[Content note: Racism, violence, homophobia]
Why Aren't There Nachos In My Mouth Right Now?
In Fucking Scumbag news: The George Zimmerman defense team has misharacterized evidence meant to paint Trayvon Martin as the aggressor.
In Guys From Canada Who Want To Run For President news: Ted Cruz is the best they have to offer? LOLOLOLOL! Oh, GOP!
In Burning Bush news: God is a Republican and he likes John Boehner! But, who doesn't like John Boehner?!
In Feline news: This cat has the smuggler's blues.
So does this cat.
Meanhwile, in Chicago: Ground has been broken on the nation's first affordable housing facility for LGBT seniors.
And in Central Park: Here is a great clip of Jeffrey Wright and Ben Shenkman from Angels In America.
Coming soon to Bravo: Hillary Clinton's Project Pantsuit. LOLforever!
And speaking of how terrible Animal Planet is: The network's bullshit special Mermaids: The New Evidence earned them their largest audience ever.
In The News
This is a real thing in the world.
[Content Note: Misogynist double entendres.]
Top Hooker is a new reality show on Animal Planet. It's a fishing competition.
(The website for the show is here; please note that a video begins to play automatically when you click through.)
I watched the premiere episode last night, the title of which was "World's Oldest Profession." For real. There are two female contestants out of ten. In the first episode, one female contestant is seen saying, "I'm really good with my mouth," about a challenge centered around catching goldfish in one's mouth (because "the oldest fishermen were other fish" and NO I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP). In scenes from the second episode, the other female contestant is seen saying, "I've never held a rod that big before," about a challenge centered around pole-fishing.
Fine work, Animal Planet. Excellence in programming.
Sounds Legit
Dr. Keith Ablow, "a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team," believes that the Obama administration is "conducting psychological warfare on conservative Americans. Not only that but it is also waging this war on all Americans who previously viewed themselves, their country, their Constitution and their overwhelming belief in God as a force for good in the world."
Ooh. That sounds scary and terrible for conservatives, who are obviously already suffering the horrendous persecution of the War on Christmas. Tell us more, Dr. Ablow.
The psychological warfare began with an apology tour in which President Obama publicly "confessed," presuming to speak for all of us, for the shortcomings of America and our supposed contributions to tyranny and all manner of evils around the world.If anyone is fucking with conservatives' heads, it's doctors who tell them that their President—who routinely exhorts respect for their dissenting views (to a fault)—is waging psychological warfare on them, and it's political and cultural leaders who avoid their own accountability for social failures by telling them myths about bootstraps and personal responsibility and then selling them ghost stories about feminists and queers and brown people and atheists and immigrants to redirect the insecurity left by gossamer promises of success if only you work hard and trust in Jesus and Ronald Reagan.
This confession planted in the American mind the notion that our values and beliefs might not be in line with freedom and truth.
It was reinforced by the first lady stating during the 2008 presidential campaign that she had never felt pride in our country.
These statements were seemingly shrugged off by Americans who, collectively, seemed to be telling themselves that they were hearing discontent channeled from disenfranchised groups in our nation who, nonetheless, loved the country—and all of us, too.
But, deep inside the American psyche, something more malignant could have been planted—the seeds of self-hatred and self-doubt. And I no longer believe that those seeds were planted unintentionally by people as smart and capable as the president and first lady.
...Gun rights are inextricably entwined in the American psyche with freedom to defend oneself. Attacking gun rights, I believe, is an element of the psychological warfare on the American belief that force is justifiable when confronting evil.
My belief that psychological warfare is being deployed on Americans by this American president and his administration has been solidified as news has come out of the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.
This black ops targeting doesn't just have the effect of slowing the financial momentum of these groups. It has the goal of dispiriting them and making them feel helpless to achieve their goals.
Morning in America 2.0
[Content Note: Prejudice and injustice; examples of victim-blaming]
Boston Globe—Supreme Court rules police can take DNA samples from those arrested
WASHINGTON (AP) — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for police to take a DNA swab from anyone they arrest for a serious crime, endorsing a practice now followed by more than half the states as well as the federal government.Previously, taking a cheek swab from a non-convicted felon required a warrant issued by a judge. The Supreme Court has now ruled that taking DNA at arrest time constitutes only a minimally invasive search on the grounds that a cheek swab is not painful, and can be performed without a warrant or a conviction.
The justices differed strikingly on how big a step that was.
‘‘Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,’’ Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s five-justice majority. The ruling backed a Maryland law allowing DNA swabbing of people arrested for serious crimes.
But the four dissenting justices said the court was allowing a major change in police powers, with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia predicting the limitation to ‘‘serious’’ crimes would not last.
‘‘Make no mistake about it: Because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,’’ Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom.
There are a lot of concerns I have about this decision, not the least being that institutionalized bias in the police force leads to the disproportionate arrest of marginalized people over privileged people. Indeed, I worry that this ruling will further increase this gap between marginalized and privileged: if a mentality of "the more arrests, the better" takes hold in service to filling out the federal database, then we may see an uptick in arrests among those populations of people which are ill-equipped to defend themselves.
At the same time, if arrests start to lead to permanent DNA collection to be stored in a database for time and eternity, the privileged people who are able to call in favors and pull strings to dodge justice are going to be empowered to do so even more: "You don't want to bring in Johnny on a simple little mistake, do you? His DNA will go into the database, and that's a big penalty for a little college hijinks, especially when he has such a big future ahead of him..."
And, of course, victims will be pressured even more to not press charges or file complaints, because an arrest would obviously ruin the perpetrator's life, and what if you were wrong, are you sure you're remembering correctly, ad nauseum.
It is entirely possible that we need to revisit DNA collection (and other methods of high-tech search and seizure) now that we're in the enlightened space age of 2013. But the institutionalized prejudice which unfairly targets the marginalized, re-victimizes victims, and protects the powerful is still tremendously present, and any conversation regarding DNA collection needs to acknowledge this.
This is Kristin Beck.
Kristin Beck is the author of a new memoir, Warrior Princess, about her service in the US military as a Navy SEAL and her decision to transition after her retirement in 2011. She is the first Navy SEAL known to identify as transgender.
In [her memoir], Beck describes how, over the course of her 20 year military career, including thirteen deployments over the globe, she slowly became more and more aware that was she meant to live life as a woman — a vexing and often tormenting realization for a long-time member of an elite all-male unit that went on to capture and kill Osama bin Laden.Beck posted a picture of herself as Kristin on her LinkedIn profile earlier this year, which is how most of her colleagues found out about her transition. The response, Beck says, was overwhelmingly positive.
...Beck's openness about her post-SEAL life makes her something of an anomaly among SEAL memoirists, who tend to write behind pseudonyms, especially when discussing classified military intelligence. By contrast, Beck includes dozens of pictures from her deployments and her life at home, pre- and post-transition, in Warrior Princess.
...At the same time, Warrior Princess is still poised to have an effect on military policy. Even after the long-sought repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which barred gay servicemembers from discussing their sexuality, transgender individuals remain banned from entering military service. ...So perhaps this memoir, which documents the [experiences] of one of the U.S. military's most effective and loyal agents, will lay the groundwork for even greater inclusion in the armed forces.
I hope she continues to receive such great support, especially from her fellow SEALs, who recognize her courage in and out of the war theater.
[H/T to Transgender Law Center.]
Question of the Day
What object or word or wev that you occasionally or frequently encounter in daily life inescapably invokes for you a movie scene or quote?
Earlier today, I happened to see an abandoned wooden wagon wheel, and every single time I see a wagon wheel, I hear Billy Crystal saying: "THIS STUPID WAGON WHEEL ROY ROGERS GARAGE SALE COFFEE TABLE!" from When Harry Met Sally. It is impossible for me to lay eyes on a wagon wheel without the memory of that line firing off in the recesses of my brain pan.
I know A LOT of people who cannot hear the word "inconceivable" without hearing Wallace Shawn's voice exclaiming "Inconceivable!" or Mandy Patinkin's voice observing: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Spring Has Sprung
[Click to embiggen.]
A photo taken near my home, earlier today. It took a long time for spring to get here this year. But we're finally having some beautiful days at long last.
Quote of the Day
Things are gonna get tougher. [long dramatic pause] And, quite honestly, I believe I have said from the beginning, and I know this to be true more and more every day, that it will be this audience that saves the nation. I no longer believe that it's going to be saved the way we thought it would be. It may only be saved in remnants and pieces; there may only be portions of people that are actually living the constitution. But it will be saved. The American spirit will not be snuffed out. I don't know what's coming. I do know tough times are coming. And I do know that real civil rights leaders will rise. I don't know who they are. If you're listening to this program, and you're listening long-term...[dramatic heaving sigh]...they're probably going to be you.LOL FOREVER! This fucking guy!
[Via Kyle.]
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Content Note: Alcoholism; misogyny.]
Our old pal Peggy Drexler, author of the terrific "When mom earns more, it's tough on dad" that we discussed last week, is back with a new, equally terrific piece examining the reasons why women are reportedly drinking more.
And by "examining the reasons," what I mean is throwing out every conceivable theory: It's younger women who are drinking more; it's older women who are drinking more; it's businesswomen who are drinking more; it's stay-at-home moms who are drinking more; it's women who are binge-drinking; it's women who are drinking alone every night; it's women who are concealing the amount of alcohol they drink; it's women who are bragging about the amount of alcohol they drink! "Many women don't realize what problem drinking looks, or feels, like." But "more and more women fit the profile [of an alcoholic as defined by medical professionals] quite nicely, though often come to the realization on their own."
SO MANY WOMEN ARE DRINKING AND THEY DON'T EVEN REALIZE THEY'VE GOT A PROBLEM BUT DEFINITELY REALIZE THEY'VE GOT A PROBLEM!
It's tough to pick out my favorite part of this piece, but I'm going to go with:
Sarah, a stay-at-home mother, began to drink more frequently after having her third child. She was often drinking alone, because her husband traveled a lot for work. "My social life is just so restricted; I'm home every night," she said. "I used to have an active social life. Now, most of my evenings are about feeding kids, cleaning kids, putting them to bed -- and then collapsing in front of the TV." Sometimes, she said, having a drink was a way to remember some of the excitement of her old life. Other times, it was just something to do.Or, maybe like millions and millions of other people who use alcohol (or cigarettes, or drugs, or food, or gambling, or compulsive behavior of any sort), Sarah was using alcohol as a coping mechanism because she was anxious and/or unhappy. Obviously, that's not something that we're allowed to say, because THERE IS NO GREATER JOY THAN BEING A MOTHER and you are a monster-lady if you suggest otherwise.
(Which is no judgment at all on the women who are perfectly content to be stay-at-home mothers. I am pro-choice! Choose what makes you happy!)
But the truth is that, for a lot of human beings, sitting at home alone every night because your partner travels and trading a satisfying social life for looking after children isn't enough. And saying that is not the same thing as saying "I hate my children," but it's often received as though it is.
And maybe that's why more women are drinking. Because the world is opening up for women, and yet we're still being told that nothing is better or more fulfilling or more important than being at home with children. And we're still judged harshly if we assert that we want more than that for ourselves. We're still side-eyed suspiciously and critically if we need more than babies to make us content. We're made to feel guilty and ashamed and less than if we don't regard motherhood as the be-all end-all of our existences, especially if we're already mothers.
Being told "the world awaits you," and then negatively judged if you want more of it beyond the walls of your home, well, that might warrant a glass of wine.
Tweet of the Day
[Content Note: Fat hatred; disablist slur.]
Wow. WOW. Wow.
Miller, who is an evolutionary psychology professor with a permanent position at the University of New Mexico currently visiting at NYU, deleted the tweet and offered "sincere apologies to all for that idiotic, impulsive, and badly judged tweet." He further noted
that, "obviously my previous tweet does not represent the selection policies of any university, or my own selection criteria." But it's not obvious. Miller has sat on admissions committees before, his CV states. Now he's expressed this apparently serious, if better-left-private, non-academic criteria for accepting or rejecting people. And his peers are calling foul.Additionally, Chris Chambers, with the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, has written a letter to the departmental chair at UNM's department of psychology asking for accountability and a response to Miller's bigotry.
In the coverage of this fat-hating, scientifically inaccurate, harmful mess, I've seen a lot of variations on calling out Miller for hitting out the send button impulsively or failing to properly censor himself. But the problem isn't that Miller broadcast this bigotry in a public venue. The problem is that he holds this bigoted view at all.
[H/T to Kristen Fuchsia.]
Donald Trump Is a Clown
That is not Breaking News, I realize. But sometimes his bozosity is just truly breathtaking:
Despite Donald Trump's best efforts, Republican National Convention–goers missed out on what could have been a very interesting video. The real-estate mogul tells me he filmed a five-minute commercial for Romney that featured the mogul saying "You're fired!" to an actor with an uncanny resemblance to the president. The spot would have run at the convention, but the event's schedulers ultimately decided to cut it. Trump says he thinks part of the reason for that was the hurricane, which changed the convention's schedule. But he says Republicans also thought the spot might not have gone over well.Ha ha yep! That was definitely the problem. If there's one thing everyone always says about the Republican Party, it's that they're TOO POLITICALLY CORRECT. And if there's a second thing everyone always says about the Republican Party, it's that they're SO SCARED to insult the President.
"Everybody thought it was great, but they were afraid to use it," Trump says. "They thought it was too tough."
"They didn't want to rock the boat," he adds, "and the problem with this country is nobody's willing to rock the boat and everybody wants to be so politically correct."
Trump also says he thinks the Romney campaign thought he was too controversial to be an asset in the general election. The star of The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice stumped for Romney in a handful of primary states and also made robocalls for him. But Romney's campaign didn't call Trump back once Romney won the nomination (a victory for which Trump takes partial credit). Not getting asked to make a repeat performance "was fine with me, because I do have lots of other things to do," he adds, but he thinks he might have pushed Florida over to Romney in the general.WHAT IS HE EVEN TALKING ABOUT. "I'm a very busy gentleman, as evidenced by the gold-plated toilet in my guest bathroom which I paid for with all the money I make being an asshole on television and increasingly infrequently in actual business settings, so I don't even care that I didn't have to ask my secretary to rearrange my schedule to help Mitt Romney win Florida, but if he HAD asked, I would have done it and then he would have won. FACTS."
"I'm not unhappy about it," he tells me, "but I think I would have made a very big difference for him, as I did in the primaries."
And now, as the New York Post has reported, Trump is eyeing his own run at the presidency. While he's far from making up his mind, he told me that "what's happening with the country" will inform his decision-making process.If he notices the entire country, or at least half of it, loses its memory and forgets entirely who Donald Trump is, but is inexplicably inclined to vote for him, he will definitely run. Even though he's busy. Because he is a hero and a patriot. And you're fired.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by fancy lube.
Recommended Reading:
FMF News: Beatriz Will Undergo C-Section to Save Her Life [Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
BYP: George Zimmerman's Attorneys Apologize for Mischaracterizing Evidence [Content Note: Violence.]
Lois: Now, You Can't Ban Guns at the Public Pool [Content Note: Guns.]
Rebecca: States Lose $5.1 Billion in Grants Due to Sequestration
Ragen: Flying Fat on Southwest Airlines [Content Note: Fat bias; disablism.]
Trudy: Melissa Harris-Perry Went THERE! [Content Note: Dominatrix imagery which may be NSFW.]
Steve: June Is the American Humane Association's Adopt-A-Cat Month
Melissa: Jean Stapleton—An Appreciation
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Daily Dose of Cute
"What?"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, terrorism]
It's Monday and I Want a Cheezeburger:
The Supreme Court has ruled criminal suspects can be subjected to a police DNA test after an arrest, before a trial and a conviction. Obviously.
The Indiana Youth Group, an LGBT youth support group, is celebrating a big win after a judge ordered their specialty license plates to be reinstated after they were halted last year by some bigoted douchebags.
Jean Stapleton, who played Edith Bunker in the long-running 1970s television series All in the Family, died Friday of natural causes. She was 90.
Boy Scouts wore their uniforms Sunday as they marched in Utah's gay pride parade, defying a leader of the organization who had said they couldn't do so under the organization's guidelines.
Michael Douglas has revealed that his throat cancer was apparently caused by performing cunnilingus.
Lou Reed, songwriter, poet and vocalist with the Velvet Underground, had a liver transplant last month.
An official of a northern Indiana animal shelter has been charged with stealing more than $100,000 from the organization. What a douchebag.
Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey has died.
And lastly: WHY THE FUCK IS STEVEN SEAGAL INVOLVED IN THE INVESTIGATION OF THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS???
Um.
Via Andy at Towleroad, Bill Maher said on his show Friday night that "pot is the new gay marriage. And by that, I mean it's the next obvious civil rights issue that needs to fall."
Sure.
That I find Bill Maher to be a colossal annoyfuck is not a secret, but, in fairness to him, in this case I'm merely singling him out as an example among many people (virtually all of whom are straight) who are talking about same-sex marriage in the US as if it's a done deal. As if it's time to move on to the next big civil rights issue, which is definitely something that matters to straight people!
Same-sex marriage has been legalized in 12 out of 50 states. And despite the fact that it looked to be a sure thing in Illinois, it wasn't. This is a fight that continues, and, in a lot of places, it's not going to get easier. At least not without some help from the Supreme Court, which is not even expected to provide the kind of help that federally legalizes same-sex marriage.
For same-sex couples in 38 states, same-sex marriage is still an "obvious civil rights issue."
Which is to say nothing of the couples in the 12 states with legal same-sex marriage who may still face clerks who refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses or justices who refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies or other pushback that requires legal intervention and communicates a pointed reminder that changing the law doesn't magically enact culturally equality.
That takes time and vigilance. Not pretending everything's solved yayayayayay let's move on wheeeeeeee!
For fuck's sake.
[Note: Legalized weed is an important issue for a number of reasons, most notably the vast number of healthcare applications and reducing the number of lives ruined by the garbage nightmare that is the war on drugs. Whether legalizing weed is itself an important issue isn't, however, the topic of this thread. Casual indifference to the incomplete campaign for marriage equality is.]
Whooooooooops Your Scary Government Strategy
Conservatives have always (ostensibly) been in favor of smaller government (except for wars of choice and massive corporate hand-outs under the guise of healthcare reform AS EXAMPLES), and (ostensibly) in favor of decentralized government (except for federal interventions into blocking same-sex marriage or making uteri property of the state AS EXAMPLES), but the fearmongering about the inherent nefariousness of the Big Scary Federal Government has gotten even more intense and hyperbolic and paranoid and absurd in the Age of Obama, especially as Republicans have tried to activate and exploit racist fears by dogwhistling about "entitlement" and "handouts" and "takers" and "moochers" while (ostensibly) talking about the federal government's "wealth redistribution" plan.
But whoooooooooooooops the problem is that they still want to get elected to the government they constantly say is a garbage nightmare not to be trusted in the slightest: "Republicans scheming to take back control of the Senate next year are walking a delicate line between the politically pragmatic decisions they need to make to win and an activist base that sees a nefarious, hidden agenda in Washington's meddling."
The party's having an increasingly difficult time finding candidates who want to run in races where they're going to face a primary battle which amounts to "so many candidates trying to portray themselves as the most conservative possible option," convincing a suspicious base that they definitely hate the federal government more than everyone else so please send me there—and then having to stick to the most absurd, retrograde, harmful, indefensible positions, because if they betray their promises to be the seething id of their bigoted, anti-intellectual base, they'll only prove even more that government can't be trusted, even Republicans in government.
What a clusterfuck. Whoops.
Game of Thrones: GOT OMG WTF
Fuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—
Last night was the penultimate episode of the current season of Game of Thrones, and it was PRETTY WILD. As per usual, I posted Jess and I talking about the episode over at "Jess and Liss Talk About Stuff," although before you click through, please note there are major show and book spoilers and lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of references to violence.
Also in this week's epic recap, some audio clips of Iain explaining stuff that might not be (ha ha pretty definitely won't be) apparent if one hasn't read the books.
Anyway. What did you think of the episode? AND HOW AWESOME IS ARYA?! Discuss.
Assvertising, Part Wev in an Ongoing Series
[Content Note: Description of shingles.]
I have seen this advert no fewer than one biebillion times recently:
Image onscreen of a red, inflamed network of sores accompanied by text reading: "SHINGLES: The Inside Story." An older white man, who is identified as "Steve Sinofsky, Retired Deputy US Marshal," tells his story while sitting in an otherwise empty office: "I woke up to a blistering on my shoulder—the blisters were oozing and painful to touch. I spent 23 years as a deputy United States marshal; we get up early and stay up late; there was a lot of running, a lot of fighting; I've been pretty well banged up. But the worst pain I ever experienced was when I had shingles! I was going through some extremely difficult training, and I couldn't do it. When we were going through pursuit driving, I couldn't put a seatbelt on because the pain that would've been caused by the seatbelt rubbing against the shingles would have been excruciating. When I went to the clinic, the nurse told me that it was the result of having had chickenpox."Okay, so everything about this advert is strange. It's not a PSA for a common but little-talked-about illness; it's a bunch of random fearmongering about a common but little-talked-about illness, because Big Pharma's quarterback, Merck, evidently has some fancy new shingles drug. I guess? It's not like the advert actually says that. It just says you're probably going to get shingles when you're old and IT IS TERRIBLE! So talk to your doctor about that. Or something.
A female voiceover says, over text onscreen reading the same: "If you had chickenpox, the SHINGLES virus is ALREADY INSIDE YOU."
Back to Steve Sinofsky, where text onscreen reads: "Your risk for shingles increases as you get older." Sinofsky says: "I had never heard of shingles prior to that point, and I've always been relatively healthy."
A female voiceover says, over text onscreen reading the same: "1 IN 3 people will get SHINGLES in their lifetime."
Back to Steve Sinofsky: "The rash, the itching, the burning that I experienced on the side of my neck and my shoulder—I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."
Image of red, inflamed network of sores with text reading: "Talk to your healthcare professional. shinglesinfo.com." A female voiceover says: "Talk to your healthcare professional." Merck logo.
Oh, and also? Did we mention it's TERRIBLE? Because it is SO TERRIBLE. This tough guy says it's the worst pain ever, and he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy, who, by virtue of his job as a deputy US marshal, is probably Al-Qaeda, so that's how terrible it is! It's too terrible for Al-Qaeda! Worse than drones.
What is this commercial?!
I mean, my grandmother had shingles and OMG it was indeed very painful and awful for her. I'm not saying shingles isn't actually very terrible and serious. I'm just saying WHAT IS THIS COMMERCIAL?!
Upon seeing it again yesterday, I did the only logical thing for someone annoyed by a stupid advert. I texted Deeky.
Liss: Why the fuck are there commercials about shingles now?
Deeks: THE SHINGLES VIRUS IS ALREADY INSIDE YOU!!!
Liss: "If you had chickenpox, you could definitely get shingles someday! What? No, no way to prevent it! Just wanted to give you some more shit to worry about!"
Deeks: LOLOLOL.
Liss: We are so fucking middle aged. They ain't showing shingles adverts on MTV! "Run this shingles commercial 97 times during every syndicated re-run of Law & Order and NCIS!"
Deeks: What's on MTV? Skittles commercials?
Liss: Lube and acne commercials.
Deeks: LOLOLOL.
Liss: It's real bullshit, too, because I like fancy lube! And I have acne! But not shingles...YET!
