Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Guns] The Centers for Disease Control's current funding for gun violence prevention research is $0. And it looks like it will remain that way for the foreseeable future, since Congressional Republicans refuse to fund it, with one Republican Congressman calling money for gun violence research a "request to fund propaganda." The depth of my contempt is cavernous.
[CN: War on agency] Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed into law a bill that allows "state health authorities to conduct surprise inspections of abortion clinics without a warrant. HB 2284 repeals an Arizona law that requires a judge to give approval for inspections of abortion clinics. Department of Health Services officials will now be able to inspect any clinic during business hours, even without reasonable cause." This is just state-sanctioned harassment of abortion providers and patients.
[CN: Homophobia] This is your regularly-scheduled reminder that same-sex marriage equality is not the end-all be-all of gay rights: "A Boy Scout troop in Seattle announced on Monday that its charter had been revoked after its church sponsor refused to fire the troop's scout leader because of his sexual orientation. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) withdrew the membership of Scoutmaster Geoff McGrath, 49, in March after he revealed to an NBC News reporter that he was gay. McGrath was widely thought to be the first openly gay scout leader after the organization voted last year to allow gay youths as of Jan. 1, but not allow gay adults to lead troops. The Rainier Beach United Methodist Church received a letter from BSA on Friday stating that its charter had been revoked, and an attorney from the organization told the church it could no longer host any troops under the Boy Scouts name." Fucking assholes. Seriously.
[CN: Homophobia] On the marriage equality front: States with conservative majorities tend to lag behind the national average in support for same-sex marriage, but a new poll out of Texas has found that 48% of Texans now support same-sex marriage while 47% oppose it. That sound you hear is another domino falling to the floor.
[CN: War on agency] Tennessee's Pregnancy Criminalization Law Will Hit Black Women the Hardest: "The bill, SB 1391, would impose criminal penalties on mothers of newborns who have been exposed to addictive illegal or prescription drugs in utero. While the bill appears race-neutral, prosecutors and judges will wield the law against Black women more so than white women, based on a long tradition of deeply embedded racial stereotypes about Black motherhood. Should Gov. Haslam ignore the growing outcry against SB 1391 from pro-choice and anti-choice advocates alike, the law would likely lead to Black women being thrown in jail for up to 15 years for aggravated assault should they choose to carry a pregnancy to term while struggling with an addiction to illegal narcotics."
[CN: Fat bias] Oh for fuck's sake: "Airlines look for ways to cut down on weight, squeeze in more seats: If you thought airlines could find no new ways to squeeze more passengers into each plane, you are underestimating the resolve of the airline industry. At this month's Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany, many of the 500 exhibitors were promoting new ideas to cut down on weight—to save fuel—and innovative layouts to fit more seats per cabin. Among the concepts offered at the expo was a set of seats that put passengers face to face; seats that are installed in a staggered, diagonal layout, and lavatories designed to wedge in a few extra passengers in the back of the cabin." Meanwhile, fat passengers will be up for even more harassment and discrimination, because it's our bodies that are the problem, not the constantly diminishing space on airplanes.
And finally: Would you like some vegetable ice cream? Häagen-Dazs is debuting veggie ice cream in Japan next month. Sounds interesting! One of the best things I've ever eaten was a cucumber sorbet at Tom Colicchio's restaurant Craft. Delicious!
In the News
War on the War on Drugs
[Content Note: Racism.]
So, this is good news:
The Obama administration is beginning an aggressive new effort to foster equity in criminal sentencing by considering clemency requests from as many as thousands of federal inmates serving time for drug offenses, officials said Monday.This follows the decision of the US Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal judges, to vote "to revise its guidelines to reduce sentences for defendants in most of the nation's drug cases." In 2002, the commission "found that the [sentencing] disparity had created a racial imbalance in which harsh sentences had been disproportionately imposed on minorities, particularly African Americans."
The initiative, which amounts to an unprecedented campaign to free nonviolent offenders, will begin immediately and continue over the next two years, officials said. The Justice Department said it expects to reassign dozens of lawyers to its understaffed pardons office to handle the requests from inmates.
"The White House has indicated it wants to consider additional clemency applications, to restore a degree of justice, fairness and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. "The Justice Department is committed to recommending as many qualified applicants as possible for reduced sentences."
Ostensibly, this new effort should help address that disparity. But:
Holder has announced a series of initiatives to tackle disparities in criminal penalties, beginning in August when he said low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations would not be charged with offenses that call for strict mandatory sentences. He has traveled across the country to highlight community programs in which nonviolent offenders have received substance-abuse treatment and other assistance instead of long prison sentences.Emphasis mine.
My concern here is that men of color, specifically black and Latino men, are disproportionately likely to be accused of having gang or cartel affiliations during drug prosecutions, sometimes even if they have no meaningful connections to gangs or drug cartels at all. Gang activity by association is another level of bias, which will mean many of these offenders, including women of color whose "gang activity" might have been established simply by dating someone in a gang, won't benefit from clemency.
This article about the new effort [CN: sexual abuse] tells the story of a white woman who is serving a disproportionately long sentence "for her minor role helping her drug dealer husband." But if her husband had been involved with a gang, or could have been convincingly accused of involvement with a gang, hers might not be described as "emblematic of the harsh and inflexible sentencing regimes of the past," nor she a good candidate for clemency.
So, I am glad for this effort, but I am concerned about its application. Its parameters may simply entrench racial privilege in yet another way.
Blog Note
The blog may look a little weird this morning, because Photobucket seems to be having some kind of issue, so our images aren't serving properly. Hopefully Photobucket will resolve the issue soon.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Alison Rose: "What is something about you now—your life, your work, your personality, etc—that a younger version of you would be surprised by?"
Photos of the Day
Congratulations to Rita Jeptoo of Kenya, who won the women's Boston Marathon for the second year in a row with a course record of 2:18:57, and to Meb Keflezighi of the US, who won the men's Boston Marathon, making him the first US man win the Boston Marathon since Greg A. Meyer in 1983.
Rita Jeptoo
Meb Keflezighi
Um, Okay
Welp:
In a new national poll [by GfK Public Affairs & Corporate Communications] on America's scientific acumen, more than half of respondents said they were "not too confident" or "not at all confident" that "the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang."PIX OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
...Scientists were apparently dismayed by this news, which arrives only a few weeks after astrophysicists located the first hard evidence of cosmic inflation.
...Other polls on America's scientific beliefs have arrived at similar findings. The "Science and Engineering Indicators" survey -- which the National Science Foundation has conducted every year since the early 1980s -- has consistently found only about a third of Americans believe that "the universe began with a huge explosion."
In 2010, the NSF poll rephrased the question, asking whether the following statement was true: "According to astronomers, the universe began with a big explosion." When reworded, more Americans agreed, suggesting more respondents are aware of the science than originally suggested -- they just don't believe the science.
Naturally, the go-to explanation is always religious belief, but there lots of religious people, across religions, who also believe that the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang (based on what current science can tell us at the moment, with the caveat that new science and technologies may result in adjustments to the theory). There's a lot more going on than that.
There's no single universal answer, either, because individual people have individual (and sometimes overlapping) reasons for disbelieving science of the universe.
And, frankly, I wouldn't even care what people believed, except that disbelief in science of the universe is so inextricably intertwined with the garbage beliefs that are used to legislate oppression.
Fatsronauts 101: Fat in Public, Thin Allies, and the Veneer of Strength as Dehumanization
[Content Note: Fat hatred; abuse; harassment.]
This afternoon, I've been doing some tweeting about being fat in public and the obligation for fat people, especially fat women, to be impenetrably strong in the face of harassment. For those who aren't on Twitter, here is the Storify of that tweet session and a place for discussion.
If you have problems reading the embedded Storify, you can also read it here.
Discussion Thread: Democrats 2016
With Senator Elizabeth Warren saying definitively that she is not running in 2016, and with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton still officially undecided, let's imagine that neither of them runs for the 2016 presidential election. Who would you like to see as the Democratic presidential nominee?
Please note the question doesn't presume you're a Democratic voter. (Or even a USian.) I wouldn't vote for a Republican candidate if you paid me all of Mitt Romney's money, but I still have some investment in who the nominee is, etc.
Your answer is not required to be someone who is likely to be able to get the nomination, e.g. Joe Biden, or people who have been named as potential contenders, e.g. Martin O'Malley or Deval Patrick. You are absolutely welcome to name a fantasy candidate, i.e. someone who is a terrific politician but unlikely to be a contender based on the usual stupid factors.
Assvertising
[Content Note: Rape jokes; disablist jokes; fat jokes; privilege.]
Shaker Rebekah forwarded me this piece about the series of adverts Ricky Gervais is doing for luxury car brand Audi, which have recently started airing in the US:
To launch its new A3 sedan, Audi of America is turning to Ricky Gervais to drive home the message that consumers should never compromise.I've seen the "Names" spot several times, in which a little girl reads shitty tweets about Gervais, and he says they mean he's doing something right. The other two, I've only seen online, and this "Uncompromised Portrait" ad is hilariously awful:
To hammer home the message, it cast Gervais, a comedian who is often blasted by critics for his acidic sense of humor and jokes.
Gervais is featured in an overall branding campaign called "Dues," and a separate shorter spot called "Names," as well as in a series of "Uncompromised Portraits," in which he discusses his process of telling jokes.
The ad, filmed in black and white because OF COURSE IT IS, opens with piano music and text onscreen reading: "Audi A3 Presents: An uncompromised portrait. Ricky Gervais, writer, comedian, actor, etc..."Good fucking grief.
Gervais, sitting facing the camera, says: "I cherish the gasps as much as the laughs and the cheers and the rounds of applause." He makes a gasping noise. "I like that. I didn't turn up to any audience and go, 'What do you like? What shall I do? I do requests.' You know? The reaction after the Golden Globes was weird." This monologue is intercut with images of an empty theater, a man walking in the snow, a train, and other random shit because ART. "You usually have to be a mass murderer for that sort of column inches. But then, you know, by the end, they sort of got it. They went, 'Oh, okay then. He's just telling jokes.' I don't really want to do safe, homogenized stuff that everyone likes a bit, you know? I sort of like doing it my way, 'cause that's the fun. Every day should be filled with doing what you love. That's more important. It's more important than anything." Gervais grins.
Text onscreen: "Whatever you do, stay uncompromised." Audi logo.
First of all: LOL FOREVER at the contention that people who criticized Gervais' garbage routine at the Golden Globes were somehow confused about the fact that he was telling jokes.
Secondly: LOL FOREVER at the assertion that Gervais isn't doing "safe, homogenized stuff" when he's a teller and defender of rape jokes, disablist jokes, and fat jokes (for a start), as if making fun of rape, disabled people, and fat people isn't so old it's got brontosaurus shit in the treads of its sensible shoes.
It is the height of irony that humorists who do bigoted humor are regarded as provocateurs.
I mean, sure, he's a "provocateur" if provocateur is broadly defined enough to encompass a playground antagonist who pokes other children with a stick. If anything designed to provoke any response can make one a provocateur, then give Ricky Gervais his trophy for Provocateur of the Year or whatever.That shit's about as edgy as an abacus.
But "provocateur" really should mean something loftier—not a person who engages in the tiresome bigotry of misogyny and ableism, of racism and xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia, who tells and defends rape jokes, just to elicit an entirely predictable (and legitimate) negative reaction from people getting poked with the stick, who are then immediately dismissed with charges of "humorlessness" or a lack of sophistication required to get the nuances of a joke to which the punchline is, at its essence, you are less than me.
A provocateur, if the word is have real meaning, is someone who challenges existent paradigms and marginalizing narratives, who presents a radical thought that makes people sit rather uncomfortably in their privilege and urges them to wander off the well-worn path of their socialization. It's someone who changes minds.
It isn't someone who calls people "mongs" and pretends that it's brave.
Finally: All the mirthless laughter in the multiverse at another highly privileged person sagely dispensing the advice that "every day should be filled with doing what you love" because "it's more important than anything." EVEN EATING! OR SHELTER! So go ahead and quit your job at the factory and spend your days DOING WHAT YOU LOVE, because no matter what it is that you love, you can definitely get rich doing it, if only you work hard enough!
Jesus Jones. Everything about this advert is the worst. Except for the fact that it's probably a pretty great choice for selling a luxury car to privileged dipshits who think Gervais is a hero for bravely upholding kyriarchal norms and calling it radical.
Daily Dose of Cute
Matilda, hanging out in the red chair in my office. Being goofy because obviously.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by oil paintings.
Recommended Reading:
stavvers: [Content Note: Choice policing] Can You Be a Feminist and Write "Can you be a feminist and" Articles?
Trudy: [CN: White supremacy; appropriation] BuzzFeed's Cultural Appropriation and Infantilization of Black Colloquialisms
Heather: [CN: Discussion of sex trade shaming, worker exploitation, and choice policing] Katha Pollitt's Quality Control
Carla: [CN: Sexual violence] Prison Rape: Getting from Punchline to Serious Crime
Sara: Decolonial Intersectionality and a Transnational Feminist Movement
BYP: BYP 100's Edward James, Civil Rights Activists Call for Firing of Angela Corey
Aja: [Note: The girl in this story was unharmed] Little Girl Crawls into Claw Machine to Become Hero of the Arcade
Amanda: A New Breed of Cat That Looks Like a Werewolf and Behaves Like a Dog Has Been Discovered
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Senator Elizabeth Warren says (again) she's not running for president in 2016: "I'm not running for president. You can ask it lots of different ways." Ha ha. I love her.
RIP Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter.
[Content Note: Disaster; death] Sixty-four deaths have been confirmed and 238 are still missing, most of them high schoolers on a class trip, in the capsized ferry disaster in South Korea last week. Seven arrests have been made so far, including the captain and six crew members. President Park Geun-hye said their actions, which included telling passengers to remain in their cabins and abandoning the ship, were "tantamount to murder." Said Park: "Above all, the conduct of the captain and some crew members is unfathomable from the viewpoint of common sense, and it was like an act of murder that cannot and should not be tolerated."
[CN: Worker exploitation] Temporary work is becoming the norm for many US workers, which of course has great benefits for exploitative employers and frequently terrible consequences for workers: "With full-time work hard to find, these workers have built temping into a de facto career, minus vacation, sick days or insurance. The assignments might be temporary—a few months here, a year there—but labor economists warn that companies' growing hunger for a workforce they can switch on and off could do permanent damage to these workers' career trajectories and retirement plans." Like the companies who exploit people give a shit about their career trajectories or retirement plans. Or whether they even have enough to eat right now. This isn't going to get changed by good will. Clearly. We need laws to prevent this type of worker exploitation.
The Supreme Court will rule on lying liars in political campaigns and whether the right of free speech trumps the right to say whatever the fuck you want about candidates, even if it's not remotely true.
Speaking of SCOTUS: "During an event at the University of Tennessee's law school on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suggested to the capacity crowd that perhaps they should revolt against the U.S government if their taxes ever get too high." He seems nice.
[CN: Survival of grave danger] A 16-year-old boy survived a flight from California to Hawaii, while stowed away in the plane's wheel well. Holy shit! FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu said "security footage from the San Jose airport verified that the boy from Santa Clara, Calif., hopped a fence to get to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 on Sunday morning. The child had run away from his family after an argument, Simon said. Simon said when the flight landed in Maui, the boy hopped down from the wheel well and started wandering around the airport grounds."
And finally: The French Parliament has voted to "change the 1804 law that considered pets only 'movable goods,' which is their current status in the US. ...For hundreds of years, dogs, cats, and horses in France had the same legal status as furniture, but they now have had their rights upgraded." In addition to enabling better protections from animal cruelty: "This will also help determine who gets to keep the pets in a divorce, as well as allow people to leave inheritances to their furkids."
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: War on agency; rape culture; reproductive coercion.]
"All you have to do is walk into a 7-Eleven or any shop on any street in America and have access to [contraceptives]."—The archbishop of New York, and Aphra_Behn's BFF, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while discussing the Hobby Lobby case on CBS' Face the Nation yesterday.
As Steve Benen points out:
In case there's any lingering confusion, it may be worth clarifying that that there are different kinds of birth-control methods. An American consumer can, for example, buy condoms fairly easily, at a modest price, in plenty of locations. "Any shop on any street in America" is obviously an exaggeration, but access to condoms is, in reality, relatively straightforward.The case Dolan is mounting is that Hobby Lobby should be allowed to refuse to pay for employees' birth control, because contraception is widely available. But if you are one of the millions of people who take hormonal birth control for reasons other than (or in addition to) pregnancy prevention, a condom is not even remotely a sufficient alternative.
What's more, emergency contraception – the "morning-after pill" – is also now available over the counter.
But that's not what the Hobby Lobby case is about, and given the context, it's not what Dolan was referring to yesterday. Rather, the ongoing political dispute is over access to oral, hormonal birth control, better known as "the pill," which is available by prescription.
Further, if you are a person who relies on hormonal birth control because you are unable to safely extricate yourself from a relationship in which you are sexually abused and/or subjected to reproductive coercion, Cardinal Dolan apparently imagines that asking your abusive partner to wear a condom is a practical solution for you.
It would really be nice if a passing familiarity with the basic realities of many women's lives were a requirement for being given a national platform to opine on issues primarily affecting women.
David Brooks Says President Obama Has a "Manhood Problem"
[Content Note: Gender essentialism; racism; misogyny.]
David Brooks continues to be the absolute worst:
New York Times columnist David Brooks on Sunday claimed that President Obama's foreign policy isn't "tough" and that he has a "manhood problem" in the Middle East.Leaving aside the evident issue that conservatives never think diplomacy and/or non-military interventions are "tough enough," because they favor an aggressive, militaristic foreign policy, this shit not only plays into gender essentialist narratives equating maleness with toughness, but also invokes a racist history of policing and questioning black male manhood, which has long written black men out of the stereotypical definitions of the "alpha male."
Pivoting off Sen. Bob Corker's (R-TN) charge on NBC's Meet the Press that Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine have showed an "era of permissiveness" under Obama, later in the program, Brooks — while noting that he doesn't necessarily agree with the charge — said this issue extends to the Middle East:
BROOKS: Basically since Yalta we've had an assumption that borders are basically going to be borders and once that comes into question if in Ukraine or in Crimea or anywhere else, then all over the world all bets are off. And let's face it, Obama, whether deservedly or not, does have a — I'll say it crudely — but a manhood problem in the Middle East. Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like Assad or somebody like Putin? I think a lot of the rap is unfair but certainly in the Middle East there is an assumption that he's not tough enough.NBC's Chuck Todd agreed. "By the way, internally they fear this you know it's not just Corker saying it, questioning whether the president is being alpha-male," he said. "That's essentially saying 'he's not alpha-dog. His rhetoric isn't tough enough.'"
(I suspect if Brooks were obliged to address such criticism, there would be a whole lot of intent argumentation, but the point is not whether Brooks explicitly intended to invoke racist tropes. He did, and his intent is irrelevant.)
Meanwhile, I expect we will be hearing an increasing number of overt and thinly veiled gender essentialist attacks on the current president, as conservatives seek to preemptively discredit presumed candidate Hillary Clinton on the basis that she is not a man.
