Suggested by Shaker FloraFlora: "What trait do you most value in a friend?"
Blog Note
Well, Disqus no longer supports the old, customized version of commenting we knew and loved, so we've been automatically upgraded into their new system.
We're trying to figure out: 1. If it's possible to get back to flat comments, because nested comments are difficult to navigate for lots of people with visual processing disorders (like me), and: 2. If there's a way to turn off avatars, like we used to be able to do.
At the moment, it looks like we're not able to make these customizations anymore. I've tweeted my concerns at Disqus, and I'll keep you updated.
In the meantime, to may need to reset your preference (oldest comments first, newest comments first, etc.), which you can do by clicking "Discussion" at the top left of any comment thread.
In good news, there are some nifty new sharing options, both at the top of each thread and at the bottom of individual comments, that weren't available before.
UPDATE: Disqus has restored us temporarily to the old version. I'm in communication with them about resolving some of the issues, although it doesn't appear at this point like we're going to be able to keep flat threading, as soon as our time with this version is up.
I'll keep you posted.
Candice Glover Is Everything
1. I love garbage television. If you haven't heard me confess this before on any one of a million occasions, Spudsy—who exclaims at me at least once a month "I can't believe the shit you watch!" (which makes me laugh and laugh)—or Deeks—to whom I recommended Ghost Mine last night—or anyone else who knows me will be happy to confirm the facts. I am an incorrigible aficionado of garbage television.
2. Arguably, the garbagiest of all garbage television is American Idol, for so many reasons. Each season, it gets even more unfathomably gargbagey than the season before. This season, the usual mess of kyriarchal codswallop is being complemented by a heaping dose of body policing from new judge Nicki Minaj, who is so great when she's not congratulating someone on their weight loss or telling a female contestant to show her legs more.
3. But I can't stop watching this season, because CANDICE GLOVER IS EVERYTHING.
Video Description: Idol contestant Candice Glover, a young African American woman, performs "I Who Have Nothing," made famous by Ben E. King, Shirley Bassey, and Tom Jones.
Ben E. King's version of this song (which I love, despite it's Nice Guy/Girl-ish lyrics) is one of my favorite tracks of all time. True Fact: I was just listening to King's version on a loop Monday afternoon, coincidentally. And Candice is my favorite contestant this season because OMG HER VOICE, so I was basically in heaven last night. Is what I'm saying.
"I'm not a sixth grader."
Something Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) actually had to say on the Congressional record today, because Senator Ted Cruz (R) was talking to her like she was one. [Content Note: Gun violence.]
Cruz, a former constitutional law professor, began [a hearing on legislation to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban] by reciting portions of the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, and asked Feinstein whether the power of government to restrict certain types of guns would be equally appropriate given those provisions.As far as I'm concerned, it should have been Cruz apologizing to Feinstein. She owed him nothing but contempt.
"Let me just make a couple of points in response," Feinstein shot back at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "One, I'm not a sixth grader. Senator, I've been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years." [Feinstein the described examples of brutal gun violence with which she's had experience.] "I'm not a lawyer, but after 20 years I've been up close and personal to the Constitution. I have great respect for it. This doesn't mean that weapons of war and the Heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here."
Feinstein continued: "It's fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I've been here for a long time. I've passed on a number of bills. I've studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for the lecture. ... I come from a different place than you do. I respect your views. I ask you to respect my views."
The panel approved the bill on a party line vote, 10 - 8. The legislation now moves to the full Senate, where it is widely expected to fail.
After the vote, Feinstein made nice.
"Senator, I want to apologize to you, you sort of got my dander up," she said.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda models the cutest Dorito Ears in the biz.
This dog. THIS DOG. I love this dog. Every day of our lives, I look at her wee adorable face and I think about how I am the luckiest human person that I walked into the Humane Society one day, not even planning on adopting a dog, and found myself kneeling in front of her kennel, falling deeply and forever into her big brown eyes.
She is one of the greatest joys of my life, this silly big black mutt whom no one else wanted.
* * *
If you are thinking about adding a pet, please consider adopting a shelter or rescue animal. If you are looking for a particular breed and need help finding a breed-specific rescue, I am happy to help; just fire me an email.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
This Female Atheist, and Where She Is
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Even before I identified as an atheist, back when I was a teenager going to church every week and was ostensibly a god-believer, I was, in truth, an agnostic at best. Once, upon confessing my lack of faith, the minister told me, "Even Jesus had doubts." But I did not have doubts. I had no sense of god.
The closest thing I ever had to a sense of god was a fear of getting in trouble, whether that meant karmic retribution from a god who would not reward a naughty child or eternal damnation. And it felt pretty much the same as the fear I had of disappointing or angering my parents. It wasn't a feeling of the infinite; it was as small as worrying about being grounded.
I knew I was supposed to believe in god, so I tried to look into the glorious sunsets and sweeping landscapes in which the god-believers around me saw his handiwork and find him there. Sometimes I pretended I had. But the truth is, all I ever saw was the sun and the earth.
So there were never any tormentful rejections, no dramatic fist-shaking rebukes, at god when I came to atheism. I just slid into it, like a new pair of shoes.
There were, however, conscious rejections of my religious indoctrination, which had shaped me in a way that belief in god, or the lack thereof, had not.
The religious community in which I'd been raised did not allow female ministers, did not allow female presidents of the congregation, did not allow female elders, and did not, for most of my childhood, even allow female lectors to read the selected Bible readings during the service each week. Women were for teaching children—and for cleaning: Communionware, the kitchen, maybe a vestment.
I started asking questions about this disparity at age 7, possibly earlier. I got the usual bullshit answers that are used to justify these things. I was good enough to be an acolyte (especially since there were precious few teenage boys willing to do it) and scrub the toilets—both of which I did countless times—but not good enough to be ordained. I was less than.
Further, my objections to being told, on the one hand, that we are all equal in the eyes of god, and, on the other, that my gender nonetheless rendered me incapable of serving god in every capacity available to men, were greeted with contempt—and sometimes outright hostility. One minister told my mother that I needed to stop asking questions. Another told me I was "divisive," at an age that required my looking up "divisive" in the dictionary when I got home from church to understand his meaning. Another told me that my rebellious attitude would find me pregnant or dead by the time I was 16.
Even then I found the conflation of the two…interesting.
This was a community of which I did not want to be a part—and I left it, even before I knew, with clarity and certainty, that I am an atheist.
More than a decade later, I found movement atheism online. I was never one to evangelize my lack of god-belief, nor broadcast hatred of religion or its adherents, so that part of the movement was not a draw. But I did fancy the possibility of community around something that has been an axis of marginalization for me in some parts of my life.
I found the same inequality, manifesting in different ways.
There were precious few visible atheist leaders: The most prominent male atheists were very enamored with one another, and not particularly inclined to offer the same support to women, via recommended links and highlighted quotes and inclusion in digital salons about Important Ideas. They wondered aloud where all the female atheists are, and women would pipe up—"Here! Here we are! We're right here!"—only to then go back to the status quo, with explicit or implicit messaging that women just weren't working as hard as they are, just aren't as smart as they are, or else they'd be leaders, too.
There was the exclusion from conferences, the sexist posts, the sexual harassment, the appropriation of religious and irreligious women's lived experiences to Score Points and the obdurate not listening to those women when they protested.
In fact, female atheists' protests were greeted much the same way with which my protests had been met in my patriarchal church. Silencing. Demeaning. Threats.
All of this felt terribly familiar. A bunch of straight, white, male gatekeepers pretending there's no gate.
Whether it was "god's will" being used to justify my marginalization, or gender essentialism cloaked in garbage science, didn't make a whit of difference to me. And it doesn't still.
Not every woman raised in a religious tradition had the same experience I had. There are many different religious traditions. And not every woman who has explored movement atheism has had the same experiences I have had. There are many different ways to participate. And even the women who have had experiences similar to mine do not necessarily share my reaction to either or both.
But a lot do. Enough do.
That should be a concern to the men in movement atheism who fancy themselves a superior alternative to retrograde patriarchal religious traditions.
I would say I felt exactly as welcome in movement atheism as I did at my Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, but that would be a lie. No one at St. Peter's ever called me a stupid cunt because I disagreed with them.
In The News
[Content note: terrorism, homophobia]
Thursday Balloons:
The Pet Shop Boys announced their 12th studio album. It will be produced by Stuart Price. Yes!
Did anyone watch For The Record last night? Me either!
President Obama is seeking to push Republicans to work with him on a grand deficit bargain by first assuring them he's willing to cut entitlements. Great!
The President also says he's not as bad as Dick Cheney! Great!
New polling has shown that 64 percent of Americans now believe marriage equality is inevitable. 58 percent now agree that the issue is a civil rights issue.
One of the nation's leading gay cure groups has lost its tax-exempt status due. Thank goodness.
Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson. That's pretty neat. I think.
Another day, another poop cruise.
The remains of a medieval knight have been discovered underneath a car park in Edinburgh. Whut.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Gun violence; racism.]
"[T]he marred bodies of black boys and men who've been hit by police officers' guns are more than representations of precarity. They are targets of the myriad projectiles aimed in the direction of black life. And no matter the class of the black man, his age, his neighborhood, his sexuality, his swag, his swish, or lot, 'bullets' will surely fly his way in NYC. Space shapes. In fact, masculinities, including black masculinities, are performed partially in response to the various external conditions present within the geographical spaces, like NYC, where they emerge. In other words, masculinities are shaped by skewed conceptions of gender, a sexist culture, and the range of structural conditions that impact black men quite negatively. Consider, for instance, what type of black masculinity might emerge in response to a city funded teenage pregnancy prevention ad that pretty much tells black teen [girls] that black boys ain't shit in a city where police use tax-payer funded guns to shoot its residents?"—Darnell L. Moore, in "The Shapings of Black Masculinities" at The Feminist Wire.
This is a stunning piece, a devastating indictment of the kyriarchy. I really encourage you to read the whole thing.
If The Feminist Wire isn't already on your regular reading list, make it so!
The Rhetorical Power of Pig Pain
[Content Note: Hostility to Reproductive Rights, Appropriation of Slavery and the Holocaust, Animal Cruelty]
[NB: Not only women have uteri, get pregnant, and/or have need of access to abortion.]
On Wednesday March 13, 2013 at approximately 4:42 am Central Standard Time, Richard Dawkins decided to weigh in on women's reproductive rights using his twitter account @RichardDawkins.
I want to point out that reproductive rights are actually a very relevant thing to weigh in on following two years of US states enacting record numbers of abortion restrictions in state legislatures in 2011 and 2012, and in light of the fact that later on that same Wednesday, a new pope who has compared abortion to the death penalty would be elected. And given that I'm writing from a political climate where too many supposedly-progressive men have been silent for far too long on the issue of women's reproductive rights, I think it's potentially a very good thing to have a famous left-leaning speaker and writer standing up on twitter for women's right to bodily autonomy.
Except for the tiny little problem that Richard Dawkins' opening position made it clear that this wasn't going to be a statement about women's right to bodily autonomy so much as it was going to be about why anti-abortionists are totes hypocrites if they eat pork sausage for breakfast.
The 47% Videographer: Scott Prouty
As I mentioned yesterday, the man who shot the now-infamous Mitt Romney 47% video sat down for an interview with MSNBC's Ed Schultz last night to reveal his identity and talk about his decision to release the footage. Meet Scott Prouty:
My name is Scott Prouty. Um, I'm a regular guy. [shrugs] Uh, middle-class, hard-working guy. Um, you know, I—I'd like to think I have a good moral compass, and a core, um, and I think I have a little bit of empathy. I think I have a little bit more empathy than Mitt Romney had. I don't know how to describe myself [grins] but I, uh, I was behind this, this whole thing. I was bartending that night, uh, for the Romney fundraiser.
I brought the camera, and a lot of other people brought cameras, you know, like I said, for thinking he would come back and take pictures. [Former President Bill] Clinton in the past had come back with the staff and taken pictures, and that was, you know, really my thought. I, you know, I hadn't really made up my mind—you know, I was willing to listen to what he had to say; I was interested to hear what he had to say. I didn't, um, go there with a grudge, you know, against Romney. I was more interested as a voter.
I just carried [the camera] in my backpack. You know, again, they had never—they had never said, 'Don't bring cameras; don't film.' You know, that was never said, and, you know, I just thought, you know, why not? ...I really had no idea he would say what he said. I thought he would say basically the same things he was saying in public. [shakes head] I had no idea it was going to be this big thing that it turned out to be. I had no idea.
There's a lot of people that can't afford to pay $50,000, you know, for one night, for one dinner. And I felt an obligation, in a way, to release it—I felt an obligation for all the people that can't afford to be there. You shouldn't have to be able to afford $50,000 to hear what the candidate actually thinks.
I had gone back and forth—in that two-week period, I had gone back and forth, and said, you know what? I have a pretty comfortable life. I struggle like everybody else, and, you know, and, um, why am I gonna do this? Why am I gonna risk everything? Should I risk everything? Should I put myself in jeopardy? Should I put myself in legal jeopardy? And I, you know, and there was times I kinda went back and forth a little bit, and I, you know, I woke up in the middle of the night one night, and I was, you know, in the darkness of my house, just kinda, just looking out the window and just thinking about it, and I walked into the bathroom and I just looked in the mirror, and the words "You—you coward" just came outta my mouth, and I just looked in the mirror and just said, "You're a coward. You're an absolute coward." And, you know, because I was kinda leaning to not putting it out. And it just kinda came outta my mouth. And I, you know, I went back to bed, and said, "All right, well, that's not gonna work, you know?" [grins] I'm gonna put it out; I'm gonna be proud I did it; I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna do it to the best of my ability; and I'm gonna make sure as many people as possible hear it. And then at least when I turned that corner, I felt good about it; I felt like I was doing the right thing. And I went down the path and never looked back.
[on the 47% section of the video] You know, I knew where [Romney] came from—he was born with all the advantages, you know, advantages that few people have: The son of a governor, CEO, you know, prep school educated, Harvard educated, you know. And I don't think he has any clue what a regular American goes through on a daily basis. I don't think he has any idea what a single mom, you know, taking a bus to work, dropping her kid off at a daycare, you know, that she can barely afford, and hopping on another bus—you know, the day-in day-out struggles of everyday Americans. That guy has no idea. No idea. And, you know, I don't think he'll ever have an idea.
I wanted the conversation. When [David Corn of Mother Jones] went public with it and he released the full video, um, I had offers [to do interviews], and I thought it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. All along, with David, I wanted Mitt Romney's words, and Mitt Romney's words only. He's the guy running for president—I wanted his words to be the absolute center of attention. And, you know, maybe it'd be fun to go on a show, or do this show or that, but I thought that would change the, the topic of the conversation away from the primary thing that was most important to me.And here is David Corn's excellent piece about working with Prouty to release the video. This seems a good time to revisit a quote shared by many of you in yesterday's QOTD, care of my dear friend and colleague Maud, whom I still miss so much: "There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don't speak, they have changed you."
Thank you, Mr. Prouty, for sharing that video. It won't ever change Mitt Romney, but I hope every time you look in the mirror, you feel brave.
Morning in America 2.0
Reuters—U.S. to let spy agencies scour Americans' finances:
The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.Ha ha ya think?! "Privacy schivacy!"—The
The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.
Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of "suspicious customer activity," such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).How inconvenient for them! We should definitely sacrifice everyone's privacy in order that they might better avoid oversight and accountability. What's a little access to everyone's financial records between warantless wiretapping friends?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.
National security experts also maintain that a robust system for sharing criminal, financial and intelligence data among agencies will improve their ability to identify those who plan attacks on the United States.Ohhhhhhh I see. So it's a necessary sacrifice of privacy because WAR ON TERROR! Gee, where have I heard that before? *cough* Patriot Act *cough*
Jesus fucking Jones.
Pope Nicolas, Obviously
@deekymd That vestment is a a symbol of his individuality, and his belief in personal freedom.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2013
[Note: The linked picture is a Photoshopped image of Nicolas Cage as pope. The vestmentized quote is borrowed from Wild at Heart.]
Meanwhile, in New Zealand...
New Zealand moves one step closer to marriage equality:
New Zealand lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill allowing same-sex marriage Wednesday, all but assuring that it will soon become law.Yay!
Lawmakers supported the bill 77 to 44 in the second of three votes needed for a bill to be approved. The second vote is typically the most crucial one. The third and final vote is likely to be little more than a formality and could be taken as early as next month.
... More than 200 people crammed into the Parliament's public gallery to watch lawmakers debate the bill before they voted at about 10:15 p.m. The mostly young crowd clapped and cheered for lawmakers who spoke in support of the bill, and sat in silence for those who spoke in opposition.
"I'm very excited, as excited as the young people," bill sponsor Louisa Wall said after the vote. "It's a fantastic result."
...New Zealand already has same-sex civil union laws that confer many legal rights to gay couples. Polls indicate about two-thirds of New Zealanders support gay marriage.
...In her speech supporting the bill, Wall said denying marriage to any person devalues that person's right to participate fully in all that life offers.
"Marriage belongs to society as a whole, and that requires the involvement of the whole of society," Wall said. "The role of the state in marriage is to issue a license to two people who love each other and want to commit to one another formally. That's what this bill does."
Pope Francis and His History in Argentina
[Content Note: Human rights violations.]
Flavia Dzodan (whom you should know as the coiner of the phrase "My feminism will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit," even though not everyone has been great, ahem, about attributing it) is busily documenting on her Twitter timeline Pope Francis' history during the Argentinian dictatorship of the 1970's, during which "left wing activists were detained & tortured a priest was present to give sacraments in case of death."
This is her lived experience, and I encourage you to visit her TL to see everything, but here are some highlights:
The role of the Catholic Church during the dictatorship is extensively documented and they never were held accountable
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
This is an insult to the memory of 30,000 people who were kidnapped, tortured and disappeared during Argentina's dictatorship
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
The role of the Catholic Church, of which Bergoglio was Archibishop, is well documented in those 30,000 deaths
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
Bergoglio "delivering" priests to the military, a Guardian feature from 2010 is.gd/0AtOyY
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
And yet another feature about Bergoglio's role in handing out activists to dictatorship is.gd/laxeg5 calls accusation "slander"
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
LA Times in 2005: Argentine Cardinal Named in Kidnap Lawsuit (guess who was the cardinal?) is.gd/OAwI3u ALL HAIL NEW POPE!
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
Guess the name of the cardinal? "Argentine cardinal accused in 1976 kidnaps" highstrangeness.tv/0-799-argentin…
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
I saw my father burn half his library because he was in fucking terror that the dictatorship would find his books
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
Argentina lived in fucking terror in a dictatorship from which the country has not yet recovered fully and the Church was fully complicit
— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 13, 2013
In comments, Shaker BlueRidge shared this excerpt from the Guardian piece Flavia links above:
What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentine hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church's collaboration and in these crimes. The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.Priorities. The Catholic Church leadership has them. They are terrible.
The 47% Videographer
On November 9, 2012, I wrote a letter of appreciation to the anonymous videographer of the infamous Mitt Romney 47% video. It said, in part:
I don't know who you are... [Y]our name isn't important to me. Your courage, however, is.Tonight, that person, who has been confirmed as the bartender at the event, will reveal himself during an interview with Ed Schultz on MSNBC's The Ed Show.
It was a brave—and straight-up punk rock—thing to do to shoot that film of Mitt Romney yukking it up with his rich funders about how awesome it would be if he were Latino and how gross it is that people think they're entitled to food. During the last presidential election, there was all sorts of laughably ironic talk of "mavericks," but it was this presidential election in which an actual maverick showed up, video camera (or phone) in hand.
It wasn't just your job you risked taking that video and making it public. You risked your personal safety, should your identity have (or ever) become widely known. You risked being sued, losing your privacy, having your name and reputation inextricably tied to that video for the rest of your life.
These are not small things.
I want to acknowledge the risks you took, and I want to say that I believe you had a huge impact on this election. ...Your video was, for many voters, the first glimpse they saw of the real Mitt Romney, and his real base.
And I want to say thank you.
"How big a decision was it for you to release the tape and to go through all of this?" Ed asked the videographer, whose identity will be revealed on-air Wednesday.I am not a praying person, but I hope that he remains safe, and that he is rightly remembered for a historically important piece of citizen journalism.
"It was tough," he said. "And I debated for a little while, but in the end I really felt it had to be put out. I felt I owed it to the people who couldn't afford to be there themselves to hear what he really thought."
He went on to say:
"I simply wanted [Romney's] words to go out. And everybody could make a judgment based on his words and his words alone. The guy was running for the presidency and these were his core beliefs. And I think everybody can judge whether that's appropriate or not or whether they believe the same way he does. I felt an obligation to expose the things he was saying.""Has there been any time where you feared for your life?" Ed asked.
"I was up against the most powerful, the richest people in the country and the stakes were pretty high and you never know what could happen," said the man who shot the 47% video. "There [are dangerous people] out there. You just don't know. I've certainly had threats."
For those who have access to MSNBC, the interview will air tonight at 8pm ET.
Exciting Programming Note For Conservatives!
Set your DVRs, Tivos, and Hoppers, everyone! (Actually, if you have a Hopper, you can record this gem fourteen times at once and have just so many copies of it!) (Also, every sentence in this post will end with an exclamation point!) (¡Incluso las frases en español!)
Tonight is the debut of For the Record, an investigative news show à la Sixty Minutes airing on Glenn Beck's TV network!
Okay, hold the fuck on. Glenn Beck has his own TV network? When did this happen? (I Googlepediaed it: His steaming (typo, and it stays) web content is also carried on Dish Network. Yuck! I am glad I don't have Dish Network! Also: Weren't Dish Network the jerks who failed to keep The Walking Dead off the air? Thanks, Dish Network: strike two!
Of the show, Beck says:
"We are currently looking for our own Woodwards and Bernsteins. Maybe they don't exist anymore, and if that's the case I don't really care. We'll grow our own!"It's weird that Beck doesn't know if there are any Woodwards around, especially since the original Woodward (Bob) HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS EVERY DAY FOR THAT LAST TWO FUCKING WEEKS! The thing you really want in a good newsman is total ignorance of the news, obviously!
For the Record will be hosted by Laurie Dhue, whoever that is! (She used to be on Fox, which is why I've never heard of her. She was previously on MSNBC, which is also why I've never heard of her!) I guess Beck will be on, too? I don't know. Let's hope so! And whomever is the Libertarian version of Andy Rooney. ("Ya ever notice all these poor people everywhere?")
Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins notes that the debut episode "doesn't break any news" which I think would be problematic. But then again, the target audience likes its journalism with a heaping dose of BENGAHZI! and a side of ACORN!, so this probably won't even matter.
Though, Glenn Beck adds:
"We hope that For the Record fills an important void in the marketplace — smart, deeply researched, and incredibly well-produced television journalism for an audience that is too often ignored by the media."LOL! Oh, okay, Sure. Our fucking liberal news media has been ignoring conservatives for far too long. The jerks. Liberal news jerks! Why don't you ever invite conservatives on and ask their opinions? Seriously, I am sooo sick of seeing Phil Donohue and Jane Fonda on ABC News EVERY GODDAMNED NIGHT!
Anyway, tune in tonight. If you have Dish Network. If not, tough shit!
WHITE SMOKE! WHITE SMOKE!
A new pope has been chosen and will soon be named! MORE ON THIS EXCITING DEVELOPMENT ABOUT WHO WILL BE CRAWLING UP IN ALL THE VAGINAS AND DENIGRATING HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS AS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE!
UPDATE 1: Here is the actual white smoke.
White smoke rises from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, indicating a new pope has been elected, March 13, 2013. White smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel and the bells of St. Peter's Basilica rang out on Wednesday, signaling that Roman Catholic cardinals had ended their conclave and elected a pope to succeed Benedict XVI. [Max Rossi/Reuters]
UPDATE 2: While we await official word of the next pontiff, I will again make the observation that I really wish I didn't have to give a fuck about the pope, and hate that I am nonetheless obliged to care, because of the persistent outsized influence of the Catholic Church.
UPDATE 3: Alison Rose wins the internetz:
Have we decided yet if it's feminist or not for the pope to change his name?
— Alison Rose (@alisonrose711) March 13, 2013
UPDATE 4: And the new pope is...Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina! Who I believe is a Jesuit. More info to come...
UPDATE 5: The new pope "has taken the name of Francis and was not considered to be one of the front runners."
[Video Description: Pee-Wee Herman saying, "FRANCIS!"]
UPDATE 6: Here is Pope Francis:
UPDATE 7: Shaker ambivalentacademic posted the following in comments (which I am sharing with hir permission):
Ooh, I got kind of excited about Jesuit (the individual Jesuits I have know via my own personal experience have been pretty progressive to a man) and that he's taking the name Francis (surely the pantsless protester of greed has to be a good sign?)...then I read this:Which was my reaction almost exactly:
"Bergoglio, a Jesuit, has affirmed church teaching on homosexuality, contraception and abortion and is considered to be among the most conservative in Latin America."
*sadface*
I was intrigued that Francis was a Jesuit, til I read that he's basically a terrible one. Whoops! I loved me some radical Jesuits at Loyola.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2013
Here's some fun information from his Wikipedia entry:
Cardinal Bergoglio has invited his clergy and laity to oppose both abortion and euthanasia.HA HA HE SOUNDS AWESOME. Way to go, Catholic Church leadership! You've done it again!
He has affirmed church teaching on homosexuality, though he teaches the importance of respecting individuals who are homosexual. He strongly opposed legislation introduced in 2010 by the Argentine Government to allow same-sex marriage, calling it a "real and dire anthropological throwback." In a letter to the monasteries of Buenos Aires, he wrote: "Let's not be naive—we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."
He has also insisted that adoption by [same-sex parents] is a form of discrimination against children. This position received a rebuke from Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who said the church's tone was reminiscent of "medieval times and the Inquisition."
