Accismus

Yglesias on gay rights:

The underlying dynamic here illustrates why it’s always been a mistake to try to draw a contrast between gay rights groups’ efforts to secure equality through the courts and to secure equality through the political process. The fact of the matter is that the political process simply isn’t very friendly to minority rights claims even when the claims themselves are reasonably popular. Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has become a majoritarian position, but the Obama administration would still prefer to avoid the headaches involved in working to repeal it. At the same time, if a court case were to order the administration to end this policy, it’s abundantly clear that there would be no critical mass of political support for trying to put it back in place.

Either way, the basic fact of the matter is that the political system is biased toward doing nothing. The mere fact that a majority is prepared to support claims of equality doesn’t mean that political leaders want to expend time and energy making our clunky legislative mechanics produce laws reflecting that fact. Under the circumstances, people with just claims to make on their own behalf are wise to pursue those claims through all available avenues including the judiciary.

(emphasis mine)

Ramesh Ponnuru, linked to by Yglesias, on the Ricci decision:

Judicial restraint has also been absent. That virtue is best understood as a finger on the scales, tipping judges in close cases against invalidating the actions of Congress or state or local governments. To invalidate laws without a strong argument that the Constitution requires doing so is precisely what conservatives usually mean by “judicial activism.”

(emphasis mine)

So…wait, what?

Another Oscars ceremony has come and gone. I haven’t seen many of the movies, other than Vicki Christina, which I was happy Penelope Cruz won Best Supporting for her work in, because she was awesome; and WALL-E, which was great. And I was glad Winslet won, because, although I’m sure The Reader is just as bad as everyone says it is, she is one of my favorite actors and I think she’s a great role model for young women.

I have not seen Slumdog Millionaire, but everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it. Most of the people I know who’ve seen it really loved it, and I’m sure it’s great and all, but of course, like anything involving depictions of the “real” India by non-Indians and/or of the lives of the “real” poor by the wealthy, many people have their quarrels with the authenticity of it.

Again, I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure I’d probably agree with this post, which discusses the fact that the celebrated salvation from desperate poverty has to come from without, a financial deus ex machina, and that the female lead is a helpless battered woman who can do nothing for herself until some other man falls in love with her and saves her. In how many movies do we see this? And how many of these female characters are Asian? You’d almost think men have an unrealistic porny fantasy about “rescuing” battered, dependent, passive beauties from developing countries. Undoubtedly, these bruised and delicate flowers would know how to appreciate a good, loving master husband, unlike spoiled, bitchy feminists with their own money and their self-sufficiency.

Of course, being that the male lead in this particular movie is a young man from the Mumbai slums, I’m digressing a bit. Ahem. Where were we?

Oh, yes. Slumdog. Still, people are happy that the movie won because it’s so long been the boring standard that in America, any movie about people other than white Americans are niche films . . . unless, that is, they primarily focus on the way in which people other than white Americans affect white Americans. Which brings me to Gran Torino. Apparently, conservatives are pissed that Gran Torino didn’t get recognized and Milk did. Since, you know, Milk is about the rights of a group of people conservatives haven’t yet adjusted their prejudice about, and Gran Torino is about an old white dude and how he feels about some Vietnamese people he has to deal with. Now, a movie about Vietnamese gangs would be of no interest to these same people. That would be a niche film, of interest only to Vietnamese gangs and the liberals who care about them. But a movie about how an old white dude is affected by Vietnamese gangs…now that’s a movie that “everyone” can relate to! Especially when the old white dude is a Christian With Faith, and uses his Legal Gun of Righteousness to save the Vietnamese folk what can’t save themselves, and teaches them how to be more like old white dudes, before he finally drops dead in an oh-so-subtle crucifixion pose (which, so far as I can tell from the Wikipedia entry, is what happens in Gran Torino – I haven’t seen it, or Milk).

I have a very good friend, who is much smarter and more socially conscious than I am, and who has the irritating habit of ruining everything for me by pointing out a totally obvious bit of ridiculousness in some area of the culture that I’d been to thick to spot myself, and it was she who alerted me to this obnoxious habit of Hollywood being more interested in the ways in which racism and prejudice affects old white dudes than in the lives of black people, or immigrants, or anybody else. Now that she’s pointed it out, I see it everywhere. We’ve had Monster’s Ball, Crash, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, so on and so forth, and (as she put it) is it really so endlessly fascinating how old white bigots learn to open their minds? Isn’t there ever going to be a day when we can stop talking primarily to them and making movies about their experiences and trying to understand them and teach them to be better . . . and instead just ignore them until they go away? Are old white bigots really so relevant anymore? Isn’t it time to move on from all that?

Which is what I say in response to this post, in which James Bowman says:

Though in principle it is a good thing to seek a break with the past and the hardened positions on both sides, those positions are the result of the Penn-like tactic of characterizing those on the other side not just as wrong or mistaken but as reactionary in the commie sense – that is, as barriers to inevitable progress who must be removed. If you’re one of the barriers, you may be excused for finding that a somewhat chilling prospect. You have been identified as being, in practice if not in name, evil – that is beyond the bounds of decency and not to be recognized as legitimate in your views by anyone who is decent.

But see, that’s the thing: opponents of gay rights are barriers to inevitable progress who must be removed. Because there are actual gay families who are actually very much affected by conservatives’ slow, resistant refusal to see them as legitimate, and these families need not carefully consider those people who still oppose their rights. They need not try to see it from their side, or come to a compromise, or “respect” their point of view. Gay people simply want to live their lives the way they see fit without going a-begging to people who disapprove of them on every level.

Gay people will get equal rights eventually. And frankly, if that idea chaps your ass for some reason, you should probably get used to being the bad guy.

That said, I’m no fan of Sean Penn. I think he’s a good actor and enjoy his movies, but, as with most celebrities, I assume he an unintelligent, self-absorbed, entitled asshat, and I have absolutely no desire to know him as a person. And also, didn’t Sean Penn beat up Madonna a few times? Celebrity or no, any man who hits his wife should be in jail or in traction, but not in the spotlight, so I’m disappointed to see positive buzz about Penn on one of my favorite feminist sites. And the idea that anyone ever arrested for domestic assault could righteously preach to others about morality…well, only a celebrity would have the balls for that.

Recently, Bristol Palin went on national television, and said two highly controversial and shocking things: that it’s better to have a baby when you’re not an unemployed and single teenager who has yet to graduate high school, and that teenagers often have sex with each other. Then her mom came on and explained that, while young women do get knocked up from time to time, if they have good, loving families and financial means (like all decent people are supposed to have), it’s not too big of a tragedy.

Well. That clears that up. Teenagers shouldn’t be having sex, so we shouldn’t educate them or provide contraception, because that would be acknowledging that they’re having sex. But hey, we all realize that really, they’re having sex. But that’s ok, because if they do get pregnant, those who come from loving, well-off families will be just fine! And those who do not come from loving, well-off families, well . . . they should have had loving, well-off families. Or not had sex.

Rebecca Traister puts it better:

To Sarah Palin and Van Susteren’s minds, the real story here was not about cautioning other teens, or preventing teen pregnancies, it was about how to deal with them once they’d — inevitably, it seems — happened. In Van Susteren’s words, about “how important it is for families to pitch in.” The Alaska governor, pausing for a moment of generous reflection, said, “I don’t know how other families do it. If they kind of assume that the young parent is going to make it on their own, or assume that government would take care of the young parent and child. That’s not government’s role. This is a role for families to pitch in and help.”

So the bigger message here, as spun by Greta Van Susteren and Sarah Palin, is that abstinence is a naive peg on which to hang our contraceptive hopes, but that when our daughters reproduce before they finish high school, we need to move beyond it — not to discussions of birth control and abortion, but to the fact that the Palins are an unusually big, helpful, supportive group, and that other less fortunate young mothers should go out and get multigenerational families to help them out because it’s not the government’s responsibility.

Also, Lindsey Beyerstein points out the hypocrisy of the difference in coverage of Bristol Palin and Nadya Suleman:

I’m so sick of hearing disgruntled conservatives railing against “welfare mothers.” If they really value motherhood and childbearing as much as they say, they’ll happily pay for social services to support those families.

Of course, the very same politicians and pundits who score political points off welfare mothers had a field day ranting about birth control in the stimulus–a proposal that would have saved $200 million in healthcare costs alone over the next five years by making it easier for states to cover birth control for the same poor women are currently eligible for pregnancy care under Medicaid. (Since the federal government already matches state Medicaid contraception spending 9-1, the provision would have been a net stimulus for participating states.)

On a related note, the Atlantic bloggers have been having an interesting back-and-forth about shame. Here, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes issue with the “70% of black children are born out of wedlock” statistic:

To summarize–there is no data to show that the black “illegitimacy” figure of 70 percent has been caused by unmarried black women having more kids than they did in the past. In fact, the trend is the exact opposite. What is clear is that the behavior of married black women has changed, to the point that married black women are actually having less kids than married white women.

Megan McArdle thinks shame has its uses:

It is true that people who are ashamed often do not behave well. But they often behave badly precisely because they are trying to deflect their shame. People do a lot of things to avoid being shamed. Why do small towns have lower rates of crime, and lesser antisocial behaviors like cutting people off in traffic or queue jumping, than big cities? Are people in small towns more inherently virtuous? Or are they afraid of what the neighbors will think?

Ross Douthat weighs in:

. . . When people make bad choices, a culture of shame and stigma can make their lot in life worse, not better. . . . [H]uman beings what they are, social stigmas are usually effective precisely because they create suffering, and exclusion, and cautionary tales. Therefore it’s not quite right to say, as Rod does, that lifting the stigma on unwed childbearing involved “false compassion.” The compassion involved was and is real, and so are its beneficiaries. Many lives really were improved as American society became more tolerant of unwed motherhood – just as many lives were improved when divorce became easier to obtain, and bad marriages easier to walk away from, and so on.

But many other lives were not. And so the battle between social conservatism and social liberalism at the moment isn’t a battle between competing utopias, but a battle over which tragic choice is worse: The choice to stigmatize, which can damage and even ruin lives, or the choice to destigmatize, which can damage and ruin countless lives as well.

Andrew Sullivan notes the difficulty of destigmatizing:

But what if, in fact, there is no actual “choice” to destigmatize? What if the cruelty of some social norms – such as the way in which illegitimate children were once treated – leads to a gradual and irreversible social change? The real choice today in many areas is whether to re-stigmatize – and that is a very hard thing to do in a diverse, free and changing society. . . . Surely the more reasonable option is simply not to encourage socially disadvantageous behavior (as welfare once did), and to create a model of successful family structure that others might emulate. Obama’s marriage and family are probably much more effective in this than a lecture about abstinence from Rick Santorum.

Two things about shaming: first of all, anyone who feels they have enough moral authority to confidently shame other people probably has no self-awareness and should not be the person responsible for determining which behaviors are to be stigmatized and which rewarded. I mean, really, who the hell does anybody think they are?

And second, damn near all of the shaming I see in our society (and now I think about it, in most others, now and throughout history) is directed at victims. Often, people shame to reassure themselves they couldn’t possibly fall prey to poverty, disease, abuse, crime, etc., because they’re not stupid or careless or immoral like this or that victim.

(And speaking of situations in which the victim is always thoroughly shamed and blamed, I appreciated this article, which boldly declares that rapists are rapists, even if they’re also stars.)

Big day for Chicago today: the Trib filed for bankruptcy and Gov. Blagojevich was arrested.

And things had been going so well!

The transcripts are just embarrassing.

I know I’m further echoing a common refrain, but the unbelievable hubris of these guys just floors me. I mean, scandal after scandal and politician after politician, the blatant, shameless hypocrisy and the absolute certainty of getting away with it…who are these men? Where do they come from? And how are there so damn many of them? I know that power corrupts, but, while my powers of imagination are great (and my ego not at all small), I simply cannot imagine ever having my own ego blown up to the immense proportions of these fellows. It almost makes me want to stand up and applaud.

Upon his election in 2002, Blagojevich had this to say:

“My heart is full tonight,” Blagojevich told a boisterous crowd of supporters at a north side steel factory where his late father once worked. Blagojevich said the election represents “a bipartisan call to action.” But he also reiterated a central theme of his campaign: That a generation of Republican control is responsible for the corruption and ethics scandals that have rocked Illinois.

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Illinois has voted for a change,” Blagojevich said.

(St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Harper’s)

And then there’s this:

Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich allegedly offered to help the Chicago Tribune’s parent company save $100 million in a real estate deal in exchange for firing members of the editorial board who had criticized the governor in print.

One bit of news from Patrick Fitzgerald’s press conference was that he had asked the Tribune  to delay reporting certain stories based on its own reporting in order not to interfere with his criminal investigation, and the Trib complied.

I’m reminded of a common improv warm-up that involves everyone on the team standing shoulder-to-shoulder with eyes closed, and counting to 20 as a group without anyone overlapping. When two people speak at the same time, everyone has to start over at 1. The game is supposed to improve focus and solidify ‘group mind’; actually, it is a boring, stupid, frustrating waste of time in which everyone is forced to stand way too close to each other and smell each other’s breath, and every time a coach suggested it before a show, I wanted to punch someone, but that’s all neither here nor there. What was my point?

Oh, yes – that whenever the country is excited about a new political superstar, it feels a lot like that game: the strained, hushed, careful counting to 20, hoping against hope that you’ll somehow make it there without having to start over. Not that Rod Blagojevich was ever especially inspiring to people, but still, I’m just waiting for Obama to do something awful. So far, though, so good:

According to the charges, “Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but ‘they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.’ “  . . . In another passage, Blagojevich fumes that if Obama doesn’t show him some love, he’ll appoint a person Obama doesn’t want. Obama comes off as good as he could possibly have hoped for: He’s behaving well even when you don’t think anyone is watching. 

For weeks now, the rumblings have been distant and low, but each day, they grow closer: echoes of a distant dread. Through the subterranean tunnels, it comes, the Balrog – ambition withers in its path, dreams splinter and snap. Deep into the city where the willful urban twixter po’ folk dwell, with their no benefits, their clothes from six years ago, their hopeful new iphones. It comes even for them, the Nothing, wiping out all in its path. Even those small, powerless grubs who have elected to find a little-noticed crevice on a larger creature, and hunker down there, making no noise, causing little harm, silently sucking…they, too, will be dragged forth, out into the glaring light of day, and counted. The fire of this crisis leaves no pore unscoured – even the armpits and nostrils of the corporate beasts will be flushed clean.

It comes. Closer and closer, it comes. It sucks up years, it grays youth, it brings forth the sweat from even the most habitually sedated brow…

It comes. It comes. It comes for you. RUN!!!!

Was there some sort of unofficial holiday last night, or something?  NYC was freaking insane – there were fireworks, and people screaming and dancing in the streets, and all sorts of hoopla.

Help me out here – I can’t find anything about it on the internets.

So, this is annoying:

Can you still make it from scratch in America? That’s the question that Adam Shepard asked himself in college. On graduation, he took a train to Charleston, South Carolina and started out with nothing but $25 and a backpack. A year later, he had a car, and apartment, and $2500 in the bank. How he did it — and what he learned along the way — is the story of his new book, Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream.

See, the thing is, though, the book really ought to be called “Me; $25; a firm grasp of the English language; a good understanding of appropriate business and social etiquette; a clever brain and healthy and attractive white body [assuming the cover illustration is meant to depict the author]; the self-possession that comes of having been raised by a family that loved me, paid attention to me, and was able to provide for me; the social skills that come from having been brought up in a safe community where I enjoyed a stable support network of friends and family, and a safe and decent school with adequate funding; the freedom of being unaccompanied by any dependent children or ill or disabled relatives; the confidence that comes from knowing if my little low-stakes gambit here fails miserably I can just go back to my nice home; a college degree[!!!]; and the Search for the American Dream, which I have already extensively benefited from, and everybody who meets me immediately knows it, even if I am dressed in a potato sack and boasting proudly of how I have temporarily elected to live like the poor folk do in hopes of scoring a book deal.”

But then, that’s a lot to fit on a book jacket.

–

Also, apparently old people don’t particularly like being talked to like they’re babies, even when they’ve totally lost their minds:

“The main task for a person with Alzheimer’s is to maintain a sense of self or personhood,” Dr. Williams said. “If you know you’re losing your cognitive abilities and trying to maintain your personhood, and someone talks to you like a baby, it’s upsetting to you.”

(via Feministing)

I understand that.  I absolutely hate being talked to like I’m a baby. A lot of men like to talk to attractive young women like they’re babies – I seriously can’t count the number of times when some older man I barely know has explained to me (affectionately) that I am such a sweet, sensitive young person. What he clearly means is, ‘You’re pretty, but I know it’s inappropriate for me to be attracted to you, so I’m going to treat you like you’re my precious little daughter.’ Which, besides being presumptuous and offensive, is even more amazing in light of the fact that I am cranky, standoffish and self-absorbed, especially upon first acquaintance. That’s maybe a little hard on myself, but at any rate, I could not possibly be mistaken for a cuddly, approachable people-pleaser…except by men who are bound and determined to believe that all pretty women come prepackaged with Disney princess personalities.

At any rate, if actually becoming cranky old people won’t save us all from being cooed at and patted like we’re puppies, what the hell will? I hope I don’t get dementia, because I’ve already decided that if I make it to my 80s and don’t have anything more I really want to accomplish, I’m going to spend the rest of my days trying every possible kind of super hard-core drug. That will be my Earthly reward for a life full of self-denial and jogging, and I sure hope Alzheimer’s doesn’t rob me of the opportunity, or I’m gonna be pissed.

–

Two funny things:

First of all, I think this is my favorite liveblogging of a debate thus far…

…and Chuck Klosterman’s A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is hilarious, if long (via Kottke).

I admit that I am biased in favor of my own opinions. I admit that I think the things that I think, and that I agree with people who also think the things that I think. I admit that I am biased in favor of that which I believe to be true and correct. In matters of morality, I admit that I have a moral code, and that I think it’s the correct one to hold. Because of this (my being biased in favor of my own morality), I tend to agree with people who I think are right and disagree with people who I think are incorrect. Many times, when someone is saying something that I think is fundamentally incorrect, I will disagree with them merely because I think they are wrong. I am less likely to agree with those I disagree with. When presented with an argument, I will view it through the bias of whether or not I believe it to be factually sound and accurate as to its assertions. If I don’t think it is a valid argument, I will disagree with it and dismiss it, allowing my bias against whatever I perceive as nonsense to come through.

Furthermore, I only respect those things which I believe to be respectable. While I attempt to tolerate all sorts of bullshit, I do not, nor do I think I ought to, respect any thought, belief and/or viewpoint whatsoever, merely because some person somewhere thinks, believes and/or holds it. Rather, I only respect that which I believe to be true, admirable and valid. Furthermore, while I attempt to tolerate all people and to respect their right to believe whatever nonsense they so choose, I do not respect all people any more than I respect said nonsense. I do respect some people who believe nonsense (despite their nonsensical beliefs), and I very likely respect some actual nonsense (although I have not yet come to see it as such, or I would have stopped respecting it), but I do not extend that respect to all such people just by virtue of their being people, or to all beliefs in general just by virtue of their being beliefs.

Finally, I judge. In fact, I tend to judge and evaluate everything that I see, hear or otherwise encounter. I no sooner see a thing than I have made any number of judgments about it, and have formulated all sorts of opinions. I can no more perceive without judging than I can eat without tasting or sleep without dreaming. I form opinions about people within mere seconds of meeting them. I form opinions about everything from chunks of prose to chunks of tuna. It’s a sickness. I can’t stop it. I have only to see something, and before I know what I’m about, I’ve given it a bit of thought.

I would say I’ll attempt to reform, but that would not be honest. Truthfully, I’ve already formed an opinion as to all of this that I’ve just written, and I’ve judged it to be correct, and now here I go again – respecting my own opinion and being biased in favor of it.

–
See also:  Twelve Virtues of Rationality (via Kottke).  A good thing to read before getting into a political discussion.

So, the hell with this current economic crisis – I’m far more interested in watching this John McCain guy run around!  No one can say he’s not…central!

And luckily, his second-in-command can field the tough questions while he’s off ensuring his centrality:

That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.

Oh, I see.  Thanks for clearing all that up.

At least Alan Fishman is having a good day.

I have been so gobsmacked by this whole Palin thing that I’ve been completely unable to write anything about it; all I can do is splutter. I have many objections to Palin, but I suppose that if I am to articulate the one, basic thing that has so deeply angered me about the way in which she was presented to the American people, it’s the massively insulting suggestion that women who were excited about the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency might be anything other than utterly dismayed by the idea of a Sarah Palin vice presidency (and very possibly, presidency).

I personally define feminism quite broadly, and while some readers of this blog will disagree, I think it is entirely possible for a person to be both a political conservative and a feminist (although I’m unlikely to agree with such a person on the particulars of women’s rights). And these people may very well be thrilled with Sarah Palin (although frankly, I think even they ought to see she is a poor candidate), because she represents (I guess?) their values and their interests. But she does not represent the values or interests of Hillary Clinton supporters, and she does not represent the values or interests of liberal feminists.

Feminism holds that what is between a person’s legs ought not to overrule, or in any way reflect on what is between a person’s ears.  Clearly, Sarah Palin has a neoconservative ideology firmly lodged between her ears, and my opinion about that is not the more favorable because of what she has between her legs.

As for the rest of what’s wrong with Palin, here’s what a lot of much smarter people than me have to say (sorry for the very lengthy quotes, but I don’t think anybody really clicks on the links):

Katha Pollitt:

. . . Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex–and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world’s harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl’s privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol’s “decision” to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America.

Cintra Wilson:

We’ve been shanghaied. This is sick. We need to slap the face of our bad frat-boy date and walk home from this drive-in movie. Sarah Palin may put out to be popular, but the rest of America’s women don’t need to do the same.

If not, what the hell? John McCain should go the whole Hugh Hefner route and have eight V.P.s that all look exactly like Sarah Palin.

It’s McCain’s world, girls: You’d just live in it.

Ann at Feministing:

. . . Bill Kristol was claiming McCain would pick Palin — and that would prove that Republicans are “much more open to strong women.” Frankly, that’s bullshit. Republicans are more open to a certain type of woman — one who is strongly against things like equal pay, universal health care, and reproductive freedom. In other words, the party is pro-woman-candidates, as long as they enact anti-woman policies.

Rebecca Traister:

In this “Handmaid’s Tale”-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we’re witnessing “a new creation … of the feminist ideal,” the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it’s now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: “put a skirt on.” “I want her watching my kids,” says Deutsch. “I want her laying next to me in bed.”

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party’s nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

Latoya at Feministe compares Palin to Rice:

You can hate someone’s policies and still defend them from ad hominem arguments. I hate when people say that Condoleezza Rice is a sellout and that she isn’t black. That’s a ridiculous assertion to make. However, that does not make Condoleezza Rice a civil rights leader just because she is black and in a position of power.

I hate when people say Sarah Palin is not a woman, or she is a tool of the patriarchy, or any of the other non policy related attacks I’ve seen leveled at her from all kinds of places. But that doesn’t mean you need to start sipping the “this is a victory for women” kool aid. It isn’t. Sarah Palin does not magically become a champion for all women, everywhere, just because she happens to be a woman in a position of power.

Courtney Martin in The American Prospect:

And, in perhaps the most offensive display of her “wimp factor” agenda, she attempted to discredit community organizing by feminizing it. She sarcastically told conventioneering Republicans (along with millions of Americans watching on television), “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” It was an eerie echo of what oblivious men in positions of traditional power have been saying for centuries: that the work of community building — whether it be child-rearing, elder-caring, teaching, nursing, social work, or, yes, community organizing — isn’t really work at all. That, despite being the backbone of our economy and the heart of our civic life, it doesn’t count because it doesn’t involve power suits and bottom lines. What makes this ridicule of community-building even more ironic is that the GOP is simultaneously glorifying Palin’s role as caregiver of her own sprawling family.

(via Feministing)

Jessica at Feministing, on the various MSM journalists who leapt to praise Palin’s feminism:

Take Wall Street Journal reporter Naomi Schaefer Riley, who writes that progressives should rest easy about Palin’s candidacy because “most American evangelicals have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of women in the workplace.” A radical feminist sentiment if there ever was one! But perhaps one should take Riley with a grain of salt, considering she’s the same reporter who wrote that murdered NY college student Imette St. Guillen should have known better than to be out drinking at 3am. Victim-blamers aren’t exactly bastions of feminist thought.

Similarly, Bitch Ph.D. responds to the WSJ article on why feminists hate Palin:

[The argument] isn’t that Sarah Palin is “too good at having it all.” It’s that Sarah Palin has the same needs other women do, but that she refuses to support policies that would supply them to women who, unlike herself, don’t have large extended families, husbands with good-paying flexible work, jobs of their own that pay well and require very few hours, and lots and lots of money to pay for help if and when those other things aren’t enough.

On the other side, Camille Paglia, bless her, is predictably cuckoo for Palin:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

So, okay, feminists (always excepting Paglia) aren’t wild for her on women’s issues.  But what about the rest of her positions?

Well, there are the scandals. That whole Troopergate thing:

Josh Marshall:

We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It’s called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan’s claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.

Also, see this update.

More here at Feministing.

…and the rape kit stuff:

Bitch, Ph.D.:

First, the story breaks that under Palin’s watch, Wasilla women who went to the police saying that they had been sexually assaulted by a man, were charged for the rape kit. In case anyone doesn’t know, a rape kit is an exam done for the purpose of collecting and preserving evidence–it’s not a medical procedure. And yet, despite the fact that it’s similar to collecting fingerprints, taking photos of a crime scene, or doing ballistics analysis, the city of Wasilla insisted on charging women, or their insurance companies, for the kit, rather than using city funds. As of today, neither McCain, Palin, nor anyone on either of their staff teams has commented on this story. What’s the problem-too ridiculous to dignify with a response? Hardly, especially when the former Governor, Tony Knowles, has acknowledged that Wasilla was the only town in Alaska doing it. Prompting the state legislature to pass a law forbidding them from doing so.

Yglesias on both issues.

…and TPM on earmarks.

Juan Cole, on Palin’s religion:

The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers’ commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to “establish” or officially support any particular religion or denomination.

Well, and but here’s Christopher Hitchens:

She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with god.” Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”

As to the actual issues, there are no pithy quotes to extract, plus she hasn’t done that much yet:

Many liberals are concerned about picking on Palin the person as opposed to attacking Palin the politician. One of the problems with Palin is that her executive resume is so thin there isn’t a whole lot to critique.

…but if you’re interested, here’s a summary of Palin’s views at Firedoglake, which comes to the conclusion that:

Underneath her attractive and youthful exterior, Sarah Palin is no different from the old white guys running the Republican Party. She doesn’t care about good government, she doesn’t believe in science, she wants everyone to live in accordance with her Old Testament Christian values. Basically, she’s Tom Coburn with boobs.

And finally, and most substantively, Lindsay Beyerstein summarizes an in-depth NYT article on everything Palin.

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In conclusion, I cannot get excited about a woman who plans to use the power she has attained to make it more difficult for other women to follow in her footsteps.  Beyond women’s rights (which is certainly a significant enough issue to stand all on its own, half the population being women and all), I am of course uninterested in a candidate who fully intends to take this country further in a direction which I believe is bad for all of us.

At the end of the day, I guess that’s all I really need to say.

(If you haven’t already seen the Fey & Poehler SNL bit, click here and watch it nowrightnow.)

I wish that interviews were conducted like debates, and that at a certain point, a buzzer would go off and you would just have to stop talking immediately, right then, no matter what you were saying, you would just have to shut the hell up and put a period on it.

Sometimes I look at a person (for example, an interviewer) who’s found himself on the wrong side of my conversational onslaught, and as I run on, I pity them. I look at them, sitting there helplessly under the relentless stream of my monologue. Perhaps they’ll soon start bleeding from the ears.

They ought to seize control of the conversation, stand up and wrestle it away from me, take charge. They ought to scream, drop it! Drop the conversation immediately and back slowly away from it! I swear to God, miss, if you launch so much as one more syllable my way, I will leap across this desk and tear your throat out with my teeth!

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Also, while I’m talking about interviews, polite social behavior, and first impressions in general, have you ever wondered what those overbearing people who, upon being introduced to a total stranger, (a) initiate far more physical contact than is appropriate or desired; and/or (b) launch into a long, self-promoting recitation of everything they’re up to lately as if the person they’ve just met could possibly give half a shit…have you ever wondered, I say, what those people are thinking? Apparently, they’re thinking that they are creating a fantastic impression:

Another common pattern we all go through is the handshake. Why not do it a little differently?  One of my favorites to do in a social setting (especially with someone you just met recently) is to go for the hug instead of the handshake. They will put out their hand. Just stare it for a second as if you are confused and then open you arms wide and say “I think I’d like a hug instead” with a big smile. People will crack up laughing and instantly you have a connection.

Worst. Advice. Ever.

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As mainstream Christianity in the U.S. continues to be ever more triumphantly dominated by those who consider willful ignorance a blessed virtue, it’s nice to see that the Church of England has made a small concession to reality:

“The statement will read: Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.”

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Finally, you tell ‘em, Patty Judge.

Crap, I forgot to post all week again.  I keep intending to go back to posting regularly, and I keep not doing it, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on why.  Blogging just has not been as much fun for me lately.  Then, I read this post, and I realized that it perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling.

If you get too invested in things, there’s a point where ‘everyone’s stupid and I think it’s hilarious’ starts to become ‘everyone’s stupid and it MAKES ME FUCKING INSANE!!!!’  And I think I passed that point some time ago.  I keep drafting amusing little rants only to have them turn into vitriolic endless rants, and at some point during their composition, I leave off typing and begin circling my desk, flapping my hands around and shrieking to myself.

I grew up in the South, where nice people consider public displays of enthusiasm unseemly.  It’s understood that one has one’s political opinions, but to get yourself worked up about it is to show a level of involvement with life outside your immediate sphere that reflects poorly on your ability to manage your own affairs.  Likewise, while it’s expected that everyone be religious (in a general way), those who feel sufficiently possessed with the spirit as to go around talking about God all the time and wearing Jesus accessories are at best tacky, and possibly a little touched.  Nobody wants to be without money, but to admit of difficulties concerning it is to drop down a class level – money should simply flow, unseen and unremarked upon, into one’s coffers, as gently and steadily as rain from heaven.

All of this is to say that my blatant interest in this year’s primaries is making it difficult for me to maintain a cool, ironic detachment.  What’s needed is some perspective:

The two parties are, at heart, not very different from each other.  Neither will totally save us, or utterly damn us.  My complete lack of active (or financial) involvement in anything even remotely concerning politics (or other people, or life outside my apartment) makes any pretense of actual concern about the world in general or this country in particular hypocritical beyond all belief.  My own personal life will be unlikely to change in any significant way as a result of anything short of an apocalyptic disaster, or a profound personal attitude adjustment (which are both equally unlikely).  People are stupid, especially me, and it is hilarious.  Ten people read this blog on a good day.  I have many friends who are actually out there working real, positive changes in the world, rather than just sitting around bitching all the time.  And sometimes, it’s a blessing when the internet goes out.

To sum up:  Oh, wait, I forgot – I don’t care again!

It’s the grand reinstatement of Feminist Thursday!

First of all, let me just say I finally found a beer I can drink in good conscience. I’m less thrilled to say that it’s Fosters, as Fosters isn’t that good or widely available, and generally comes in giant oilcans that I’d rather not admit I can drink by carrying around with me. But regardless, I’m tickled pink with them for this, and happy that at long last, here’s a beer company that doesn’t feel it can afford to alienate half the population.  (Although, none of the above is really true, as Fosters advertising is just as offensive to women as all the other beer ads.)

Also, the Olympics have been going on; they’ve provided all manner of things for everybody to get pissed off about, and feminists are not left out:

First of all, are the uniforms too sexy? I don’t know, actually. While I do understand the point here, and while it’s certainly not okay for female athletes to be treated like objects. . . on the other hand, the skimpiness of women’s Olympic uniforms doesn’t really make me angry. Athletes are walking representations of what bodies can look like and what bodies can do, and you know, of course people are going to ogle them. What really upsets me is when men like (or are encouraged to like) ogling undernourished, undeveloped, weak, hairless, diminished women – listless, helpless waifs who closely resemble (or are) prepubescent girls, and whose “sexiness” lies entirely in their powerlessness. Frankly, I think the ogling of Olympian bodies is a huge step in the right direction. If only all young girls could think the best way to be sexy is to look like you can fling your date across a parking lot.

Finally, All Them are upset about this, which, yes, it’s bad, but it’s not like it’s an outrage particular to China. In the U.S., ability completely takes a backseat to attractiveness across the entertainment industry. Okay, so China was more blatant about it, choosing a pretty girl to lip-sync to a less-attractive girl’s singing. But in the U.S., we would have just had the pretty girl sing with her own crappy voice – the less-attractive good singer wouldn’t have gotten the job in any event.  What isn’t a beauty pageant, really?  America has absolutely no tolerance for the uglies – even off-camera civilians here are expected to look like movie stars.

In other (non-Olympics related) news, the UK courts decided that women who were raped while drunk deserve less compensation than those who were raped in all sobriety. Of course, there was a huge public outcry and the decision was reversed. I can’t comment on this any better than these two posts do (one and two), so everyone should just read them.

On a lighter note, how did I not know Hedy Lamarr was so cool? Apparently, she co-invented a torpedo-guiding device. She also said this:

“Any girl can be glamorous,” she said. “All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.”

Holla!

All Them* have been railing a lot about affirmative action lately. Frankly, I know nothing whatsoever about affirmative action, and I’ll leave it up to those who know more about it to speak to its efficacy or lack thereof.  But I have to admit, I make assumptions about people getting into colleges for reasons other than personal merit.  I admit it, it’s wrong of me, but . . . I think that Claire Danes probably got into Yale above many other, more qualified candidates just because she’s Claire Danes.  I assume that she wasn’t selected sheerly on the basis of her outstanding merit.  And when I hear that, say, Natalie Portman went to Harvard, I make assumptions about that.  Now, I’m not saying that Natalie Portman is a total dumbass, but I’m just saying I don’t think she deserved her spot more than other people, who maybe weren’t famous and wealthy.  And when I hear that George W. Bush went to Yale…well, I make some assumptions about possible considerations other than merit that may have gone into his admission, as well.

I know it’s unfair of me, since clearly, all selections for everything are entirely based on personal merit, except when the person selected is a minority.  I’ll try to correct my thinking. 

At any rate, here is a helpful little time line of affirmative action policies in the U.S. – if you read that, you now know as much about affirmative action as I do!

I took a race and ethnicity course in college, which basically consisted of an exasperated African professor explaining over and over again, day after day, to a classroom full of mystified young Southern Republicans that what we were discussing in class when we talked about ‘racism’ was institutional racism and not incidental racism. Trying to get this classroom full of students to grasp this concept was an impossible task. It just wasn’t going to happen. I really hope that professor has since transferred somewhere else; by the end of the course, I began to fear he was going to suffer a Jerry McGuire-style meltdown in front of everybody.

He couldn’t get across the concept that, while racial prejudice may be obnoxious and harmful on a small scale, it’s not nearly of as much concern as the fact that black people live in poverty at nearly twice the national rate, and that this poverty rate was in itself racist – that the racism of real concern was the racism built into our societal structure. He kept trying to talk about the economy, and they kept replying that no one in their families would ever use the n-word. One thing that I learned from this class is that before ‘diversity’ can ‘foster a dialogue,’ people have to stop being maddeningly obtuse.

All of this is discussed much more eloquently in this New York Magazine article on racism:

The tendency to turn the commitment to racial liberalism into sheer denial is strong. “I don’t see race” becomes “I don’t see racism.” . . .

Then there are the real-life, on-the-ground, disastrous statistical disparities that burden the lived experience of the majority of blacks, people of color, and the poor in this country: from the still-unrepaired wake of Hurricane Katrina, to the greater infant-mortality rate and lesser life span, to near double-digit rates of unemployment, to cuny professor Harry Levine’s study of stop-and-frisk statistics in New York City (blacks are eight times more likely than whites to be stopped for marijuana possession, for instance), to disproportionately high national rates of foreclosures and homelessness among blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos, to the almost complete resegregation of schools across the land, to a war on drugs so shockingly racialized and so aggressively executed that our rates of incarceration place us first in the world.

And man, if it’s hard to get people to admit we still have a problem with racism now, imagine how difficult it will be when we have our first black President. 

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*Frequently, when I’m composing blog posts, I write a sentence like this and want to say ‘everybody,’ and then realize I need to specify who I’m talking about when I say ‘people’ or ‘everybody.’ I mostly mean that, among all of the various blogs and news sites I read, skim, or glance at, bloggers, pundits, journalists, politicians and various media types seem to be frequently discussing whatever the issue is, in general, recently. This takes a long time to type. So from here on out, I am going to use the term ‘All Them’ to mean ‘people who speak from public platforms that I have been hearing a lot from lately, and that you may or may not also have read and/or watched.’

Should English be our official national language? My opinion is, who the hell cares? But some people care a whole, whole lot.

Here’s a good, detailed discussion of this at Language Log (this quote pretty much sums up what I think):

In short, English is already, for all practical purposes, the language of the nation (not to mention much of the world in many ways), and it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than a growing population of (mostly Spanish-speaking) immigrants – a population that has been shown in study after study to lose their heritage language and adopt English within three generations, as Jon Weinberg helpfully pointed out – to change that. If we make English official, there’s no telling how its currently exalted position would be affected.

. . . In my view, the move to make English official in the US is effectively a political move to disenfranchise minority or otherwise already disempowered groups along culturally-defined lines. Using language for this purpose is particularly insidious.

I am actually quite embarrassed that I only speak English. It was lazy of me never to really learn another language, and traveling made me all the more embarrassed of myself, because it seems like damn near everybody all over the world can muddle along in at least two languages – no matter how broke, rural and otherwise uneducated they are. And mostly what they speak is English (even though apparently it’s one of the most difficult languages to learn if you’re not a native speaker), which is so fortunate for me, because I don’t have to learn word one and still rarely have difficulty communicating anywhere I go. Obama thinks it’s embarrassing, too.

Many Americans, however, are not the least bit embarrassed for only speaking English. They are rather infuriated that anybody would set foot on American soil without speaking English in addition to whatever else they speak, or (if foreigners do speak it) for speaking it poorly, or with a thick accent.

These are people who often say, “I wouldn’t go to a country where I don’t speak the language, so I don’t see why ‘they’ come here.” Leaving aside the obvious stupidity in this statement (people come here because there is money here), what a limited, incurious perspective that statement reveals! Who are these people who wouldn’t go where they don’t speak the language? I’d hate to think that my possible living situations are limited to English-speaking countries. Not only would I happily go somewhere (for a short or long period of time) where I don’t speak the language, but I’d most likely be welcomed there. Speech isn’t the only way to communicate. If two people focus up, they can usually communicate across a language barrier without too much trouble, especially if one or both of them stands to profit from it.

I’ve actually talked to people who complain about having to push 1 for English. Here’s LL again on this:

I find the objection to “press 1 for English” incredibly curious. I would think that a large proportion of those who object would encourage businesses to act in their self-interest by whatever legal means necessary – and making multiple language options available for their (potential) customers is one easy, legal way to increase your business (even if you’ll lose some idiots who can’t bring themselves to press a simple button for their language).

It seems like, before anyone would actually complain about the time it takes them to press 1 for English, they might think for a beat about what life in general would be like to be somebody who has to press 2 for Spanish – talk about inconvenient! – and then count their blessings and shut the hell up.

–

Speaking of language and stupidity, is Obama really a great speaker, or is it just that the level of our political oratory has been brought so low?

A major reason that Obama’s rhetoric seems to soar so high is that our expectations have sunk so low. In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by American presidents to a thorough statistical analysis-and he finds, unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline. A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade, and if the trend continues, next century’s State of the Union addresses will be conducted at the level of “a comic strip or a fifth-grade textbook.”

(via 3QD)

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Psst.  Hey, English champs: do you know what a grawlix is?

What about mamihlapinatapai? Define that, suckaz! (Yeah, ok, so that one’s not English.)

Where to start?

In the U.S., Bush wants health care programs receiving federal aid to sign certificates promising they won’t refuse to hire health care workers who won’t provide or discuss abortion and/or birth control and other forms of contraception.

Meanwhile, birth control isn’t something McCain really cares to discuss. He’d rather keep it light, I guess.

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A pregnant illegal immigrant gave birth under custody, and then had her baby taken from her, because of local charges on driving without a license:

Weikal said the sheriff’s office knew the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency planned to release Villegas on her own recognizance because of the pregnancy, but she had to stay in jail until she had seen a judge on the local charges.

Villegas’ attorney, Elliott Ozment, said Villegas was still in jail awaiting a hearing on the driving charge when she went into labor on the night of July 5. She was taken to Nashville General Hospital at Meharry, where she was handcuffed to the bed by her right wrist and left ankle until shortly before the birth.

–

Indian sanitation workers were invited to walk the catwalk by the UN:

Today Sharanya at the Indian feminist blog Ultra Violet has a post about a recent UN conference in which Indian sanitation workers walked the runway alongside professional models at a charity fashion show. (Sanitation workers, also called scavengers, are usually Dalit women whose job it is to remove the human and animal excrement from the homes of higher-class Indians.)

What a treat.

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This is amazing: some very young children in Yemen are standing up for themselves against the grown men their families have sold them off to:

Together, the two girls’ stories have helped spur a movement to put an end to child marriage, which is increasingly seen as a crucial part of the cycle of poverty in Yemen and other third world countries. Pulled out of school and forced to have children before their bodies are ready, many rural Yemeni women end up illiterate and with serious health problems. Their babies are often stunted, too.

The average age of marriage in Yemen’s rural areas is 12 to 13, a recent study by Sana University researchers found. The country, at the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

(via Feministe)

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And we complain about taking our shoes off:

NPR covered a story about security in Baghdad’s Green Zone, which centered specifically on one woman’s protest against the type of body scanning used: it doesn’t see hair or clothing, but sees the body, (I’m assuming metal) jewelry, and any prospective weapons. The body is rendered essentially naked (pictured here; picture from NPR).

Farah al-Jaberi’s objections (which are shared by other female workers) are mainly to male guards seeing their bodies through the scanner, and the worry that “images of their bodies can be saved and viewed by anyone later.”

(There’s an image at the link of what the scans look like.)

–

And, as always, to “rape” is not to “have sex with” – and the media should respect the distinction.

Slate has a long article summarizing all the various reasons why the science behind various studies and books asserting inherent differences between the sexes is thin at best. The article covers familiar ground – a lot of it restates the Mark Liberman posts I’m always linking to over at Language Log – but hopefully, this will help to discredit some of the more oft-repeated (and baseless) claims:

Even on the most hotly contested questions—like whether women have better verbal skills, or are hard-wired for empathy, or have cognitive differences that limit their advancement in math and science—the case for large, innate disparities is messy and, for the most part, underwhelming. This is especially true when it comes to neural and hormonal claims, which tend to be controversial. These writers offer canny caveats about culture and its role in gender difference. But they tend to imply that if a difference has innate roots, it’s likely to be relatively fixed. And that’s not necessarily so. In crucial ways, the mind is malleable. Ultimately, the evangelists aren’t really daring to be politically incorrect. They’re peddling one-sidedness, sprinkled with scientific hyperbole.

And while we’re on the differences between men and women, a nice rant all about orgasms – having them, not having them, faking them and who’s to blame – in response to a totally stupid column by MSNBC’s Brian Alexander:

But the thing that pissed me off the most is how Alexander wants us to look at his “roughly one-third” of straight women always have an orgasm statistic and be impressed by it. Clearly, the language he uses around it tells us that he’s saying WOW! One whole third? What a big number – especially when so many women are sexually defective!

As everyone knows, women love jerks, who, it seems, get laid a lot more. Why might that be?

It’s not always a matter of bad boys wooing vulnerable women into bed and then leaving them; it’s often two people who are both interested in just sex picking each other and calling it a day. Of course, there are no doubt some women who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks; there are also some dudes who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks (just as a Nice Guy). But sex isn’t always a trick men play on women.

What? Women might have different criteria (like looks and availability) for a one-night stand than they do for an actual relationship? No way!

One of the (many) things that really pisses me off is when guys go on about how women don’t like them because they’re too nice. I realize that everybody has to tell themselves something to get over rejection that puts the blame on the rejector and off themselves – women do the same thing (“I’m too intimidating/smart/successful”) – but I hate hearing guys go on about how their whole trouble is they’re just too swell for their own good. You know what? Usually “too nice” really means “unattractive and obnoxious.”

Hey, did you hear anything about these girls who had a pregnancy pact? And then, did you hear about how they actually didn’t?:

In short, the actual news item isn’t TODAY’S TEENS ARE SO IRRESPONSIBLE OMG. Rather, it is PREGNANT WOMEN REALLY WANT TO DO THE BEST THING FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR CHILDREN, EVEN WHEN THEY THEMSELVES ARE PRACTICALLY CHILDREN, AND IF YOU REMOVE THE STIGMA AND GIVE THEM SOME ACTUAL FUCKING SUPPORT IT HELPS A LOT. But that doesn’t fit in a headline, and it doesn’t give people an opportunity to feel morally superior.

Apparently, the problem is knocked-up teenagers aren’t being mocked and derided sufficiently anymore:

When the same girl shows up at the school clinic for five pregnancy tests in one month, shouldn’t somebody be mocking her for it? In fact, isn’t promoting shame through mockery our civic duty?

(via Feministing)

Just…wow.

More on keeping daughters in line:

“Authorities allege that Rashid killed his daughter because he feared that her resistance to a recently arranged marriage would disgrace the Pakistani-American family.”

Sounds so simple right? He killed her because his “culture” made him. Not because he might be mentally ill or pathological. There is no denying that in basically every culture there is pressure put on women to act a certain way and especially with regard to marriage or the ownership of her sexuality. But the way that “honor” killing is discussed in the media you would think it is some normal cultural phenomena, when it is not. It is a sign of illness, culture gone awry and patriarchy at its most exaggerated.

Speaking of other cultures, here’s a few utterly sickening photo shoots in which black women are used as props for white models. Can we please, please, please just completely be done with the fashion industry now? Please?

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I didn’t mention Michelle Obama once! If you need your fix, Michelle Obama Watch is a new blog entirely devoted to the subject. (via Feministing)

I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately like this one, about people working toward achieving forgiveness and reconciliation between the victims of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and those who participated in it (who are getting out of prison around this time, and returning to their former communities):

In 1994, the poorer Hutu ethnic majority committed genocide against the wealthier Tutsi ethnic minority, killing almost 1 million people. Since 2005, 50,000 of the killers have been released from prison, and now killers and victims are coming face to face once again.

“It’s unprecedented,” Hinson says. Nine months after her initial trip to Rwanda, Hinson packed up her camera equipment and a crew of four film students with a task she now admits was overwhelming: to tell the story of forgiveness and reconciliation through the victim and the perpetrator.

Yeah, it’s unprecedented – unprecedentedly awful. Here’s this idiot again:

“I had to ask myself again and again, would I forgive? Would I reconcile with somebody who killed my family? And I don’t know that answer,” she says.

Don’t you? I know my answer – fuck no, I wouldn’t reconcile with them! I would consider it a massive, superhuman accomplishment if I could keep myself from killing them. These poor people – having lived through a genocide, they now have to live alongside the perpetrators, and endure morons coming over and urging them all to sit down and talk with each other, as if they are nursery school children who’ve gotten into a spat.

Meanwhile, here’s a much better reaction to genocide:

South Carolina has become the 25th state to adopt a targeted Sudan divestment law that prohibits investing in companies that contribute to genocide in Sudan.

Good job, South Carolina. I hope the other 25 states follow suit.

And over at the G8 convention:

Higher prices are taking a particularly heavy toll on the world’s poor. A World Bank study issued last week said up to 105 million people could drop below the poverty line due to the leap in food prices, including 30 million in Africa. . . .To help cushion the blow, officials said the G8 would unveil a series of measures to help Africa, especially its farmers, and would affirm its commitment to double aid to the world’s poorest continent to $25 billion a year by 2010.

Measures are being unveiled and commitments are being affirmed. Hang in there, world’s poor…

Speaking of, in Mongolia:

While the government’s response to the violence–which included declaring a state of emergency, shutting down media outlets, and deploying troops into the streets–was far from ideal, there are reasons to remain optimistic. For one, the violence appears not to be caused by any inherent flaws in Mongolia’s system, but rather by the unfortunate confluence of economic frustrations and cheap vodka.

Before Samantha Power called Hillary Clinton a monster, she wrote pretty much the book on genocide, which I’ve been forever meaning to get around to reading. Here’s what she says should be done about Zimbabwe:

To start, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should appoint his predecessor, Kofi Annan, fresh from brokering a power-sharing deal for Kenya, as the U.N.’s envoy to Zimbabwe. One by one, those African and Western leaders who claim to be disgusted with Mugabe should announce that they bilaterally recognize the validity of the March 29 first-round election results, which showed the opposition winning 48% to 43%, though the margin was almost surely larger. The countries which do would make up the new “March 29 bloc” within the U.N. and would declare Morgan Tsvangirai the new President of Zimbabwe. They would then announce that Mugabe and the 130 leading cronies who have already been sanctioned by the West will not be permitted entry to their airports.

Tsvangirai and his senior aides should do as South Africa’s African National Congress did throughout the 1960s and ’70s: set up a government-in-exile and appoint ambassadors abroad–including to the U.N. That ambassador should be given forums for rebutting the ludicrous claims of the Zimbabwean and South African regimes.

And here’s Robert Dreyfuss responding in The Nation:

I’d say that Africans’ fears of civil war (and close-to-genocidal bloodletting that could follow) are realistic. And it’s by no means clear that Russia, China, and other world powers who are suspicious of US and Western efforts to topple regimes they don’t like would go along with Samantha Power’s plan. So her plan to carve up the world into “March 29″ countries and “June 27″ countries is a recipe for disaster, and it could result in creating animosity, division, and bloc vs. bloc rivalries that could undermine the possibility of diplomatic solutions for the war in Iraq, the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program, the North Korea issue, and others.

Whoa, whoa! Hear that? Refusing to recognize Mugabe would ruin the world.

On a lighter note, Bush and his team massively insulted PM Berlusconi at the G8 summit yesterday:

The White House had to profusely apologize to Silvio Berlusconi yesterday after it handed out a biography of the Italian prime minister that described him as “a political dilettante who gained high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media.” The WP’s Al Kamen notes that the administration even managed to offend “all of Italy” by describing Berlusconi as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice.” How did this happen? A cut-and-paste problem, of course. Turns out the bio was copied directly from a Web site and, apparently, the White House doesn’t proofread.

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow:

We are witnessing a globalized political whitewash job, with artists and assorted collectors, dealers, and sycophants pouring a thick layer of avant-garde double-talk over the infernal decade of suffering, destruction, and death that Mao unleashed on his country in 1966. And as we are also dealing with the house of mirrors that is the art world, I have no doubt that somebody is ready to explain that I am confusing appropriation with approbation or that fascism is just another way of spelling freedom.

(via 3QD)

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Better, a roundup of art reflecting desolation, worlds without people and post-apocalyptic cityscapes:

This new ruin romanticism is especially evident in the Flooded London imagery, rendered up by Squint/Opera (the firm behind the visualisations for the 2012 Olympic Stadium, via Archinect – what could be the emotional motivation behind their fascination with rendered ruins?). The imagined ruin has always existed – they have been a staple artistic subject for centuries. Only the focus used to be on abandoned civilizations, the perceived hubris of the ancients. In contrast, the virtual ruination of the modern era is self-imposed schadenfreude, with all the damage and joy turned inwards. It is a feeling made universal by the internet, where planning catastrophes and architectural missteps are all lovingly chronicled and catalogued.

When I Am Legend came out, New York was briefly plastered with posters of Will Smith and his dog, walking briskly down a completely empty city street.  Commuters gazed upon the posters with wistful sighs.

Last night, the boy next door who’s been learning guitar, held a little concert just outside my window.  He went through the entire White Album, and his group of friends was very encouraging of his efforts.  If I woke up tomorrow and found myself the last human on Earth, I think I’d be alright with it.  (And I wear contact lenses, so.)

Get disappointed by someone new, indeed. Everyone’s talking about Obama and FISA. TPM has a good summary of his statements on the matter, and how his position has changed:

Viewing his statements, it’s striking how forcefully he argued in the past that the choice between civil liberties and safety is a false one.

Let the disillusionment begin.

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Here, the women of Slate discuss the American Girls line of dolls. The general opinion seems to be that the dolls, while promoting consumerism, are at least an improvement on Barbies and other bubble-headed bimbo lines, what with the AG’s emphasis on historical context and self-sufficient and adventurous characters.

Well! Trust me to crap all over that! Frankly, I think anybody who buys their kid a $90 doll ought to be ashamed of themselves. If that’s too rigid an opinion, I’m sorry, but I can’t fathom how anyone could argue it’s a positive thing to purchase this hugely overpriced luxury line of dolls and doll-related items for their kid. I loved looking at the AG catalog when I was little – I wore holes in it. But even back then, I saved my breath about the possibility of actually getting one. My parents bought me all kinds of dolls and undoubtedly spoiled me toy-wise, but even if we had been billionaires, I doubt they’d have entertained the idea of spending $90 on such a thing.

To be fair, my opinion about the AG dolls is entirely colored by a specific episode in my childhood that left me with a very bad impression of both the dolls and the families who value them. I went to an elementary school in a hugely wealthy neighborhood, and in third grade, one of the most well-off girls in my class invited everyone to her birthday party. The party was at the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, and it was an American Girls doll party. Everyone was to bring their American Girls doll. This ignoring the fact that most kids did not, of course, own an American Girls doll. I brought my little baby doll that probably cost around $12, and I went with my best friend, who was one of two black kids in my grade. I mention this because at the time (and possibly still, for all I know) the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, in the grand tradition of country clubs everywhere, did not offer membership to black people. It was, however, staffed by them.

The party had big tables for the kids, and little tables for the dolls. The table settings matched – there were big dishes, and matching doll dishes. There was real-people food, and matching fake doll food. There were big-girl party favors, and matching tiny doll party favors. The girl hosting the party wore a sailor suit that matched her Samantha doll’s sailor suit. I wasn’t really friends with anybody at the party, other than my best friend. And I don’t remember much about it, other than that the (exclusively black) men in butler outfits waiting on us were required to go around and pour air tea for the dolls.

I shit you not.

You know, to each their own and all that, but personally, I don’t want to have anything to do with anybody who is even remotely a part of the world I observed that day. Because of this experience, the AG dolls have become a sort of symbol of extravagance and snobbery to me, and as a result, I don’t think much of them, or mothers who think they’re precious (I’m disappointed Michelle Obama is one of them). Samantha may be promoting a more positive message than Barbie, but it’s entirely possible the little girl who threw that party resembles nobody so much as Barbie in her adulthood. The “message” is lost (because the message is beside the point); the consumerism, however, finds its intended audience.

Massively overpriced consumer items have one purpose, and one purpose only – to create and encourage desire and greed (in part by establishing themselves as status symbols: the enjoyment of having a $90 doll depends upon other girls having $12 ones – how else do you know yours is worth $90?), and to profit from it. Period. I don’t care if the dolls are a line of miniature Susan B. Anthonys and Betty Friedans – there is nothing progressively feminist about encouraging your daughter’s desire for a ridiculously high-priced doll and its accompanying outfits, accessories and furnitures.

Rawr! My daughter will have a flour sack with a face drawn on it for a doll, and she’ll damn well like it!