Suggested by Shaker catvoncat: Inspired by yesterday's QotD from Brenda A.: "Tell about a time (or more than one!) when you have helped a random stranger."
When I lived in Chicago, I lived on the far north side, and, when I took the El home from work, by the time it got to my neighborhood, the train was usually almost entirely empty.
One evening, an elderly woman got on the train a few stops from mine with a grocery cart—not like one that's used as the grocery store, but a personal cart, like one of these, used to carry home one's groceries. And as she harrumphed it over the gap between the platform and the train, one of the wheels came loose.
I could see that she was sort of panicked about how she was going to get her groceries home with a broken cart, so I approached her and asked if she would like some help getting home. She accepted my offer, so I took the train to her stop, just one past my own, and walked home with her, assisting with the broken cart.
Between the two of us, it wasn't that hard to manage it, even with the dodgy wheel. And we had a lovely conversation on the way.
It wasn't a particularly remarkable thing to do, but because the train was almost empty, there weren't a whole lot of people she could have asked, had I not offered and been able to help. And it was probably easier for her to feel comfortable accepting help from another woman.
Question of the Day
Number of the Day
[Content Note: Disablism; carcerality.]
356,368: The number of people with severe mental illness who were imprisoned in the US in 2012. (And, personally, I'm guessing that number is an underestimate.)
The state of mental health services in this country is unacceptable. Instead of social workers, we have armed law enforcement officers. Instead of treatment facilities, we have prisons and jails. More than half of the people behind bars have shown recent symptoms of mental health problems. The Cook County Jail in Chicago is now the biggest single-facility provider of mental health services in the country. Nearly $9 billion per year is spent locking up people struggling with mental illness.Sign this petition urging Congress to to pass H.R. 4574, the Strengthening Mental Health in Our Communities Act, and provide treatment for people with mental illness instead of incarcerating them and leaving them with criminal records that limits their opportunities. Mental illness is not a crime.
...[F]or decades, this county has been shoving social problems like mental illness and drug addiction into a criminal justice system ill equipped to solve them. This mass criminalization has led to way too many people behind bars, often for too long and for reasons that have no business being crimes in the first place. Communities of color have been hardest hit.
But it doesn't have to be this way. America can safely reduce our reliance on incarceration – several states have reduced their prison populations while crime rates have dropped.
Who Ya Gonna Call?
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Yesterday I mentioned that the all-female Ghostbusters reboot IS GO. And I've pretty much been vibrating with excitement like Beavis on too much soda ever since.
Now this interview with the director and co-writer Paul Feig is making me EVEN MORE EXCITED!
So in the universe that you conceived, it's like the world of the first two movies didn't exist?There's so much more detail about their vision at the link! And I looooooove the approach he's describing; I am so ridiculously excited about it.
Yeah. I love origin stories. That's my favorite thing. I love the first one so much I don't want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. So it just felt like, let's just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today that hasn't gone through it so it's like, oh my god what's going on?
...Are you freed from having to have one person who's the Venkman and so forth, or do you feel like might adhere to some of those familiar dynamics?
We want to have fun with giving nods to what came before, but we don't want to be bound by it because Katie [Dippold, Feig's co-writer] and I already have talked at length and we have really fun ideas for things. But we want to tell the stories that we would like to tell, which means we want to tell the character arcs that we want to tell, which means we want to start with some of our characters in a different place or with different personalities and things they have to overcome and learn through the experience of this first movie.
...We have a very rough, rough outline that we're working with, but definitely know the basic story, know what we want the basic characters to do, know what we want the world to do and what the rules of our world are, but nothing I want to discuss obviously. It's cool. I think it's a really strong origin story that feels real—as real as a ghost story is. It's going to be really fun and real. We'll make it scary and funny.
...I think fans will be very happy with what we do because it has fun with what came before but it's new. It's just a new, fun take on it.
...It's a world that they've experienced before in the old ones, but the hope is the minute they sit down they'll go, "I love the old one, oh my god, I'm loving this new one."
But this is for sure the best part of the whole thing:
You've worked with so many funny women, but when news first came out of your plans there was still backlash to the idea. Deadline ran a piece with the headline "Do We Want An Estrogen-Powered 'Ghostbusters?'" What is your reaction to that?That last line. Boom.
I just don't understand why it's ever an issue anymore. I've promoted both Bridesmaids and The Heat and myself and my cast are still hit constantly with the question, "will this answer the question of whether women can be funny?" I really cannot believe we're still having this conversation.
Some people accused it of kind of being a gimmick and it's like, it would be a gimmick if I wasn't somebody whose brain doesn't automatically go to like, I want to just do more stuff with women. I just find funny women so great. For me it's just more of a no-brainer. I just go, what would make me excited to do it? I go: four female Ghostbusters to me is really fun. I want to see that dynamic. I want to see that energy and that type of comedy and them going up against these ghosts and going up against human detractors and rivals and that kind of thing. When people accuse it of being a gimmick I go, why is a movie starring women considered a gimmick and a movie starring men is just a normal movie?
PLEASE GET THIS MOVIE IN MY FACE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE THANK YOU.
An Observation
[Content Note: Silencing technique.]
Virtually every time I am speaking about hating the patriarchy, or male privilege, or some narrative or behavior or cultural tradition that is born of male privilege, I am accused of hating men.
Very specifically, I am accused of being "a man-hater." Which reduces me to a creature—"Man-Hater from the Misandry Lagoon!"—that is the sum of a disposition I don't even actually have.
If I say, in my defense, that I don't hate men—that, in fact, I like many of them quite a lot, including, for example, my husband—then the men for whom I have an affinity simply become the target. My husband must be weak, pathetic, self-loathing, whipped. Not a real man, in any case. My male friends must be sniveling pretenders, who only affect respect for women to get laid. In this equation, gay/bi men don't even exist.
(All of which, that manner of policing and disappearing certain kinds of men, seems rather quite man-hating to me.)
If I say, in my defense, that I don't hate men, but do hate male privilege, then, if I'm dealing with a sophisticated sort, I might hear some old chestnut like how male privilege doesn't exist; and if I'm dealing with a less sophisticated specimen, I will probably hear that I am a stupid fat cunt. In either case, there is never a viable rejoinder to my eminently reasonable distinction between hating men and hating male privilege.
(All of which, the denial of institutional misogyny and use of misogynist epithets used to try to harm me, seems rather counterproductive for someone trying to convince me that men are likeable.)
If I say, in my defense, that I don't universally hate men, although sometimes I am indeed angry at an individual man, or specific men, because they have earned my ire, in response to some expression of male privilege or display of misogyny or some other kind of bigotry or objectionable behavior, then comes the most vicious accusations that I am indeed a man-hater after all.
(GOTCHA! They say. Having got naught.)
I have found that it is the men who give me some reason to be angry who are most inclined to accuse me of man-hating.
It is easier, you see, for them to believe I have a blanket hatred for all men than to address the fact that I just don't like them. With good reason.
Daily Dose of Cute
I don't even know why we don't just live in a studio apartment, since all five of the furry residents have to be sitting right next to me at all times, lol.
Video Description: It's evening, and I'm sitting in the living room on the couch. Matilda the Cat's head is right in front of me. She purrs and chirps at me. I pan past her fluffy tail to find Olivia the Cat sitting on the arm of the loveseat, beneath a lamp, grooming herself. I pan left to find Dudley the Dog lying stretched out on the loveseat and onto the ottoman, snoring away. I pan further left to find Zelda the Dog lying on the floor on her side. I pan left again to find Sophie the Cat lying on a pillow right beside me. She stretches. I pan right back across the room. Olivia is now napping. Matilda is lying on the arm of the couch beside me. She turns her head to me and chirps, then rubs her head against me, purring. She looks at the camera. Fin.
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As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
(Note: For some reason, it now takes a moment for pix to load on the page in comments. So if you upload a picture and it doesn't seem like it "took," just give it a minute. It's probably there and will appear after refreshing the page in a couple minutes. *wink!*)
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Misogyny; ageism; racism.]
"I love Meryl Streep. She's such an incredible actress. But I feel like she's the only one in her age group who gets those parts. I'd like to see Jessica Lange in a movie again, you know? Or Susan Sarandon. Why isn't Viola Davis a lead in a film? She's one of the greatest actresses alive. And where are the Asian actors and actresses? I'm not saying, 'We don't want movies about men.' I'm just saying, 'Come on, all the men I know love women. So let's also have some stories about these women. Let's write something for them, guys—and let's make room for women writers, too.'"—Actress Jessica Chastain, on the need for more, and more diverse, roles for women.
It's so amazing how every single time a woman advocates for more opportunities for women, she is reflexively obliged to say, "I'm not saying that men should not have opportunities anymore."
In case it isn't evident, that is not a criticism of Chastain. I do the same damn thing. We all do it, because we know the inevitable blowback, in which our advocacy for women is immediately and mendaciously misconstrued as hatred of men, is coming. It always is. Always.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War] IS fighters are overwhelming the Syrian border town of Kobane, and the US and Turkey are at odds over intervention strategies, because US airstrikes aren't enough, but Turkey doesn't want to conduct a unilateral ground operation on its own. I don't even know what to say.
[CN: Torture; indefinite detention] The court case over force-feeding detainees at Guantánamo Bay continues, and attorneys for the US government are defending the use of a restraint chair on the basis that detainees were able to attack nurses administering the force-feeding without it. Which maybe should have suggested that the torturous force-feedings stop, rather than making the feedings even more torturous. This is horrendous. Not only has Gitmo not been closed, but the conditions there are increasingly awful, and we are vigorously defending them.
[CN: War on agency; domestic abuse; reproductive coercion] Abortion access is critical for women and others with unintended pregnancies who are in abusive relationships, and: "As state legislators work hard to restrict access to safe abortion care, they are closing doors in the face of survivors of abuse looking for an escape route."
[CN: Transphobia; gender essentialism] Why the National Women's Law Center thought this shit (an advert in which comedian Sarah Silverman opts to get a sex change in order to avoid the pay gap) was a good idea is beyond me. Holy shit. Dr. Jane Chi lays out what's wrong with this garbage.
[CN: Guns] Welp: An "open carry enthusiast was robbed of his weapon on Saturday by another man with a gun."
[CN: Class warfare] Further evidence that the old conservative chestnut about how we don't need a robust social safety net because charitable wealthy people will step up in times of need is total bullshit: "Which demographic group responded to the financial crisis by giving less money to charity? ...You guessed it. It was the rich. Americans making more than $100,000 a year cut the percentage of their income they gave to philanthropy by 3.3% between 2006 and 2012. Those who earned less in salary actually gave more to the poor. In fact, according to a recent study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, based on IRS data, those earning $25,000 or less donated an average of 16.6% of their adjusted gross income. By comparison, high-earning citizens gave only 4.6% of their incomes. The higher you go in income, the lower the percentage of your salary that you gave to charity."
[CN: Misogynoir] The Hollywood Reporter has a big profile of Shonda Rimes, and it is very good: "They wouldn't say that someone is 'the most powerful white male showrunner in Hollywood.' I find race and gender to be terribly important; they're terribly important to who I am. But there's something about the need for everybody else to spend time talking about it … that pisses me off."
[CN: Natural disaster] I don't like the framing here that the erupting Mount Sinabung volcano in Indonesia is "nature's wrath," but the pictures of the eruption, and people contending with the ash, are extraordinary.
[CN: Animal abuse, but happy ending] A New York Carriage Horse "who spent most of his life pulling tourists around Central Park" is rescued and rolls on the grass for what may be the first time ever. Blub.
I Have a Problem with This
[Content Note: Coercion; hostility to consent.]
Despite the fact that Senator Elizabeth Warren has now repeatedly said she does not want to run for president in 2016, there are a bunch of people who want her to run so badly that they quite literally won't take no for an answer:
The Massachusetts Senator says she'll sit out 2016. But some Democratic diehards won't take no for an answer, and are already building a campaign for her.Senator Elizabeth Warren: "No means no." People who want her to run: "Your mouth is saying no, but your eyes are saying maybe!"
She is, she insists, not interested, telling The Boston Globe, "There is no wiggle room. I am not running for president. No means no."
But for the organizers behind Ready for Warren, the SuperPAC trying to draft the Massachusetts senator into the 2016 presidential race, the door remains open for a potential run. So the group is staffing up in key early primary states and raising money in what they say will be an all-out blitz after the midterm elections designed to show Warren that there is a groundswell of support behind her.
...[Democratic campaign operative Audrey Blondin] held a house party for Ready for Warren over the summer, and said she was unswayed by the senator's denials.
"I understand that she says she is not interested in running. I have been in politics 35 years. I know what happens. You think she is not watching what we are doing? Of course she is. And that is going to make a difference. It's all about timing and she is in the right place at the right time with the right message. In a few months it is going to take off. She won't be willing to buck the tide that is carrying her forward."
This is totally fucking gross.
And, let me be clear: I'm not saying that anyone is wrong for wanting Senator Warren to run. (I'd love it if she ran!) Nor am I saying that anyone is incorrect about the fact that there have been politicians who have been persuaded to run if shown a compelling path to potential victory. But just because that has happened doesn't make it right.
(And I'm not convinced that it hasn't typically been more like someone saying, "I'm a big no unless and until you can prove I have a chance," which is different from, "I'm a big no and I'm not even interested in being convinced.")
As I have noted a dozen or so times now, there is also a particular context to ignoring a female politician's "no" that makes this sort of public coercion super problematic.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Senator Warren used the very specific language of: "No means no."
I would like it very much if we could all listen to that.
I realize that's not "how politics works." But, you know, part of the reason that freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren is such an attractive candidate to so many people is because politics is disgusting and broken. So maybe we could try aspiring to something better.
Whoooooops
[Content Note: Islamophobia; misogyny.]
As you may have heard, last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher had an interesting, ahem, segment, during which movement atheist Sam Harris and Bill Maher were engaging in some of their entirely typical Islamophobic generalizations, and actor Ben Affleck called them out on their rank bigotry.
(If you'd like to see the segment, it's here.)
After a few days of Affleck being congratulated for angrily challenging them, Harris has responded, and I'll set aside his embarrassing defenses of his broad characterizations of Muslims, because I don't know that I could even convince someone otherwise who views that shit as acceptable discourse, and because I want to focus on his petulant little tantrum about Affleck's criticism:
I admit that I was a little thrown by Affleck's animosity. I don't know where it came from, because we hadn't met before I joined the panel. And it was clear from our conversation after the show that he is totally unfamiliar with my work. I suspect that among his handlers there is a fan of Glenn Greenwald who prepared him for his appearance by simply telling him that I am a racist and a warmonger.So: Affleck is a Glenn Greenwald puppet who couldn't possibly have his own convictions; Affleck was not judging Harris on his actual words, but on hyperbole that Harris is a "racist and warmonger" with which he'd been brainwashed; Affleck's tone was hostile; Affleck was contemptuous of Harris personally, not his ideas.
Whatever the reason, if you watch the full video of our exchange (which actually begins before the above clip), you will see that Affleck was gunning for me from the start. What many viewers probably don't realize is that the mid-show interview is supposed be a protected five-to-seven-minute conversation between Maher and the new guest—and all the panelists know this. To ignore this structure and encroach on this space is a little rude; to jump in with criticism, as Affleck did, is pretty hostile. He tried to land his first blow a mere 90 seconds after I took my seat, before the topic of Islam even came up.
...At one point Affleck sought to cut me off by saying, "Okay, let him [Kristof] talk for a second." As I finished my sentence, he made a gesture of impatience with his hand, suggesting that I had been droning on for ages. Watching this exchange on television (his body language and tone are less clear online), I find Affleck's contempt for me fairly amazing.
And worst of all—oh the humanity!—Affleck interrupted Harris to criticize him.
Hey, remember when Sam Harris said this shit a couple of weeks ago?
I also asked Harris at the event why the vast majority of atheists — and many of those who buy his books — are male, a topic which has prompted some to raise questions of sexism in the atheist community...Oh dear.
"I think it may have to do with my person slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people. People just don't like to have their ideas criticized. There's something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women," he said. "The atheist variable just has this – it doesn't obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men."
Sam Harris, this is what being a woman who is "criticized" looks like. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like.
Having Ben Affleck be righteously angry at me for a couple of minutes would be my best day ever.
But, listen, if it felt bad for you, that's okay. I'm not saying you're not allowed to feel bad. What I'm saying is: Maybe you can keep the garbage about women's delicate constitutions to yourself.
Because if you can't handle Affleck, you really can't handle what this atheist woman deals with every goddamn day.
And Again
[Content Note: Police brutality; death; racism.]
Last night in St. Louis, an off-duty police officer who was "patrolling the Shaw neighborhood for a private security company" fatally shot 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers Jr., following a foot chase and, the officer alleges, Myers shooting at him first. The unnamed officer fired at Myers, who is black, 17 times.
17 times.
This is the police account: The officer was in his car, and saw three young black men, one of whom started to run when they saw him, but then stopped. When the officer did a U-turn to do a "pedestrian check," which sounds like a neat euphemism for "stop-and-frisk," they all ran.
The officer said three men in the street ran away when they spotted him, [St. Louis Police Chief Col. Sam Dotson] told reporters at a news conference early Thursday. The way that one of the men ran — grabbing at his waistband, slightly lopsided — indicated that he was carrying a weapon, so the officer chased him, Dotson said.Witnesses and Myers' relatives say that he was not armed, but was carrying a sandwich. The police say they have "recovered a 9mm Ruger," and Dotson noted that Myers "was no stranger to law enforcement."
The man approached the officer in an aggressive way, an altercation ensued and the man fired at the officer, the police chief said. The officer returned fire and killed him.
Ballistic evidence recovered from the scene indicates that the man fired three rounds at the officer before his weapon jammed, Dotson said, adding that the gun was also recovered.
The officer fired 17 shots, Dotson said. He said he didn't know how many of those shots hit the suspect or why the officer fired that many shots. The officer was not injured.
"An investigation will decide if the officer's behavior was appropriate," he said at police headquarters.
He also said that when running Myers' name in the police database, "something popped up very easily." Um, okay.
Because it's time to put another dead black young man on trial for his own murder.
So, here are a few questions: What exactly is a "pedestrian check"? Missouri has an open carry law, as well as a concealed carry with a permit law, so how is the suspicion that someone is carrying a weapon a justification for pursuit? Why was an off-duty police officer working for a private security company wearing his uniform and driving his cruiser? What is even going on? How is any of this okay?
At least that last question is easy to answer: It isn't.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Brenda A.: "When were you helped by a random stranger?"
One night, many years ago, before there were automated railroad gates at every crossing on the country roads near where I live, I came to a railroad crossing I crossed all the time, braked to a stop, and looked both ways, just like always. I was just starting to proceed across the tracks when the driver of a car pulling to a stop, on the other side of the tracks, flashed its headlights at me.
It was just enough to get my attention, just enough to cause me to hesitate for a moment. And suddenly a train came barreling through the intersection, at an unusually high speed. Its horn blared as it passed, startling me so thoroughly I gasped out loud.
The front bumper of my car was inches from the tracks. Adrenaline rushed through me like a bolt of electricity. I knew with absolute certainty I would have been onto those tracks and in the train's path if that person hadn't been paying attention, hadn't noticed that I was about to cross the tracks and flashed hir headlights at me.
I don't know how I missed seeing the train, or how the stranger was able to see the train. It was a very dark night, on an unlit country road. Maybe it was just that the brush from hir direction didn't mask the front light of the train, but did mask it from my direction. I don't know.
I still feel a visceral rush of relief, even thinking about it now, probably 22 years later.
Once the train had passed, I flashed my headlights back as a thank you. We passed each other in the night as we crossed the train tracks, and I tried to see who it was who had saved me, but it was too dark.
That crossing has an automated gate now.
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(Do you have a suggestion for a Question of the Day? Drop it here!)
IT'S HAPPENING!
As you may remember, on August 4, I mentioned there was a rumor that Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids and The Heat, might reboot Ghostbusters with an all-female cast. And that same day, we all did our fantasy casting for the film.
Well, it is definitely happening, and Feig has hired Katie Dippold, who co-wrote The Heat with him, to co-write with him the all-female Ghostbusters reboot!
This is a dramatic reenactment by Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock of what Jessica Luther and I did as soon as we heard the news:
Thank you, Maude, for making this happen.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Gender policing.]
"I feel that it's wrong to have to change your body for sport participation. I'm not changing for anyone."—Dutee Chand, India's 100-meter champion in the 18-and-under category, who has been barred from competing against women because she has hyperandrogenism, which the International Association of Athletics Federations says disqualifies her from competing as a female runner, unless "she lowers her testosterone level beneath the male range. She can do that by either taking hormone-suppressing drugs or having surgery to limit how much testosterone her body produces."
Chand has decided to fight her ban.
"Last month, she filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, challenging guidelines put in place in 2011" by the IAAF, following the controversy (generated by their ignorance and bigotry) around the participation of South African track runner Caster Semenya.
It has taken a lot of courage for Chand to stand up for herself; other athletes with her condition have quietly consented to surgery or left sports altogether. But Chand says she is willing to handle the scrutiny that has come with her public stand.Here is a simple solution, international sports boards: Let people who identify as women compete with women and let people who identify as men compete with men. It's really just that easy.
"I cried for three straight days after reading what people were saying about me," she said, regarding what she saw being debated in Internet forums. "They were saying, 'Dutee: Boy or girl?' and I thought, how can you say those things? I have always been a girl."
Especially when you don't try to complicate it with absurd hypotheticals about men who will "become" women just to win at sports.
A Culture of Violent Entitlement
[Content Note: Guns; death; misogyny.]
This is what happens when we allow a culture of violent entitlement to go unchallenged; when we think it's okay for men to believe that they own women and are entitled to our time, our bodies, our attention:
Twenty-seven year old Mary "Unique" Spears was attending a family event [in Detriot] following the funeral of a relative when a stranger reportedly approached her inside the venue, asking for her name and phone number.Spears repeatedly told the man that she was not interested, and that she was with someone else. The man continued to hit on Spears until 2am, when Spears and her family were leaving.
The stranger then allegedly approached the woman one final time, and soon a scuffle broke out between the man and Spears' fiancée.Spears' aunt asks: "What was on your mind that you could be so evil, because she said no to you?"
Suddenly the stranger opened fire, shooting Spears once as she ran away and then twice in the head, WJBK reported.
The man then began to fire at other members of the family, injuring five of them. WJBK reported that four were subsequently hospitalized.
Detroit police arrested the man after he allegedly tried to flee the scene.
That is, of course, a rhetorical question. Because we all know the answer: What's on his mind was that he was entitled to her, and that she didn't have the right to tell him no.
My sincerest condolences to Unique Spears' family and friends. I am so sorry for your loss.
[Related Reading: You Don't Own Women; On Elliot Rodger.]
Daily Dose of Cute
He's so adorbz I don't even know what to do.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
(Note: For some reason, it now takes a moment for pix to load on the page in comments. So if you upload a picture and it doesn't seem like it "took," just give it a minute. It's probably there and will appear after refreshing the page in a couple minutes. *wink!*)
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by an autumn breeze.
Recommended Reading:
Kathy: [Content Note: Misogyny; harassment; stalking; threats of violence; doxxing; use of "Koolaid" metaphor] Trouble at the Koolaid Point
Emma: [CN: Misogyny; harassment; abuse; violence; sexual assault; description of assault] Stories Like Passwords
Prison Culture: [CN: Misogynoir; carcerality] #NoSchoolPushout: The Girl to Prison Pipeline
Jason: [CN: War on agency] Is Colorado's 'Personhood' Amendment a Sweeping Approach to Ban Abortion?
Rachel: [CN: War on agency] Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the Myth of "Post-Abortion Syndrome"
Shane: [CN: Injury; exploitation] Health and Safety Doesn't Matter Here
Carla: [CN: Police brutality; racism; death] $75 Million Suit Being Filed by Eric Garner's Family
Sean: [CN: Homophobia] Utah Lawmaker Files Bill to Officially Refer to Gay Marriages as 'Pairages'
Mustang Bobby: Blood Moon
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: Illness] Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian traveler who was being treated for Ebola in Dallas, has died. "It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning," the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital said in a statement.
[CN: Illness] In other news: Ebola researchers are walking a fine line between tempering alarmism about an Ebola epidemic in the US and also conveying realistic information regarding how little certainty we can actually have about a virus that has "opportunities to evolve as it passes through multiple human hosts." Meanwhile, male Ebola survivors (and other people with testes who don't identify as male) are being urged to wear condoms because "the disease can last much longer in semen," perhaps as long as more than 90 days.
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Rage seethe boil: "Eighteen-year-old DeShawn Currie was walking into his foster parents' unlocked side door after school Monday afternoon, when a neighbor called 911 to report what they perceived to be a burglary on the residential block in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. When cops arrived, they walked inside the house and ordered Currie to put his hands up, as Currie, confused, questioned what he had done wrong. Cops responded by pointing to a picture on the wall that showed several white children together, implying that Currie, black, did not belong. By the time Currie's foster mother Stacy Tyler came home, EMTs were treating Currie in the driveway for having been pepper sprayed in the face by the officers, WTVD reports. Police said in a statement they pepper-sprayed Currie because he would not follow orders."
[CN: Worker exploitation] David Leonhardt explores "The Great Wage Slowdown of the 21st Century." And I'm no economist, but it seems to me it might be worth mentioning that profits aren't hurting. Executive pay is increasing. I don't really think it's so much about energy costs, or education costs, or healthcare costs, as it is about priorities. Energy, education, and healthcare costs serve as useful red herrings to avoid talking about greed, though.
[CN: Identity theft] WHAT: "A DEA agent commandeered a woman's identity, created a phony Facebook account in her name, and posted racy photos he found on her seized cell phone. The government said he had the right to do that." But now: "Facebook has removed the page and the Justice Department said it is reviewing the incident." Fucking hell.
[CN: Homophobia; war on agency] This is an interesting article on "contact theory" and political canvassing, and how canvassers disclosing that they are gay, bi, or trans can persuade people to change their views on same-sex marriage, and whether canvassers disclosing they've had an abortion might similarly persuade people to change their views on abortion.
Jon Huntsman says he's not running again in 2016. I'm sure that's very interesting news to the five of us who remember he ran in 2012.
And finally: Here's just a terrific video of a sloth eating carrots precisely as lazily as you imagine a sloth might do that.
