Since today is a Friday the 13th with a full moon, which won't happen again for a very long time, it seems appropriate to have a thread about superstitions!
I'm not superstitious at all: I walk under ladders, spill salt, coo at black cats crossing my path, step on cracks, go through life with no lucky numbers, objects, or clothes.
I do say "touch wood" a lot, but it's not really because I believe something bad will happen if I don't. It's more a rhetorical shorthand for communicating that I hope nothing bad happens, or I'm aware of my good fortune, or whatever.
So I can't really think of any superstitions I have. Boring!
You?
Discussion Thread: Superstitions
Daily Dose of Cute
Big roundy cat pie.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by a cool glass of ice water.
Recommended Reading:
Shannon: [Content Note: Discussion of body policing; fat bias] I'm Cute, Fat, and Living
Aoife: [CN: Discussion of gender policing; coercion] "The Stranger Is Always You": Hedwig, Survival, and the Questionable Trans Label
Soraya: [CN: Discussion of misogyny; silencing] 10 Simple Words Every Girl Should Learn
Angry Asian Man: [CN: Racism; racist imagery at link] Why Are Ignorant People So Eager to Make This Racist Gesture?
Winnie: [CN: Racism; violence; harassment; self-harm] Who Killed Private Danny Chen?
And finally: You are reading Captain Awkward, right? If not, you should definitely check out Captain Awkward, who is totes the best.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Police brutality] Welp, looks like everything's going great the World Cup already.
[CN: War on agency] Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed legislation yesterday "that is expected to close four of the state’s five abortion clinics. The new law is directly modeled on similar clinic restrictions in Texas that are already wreaking havoc on women's access to abortion services in the Lone Star State. Jindal also signed a measure that will ban Planned Parenthood employees from providing any material about sexual health in public schools. After approving the two pieces of legislation in a Baptist church, the governor released a statement saying he's 'proud to sign these bills because they will help us continue to protect women and the life of the unborn in our state.'" Protect women. Fuck off.
[CN: Food insecurity] This is very good news: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has extended the deadline for applying for community eligibility in the National School Lunch and breakfast programs to Aug. 31, the agency said in a letter to state nutrition program directors this week. ...The USDA estimates that more than 22,000 schools are eligible for the program. 'CEP has the potential to offer more than 8 million low-income children free meals each school day,' Cynthia Long, a deputy administrator for child nutrition programs, wrote in the letter."
Speaking of public schools, this was passed on to me by a friend of mine who is an excellent teacher but left the classroom at the end of this year, and I'm guessing it will resonate with a lot of you in public education: "A teacher's tough decision to leave the classroom."
RIP Ruby Dee, "one of the most enduring actresses of theater and film, whose public profile and activist passions made her, along with her husband, Ossie Davis, a leading advocate for civil rights both in show business and in the wider world." What an amazing person she was. A great actress, a great activist, a great woman.
This is a pretty remarkable discovery: "After decades of searching, scientists have discovered that a vast reservoir of water, enough to fill the Earth's oceans three times over, may be trapped hundreds of miles beneath the surface, potentially transforming our understanding of how the planet was formed." Yowza.
[CN: Misogyny; abuse] Tobey Maguire sounds like a real d-bag: "Tobey went on to humiliate Bloom in front of the [other high-stakes poker] players, loudly offering her a thousand-dollar chip if she did 'something to earn these thousand dollars. ...Bark like a seal who wants a fish.' Bloom writes that she tried to laugh it off, but Tobey continued: 'I'm not kidding. What's wrong? You're too rich now? You won't bark for a thousand dollars? Wowwww...you must be really rich. ...C'mon,' he said, holding the chip above my head. 'BARK.' 'No,' I said quietly. 'No?' he asked. 'Tobey,' I said, 'I'm not going to bark like a seal. Keep your chip.'"
Aidy Bryant, one of the writers (and stars) of one of my favorite SNL digital shorts of all time, "(Do It on My) Twin Bed," about getting in on in your childhood bedroom while you're home for the holidays, made her first late-night chat show appearance earlier this week on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and she was fucking hilarious. [CN for two instances of use of "insane" in its increasingly common colloquial use as an emphatic modifier.] Part One; Part Two. I love her. Please put her in all the movies. Thank you.
TV Corner: Fargo
[Content Note: Discussion of violence and privilege. Spoilers from the TV series Fargo.]
Budge, Pepper, and Solverson.
Deeks and I were texting about Fargo again this morning, because THAT SHOW, and I'm sharing our conversation here with his permission...
Deeky: Know what's awesome about Fargo? The heroes are a woman and two men of color.
Liss: YES! I wrote about that last week! I was all I DON'T ASK FOR MUCH BUT MAKE THEM THE HEROES! And then it really looked like it's definitely going that way this week!
Deeky: Did you? I missed that!
Liss: BRAINTWINZ! Also? If any white straight men are heroes, it will be an old man (Carradine) and/or a coward (Hanks). There ain't a straight white "alpha male" in sight. And!!! Think of the commentary on how the more "alpha" Lester gets, the more violent and dangerous he becomes!
Deeky: Right? I'm so glad Gus is a mail carrier now.
Liss: Me too. And I love how that was preceded with an earlier scene of his saying he'd always wanted to be a mail carrier.
Deeky: Know how good Fargo is? It's the first movie/TV show where I've not actively hoped for Colin Hanks' character to die.
Liss: This show has made me LIKE Colin Hanks! My phone keeps trying to autocorrect his names to "Colon Hacks."
Deeky: LOL!!! Buzzfeed's Top 25 Colon Hacks. Your Butthole Will Thank You.
Liss: Hahahahaha!!! All's I can say is that I have very high expectations for how this shit's gonna end, and they'd better come through!
Deeky: They will.
Liss: Promise?
Deeky: Yes!
Liss: I LOVED how Budge and Pepper praised Solverson in front of Bob Odenkirk. That was amazing. And promising.
Deeky: Right?
Liss: Right! I did not expect this show to be so subversive! [sends above picture via Twitter] LOOK AT THIS PERFECT PICTURE.
Deeky: Such an incredible moment.
The Three Habits of Highly Obnoxious Trolls
[Content note: transphobia]
On Wednesday, under the headline Heads Up, Trans Activists, Dan Savage, a cis gay man, decided to offer some advice to trans activists, writing:
Maybe it's time to turn your attentions away from policing the speech of drag queens with reality shows, drag queens with club nights, and retired drag queens with advice columns... and focus your attentions, your tweets, and your rage on the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention?(The surprising premise here is that the Southern Baptist Convention is run by transphobic bigots.)
The whole post is A+ level trolling, even by Savage standards, so I think it's worth pointing out the three things that he absolutely nails.
1) Portraying Your Target as a Monolithic Entity
"Trans activists?" Which "trans activists" are you talking about, Dan? I can only assume that you're not naming names because you either don't care enough about trans people to know the names of folks involved, or you (correctly) realize that calling out individual trans activists would make you look like a colossal bully.
I don't recall policing the speech of drag queens with reality shows. Trans activist Kate Bornstein uses the very slur "trans activists" are condemning. You'd know this if you had read your own column from last Saturday.
I first came out in late 2004. Just to demonstrate how monolithic trans women aren't, here's an abbreviated list of topics that, during the last decade have been responsible for cataclysmic levels of vitriol within circles of trans women:
How do we feel about crossdressers?
How do you feel about using progesterone?
"I cycle my hormones" / "Why do you side with the patriarchy?"
Estrogen in pills / FUCK YOU NEEDLES
"I let my estrogen pills dissolve under my tongue."/"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Transamerica: What was that?
"Holy shit, you're one of the three people who actually thinks 'autogynephlia' is a thing?!?"
Electrolysis versus laser hair removal
"North American genital surgeons 4EVR!"/"I'd rather go to Thailand"/"Shut up, I can't afford surgery"/"Fuck you, I don't want surgery"
Nose jobs?
Gay sex? (Wait, what do you mean by "gay"?)
"Genital electrolysis!" / "genital. fucking. electrolysis."
I have a moustache. Deal with it.
Pants
WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY BALLS?!?
When did you know?
Oh! In additional to being a partial list, those are all things that I've seen vicious debates about amongst relatively young, relatively affluent, white trans women. If you want to party, you should talk about intersecting oppressions. Racism. Ageism. Classism. Binaryism. Imagine dropping acid and sitting down with Nic Cage to watch an M Night Shyamalan film. That's the kind of horror I'm talking about here. Trans women (and let's be honest, Savage is talking about the ladies) make up diverse communities filled with seriously fucked up individuals. In short, we're like any other non-monolithic population. We're people.
2) Assuming Your Target Is Only Capable of Dealing with One Topic
I know and love a lot of the trans activists that have been, as Savage says, "policing" drag queens' language. I don't recall any of them ever say that we shouldn't be talking about other things. A lot of them have made the point that normalizing the use of transphobic slurs contributes to a larger system of violence against trans people. (Spoiler: They're right, Dan.)
A lot of trans activists have been talking about Jane Doe. I've been closely following all the developments around same sex marriage in Wisconsin. Oh, also: THE WORLD CUP STARTED YESTERDAY!!! (As did the protests. FIFA can suck a douche.) A lot of us have a lot of interests, is what I'm saying.
Let be honest here. When you say "How dare you talking about this thing in the face of this horrible injustice!" what you're really saying is "I believe that the said injustice is more important than the current topic of discussion. You're making a judgement about the relative merits of the topic at hand. It's a powerful way to prod people into discussing the very thing you're ostensibly asking them to push to the back burner. To that I say:
Fuck you, Dan Savage.The recent discussion over the t-word has caused a tremendous amount of pain and suffering within the trans community.
I cried. (Some of us trans ladies have issues with expressing our emotions, so that's saying something.) It's caused me to reconsider how I use social media and how I define my community. It's caused me to do a lot of soul searching about how best to play a part in a beloved community.
I'm hoping that the result of these past few vicious months will be a stronger, more confident, and more loving trans community. I'm optimistic. That seems to be the pattern. I'll be damned if we don't have some incredible leaders these days. I count myself as lucky to be in the company of my trans siblings. Regardless of our differences, we're a pretty remarkable group.
You don't care about that, Dan Savage. You're interested in getting us to keep up the infighting for your own amusement. Fuck off-- most of us are better than that, asshole.
3) Deflecting!
It's always about someone else, isn't it? Andrew Sullivan isn't a Baptist yet is a gay guy. He thinks (or at least he thought, prior to some half-assed revelation) that Laverne Cox owes us all an explanation of her genitals. I get that there are folks in the Southern Baptist Convention who hate trans people (and conveniently enough, gay folks such as you, Dan). We're not talking about Baptists. We're talking about folks who use the t-word-- Baptist or not.
---
But honestly, why should anybody give a shit what Dan Savage thinks, what with global warming and all?
Perfect
[Content Note: War.]
This is an actual fucking headline: "GOP on Iraq: We told you so."
We told you that we should stay in Iraq forever. After we told you when we tricked the nation into this war that it was going to last six weeks.
The unmitigated temerity!
Sen. John McCain said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s entire national security team should resign over the resurgence of Islamic militants in Iraq.Rage. Seethe. Boil.
"Everybody in his national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced," the Arizona Republican told reporters ahead of a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. "It's a colossal failure of American security policy."
This is a fucking game to them. It was a game when we launched this war, it was a game while George W. Bush was in office, a game then that was all about deflecting accountability, it's a game now while Barack Obama is in office, a game now that is all about hanging all the responsibility on him, a game that has never been about anything but oil and revenge and politics, a game that cares nothing for the human costs of this violent clusterfuck.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker SteffaB: "If you could be in the audience of one concert/musical event in the whole history of music, what would it be?"
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 12 June 2014: Dolphins leap and frolic in the Moray Firth in Scotland. The mammals, the most northerly resident bottlenose dolphins in the world, were caught on camera by wildlife snapper Andy Howard. The display is thought to be part of social bonding when two groups meet up and always occurs after feeding on the salmon that congregate trying to get back to their spawning grounds. [Andy Howard/National]Love.
Welp
[Content Note: Worker exploitation.]
Video Title: "Runaway CEO Pay in 30 Seconds." Video Description: Text appears onscreen, reading: "Top CEOs made 20x more than typical workers in their industries..." A CEO avatar of a white man appears onscreen labeled "CEO." Then average worker avatars of men and women of different colors appear onscreen labeled "Everybody Else." Pan right to reveal 20 people. Text onscreen: "...in 1965. Now things are different." A CEO avatar appears onscreen, followed again by average workers avatars. Pan right to reveal lots and lots and lots of people. Text onscreen: "In 2013, top CEOs made 296x more than typical workers in their industries."
Additional details, care of the Economic Policy Institute, can be found at this link.
It Continues to Be a Real Mystery Why Republicans Aren't Connecting with a Majority of Female Voters
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
North Carolina edition:
Yesterday, [Democratic] State Rep. Susi Hamilton spoke out in defense of a tax credit that brings film industry jobs to her district after [Republican Speaker of the NC House and current Republican candidate for US Senate Thom] Tillis' staff whipped votes to kill the measure in committee. In response to Hamilton's strong advocacy for a bill that would protect jobs in her district, Tillis accused her of being too emotional.Probably!
In a rare interview with the StarNews, Tillis retorted that Hamilton's comments were likely "born out of emotions" but that this "sort of behavior" makes her the "single greatest threat" to a compromise on film incentives in the state House."Thom Tillis' comments are flat-out offensive—not just to women, but to all North Carolinians who believe it's the job of an elected official to advocate for their constituents," said Suzanne Buckley, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina. "Rather than debate the merits of the bill, Tillis chose to launch a personal attack on his colleague. Is this how he plans to behave in Washington?"
I have a special sort of contempt for male politicians who try to discredit their female colleagues on the basis of being "too emotional." Not only is that a misogynist trope so old it farts dust [/spudsy], and utterly dehumanizing (as humans are designed to have emotions), but it is completely antithetical to what a functional representative democracy should look like.
If someone doesn't have an emotional response to legislation that will affect the lives of their constituents, if they're not emotionally invested in the people whom they represent, they're not fit for public office.
It shouldn't even be considered reasonable to suggest that emotions don't have a place in politics.
That it is goes a long way toward explaining why we've got the systemically apathetic, dysfunctional, compassionless, indecent, empathy-free zone we call a political system that we do.
[H/T to Robin Marty.]
Fat Fashion
This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.
Gussied up for a wedding last weekend. Dress by ModCloth. Shoes by Franco Sarto.
Cardi by (I think?) Jessica London. Pearl necklace purchased from Etsy.
I wish my cardigan wasn't so disheveled in this photo, but whatever! You get the gist.
For a really long time, I found it incredibly difficult to find cute, summery, mid-fancy dresses to wear to events like daytime weddings. And it's still not super easy, although being able to shop online and increasing numbers of retailers who carry plus-size lines has helped a lot.
ModCloth presented me with a few decent options, and I was lucky to have a ModCloth gift certificate given to me for my birthday by my wonderful friend Miller, so I used part of it to buy the dress in this picture. Which is only $55. A pretty good price for something I'll be able to wear to multiple events.
The cardigan, shoes, and necklace I've all had for years. When I was choosing a dress, I definitely tried to find something that would work and look cute with stuff I already had. I've also got a long-sleeved rust cardigan that can be paired with this dress in cooler weather, and it's sleeveless for middle-of-summer weather.
The thing about having something to wear is that it makes getting dressed up for a special occasion so much less stressful. I used to dread dressing for special occasions, because I didn't know how to dress my body, and I couldn't have found appropriate clothes I liked even if I did.
Feeling better about myself and finally having access to a wider spectrum of options makes dressing up fun, which is something I never would have imagined I'd experience.
And it's a self-reinforcing loop: Having special clothes I like makes me feel good, and feeling good makes me want to wear special clothes I like.
Really, years ago, I never could have imagined that I'd ever feel any other way than, "Welp, this black sack is all I can find, so I'll wear this black sack, and then I'll feel miserable in my black sack." It's kind of amazing.
Anyway! As always, this is a general thread for fat fashion, but, if you need a topic: Do you have a go-to dress for daytime weddings and/or similar events? Are you in desperate need of one? Do you eschew dresses altogether? Do you love getting dressed up for special occasions, or dread it?
Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.
Daily Dose of Cute
Loyal hound.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Transphobia; carcerality; abuse.]
"I have been sitting in this prison for a month now and there is no plan to get me out. I am suffering in here. I'm having trouble sleeping and I'm not eating much. I cry in bed every night. I can't be myself in this place. I feel forgotten and thrown away… DCF is supposed to be helping me, right? If this is helping me then I'm all set with being helped. I would be a lot better off being on my own. It seems like you're my last chance to get out of here. Don't forget about me. I can't take another month of this."—Jane Doe, a 16-year-old transgender Latina teenager who is being held in solitary confinement in an adult women's prison despite not having charged with any crime, in a letter to Connecticut Governor Dannel O'Malloy, more than a month ago.
Today is the 65th day that Jane has spent in solitary at Connecticut's York Correctional:
Since being incarcerated Jane has spent most of her time in solitary confinement. She has not interacted with a peer since January. She cannot shower without two guards watching her. She has asked for help and those with legal custody over her have locked her away in the hopes that she will be forgotten.There are many ways to take action in support of Jane at the link. Let's work those teaspoons.
...Jane needs to be released from prison so that she can heal and experience the love and support that she deserves. Jane is a teenager with dreams whose humanity we cannot forget and she needs our help to make that happen.
[Via Melissa Gira Grant.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War] Iraq is disintegrating into chaos: "Iraq is facing its gravest test since the US-led invasion more than a decade ago, after its army capitulated to Islamist insurgents who have seized four cities and pillaged military bases and banks, in a lightning campaign which seems poised to fuel a cross-border insurgency endangering the entire region. The extent of the Iraqi army's defeat at the hands of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) became clear on Wednesday when officials in Baghdad conceded that insurgents had stripped the main army base in the northern city of Mosul of weapons, released hundreds of prisoners from the city's jails and may have seized up to $480m in banknotes from the city's banks. Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. ...The developments seriously undermine US claims to have established a unified and competent military after more than a decade of training. The US invasion and occupation cost Washington close to a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 of its soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis." Seriously undermine. That's polite.
[CN: War; drones] Meanwhile, in Pakistan: "Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected US missile strike has killed at least 10 people in a north-western tribal district near the Afghan border. Two officials say a pair of American drones dropped three missiles on a militant compound and a vehicle early on Thursday in the town of Ghulam Khan in North Waziristan. ...The strike came hours after a strike, also in North Waziristan, killed three militants on Wednesday night, marking the resumption of the CIA-led programme in Pakistan after a hiatus of nearly six months."
[CN: Guns; violence; death] At the intersection of guns and racism and a shitty economy: "Shortly after midnight Friday, 23-year-old Junior Jordan Montero was trying to repossess a 10-year-old pickup truck on Conde Road in Fauquier County. The owner of the truck came out shooting, authorities said, and the tow truck and pickup truck ended up in a water-filled ditch. Divers tried to rescue Montero, but there was nothing they could do to save him."
[CN: Guns] Speaking of guns: "A West Virginia hospital plans to raffle off a set of firearms later this month in an effort to raise funds to construct a new hospital facility. Preston Memorial Hospital in Kingswood, W.V. advertises a 'community BBQ and firearm fundraiser' on its website at a cost of $20 per ticket. All proceeds go to benefit the 'PMH Foundation Building for a Healthy Future Capital Campaign,' the ad reads." Welp. That sounds like a perfect idea.
In better healthcare-related news: 95% of Minnesotans now have health insurance. "The percentage of uninsured Minnesotans has dropped to the lowest level in state history, and the second-lowest level in the nation, following the end of enrollments under the Affordable Care Act." IMPEACH OBAMA! THIS CANNOT STAND!
[CN: Poverty; death; carcerality] We have to stop criminalizing need in this country: "A mother of seven died in a Pennsylvania jail over the weekend while serving a two-day sentence. Eileen DeNino, 55, was put in the cell where she died because she could not pay thousands of dollars in fines relating to her children's truancy from schools in the Reading, PA area."
WHO'S A GOOD KITTY-CAT? YOU ARE! "A 17-year-old cat named Ashton is being credited with saving his family and his fellow pets, along with their home, when he woke his petmom to alert her to a fire burning in the garage. ...'We'd gone to bed, and this cat started nudging my wife in the face. She told him, 'Ashton, leave me alone, I want to sleep,' and she sat up in bed to put him on the floor. Then she said 'there's smoke in the house!'" Give that cat ALL THE TREATS! All of them!
Ladies, Amirite?
If you are a fan of Bridesmaids, or ladies, or humor, or humorous ladies, or comedic films, or empowering women in filmmaking, or of fart jokes, then you might be a fan of this news:
Since 2011, when "Bridesmaids" became a global hit and expanded the range of female-driven comedy, Hollywood has been desperate for its screenwriters, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, to team again on another big movie.Ha ha!
They have finally agreed: Ms. Wiig and Ms. Mumolo will write, produce and star in a wide-release comedy for TriStar Productions, which described the film as the story of "best friends who find themselves in over their heads and out of their depths, which were, perhaps, not too deep to begin with." The plot involves a town called Vista Del Mar.
"We're very excited to be writing," the two women said in a statement. "We will be going into a cave for months to finish. An actual cave. We found one that's nice and big. We're putting a couch in there."
...Why did Ms. Wiig and Ms. Mumolo wait to write another screenplay? "We wanted it to be the right time and the right idea," they wrote in an email response to the question, "and both of those elements have come together."
...Ms. Wiig is also expected to direct, a first for her. A release date has not been set. ...Ms Wiig added: "I've been wanting to direct for some time now. This seems like the perfect first project."
Asked about the film's tone — whether, for instance, it might recall the quirky buddy comedy "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion" — Thomas E. Rothman, TriStar's chairman, played coy. "Kristen and Annie assured me that the film will be a searing and depressing drama, which is what the world needs right now," he said.
[Content Note: Misogyny; rape culture.]
Like every article ever written about Bridesmaids ever, this one calls Bridesmaids "a feminine answer to 'The Hangover' and other male-oriented comedies."
Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooops!
See, the thing about the narrative that Bridesmaids is just "The Hangover with Women" is that it fundamentally misses the point that lots of women who did not like The Hangover but do like Bridesmaids aren't responding just because LADYFACES. They're responding because The Hangover treats women like objectified garbage, and Bridesmaids treats women like human beings.
That doesn't make Bridesmaids the "feminine answer" to The Hangover so much as it makes Bridesmaids "a movie that does not shit all over women" and The Hangover "a movie that stars an actual convicted rapist."
A woman doesn't even have to like either film to understand and appreciate that difference between them.
Whut.
[Content Note: Domestic violence; guns.]
A child viewer wrote in to Pat Robertson's 700 Club asking what zie should do, because hir father repeatedly brandishes a gun at hir mother during arguments, in front of hir and hir little brother, and Robertson's advice to the kid was to tell hir mother to do something about it.
"You don't want to get your father busted, but you could," Robertson explained. "You ought to go to your mother and say, 'Mom, this thing is scaring me, and I ask you please to get my father to have some help.'"You don't want to get your father busted. What the actual fuck. I almost can't imagine worse advice to give a child in this situation than, "Tell your mom to get your dad some help, but don't call police and get him busted, that's for sure!"
"This kind of rage — I mean, one day he's going to pull the trigger," the TV preacher warned. "It doesn't take too much if you've got a loaded weapon and you're brandishing it around, 'I'm going to kill you.' And the next thing you know, the thing goes off. It may be accidentally, but the mother will end up dead."
Robertson told the child that something had to be done about the father.
"But you're a kid, what do you do? You know?" he said. "Your mother ought to take care of that."
And I really love, ahem, how Robertson's already preemptively defending this violent man he doesn't even know by suggesting if he kills his wife with the gun he continually points at her in the heat of anger that it could be just an accident. Fucking hell.
It tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the Good Christian Robertson and his production team that they received this question and decided it would be a great chance to broadcast to children that they shouldn't bust out their dads to the cops, rather than deciding it was a cry for help from a child who needs adult intervention, and using their considerable resources and influence to protect that child, hir brother, and hir mother.
