[Content Note: Racism; violence.]
Last month, Mercutio Southall Jr., a black activist, was attacked at a Donald Trump rally by white Trump supporters, who beat him and hurled racist epithets at him. And last night, at another Trump rally, it happened again: After protesters interrupted the event with calls for gun control and displayed a poster reading "NO HATE. YOU'RE FIRED.", security moved in to remove them, while Trump supporters surrounded them. When one of the protesters fell to the floor in the crush of shouting Trump supporters, they closed in on him.
"Light the motherfucker on fire!" one Trump supporter yelled.That will be reported, though not nearly as widely or seriously as it should be. This part of story will not get as much attention, although it is just as chilling:
Physical altercations between protesters, security, and the occasional tough-guy supporter have been a running theme in Trump's combative campaign this year — but Monday night was different. Reporters who regularly cover Trump said they had never seen anything like the fevered, frenzied mood that gripped the ballroom in Las Vegas.
...One after another, protesters were forcibly dragged from the ballroom — limbs flailing, torsos twisting in resistance — while wild-eyed Trump supporters spewed abuse and calls to violence.
"Kick his ass!" yelled one.
"Shoot him!" shouted another.
When a white activist proclaimed "Black lives matter!" as she was being carted out of the building, a male Trump supporter leaned toward her and snapped, "White lives matter."
According to NBC News, someone at the Trump rally even yelled a German Nazi-era salute — "Sieg heil!" — while a protester was being removed from the event.
Trump, meanwhile, gleefully narrated the madness from his podium like a tabloid talk show host presiding over an on-camera brawl between guests — egging on the confrontation, whipping the audience into a frenzy, and basking in his fans' celebratory chants.
"Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!"
"This is what we should have been doing to the other side for the last seven years!" Trump exclaimed during one of the scuffles with protesters.
But while Trump and his hardcore supporters seemed to be enjoying themselves, not everyone was thrilled by the night's unexpected turn toward mayhem. ...Among those most put off by the display, though, were the recreational spectators who had stopped by simply to see Trump's famous performance in person.The best show in town. The fucking privilege to be able to imagine that Trump's campaign is nothing more than a "spectacle" for your consumption—a terrific bit of entertainment to take in with your son, like a revival of Hair, perhaps.
"I just came for the spectacle," said Stephan Reilly, a left-leaning Las Vegas resident whose college-aged son had tagged along for kicks. "This is the best show in town!"
But by the end of the night, neither of them were smiling much.
"I'm very alarmed," Reilly said.
"I would like to be with Senator Cruz for a moment and I would like to respectfully ask him, since he quotes all the lines from 'The Princess Bride' and certainly all of my character, Inigo Montoya's, lines, I would like to know why he doesn't quote my favorite line?" That line, Mr. Patinkin said, was among the last his character utters in a movie that essentially taught that love conquers all.The only appropriate response, Senator Cruz, is: "As you wish."
..."After the princess flies out the window and falls into Andre the Giant's arms," Mr. Patinkin said, "Inigo says to the Man in Black, 'I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.'"
Mr. Cruz, in Mr. Patinkin's heavily left-leaning worldview, is trafficking in the revenge business, appealing to anxious voters by saying of the Islamic State, "We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion," and by exploiting fears about immigrants and Muslims.
"Senator Cruz, if you're going to say those lines, you've got to say the other line, too," Mr. Patinkin said.
Sounding increasingly vexed, he added: "This man is not putting forth ideas that are at the heart of what that movie is all about. I would love for Senator Cruz, and everyone creating fear mongering and hatred, to consider creating hope, optimism and love. Open your arms to these people, these refugees trying to get into our country, and open your hearts."
It's that time again: What would you like to see asked as a future Question of the Day? Either something that's never been asked, or something that I haven't asked for awhile and you really enjoyed the first time around.
BRING ALL YOUR QUESTIONS! ALL OF THEM! :)
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
Sounds about right:
On Monday, Bill Cosby filed a countersuit against 7 of the nearly 60 women who have accused him of drugging and/or sexually assaulting them, claiming that their allegations were "malicious, opportunistic, false, and defamatory."I call bullshit. Anyone who has been accused by more than 50 women of rape or attempted rape and then countersues seven of them to call their conduct "morally repugnant" simply cannot be mortified. Clearly.
...The suit claims that the seven women made "false" and "opportunistic" allegations upon learning that Cosby was slated for a potential television comeback with a family comedy series on NBC and a Netflix special. Additionally, the suit claims that the women's "morally repugnant conduct" caused Cosby to lose out on work and suffer "mortification."
This blogaround brought to you by hats.
Recommended Reading:
Maya: [Content Note: Anti-blackness; violence] For Black Girls Who Are Trying to Find Their Voices
stavvers: [CN: Rape culture; self-harm] Rape Survivors Are Innocent until Proved Guilty
David: [CN: Islamophobia; violence] A Firestorm of Vicious Behavior Toward Muslims Rages in the Wake of San Bernardino Rampage
Angry Asian Man: [CN: Islamophobia] Suspect Arrested in Sikh Temple Vandalism
Mannion: [CN: Bigotry; class warfare] What They're Up To, Once More with Feeling
Teresa: [CN: Misogyny] Japanese Women Fight for the Right to Keep Their Last Names after Marriage
Charles: Cultural Awareness Starts with Movies Like Sanjay's Super Team
Jess: Sports Podcasts Hosted by Women
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
[Content Note: There is a strobe effect in this video.]
[Content Note: Bigotry.]
Republicans watching in dismay as Donald Trump continues to lead their presidential primary contest have almost given up trying to come up with a plan to stop him, with the spreading realization that he'll rise or fall and there's little they can do to affect that outcome. But if you can't change things, at least you can explain them, which leads to the pressing question: Whose fault is this?This sounds familiar! And let me note once again that, although Trump's candidacy may be a shitshow, the establishment Republicans pretending to have a case of the vapors over his popularity are putting on an even more detestable spectacle.
Liberals have their answer. Trump, they say, is the culmination of the last seven years of Republican politics, or maybe even the last 50 years. Faced with an angry Tea Party base, the party's leadership encouraged that anger, yet couldn't deliver on any of the substantive promises they made. They told their voters to hate Washington, despise Barack Obama, and fear immigrants — and this is what they got. Go even farther back and you can find Trump's roots in the "Southern Strategy" that worked so well for so long, where Republicans fed working-class whites a diet of racial resentment to get them to sign on with an agenda that served the interests of the wealthy.
As you might imagine, this story isn't particularly appealing to conservatives. So they have a different answer, one which is now gaining increasing currency on the right. Who's to blame for Donald Trump? Why the same man who's to blame for everything that goes wrong in America: Barack Obama.
...If Trump's success is a reaction to Barack Obama, it's only insofar as he's an exaggerated version of the way all Republicans have felt, spoken, and acted toward this president over his entire presidency. Trump's voters didn't wake up a month or two ago and decide that they're nativists attracted to someone offering easy answers to complex problems. They're exactly the voters that the Republican Party has been cultivating, full of fear and anger and contempt.
...[T]hey can't pin the blame on Barack Obama. They sowed this poisonous field, and the Trump candidacy is what grew out of it. If it means they lose the White House again because of it — whether Trump is the nominee or not — they'll have no one to blame but themselves.
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Time's Person of the Year is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom they dub "Chancellor of the Free World." And give her the cover with a really unflattering painting. Merkel is the first individual woman selected as Time's X of the Year since then-president of the Philippines Corazon Aquino was named Woman of the Year in 1986. In 1999, Time changed the annual year-end honorific, which had almost exclusively been a "Man of the Year" since its inception, to "Person of the Year," but it merely created an illusion of parity. Anyway. Congratulations to Chancellor Merkel, who probably couldn't give less of a shit.
Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year is Serena Williams, and she gets to sit on a golden throne on her cover. Chancellor of the Free Multiverse!
Welp: "In a literally world-changing deal that was almost unthinkable just a year ago, some two hundred leading nations unanimously embraced a plan that will leave most of the world's fossil fuels unburned. As part of a concerted effort to avoid catastrophic climate change, the world unanimously committed to an ongoing effort of increasingly deeper emissions reductions aimed at keeping total warming 'to well below 2°C [3.6°F] above preindustrial levels.' The full text of this Paris Agreement [pdf] goes even further, with the parties agreeing 'to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.'" This (still imperfect) deal was better than for which I'd hoped, but I wonder if it happened soon enough...?
[Content Note: Extreme weather; video may autoplay at link] In totally unrelated news (ahem): More than 700,000 people in the Philippines have been evacuated as Typhoon Melor batters the central coastal areas. Fortunately, the storm has weakened, but it still has winds that are the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane. Also fortunately, "the storm was not expected to make landfall over densely populated areas."
[CN: White supremacy] GOOD: "France's far-right Front National has failed to win control of any regions in the final round of local elections despite a historically high score in the first-round when it was ranked as the most popular party in France. The defeat of the FN was down to mass tactical voting, an increase in turnout and warnings by the left that what it called the 'antisemitic and racist' party would bring France to its knees. All this combined to stop the FN translating its huge first-round score of nearly 28% into the overall control of any region. ...The Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, deliberately avoided any triumphalism. 'Tonight there is no relief, no triumphalism, no message of victory,' he said. 'The danger of the far right has not been removed–far from it–and I won't forget the results of the first round and of past elections.'"
[CN: War on agency] "Republicans Put Anti-Choice Language into New Education Law." Because of course they did. "Buried deep in the 391-page Every Student Succeeds Act (S. 1177) is a section that references an existing requirement in the Public Health Service Act that 'school-based health centers,' which receive public funds, may not provide abortions."
[CN: Homophobia] Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio ain't done fighting same-sex marriage, despite the fact the Supreme Court has already decided its constitutionality: "Rubio sat down with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Sunday and reiterated his opposition to marriage equality insisting that the issue is not settled law. Rather than pursue a federal marriage amendment if he's president, Rubio says he'll appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Obergefell ruling as unconstitutional."
[CN: Privacy violations] Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz's campaign is bragging about how its data-mining exploits are turning him into the front runner. And not only is Cruz employing "a team of statisticians and behavioral psychologists" to help micro-target voters, but: "The Cruz operation has deepened the intensity of the effort and the use of psychological data. ...Some of the data comes from typical sources, such as voters' consumer habits and Facebook posts. Some is homegrown, such as a new smartphone app that keeps supporters in touch while giving the campaign the ability to scrape their phones for additional contacts." THE FUCK. "Cruz, a critic of excessive government data collection, has been notably aggressive about gathering personal information for his campaign." LOL! That's a nice way of calling him a gross hypocrite.
[CN: Disablist language] Donald Trump isn't very happy that Cruz is nipping at his heels: "Trump says Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is 'a bit of a maniac' who doesn't have the 'right temperament' to be president. 'The way he's dealt with the Senate—where he goes in frankly like a bit of a maniac—you never get things done that way,' Trump said on Fox News Sunday. 'You can't walk into the Senate and scream and call people liars and not be able to cajole and get along with people. He'll never get anything done. That's the problem with Ted.' Trump, on the other hand, says he has a 'much better temperament' than Cruz." Okay, player.
Gallup: "After the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Americans are now more likely to name terrorism as the top issue facing the U.S. than to name any other issue—including those that have typically topped the list recently, such as the economy and the government. About one in six Americans, 16%, now identify terrorism as the most important U.S. problem, up from just 3% in early November." Yes, after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino (and Colorado Springs, ahem), but also after an enormous amount of fearmongering and Islamophobia, which I daresay has more to do with the uptick in people fearing terrorism than even the actual attacks themselves.
[CN: Guns] The "mock mass shooting" staged at the University of Texas campus over the weekend "was drowned out by a much larger group of counter-protesters armed with fart guns. ...While just a handful of people attended the mock shooting, [UT alumnus Andrew Dobbs'] counter-protest attracted about a hundred people shouting slogans like 'We fart in your general direction.'" LOL. Perfection. I'm super relieved that the jerkbags who staged the mock mass shooting didn't get anyone hurt.
Do you want to be an astronaut? Well, NASA is hiring! "Recently named the best place to work in the federal government for the fourth year in a row, NASA is looking for the best candidates to work in the best job on or off the planet. The astronaut candidate application website now is live and accepting submissions through Feb. 18. ...'NASA is on an ambitious journey to Mars and we're looking for talented men and women from diverse backgrounds and every walk of life to help get us there,' said NASA Administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden. 'Today, we opened the application process for our next class of astronauts, extraordinary Americans who will take the next giant leap in exploration. This group will launch to space from U.S. soil on American-made spacecraft and blaze the trail on our journey to the Red Planet.'"
And finally! Two little doggehs named Dora and Squishy become friends. GOOD GRIEF THIS IS TOO CUTE! ♥
by El, who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a purposefully unspecified country in South America from 2010 to 2013 and likes vegetables, naps, and stretch marks.
[Content Note: Ciscentism; heterocentrism; misogyny; sexual assault.]
I know most Peace Corps recruitment is supposed to be joyful and happy and excited and promising. Most Peace Corps recruiters are going to show you photos of conventionally attractive white people Accomplishing Things with children of color, just as most LGBTQAI Peace Corps recruiters will be cis gay/lesbian/bi people promising you that It Will Be Hard and Magic!! This piece will not be that. But it will be honest.
Going into Peace Corps in 2010 as a queer/questioning 20-something, I tried to find information about queer Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) life. I found a lot of stuff on the LGB Peace Corps Website, promising to some people - there's abundant information out there for those of us who are LGB, and I'm bi - but somewhat lacking for me as someone whose gender was...unclear. I thought I was trans but didn't exactly fit the media standard ("I knew I had been assigned the wrong gender as long as I can remember"). The best person I spoke to was a trans Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), who also happened to be my dad's best friend from college. During one of our discussions, she told me her experience in Peace Corps later gave her the strength to become herself, to live out, to live proud. She asked me about my gender. I told her I couldn't tell her. She wished me luck and sent me love. I headed to training, queer as the soccer field at church camp. But thinking I was probably cis.
Welp. That was a bygone time.
Peace Corps was the adventure of a lifetime. The happiness I found as a volunteer still shines through me and the scars I have from service, truth be told, I'm not sure if they've healed. Same with any life-changing experience. It's a two-year chunk of your life. And yes, much of it is downtime eating a sixth plate of food at your host family's house or spent alone cuddling books you never got a chance to read or helping people understand that the United States is in fact not the Promised Land it pretends it is, but plenty of it is, in a word, indescribable. Plenty of people have written about this so I don't have to. Everything they write: believe them.
But you're trans. Or I was. And you know it. Or maybe you don't, because as I said, going in, I wasn't quite there yet. But you're never more yourself than you are in Peace Corps. In a completely new environment, the interactions you have catch on every corner of your identity, angles you never knew you had, strengths and weaknesses you've never tested. And whether they'd phrase it this way or not, the PCVs around me found ways to articulate and affirm their (cis) genders in new contexts, new languages, new communities, new friendships...
...and I lost track of mine. Because in the Peace Corps, you're never less yourself either. It's hard to be in denial as the lies you've been telling yourself crumble. Accepting my gender while being a PCV was an added challenge to an already challenging environment.
Yes, I wore skirts and kept my hair long and grumbled about my period and complained about third shifts and did all the things arbitrarily associated with being a woman. (Things that you can still do even when you're out and proud and trans masculine, by the way. And it's disturbing and incorrect to put womanhood in these terms, because that's not what being a woman is. Any woman, cis or trans, can tell you that.)
I'd walk home to the melodious sounds of street harassment, after a day of work at the health clinic being sexually harassed, month in, month out. And I'd close the door to my home and bind my chest with the Peace Corps-provided ace bandage. I'd spend the lonely hours at night perfecting a more masculine walk, dropping my voice, imagining how my body could look, which clothes I would buy if I could find any that fit. (By the way, yeah, don't bind with ace bandages.)
I'd sit and listen to cis male PCVs (heterosexual and gay/bi alike) talk about how they were better, kinder, less sexist than the men in our host country, note that both groups were inordinately misogynistic. I learned what kind of man I didn't want to be.
I heard cis gay dudes from the US and my host country both talk about how disgusting vaginas are, shuddering at the thought of non-phallic genitalia. I observed cis 'allies' fresh out of college erasing trans people daily while embracing a version of gay culture and history where we exist in the background at best. I heard cis lesbians talk about how much they hate dick and how they're lucky to be lesbians so they don't have to go "that route." Whether or not you're politically aware as a trans person, this type of thing is grating on your soul.
I dated a woman who, during our brief affair, told me all about how she wanted to study trans people for her next job. After we broke up, she explained that my gender presentation wasn't to her liking, then promptly dated a cis woman who diverged even more significantly from her stated preference than I did. People's preferences are legitimate, but it was not the first time, nor the last, I've witnessed or experienced cis people not very subtly using a "preferences" argument as a cover for transphobic policing. A simple "It isn't working" would have been enough.
I was sexually assaulted by men who thought I was a woman. I didn't tell my friends. I didn't tell admin. I slowly fell apart while I grappled with how to deal with another sexual assault, adding to the several I'd lived through in the US. No person should have to go through that, regardless of our gender. When you're in the Peace Corps, coming forward about sexual assault is hard. When you're trans, when you're closeted, when you're lost, when you've gone through sexual assault awareness scenarios that ignore how rape happens in the real world, when you're working with a group of people and a culture that ignore boys like me and girls like you...it's worse. I lost friends and pieces of my mind. I spiraled deeper into depression than I ever thought possible.
And meanwhile, back at headquarters, the cis LGB volunteers conducted "diversity training" where they spoke for trans people (using their university backgrounds as justification/qualification) and honestly I couldn't be bothered to complain, let alone show up. These same cis LGB people who would tell me how affronted they were when heterosexual people spoke for them felt perfectly qualified to teach others about how to include trans people based on reading about us or even being "friends" with us. In this way, Peace Corps is no different than any other work environment. Disturbingly familiar, in fact. Prepare yourself emotionally, because cis people are cis anywhere in the world.
And trans people are trans anywhere in the world.
Now, every culture has its own notions of gender. My cultural tradition has five different genders and words to name them, each dating back over a thousand years. I'm not going to pretend gender expression, performance, identity, any of these things are static: that would be colonialist Euro-centric nonsense. But where I was serving, 500 years of colonialism had certainly enforced the idea that there are men and there are women, even if those roles were performed in ways that weren't identical to what we're used to in the United States.
And as such, there were trans people.
Miles from pavement, miles from other volunteers, miles from a bus stop, I found another trans person. A town of 100 people and here he was, a teenage boy whose family thought he was a girl, whose masculinity was now (at the edge of seventeen) no longer a cute childhood gimmick, who met my eyes my third week in site and somehow we both knew. Cousins would whisper about him, that he'd just be a normal girl if his mother wouldn't cut his hair short, that he should stop playing sports with the boys, that he'd never get married. We'd talk about it. He didn't care. He was moving out and moving on the second he was done with high school. We played soccer at church camp. It was as queer there was it was in the US.
And back in the capital city at the gay clubs I'd find trans girls and guys both. I'm sort of shy anywhere I am in the world, as it turns out, but I found a few people I felt comfortable with, people with whom I could be open and honest. There's not a lot of information on HRT or binding or packing or tucking written in the language of the country where I served, and the free, cis-centric healthcare system essentially ignores trans people. They'd ask questions, I'd print stuff out in English, and we'd go over it together. I learned a lot about trans healthcare during that time. Things I should have known anyway. Things I was embarrassed and ashamed to learn on my own. Self love is a process that I'm still learning and the foundation was laid there, during my service, during the hardest and easiest moments of my life. Those times I shared with trans host country nationals? I never shared them with any other PCVs. I wasn't ready to be myself yet, and that would have been too honest and revealing for me. But those moments meant everything. I had the opportunity to bond as a biromantic person with LGB host country nationals/a few bi PCVs and it was great. I loved that too. But as trans people know, being trans is a different magic.
Peace Corps in a lot of ways gave me the strength I needed to admit to myself who I was, even though I never disclosed to fellow volunteers. And truthfully, still haven't told the few RPCVs from my group with whom I'm still in contact. I understand there's a cultural shift happening and probably my cis gay friend who said the transphobic stuff in 2010 wouldn't make that same mistake today...or maybe he would. Maybe today I'd find strength to call the woman I dated who embraced oppressive standards of gender expression (by the way, last I knew she's studying trans people as part of a graduate program...), or maybe I wouldn't. Truth is, I could come out to cis RPCVs I know, but those aren't the relationships I want to build. Trans people are the people I love most, the people with whom I feel most comfortable, anywhere in the world. I build my community with trans people, men, women, non-binary. Of course we don't all get along, of course being trans isn't sunshine and rainbows, but that has nothing to do with Peace Corps.
My dad's friend? She also told me "Peace Corps was an amazing experience, and worthwhile. I'm just glad I did it before I started embracing my gender." For me, Peace Corps was an amazing experience, and worthwhile. And I started to embrace my gender in my host country. I knew trans people in the States, but it took until I got to that environment for me to know myself as trans. Back in the States, I can't be out all the time just yet, but still, I embrace my gender. Cis people won't get that. You do, though.
Anywhere in the world where European colonialism has taken root, there are trans people. And in these places, trans men have immense privilege over trans women, racialized hierarchies exist, and we have to grapple with these things as well as classism and ableism and other forms of oppression, no matter what. In any organization where we work, we're going to have to deal with cis het people who are afraid of us and LGB 'allies' who erase us. Whether we're Peace Corps Volunteers serving abroad, RPCVs 'bringing it home', applying for Peace Corps and considering what service means to us...being trans is one aspect of our identity. It is one facet of who we are. Our ability to identify how we are oppressed and how we oppress others is another. Our desire to serve, and do better, and be better, is another.
If you're trans and thinking about Peace Corps, trust yourself. Trust your own judgment.
If you can't be out during Peace Corps, you're still trans. I love you. I embrace you.
If you can be out during Peace Corps, I love you. I embrace you.
And I'm here for you, any time.
(Reprise!)
The Christmas song that I hate with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns is...
...Do They Know It's Christmas? Every time this fucking track comes on the radio, I feel obliged to shout "DO YOU KNOW THIS SONG IS RACIST AS FUCK?" Why are they still playing it on the radio?! (Why I am I still listening to the radio?!) (Because I'm old!) And then Geldof went and made another one!!! I can't even with this song. I CAN'T!
Also I really hate Baby It's Cold Outside because gross. And Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime, because it is one of my worst earworms. Once that shit gets stuck in there, I can't get it out! Dammit, McCartney. Such a shitty song, too!
ANYWAY! This is obviously not a thread just for people who celebrate Christmas. In fact, I imagine that people who do not celebrate Christmas, but nonetheless cannot escape shitty Christmas music will have a lot to say in this thread, lol!
[Content Note: Racism; Islamophobia; appearance mockery; disablism.]
Saturday night, former Saturday Night Live cast member Will Ferrell, who for many years played former President George W. Bush on SNL, returned to do the cold open, and it was both funny and terrifying.
Video Description: Over an image of the seal of the office of the President, a male voiceover says: And now an announcement from the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush."It's a pretty good plot twist that I turned out to be the smart one" made me laugh real hard, y'all.
Will Ferrell, costumed and in character as former President George W. Bush, appears onscreen, standing at a podium flanked by US flags. He says, with audience cheers and laughter peppered throughout:
This is an important day. I've made a big decision: I'm entering the race for President of the United States of America. The field of Republicans out there is so messed up, I figured it makes ya miss me, doesn't it? Yeah. And that's saying a lot!
I've already got my campaign song. [sings] Ready or not, here I come, you can't hide, I'm gonna fiiiiiiiind you and make you love me! [ends singing] That's a little something from the Fugees. [mispronounces it with a hard "g"]
I'm telling ya: I can beat these guys. Here, let's take a look at some of the front runners.
[image of Ben Carson] Dr. Ben Carson. I can barely hear him when he talks. I'll tell ya something: That's not gonna work when you have to go to China or Azerbaijan [mispronounces it] where you have to [speaks slow and loud, like an asshole does to someone who does not speak English] talk loudly so they will understand! Not to mention, he's some kinda brain surgeon. And I got news for him: Running the country is not brain surgery. Trust me—trust me, I know. Next!
[image of Carly Fiorina] Carly Fiorina. I like Carly. She's got guts. She got fired from her job; she got her butt kicked in a Senate race; she's not qualified in any way to be president. In many ways, she reminds me of me. But she isn't me! I am me! Next!
[images of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio] Cruz and Rubio. Rubio and Cruz. Sounds like a Miami law firm. If you've been injured on the job, call Rubio and Cruz. These two guys, the sons of immigrants, hate immigrants. I for one like the Mexican people. They are my amigos. Tex-Mex is my favorite kinda food. I enjoy the slow-roasted carnitas at Chevy's. Laura always orders the baja sampler with the blue crab enchiladas. The way I see it, unless your name is Running Bear or Chief Two Rivers, we're all anchor babies. That's something to think about.
And then you got this knucklehead. [image of Donald Trump; cut back to Bush laughing uproariously] With the hair! [laughs] And the hundred-foot wall! [laughs] Bring that picture back. [image of Trump; cut back to Bush laughing even harder] I tell ya something: Whenever I get in a bad mood, I just—I just picture his big, fat, orange, Oompa Loompa face, and I just piss my pants!
And now he says he wants to keep all the Muslims out. Yeah. Great idea. That's impossible to implement and not what this country's about. Heck, that's like—that's like saying let's keep all the Leprechauns out. We tried tiny Leprechaun internment camps in the late 1920's, and, as you all know, it totally backfired. Leprechaun relations have never recovered since. That's why they are so hard to find. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a Leprechaun? I say no thanks to Donald Trump. Next!
[image of Jeb Bush, with "Jeb! 2016" logo] Jeb. Oh boy. Poor Jeb. You gotta admit, it's a pretty good plot twist that I turned out to be the smart one.
Of course, I wish he woulda asked me about the exclamation point, on the end of his name. Look, I don't like the taste of broccoli, but it doesn't get any tastier if you call it BROCCOLI!
He doesn't stand a chance in this field. He's an insider who knows how to govern. The Republican voters don't want that. They want someone who is coocoo for cocoa puffs. But running a government is kinda like driving a school bus: You don't want a crazy person driving that bus; you want a simple, underachieving, not very educated but reliable guy behind that wheel. Someone with a steady hand who will be on time and get into one or two but no more than four accidents a year.
You already know that someone—and that someone is me. I'll see you in the White House. And live from New York, it's Saturday night!
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
For the first time, Saudi women were allowed to run for office and vote in the national election that took place over the weekend. Of the 7,000 candidates running across the country for around 2,100 municipal council seats, 979 of them were women, and 20 of them won.
The women who won hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia's largest city to a small village near Islam's holiest site.One percent is a meager but important start. Especially since the female candidates were hampered by the "strict gender segregation rules that ban men and women from mixing in public. This meant candidates could not directly address voters of the opposite sex." The female candidates mostly "ran their campaigns online, using social media to get the word out."
The 20 female candidates represent just one percent of the roughly 2,100 municipal council seats up for grabs, but even limited gains are seen as a step forward for women who had previously been completely shut out of elections. Women are still not allowed to drive and are governed by guardianship laws that give men final say over aspects of their lives like marriage, travel and higher education.
Though there are no quotas for female council members, an additional 1,050 seats are appointed with approval by the king who could use his powers to ensure more women are represented.
Many women candidates ran on platforms that promised more nurseries to offer longer daycare hours for working mothers, the creation of youth community centers with sports and cultural activities, improved roads, better garbage collection and overall greener cities.Women ran for office, and women voted: "The historic election drew a staggering 106,000 female voters out of some 130,000 who'd registered."
In October, the Saudi Gazette reported that harsh road conditions and long distances to the nearest hospital had forced some women in the village of Madrakah, where one female candidate was elected, to give birth in cars. The local newspaper reported that the closest hospital and the nearest university were in Mecca, prompting some students to forgo attending classes. The article said residents were also frustrated with the lack of parks in the village.
It is precisely these kinds of community issues that female candidates hope to address once elected to the municipal councils. The councils do not have legislative powers, but advise authorities and help oversee local budgets.
In Jiddah, three generations of women from the same family voted for the first time. The oldest woman in the family was 94-year-old Naela Mohammad Nasief. Her daughter, Sahar Hassan Nasief, said the experience marked "the beginning" of greater rights for women in Saudi Arabia.Many Saudi women tweeted pictures of themselves voting for the first time. And I've got something in my eye.
"I walked in and said 'I've have never seen this before. Only in the movies'," the daughter said, referring to the ballot box. "It was a thrilling experience."
[Content Note: There are some flickery lights in this video.]
[Content Note: Rape culture; sexual violence; revictimization.]
"People have been telling these stories for a long time—what is it that decades of them have not been sufficient to 'reveal'? ...The many detailed rape accounts in [Jon Krakauer's book Missoula]—accounts that are sometimes repeated, as if from different camera angles, retold through police reports, trial transcripts, and interviews—leave no doubt about what rape is and what rape does. They produce a seasick, anxious feeling: that no one story can turn this system around. The most ill-making narrative here is not that of rape itself, but of a system set up to extract stories from victims and survivors without offering any reasonable hope that such a painful display will result in anything of value for them. ...To have faith, as Krakauer does, that telling stories of rape will help transform the situation is to assume that the system's own interests and those of victims and survivors are more or less aligned, and that until now it hasn't been working well enough. But if you understand that protecting people is not its primary aim, you can see that, in fact, the system has been working just fine."—Melissa Gira Grant, in a must-read piece about two new books on rape, the rape culture, and the limitations of institutional solutions: Krakauer's Missoula and Jennifer Doyle's Campus Sex, Campus Security.
[H/T to Jess.]
This blogaround brought to you (literally) by the internetz.
Recommended Reading:
Tressie: [Content Note: Racism; classism] The Great Mismatch
Kenrya: [CN: Police brutality; racism] Chicago Mayor Apologizes for Laquan McDonald's Slaying; The People Are Not Interested
thewayoftheid: [CN: Racism; violence; appropriatoion] On Chiraq
Bina: [CN: Islamophobia] Are Muslims Liars?
Jenn: [CN: Racism; Islamophobia] Chinese Exclusion, and the Dangerous Islamophobia of Donald Trump
Ragen: [CN: Fat hatred; weight loss talk] It's a Lifestyle Change All Right
Ester and Katie: [CN: Class warfare; worker exploitation and abuse] Ester Bloom and Katie Klabusich Talk Poverty and Poverty Activism
Victoria: Lupita Nyong'o Lights Up Red Carpet in Dress Coded by Girls
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
