So, there's this conservative kid, who's 14, and he has his own talk show and a book, and he's beloved by conservatives, big-name conservatives like Rudy Giuliani and Glenn Beck, who love that he says outrageous things—like, most recently, that President Obama is making kids gay, which is currently getting him lots of attention across the internet, where he's considered either a hero or a bozo.
I am not going to link to this kid, or post his video, even though he is saying terrible things.
When I was 14, I knew some 14-year-olds who said terrible, conservative, homophobic things.
Some of them probably still say them.
Some of them, in years hence, deeply regretted the things they said only because that's what they'd been taught by their families, their churches, their culture.
Some of them later came out.
I don't know in which one of those categories that boy might find himself two or twenty years from now. So I will only say this: If it's in either of the latter two, a space as safe as I know how to make it will be waiting for him.
A Thing on the Internet, and My Thoughts About It
Question of the Day
After yesterday's epic QotD about creepy "romantic" pop songs, I thought we'd do the flipside as suggested by Shaker LunaMichelle: What pop song(s) meant to be romantic do you find to be genuinely romantic instead of creepy?
I'm going to throw my vote to Travis' "Flowers in the Window," which is a lovely song about finding someone uniquely suited to you, someone whom you "help with the load" as you go through life together, and feeling happy that you're both content in your relationship. I really love this song, because there's no bullshit about rescuing each other or completing each other or living a perfect life. Nope, life is a slog, but it's better with a person who complements you (if that's your thing), and if you want flowers in the window, you've got to keep planting seeds.
[Lyrics here.]
I first heard this song after Iain sent me a copy of the single through the mail, when we still lived on different continents. It was the first song he ever sent me, and it means more to me with every passing year that I know him. He has always loved me in a way that makes me feel safe.
Quote of the Day
"Economic crises of the kind we are in are costly tragedies, and it takes dedication, sacrifice, and hard work on the part of business elites, labor organizations, political leaders, and ordinary consumers and voters to make it through. Historically, the gumption has been found."—Jack A. Goldstone, in "It's Worse Than You Think: Halftime Between Two Lost Decades," for The Atlantic.
Let us hope we find the gumption once more.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 4, page 52: "I studied hard."
That is definitely a real quote from page 52 of Privilege, Balls, and Things I Did That Were Hard (That's What She Said).
A portrait of the hard-studying study-harder.
[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
[Content Note: Misogyny; gender-based discrimination.]
1,975: The number of charges filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Walmart discriminated in pay and promotion decisions on the basis of gender.
Nearly 2,000 current and former Walmart employees filed claims of discrimination on the basis of gender with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Complaints were filed in all but two states - Montana and Vermont - but at least one complaint was filed in every US Walmart retail region. The lawsuits were filed in response to last year's Supreme Court ruling on a class-action lawsuit, Dukes v. Walmart Stores, Inc., in which the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's certification of a national class of women.Indeed.
Brad Seligman, one of the lawyers for the women in Dukes v. Walmart Stores, Inc., said that "the fact that EEOC charges were filed in every single Walmart region in the nation demonstrates the widespread and pervasive nature of Walmart's pay and promotion discrimination against its women employees."
In related news: "Walmart's outsourcing of jobs is driving down wages at American factories, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project."
What a great company. We should give them more tax breaks.
Walmart's garbage employment policies underscore the speciousness of waxing rhapsodic about "job creators" without any kind of qualifications about what kind of jobs are being created. Walmart's increasingly expansive presence across the nation creates retail jobs—but does so at the expense of US factory jobs. (Not to mention the jobs lost at the smaller and/or independent retailers Walmart drives out of business.) Meanwhile, the jobs Walmart creates lack protections, benefits, and equal pay.
The US needs fewer jobs like the ones Walmart is creating, and more like the ones Walmart endeavors to destroy to maximize profits.
Reproductive Rights Update: Montana
[Content Note: War on agency; reproductive rights; dehumanization; Christian Supremacy.]
There are two issues happening in Montana. One will definitely be on the ballot in November, the other is currently getting signatures to be able to be on the ballot.
First, on the ballot is LR-120 (HB 627), which requires parental consent for a minor to obtain an abortion. It will read (.pdf):
LR-120 prohibits a physician from performing an abortion on a minor under 16 years of age unless a physician notifies a parent or legal guardian of the minor at least 48 hours prior to the procedure. Notice is not required if: (1) there is a medical emergency; (2) it is waived by a youth court in a sealed proceeding; or (3) it is waived by the parent or guardian. A person who performs an abortion in violation of the act, or who coerces a minor to have an abortion, is subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability.The other issue is CI-108, a "personhood" initiative. CI-108 reads:
And what of the right of the person with the uterus to not be forced by law to carry a pregnancy to term? *crickets*CONSTITUTIONAL INITIATIVE NO. 108
A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROPOSED BY INITIATIVE PETITION
The due process section of the Montana Constitution provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. CI-108 amends the due process section of the Montana Constitution to define “person” as used in that section to apply to “all human beings at every stage of development, including the stage of fertilization or conception, regardless of age, health, level of functioning, or condition of dependency.” It grants due process rights at every stage of biological development, including fertilization or conception.
There are no exceptions written into this initiative for, well, anything. The "rights" of a blastocyst are foremost to the rights of the person with the uterus.
The sponsor of the initiative is Dr. Annie Bukacek, an outspoken anti-choice activist. A couple years ago, Dr. Bukacek was under investigation for Medicaid fraud, the doctor was apparently asked to leave a group practice because she refused to stop praying with patients, and was a force behind the previously-failed attempt to get "personhood" on the ballot two years ago in Montana (6,000 signatures short). She said:
"The killing of innocent humans is not compatible with a civilized society. We have barely begun the fight for the rights and liberties of unborn babies, and we will keep working at it until their personhood is established in our Montana Constitution."But what is "compatible with a civilized society" is negating the rights of people with uteri? I see.
The status of the initiative so far is:
Signatures received and tallied by SOS: 3,270 of 48,674 total signatures needed; qualified in 4 of 40 legislative districts needed.October is the deadline for signatures.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda is very particular about the times she wants to play and the times she wants to cuddle. (Fair enough! So am I!) Earlier today, after coming back in from running around in the backyard, I offered to play Get the Squirrel with her (rules: I have the squirrel; Zelda gets the squirrel), but she was not interested in plushy squirrels (which are actually chipmunks). She was interested in butt-scratches.
Video Description: Zelda the Black-and-Tan Mutt stands in front of me, grinning. I offer her the squirrel. She ignores the squirrel and sits in front of me with her back to me, tilting her head up at me. "What are you doing?" I ask, laughing. I offer her the squirrel again. "Get that squirrel," I tell her. She takes it gently from my hand, plays with it half-heartedly for approximately one second, then walks it over to her bed, lays it down very deliberately, then walks back and stands in front of me with her butt tilted toward me. She wags her tail and looks up at me with a grin. "What—you want butt-scratches?" I ask her. I scratch her at the base of her tail. I stop. She looks at me. "What—do you want MORE butt-scratches?" She tilts her head and grins. "Okay." I scratch her butt. I stop. Her tail wags. She sits in front of me and nudges my hand so I'll scratch her head. (This is the ritual. Butt-scratches, head-scratches, butt-scratches, head-scratches.) "What?" I ask her, scratching all around her head and ears and chin. She looks blissed-out. "Such a good girl." She grins.
Full Disclosure: This video was followed by extensive cuddling and face kisses.
Zelda McEwan: Power Cuddler
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
In the news today: Mitt Romney out-fundraised President Barack Obama in May, and Newt Gingrich's sugar-daddy Spencer Adelson is about to cut a Romney SuperPAC a huge check.
Once again, I'd like to commend the Supreme Court on that excellent Citizens United decision. Great job, assholes.
Also stop by Digby's place to read all about how Mitt Romney used to like to impersonate a police officer in order to "play pranks" on people.
Whooops Your Vatican-Condemned Bestseller!
[Content note: this post contains negative statements about human sexuality.]
The story, Monday:
The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday denounced an American nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School for a book that attempted to present a theological rationale for same-sex relationships, masturbation and remarriage after divorce.
The story, Wednesday:
After the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog condemned an American nun for a book she wrote on human sexuality this week, the book shot up Amazon.com’s bestseller list, becoming the #1 best selling religious studies book by Tuesday.On Wednesday , Sister Margaret A. Farley's "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics," was the #16 best-selling book on Amazon overall, just ahead of Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption,” which has been on Amazon's bestseller list for well over a year.
Farley's book has been on the list for three days. The Washington Post reported that the book was #142,982 on Amazon as recently as Monday.
Whooooops!
Among Sister Farley's sins: suggesting that " 'many women' have found 'great good in self-pleasuring — perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure — something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.' "
The Vatican response: “ 'Masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action,' the church said in a statement Monday."
I don't know about you, but nothing suggests that me that the Vatican leadership is really well-informed about human sexuality more than telling the laydeez not to play with their naughtybits or they're going to hell.
[Commenting note: Please take care in comments to distinguish between Catholic hierarchy and ordinary Catholics, many of whom disagree with the actions of their leadership.]
The Tyranny of OH HELL IT BURNS: 3. NO LABELS
In other words, liberals are smart enough to use the word socialist intelligently but conservatives aren't. - Jonah Goldberg, explaining what liberals think
Van Jones, President Obama's erstwhile "green jobs czar"... explain[ed] in a 2005 interview that he was going to give up openly proselytizing Marxist-Leninism while still pursuing the ends: "I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends." - Jonah Goldberg, using words intelligentlyIf you had two in the "number of pages until Jonah Goldberg invokes Nazism" pool, you win! Go you, and go Goldberg, way to get back on the horse! You're back on the trolley to Godwin town!
Where were we? Ah yes....
Introduction: Who the fuck cares?
Chapter 1: Liberals say "ideology" like it's a bad thing, but everyone believes in junk!
Chapter 2: Liberals are pretentious liars that won't let you argue with them.
Chapter 3: NO LABELS.
At first I was excited, because Naomi Klein, but then I realized I was thinking of a) No Logo, which was b) a book.
This is a chapter devoted to the organization No Labels.
Jonah Goldberg, let me put this in terms you'll understand. Writing an entire chapter about No Labels is the moral equivalent of centering an essay on Allen Gregory.
(In case you missed them, Allen Gregory was an animated series on Fox, and No Labels was a press conference attended my Michael Bloomberg and Arianna Huffington.)
Bloomberg, Huffington and David Frum (one of the "intellectuals" of the movement) are just in denial of their liberal-Marxist ways.
(Here's a joke: Michael Bloomberg, Arianna Huffington, and Karl Marx walk into a bar. Michael Bloomberg owns the bar, but he sells it to Arianna Huffington who then lays everyone off as Karl Marx watches and laughs.)
NON-SEQUITOR!!!
If I call you a racist for opposing reparations for slavery or for opposing statehood for Washington, D.C., my offense is not in using the word racist but for using it inaccurately... However if you propose restoring slavery because blacks are unworthy of citizenship and I call you a racist... I should be applauded for committing the simple yet noble act of telling the truth.First off, I have no idea where that came from. (I know exactly where that came from.) I think the idea is that liberals live in a topsy-turvy world where up is down and systemically disenfranchising a city with a huge black population is racism. So, if a hypothetical intellectual (let's call him Gonah Joldberg) were to advocate against giving residents of a traditionally black-dominated city the vote, yet fall short of calling for the enslavement of the city's black residents, you shouldn't call him a racist. (Liberals, I'm looking at you on this one.) You should throw him a parade.
Liberals are afraid of the awful truths that up is up, Gonah Joldberg is not racist, and Michael Bloomberg is a socialist. I think that's the point of this chapter. Also, there's more John Dewey, because the kids, they love the John Dewey.
One more quote:
Indeed in their own publications [citation needed] and conferences [citations] they [liberals? Like David Frum?] routinely say the favor socialism or "social democracy," [quotes original] which is socialism [citation needed]. But the moment critics say liberals are socialists, it's considered [by liberals? Like Mike Bloomberg?] a slander [citation needed]. But remember, these liberals don't dislike socialism. Even the ones [YOU KNOW WHICH ONES] who don't embrace it fully themselves admire the social democracies of Europe [citation. fucking. needed.] and want to emulate, say, [say?] the Labor [Is the Labor Party the big socialist party in the UK? I'm not sure. The Labour Party sure as hell ain't.Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this u!] Party in Britain [citation needed].
"I realized those issues are real."
[Content Note: Fat hatred; eating; anti-fat myths.]
CNN is featuring the story of Drew Manning, the fitness trainer who purposefully gained 70 pounds only to lose it again, and is now promoting a book titled Fit2Fat2Fit, documenting the process. When Manning started his journey to prove that losing weight is just about diet and exercise, WHICH HE HAS DEFINITELY PROVEN FOR SURE, he didn't expect to learn that fat people have emotions, or something.
Always a fitness junkie, staying in shape comes naturally for Manning. He's that guy at the gym the rest of us love to hate, the one who likes to use his biceps for pumping iron instead of changing channels, and who prefers sucking down a spinach shake to indulging in a brownie sundae.Manning could certainly have taken a more direct route to the realization that "mental and emotional issues" around fat are "real" than gaining and losing 70 pounds. He could have tried treating fat people like human beings, listening to us, believing us, and giving empathy a shot. That he found it easier to change his body than to relate to a fat person on a basic human level, that he could not trust us to be experts on our own experiences, but had to become fat himself, underscores the depth of the dehumanization and marginalization of fat people by people with fat bias.
Because of that, Manning was a "judgmental" trainer, his wife says. "He would look at someone who was overweight and say, 'They must really be lazy.'
"I was convinced people used genetics or similar excuses as a crutch," Manning writes in his new book, Fit2Fat2Fit. "You either wanted to be healthy or you didn't."
That point of view wasn't helping Manning help his clients. When he failed yet again to push someone over to the light side, he knew something was wrong. In order to better understand the struggles his clients were facing, he had to face them himself.
He gave up the gym and started consuming junk food, fast food and soda. In just six months, he went from 193 pounds with a 34-inch waist to 265 pounds with a 48-inch waist.
Lynn saw the difference in her husband in less time than that. He became lethargic, stopped helping around the house and was less than eager to play with their 2-year-old daughter.
"He was so insecure -- saying 'I'm so fat. I look so horrible,' constantly complaining about how he looks," she said.
Manning says he didn't realize the effects of his weight gain would be more than physical. It altered his relationships and his self-confidence. Returning to the gym after the Fit2Fat portion of his journey made him nervous. The fact that he had to do push-ups on his knees was almost humiliating.
"The biggest thing [I learned] is that it's not just about the physical. It's not just about the meal plan and the workouts and those things. The key is the mental and the emotional issues. I realized those issues are real."
And now he is being treated as though he's a reliable "expert" on fatness and fat people, because we are still not allowed to be experts on our own experiences when there's a thin fitness trainer with an agenda and a book to sell, who treated gaining weight like some 17th century ethnographic adventure to exotic shores, only to return to the civilization of thinness to report his findings about the savage fatties.
It turns out they have feelings! Oh, DO TELL, Dr. Livingstone.
This was a stunt. A gross, dishonest, appropriative stunt. And the fact that Manning has tacked on an infantile moral about how he learned that fat people have emotions to his conclusion that we could still be thin if we really wanted to (because he did it! so everybody can do it!) does not turn this stunt into something profound.
He set out to prove that a thin, able-bodied fitness trainer could "let himself go" and then reclaim his rock-hard physique through diet and exercise, and that's what he proved. That's all he proved. Because not everyone's body is capable of doing what his did—not everyone can gain weight like he did, and not everyone can lose weight like he did.
This: "He gave up the gym and started consuming junk food, fast food and soda. In just six months, he went from 193 pounds with a 34-inch waist to 265 pounds with a 48-inch waist."—is not the experience of most fat people. Fat people are fat for a variety of intersecting reasons. We are not fat by virtue of a deliberate weight gain through strategic abandonment of exercise and all healthful food.
The article, of course, doesn't even bother attempting to address that not every fat person is fat for the same reason, because that would undermine the entire premise of this absurd stunt, which only works if we all buy into the narrative that fat people are all fat because they don't eat right and don't get enough exercise.
There is no acknowledgment that not every fat person consumes nothing but "fast food, junk food, and soda." There is no answer to the obvious question of what fatties who don't eat nothing but "fast food, junk food, and soda" are meant to do, since the magical solution of cutting "fast food, junk food, and soda" out of our diets isn't an option.
That's because we don't exist. Not in the world in which a thin, able-bodied fitness trainer is considered a more reliable spokesperson for fatkind than a person who actually lives life in a fat body.
Manning has "proven" that it's all just an issue of willpower to go from Fit2Fat (love how those are once again positioned as mutually exclusive concepts). Except, here's the thing about willpower and weight: It was an act of significant willpower that resulted in my most significant weight gain in my adult life. On Thanksgiving 2006, I smoked my last cigarette after a 14-year two-packs-a-day habit that I loved and considered an integral part of my identity. And after quitting cold turkey, I have since been and remain still a nonsmoker almost six years later.
Willpower is not my problem.
After quitting smoking, I did not change my eating habits, increased my exercise, and still gained weight, for reasons most likely having to do with the one billion chemicals I was inhaling on a constant basis having fucked up my body in weird ways. I am fatter now, but I am also healthier.
(Look for my upcoming book Smoker2Fatter2Healthier.)
Other than that, I have basically stayed at the same weight, give or take a few pounds in one direction or another, for more than a decade. I still have—and wear—clothes I owned when Iain and I met in 2001. During that time, I've eaten worse and better for me, exercised more and less, sometimes way more and way less, and it was only the quitting smoking that resulted in any sort of discernible flux.
My fitness changes when I eat better for me and get more exercise, but my weight doesn't.
Sure, I'm one person, but I'm not extraordinary. There are all kinds of fat people with stories like mine, whose voices aren't being heard because opportunistic showmen like Manning are given bullhorns to shout bullshit that talks about fat people like some slob monolith who just need more condescending evangelizing to inspire us.
If Manning actually cared about the emotional lives of fat people (ha ha he doesn't!), then he wouldn't be hawking some exploitative garbage book about the time he turned himself into a human fat suit for awhile. He has no idea what it feels like to live in a body you can't change, and he doesn't even believe those bodies exist.
He's going to be all over the media, peddling his book which is dependent on that belief. And he's going to be making life that just much harder, entrenching bias against fat people just that much more, while simultaneously claiming to have had a compassionate breakthrough about the difficult emotional life of fatsronauts.
What a jerk.
[H/T to Iain.]
Culture Shocks
Last week, I was a guest on Culture Shocks, the radio show hosted by Rev. Barry Lynn, whose name you probably recognize from his longtime position as Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. We discussed using "satire" as a defense of misogyny, among other issues.
The episode is now available here, if you'd like to listen to it.
My thanks to Barry Lynn, who was incredibly nice both on and off the air.
The Munsters Being Rebooted
There are already at least five things wrong with this idea:
1) Jerry O'Connell as Herman Munster.
2) The new version will be a one-hour drama.
3) The show will be called "Mockingbird Lane."
4) Mason Cook.
5) The pilot episode will be directed by Bryan Singer.
Question of the Day
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
What supposedly "romantic" pop song has the creepiest lyrics of all time?
There are sooooooo many pop songs with super creepy lyrics. "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is like an ode to date rape; "Young Girl" is like an ode to statutory rape; "Every Breath You Take" is like an ode to stalking (about which Sting only realized in retrospect "how sinister it is" whooooooops). Not all creepy songs are so creepy, but it's truly amazing how many pop songs just get played on the radio, and sung along to, and remain standards and favorites for decades, despite their being truly and deeply hostile to the concept of consent (or romantic agency of any kind, e.g. the Nice Guy anthem, "Cooler Than Me").
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen. Via the Telegraph. Photo by Paul Grover.]
This is literally the only part of the Queen's Gold Car Elevator Jubilee that I am likely to give a shit about, because GRACE JONES. (Also because: Seriously? Nobody in the UK government is allowed to say the word "austerity" for ten years without being thrown in jubilee jail for a sentence of no shorter than ten Grace Jones seminars on Being Awesome.) So please feel welcome to use this as a general Diamond Jubilee thread.
You can watch Grace's performance here.
Another Day, Another Judge Strikes Down DOMA
Igor at Think Progress:
Another federal judge has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), finding that the law "should not be presumed to be constitutional, and should instead be subject to a heightened form of judicial scrutiny." The victory comes in the case of Edie Windsor, who was seeking a refund of the federal estate tax paid by the estate of her late wife. It's another loss for Paul Clement and House Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives ("BLAG"), who had claimed that her homosexuality was a "choice."Poor Boehner. It mustn't be fun to feel like a dinosaur, looking into the night sky and seeing a meteor.
From the ruling: "It does not follow from the exclusion of one group from federal benefits (same-sex married persons) that another group of people (opposite-sex married couples) will be incentivized to take any action, whether that is marriage or procreations."
<--So, so tiny.
Wonderful Web
[Content Note: Animal endangerment.]
Very few things make my teeth grind like the old "everything is terrible on the internetz" chestnut, as a way of dismissing the urge to expect more. Partly, that's because of how I make my living, but, partly, it's because of stories like this one:
Beth-Andy Kohn Gresham was on a work break in Memphis on Friday when she noticed a nearby dog with its head stuck in a jar. "[I] got within 15-20 feet and it raised its head but went into the woods," she said.Yay!
Luckily, Gresham had just enough time to snap this pic, which she promptly posted to Facebook. By the next day, the photo boasted more than 300 comments and had inspired a dozen would-be rescuers.
After a Saturday of searching in woods where "you sink to your ankles" and that were thick with briars, brush, and "other obstacles," Gresham said, she and her team finally located the dog and used container cutters to set him free.
Gresham posted a video of the dog — called Miracle — to Facebook [yesterday]: "Thanks everyone. Miracle is worth it !!! She is just precious. Was able to visit with her at the vet's office yesterday."
