[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Extra Credit
Shaker GoldFishy just emailed the following question to me, which I am posting with his permission since I don't have the answer (and am now curious for the answer, too!):
I'm sure there's a term for an instance where one hears/reads the same somewhat unusual word multiple times in short order (hearing the word "perseverate" three times in one day, for instance…). Do you happen to know what it is?I'm fairly certain I've actually heard the word/phrase for this particular type of coincidence before, but I can't call it to mind.
Shakers?
2012
Rudy Giuliani Considering Second White House Run.
Absolutely.
Bachmann for President? 'I'm Going to Iowa – There's Your Answer'.
Yup.
This is all going to go great.
Daily Dose of Cute
This is an old video, shot in 2004, the day we brought Olivia home, or maybe the day after:
[Video Description: Olivia, then a tiny kitten, hops all around a cardboard animal carrier, sticking her paws in the air-holes and generally being annoying. After a few moments, while Livs isn't paying attention, Matilda sneaks out one side of the box, in which she'd been hiding, and slinks away undetected.]
For those who don't know the story, Olivia came to us one morning on our way to work, many years ago when Iain and I worked at the same place. I was driving that morning, and, as is not unusual in our exurban area, we were following a truck towing a big piece of farm equipment.
Halfway to work, two kittens tumbled off the trailer. One ran off like a shot into the field abutting the road. The other ran under our car, and I felt the dull thud as a rear wheel ran over it, killing it. Tears. I was driving and sobbing; Iain was reassuring me it wasn't my fault.
We turned from the country road onto the highway, and had just accelerated to full speed when a third kitten came flying off the trailer, hitting the pavement and bouncing back into the air before landing in the verge. I pulled over and Iain ran into the long grass and collected the wee thing, running back to the car clutching her against his chest. His sweater was covered in blood.
I drove to our vet. The little grey kitten's paws were scraped and her chin was badly hurt. We left her in their capable hands and went to work.
At the end of the day, we went to the vet to check on the kitten and pay the bill. We didn't intend to adopt her. They told us she'd come through her surgery fine; they'd given her a chin implant to replace the smooshed bone, stitched her up, and, when she'd come to, she immediately went to her bowl and started munching on hard food like nothing had happened. When we arrived, she gave us this look, like, "Hey! I remember you! Whuzzup?!" She was a character. We couldn't let her go.
We took her home and cleaned her up. Turns out she was white under all that dirt.
Iain noted that she'd had a rather Dickensian start, being a filthy little orphan and all. I proposed calling her Olivia Twist.
"Got any treats?"
Number of the Day
43.2 Million: The number of Usians receiving food stamps.
The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 43.2 million in October as the jobless rate stayed near a 27-year high, the government said.Let them eat
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 15 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.7 percent from September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a statement on its website. Participation has set records for 23 straight months.
Film Corner
[Trigger warning for misogyny, dehumanization, implied violence.]
So, Jennifer Aniston is in yet another movie evidently produced by Backlash Productions: Just Go With It, an "an uncredited remake" of Cactus Flower, is the story of a man [Adam Sandler] who "enlists the help of a woman and her kids to land the woman of his dreams."
Gee, let me guess: His co-conspirator turns out to be the REAL woman of his dreams. Negative one billion biebers for hackiness and predictability.
If only hackiness and predictability were the only problems with virtually every Jennifer Aniston film ever. Nope. Bring on the anti-feminism!
Below the fold (in most browsers) is the first poster released in support of the film.
Here, we see Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler sitting on the beach fist-bumping each other, sealing the deal in which she'll help him "land the woman of his dreams." In the background, her bikini-clad back turned to the camera, is, presumably, said dream woman.
But take a closer look at the way their fists are positioned as they bump. Shaker Eileen notes via email: "They appear to be about to pull apart the model's legs, like a turkey wishbone. This might take some kind of prize as the subtlest version of violence against women in movie posters that I've ever seen, but it still definitely suggests a violent act."
This is not a coincidence. The entire premise of the movie is that Sandler has enlisted Aniston's help to get laid, and here is the visual representation of the two of them working together to pry apart a woman's legs.
Ghastly.
Not to let Adam Sandler off the hook, he not only stars in the film, but serves as a producer. (Happy Madison Productions is also responsible for such gems as the Deuce Bigalow series, The House Bunny, and The Hot Chick.) One would have hoped that after he had two daughters, he'd be interested in making films that aren't steeped in violent misogyny, but apparently not!
Jennifer Aniston (and Adam Sandler, for that matter) can afford to not care about perpetuating a culture of inequality and violence against women. But I've gotten about a dozen violent threats this week alone—more violent threats than donations. What am I supposed to do? What are all the women like me supposed to do? The women who can't afford the best private security money can buy...?
Aniston can afford to not care about that, too, I guess.
[Previously in Jennifer Aniston is the Worst: Shouldn't What's Best for Your Uterus Really Be Left to a Man to Decide?, That's Entertainment!, Sigh, Texting! With Liss and Deeky!, Quote of the Day, Film Corner!, Great News from the S.S. Sarcasm, Insert the Sound of Wild Laughter Here.]
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Romantic films put too much pressure on guys?
It's hard to pick what the worst quote of the piece is, but I'm gonna go with this one:
"Molten," apparently a very fastidious fellow, wrote that he would have answered, "Yes, if you will clean it from floor to roof and wall to wall every day for the rest of your life."Fastidious. Misogynist. Tomato. Tomahto.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky W. Gashlycrumb's newest fragrance, Buttered Popcorn for homme.
Recommended Reading:
rikyrah: One Day In, and the GOP is Already Disenfranchising People of Color
Sady: Why I Didn't Delete Tiger Beatdown [TW for sexual violence, threats, harassment]
Charli: Actually, We Don't Know How Many Civilians Are Dying in Drone Strikes.
Joel: The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller [TW for suicide and sexual violence; this link is extremely difficult to read, but important. More on Bill here.]
scatx: Oh, Science – What's Your Point?
Andy: GLBT History Museum Opens in San Francisco's Castro District
Renee: Zora Neale Hurston Biography
Strumpet: 32nd Down Under Feminists Carnival
Leave your links in comments...
Ugh, Joe Biden, Shut Up
During the Congressional swearing-in ceremony, Vice President Joe Biden was on hand to greet new members and pose for pictures and other stand-here-and-smile-and-hope-the-president-doesn't-die duties, and every time a daughter, niece, grand-daughter, or whatever young female relation was introduced to him, he made the same joke: "No dates/no men until you're 30." Har har.
[Video Description: Just scene after scene of Vice President Joe Biden meeting little girls and young women, and saying some variation on "No dates/men until you're 30," followed by family members laughing politely.]
Apart from the fact that Biden's a hack, and a hetercentrist hack at that, and the fact that there is a distinct (and creepy) difference between making that horrible garbage joke to a little girl and a woman who is in her 20s (especially while you're sort of leering at her? ew), I can't even begin to put into sufficiently contemptuous words how NOT the job of the Vice President of the United States of America it is to even jokingly be the hall monitor of young women's sexuality.
That Joe Biden loves to make sexist jokes (and express his sexism in other ways, ahem) is not news, which is why he shouldn't have been made vice president. But of course treating women as less than isn't a disqualifying characteristic for the executive branch.
Being a woman is.
I Love the Smell of Corporatocracy in the Morning
President Revs Up Campaign to Make Peace With Business:
The appointment of Mr. Daley begins a reshuffle of the senior White House staff that is expected to bring more business experience into the president's inner circle, administration officials say."Where "the American people" equals Wall Street executives.
...The president has been reaching out directly to U.S. companies, meeting with 20 chief executives last month to ask for ideas on policies that would inspire them to invest and hire. And on Feb. 7, Mr. Obama will cross Lafayette Park from the White House to the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, his longtime political nemesis, to discuss working together on job creation.
"The administration took some positive steps recently, striking a bipartisan agreement to extend current tax rates, moving the ball forward on the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement, and reaching out to the business community," says Thomas J. Donohue, the chamber's president. "We're not going to agree on everything, but there's a lot we can get done for the American people."
Meanwhile, Obama is also set to name Gene Sperling as director of the National Economic Council. I like Sperling: He was Clinton's chief economic advisor during her campaign, and he helped run an international charitable project designed to assist women in developing countries start and run their own businesses.
The catch is that the helped run it for Goldman Sachs, and got $800,000 for his services. He's also made about $200,000 in the past few years as a speaker for various Wall Street firms.
As much as I like Sperling for some reasons, appointing him to head the NEC isn't a move that dissuades the appearance that Obama's administration is too enmeshed with Wall Street financial firms and the banks. I don't believe there's no one in the nation who's got the same talents at Sperling but doesn't have what ought rightly to be considered a conflict of interest re: ties to Wall Street.
Also: Sperling's had the job before. He headed the NEC from '96-'00 under Clinton. Ezra Klein notes:
Obama's personnel decisions have shown a strong preference for prior government experience. William Daley, who was named chief of staff earlier today, is a former Secretary of Commerce. Jack Lew, who replaced Peter Orszag as head of the Office of Management and Budget, held the same position under President Clinton. Robert Gates, who leads the Defense Department, was a holdover from George W. Bush. Larry Summers, who Sperling is replacing, was Treasury Secretary under Clinton. And the list goes on. Expectations that Obama would begin to turn to people whose primary experience was outside government have not, thus far, been borne out in his staff shakeup.Hope and change looks more and more like the same old shit.
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Dudley tries to figure out how to play with a new toy, which was a gift from Nana Shakes. He's not sure what to do, so he'll just take a nap and figure it out later.
Your Corporatocracy Has Arrived
So, Obama has chosen Bill Daley as his new chief of staff.
Who's Bill Daley, you may ask? Oh, he's just "a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, where he is paid as much as $5 million a year and supervises the Washington lobbying efforts for the nation's second-largest bank. William M. Daley also serves on the board of directors at Boeing, the giant defense contractor, and Abbott Laboratories, the global drug company, which has billions of dollars at stake in the overhaul of the health care system," succinctly explains the New York Times, in their piece titled "Business Background Defines Chief of Staff."
Here in Chicagoland, we also know him as Mayor Richard Daley's brother. Depending on who you ask, being from the Daley political dynasty is either a recommendation of greatness or, um, the opposite. Plus 3/8ths pure evil.
I suppose the same thing can be said about Daley's coziness with Corporate America. Depends on who you ask whether that's a good thing.
The president thinks so.
Well. It's not the first time we disagree on something, now is it?
Further Reading: Digby, D-Day, Ezra, Greg.
Meet Tzvika the Turtle
A veterinarian places Tzvika, an injured female turtle, on a carpet at the Wildlife Hospital in the Ramat Gan Safari near Tel Aviv January 5, 2011. Now she's a cyborg turtle.
About two months ago Tzvika was run over by a lawn mower, suffering severe damage to her shell and a spinal injury that affected her ability to use her rear limbs. The wheels, attached by veterinarians at the Safari, elevate the turtle to keep the shell from being worn down and enable her to walk.
More here.
This story has a particular sweetness to it for me...
When I was a kid, my granddad, who lived in Queens and had a backyard the size of a postage stamp, had two pet box turtles for whom that postage stamp was a majestic kingdom. Tommy and Matthew. They'd lived there since my mom went off to university, maybe before. When Grandpa died, they were relocated to Indiana to stay with us, where they lived an indoor life, since we didn't have a fenced-in yard.
Tommy made his escape one day while Mama Shakes was gardening. A creek ran behind the neighborhood; it was there, we figured, he made his new home.
Matthew didn't seem to have any desire to leave his cushy life, where he didn't even have to do tricks or expend any effort to attain a steady diet of raw hamburger, fruit, and other goodies. But he did wander in the road one day, where he was hit by a car.
He was still alive, but a fucking mess. Mama Shakes scooped him out of the road to take him to the vet. My father gently suggested that maybe the best thing would be to put Matthew out of his misery. "I HAVE KNOWN THIS TURTLE LONGER THAN YOU!" she shrieked, terrifying and exhilarating me in equal measure.
The vet humored her. Wounds were cleaned and stitched. Matthew's shell, shattered into thirteen different pieces, was put back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and covered with some sort of clear, glistening epoxy to hold it all together. He was given fluids and drugs, to make him comfortable.
Matthew's back was broken. His back legs didn't work any more. The vet expected him to die.
But Matthew rested and healed. And then he scootched himself over to his bowl with his front legs, and carried on with life just as he had before. The vet said, "If I'd have thought for a second he'd survive, I would have taken a before picture!"
We took Matthew home, where he lived out the rest of his days, in shiny-shelled bliss.
Weapon of War
[Trigger warning for sexual violence on a mass scale.]
One of the most heinous expressions of a rape culture is the use of rape as a weapon of war—and, as has been previously discussed here, the prevalence and intensity of ongoing, endemic sexual violence against women in Congo has been described as the worst in the world. Hundreds of thousands of women have reportedly been raped in Congo, with sexual violence so widespread that Doctors Without Borders has said "that 75% of all the rape cases it deals with worldwide are in eastern Congo."
In August, a mass rape was reported in the town of Luvungi, during which hundreds of women were raped by rebels over the course of four days.
And now it has happened again: "Dozens of women were raped in a coordinated attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo on New Year's Day, Doctors Without Borders said Thursday."
The humanitarian agency said 33 women were raped in Fizi, South Kivu, in the eastern part of the war-torn country.5,600 survivors of rape.
"Women had been restrained with ropes or beaten unconscious with the butt of a gun before being attacked, some in front of their children," said Annemarie Loof, an official with the agency, commonly known by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres.
..."MSF is extremely concerned about the current situation in and around Fizi," Loof said Thursday. "People are fleeing the area fearing further violent attacks."
The agency provided medical and psychosocial care for 5,600 rape victims in North and South Kivu in 2009, it said.
Once again, I will advocate donating to Doctors Without Borders, who are doing such good and necessary work in places where rape is devastating entire populations of women and children.
Over the past few days, there have been an alarming number of stories about birds falling out of the sky and fish dying in large numbers, and I am seeing references to these stories everywhere. And that's understandable; I don't mean to suggest it isn't, because I'm interested in those stories, too.
But women are being raped in mass numbers in Haiti and DR Congo, day after day after day after goddamned day, and that has somehow failed to capture the interest of the global community in the way dead birds and fish has.
Which troubles me.
To put it mildly.
I'm not suggesting it has to be an either-or situation; I believe humans are capable of holding multiple thoughts in their heads, of caring about multiple issues simultaneously. We are multitaskers, we humans. Built that way.
I'm just saying I would like the women of Haiti and DR Congo to get at least as much attention, fuck, even half the amount of alarm, that dead birds and fish are getting.
These women matter. Their lives matter. Their health and safety and right to live a life free from the constant threat of brutal rape as the daily business of war matter.
Contact the State Department. Contact your Senators. Contact your Representative. (If you're not in the US, please feel welcome to leave links for contacting MPs or other government officials in other countries in comments.) Make your voice heard. Tell them you are thinking about the women in Haiti and DR Congo. Tell everyone you can that these women matter. Mattering is the only way they will ever be safe. Our teaspoons have to be our weapon of war against rape.[Previously on the DR Congo Rape Epidemic: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten.]
"An elaborate fraud"
In completely unsurprising news, discredited and disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield has been found, apparently more conclusively, to be a liar. For those who do not know who Wakefield is, he is the man who set off the vaccine scare by linking the MMR vaccine to causing autism. Back in May of last year, he was stripped of his medical credentials. To recall:
In making the verdict on the sanctions, Dr Surendra Kumar, the panel's chairman, said Dr Wakefield had "brought the medical profession into disrepute" and his behaviour constituted "multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct".That was the result after the General Medical Council found that he had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his research and "with callous disregard" for the children he conducted research on.
In total, he was found guilty of more than 30 charges.
Now, an investigative (not clinical) piece published in the British Medical Journal has elaborated on the Council's point by further exposing Wakefield:
An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study -- and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible.In 2005, Wakefield founded an autism clinic in Texas (where he earned a $270K/year salary). He resigned after the Medical Council found him guilty (but before they stripped him of his credentials). As per usual, Wakefield is insisting he's innocent and that all of this is a witch hunt designed to quell anyone who questions vaccine safety.
"It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor-in-chief, told CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."
[...]
"But perhaps as important as the scare's effect on infectious disease is the energy, emotion and money that have been diverted away from efforts to understand the real causes of autism and how to help children and families who live with it," the BMJ editorial states.
Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose. After years on controversy, the Lancet, the prestigious journal that originally published the research, retracted Wakefield's paper last February.
The series of articles launched Wednesday are investigative journalism, not results of a clinical study. The writer, Brian Deer, said Wakefield "chiseled" the data before him, "falsifying medical histories of children and essentially concocting a picture, which was the picture he was contracted to find by lawyers hoping to sue vaccine manufacturers and to create a vaccine scare."
According to BMJ, Wakefield received more than 435,000 pounds ($674,000) from the lawyers. Godlee said the study shows that of the 12 cases Wakefield examined in his paper, five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine and three never had autism.
"It's always hard to explain fraud and where it affects people to lie in science," Godlee said. "But it does seem a financial motive was underlying this, both in terms of payments by lawyers and through legal aid grants that he received but also through financial schemes that he hoped would benefit him through diagnostic and other tests for autism and MMR-related issues."
A witch hunt, eh? Once again, let's review.
In 1998 a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published an article in the respected medical journal The Lancet. He did intestinal biopsies via colonoscopy on 12 children with intestinal symptoms and developmental disorders, 10 of whom were autistic, and found a pattern of intestinal inflammation. The parents of 8 of the autistic children thought they had developed their autistic symptoms right after they got the MMR vaccine. The published paper stated clearly: “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.”Witch hunt. Sure. He'll be on Anderson Cooper tonight, vainly attempting to cover his ass.
Despite this disclaimer, Wakefield immediately held a press conference to say the MMR vaccine probably caused autism and to recommend stopping MMR injections. Instead, he recommended giving the 3 individual components separately at intervals of a year or more.[...]
Wakefield’s data was later discredited (more about that later) but even if it had been right, it wouldn’t have been good science. To show that intestinal inflammation is linked to autism, you would have to compare the rate in autistic children to the rate in non-autistic children. Wakefield used no controls. To implicate the MMR vaccine, you would have to show that the rate of autism was greater in children who got the vaccine and verify that autism developed after the shot. Wakefield made no attempt to do that.
His thinking was fanciful and full of assumptions. He hypothesized that measles virus damaged the intestinal wall, that the bowel then leaked some unidentified protein, and that said protein went to the brain and somehow caused autism. There was no good rationale for separating and delaying the components, because if measles was the culprit, wouldn’t one expect it to cause the same harm when given individually? As one of his critics pointed out: “Single vaccines, spaced a year apart, clearly expose children to greater risk of infection, as well as additional distress and expense, and no evidence had been produced upon which to adopt such a policy.”
Wakefield had been involved in questionable research before. He published a study in 1993 where he allegedly found measles RNA in intestinal biopsies from patients with Crohn’s disease (an inflammatory bowel disease). He claimed that natural measles infections and measles vaccines were the cause of that disease. Others tried to replicate his findings and couldn’t. No one else could find measles RNA in Crohn’s patients; they determined that Crohn’s patients were no more likely to have had measles than other patients, and people who had had MMR vaccines were no more likely to develop Crohn’s. Wakefield had to admit he was wrong, and in 1998 he published another paper entitled “Measles RNA Is Not Detected in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” In a related incident, at a national meeting he stated that Crohn’s patients had higher levels of measles antibody in their blood. An audience member said that was not true — he knew because he was the one who had personally done the blood tests Wakefield was referring to. Wakefield was forced to back down.
In 2002, Wakefield published another paper showing that measles RNA had been detected in intestinal biopsies of patients with bowel disease and developmental disorders. The tests were done at Unigenetics lab. Actually, Wakefield’s own lab had looked for measles RNA in the patients in the 1998 study. His research assistant, Nicholas Chadwick, later testified that he had been present in the operating room when intestinal biopsies and spinal fluid samples were obtained and had personally tested all the samples for RNA with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The results were all negative, and he testified that Wakefield knew the results were negative when he submitted his paper to The Lancet. Chadwick had asked that his name be taken off the paper. So the statement in the paper that “virologic studies were underway” was misleading. Virologic studies had already been done in Wakefield’s own lab and were negative. Wakefield was dissatisfied with those results and went to Unigenetics hoping for a different answer.
Soon Wakefield’s credibility started to dissolve. The Lancet retracted his paper. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described the original paper as “fatally flawed” and apologized for publishing it. [...]
Attempts to replicate Wakefield’s study all failed. Other studies showed that the detection of measles virus was no greater in autistics, that the rate of intestinal disease was no greater in autistics, that there was no correlation between MMR and autism onset, and that there was no correlation between MMR and autism, period.
In 2001 the Royal Free Hospital asked Wakefield to resign. In 2003, Brian Deer began an extensive investigation6 leading to an exposé in the The Sunday Times and on British television. In 2005 the General Medical Council (the British equivalent of state medical licensing boards in the U.S.) charged Wakefield with several counts of professional misconduct.
One disturbing revelation followed another. They discovered that two years before his study was published, Wakefield had been approached by a lawyer representing several families with autistic children. The lawyer specifically hired Wakefield to do research to find justification for a class action suit against MMR manufacturers. The children of the lawyer’s clients were referred to Wakefield for the study, and 11 of his 12 subjects were eventually litigants. Wakefield failed to disclose this conflict of interest. He also failed to disclose how the subjects were recruited for his study.
Wakefield was paid a total of nearly half a million pounds plus expenses by the lawyer. The payments were billed through a company of Wakefield’s wife. He never declared his source of funding until it was revealed by Brian Deer. Originally he had denied being paid at all. Even after he admitted it, he lied about the amount he was paid. Before the study was published, Wakefield had filed patents for his own separate measles vaccine, as well as other autism-related products. He failed to disclose this significant conflict of interest. Human research must be approved by the hospital’s ethics committee. Wakefield’s study was not approved. When confronted, Wakefield first claimed that it was approved, then claimed he didn’t need approval. Wakefield bought blood samples for his research from children (as young as 4) attending his son’s birthday party. He callously joked in public about them crying, fainting and vomiting. He paid the kids £5 each.
The General Medical Council accused him of ordering invasive and potentially harmful studies (colonoscopies and spinal taps) without proper approval and contrary to the children’s clinical interests, when these diagnostic tests were not indicated by the children’s symptoms or medical history. One child suffered multiple bowel perforations during the colonoscopy. Several had problems with the anesthetic. Children were subjected to sedation for other non-indicated tests like MRIs. Brian Deer was able to access the medical records of Wakefield’s subjects. He found that several of them had evidence of autistic symptoms documented in their medical records before they got the MMR vaccine. The intestinal biopsies were originally reported as normal by hospital pathologists. They were reviewed, re-interpreted, and reported as abnormal in Wakefield’s paper.
[While the post is about Andrew Wakefield, it's inevitable that the conversation in comments will also include the topic of vaccinations in-general. Thus, we have some commenting guidelines on this one: We realize there are varying views on vaccines among Shakers, and no opinion is off-limits in the discussion, but we request that people make sure they are using "I" language to express those opinions and not making sweeping generalizations. Let's keep this a civil conversation, please.]
Piers Morgan is a Man's Man, Man.
[Trigger warning for violence, homophobia]
There was a time when I confused the Cable News Network with some sort of gay ladies' tea party. [Hey! That gives me an idea...] That was before the release of CNN2: The Repiersing. (This Time it's Piersonal.):
[A screen capture of CNN.com, featuring teasers that "Piers Morgan can take a punch", and "Morgan makes famous people cry", along with a helpful reminder that Piers Morgan is CNN's newest talk show host.]
I don't get it. Am I supposed to trust Piers Morgan because he's a bully, or am I merely supposed to tune in for my one-and-only chance to see potentially violent hyper-masculinity?
As Liss pointed out, folks at CNN might be worried that Americans "won't be able to distinguish between 'British' and 'Big Fag'", hence the awesome new campaign.
Speaking of the word "awesome" and queer Brits, you know what I would pay money to see? Eddie Izzard interviewing a fucking squirrel. CNN? That would be, like, a hundred billion hot dogs of awesome.
Haiti One Year Later
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
Back in June, I mentioned an article in the New York Times that detailed how Haiti, in the aftermath of its devastating earthquake, had become what Malya Villard, the director of grass-roots survivor support org Kofaviv, described as "an ideal climate for rape."
Today, MSNBC reports:
A year after Haiti's devastating earthquake, women in Haiti's still-teeming tent cities face yet another threat: sexual violence. With little protection from community or law enforcement, many have been violently raped, only to become pregnant with their attackers' children.There aren't sufficient words to convey my rage and sadness.
Photojournalist Nadav Neuhaus traveled through Haiti's tent cities last summer, photographing and interviewing dozens of residents in the camps that still house more than 1 million people. During a visit to Camp La Piste, home to 50,000 displaced people, Neuhaus noticed an unusually high number of pregnant women. A community organizer and a local midwife confirmed his worries: Many of the women were pregnant as a result of rape.
...Fueled in part by these sexual attacks, the birth rate in Haiti has tripled since the quake, climbing from 4 percent to 12 percent, according to population experts.
Most women told Neuhaus they don't report the rapes, either out of shame or fear of repercussions. Even if they wanted to report the crimes, there's little help in a country where police and justice systems are destroyed or distracted and where resources for the powerless are almost non-existent.
In June, I also noted that Doctors Without Borders is treating survivors of brutal sexual assaults in Haiti. They provide "antibiotics for sexually transmitted diseases, anti-HIV treatment, pills for vaginitis, and over-the-counter painkillers," and, naturally, they are providing treatment to infants born in terrible conditions. You can donate to Doctors Without Borders here.
Top Chef Open Thread
[Image from a recent episode: Cheftestant Richard does some shit with nitrogen. For some reason.]
Last night's episode will be julienned in detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, pack your knives and go...
I Write Letters
Dear English-Speaking World:
I am officially requesting cessation of use of the truly abominable phrase "Man Up."
It is contemptible on so many levels that I would hardly know where to begin, had I the remotest inclination to explain everything that's wrong with it. Luckily, I don't. Suffice it to say, it sucks.
Please discontinue use effectively immediately.
With Womanly Regards,
Liss
Dude...
The $380 million jackpot was won last night in the Mega Millions lottery. Two lucky (maybe) ticket holders with the winning numbers (4, 8, 15, 25 and 47, with the Mega ball number of 42) will split the prize.
And approximately 16,234 Lost nerds will be queueing up to collect about $150 each.
Question of the Day
What's the best piece of career advice you've ever gotten?
Many years ago, while working in a corporate office not long after graduating college, I was complaining bitterly to my dad about my boss, whom I liked, but often made very foolish management decisions, especially with regard to employee morale. Like, monumentally foolish decisions, which would result in a wave of resignations or some other stafftastrophe, grim inevitabilities that were glaringly evident to everyone else from ten miles away.
I finished my rant about the latest terrible example, and how my boss had failed to listen to my warning about the inexorable dire outcome—I was so frustrated; why didn't my boss ever see the obvious?!—and my dad very calmly said to me, "Listen, you're probably going to be smarter than everyone you work for your whole life. You might as well reconcile yourself to that fact now so you don't spend your entire career constantly annoyed by it."
He just said it matter-of-factly, between bites of his dinner, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, but it a revelation to me. I might be smarter than the person who employs me. Shit.
That advice seriously lowered my stress level for many years, for all the years until I became my own boss.
Daily Dose of Cute
Two-dimensional Dudley.
Mysterious Sophie.
Sleepy Olivia.
Regal Matilda.
Quote of the Day
"It's all cut-and-dry identity politics. 'Is he straight or is he gay?' Or, 'This is your third gay movie—come out already!' And all based on, gay or straight, based on the idea that your object of affection decides your sexuality. There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys. And there are also lots of other aspects about these characters that I'm interested in, in addition to their sexuality. So, in some ways it's coincidental, in other ways it's not. I mean, I've played a gay man who's living in the '60s and '70s, a gay man who we depicted in the '50s, and one being in the '20s. And those were all periods when to be gay, at least being gay in public, was much more difficult. Part of what I'm interested in is how these people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition. Or, you know what, maybe I'm just gay."—Actor James Franco, who, despite his fat hatred, of which I (perhaps foolishly) believe he could be cured with a thoughtful conversation given his open-mindedness to other ideas, I really kind of like quite a lot.
[You May Also Enjoy: James Franco makes out with himself in a mirror.]
Sic Transit Space Station
A telescope captured the International Space Station as it passed in front of the sun during a partial eclipse yesterday.
It took less than a second for the transit to occur.
From Thierry Legault.
Today in Feminist Rape Apologia
[Trigger warning for sexual assault, rape apologia.]
Feminist Naomi Wolf has written a piece arguing that the women accusing Julian Assange of sexual assault ought to be named.
(The headline says they "deserve" to be named, which is certainly an interesting word choice; as a contributor to Comment is Free, however, I know that it was not a choice made by Wolf. I'm extremely curious to know which editor inserted that particular bit of vituperative judgment into the headline.)
There is so much wrong with Wolf's piece that I could literally spend the next three hours deconstructing and rebutting it, but that is time I'm simply not willing to invest responding to a concern troll.
I'll simply note that her premise is intrinsically flawed as it's based on the erroneous assumption that we shield accusers because of some antiquated notion that rape is shameful. We do not. We shield accusers because survivors are routinely revictimized by rape apologists.
If Wolf's got a problem with the fact that we need to protect the anonymity of people (not just women, by the way) who allege sexual violence, then she needs to take it up with the jackbooted enforcers of the rape culture who pour out of the woodwork to try to silence rape victims every time one of them has the temerity to speak.
And as for her contention that treating rape as shameful and its survivors as "damaged goods" has gone the way of whalebone, I encourage Wolf to spend some time speaking to raped daughters of Good Christians (just for a start) and see how many of them, of us, feel the shame of parents' silence—and, fuck, visible disappointment—wrapped tight around their midsections like a whalebone corset that will never go away.
[I will continue tweeting other reactions to this piece.]
Photo of the Day
Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (in blue) hands the speaker's gavel to incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) after Boehner was elected Speaker on the opening day of the 112th United States Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 5, 2011. [Reuters Pictures]Sob.
And if that isn't enough to make your barf bieberous chunks, get a load of this pic of Boeher puckering up to plant one on Pelosi. Eugh.
[Commenting Guidelines: No making fun of Boehner's name, tan, or crying.]
Vanderfeelings
Actor James Van Der Beek sits at a desk, typing on a laptop. He looks up at the camera, then begins to speak. Hi, I'm actor James Van Der Beek. If you're under the age of 20, odds are good you know me best from a five-second clip of me crying that's circulating the internet. Infamous gif appears. Yep, that's me on "Dawson's Creek" in a scene with Katie Holmes, where her character dumps mine. You know, the more I saw it in internet comment sections mocking the sadness of others, the more I realized what he internet was really demanding: More intense emotional close-ups of my face.Happy, obviously. With a dash of eyebrow string dancer.
So, I started a website! You can find short clips of me emoting dozens of other feelings at jamesvandermemes.com. The original clip is still there, of course, BUT digitally restored and remastered.
But what if you're not sad? What if you just watched an adorable cat video and you're giddy to share it? Post my new "happy" clip in the comment window to show everyone just how elated you are. "Happy" gif appears. Sometimes you need a good eyeroll to go with the latest Lindsay Lohan story. "LiLo Eye roll" gif appears. Things getting uncomfortable on your friend's blog? No bette way to say, "Awwwkwaaard!" than with this clip. "Awkward" gif appears.
We've got dozens of intense emotional clips fitting for any internet post. There's "Mild Sadness," "Super Sad Sobbing," "10 Year Anniversary Crying Edition," "Sheer Panic," "Nostalgia," "Double Take," "Eager Beaver," "Dramatic Dawson," "The O-Face"—that's for you, ladies—and many, many more.
Long on to jamesvandermemes.com today, and show the world what kind of vanderfeeling YOU'RE having.
UPDATE: Please see warning in comments about other content at external site.
$43 Million
Pop Quiz!
The state of Kentucky/Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority has given preliminary approval for $43 million in tax incentives to be used to fund _________?
If you said: "Ark Encounter, the theme park that is all about how people and dinosaurs lived together in the mesolithic (or is it neolithic) time based on particular biblical interpretations." -- you win 10,000 clams*.
On Dec. 20 the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority gave preliminary approval for up to $43 million in tax incentives to help fund an attraction in Grant County based on the Genesis story of Noah's ark.Apparently an economic analysis has to be done--by an independent group and paid for by the developer--before final approval is given. It has to meet certain criteria as set out by a '96 tourism law. Ok. Tourism and jobs = important. Understandable. But. But. Seriously now. This apparently is a really out there suggestion, so prepare yourself: there might be other things that Kentucky might want to focus on that $43 million worth of incentives could help. Things which are not religious-based, anti-science propaganda. Just maybe.
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear is an enthusiastic supporter of Ark Encounter, the 800-acre park that will tell how men and dinosaurs co-existed less than 10,000 years ago according to one interpretation of biblical texts.
Ark Encounter is the brain child of Answers in Genesis, the Christian organization behind the Creation Museum, a popular creationist-oriented destination in the state. The developer says the park will generate 900 jobs and 1.9 million tourists a year. Taxpayers will be on the hook for 25 percent of the total cost, but only after the park is finished and begins to reach its performance goals.
*clams are the currency of Bedrock
RIP Judy Bonds
Environmental justice activist Judy Bonds has passed away at the age of 58.
The WaPo has an excellent obit:
"A coalfields native who scraped by working in restaurants and convenience stores, Ms. Bonds was equivocal about the risks of mining until the 1990s, when the A.T. Massey Coal Co. arrived in Marfork hollow, one of the narrow, green valleys that wind through the Appalachian Mountains in southern West Virginia."
"Massey had planned a dam farther up Marfork hollow - an impoundment that would hold millions of gallons of coal sludge. Her family would be in danger if the dam failed, and such dams had failed before - including in 1972 at Buffalo Creek, W.Va., where 125 people were killed in the toxic flood."
"When she heard her grandson concocting escape plans in the event of a dam break, Ms. Bonds - the last holdout in Marfork - knew that it was time to move and time to call attention to the threats of mountaintop mining to clean air, clean water and the Appalachian way of life."
"'If coal is so good for us hillbillies,' she said at a 2008 Appalachian Studies Association conference, 'then why are we so poor?'"
My condolences to all who knew Judy, including her compatriots at Coal River Mountain Watch.
How Odd, Part 20 in an Ongoing Series
[Trigger warning for transphobia and diminishing the gravity of sexual assault.]
So I'm looking at Yahoo's News Photos page, and discover the below strip featuring the top photos in the "Odd News" section, which, as I have written many times previously, typically includes content that equates gender-based violence with stories of water-skiing squirrels or other inane crap:
On the left, an image of what appears to be a female midwife's hand examining the belly of a pregnant woman (likely in labor), which is being used to represent the following story: "A Finnish doctor who said he sucked a patient's nipple in line with an old midwives' diagnostic trick has been fined for subjecting the 20-year-old woman to a 'sexual act', a court said Wednesday."
That story is neither "odd" in the sense that it's rare (sexual abuse of patients by doctors is not, unfortunately, uncommon), nor in the sense that it's quirky or amusing. It doesn't belong in the Odd News at all, no less with this image.
In the middle, pictures about picnicking with a polar bear and potty-training pigs.
On the right, an image of the male and female gender symbols, which is being used to represent a story about a couple who are trans, one of whose daughters is also trans. The actual article is headlined: It's in the genes, suggests Czech transsexual 'family'. Scare quotes original, obviously.
This is the detritus of our continued marginalization. Being sexually assaulted is kooky. People who are trans are zany. Just so much fodder for the "Odd News."
And naturally anyone who objects is just looking for something to get mad about, just another hysteric who's too sensitive for a cruel world.
But I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous.
And I'm also clever enough to know that it is the pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable little things that create the foundations of the rape culture and institutional transphobia on which the big stuff is dependent for its survival. It's the little things, the constant drumbeat of inequality and objectification, that inure us to increasingly horrible acts and attitudes perpetrated against marginalized people.
Irrespective of intent, the recommendation to "ignore the little stuff," so often intertwined with accusations of looking for things about which to get offended, is not just ill-advised, but counter to the ultimate goal of full equality. The little stuff, like the Odd News, is the fertile soil in which everything else takes root and from whence everything else springs, the way that fundamental ideas like sexual assault is funny and people who are trans are less than are conveyed over and over and over again.
I object to that.
Asking me to not care is to ask me to participate in my own marginalization and the marginalization of people I love, which I am unwilling to do.
[How Odd: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen.]
Alternate Reality Newz
Yesterday, NPR ran two stories on the spectacle that is the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.
My favorite part was the sound bite from Jim Kessler of the think tank Third Way, who represents the direction the White House is (still) going. [Spoiler alert: the third way is a lot like the other two, only more condescending.]:
"With the passage of health care reform, the 80-year Democratic quest to build the best possible safety net is essentially over... and the Democratic Party has to shift from being a party primarily concerned with economic security and dividing up the pie to one that is primarily concerned with economic growth and expanding the pie."
I have to say, this is my favorite quote of the Obama administration thus far. It is telling.
Anyhoo, now that there aren't any folks in the US being left behind (certainly not this guy), it's totes time to get back to making money, which benefits everyone.
First, lol this guy's understanding of economics.
Second, has this guy been to America lately? He's more than welcome to visit my neighborhood. We could window shop for used tires and used mattresses, and check to see if anyone's left out any returnables.
If you're reading, Mr. Kessler, when you get to Syracuse on the thruway, you want to exit at the abandoned air conditioner factory. You can't miss it-- it's right between the abandoned transmission plant and the abandoned General Motors complex. If you don't want people riffling your car, I suggest you come during the daytime.
Back to the Obama Administration.
NPR:
President Obama is reportedly considering former Commerce Secretary William Daley for a position in the West Wing — possibly chief of staff. That would signal the administration's intent to court moderate voters and the business community.
Daley, who was commerce secretary under President Clinton, is on the board of a Washington think tank called Third Way, that advocates for centrist policies.
Super!
And then there's Gene Sperling, a possible candidate to replace Larry Summers (remember: Summers left-- Obama *didn't* fire him) as Obama's top economic advisor:
I thought there was a dearth of people who accepted the inevitability of globalization, the inevitability and power of markets, and yet who still believe there was a role for government to make sure that a rising tide was lifting all boats.
Ok, I LOL'd for REALZ at that.
Inevitability...markets...inevitability...markets..."lifting all boats"??? Sure. Why the hell not?
I actually agree that markets are powerful. I'm not sure precisely how successful the government can be in harnessing the market to make everyone better off, but that's my problem. What's interesting, is that if we are going to try that tactic (hint: we are), I'd argue that we should probably have someone who's not running the markets doing the harnessing. Just sayin'. Repeatedly. For emphasis. Lots of emphasis. :ahem:
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of The General Annabelle Lee and Other Pop Culture Smashes.
Recommended Reading:
Thomas: Prop 8: They Did What Now?
Andy: Same-Sex Marriages Performed Elsewhere are Legal in New Mexico, Says Attorney General
Zerlina: Dear Kanye West: I Quit You [TW for misogyny, sexual violence, dehumanization, exploitation]
BTD: Norquist Triumphant
Shark-fu: By request…my thoughts on re-writing Twain…
Meowser: The FODMAP Not Taken [TW for discussion of eating and diet]
Angry Asian Man: Epic YouTube Cover: "Beauty in the World"
Leave your links in comments...
Oops
eHarmony's copywriting is being outsourced to the same firm who's been penning Presbyterian sermons:
[Click to embiggen.]
"Finding someone wonderful is now in the palm of your hand!"
I didn't know the evangelicals had gotten so refreshingly libertine with the old wankity-wanking. Nice!
Here's a Fun Article About My Governor Who Should Never Be President
Budget Hawk Eyes Deficit.
David Leonhardt makes The Blade sound almost scarily reasonable, by omitting all of his catastrophic failures. It's all well and good to hear a Republican talk about investing in infrastructure, but letting Daniels wax patriotic about building roads without mentioning his penchant for privatizing them is just irresponsible journalism.
Frankly, a profile of Daniels that doesn't even contain the word "privatize" is dishonest. It is his defining characteristic as governor.
And despite the glowing whitewash that surrounds it, this is really the only passage that accurately reflects his governorship:
Shortly before taking office, he gathered his staff in an Indianapolis hotel and told them that their No. 1 goal was lifting the per capita disposable income of the state's residents. Instead, income growth in Indiana has trailed growth nationwide and in every bordering state but Michigan.That paragraph arrives third from last in the entire piece.
Which is reflective of the national coverage of Daniels: He's frequently lauded as a great Republican governor with grand ideas, without much emphasis on the reality that his grand ideas don't work.
He's used Indiana as his testing ground and met failure, yet, inexplicably, the national media seems keen to help give him a chance to try again with the whole country.
So they're giving him the John McCain treatment: Rewriting him as a maverick who isn't constrained by party ideology, even though he's a textbook conservative who deviates from dogma cravenly, only when it's politically expedient. And, like McCain, he's no patriot; he's just a corporatist who fervently believes that the private sector holds all the answers, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Sayonara, Press Secretary Gibbs (Hello, Campaign Strategist Gibbs)
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is leaving the White House. But only in his capacity as Press Secretary. Gibbs "will step down and become an outside political adviser to the president and his re-election campaign." Not surprising, since he was an integral part of Obama's election campaign the first time around.
I'll really miss all the hippie-punching, though. *single tear*
(Non-Sarcastic) Science News
This weekend, I played some Rock Band, watched some football, and roller skated. In that order.
10-year-old Kathryn Aurora Gray of Fredericton, New Brunswick discovered a supernova. Which is approximately fifty kerfuffletillion times cooler than anything involving Whitesnake and a plastic guitar.
The Toronto Star:
“Kathryn pointed to the screen and said: ‘Is this one?’ I said yup, that looks pretty good,” said Paul Gray, describing his daughter’s find.
“It’s fantastic that someone so young would be passionate about astronomy. What an incredible discovery. We’re all very excited,” said Deborah Thompson, executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
Awesome.
Via NPR.
No More "Death Panels"
Dateline: Capitulationtown.
The Obama administration, reversing course, will revise a Medicare regulation to delete references to end-of-life planning as part of the annual physical examinations covered under the new health care law, administration officials said Tuesday.Literally, the Obama administration just caved to GOP framing because the GOP is going after his healthcare plan, and instead of standing their ground, in fear of Sarah Palin screaming, "Death panels!" again, they dropped the regulation, despite the millions of people it may have helped.
The move is an abrupt shift, coming just days after the new policy took effect on Jan. 1.
Many doctors and providers of hospice care had praised the regulation, which listed "advance care planning" as one of the services that could be offered in the "annual wellness visit" for Medicare beneficiaries.
While administration officials cited procedural reasons for changing the rule, it was clear that political concerns were also a factor. The renewed debate over advance care planning threatened to become a distraction to administration officials who were gearing up to defend the health law against attack by the new Republican majority in the House.
There is certainly an argument to be made that conceding one "controversial" component to save the rest of the legislation is "smart politics." But that argument is contingent on ignoring the reality that the GOP will just find something else to wildly misrepresent and mendaciously use to undermine the legislation.
This wasn't a move of strength. It was a move of weakness. The battle hasn't even begun, and the Dems are already losing.
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Dudley is full of beans at the dog park, plays tag with Iain around our favorite bench.
Him & His Property
Shaker FilthyGrandeur sent me this screencap announcing the break-up of two successful and well-known young actors:
"Culkin Splits From Longtime Girlfriend"
"Longtime Girlfriend" Mila Kunis is one of the stars of a little movie you may have heard of called Black Swan, which is one of the most successful films currently playing in theaters.
Kunis also starred in the hugely popular sitcom That '70s Show for eight years and has been in numerous films, including the wildly successful (ugh) Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Culkin, whose work in smaller films I quite like and am not intending to diminish, has not been in a box office hit since Ri¢hie Ri¢h in 1994. Yet he is still considered The Star, and she his (former) property.
For perspective, think how strange it would be if Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher split, and the headline read: "Moore splits from husband."
That, of course, would be considered absurd.
Brett Favre News
[Trigger warning for sexual assault, which applies to both links]
[Link includes descriptions of sexual assault] Associated Press:
"Two massage therapists sued Brett Favre on Monday, saying they lost them their part-time jobs with the New York Jets after complaining about sexually suggestive text messages from the veteran quarterback."This is a significant (and totally unsurprising) development, in that the allegations involve some pretty serious wrongdoing on the part of the Jets.
The NFL has already put the Favre matter to rest.
"The NFL also reviewed media reports that Favre pursued two massage therapists who worked at the Jets' facility in 2008, but the league said that claim could not be substantiated because people with 'potentially relevant information' wouldn't cooperate with investigators. O'Toole's and Scavo's lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, said he told investigators about the information his clients had."Maybe if the NFL won't find something rotten with the NFL, the courts will.
The Best Thing You'll Read All Day
Doctor urges new view of obesity:
"I think one of the biggest misconceptions when we talk about obesity in general is that obese people are obese largely because of their lifestyles and because of the way that they live," Dr. Arya Sharma of the University of Alberta, told CBC News. [Sharma is the chair of obesity research and management at the University of Alberta and medical director of the Weight Wise program at Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital.]Sharma notes there are all sorts of benefits for the body to exercising and eating healthfully (if one is able), but that weight loss simply isn't one of them for many people.
Sharma points to studies where people's eating and activity are carefully monitored. They show that some people can eat an additional 1,000 calories per day and not gain a gram, while others would gain five to six kilograms over a six-week period.
"There's a huge variability in how people can cope with extra calories," he said in an interview with CBC News.
He says people who tend to pack on the pounds simply have bodies that burn calories very efficiently and store the excess as fat. "They just take their extra calories, they don't even burn them because they're very fuel efficient, they'll just store those calories and they'll put them away."
..."Some people are just naturally lean. They can have crappy lifestyles and it doesn't seem to affect them."
..."We keep hammering home the stereotype of the fat, lazy slobs who are eating fast food all the time who are not moving, not exercising or not taking care of themselves, making poor choices, when there's very little science that actually backs this up."
Gee, that sounds suspiciously like what lots of fat people have been saying about their own bodies and lives and realities for years!
[H/T to Shakers Sarah and Wondering. Reminder: That many people don't choose to be fat does not render choosing to be fat an invalid choice. It is a valid choice.]
Quote of the Day
"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."—Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
The Thing Is, Rapists Lie
[Trigger warning for sexual assault.]
Greg Mitchell, who I normally really respect, just retweeted the following:
RT @DanielEllsberg Sex charges against Assange are grave, but having heard his account personally, I believe they're false and slanderous.That's an interesting thing to say, for lots of reasons.
I wonder if Ellsberg has also personally heard the accounts of Assange's accusers, and found them unconvincing. I doubt it.
I suspect that he just assumes that they would sound like liars, were he to speak to them, because Assange sounded sincere. And why would he not make that assumption? One of the key narratives of the rape culture is that false accusations are extremely common. (They are not.)
Or maybe he just assumes that rapists are easily identifiable, that he can suss out a rapist by talking to him. Unlike the stupid women who trust them, date them, marry them, work alongside them unawares. Until.
It's funny, ahem, how much implicit victim-blaming is embedded in the assertion to know a man has been wrongly accused.
The truth is, it doesn't really matter what Assange or his accusers sound like to Ellsburg, or anyone else. Because sounding honest and being honest are often mutually exclusive concepts.
And rapists are excellent liars.
Who sounds credible is frequently cited as a sound method of determining the veracity of rape allegations, and that is one of the primary reasons that justice remains so frustratingly elusive in the majority of sexual assault cases.
Dishonesty comes with the territory. Vanishingly few accused rapists are inclined to be honest about their crimes, for what ought to be evident reasons, and, further, rapists know they can rely on a breathtaking scope of rape apologia to contextualize and excuse their behavior. It is accusers, survivors, who sound like the liars, the fantasists, as they stammer and fume in the face of an entire culture primed to disbelieve them.
And even if they are credible, and taken seriously, adjudicators (official and amateur) shrug their shoulders and murmur phrases like "he said, she said." Impossible to know.
Sounding innocent isn't proof of innocence.
Like Daniel Ellsberg listening to Julian Assange, I personally heard my rapist's account of what happened between us. He sounded sincere. His cool recounting made my charges seem false and slanderous to the men who were listening.
He was lying.
I don't know if Julian Assange is guilty or innocent of the allegations made against him. I do know, however, that Daniel Ellsberg's opinion of his truthfulness is evidence of exactly nothing.
Science: Atheists are Angry Liars
CNN: Anger at God common, even among atheists.
So the researchers in question are recruiting volunteers for a study on anger at God. I'm not signing up for that-- I'm not even *not* angry at "God", because I don't subscribe to one of the big three Western religions. The "atheists" that did sign up were undoubtedly the ones that were really interested in God. Duh.
Selection bias + popular narrative = media sensation. See also: every Science Times story on sex and gender.
Also:
It seems that more religious people are less likely to feel angry at God and more likely to see his intentions as well-meaning, Exline's research found. [emphasis mine]
Sure, uh-huh.
Just like with people in your life, you can respect and feel anger toward God at the same time. And you can move toward forgiveness by reframing the way you view the negative event: Perhaps God was not responsible for it or that he acted in that way for a reason [emphasis mine]
Perhaps. Or definitely not, in the case of my fellow atheists. :headdesk:
CNN also recommends that you read about how "Atheists are not so smart after all." Because CNN is an asshole. It's a story about atheists scoring better than average on some quiz about religion. I know.
[A screen capture of CNN's website, listing five articles "We recommend", including the aforementioned article on atheists not being so smart, and as a bonus: "Memo to Women: Please stop faking!"]
Oh, I Get It. He's Actually a Comedian.
And his presidency is performance art. Like Kaufman, only grander and no kooky accents.
Now it all makes sense. Because this is fucking hilarious:
Obama did not specifically address the GOP's plans [to immediately try to repeal the health care reform law], but acknowledged, "there's gonna be politics, that's what happens in Washington" when asked if he expects a chilly reception from the new Republican majority.Ha ha! Good one, Obama. HIGH FIVE!
"They are going to play to their base for a certain period of time. But I'm pretty confident that they're going to recognize that our job is to govern and make sure that we are delivering jobs for the American people and that we are creating a competitive economy for the 21st Century," Obama said.
Breaking News: Scalia's an Asshole
Not for the first time, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has asserted that "the Constitution's 14th Amendment doesn't guarantee protection against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation."
"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex," Scalia told California Lawyer. "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that."Marcia D. Greenberger, founder of the National Women's Law Center, underlines one inherent problem with Scalia's position: "In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them. But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them. And that's a pretty shocking position to take in 2011."
Scalia, long known to be a constitutional "originalist" and a conservative stalwart on the Supreme Court, argued that it's up to legislatures to pass laws that protect women against discrimination, and doing so wouldn't be unconstitutional.
"If indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society," he said. "If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box."
...Scalia's position on gender and sexual orientation discrimination is nothing new. The Reagan-appointed justice told an audience last summer that the 14th Amendment doesn't protect women because that wasn't the intent of the amendment when it was written in 1868.
He also said the Roe V. Wade decision that struck down laws against abortion was based on "a total absurdity."
And Big Tent Democrat underlines another inherent problem here: "What Scalia says is that even though the original understanding of the 14th Amendment would, if applied today, prohibit gender discrimination, since in 1868 it was understood not to, then the 19th Amendment was necessary to give women the vote. This leaves Scalia with a significant problem in my view - what of other forms of gender discrimination? To me, Scalia's statements require him to state that other forms of gender discrimination are CONSTITUTIONAL."
Scalia takes originalism to a ludicrous degree. His position does not reflect the thoughtfulness and nuance that any US citizen has the right to expect of one of the nine people chosen to make the nation's most difficult legal decisions. It is, instead, approximately as sophisticated as a child who still believes his daddy can't ever be wrong.
That is, quite evidently, not good enough for the marginalized people in this country who frequently have to depend on the Supreme Court for access and equality.
Which is, of course, the point.
Scalia isn't a stupid fella. He's just a bigot. A bigot with a lifetime appointment to make decisions about the rights and lives of people against whom he holds deeply entrenched bigotry.
In a decent country, there would be outrage about that unambiguous injustice sitting square in the middle of the Supreme Court. But in this country, it barely gets noticed. After all, there's no explicit right to fairness for marginalized people in the Constitution.
As Justice Antonin Scalia will happily tell you.
Cuomo to Take One for His Team
New New York (try again) Governor Andrew Cuomo just announced that he'll be returning 5% of his gubernatorial salary.
Shocking coincidence: The State of New York's contracts with many of its largest public employee unions (I'm a member of one of these) will expire soon.
Shocking fact: Politicians and the media are really vilifying public employees these days.
I just don't have the energy to fully go into the war on public employees (FWIW, my father is and grandmother was a public employee, so I'm used to it), but I do have a couple of issues.
1) Just as entitlement programs aren't *the* problem with the US Federal budget, public employees' wages and benefits aren't *the* problem with state and local budgets. Didja know that lately New York State has generated around 20 percent of its income from the taxes paid by Wall Street paper shufflers? This would seem to indicate a systemic problem. New Yorkers used to make steel and chemicals and air conditioners.
IMO, New York's never figured out what (or perhaps more appropriately, if) to do about the rust belt. Granted, issues arising from global capitalism are best tackled globally, but it'd be good to at least see New York State's leaders acknowledge Upstate New York in a way that doesn't involve vague references to Ma, Pa, and flannel.
2) We're not all in this together. Well, we should be, but the notion that if 'we' all do our 'fair share' of sacrificing 'we' can pull through this is bullshit. The Governor of New York is giving back several thousand dollars on what is a $179,000 salary.
While as far as I'm concerned, $179,000 is an eminently reasonable salary for a state's top executive (hint, hint...), this number doesn't count the Governor's assets, including the house he shares with someone who's a national television personality. I haven't talked to Cuomo's financial advisor lately, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that he has a financial advisor.
While New York's public employees do have jobs (at least a lot of us still do), it's a bit disingenious to imply that we need to sacrifice for the good of 'the team.' We sacrifice every other Wednesday (or Tuesday, if we have direct deposit-- speaking of which, I am so buying groceries tonight). Sometimes we go to the doctor, sometimes we don't.
And while public employees might count ourselves lucky to get paid money to do unimportant work and to possibly retire with pensions that governments may or may not default upon, it's hardly fair to use other people's misfortune (which is also ours, given that many of our households rely on income from the private sector, too) as an excuse to call for public employees to 'share' the pain. As I see it, governments are supposed to be the ones setting the example here. Perhaps that's the problem.
Most USians are already doing their share of sacrificing. While I don't begrudge Cuomo's faux-sacrifice, let's be clear about what it is: another attempt by a member of the ruling class to pretend to do hir share to get the country out of the mess the wealthy created for their own benefit. We don't need charity. We need change, and that includes revisiting the policies that led to the massive inequalities in wealth that make such grand gestures possible.
