"Almost 70 percent of the federal revenue is provided by the top 10 percent of taxpayers now. Between 45 percent and 50 percent of Americans pay no income tax at all. We have an extraordinarily progressive tax code already. It is a mess and needs to be revisited again."--Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican Leader, explaining why the United States needs to lower taxes on the rich, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and slash "entitlement" programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
"Extraordinarily progressive."
Mitch, I do not think this means what you think it means.
Or perhaps you can explain to me how a tax code with a top marginal rate that is significantly lower than it was under noted Communists Reagan, Nixon AND Eisenhower could be described as "extraordinarily progressive" ? (And here's a little international perspective on that. Hint: The U.S. is still not looking "extraordinarily progressive"!)
Then again, forget I asked. I don't think I really want to hear any more economic wisdom from someone who says that because 40-50% of Americans are too poor to owe income tax, we should slash the programs that are helping to keep them (barely) afloat.
Quote of the Day
Today in Rape Culture
[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape culture tropes.]
Shaker everestmckinley sent along this article by Dan Wetzel for Yahoo! Sports about the goings-on at the Jerry Sandusky trial, perfectly describing how the rape culture works:
Yes, even after Victim No. 9 had wept on the witness stand last Thursday and detailed being forced into repeated acts of oral and anal sex by Sandusky. Even after he'd described screaming from Sandusky's basement in the hope someone would save him. Even after he conveyed general disgust at Sandusky expressing love for him – "It was creepy, I was a kid," he'd testified.Yes, because he is a predator—and like many sexual predators, he is a narcissist, who believes that his needs eclipse others' safety and who further believes his intent should dictate others' emotions. If he did not intend to harm, then no one should feel harmed.
Even after the boy's mother bawled on the witness stand and disclosed regret at not realizing what her son was going through. Even after the boy said he'd often bleed from the assaults and his mother testified she kept asking why he often returned from the Sandusky's without his underwear – "He'd tell me he'd have an accident in them and he threw them out."
Even after all of that, Jerry Sandusky was flipping through a file and basking in some notion that he'd been good for the boy all along.
Once the kid turned his back on him and Second Mile, that's when the trouble came.
This is the delusion Jerry Sandusky appears to still operate under.
That, culturally, we tend to indulge this line of reasoning (or lack thereof) is a key feature of the rape culture. The undue emphasis on the intent of people who harm is what underwrites the rape apologia that takes the form of searching for some other reason, any reason, why a man would have "hugged" a naked child in a shower, or why a man would have "had sex with" an unconscious woman, or any of the other incidents of sexual violence for which we reflexively try to find some explanation, some excuse. He didn't know, he didn't realize, it's his generation, it's his culture...
Predators like Jerry Sandusky know that we value intent as much as anyone. They trade on it. They exploit it. His self-professed "harmlessness" is less likely a delusion than a well-rehearsed play at mystification that appeals to the cultural urge to find some reason to credit his "good intentions."
[Former Penn State assistant coach Dick Anderson and fellow former assistant coach Booker Brooks testified in Sandusky's defense] they too had showered with young boys, either in the Penn State locker room or the local YMCA. Both clearly stated they'd never engaged in the kind of behavior Sandusky has admitted to, such as hugging, wrestling and soaping up the kids, sometimes in empty locker rooms late at night. Still, the testimony was memorable.Never mind that Anderson is not accused of doing what Sandusky has allegedly done, nor even what Sandusky has admitted doing ("hugging, wrestling and soaping up the kids"), which renders his showering habits irrelevant, anyway. This is certainly questionable behavior to which he's admitting, at best, yet its supposed commonness is being used to frame Sandusky's abuse within a spectrum of "normal," thus justifying it.
"At the YMCA, at Penn State, at other places," Anderson said of places he'd showered where boys were present. "The first time I took a shower in high school was with coaches; it was part of my life."
"You showered with young boys?" deputy attorney general Joseph E. McGettigan III asked Anderson on cross-examination.
"Oh, yes," Anderson said.
"Eleven year-olds?" McGettigan said.
"Oh, yes," Anderson said.
"Who you didn't know?" McGettigan said.
"Oh, yes," Anderson said. "I still do. There are regularly young boys at the YMCA showering at the same time there are older people showering."
"Do you hug him in the shower?" McGettigan said.
"No," Anderson said.
Brooks testified that he's taken his granddaughter, whose age wasn't specified, into the showers with him at the YMCA.
The rape culture's pervasiveness is routinely used to excuse sexual violence by normalizing, and thus minimizing, it.
As an aside: Communal showering, ubiquitous in US schools and sports programs, is an upsetting and/or traumatizing experience for many people, male and female. Especially the "mandatory showering" to which many of us are subjected, in which gym teachers/coaches watch us shower and check off our names as if taking attendance, to be sure we've washed. I have even heard adult coaches express how communal and/or mandatory showering made them uncomfortable as children, yet continue the practice, simply because it's habit. "Well, I got over it; they'll get over it, too." or: "I was just a weird kid; most kids don't mind." This is how the rape culture perpetuates itself—by making those who experience trauma via violation of healthy boundaries feel alone and weird and exceptional, and by treating the violation of healthy boundaries as a rite of passage we all share.
Back to Sandusky:
Later, the defense called a parade of witnesses to speak on Sandusky's behalf.Here, too, is a common narrative of the rape culture: If someone is a "good person," he can't possibly be a rapist. (And the corollary: If someone is a rapist, then he will show no evidence of being a "good person.") Humans, even rapists, are complex entities. A rapist is capable of doing good things for some people, while doing grave harm to others. In Sandusky's case, what appeared to be (and in some cases maybe actually was) good works was simultaneously the grooming of victims.
There was the Army veteran who had positive memories of Second Mile. There was a co-worker at the charity that saw great acts from Sandusky. There was a local teacher impressed with Sandusky's dedication. There were the assistant coaches alluding to Sandusky's sterling reputation in the community. There was Anderson intimating that even the iconic Paterno held Sandusky in high regard.
All of this is fine but isn't the heart of the case.
There is no denying that Sandusky and Second Mile made a positive impact on many troubled youths or that prior to being the center of sexual molestation case most viewed the old coach as a good man or that the showers at the YMCA are open to all.
But what about all those other kids who said Sandusky molested them? Remember them?
That should underscore the danger of narratives like, "He'd never do that; he's such a nice guy." I hope the sports writers who are rightfully taking Sandusky's defense to task for this bullshit (but typical) line of defense remember that next time an adult woman brings charges against a professional sports hero who's done charity work, instead of immediately accusing her of lying because "he's a such a nice guy." Rapists do charity work, too.
Monday was the defense's big chance to make an immediate impression, to jolt the jury into believing that the state's case is rickety, that there were compelling counter facts, that Sandusky's side could trot out powerful witnesses, too.In other words: The rape culture in action.
Instead it was some kind of strange ode to Jerry, strange ode to the normalcy of showering with boys, strange ode to the kind of delusion that makes Sandusky listen to a kid and his mom break down in terror on a witness stand and conclude that their problems didn't come until after they kicked Jerry Sandusky out of their lives.
Random Nerd Nostalgia: Not Just Tweet-Tweet
[Description: A 1950s cartoon parakeet perches on a branch near a Baby Ruth bar. Text: "A popular bird, the bright parakeet/He really can talk-- not just tweet-tweet/And what he says best/ With pleasure and zest/ Get BABY RUTH candy--Boy, what a treat!"]
Today in Mitt Romney Stands in Front of Something
In election news today, Mitt Romney is still a huge jerk. He is definitely terrible and would make a horrendo president whose economic policies would be a disaster and whose foreign policy would be a nightmare and whose social domestic policies would be a stinking garbage heap. He is the worst.
In other news, he is SO TERRIBLE!
Do not elect this man, America.
"Anxious Days for American Workers"
In today's New York Times: Lost in Recession, Toll on Underemployed and Underpaid.
Throughout the Great Recession and the not-so-great recovery, the most commonly discussed measure of misery has been unemployment. But many middle-class and working-class people who are fortunate enough to have work are struggling as well...And while the cost of healthcare rises, access to health insurance is increasingly elusive: "The real entry-level hourly wage for men who recently graduated from high school fell to $11.68 last year, from $15.64 in 1979, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. And the percentage of those jobs that offer health insurance has plummeted to 22.8 percent, from 63.3 percent in 1979."
These are anxious days for American workers. [Many] are underemployed. Others find pay that is simply not keeping up with their expenses: adjusted for inflation, the median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the Economic Policy Institute, "The State of Working America, 12th Edition." Good benefits are harder to come by, and people are staying longer in jobs that they want to leave, afraid that they will not be able to find something better. Only 2.1 million people quit their jobs in March, down from the 2.9 million people who quit in December 2007, the first month of the recession.
"Unfortunately, the wage problems brought on by the recession pile on top of a three-decade stagnation of wages for low- and middle-wage workers," said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington that studies the labor market. "In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there has been persistent high unemployment as households reduced debt and scaled back purchases. The consequence for wages has been substantially slower growth across the board, including white-collar and college-educated workers."
...Though inflation has stayed relatively low in recent years, it has remained high for some of the most important things: college, health care and even, recently, food. The price of food in the home rose by 4.8 percent last year, one of the biggest jumps in the last two decades.
None of this is news, of course. I don't know a single household of working people that hasn't been experienced unemployment, underemployment, or underpayment during this recession.
We aren't "lost in the recession" from our perspectives, and we aren't "not discussed" amongst ourselves. The media have failed to give us a voice, and now the media ponderously observe that our stories haven't been told.
Meanwhile, the entire economic structure of the country is collapsing, because it was built on the premise that workers were well-paid enough to be consumers, and now workers are lucky if they're paid enough to survive, no less spend lots of disposable income.
And the best we're offered by our political leaders is tax cuts and bootstraps, solutions so wildly insufficient it's like they literally have no idea what the fuck is going on in this nation anymore.
Question of the Day
Which job that only exists in science fiction do you wish you could do for a living?
Ghostbuster. I ain't afraid of no ghosts.
(Question nicked from the io9 FB page.)
Photo of the Day
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flips her hair standing next to an unidentified official after she stepped off her official airplane June 17, 2012 at Los Cabos International Airport in San Jose del Cabo, Baja California, Mexico to attend the G-20 Summit which starts on Monday. [Getty Images]More evidence of Secretary Clinton "not looking good these days," lulz.
Today in Fat Hatred: U.S. Fatties Doom the World
[Content Note: this post contains referenced to eliminationism, obesity myths, and dehumanization of fat people.]
Today, Think Progress put up a post titled "Due To U.S. Obesity, Global Population Is 17 Million Tons Overweight," which begins:
Although the United States represents just 5 percent of the global population, it contributes to almost one-third of the world’s global obese weight, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded in a study released today. The U.S.’s rising obesity rate may lead to a future food scarcity problem, the researchers warned.
The study calculated the weight of the global population at 316 million tons, and estimated that about 17 million tons of that figure is due to the growing numbers of people who are overweight. Increasing levels of fatness around the world will threaten future food security, since current levels of obesity could have the same impact on global resources as an additional half billion people.
Yiiiiikes. Where to start?
Should I mention the scientifically problematic assumptions about the relationship between eating and obesity? (See: Fatsronauts 101 # 4). With nary a mention of any other causes for obesity, nor of the harmful effects of food restriction as a "treatment" for obesity? Or how about the eliminationism implied by the posited relationship between "obesity rates" and global starvation? (And it's fatties who will be TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE for higher food prices in the future, mind you, not those nice bankers speculating on food commodities!) Finally, you gotta love the tiresome and repetitive and dehumanizing use of the headless fatty illustration. (By "love" I mean, of course, "regard with deepest contempt.")
Think Progress is a leading source for progressive news, so it is especially depressing to see it miss the mark on FA and HAES. There are serious concerns to be raised over global food supply and food prices, but giving uncritical space to a study that demonizes fat people based on some questionable scientific premises is not the way to do it.
Normalizing fat hatred has real-life consequences. To name only a few examples, it makes it harder for fat people to receive medical care and insurance coverage (both public and private), more acceptable for assholes to threaten and harass us, and easier to justify all kinds of discrimination against us. The list could go on, but the point should be clear: perpetuating fat hatred (or any other oppression) in the name of a "progressive" concern is not, in fact, terribly progressive.
We can do better. I am a human being, and I expect more.
[Hat tip to Liss for the link.]BushQuotes!
Chapter 5, page 58: "I was working full-time for an inner-city poverty program known as Project PULL. My friend John White, whom I had met during my dad's 1970 Senate campaign, asked me to come help him run the program. John was a former tight end for the Houston Oilers who had convinced off-season professional athletes to help him mentor inner-city kids who needed attention and role models. I had just returned from the Red Blount for U.S. Senate campaign in Alabama, and I was intrigued by John's offer. I had worked in politics and in business. Now I had a chance to help people."
"Politics and business" and "helping people" as mutually exclusive endeavors. I expect I have never seen a more succinct summation of conservative ideology than that.
[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.]
Achoo
Do you want to look at some dogs sneezing? Go look at some dogs sneezing.
There is a decent chance it will make you momentarily happy.
Today in Mitt Romney Is Surprised by the Cost of a Sandwich
US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney pays for a sandwich as he visits a WaWa gas station in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, June 16, 2012. [Getty Images]
Quote of the Day
"Our vacations and our happiness come from being with our children and our grandchildren."—Ann Romney, wife of Mitt Romney, noting that she would never take an international vacation, unlike some other First Ladies she could mention. Haughty sniff!
In case you didn't get her point, she added: "When we take a vacation, it'll be with our children and grandchildren." She also noted that Family Romney has their "own places for that."
Yeah, assholes! The Romney Family doesn't take fancypants overseas trips to socialist grodytowns where you might accidentally mingle with the hoi polloi! They holiday at lavish family compounds impenetrable by the dirty rabble who should definitely vote for Mitt Romney!
What a terrible family.
An Observation
Manliness is always gauged by what you do to someone, as opposed to what you do for someone.
Okay, Lord Player.
[Content note: This post refers to institutional privilege, Christian supremacy, and bigotry relating to same-sex marriage.]
Actual Headline: "Lord Carey: opponents of gay marriage treated like bigots."
Actual Quote: "'It is in fact the supporters of traditional marriage who have been accused of bigotry and homophobia — the kind of intolerant and judgmental language he talks about in his interview,'[former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey] said. "
*sigh*
Okay, Lord Player. I guess I need to explain this again.
Your Grace,
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, you're getting treated like a bigot because you are ACTING like a bigot?
When your argument against same-sex marriage is that it will make a "change in the definition of marriage for everyone," even though it clearly changes NOTHING for straight couples other than the fact that they will now share their institution with queer couples....
...then yes, sir, you sound like a privileged homophobe.
When you say that "[t]he Government’s fundamental interest in marriage should be confined to preserving an institution in which the raising of the next generation of citizens is stable and secure," despite the fact that marriage requires neither reproduction nor stable child-rearing (and neither reproduction nor stable child-rearing require marriage)....
...then yes, sir, you look like a ridiculous bigot.
And when you claim the cause of "traditional marriage" and loudly worry about setting precedents and changing the way things are done in regards to LGBT*QI people, but are famous for advocating a fairly significant re-interpretation of tradition for your powerful, straight friends...
...then you not only appear to be a bigot and a homophobe, you have also claimed a brightly-colored Mantle of Hypocritical Douchnozzlery +10 for your very own.
Criticizing the positions of a powerful member of the House of Lords and former Archbishop of Canterbury is fundamentally not the same as spouting off prejudicial statements about oppressed people which serve to encourage even more oppression against them. No matter how many false equivalencies you draw between the two, these things remain quite different from each other.
Please make a note of it.
Sincerely,
Aphra
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: On the day she got her lion cut, Tils parades around my office with her furry boots, tail, and mane, looking ridiculously adorbz. She walks over and rubs against my leg. I pan to Zelda, lying on the floor and looking at Tils. "What do you think about that silly cat, Zelda?" I ask her. "What do you think about her, hmm?" I pan back to Matilda, who runs around to the other side of my chair. "Matilda." Zelda comes over and sits by me, looking like she's about to play-bow at Tils. "Oh, are you gonna get her?" I ask, as Matilda struts by. "Get her." Zelda just watches her, slightly confused, as if wondering where Tilsy's fuzz went. Tils heads for the door. "Tils, c'mere," I say, and give her special whistle. I snap and whistle again. She turns around and walks back toward me. "C'mere." She walks halfway to me, then stands and looks at me, because her recall is nothing if not totally half-assed and always on her terms. "Who's a silly cat?" I ask her. "Who looks silly? Matilda." She sits. I whistle. She looks at me. "You look silly! Zelda agrees, don't you, Zelly?" Zelly sits at my side, regarding Tils. "Yeah, she agrees that you look very silly." Matilda turns her head away. "Oh, don't turn your back on us!" I say. (Except I actually say "backs," because I am a dildobrain.) Matilda walks out. I whistle after her and she ignores me. "Tils."
Silly.
Silly.
Not having it.
This is a made-up storyline. Matilda is not harrumphy at all about her lion cut or being told she looks silly. She loves when I talk to her, no matter what I'm saying, and she loooooooves her lion cut. As she gets older, she gets more frisky when she's got her lion cut, because it makes grooming a lot easier for her. I just like to pretend she is grumpy about it, because it amuses me!
It Remains a Mystery Why Survivors Feel Unwelcome in Gaming Culture (No It Doesn't)
[Content Note: Male-centrism; sexual violence; rape jokes.]
So, this weekend, Iain and I were watching a series on the "Top 100 Video Games of All Time," which was airing on G4. G4 is generally pretty hostile toward the idea of meaningful inclusion of women, to put it politely, so I was prepared for the usual tokenism, dick jokes, and discussions of "nerd culture" that were implicitly boys-only.
And even those rock-bottom expectations were not low enough.
The show was one of those formats where a bunch of celebrities comment on their favorites as lists of whatever are counted down. Among the celebrity commentators was comedian Brian Posehn, who is no stranger to rape jokes. During the discussion of Unreal Tournament, a first-person shooter, the show cuts to Posehn, who says:
"One of the most, like, man moments of my life was playing Unreal Tournament while Oz was on on the other TV. So we're watching prison [bleep] and then playing Unreal Tournament at the same time, and it was, like, it doesn't get (laughing) any nerdier or more manly that that."Oz was an HBO series set in a men's prison. The word that was bleeped out was "rape."
Iain and I just looked at each other, like WTF did we just see?
First of all, I love (ahem) that G4 felt obliged to bleep out the word rape, but broadcasting the idea of watching prison rape for entertainment and manly empowerment is totes cool. Just as long as you don't actually hear the word. Because it's the the word that's the problem here.
Iain—who is about the last person on earth you'll ever witness wringing his hands and wondering "What about the children?!"—also noted that this is a show about video games being broadcast on a Saturday afternoon. One doesn't generally expect jokes about prison rape in shows that seem to be courting young viewers.
That the content was included, no less with its absurd bleep, is only one issue. Another is the conflation of "nerdy" with "manly"—and, notably, with a "manly" affinity for sexual violence. Feminist/anti-rape gamers who take issue with the various manifestations of rape culture within the gaming/nerd community because we want better from the community are routinely accused of hyberbole, oversensitivity, and demonizing male gamers. But here is a male gamer shamelessly associating male nerd culture with an affinity for sexual violence, and he will no doubt be roundly defended by the same people who scream at feminist/anti-rape gamers for being trouble-making hysterics who "look for things to get mad about."
Which is technically true, if "looking" constitutes engaging at all with the gaming community.
Posehn's assertion that there's something intrinsically "manly" about watching men raping each other (or anyone) is profoundly disturbing. Again I find myself compelled to observe that it's feminists who have the reputation as man-haters, but few things are more man-hating than the suggestion that masculinity is inherently violent and pro-rape.
Naturally, I will be called the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington, accused of overreacting, and admonished that IT'S IRONIC and I just don't get the sophisticated humor of comedy geniuses like Brian Posehn.
Setting aside the fact that there is no discernible humor in that "joke" either straightforwardly or ironically—as the tiresome trope about nerdy dudes accessing patriarchally-defined masculinity via violent video games and sexually violent entertainment isn't actually amusing—here's the thing: There is no neutral in the rape culture, and I stand resolutely on the side of anti-rape advocacy. If that gets me branded as a humorless feminist, then I'll wear the badge proudly.
The truth is, I have a fine sense of humor. I just don't find jokes that empower rapists funny.
G4 is a property of NBC Universal. Their contact page is here. Their official Twitter is here.
