[Content Note: Violence; racism.]
"I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am, and I did not know if he was armed or not"—George Zimmerman, in court today, offering an aggressively defensive non-apology to Trayvon Martin's parents. There is video here; video starts playing automatically.
Trayvon Martin's father, Tracy, reportedly cried tears of anger after the apology.
Also today: Judge Kenneth Lester set Zimmerman's bond at $150,000, despite prosecution arguments that bail should be set at no lower than $1 million or denied altogether, based on Zimmerman's history of violence, demonstrated via testimony about Zimmerman's previous assault on a police officer (for which he was ordered to attend an anger management program) and an assault on former girlfriend.
Zimmerman's wife and father testified in his defense, the latter arguing Zimmerman was never violent unless provoked. Uh-huh.
To that end, a picture is being circulated that is purported to be of Zimmerman's head bleeding immediately after the shooting that left Martin dead, in regard to which I will just reiterate my previous comment: Even if it is true that Martin at some point got physical with Zimmerman, to pretend that happened unprovoked is absurd in the extreme, given the available recording of Zimmerman talking to police and being told they do not need him to follow Martin, after he describes nothing that reasonably warrants a call to police in the first place. From Trayvon Martin's perspective, he was being stalked by a man in a vehicle who was describing his movements. If at some point he decided to try to defend himself, who the fuck could blame him?
Quote of the Day
Stand Your Ground (Not So Fast, Ladies)
[Content Note: Violence; domestic abuse.]
Hey, you know how I keep harping like the broken record that I am about Stand Your Ground laws being inherently corrupt by virtue of the inevitability of unequal application in a kyriarchal culture...?
Florida Woman Facing Jail Time After Defending Herself Against Domestic Violence:
A Florida woman is facing 20 years in prison after being convicted on three counts of Aggravated Assault for firing a gun in the air to scare off her abusive husband. Marissa Alexander was arrested in August 2010 after a fight with her husband, who she says was abusive for many years. She said in court documents that she tried to escape after her husband strangled her but she was unable to get out of the locked garage so she grabbed her gun instead. No one was hurt when she shot at the ceiling.But apparently being victimized "for many years" by a man on whom Alexander had taken out an order of protection (he had one on her, too) did not constitute a "reasonable belief" that he was going to hurt her.
Alexander's lawyer said he did not use the Battered Spouse defense because it is a psychiatric defense that requires an expert to testify. Instead, he based Alexander's defense on Florida's Stand Your Ground law.
Marissa Alexander is an African-American woman.
The judge in the case dismissed the motion for immunity under Florida's Stand Your Ground statue, so Alexander will now face trial. Part of the judge's reasoning for dismissing the motion was that Alexander should have left the house, despite the fact that the Stand Your Ground statute includes no duty to retreat.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by meaningful silence.
Recommended Reading:
Julia: Trans Feminism: There's No Conundrum About It [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of transmisogyny, transphobia, cissexism, and Othering.]
Latoya: Girls That Television Will Never Know [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of racism.]
Mychal: Bill Cosby's Erasure of Race from the Trayvon Martin Case [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of violence, racism, and racist tropes.]
Aram: New Account: Zimmerman Told Cops Trayvon's Last Words Were 'Okay, You Got It' [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of violence and racism.]
Daniel: Droning On [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of the use of drones in US foreign policy.]
Ana: Deconstruction: McDonalds, Advocacy, Fat Pride, and Swear Words [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of fat hatred, food/eating, surgery, racism, and hate groups.]
Darron: Is Love Enough? Limits of Whiteness in Transracial Adoptions
Tami: If Childcare & Housekeeping Were Important, Men Would Do Them
Ask a Geek Feminist: Writing Violence Against a Female Superhero in Fiction While Male [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of violence and misogyny.]
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Day of Silence
Today marks the 16th annual Day of Silence, which was launched by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, during which the discrimination and harassment—in effect, the silencing—of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students and their allies is protested with silence.
Thank you for the reminder to Andy, who has video of the GLSEN Day of Silence 2012 organizers.
There are many different activities associated with the National Day of Silence now, but the primary action is silence. A perfect, still silence.
Today, in schools across the country, thousands and thousands of kids—gay kids, bisexual kids, asexual kids, questioning kids, undecided kids, straight kids, trans* kids, intersex kids, cis kids—will move through the halls of their schools, surrounded by the bustle of lockers being opened and closed, the boisterousness of their peers, the laughter and shoving and passing of notes, and they will remain silent.
They will make eye contact with other participants, nodding, sharing solemn smiles, and they will say nothing, in support of one another. They are silent on this day so that the QUILTBAG community may not have to be.
The vile bigotry that still makes life hard for QUILTBAG teens is a dinosaur, and one day it will be extinct—and we will collect its bones and put them in a museum and tell future generations about the purveyors of that vile bigotry who once thought that the QUILTBAG community didn't deserve equality. The children of future generations will laugh and shake their heads, and we will remember bitterly when there was a time people had to be silent to make some noise.
A moment of silence: __________________________________
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen.]
Monday, April 16 marked the one-year anniversary of the first time park guests got to see [male cheetah Kasi] and [female yellow Labrador Mtani] start to strike up a friendship that the park's animal experts expect to last a lifetime. Now, a year later, they live together full time at the park's Cheetah Run habitat and even travel together to schools, events and television studios, helping the park's education team teach the public about the plight of cheetahs in the wild and the importance of Busch Gardens’ conservation efforts. (Link)The friendship was developed slowly and safely under the supervision of park staff. Pairing dogs with cheetahs (and finding other domestic animal pairings that work, e.g. a gorilla and a rabbit) is an approach that provides captive animals companionship without removing companion animals from natural habitats and without offering breeding opportunities (thus creating more captive animals).
[H/T to @bekitty.]
Primarily Awful
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney pauses while speaking at the closed National Gypsum drywall factory in Lorain, Ohio, Thursday, April 19, 2012. [AP Photo]That's not even a Photoshop. That's just a straight-up wire image of Mitt Romney standing in an empty factory behind a sign reading "Obama Isn't Working." Ha ha but I thought YOU were the one who's "unemployed," Mitt Romney! Ha ha you jackass!
Here's a Fun Fact about that "Obama Isn't Working" slogan, about which the Romney campaign is so excited: It's racially loaded. I'm sure playing into the stereotype of the lazy black man who draws a government check without doing any work is just a coincidence, though, and not a dog whistle to the Republican Party's deeply racist base. (It is deliberate race-baiting.)
And here's a Fun Fact about that empty factory, which Romney was using as a prop to suggest Obama's uniquely responsible for the high unemployment rate: The factory shut down in June 2008, while George Bush was still in office. Whoooooops!
In other news, Mitt Romney has hired Richard Grenell as his national security spokesperson. You might not have heard of Richard Grenell, but he was a major player in the Bush administration, serving straight through both terms as the director of communications and public diplomacy at the United Nations. Which means he was a personal adviser to, among others, John Bolton, the UN-hating UN ambassador, the mere mention of whose name once caused Hillary Clinton to burst into contemptuous laughter. So, in other words, he's basically a perfect choice for Team Romney.
Spoiler Alert! Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson could be a big-time libertarian spoiler, except for how no one's heard of him! But he's already polling at 6% nationally! Watch out!
And finally! Karl Rove's SuperPAC, American Crossroads, has already raised $100 million. That is A LOT of Ronpaulbuxxx, baby. I mean, free speech. That is a lot of FREE SPEECH.
Sob.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging
This morning, Blogger unveiled the new interface for its dashboard. If you've got Gmail, you sort of have an idea of what it looks like, even if you had been reverting to the old look, because, as of today, you can't revert anymore.
I get that they were going for a "clean" look, but it's too light: The best way I can describe it is that it's not heavy enough—the elements on the pages aren't sufficiently substantial. Everything just looks like it's floating to me, and it's giving me a serious headache. I've got some kind of information processing deficit (like dyslexia, but not exactly), and the new interface is frying my brain as it tries to make sense of the screen.
I question if Google meaningfully tested this new look with people with various info processing disorders, because this seems to be a significant accessibility issue to me.
Anyway. Here's a thread for discussion about the new Blogger and/or new Gmail interface(s), if anyone wants to weigh in, pro or con.
Question of the Day
What's the nicest compliment you've received recently?
Last week, after I got that little lost dog out of traffic and into the safe hands of our very kind and gentle animal control guy, Iain came home that night and said how nice a thing it was. As is my usual habit, I brushed it off, because I am a super awkward dildobrain about accepting compliments, but also because I didn't think it was all that nice—that's just a sort of thing I imagine anyone would do, even though I simultaneously recognize our house full of rescues suggests otherwise.
"No, it was really decent," Iain said. "Reading about it made me feel happy to be married to you."
That's a nice compliment to get.
Nope!
Universal Develops 'The Rockford Files' for Vince Vaughn to Play James Garner Role.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NO NO NO! NOOOOOOO! NONONONONONONO! NOPE!
It's not that I'm axiomatically averse to a remake of The Rockford Files. I loved that show when I was a kid, and I think it's one of the better franchises to update. Just not with Vince Vaughn!
1. Did I mention nope to Vince Vaughn? Nopity-nope! It's not that he couldn't pull it off. He could. But.
2. The key to Rockford is an insouciant charisma and a quick wit, with a twist of grumble. None of these things are tied to being white, or male, or straight, or of a certain age. If you're gonna remake it, remake it. Otherwise, I'mma just watch the original on DVD. Are you telling me Rosario Dawson wouldn't be a better Rockford than Vince Vaughn? Because you're wrong.
3. If you're going to insist on remaking it with a white dude, I've got two words for you: Josh Holloway.
Quote of the Day
"Governor Romney supports the Violence Against Women Act and hopes it can be reauthorized without turning it into a political football."—Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul, who "declined to specify which version he supported."
So much LOL at sending out a female spokesperson to address Romney's "support" of the VAWA, and more LOL at failing to acknowledge of what, exactly, that support is constituted, now that Republicans have turned the reauthorization of VAWA into a big fucking fight because of new provisions for icky things like protections for same-sex couples and undocumented immigrants, and additional LOL at the implication it might be someone other than members of Romney's party who turned federal protections for abused women into a "political football."
Failfecta!
Photo of the Day
President Barack Obama sits on the famed Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum following an event in Dearborn, Michigan, April 18, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
BushQuotes!
Chapter 3, page 23: "What Texans Can Dream, Texans Can Do."
That's the title of this chapter. We're moving on from the glimmering nostalgia of Bush's Texas childhood to the gritty nostalgia of Bush's Texas adulthood.
So far, on this first page of the chapter, he's already said Ann Richards was made of yuck and Kay Bailey Hutchison is the best. I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly.
*looks around for a couch*
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Number of the Day
One: The number of inches away from war we are "almost every day" in the region around North Korea, according to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
I would have thought the US had lost its taste for war, after a decade of the stuff and the resultant broken lives and crushing debt, but nope! Nary a day goes by when I don't hear about the imminence of war with North Korea or Iran.
Which is to say nothing of the secret little drone wars we're fighting all over the place, with precious little oversight, transparency, or public discussion.
Michele Bachmann Joins the Tar Baby Hall of Shame
[Content Note: Racism.]
I cannot believe in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and twelve there are still Republicans using the racially loaded phrase "tar baby," but here it is, yet again:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) blasted President Obama following his proposed "crackdown" on firms found to be manipulating the oil market, saying he is "waving a tar baby in the air" as a distraction from high gas prices.And naturally if you question the decency of using the term "tar baby" at all, no less in the middle of scolding our African-American president, then you're just an oversensitive hysteric looking for things to get mad about, etc.
"This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is a problem," Bachmann said in an interview Wednesday with The Shark Tank, a conservative news organization that covers Florida politics. "I have never seen a more irresponsible president who is infantile in the way that he continually blames everyone else for his failure to first diagnose the problem and second to address the problem. It's always everyone else's fault."
She said her message for the president is, "Get over it," and stop blaming everyone else.
The term "tar baby" is a racially loaded phrase coined in the "Brer Rabbit" tales. The term generally means a "sticky situation," but has also been used as a derogatory term for a black person.
Or maybe Rep. Bachmann will use Mitt Romney's strategy when he used the phrase in 2006 and claim to be "unaware that some people find the term objectionable." Ha ha great explanation. "I'm too privileged to know about things that offend black people!"
Other members of the Tar Baby Hall of Shame include: Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, Republican Rep. Tom Davis, Republican Senator John McCain, Republican White House Spokesperson Tony Snow.
Nothing Says You Value Women Like Siccing the Inquisition on Nuns!
[Content note: religious oppression, institutionalized misogyny.]
I alluded in yesterday's post to the Vatican's announced crackdown on Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents most American nuns and other women religious. The Washington Post has has more details, including the fact that this is the result of an investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
And what have these nuns done to deserve such a "correction"? Not only have they sponsored conferences featuring "a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,” the Inquisition CDF also finds that:
"...the church’s biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes church teaching. Moreover, occasional public statements by the LCWR that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose.”So, you're going to discipline some of the only figures within the Catholic leadership who are (a) women and (b) consistently serving the health and defending the humanity of women? Well, that gives me all KINDS of warm fuzzies about the Vatican's care and concern for anyone who isn't a patriarchal man-type!
The Vatican would like us to believe that this is simply a matter of "serious theological error." Without delving deeply into Church history or politics, let me simply note that this is a terribly, terribly convenient moment to "discover" this "error." It coincides with the USian debate over the Affordable Healthcare Act, which has tremendous financial implications for Catholic health and social services. It coincides with the U.S. Bishops' increasing attempts to permanently ally themselves with the Republican party, thereby gaining for themselves the kind of political power that the white, conservative evangelical establishment has enjoyed since the 1980s. And it coincides with an astonishing political season in which the leading candidate for the Republican nomination has distanced himself from women's economic rights, announced his intent to gut services which help guarantee women's basic bodily autonomy, and whose sole research into women's issues seems to consist of talking to a woman who shares his economic privilege and conservative religious beliefs.
(Gee, you know, except for that Mormon thing, Mitt Romney would make a great Catholic bishop!)
Catholic nuns are not a monolith, nor are they perfect. As individuals and as orders, religious women have participated in their fair share of religious oppressions and abuses of power, in the U.S. and around the world. But it is undeniable that Catholic religious women have also been historically one of the few female voices allowed to even speak to the male-dominated power structure of the Catholic church. While far from the "radical feminists" presented in the hostile imaginings of conservative Catholic clergy, members of the LCWR provide an important alternative to the radically misogynist and homophobic teachings of the current Catholic leadership.
That they are to be silenced for their efforts on behalf of those on the receiving end of kyriarchal oppression is profoundly depressing, and profoundly revealing.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please take the time to make sure any criticisms are clearly directed at the Catholic Church leadership and not at "Catholics," many of whom are themselves critical of the failures of Church leadership.]
Daily Dose of Cute
As longtime followers of the Daily Dose of Cute will recall, Dudley is highly food motivated and considers pigs' ears a high value treat. And, when he isn't busy losing his high value treats under bookcases, he's busy gobbling them up instantly. A pig's ear lasts him about three minutes.
Zelly, on the other hand, will chew on a pig's ear or green stick slowly, often doing little damage to it before she walks away. For her, the biggest excitement seems to be getting the treat, rather than eating it. I have to be quick to grab whatever she abandons before Dudley swoops in, because he's suddenly a Watch Dog when there's a treat to be had.
Video Description: Zelly lies on the living room rug chewing on a pig's ear. She loses interest, gets up, stretches, and hops up onto the couch beside me. In the background, Dudley lies in his dog bed, his eyes fixed on the unguarded treat.
Bonus Cuteness: I received the following email from Shaker cellocat, which I am sharing with her permission:
I showed my daughter (3 years old) [April 10th's] video of Zelda, and then we went to your Youtube channel and watched a bunch more. We don't let her watch TV, and the videos she sees are limited to zoo videos and short takes we do ourselves of us and our daily life. But I feel totally safe having her watch clips of your wonderful menagerie. Anyway, in one of the videos we saw, one or both of the dogs were jumping. I said, "Look at the dogs jumping." [My daughter] said, "They're jumping for joy! They're jumping for life!" It was a sweet moment, and I just wanted to share it with you.They're jumping for life! I love that so much!
Primarily Bored
Shakers, I had a dream the other night that President Obama told me he'd made a deal with Joe Biden to be his veep for the first term, so he could get elected, and that he'd soon be announcing Hillary Clinton is going to be his running mate in 2012. He told me not to tell anyone, but, since it was a dream and all, I think it will be okay to break the President's confidence. I take away three things from this dream:
1. I really and truly cannot turn off my brain, which continues to work even when I am asleep.
2. I really want to find a reason to vote affirmatively for President Obama.
3. I really think this would be a terrific idea and I wish it were true. No offense, Joe Biden, but you are not very exciting and you mostly make news by being a gaffe machine, and it would be really great if the Democratic Party and President Obama had the foresight to set up a future Democratic presidential incumbent other than you, especially one will help them win this election by a fucking landslide.
Seriously, how cool would it be if President Obama got reelected with a female running mate and made presidential history twice? COME ON, OBAMA! Do it! Doooooooooooo iiiiiiiiiiiiit!
Please.
Speaking of running mates, CNN polled Republicans and Republican-leaning independents about whom they'd like to see as Mitt Romney's running mate, and the winner from their pre-selected list of eight was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She got 26% of the vote. Runner-up was Rick Santorum, who got 21% of the vote. LULZ. Great choices. Very cool.
"Mitt Romney, you should pick that black lady who watched football with George W. Bush, because that will steal voters from Barack Obama, who is black and also favored by ladies! This is an excellent plan, because our understanding of racial and gender politics is garbage! If not, just pick that other white guy."—GOP voters.
Hey, y'all remember when Condoleezza Rice was taking in a play and going shoe-shopping in NYC while people were drowning in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? Good times. She's terrific.
Anyway! Even though Obama is still polling high among women, the New York Times informs us that the shitty economy still leaves an opening for Romney. Sure, whatever. File this under things that won't truly matter for another five months.
I do, however, enjoy how "women's issues" and "the economy" continue to be framed by the media as mutually exclusive things. Ha ha no.
In other news, Mitt Romney is still definitely terrible, and will be shoring up his garbage nightmare credentials in May by giving the commencement address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. PERFECT.
And finally! For all you Rick Perry fans out there, and also for all you 2016 Heads, the good news is that Rick Perry is already considering running again in 2016. A great announcement for us all, I'm sure.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
