And on the Eighth Day, God Created CGI

[Trigger warning for anti-Semitism.]

With remakes of every movie made during the 1980s in the can, the film industry is turning its eyes toward some new old source material: The Old Testament. So many Bible movies coming your way!

Are Moses, Noah and Judah Maccabee the next Bella, Batman and Harry Potter?

With half a dozen film projects derived from classic Bible stories in development, it would seem that Hollywood has (amen!) found God. Not since the 1950s, when Paramount and Cecil B. de Mille trotted out a handful of Old Testament tales, has there been so much Good Book on the books. Paramount and New Regency are building the big-budget Noah with Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky; Relativity has Goliath in the works with director Scott Derrickson; Warner Bros. has its controversial Judah Maccabee/Hannukkah movie with Mel Gibson producing (that film is competing with another Maccabee project); Steven Spielberg is considering directing Gods and Kings, a Moses story; and an adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost starring Bradley Cooper as Lucifer is aiming for a January shoot. It's a veritable flood.

A veritable flood, ha ha. I see what you did there!

Anyway! So many Bible stories made by so many dudes! And they obviously all sound great. Bradley Cooper as Lucifer—sure. Bruce Almighty by Darren Aronofsky—perfect. A Maccabee movie produced by Mel Gibson. *sound of record scratching* I'm sorry—WHAT?! Mel Gibson, who drunkenly slurred, "Fucking Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," after being pulled over for a DUI and then asking the Jewish community to help heal his anti-Semitism, is making a film about the origins of Hanukkah? Yep, totally appropriate. I cannot wait to not see it!

One of my favorite things about Old Testament tales being turned into movies, aside from when they're being made by anti-Semites, of course, is how they provide such a neat justification for marginalizing women. Also: The great opportunities for racism, both within the storytelling and in casting choices. Omigosh, I'm so excited about all these movies that will really give filmmakers a chance to be totally lazy and unoriginal while maximizing profits!

"What are those things that have huge pre-awareness that are huge spectacles that you can exploit our contemporary filmmaking abilities to do even bigger?" says Goliath producer Wyck Godfrey, who saw comic-book, video-game and fairy-tale cycles running their course. "We've spent our entire lives hearing sports analogies of David versus Goliath. Well, before every David and Goliath story there was David and Goliath. That's how I sold it."

Genius. Someone give that man an Oscar for Best Achievement in Being a Total Genius.

Speaking of good ideas, here's one I would like to suggest to Mr. Dreamworks T. Paramount of Hollywood: Jonah, directed by Judd Apatow and starring Jonah Hill. With Seth Rogan as the voice of The Whale.

Thank you, I know. One star on the Walk of Fame, please!

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Wal-Mart to Cut Healthcare Benefits

I was just thinking that what this country needed was MORE corporations treating their employees like expendable garbage:

After trying to mollify its critics in recent years by offering better health care benefits to its employees, Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff.

Citing rising costs, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, told its employees this week that all future part-time employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will no longer qualify for any of the company's health insurance plans.

In addition, any new employees who average 24 hours to 33 hours a week will no longer be able to include a spouse as part of their health care plan, although children can still be covered.

Guess what's another good way of cutting costs? Hire two part-time workers to work 20 hours a week instead of one worker to work 40 hours a week. Then you don't have to pay for any healthcare benefits at all! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

If this country considered healthcare a right, instead of a privilege, this would not happen. Even if we did not have socialized healthcare, we would have laws that prevent corporate employers from being able to take away workers' benefits because of "rising costs" that cut into their profits.

But we don't consider healthcare a right, and we subscribe to bullshit conservative fiscal ideologies of unfettered capitalism and bootstraps, and believe in fantasies about how the market will solve everything, while simultaneously deregulating the market to the point where workers are dependent on the goodwill of their employers to provide them with healthcare coverage, as if the Invisible Hand is a gentle benefactor and not a greedy fucking thief.

This system could not be more profoundly broken.

This is a big shift from just a few years ago when Wal-Mart expanded coverage for employees and their families after facing criticism because so many of its 1.4 million workers could not afford or did not qualify for coverage — rendering many of them eligible for Medicaid.

Which they now will be again, if austerity measures don't render them ineligible for Medicaid, too.

And conservatives will whinge endlessly about the Welfare Queens who accept government assistance, while diligently ignoring that working people denied full-time positions in order to further deny them benefits are not the problem: The problem is megacorps like Wal-Mart who want taxpayers—including their own exploited employees—to subsidize their outsized profits by providing the care for their employees they are unwilling, and not required, to provide themselves.

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Occupy Wall Street: News Round-Up

Here's some of what I've been reading this morning... [Trigger warning for racism and misogyny.]

The Occupy Wall Street Library now has its own website.

Cynthia Kouril live-blogged the Real Estate Board of New York meeting last night, at which some people in the community sought to get protesters removed from Zuccotti Park.

New York Magazine—The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuccotti Park. This piece is ostensibly about disorganization threatening to tear apart the Occupy Movement, but I'm more interested in (and disgusted, if not surprised, by) the fact that so many of these "radicals" continue to be held in thrall by the most conservative of kyriarchal prejudices (emphasis mine):

Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. "The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out," said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.

..."They're imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. "The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people's opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn't."

It was a very important part of the complaint that this young man (presumably white, since his race wasn't identified) was told he couldn't do something by a person who was fat, black, female, and feminist/man-hating plus racialized/white-hating, of which the female Afro remains a symbol to petulant young white men. I wonder if you can check out Oppression Bingo cards from the OWS Library, ahem.

Listen, I know this is one kid, but it's not just one kid. There are lots of people hearing this kind of shit at the protests: It's all unity and diversity and kumbayah until someone who isn't a straight white cis man exerts any kind of authority over a straight white cis man and then suddenly that "we're one people!" turns into this "big black organizer chick with an Afro" is trying to tell me what to do!

It's like sci-fi writers who can dream of a future in which cars fly and robots serve us breakfast in spacebed, but they can't dream of a future in which people of color and white women don't still need rescue by straight white male heroes. Many of these protesters can envision a world of financial equality, but still can't look at another human without seeing "big black organizer chick with an Afro," and attaching all kinds of judgments to that.

And, while I'm on the subject: Fuck You, Steven Greenstreet.

AlterNet—Occupy DC Flashmobs Conservation International Gala Featuring Wal-Mart Chairman & Harrison Ford: "There I was, trudging through Union Station in my suit, and a flashmob broke out at around 7 p.m., EDT. Occupy DC staged a raucous demonstration in the majestic main hall of the station, just outside a $1,000-a-plate gala for Conservation International, where the scheduled speakers were Rob Walton, chairman of the board of Wal-Mart Stores, and Wes Bush, chairman and CEO of the defense contractor Northrop Grumman, were scheduled to speak, along with the movie actor Harrison Ford, who is vice chair of CI."

San Francisco Chronicle—Oakland orders Occupy protesters to leave plaza:

Oakland officials Thursday night ordered protesters inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement to vacate Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, where hundreds of people have lived since Oct. 10 in an elaborate tent city complete with a kitchen, a school and a medical tent.

A document titled "Notice to Vacate Frank Ogawa Plaza" was posted on the city's website at 8 p.m. by the office of City Administrator Deanna Santana. It said Oakland was committed to allowing free speech, but also had a responsibility to protect public safety.

"We believe that after 10 days, the City can no longer uphold public health and safety," the notice said. "In recent days, camp conditions and occupants' behavior have significantly deteriorated, and it is no longer manageable to maintain a public health and safety plan."

James Fallows at The Atlantic—Well, Good for WDAV: "According to this update just now, the classical music public radio station WDAV, in North Carolina, will not dismiss Lisa Simeone from her role as a freelance (ie, non-employee) host of an opera (ie, non-political) program carried by NPR, just because she has also been a spokesperson for the Occupy DC movement. The reports to the contrary over the past 24 hours boded ill for all who seemed to be involved, starting with NPR -- though, who knows, their sizzle might increase the audience for the next few installments of World of Opera."

Zaid at Think Progress—In Sign of Global Influence, Chinese Officials Cracking Down on Occupy Wall Street Coverage: "When the Occupy Wall Street protests started last month, Chinese state media blasted the U.S. media for its poor coverage of the events. Yet as the Financial Times reports, now that the protests are spreading and igniting global unrest, Chinese censors are cracking down on coverage."

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Gotye: "Somebody That I Used To Know"

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Blog Note

As you may have noticed, Shakesville has a new look this morning. The Pink Petulance has been sent to take a nap for a bit, while we enjoy some pie!

For those who don't understand our current tagline, "Here, we have only pie," it is a much-loved line provided by Shaker JupiterPluvius. In the truly hilarious but browser-crashing Fat Princess Flypaper thread (the Top 10 Troll Droppings from which are recounted here), JupiterPluvius calmly, brilliantly, and memorably explained to a troll who was missing the point: "What you are doing, sir, is the equivalent of going into a pie-shop and demanding a jellied eel, because the jellied-eel shop had been closed down after a gang of hooligans had demolished the place. SIR, YOU ARE TOO LATE FOR THE JELLIED EELS. HERE, WE HAVE ONLY PIE."

Ever since, a clueless visitor who, for instance, insisted on trying to debate abortion with us or cajole us into agreement that feminism is inherently man-hating or some other nonsense completely incompatible with social justice 101, was likely to be told, eventually: "Here, we have only pie."

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Open Thread

Hosted by Pink Elephants on Parade. Look out. Look out.

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Question of the Day

What's the one thing everyone does, but no one admits?

And of course "everyone" doesn't literally mean everyone, since there are precious few things that literally everyone does. It's really about confessing something you do that you suspect you're hardly alone in doing, and no one need feel obliged to announce that they don't do this or that. It's meant to be a fun question, so have fun with it.

[H/T for the question to @AngryBlkManDC, via @nelsonpants.]

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What I'm Listening To

Labelle, "What Can I Do for You?"



People want to live, not merely exist / We need power; we need peace...

[Lyrics here. Thanks to @jsmooth995.]

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Good News!

Now you can go ahead and get that skull tattoo on your face you've been wanting, because all you need, in case you ever want a traditional job, is Dermablend Pro concealer. Oh, and an entire team of make-up artists to apply it.

Video Description: Canadian model Rick Genest, who, as far as I can tell is white and presents as male, sits down on a stool and removes his t-shirt, revealing a bare chest. He has facial piercings, but no tattoos. WAIT A SECOND! Genest puts some sort of cream on a cloth and rubs his chest, revealing part of a tattoo. Is that it? HELL NO! He then grabs a cloth and rubs his face clean of what is now understood to be the awesome concealer being advertised, revealing a skull and brain tattoo. The video then shows the application in fast-reverse, by the end of which Genest is revealed to have tattoos all over his head, torso, arms, and hands.

[Via Kelly.]

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Ask and Ye Shall Receive

For Shaker intransigentia.

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Quote of the Day

[Trigger warning for homophobia and Christian Supremacy.]

"I'm not a politician. I'm one individual that has a very special relationship with Jesus Christ. And I just can't do this."—Republican Town Clerk for Ledyard, New York, Rose Marie Belforti, who refused to sign a marriage license for a same-sex couple this summer, after New York legalized same-sex marriage. Belforti says her Christian beliefs prevent her from fulfilling her duties in good conscience.

That's fair enough. Then it's time to quit your job, ma'am.

Right now, a deputy clerk has taken over the responsibility of issuing marriage licenses, which Belforti evidently believes is a reasonable solution. It is not. Same-sex couples should not be required to navigate Belforti's public bigotry, no matter how much she's struggled with her decision nor how much she believes her religious beliefs are a legitimate justification.

Belforti, at the event whence the above quote came, also expressed consternation that "everyone thinks I'm a bigot." Well, unfortunately, "Jesus says so" isn't a rationalization for discrimination to which everyone is sympathetic, especially when there are millions of American Christians who don't subscribe to anti-gay prejudice.

And, by the way, most of them think they have "a very special relationship with Jesus Christ," too. Whooooooooooooooops.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Sophie is intrigued by something out the window.



Zelda shares her curiosity.



Squirrels beware!
(Dear Squirrels: You do not have to beware. One never goes outside, and the other's always on a leash. Carry on with your squirrelly business. Love, Liss.)

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Oh Good Lord

I really try not to write shitty, cynical, simplistic stuff like, "This story sums up everything that is wrong with the US," but if I were in the habit of writing shitty, cynical, simplistic stuff like, "This story sums up everything that is wrong with the US," I might take this occasion to shittily, cynically, and simplistically write, "This story sums up everything that is wrong with the US," because oh god this story: Steven Seagal Sworn in as Deputy Sheriff to Help Secure Southern US Border.

Border bandits in far West Texas may want to brush up on their martial arts and film presence now that action film star Steven Seagal is coming to town.

Seagal, 59, was sworn in this week as the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office newest deputy. The sheriff's office said he'll be working full time to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Seagal called the department himself about two months ago asking for the job.

"It became very clear to me that Mr. Seagal is not in this for the celebrity or the publicity," Sheriff Arvin West said. "He's like the rest of us that live down here; he has a sincere passion for his country and he wants to do more to help."

Sure. Also, he's racist.

Both Seagal's reps and the Hudspeth County force claim that there are no plans in the works for a reality show, but Seagal isn't slated to start his role as "deputy chief to the chief deputy" until "early next year," and department spokesman Gary Fleming won't say they're not "weighing their own options for a reality show some time in the future," though "the television aspect of what we're doing here is the last priority." So basically, there's going to be a TV show.

Just what the already incendiary, xenophobic, violent, Othering, and dangerously uninformed national discussion about immigration, such as it is, really needs: An exploitative man-boy fantasy about kicking illegal ass at the border with Steven Seagal. Yiiiiiiiiiiikes.

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Number of the Day

$507: The US median weekly paycheck in 2010, "the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999."

I strongly encourage you to read David Cay Johnston's column about the first official data on 2010 paychecks, which was posted on the internet yesterday by the US government without warning or announcement. And, if you're able, watch/listen to the embedded video there—its content unavailable for commercial reproduction, unfortunately—in which Johnston provides some great commentary on the abysmal numbers.

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Speaking of Chipping Away at Roe...

Something I (and many other advocates for abortion rights) have been saying for years is that the anti-choice movement has effectively conceded that trying to overturn Roe is a losing battle, so they've switched strategies to simply undermine the right it grants in every conceivable way.

In April of this year, the Reverend Pat Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, flatly stated as much: "We don't have to see a Roe v. Wade overturned in the Supreme Court to end it. … We want to. But if we chip away and chip away, we'll find out that Roe really has no impact. And that's what we are doing."

For a very long time, that chipping strategy focused on "demand-side" abortion restrictions, i.e. those that create barriers to women and trans men seeking abortions, and we saw a bunch of states pass laws creating waiting periods, parental consent laws, etc.

But, as a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine has found, "demand-side" abortion restrictions "have not produced the drop in abortion rates that abortion-rights opponents desire," so anti-choicers have turned their attention to "supply side" abortion restrictions, which target physicians, hospitals, and clinics, with legislation that, for example, seeks to redefine abortion clinics as medical-surgical facilities.

Arizona, Kansas, Utah and Virginia are among the states that have turned to supply-side measures, such as strict structural requirements for abortion clinics that could force providers out of business. Nationwide, only 14% of ob-gyns offer abortion care, according to [NPR's "Shots"/Kaiser Health News].

[Theodore Joyce of the City University of New York and the National Bureau of Economic Research] writes that the supply-side strategy has been particularly effective in Texas, where a law called the Woman's Right to Know Act took effect in January 2004. The law includes demand-side restrictions that require women seeking abortion services before 16 weeks of pregnancy to receive certain information at least 24 hours before the procedure. After 16 weeks, the law includes supply-side restrictions requiring that abortions be performed in hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers that meet certain staffing, reporting and structural requirements.

As a result, the number of abortions performed at or after 16 weeks decreased from 3,642 statewide in 2003 to 446 in 2004, while the average distance to a non-hospital abortion provider increased from 33 miles to 252 miles during the same time frame, according to Joyce (Gold, "Shots"/Kaiser Health News, 10/19).

Meanwhile, as this radical legislative assault on the bodily autonomy of more than half the population of US citizens insidiously snakes its way through statehouses across the nation, our ostensibly "pro-choice" president continues to remain totally silent on the issue, failing even to give a passing mention to reproductive rights in his "Women's Equality Day" proclamation. He has a bully pulpit which he knows how to use on behalf of marginalized constituencies when he deems it important enough, and I wonder still when he might find this pernicious subversion of a basic medical right important enough to say something, or even send out a surrogate to say something, anything, in our defense. You can't claim to be an ally if you're silent.

And lest anyone mistake that my ire is directed exclusively at President Obama, I'll also note once again the cavernous void of outrage across the progressive blogosphere at this affront to women. One would think the male-authored blogs at which protecting Roe is such a huge issue during elections would be prominently featuring coverage of this assault on women's basic bodily autonomy.

It's almost like certain gentlemen on the Left side of the aisle only care about Roe as a bargaining chip, and not as a fundamental right of women. Huh.

[H/T to Steph Herold.]

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Al Stewart: "Year of the Cat"

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Planned Parenthood Funding Fight Continues in Indiana Today

After Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R-Adicalextremist) signed a measure in May to make Indiana the first state in the US to defund Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood requested a restraining order to block the legislation until they could appeal it, a request which was denied by a federal judge. Planned Parenthood Indiana was forced to take a furlough day in June after it ran out of state funding, before Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled later in the month that the state could not defund Planned Parenthood, because it was a violation of federal Medicaid rules and would "exact a devastating financial toll on PPIN and hinder its ability to continue serving patients' general health needs."

Enforcement of the law was blocked, which the State then appealed in August, and today the fight resumes at a US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said the funding battle is centered on abortion. "The Legislature doesn't want to the indirect funding of abortions by tax payers," Zoeller said.

PPIN CEO Betty Cockrum said the funding should be focused on healthcare.

"The worst thing that can happen is to diminish access to health care," Cockrum said.

..."We are really asking that the court eliminate the injunctive relief that the lower court granted so that we can continue to do what the statute says," Cockrum said. "You cannot discriminate against an entity because it's providing a constitutionally protected service."

..."[The funding is] for pap tests. It's for STD testing and treatment. It's for birth control. Birth control is very important," Cockrum said.

Indiana officials said the legal battle could end if PPIN separates its abortion services from all others.

"The state has the right to avoid even the indirect funding of abortion services," Zoeller said.

"Not one penny of Medicaid money goes toward abortion, except in those very rare circumstances where there's a police report regarding rape or incest," Cockrum said.

In other words, the state already is avoiding "even the indirect funding of abortion services," but that's not good enough for inarticulated reasons best left vague because they are manifest horseshit.

Zoeller and the rest of the conservative nincompoops at the Indiana Statehouse can keep yammering about "the indirect funding of abortions by tax payers" all they want, but it's an evident line of bullshit spouted by mendacious cowards who refuse to be honest about their real objective of undermining pregnant people's legal access to abortion.

[H/T to @PPINAdvocates.]

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Top Chef: Just Desserts Open Thread

Is this show still on? Why hasn't it been cancelled yet? I like Gail Simmons, but really, this show is terrible. She deserves better.

Last night's episode will be discussed in detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, pack your fluffernutters and go...

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Occupy Wall Street: News Round-Up

Occupy Chicago, October 18. [Getty Images]
Here's some of what I've been reading this morning...

Leonard Pitts, Jr.—Occupy Wall Street can bring about systemic change:

The Occupy movement is only a little over a month old. It is a new colt, still wobbly on its legs, yet some of us want it to already be Seabiscuit.

It is, however, difficult to escape a certain impatience when you consider that the corporate greed and exploitation the movement exists to oppose have gone unquestioned and unchallenged for an unconscionably long time. There is something grotesque about the idea that 1 percent of the nation controls more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. There is something pitiful about the idea that the bottom 90 has endured economic exploitation in silence for years.

The nation - the world itself, to judge from last weekend - needs this uprising, this line in the sand, this visceral reminder of the power of the people. We need this to be something.

Greg Sargent—Yup: Blue collar whites do support Occupy Wall Street: "Conservatives predicting that the protests will drive away blue collar whites are trying to exploit a traditional cultural faultline that has been a feature of our politics for decades—the one between working class whites and liberal activists who resort to outsized protest tactics. But if anything, white working class voters may be looking past the theatrics and responding to Occupy Wall Street's actual message. It's very early days, and anything can happen to the movement, but this raises at least the possibility that labor organizers can begin to make some headway in tying it to a broader working class constituency."

Errin Haines for the AP—Occupy protesters eye diversity as movement grows:

On Saturday, the nation's capital provided a sharp contrast: A couple dozen mostly white protesters congregated in Washington's Freedom Plaza. They were separate from Occupy DC but hold similar ideals. Not far away, thousands marched to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Their rallying cry was similar, if not identical -- yet the vast majority were black.

A few men played the bongo drums at Freedom Plaza, while a band at the nearby rally led by the Rev. Al Sharpton near the Washington Monument played a soulful, jazzy rendition of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" -- albeit with a white saxophonist -- and the crowd sang along knowingly as a speaker recited the familiar opening theme to the "Tom Joyner Morning Show."

Phil Calhoun, 44, an engineer from Crofton, Md., who was checking out the various protests, marveled at the racial disparity between the two groups even though they were preaching similar ideologies.

"Maybe it's just the nature of our society, set this up this way," he said. "But it's one thing I think we need to bridge. We need to bridge that gap."

Emerging from Chicago's South Side, Occupy the Hood, which is quickly spreading to other US cities, is one attempt at bridge-building.

Other odds and ends...

Public Radio International: Tourists flock to New York's Occupy Wall Street protests.

The Daily Beast: Occupy Wall Street Invades Late Night.

Voice of America: Grassroots, Labor Support for Occupy Wall Street.

Change.org Petition: Tell Bank of America: No $5 Debit Card Fees.

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News from Libya: Qaddafi Has Reportedly Been Killed

New York Times—Qaddafi Dead as Troops Seize Stronghold, Officials Say:

The head of the Libyan military council said that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed Thursday as fighters battling the vestiges of his fallen regime wrested control of his hometown of Surt after a prolonged struggle. Al-Jazeera television showed what it said was Colonel Qaddafi's corpse as Libyans rejoiced.

Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the Tripoli military council, said on Al Jazeera that the former leader had been killed and that anti-Qaddafi forces had his body.

...As rumor of his death spread in the capital, Tripoli, car horns blared as many celebrated in the streets.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Afghanistan, said the department was aware of the reports "on the capture or killing of Muammar Qaddafi" but could not confirm them "at this time."

Qaddafi has been both actual shit-head and US boogeyman for most of my life. And I'm having pretty much the same reaction I had when I heard that bin Laden had been killed: It's good, I guess...? I have a hard time feeling awesome about anyone being killed, even when it's an irredeemable specimen of humanity's worst nature like Qaddafi. It's just a weird thing to celebrate.

My thoughts are with the people of Libya, especially the people within marginalized populations there. I desperately hope as their country moves forward, their voices are heard and their lives valued. I hope this is a new dawn for everyone in Libya.

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