The slippery slope argument is the worst. I hate how liberals totally use it to cheat in the War on of Ideas. Wait, what's that, Jonah Goldberg?
So long as one remembers that the slippery slope isn't a thing but a metaphor, it's not so bad. [italics, actual quote original]
Oh.
I remember last summer we planned on going down to Willmar with the Gustafsons to see the slippery slope. Thanks to ObamaCare, we could only afford to see the giant walleye in Garrison. Ida was so disappointed.
Mitt Romney opened his mouth today, and thus I have something to report about something stupid that Mitt Romney said. Heads-up, teachers!
Mitt Romney joked Tuesday about being "terribly partisan" during a question and answer session devoted to the subject of education.
Romney said as president, he wouldn't prevent teachers from going on strike, as they recently did in Chicago. But the GOP presidential nominee said he thought the influence of teachers' unions on the Democratic Party was bad for policy.
"I don't mean to be terribly partisan, but I kind of am," Romney said, according to written pool reports.
Ha ha hang on—I haven't even gotten to the gold star stupidity yet! I just wanted to throw that in as an amuse-bouche.
[Romney said] in the education forum that neither class size nor the money spent per student was the deciding factor in a good education.
"It was the quality of teachers," Romney said.
Cool! Cool theory. So, basically, if you're a public school teacher for a district that spends a below-average amount per student and puts 40 kids to a classroom, and you fail to give each and every one of those kids a quality education with sub-par resources and virtually no individual attention, it's because YOU ARE A TERRIBLE TEACHER.
Look, I'm not a public school teacher, and the only contact I've had with public school teachers is being taught in public schools for thirteen years; my parents, who are both retired public school teachers; most of their friends, who are/were public school teachers; my godfather, who is a retired public school teacher; my oldest friend who I have known since I was five years old and is a public school teacher; my two oldest girlfriends, who are public school teachers; and my first writing mentor, who is a retired public school teacher, none of whom ever share stories about being a teacher (ahem), so please bear my total lack of perspective in mind when I say: MITT ROMNEY SHUT THE FUCK UP.
All those teachers on that list? They don't agree about what it takes to make public education a success. They don't all share the same politics. They don't even agree on the value and priorities of teachers' unions. But I'm pretty fucking sure that they all agree it is some rank bullshit to assert that class size and funding are not "deciding factors" in whether students get a good education—because even the best teacher on the entire planet can only be the best teacher with a finite number of students and sufficient resources.
The best teacher on the entire planet can be overwhelmed.
I guess Mitt Romney rejects that idea. Oh, speaking of rejecting ideas...
In the session, sponsored by NBC, Romney was asked if all children in America should be afforded the type of education Romney himself received at Cranbrook, the private prep school in Michigan.
The candidate said tuition figures don't always equate with the quality of education.
"I reject the idea that everybody has to have, if you will, a Harvard-expense level degree to be successful," Romney said.
Sure. I reject that idea, too. We all reject the notion that it should cost exorbitant amounts of money to access a quality education. But that means robustly funding public education! Not just talking total shite about how all that matters is hiring good teachers.
(Which, by the way, is an increasingly difficult task when you don't pay intelligent and talented people competitive salaries.)
And here's one other thing about Romney "rejecting" the idea that one doesn't have to pay for Harvard to be successful: He's casually eliding the reality that being able to present to a potential employer, or investor, a piece of paper saying HARVARD on it means something very different than a piece of paper on which one has written: "I read all the books on my own. All of them. I am smart as hell, even though I don't have an Ivy League institution, or any institution at all, certifying that fact. Please hire me, anyway."
Romney is so devastatingly privileged he can't even imagine what life is like for someone who lacks access even to the shitty versions of his opportunities.
1. David Brooks is still inexplicably being employed by the New York Times to write a garbage column that is full of obfuscations, simplifications, and lies.
2. David Brooks uses this week's garbage column to write a modern history of conservatism, which completely elides the shit-nightmare that is radical extremist social conservatism.
A new survey shows 49% of voters said they would approve a constitutional amendment barring marriage equality in Minnesota, while 47% definitely oppose it. Four percent remain undecided.
Someone made an Atlas Shrugged cake. (See left.)
As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets by introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink, more and more of its citizens are going hungry.
Joel and Ethan Coen are developing a television adaption of Fargo for FX. Okay then. NB: This is the second time an adaption of the show has been made. In 1997, a pilot was filmed starring Edie Falco as Marge Gunderson. (I was going to link to a video clip, but it's since been removed from the YouTubes.)
The Supreme Court released its list of cases today that they will take up this session and none of the DOMA cases nor the federal Prop 8 case is on the list.
A world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable.
Japanese and Taiwanese vessels began sparring Tuesday in a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands. The boats are, as of now, only spraying each other with water. Let's hope hostilities don't escalate.
Bananarama has a new E.P. out. I bet you didn't even know there were still around.
Weather conditions and continued insecurity are hampering aid agencies' efforts to reach hundreds of thousands of people displaced by armed conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Staten Island borough president James Molinaro called Lady Gaga a slut yesterday at an anti-substance abuse initiative. Nice, Staten Island borough president James Molinaro!. Real nice.
Republican Darrell Issa wins "most corrupt" award from non-partisan watchdog group CREW. Whoops! Sucks to be Darrell Issa.
Here is a 2(x)ist Commercial. It's for underwear. More commercials should be like this.
Or: Guttmacher Institute does yet another study confirming that we could all save money on studies by just listening to women speak truth about their experiences.
Maude bless the Guttmacher Institute for doing this stuff. Guttmacher's a national treasure, and if I had Mitt Romney money, I would build a monument to their awesomeness in every state in the union.
It would be a giant, gold-plated ear, with the gold-plated forms of three women talking into it, and from the ear would extend two gold-plated hands, one taking notes on a gold-plated notepad, and the other eternally handing to passers-by a gold-plated press release reading "Study Finds Women's Voices Only Matter When Computed into Datapoints."
Often, not even then, of course. But I am profoundly grateful to the Guttmacher Institute in trying to amplify our stories by collating them.
"It was like a game thing."—A "troll," who wreaked terroristic havoc in Leo Traynor's life, online and offline, explaining why he did it after Traynor confronted him.
Traynor's piece about the incident, which takes a rather surprising turn, is here.
I don't know that I would have made the same decision, in the end, that Traynor did. I wouldn't have had faith that the lesson being learned wasn't simply to mess with different sort of people, in future. People even more vulnerable.
If I'm totally honest, it's also because I know a woman who lets shit slide, even with the best of motivations, doesn't get called a hero, especially if there's any chance that shit will happen again to someone else.
Anyway. This isn't really about what happened to Traynor's harasser. It's about why he was a harasser in the first place. It was like a game thing. That is terrifying evidence of the dehumanization underlying harassment. It's all just a game.
Ann Romney's plane was grounded Friday after the main cabin filled with smoke. The small electrical fire caused no injuries...
"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly," [Mitt Romney] told the LA Times. "And you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem."
Air crafts do not open windows because the cabins are pressurized to fly safely at an altitude of tens of thousand feet. Opening a window in an airplane would seriously sicken the passengers and crew.
Seriously, this guy doesn't know anything about anything. It's extraordinary.
[Video Description: I pan around the beach on a stormy but beautiful day. The lake churns; the sky is filled with dramatic cloud formations; the dune grass sways in the wind. I follow a seagull taking flight, and then settle on Iain walking toward me with Dudley and Zelda, who greet me warmly. Iain waves at me. And the video cuts off abruptly because whoooops my editing.]
This past weekend, we took the dogs to the beach. (For those who don't know: We live in Indiana on the southern tip of Lake Michigan, a few minutes from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.) I walked as far as I was able—walking in sand super aggravates my chondritis; I can walk a much shorter distance in sand than on solid ground—and then Iain took the dogs for a run down the beach, which they adore, while I stayed behind and took some photo and video of the gorgeous day we had the privilege of enjoying.
I've written before about how important it is for me to remember, and to actively appreciate, that I live in a beautiful place which I love—because I also live in a place with a deeply conservative state government that often feels hostile to me, as a woman and as an advocate of social justice and as a human who believes that we're all in this thing together.
Often, marginalized people whose lives are made more difficult and less safe, whose bodies and agency are held in contempt by their own state governments, are told by people outside of those states, even ostensible allies, to move. Just move to a blue state. As if it's just that simple—just picking up your life and abandoning your home and career and local support network, to move somewhere else. As if blue states are universally better.
As if you don't love the place where you live, even if it's imperfect. I love this place. I grew up here, and I fled from its clutches as soon as I could, and I lived in a city which is something I needed to do for a very long time, and I lived in another country, and then I moved back. And I love this place still, and I always have, even when I've hated it.
I love this place despite its history. It is, like much of the United States, a history of seized land, of racism, of union-building and union-busting, of industry and collapse, of extraordinary natural beauty and the fight to preserve it, and its people, from pollution and decay.
I have spent so many days, and nights, on this beach. I've been sunbathing, and I've gone nightswimming, and I've felt the caress of seaweeds swirling around my legs in the dark as I've gazed up into a starry night sky. I've stood on this beach and gazed into my husband's eyes while he held my face and kissed me. I have laughed while the dogs pranced away from lapping waves. I have stood with my feet in icy water at the end of autumn, looking out over the lake and breathing in its familiar air, and taking a long, lingering moment to feel lucky that I am alive, in this time and this place.
I don't want to move. This place is my home. My parents were born in California and New York, but I was born here. I am a Hoosier, and I want to be in Indiana and make it a place other people want to be, too.
* * *
One of the objectives of Flyover Feminism is to challenge the narrative that we should simply abandon places we love, instead of expecting more from them.
Tori wrote a post for FF about what she loves about Southern Arizona. We want to hear what you love about the place where you live, even with its flaws. Please consider submitting something to help change the conversation about living in conservative places.
"We are in perilous times in this country. We are looking at financial ruin. We are looking at dependency. We're a nation of people dependent on their government, and that is what Barack Obama gives us."—Bay Buchanan, adviser to Mitt Romney, on Meet the Press yesterday.
You know, in case you hadn't gotten the message yet that Team Romney is a bunch of sneering, elitist, world-class assholes.
Below, the trailer for a movie called Beautiful Creatures, which is based on a book that may or may not have the same title, but I cannot be bothered to look it up because who cares.
This is one of those rare movie trailers for a movie about which I've heard absolutely nothing, even though it's apparently based on a popular book (same title? who knows! it's a mystery lost to the sands of time.), so I had no clue what the movie was about before I watched the trailer—and I still had no idea what it was about after I watched the trailer.
I'm pretty sure it's a Nanny McPhee spin-off about a teenage boy who uses magic to make out with a clone of himself in a long wig? That sounds about right.
To the video!
Crickets. Emo-scary gate. (Emo-scary—you know, like Tim Burtony, but less so, because people think tween girls have no taste and are stupid.) Be-robed person on emo-scary veranda. In voiceover, Emma Thompson who is speaking in a southern accent and dressed for church (?) but kind of like a witch (?) but definitely in a way that at first I think this a comedy (!), says some crap about a family with a spooky history, and how the "Bella" of the family (by which I mean a pretty white teenage girl who is the center of the entire magical universe) has been to three—count them THREE—different fancy/scary schools and weird shit has happened at ALL OF THEM.
Well, you know what they say: Suspicious accidents that mysteriously happen after the arrival of a Bella from a fucked-up witch family happen in threes!
Emma Thompson says, "I'm not afraid of you or your evil kind!" and I'm still thinking it's a comedy at this point, and there's about to be the sound of a record being scratched before Zach Galifianakis shows up and says something zany, but instead it's an unintentional comedy, and, after an Edward gives a lustful look at this hot new Bella in town, the windows at the school shatter, followed by appropriate emo music.
The Edward skulks around the emo-scary schoolgrounds and finds the Bella, who really does look just like him in a long dark wig, so now I'm thinking this is some sort of southern, gothic, Donna Tarttian story about long-lost twins who will totes murder the fuck outta snitches. THAT WOULD BE COOL.
Oh, hello, Viola Davis! Y'all, I'm pretty sure Viola Davis is playing a literal Magical Negro in this movie, and it is making me very uncomfortable, but I barely have time to be uncomfortable about that before I'm uncomfortable about the fact that the Bella is "going dark," which is a bad thing whoooooops that was just intercut with images of Viola Davis, but before you can say "problematic tropes!" the Bella and the Edward are making out. AHHHH! FLOWERS IN MY BRAIN ATTIC!
They are definitely not twins. Or: The book on which this movie is based which may or may not be called Beautiful Creatures was written by V.C. Andrews.
Emo music. Montagery. People are protesting. There is an amulet. Running on a hill. Jeremy Irons in the shadows. (That is never good. In the movies OR in real life.) Emo-scary spinning table of witches (?) and people flying through the air in a dark chamber like some real Gandalf vs. Saruman shit. The civil war? The Edward (OR MAYBE HE IS A JACOB!) yells at the Bella in the rain (obviously): "You wanna be like a normal human? What do you think that is?!" We are all inhuman fantasy characters in our SOULS.
The Edward says in voiceover, over emo-scary tattoos or whatever, "I don't believe that we have one fate and no choice. We make our own lives." The Bella and the Edward make out again. Eugh.
Coming next Valentine's Day to an emo-scary theater near you.
by Shaker BrianWS, who may or may not become a full-time contributor someday based on our next visit to The Oracle with Neo.
So, my boyfriend and I just got a new place. I had to make copies of the keys, so I went full-tilt, faux-patriotic Republican. Mitt Romney would be so proud. That is, if he were able to feel emotions other than MONEY.
When I got them, of course I took a picture of them and sent it to Liss, with the message: "They unlock the AMERICAN DREAMTM!"
Followed shortly thereafter with: "OMFG I couldn't make this shit up… THEY DON'T WORK! OBVIOUSLY!"
It was especially surprising since that's the first time I've ever seen something with a bald eagle on it be anything but absolutely perfect.
I'm on my way back to the keysmith. Life is an adventure!
It's not just you. Commenting is glitchy again, and it's taking about a half hour for comments to show up on the page once they've been left.
I've let Disqus know, and hopefully it will be resolved soon. My apologies.
UPDATE: Now some comments which at one point were appearing on the page have disappeared. I don't know if this is because they're working on it, since they haven't responded to me, or if it's just a new problem altogether. I've let them know about that issue, too.
UPDATE 2: Things seem to be working better now. I still haven't heard from anyone at Disqus, but as I do not presume that these things happen via magic and pixie dust, I'm going to go ahead and say thank you to whomever (probably Ryan!) at Disqus who fixed it! Thank you!
Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.
[Content Note: Fat bias; trauma; discussion of disordered eating.]
#12: Fat people don't like/want to see media representations of themselves.
Short answer: Yes we do! Sort of!
Longer answer: Well, it's complicated—like everything else in the world. Whether a fat person likes and wants to see media representations of fat people has a lot to do with how that fat person feels about hirself and about being fat. And whether a fat person enjoys media representations of fat people has a lot to do with the quality of those representations.
That is to say, if you're full of self-loathing because you are a fat person who lives in a culture that conspires to communicate to you incessantly that you are ugly, gross, sick, dying, barely even human, less than in every conceivable way, then you might not be keen to see any images of fatness, even the vanishingly rare positive ones, because it reminds you of all the internalized messaging that makes you hate yourself.
But if you're a fat person who loves yourself and your body, and knows and loves other fat people and their bodies, in spite of the constant drumbeat of exhortations to self-hatred, then you might be inclined to enjoy and even seek out media images that celebrate fat people.
(It's worth noting here that access to positive images of fat people correlates with fat people's self-esteem. Visible images of fat people that are not demeaning actually create a desire for more, even in fat people who don't think they want more.)
It's also to say that not all images of fat people are created equal. I don't know a single fat person who feels anything but snarling contempt for the ubiquitous imagery of headless fatties, whose disembodied guts or asses or thighs accompany news stories about the OMG Obesity Epidemic. And I don't know many fat people who don't cringe at the sight of a thin actor in a fat suit.
On the other hand, I don't know many fat women who don't find the picture at the bottom of this post to be beautiful and affirming.
And even most of the best (or least worst) of mainstream media images of fat people are a complicated mess of playing into anti-fat stereotypes and subverting them, which means fat people will have complex reactions to them.
Melissa McCarthy's character Megan from Bridesmaids is loathed by some fat people, and loved by others—and is, truthfully, contemptible and lovable in equal measure. Certainly her fatness is played for laughs, but she is also a fat female character who is professionally accomplished, physically strong, sexual and sexually desired, and kind. And a character who is allowed to talk about being bullied for being fat, no less. Yet—har har—her sex romp includes a giant sandwich.
MIXED BAG!
And how a fat person views a mixed bag of a fat character like Megan has a lot to do with how much that fat person sees of hirself in the character, for good or bad. Which is a common phenomenon of media representations of all marginalized populations, of course.
All of that said, I can only speak for myself—and I am a fat woman who wants desperately to see more positive representations of fat people in the media, by which I mean characters, or performers, or reality stars, or whatever, whose fat is not the only or most important thing about them; who isn't explicitly trying to lose weight; who isn't primarily a target of fat jokes and doesn't reflexively make fat jokes preemptively as a mechanism of self-defense; who is stylish and/or not axiomatically considered disgusting; who isn't defined via tired fat-hating tropes about sloth and gluttony; who is allowed to express and represent a full spectrum of humanity; whose fat face is allowed to be seen attached to hir fat body.
I was sitting out in the garden with the dogs the other day, just about to take a picture of Zelly sitting in the grass, when Dudley totes photobombed with his sixpack.
I couldn't have deliberately gotten that picture if I'd tried for one biebillion years, lol.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
