I'm pissed.
As if this country needed a further degradation of the quality of mainstream media outlets, today the FCC voted to relax the rules governing ownership of outlets in the same market. Under the new rule, a corporation could own a newspaper and either a TV or a radio station in the same market, with a few conditions - the station can't be among the top four in that market, there have to be at least eight other independently owned-and-operated outlets left over and the new allowance would only apply in the nation's 20 largest markets.
For 2007-08, Nielsen Media Research ranked the top media markets in the U.S. See the full list here. (Sorry for the Wikipedianess, but Nielsen's Web site is a bear to navigate...) Charlotte is #25, Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville (WTF?) is #28 and the Triad is #46.
By the way, the vote was 3-2. The two Republican committee members and Republican chair voted to undo the 32-year old ban on multiple-outlet ownership, and the two Democrat members voted against the relaxed rules.
I guess that's why I'm pissed. Today's vote was nothing but an obviously partisan sop to the handful of corporations that can afford to buy more than one outlet in a market large enough to be eligible under the new rule. It's not going to dramatically affect who owns the newspaper and one TV station in my hometown (yet). But unfortunately my local paper and TV news stations get the lion's share of their national and international content from, you guessed it - media outlets in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and the other Top 20 markets targeted by the FCC.
And here I thought "media partnerships" (everything from story-sharing to outright event sponsorship) were a bad idea...now my local media outlets - alreadly understaffed and underfunded - will have even less variety in perspectives to choose from in filling their broadcasts or pages.
A monopoly of media is just as dangerous as a monopoly of any other service - in fact, even more dangerous because if you (say, Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner) control the flow of information, you control your opposition. You control the world. Not to mention the standard monopolies-are-bad argument that competition increases quality. And if there's one thing our MSM could use a little more of, it's quality.
Which is why I'm mildly amused, if not totally surprised, that it was the Republican FCC representatives who voted to change the very rule that promoted healthy competition in the media industry. (Unhealthy competition, too, to be fair - would we have 24-hour news and screaming heads if outlets didn't have to fight for viewers?) It's funny how so many Republicans are all down on welfare and socialist protectionism until they're the ones who need protecting. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I thought you boys were capitalists...?
On the plus side, four Republican Senators joined with 21 others on a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on Monday, warning that if the ban were overturned they would take legislative action. Now that the ban has in fact been stripped, we'll see.
By the way, the White House is reportedly completely behind the FCC on this one. Of course. In a totally unrelated story, USA Today reported in 2004 that executives from media outlet-hoover Clear Channel weren't at all shy about their apparent support of President Bush in that year's election. Nope, no connection there whatsoever.
It's a good thing we have so many disparate perspectives among our major media markets, so all the subtleties, like details of various parties' motivations, don't get lost in the shuffle...Oh, wait.
[One more thing...this may be my favorite part of the story. In defending the FCC's move, Commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez said that the FCC has "crafted changes that appropriately take into account the myriad of news and information outlets that exist today."
So, what's scarier? The spectre of all of the nation's news feeding out from a handful of corporate sources, or a Cabinet-level official who doesn't know the correct usage of "myriad"?]
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Give that man a cookie!
*sarcasm alert*
All thanks and praise to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who yesterday announced that he would pardon a female rape victim.
Pardon the victim? Yes, you read that correctly. According to various news accounts, a 19-year-old woman and a male friend were riding together in a car when they were kidnapped, taken to a remote location and raped by up to seven men (both the woman and the man were raped). The woman, who had recently married, says she was with the male rape victim to retrieve a photo of them together. The Saudi government says the two were having an affair.
Me, I could give a sh*t why they were together. But in Saudi Arabia, apparently the fact that an unmarried, unrelated man and woman were riding in the same car is as big a deal, if not more, than the fact that both of them were kidnapped and gang-raped. (Let me pause for a moment to give thanks for the fact that I live in a country that punishes its rape victims figuratively, rather than literally.)
So both the man and woman were sentenced to six months jail time and 90 lashes for breaking Saudi Arabia's strict laws against mingling with non-relatives of other genders. After the woman's attorney objected to this blame-the-victim punishment, her sentence was more than doubled to 200 lashes and the court revoked her lawyer's license. Wow, the Saudis don't really do dissent well, huh?
Yes, it's a good thing that the so-called "Qatif Girl"'s case received so much attention. I'm heartened by the number of her fellow Saudis who decried the draconian sentence. And above all I'm thrilled that this woman who has been through so much physical and emotional trauma has gotten a reprieve.
But, lest we forget...Conservative Saudis are livid that outside influence (including a tepid finger-wag from the U.S.) may have contributed to the pardon. The woman has gotten death threats even from her own family. The laws themselves haven't been changed - it's still a place where criminals can target unmarried couples, knowing that their "illegally mingling" victims will now be even less likely to report an assault. This could happen again tomorrow. And very well might, considering that the Saudi government keeps insisting the sentence wasn't wrong.
But the main thing that bothers me is that today is the first time I'd read about the male rape victim, because it was the first time I'd read about this case on something other than an American news outlet's Web site or feminist blog. At the very end of today's BBC.com story, there's an "oh, by the way" coda saying that they counldn't confirm that his 90 lashes would be dropped as well. Maybe not, since he didn't get the publicity. Shame on the people who've left someone - who was just as victimized - out of this story.
Good for King Abdullah, for dropping this medieval horsesh*t, even if it was only a one-time thing. But pardon me if I skip the victory parade.
[BTW, a special thanks to the Saudis for yet another glimpse of what life in a theocracy is like. Anyone still think this is a swell idea?]
All thanks and praise to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who yesterday announced that he would pardon a female rape victim.
Pardon the victim? Yes, you read that correctly. According to various news accounts, a 19-year-old woman and a male friend were riding together in a car when they were kidnapped, taken to a remote location and raped by up to seven men (both the woman and the man were raped). The woman, who had recently married, says she was with the male rape victim to retrieve a photo of them together. The Saudi government says the two were having an affair.
Me, I could give a sh*t why they were together. But in Saudi Arabia, apparently the fact that an unmarried, unrelated man and woman were riding in the same car is as big a deal, if not more, than the fact that both of them were kidnapped and gang-raped. (Let me pause for a moment to give thanks for the fact that I live in a country that punishes its rape victims figuratively, rather than literally.)
So both the man and woman were sentenced to six months jail time and 90 lashes for breaking Saudi Arabia's strict laws against mingling with non-relatives of other genders. After the woman's attorney objected to this blame-the-victim punishment, her sentence was more than doubled to 200 lashes and the court revoked her lawyer's license. Wow, the Saudis don't really do dissent well, huh?
Yes, it's a good thing that the so-called "Qatif Girl"'s case received so much attention. I'm heartened by the number of her fellow Saudis who decried the draconian sentence. And above all I'm thrilled that this woman who has been through so much physical and emotional trauma has gotten a reprieve.
But, lest we forget...Conservative Saudis are livid that outside influence (including a tepid finger-wag from the U.S.) may have contributed to the pardon. The woman has gotten death threats even from her own family. The laws themselves haven't been changed - it's still a place where criminals can target unmarried couples, knowing that their "illegally mingling" victims will now be even less likely to report an assault. This could happen again tomorrow. And very well might, considering that the Saudi government keeps insisting the sentence wasn't wrong.
But the main thing that bothers me is that today is the first time I'd read about the male rape victim, because it was the first time I'd read about this case on something other than an American news outlet's Web site or feminist blog. At the very end of today's BBC.com story, there's an "oh, by the way" coda saying that they counldn't confirm that his 90 lashes would be dropped as well. Maybe not, since he didn't get the publicity. Shame on the people who've left someone - who was just as victimized - out of this story.
Good for King Abdullah, for dropping this medieval horsesh*t, even if it was only a one-time thing. But pardon me if I skip the victory parade.
[BTW, a special thanks to the Saudis for yet another glimpse of what life in a theocracy is like. Anyone still think this is a swell idea?]
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Seriously...
...How many national championships do we have to win before y'all in the rest of the country (including a few folks at ESPN) learn how to pronounce "Appalachian"?
Sheesh...
Sheesh...
Friday, December 14, 2007
There will be blood, and other thoughts for the weekend
I can't believe I've been so slack about posting...I think the problem is that there's *too* much that I want to write about, and I can't seem to pick out just one thing long enough to really do it justice. And, you know, my job and all. (Actually, I think I'll go with blaming the job. It makes me look borderline responsible.)
So, in no particular order, here are a few of the things that have been flitting across my brain today...
- Hey, look! It only took four years! Look for other rosy pre-war predictions to start finally coming true as well. U.S. troops will be greeted as liberators any day now, I'm sure.
- RE: The Mitchell Report on the use of steroids in pro baseball. Great work - I'm going to file it under "no shit" along with the "revelation" that Jodie Foster is gay. And then I'll go right back to ignoring the irrelevant, corrupt, train-wreck that is the MLB.
- I finally watched "Knocked Up" this week. Well, to be strictly accurate, I watched the first 16 and a half minutes of "Knocked Up" before ripping out of my DVD player. Seriously, Netflix is lucky they're getting this one back in one piece. After calming down and thinking on it for a few days, I've concluded that it wasn't just that I didn't like it - after all, sloppy, unfunny movies come out every day. Just like with my epic, ultimately fruitless campaign against "Titanic" back in high school, the real issue isn't my dislike for a film, it's my frustration with the people who insist that it's the best film of the year/ever made, etc. I feel like an Omega Man, screaming at the world full of Judd Apatow-loving vampire/zombies, "Did you people SEE the same movie I saw???"
When "Knocked Up" came out last summer, I actually heard more than one reviewer describe it as "sweet." Um, that's probably the last word in the dictionary that I would use. I've never seen such a collection of mean-spirited characters; even the little kids are nasty to each other. The way I see it, "funny" is a club. And if you're not in the club, if you don't speak the language, it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to find something funny. "Knocked Up" wasn't funny for me because I wasn't in the club - there wasn't a single character with which I felt any identification. I couldn't get a toe-hold, so when it pissed me off, the movie didn't get my usual benefit of the doubt. That's why I say it was sloppy. It's a filmmaker's job to give viewers that toe-hold (unless he's just making the film for himself. That's not art, it's a middle-schooler's post-break-up poetry.), to show them the secret hand-signals or whatever that will get them into the club, and it's really not that hard. Try writing dialogue that does more than just zing, like revealing character and motivation, for starters. "Anchorman" does more in its first 16 seconds than "Knocked Up" mangaged in 16 minutes.
And if I'm Julianne Moore, I'm finding Judd Apatow and kicking his ass. Seriously, if he pulled that shit on me he'd spend large chunks of his future crying like a baby.
- Speaking of movies, I saw a trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's (didn't we used to call him "P.T."?) upcoming film, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis. I have no idea if it's going to be any good, but the title - "There Will Be Blood" - is just really cool. (WAY better than the title of the Upton Sinclair novel on which it's based: simply "Oil!")
- "There Will Be Blood" would make an excellent title for the game I'm most anticipating this weekend - not my Panthers vs. Seahawks, alas, but what I hope will be an epic smackdown for the ages: Patriots vs. Jets. This matchup was going to be sweet even before the revelation this week that the Jets have a few video cameras of their own. It was the whining of Jets coach Eric Boygini (he is not a man) in Week 1 that triggered what Bill Simmons has called the "F@ck You Season." The Patriots remind me of those serial killers who follow their own media coverage so closely that, when a reporter speculates that Killer X would never dump a body in Location Y, that's exactly where the next victim shows up. The Patriots run up the score? Okay, we'll take a knee at the end of the Colts game, just to screw with people. A certain Pittsburgh d-back, in his inexperience, guarantees a win? Okay, let's torch him for a few touchdowns. Bill Belichick strikes me as a person with a long memory and a sense of drama. I can't wait to see how many different ways he makes New York cry on Sunday.
While we're on the subject - why are the Patriots cast as the villains here? When Peyton Manning persuaded Tony Dungy to unleash the Colts offense so he could break Marino's single-season touchdown record (NOT because it was always the best way to win), I felt like the only person in America who thought the naked record-grab was unsportsmanlike. To begin the season, every Pats-hater with an ax to grind crowed that one rules violation negated three Super Bowls - as if Brady, Moss & Co. needed any outside help to beat a team that's gone on to win what, three games? All the Pats are doing now is definitively proving those yakking-heads wrong. And if going undefeated is unfair to the competition, why do we keep rolling Don Shula out to pop the champagne every year? Glorify winning, don't glorify it - all I'm asking is that we pick one and stick with it.
I can't think of any scenario more fitting than for the Patriots to match the '72 Dolphins, the same year that the current Dolphins fail to win a single game. I think that would be hilarious.
- Every now and then - okay, regularly - I have to explain to people why we still need to keep pushing feminism, when we've "won" so much. Seriously pisses me off - okay, first? We won what we have now because we fought for it! No one just gives away their power to an oppressed minority. Second - I don't give a shit what I have now that my mother or grandmother didn't, I want what any man has now. Don't frackin' pat me on the head and tell me to be grateful for what I have. Argh. *steam coming out of ears*
So, is feminism still relevant and necessary? Read about these recent cases, and you tell me: First, an Australian judge frees nine men who admitted that they'd gang-raped a 10-year-old girl. In Canada, Judge calls rape victim "stupid." And, before you get all self-righteous, in our own land of the free and home of the brave, some bloggers are questioning the claims of an ex-Halliburton contractor that she was raped in Iraq and that her employer covered it up. Hey, everybody's innocent until proven guilty. But why is rape the only crime where the victim is consistently belittled and held in suspicion? People commit insurance fraud every day by pretending to have been robbed or by burning down their houses, but if my house gets broken into I'm probably not going to have to worry about some a-hole Internet goon calling me "Murtha-esque" or "Beauchampian."
Well...Happy Friday - and don't miss any football!
So, in no particular order, here are a few of the things that have been flitting across my brain today...
- Hey, look! It only took four years! Look for other rosy pre-war predictions to start finally coming true as well. U.S. troops will be greeted as liberators any day now, I'm sure.
- RE: The Mitchell Report on the use of steroids in pro baseball. Great work - I'm going to file it under "no shit" along with the "revelation" that Jodie Foster is gay. And then I'll go right back to ignoring the irrelevant, corrupt, train-wreck that is the MLB.
- I finally watched "Knocked Up" this week. Well, to be strictly accurate, I watched the first 16 and a half minutes of "Knocked Up" before ripping out of my DVD player. Seriously, Netflix is lucky they're getting this one back in one piece. After calming down and thinking on it for a few days, I've concluded that it wasn't just that I didn't like it - after all, sloppy, unfunny movies come out every day. Just like with my epic, ultimately fruitless campaign against "Titanic" back in high school, the real issue isn't my dislike for a film, it's my frustration with the people who insist that it's the best film of the year/ever made, etc. I feel like an Omega Man, screaming at the world full of Judd Apatow-loving vampire/zombies, "Did you people SEE the same movie I saw???"
When "Knocked Up" came out last summer, I actually heard more than one reviewer describe it as "sweet." Um, that's probably the last word in the dictionary that I would use. I've never seen such a collection of mean-spirited characters; even the little kids are nasty to each other. The way I see it, "funny" is a club. And if you're not in the club, if you don't speak the language, it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to find something funny. "Knocked Up" wasn't funny for me because I wasn't in the club - there wasn't a single character with which I felt any identification. I couldn't get a toe-hold, so when it pissed me off, the movie didn't get my usual benefit of the doubt. That's why I say it was sloppy. It's a filmmaker's job to give viewers that toe-hold (unless he's just making the film for himself. That's not art, it's a middle-schooler's post-break-up poetry.), to show them the secret hand-signals or whatever that will get them into the club, and it's really not that hard. Try writing dialogue that does more than just zing, like revealing character and motivation, for starters. "Anchorman" does more in its first 16 seconds than "Knocked Up" mangaged in 16 minutes.
And if I'm Julianne Moore, I'm finding Judd Apatow and kicking his ass. Seriously, if he pulled that shit on me he'd spend large chunks of his future crying like a baby.
- Speaking of movies, I saw a trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's (didn't we used to call him "P.T."?) upcoming film, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis. I have no idea if it's going to be any good, but the title - "There Will Be Blood" - is just really cool. (WAY better than the title of the Upton Sinclair novel on which it's based: simply "Oil!")
- "There Will Be Blood" would make an excellent title for the game I'm most anticipating this weekend - not my Panthers vs. Seahawks, alas, but what I hope will be an epic smackdown for the ages: Patriots vs. Jets. This matchup was going to be sweet even before the revelation this week that the Jets have a few video cameras of their own. It was the whining of Jets coach Eric Boygini (he is not a man) in Week 1 that triggered what Bill Simmons has called the "F@ck You Season." The Patriots remind me of those serial killers who follow their own media coverage so closely that, when a reporter speculates that Killer X would never dump a body in Location Y, that's exactly where the next victim shows up. The Patriots run up the score? Okay, we'll take a knee at the end of the Colts game, just to screw with people. A certain Pittsburgh d-back, in his inexperience, guarantees a win? Okay, let's torch him for a few touchdowns. Bill Belichick strikes me as a person with a long memory and a sense of drama. I can't wait to see how many different ways he makes New York cry on Sunday.
While we're on the subject - why are the Patriots cast as the villains here? When Peyton Manning persuaded Tony Dungy to unleash the Colts offense so he could break Marino's single-season touchdown record (NOT because it was always the best way to win), I felt like the only person in America who thought the naked record-grab was unsportsmanlike. To begin the season, every Pats-hater with an ax to grind crowed that one rules violation negated three Super Bowls - as if Brady, Moss & Co. needed any outside help to beat a team that's gone on to win what, three games? All the Pats are doing now is definitively proving those yakking-heads wrong. And if going undefeated is unfair to the competition, why do we keep rolling Don Shula out to pop the champagne every year? Glorify winning, don't glorify it - all I'm asking is that we pick one and stick with it.
I can't think of any scenario more fitting than for the Patriots to match the '72 Dolphins, the same year that the current Dolphins fail to win a single game. I think that would be hilarious.
- Every now and then - okay, regularly - I have to explain to people why we still need to keep pushing feminism, when we've "won" so much. Seriously pisses me off - okay, first? We won what we have now because we fought for it! No one just gives away their power to an oppressed minority. Second - I don't give a shit what I have now that my mother or grandmother didn't, I want what any man has now. Don't frackin' pat me on the head and tell me to be grateful for what I have. Argh. *steam coming out of ears*
So, is feminism still relevant and necessary? Read about these recent cases, and you tell me: First, an Australian judge frees nine men who admitted that they'd gang-raped a 10-year-old girl. In Canada, Judge calls rape victim "stupid." And, before you get all self-righteous, in our own land of the free and home of the brave, some bloggers are questioning the claims of an ex-Halliburton contractor that she was raped in Iraq and that her employer covered it up. Hey, everybody's innocent until proven guilty. But why is rape the only crime where the victim is consistently belittled and held in suspicion? People commit insurance fraud every day by pretending to have been robbed or by burning down their houses, but if my house gets broken into I'm probably not going to have to worry about some a-hole Internet goon calling me "Murtha-esque" or "Beauchampian."
Well...Happy Friday - and don't miss any football!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Goodness gracious, what whiny boys!
I'm just reading ESPN.com's Hashmarks blog over lunch, and of course the talk is all about last night's Monday Night Football game where the Patriots narrowly defeated Baltimore. Now, I understand that the Baltimore players were in a pretty emotional place when they said the things reported here - having dominated New England all night only to fall apart in the last five minutes of the game. But still, this stuff is just laughable:
Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs on officiating: "Everybody is kind of cheering for them to go undefeated and break all the records." If by "everybody," Suggs means "Patriots fans," then yes, he's exactly right. Pretty much everybody I talk to on a daily basis is actively rooting for Tom Brady to get hit by a truck. And did he watch the Pats-Colts game? Anyone who says New England gets all the calls is either consumed with blind hatred or doesn't understand what the expression "get all the calls" means.
Suggs on the infamous 4th-down timeout called by the Ravens sideline: " I don't know. It looked like all 22 men on the field played as if no timeout was called. But if it was called, it was called. I don't get into that part of the game. I just do my job." If it was called? Before he mouths off to the press, Suggs should maybe watch a replay of the incident. Before the snap, you can clearly see the Ravens coaches signalling the most bone-headed timeout call in the history of the NFL. Yes, it was monumentally stupid in hindsight. You could tell from the reactions of the Ravens players how bad it sucked to realize that your coach just undermined a brilliant defensive stop. But that's football. No conspiracy.
Ravens linebacker Bart Scott on the timeout: "I didn't hear a timeout. That was very convenient." If the timeout call had come from the Patriots bench, I'd agree. But it didn't. So unless Scott is implying that the Ravens' own coaches are in on the alleged fix...
Ravens receiver Derrick Mason: "Allow the players to dictate how the game is going to go, especially the last couple of seconds. It's kind of like basketball. There's three seconds on the clock. Let the guys play. The best team is going to win." Yup. Looks like it did, alright.
More from Mason: "It's kind of like that old Bulls team when they were running the tables. You were playing against Jordan, Pippen and the bunch and it was hard to beat them because everyone was on their side." Or, you know, 'cause they're just flat better than you. That could be a factor...maybe.
This is the thing. The Patriots didn't make Billick or whoever it was call that timeout. They didn't make Bart Scott throw the official's flag into the stands, which in part led to the Pats getting an extra 40 yards on their final kick-off. The Ravens cracked, the Patriots didn't. End of story. There's a reason one of those teams is undefeated and the other is fighting for its playoff life.
Me, I have zero problem with a team that's this scary-good running the table. This kind of true excellence happens once in a lifetime - why would you want to denigrate it? I sincerelly hope the Pats go 16-0, especially if this is coupled with the Dolphins going 0-16. Karma's a bitch, you champagne-popping old farts.
Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs on officiating: "Everybody is kind of cheering for them to go undefeated and break all the records." If by "everybody," Suggs means "Patriots fans," then yes, he's exactly right. Pretty much everybody I talk to on a daily basis is actively rooting for Tom Brady to get hit by a truck. And did he watch the Pats-Colts game? Anyone who says New England gets all the calls is either consumed with blind hatred or doesn't understand what the expression "get all the calls" means.
Suggs on the infamous 4th-down timeout called by the Ravens sideline: " I don't know. It looked like all 22 men on the field played as if no timeout was called. But if it was called, it was called. I don't get into that part of the game. I just do my job." If it was called? Before he mouths off to the press, Suggs should maybe watch a replay of the incident. Before the snap, you can clearly see the Ravens coaches signalling the most bone-headed timeout call in the history of the NFL. Yes, it was monumentally stupid in hindsight. You could tell from the reactions of the Ravens players how bad it sucked to realize that your coach just undermined a brilliant defensive stop. But that's football. No conspiracy.
Ravens linebacker Bart Scott on the timeout: "I didn't hear a timeout. That was very convenient." If the timeout call had come from the Patriots bench, I'd agree. But it didn't. So unless Scott is implying that the Ravens' own coaches are in on the alleged fix...
Ravens receiver Derrick Mason: "Allow the players to dictate how the game is going to go, especially the last couple of seconds. It's kind of like basketball. There's three seconds on the clock. Let the guys play. The best team is going to win." Yup. Looks like it did, alright.
More from Mason: "It's kind of like that old Bulls team when they were running the tables. You were playing against Jordan, Pippen and the bunch and it was hard to beat them because everyone was on their side." Or, you know, 'cause they're just flat better than you. That could be a factor...maybe.
This is the thing. The Patriots didn't make Billick or whoever it was call that timeout. They didn't make Bart Scott throw the official's flag into the stands, which in part led to the Pats getting an extra 40 yards on their final kick-off. The Ravens cracked, the Patriots didn't. End of story. There's a reason one of those teams is undefeated and the other is fighting for its playoff life.
Me, I have zero problem with a team that's this scary-good running the table. This kind of true excellence happens once in a lifetime - why would you want to denigrate it? I sincerelly hope the Pats go 16-0, especially if this is coupled with the Dolphins going 0-16. Karma's a bitch, you champagne-popping old farts.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Sports madness
I'm going to pull a mini-Peter King here and just ramble about a few sports stories that are totally unrelated except for the fact that they happen to be on my mind...
- Went to the Panthers game yesterday, where my boys mercifully ended a 377-day at-home losing streak. (Yes, I know, they technically weren't playing at home most of those days, but there's nothing like the phrase "377-day at-home losing streak" to properly evoke the feelings of utter frustration and futility we fans have been feeling for some time now.) I met with some friends before the game, and we came to the consensus that, this week, we should chant "We want MATT!" since apparently the previous week's chant, "We want Moore!", was too confusing for the homonym-challenged David Carr.
Speaking of merciful...with Vinny Testaverde's old man spine back in good health, Carr is once again firmly where he belongs - on the bench. Do you know who David Carr reminds me of? Me - in middle school, in every PE class where I was forced to play softball. Each time I stepped up to the plate, I was praying only for the three strikes to come quickly so I could get back to the dugout where my book was waiting. That's Carr. He just doesn't look like a guy who wants to be out there on the field.
As terrible as the Panthers' offense has been this year, there are a couple of bright spots: 1) As promised, new defensive coordinator Jeff Davidson has done a fair job rediscovering the tight end position, which I'm not sure Dan Henning knew existed. This season has seen TD passes to my current crush Jeff King, Christian Fauria and, on Sunday, Dante Rosario; and, 2) by the time next season rolls around, Steve Smith should be nice and pissed off and ready to put up a 2,000-yard year.
- Guilford's men's basketball team was picked to win the ODAC conference, and they may very well do so. But as good as the men's team is, the women's basketball team might be the conference's sleeper. I saw them play for the third time tonight, and I'm deeply impressed. At this point my personal stand-outs are junior Tracey Croner, who put up 24 points tonight, sophomore Ann Seufer, whose name the announcer just to say after she drains yet another 3-pointer ("Annnn...SEUFER!") and junior Shevon Hackett, whom I dubbed "The Coach" for her non-stop, unabashedly vocal support and instructions for the rest of the team - I swear, she talks the whole time; I LOVE that.
The only downside for me tonight was that the team the Quakers beat 92-68 was my own Salem College Spirits, who showed enough fight to make me wonder what they could've done if they'd had more than eight players (one of the hazards of small-college life.)
The Quakers open the spring schedule at home against my basketball nemesis, Emory & Henry. I'm predicting a bloodbath, because it makes me feel good to think about it.
(While we're on the subject, I love that I see so many of Guilford's athletes in other sports at the games. I'm a little jaded, having had to put up with so many, say, football players, who think their team is the only one that really matters. I'm impressed by the support, especially of the women's team.)
- Looks like Tim Duncan will be okay. Whew. Tim Duncan may be the sole reason I follow the NBA, and is definitely the only reason I like the Spurs. Yes, the Spurs play 10 states away, but I'm allowed to pull for them according to Sports Guy's Rules for Being a Sports Fan, Rule 19-d:
"You follow your favorite college star (and this has to be a once-in-a-generation favorite college star) to the pros and root for his team du jour ... like if you were a UNC fan for the past 20 years, and you rooted for the Bulls (because of MJ) and then the Raptors (because of Vince). Only works if there isn't a pro team in your area."
(But what about the Charlotte Bobcats?, you say. Doesn't Rule #18 state that, if your area fields a pro sports team, you're obligated to pull for that team? I would respond with the corollary of Rule #19-e: said team's owner betrays the fans, therefore fans are released from obligation. Also, I'm not sure if the Bobcats count as a pro team.)
- Am I the only one who thinks that college football overtime rules are crap? What is this, kindergarten? Get the ball, score, or don't get the ball and keep the other team from scoring. Screw this "both teams must have the chance to score" BS. (Especially from the 25-yard line - WTF??? I could score from there.) Reason number 197 why college football exists solely to give middle-aged men something to argue about while looking down on their "Grey's Anatomy"-loving wives.
Me, I don't watch "Grey's Anatomy," for the same reason I don't watch college football. If I want soap, I take a shower.
And to further extend the Peter King-ness, here's my annoying/aggravating travel comment of the week:
It took me for frickin' EVER to get to Charlotte yesterday. I kept getting stuck behind drivers who were apparently unfamiliar with the "slower traffic keep right" concept. I can't tell you how many - it seemed like every quarter-mile or so I'd run into yet another traffic snarl caused not by a wreck, but by some idiot doing five or 10 under the speed limit in the passing lane. Folks, there's a reason it's called the "passing lane"! And while I hate to pass on the right, if I have enough time to get around you in the right lane, that should probably indicate to you that, um, that's where you should be - with the other slow-pokes. I don't care if you're doing 80 - if the car behind you is doing 85, get the hell out of its way.
- Went to the Panthers game yesterday, where my boys mercifully ended a 377-day at-home losing streak. (Yes, I know, they technically weren't playing at home most of those days, but there's nothing like the phrase "377-day at-home losing streak" to properly evoke the feelings of utter frustration and futility we fans have been feeling for some time now.) I met with some friends before the game, and we came to the consensus that, this week, we should chant "We want MATT!" since apparently the previous week's chant, "We want Moore!", was too confusing for the homonym-challenged David Carr.
Speaking of merciful...with Vinny Testaverde's old man spine back in good health, Carr is once again firmly where he belongs - on the bench. Do you know who David Carr reminds me of? Me - in middle school, in every PE class where I was forced to play softball. Each time I stepped up to the plate, I was praying only for the three strikes to come quickly so I could get back to the dugout where my book was waiting. That's Carr. He just doesn't look like a guy who wants to be out there on the field.
As terrible as the Panthers' offense has been this year, there are a couple of bright spots: 1) As promised, new defensive coordinator Jeff Davidson has done a fair job rediscovering the tight end position, which I'm not sure Dan Henning knew existed. This season has seen TD passes to my current crush Jeff King, Christian Fauria and, on Sunday, Dante Rosario; and, 2) by the time next season rolls around, Steve Smith should be nice and pissed off and ready to put up a 2,000-yard year.
- Guilford's men's basketball team was picked to win the ODAC conference, and they may very well do so. But as good as the men's team is, the women's basketball team might be the conference's sleeper. I saw them play for the third time tonight, and I'm deeply impressed. At this point my personal stand-outs are junior Tracey Croner, who put up 24 points tonight, sophomore Ann Seufer, whose name the announcer just to say after she drains yet another 3-pointer ("Annnn...SEUFER!") and junior Shevon Hackett, whom I dubbed "The Coach" for her non-stop, unabashedly vocal support and instructions for the rest of the team - I swear, she talks the whole time; I LOVE that.
The only downside for me tonight was that the team the Quakers beat 92-68 was my own Salem College Spirits, who showed enough fight to make me wonder what they could've done if they'd had more than eight players (one of the hazards of small-college life.)
The Quakers open the spring schedule at home against my basketball nemesis, Emory & Henry. I'm predicting a bloodbath, because it makes me feel good to think about it.
(While we're on the subject, I love that I see so many of Guilford's athletes in other sports at the games. I'm a little jaded, having had to put up with so many, say, football players, who think their team is the only one that really matters. I'm impressed by the support, especially of the women's team.)
- Looks like Tim Duncan will be okay. Whew. Tim Duncan may be the sole reason I follow the NBA, and is definitely the only reason I like the Spurs. Yes, the Spurs play 10 states away, but I'm allowed to pull for them according to Sports Guy's Rules for Being a Sports Fan, Rule 19-d:
"You follow your favorite college star (and this has to be a once-in-a-generation favorite college star) to the pros and root for his team du jour ... like if you were a UNC fan for the past 20 years, and you rooted for the Bulls (because of MJ) and then the Raptors (because of Vince). Only works if there isn't a pro team in your area."
(But what about the Charlotte Bobcats?, you say. Doesn't Rule #18 state that, if your area fields a pro sports team, you're obligated to pull for that team? I would respond with the corollary of Rule #19-e: said team's owner betrays the fans, therefore fans are released from obligation. Also, I'm not sure if the Bobcats count as a pro team.)
- Am I the only one who thinks that college football overtime rules are crap? What is this, kindergarten? Get the ball, score, or don't get the ball and keep the other team from scoring. Screw this "both teams must have the chance to score" BS. (Especially from the 25-yard line - WTF??? I could score from there.) Reason number 197 why college football exists solely to give middle-aged men something to argue about while looking down on their "Grey's Anatomy"-loving wives.
Me, I don't watch "Grey's Anatomy," for the same reason I don't watch college football. If I want soap, I take a shower.
And to further extend the Peter King-ness, here's my annoying/aggravating travel comment of the week:
It took me for frickin' EVER to get to Charlotte yesterday. I kept getting stuck behind drivers who were apparently unfamiliar with the "slower traffic keep right" concept. I can't tell you how many - it seemed like every quarter-mile or so I'd run into yet another traffic snarl caused not by a wreck, but by some idiot doing five or 10 under the speed limit in the passing lane. Folks, there's a reason it's called the "passing lane"! And while I hate to pass on the right, if I have enough time to get around you in the right lane, that should probably indicate to you that, um, that's where you should be - with the other slow-pokes. I don't care if you're doing 80 - if the car behind you is doing 85, get the hell out of its way.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Because domestic violence just never stops being funny
I stumbled on this earlier tonight, and I swear I couldn't even watch it all the way through...
http://www.flowgo.com/funny/4477_50-ways-kill-your-husband.html
It's hard for me to believe someone actually spent the time to write this, animate it and post it on the Internet. What's more troubling is that people have actually commented on it, leaving such witty suggestions as "put the whole bottle of viagra on his tea then put on an iron underwear, lock it, throw away the keys."
Okay, ladies...if any of you are reading this and snickering at the thought of shoving your husband off a cliff because he looked too long at a busty woman in the grocery store check-out line or something, let me ask you this. How hard would you be laughing if this were entitled "50 ways to Kill Your Wife"? If some guy out there in cyber-land had devoted hours to developing a cartoon ditty that extolled the possibilities of stabbing one's wife in the back, would you find that amusing? I wouldn't.
A few days ago, Feministing.com posted this picture of a billboard run by a concrete company in New York - aside from being offensive, it's just not funny. As you can see if you read the comments to the Feministing post, at least some readers chided those who find an ad based on domestic violence-humor to be troubling, writing that the billboard wasn't really offensive. And other posters questioned why so many women are quick to jump on "jokes" that denigrate women, but give a free pass to those that devalue men.
So, for the record, this is me, proclaiming to anyone who'll listen that the "50 Ways to Kill Your Husband" cartoon is just as offensive to me personally as the "kill your wife with concrete this Christmas" billboard. I'll go a step further - not only are jokes about domestic violence not funny, any joke that derives its "humor" from sexism, period, isn't funny. That goes for the e-mail that one of the male administrators sent out to our entire office this week poking fun at female drivers - yes, this actually happened in the Year of Our Lord 2007. (And yes, I called him on it, and yes, he apologized. His defense? The person who'd sent it to him was a woman, so therefore it wasn't offensive. Right. Because your female acquaintance is an effin' idiot, I shouldn't be offended.)
In one of my undergrad classes on advertising, my professor cautioned us about using imagery or slogans that played on ethnic or gender stereotypes (apparently NOT a subject covered by the writer of the concrete billboard...). She gave us this rule of thumb - if you replace the subject of the "joke" with a member of another demographic, is it still funny or clever? If not, than your brilliant ad copy is most likely racist/sexist/classist/otherwise bad.
In the case of the concrete company's billboard, "Husband need new shoes?" would still be just as unsettling to me. Jokes about killing your spouse AREN'T FUNNY. So, by definition, they're not jokes.
As for other sexist "humor" - the sad thing is, my co-worker's e-mail would've been just as amusing if it had included a few male drivers. And it wouldn't have opened our company up to a sexual harassment suit. (But it still would've been pretty unprofessional to send a frickin' e-mail forward to the entire office. Sheesh.)
http://www.flowgo.com/funny/4477_50-ways-kill-your-husband.html
It's hard for me to believe someone actually spent the time to write this, animate it and post it on the Internet. What's more troubling is that people have actually commented on it, leaving such witty suggestions as "put the whole bottle of viagra on his tea then put on an iron underwear, lock it, throw away the keys."
Okay, ladies...if any of you are reading this and snickering at the thought of shoving your husband off a cliff because he looked too long at a busty woman in the grocery store check-out line or something, let me ask you this. How hard would you be laughing if this were entitled "50 ways to Kill Your Wife"? If some guy out there in cyber-land had devoted hours to developing a cartoon ditty that extolled the possibilities of stabbing one's wife in the back, would you find that amusing? I wouldn't.
A few days ago, Feministing.com posted this picture of a billboard run by a concrete company in New York - aside from being offensive, it's just not funny. As you can see if you read the comments to the Feministing post, at least some readers chided those who find an ad based on domestic violence-humor to be troubling, writing that the billboard wasn't really offensive. And other posters questioned why so many women are quick to jump on "jokes" that denigrate women, but give a free pass to those that devalue men.
So, for the record, this is me, proclaiming to anyone who'll listen that the "50 Ways to Kill Your Husband" cartoon is just as offensive to me personally as the "kill your wife with concrete this Christmas" billboard. I'll go a step further - not only are jokes about domestic violence not funny, any joke that derives its "humor" from sexism, period, isn't funny. That goes for the e-mail that one of the male administrators sent out to our entire office this week poking fun at female drivers - yes, this actually happened in the Year of Our Lord 2007. (And yes, I called him on it, and yes, he apologized. His defense? The person who'd sent it to him was a woman, so therefore it wasn't offensive. Right. Because your female acquaintance is an effin' idiot, I shouldn't be offended.)
In one of my undergrad classes on advertising, my professor cautioned us about using imagery or slogans that played on ethnic or gender stereotypes (apparently NOT a subject covered by the writer of the concrete billboard...). She gave us this rule of thumb - if you replace the subject of the "joke" with a member of another demographic, is it still funny or clever? If not, than your brilliant ad copy is most likely racist/sexist/classist/otherwise bad.
In the case of the concrete company's billboard, "Husband need new shoes?" would still be just as unsettling to me. Jokes about killing your spouse AREN'T FUNNY. So, by definition, they're not jokes.
As for other sexist "humor" - the sad thing is, my co-worker's e-mail would've been just as amusing if it had included a few male drivers. And it wouldn't have opened our company up to a sexual harassment suit. (But it still would've been pretty unprofessional to send a frickin' e-mail forward to the entire office. Sheesh.)
Monday, November 19, 2007
WGA Strike: A Love Story
Thanks to my friend Keith for this one...
I like this for two reasons:
A) the reference to "From Here To Eternity," and
B) the fact that no studio is going to make a dime off of it, which is kind of ironically funny if you're up on the reasons for the WGA strike.
By the way, i'm totally blaming my recent lack of motivation on the strike. Not on my own laziness. No-sir-ee.
I like this for two reasons:
A) the reference to "From Here To Eternity," and
B) the fact that no studio is going to make a dime off of it, which is kind of ironically funny if you're up on the reasons for the WGA strike.
By the way, i'm totally blaming my recent lack of motivation on the strike. Not on my own laziness. No-sir-ee.
The Khmer Rouge: Another one bites the dust
There's something I've always wondered ... in my heart of hearts, I'm the most unrepentant liberal utopian, my fantasy U.S.A. a vision of publicly managed corporations and utilities - a house, a job, and education and health care for every American; natural resources managed in an ethical, sustainable fashion; in all, a civic paradise of educated, committed citizens based on the shared ideal that what's good for one person is good for society as a whole.
Of course, this is a complete pipe dream. Of course, it would be lovely, but people simply don't work that way. No socialist economy has ever survived - on a large or small scale - without incorporating some free market elements or collapsing entirely. (Or just brutally supressing its own citizens, but I'll get to that later.) I can certainly understand the ideological appeal of a system that shares resources rather than leaving behind those who can't or won't compete for them. But in actual practice, those systems simply don't work.
Which brings me to my question ... if socialist societies are so "Big Rock Candy Mountain"-dreamlike, then why do people have to be forced to live in them at gunpoint? Why can't their perfect insitutions withstand a little political dissent? I'm talking to you, Cuba. And China. And North Korea.
I got to thinking about this today after reading on BBC.com about the arrest of Khieu Samphan, a former president of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. He's the fifth Khmer Rouge official to be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by a U.N.-backed tribunal. Khieu Samphan is 76-years old. Starting just five years before I was born, he and his regime killed more than a million people, directly and indirectly.
The Khmer Rouge sought to develop Cambodia into a classless agrarian society - pretty ironic, since its leader, Pol Pot, was the son of a privileged landowner who first learned about Marxist philosophy as a student in Paris (he was fluent in French, having attended elite colonial schools) and who worked as a teacher himself. Nevertheless, Pol Pot and his administration saught to revolutionize Cambodian society by evening-out the disparities in wealth fostered by the colonial/capitalist economy.
Anything resembling industry or modernity was dismantled. No more currency, private property, religion or even family affiliations. City-dwellers were forced to evacuate; people with education (except for Pol Pot himself, of course) were threats. Imagine for a moment that U.S. society were suddenly plunged back 200 years - no electricity, no cars or even railroads and you and I forced out from in front of the television to go plant crops. Oh, and if you have an objection to this, you get send to a re-education camp to be tortured. Riiiii-ight.
How these whack-jobs managed to stay in power for four years is beyond me. (Sorry - I don't mean to sound flippant, but seriously, can you think of a better word than "whack-job" to describe people who think this way, and are willing to torture or kill those who disagree with them???) Pol Pot fled the country when Viet Nam invaded Cambodia in 1978, eventually to die in Thailand 20 years later. He'll never be brought to justice for what he did, but at least many of the men who helped him will.
Today, Cambodia still struggles to rebuild its infrastructure, after a 10-year occupation by the Vietnamese and another 13-year-long civil war that only ended in 1991. For most of the 90's, the U.N. cobbled together democratically elected governments. The CIA Factbook entry on Cambodia calls 1999 "the first full year of peace in 30 years" - 20 years after the defeat of Pol Pot's social experiment, Cambodia finally got the breathing room to start recovery.
I'm glad that the U.N. is backing the tribunal. As Isabel Allende said last week when she was speaking here on campus, you can't have reconciliation without truth first. She was talking about her native country, Chile (the rare socialist economy that might have succeeded without Henry Kissinger's interference), but it's true for Cambodia as well.
I hope that the MSM continues to cover this story with 10 per cent or so of the energy it devotes to Lindsay Lohan's latest DUI and Hillary Clinton's laugh.
BTW - I've always been fascinated by how our MSM tends to treat phenomena like the Khmer Rouge as if they came out of nowhere, when in fact one could clearly see Pol Pot coming for a good 20 years earlier. History is riddled with similar examples. Pol Pot's contempory Ho Chi Minh was at the Treaty of Versailles talks to end World War I, for heaven's sake...Oh, but that's a rant for another time. (Kind of sad how few strong references there are for this available online...) I just wish that the gatekeepers of our information were better stewards.
Of course, this is a complete pipe dream. Of course, it would be lovely, but people simply don't work that way. No socialist economy has ever survived - on a large or small scale - without incorporating some free market elements or collapsing entirely. (Or just brutally supressing its own citizens, but I'll get to that later.) I can certainly understand the ideological appeal of a system that shares resources rather than leaving behind those who can't or won't compete for them. But in actual practice, those systems simply don't work.
Which brings me to my question ... if socialist societies are so "Big Rock Candy Mountain"-dreamlike, then why do people have to be forced to live in them at gunpoint? Why can't their perfect insitutions withstand a little political dissent? I'm talking to you, Cuba. And China. And North Korea.
I got to thinking about this today after reading on BBC.com about the arrest of Khieu Samphan, a former president of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. He's the fifth Khmer Rouge official to be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by a U.N.-backed tribunal. Khieu Samphan is 76-years old. Starting just five years before I was born, he and his regime killed more than a million people, directly and indirectly.
The Khmer Rouge sought to develop Cambodia into a classless agrarian society - pretty ironic, since its leader, Pol Pot, was the son of a privileged landowner who first learned about Marxist philosophy as a student in Paris (he was fluent in French, having attended elite colonial schools) and who worked as a teacher himself. Nevertheless, Pol Pot and his administration saught to revolutionize Cambodian society by evening-out the disparities in wealth fostered by the colonial/capitalist economy.
Anything resembling industry or modernity was dismantled. No more currency, private property, religion or even family affiliations. City-dwellers were forced to evacuate; people with education (except for Pol Pot himself, of course) were threats. Imagine for a moment that U.S. society were suddenly plunged back 200 years - no electricity, no cars or even railroads and you and I forced out from in front of the television to go plant crops. Oh, and if you have an objection to this, you get send to a re-education camp to be tortured. Riiiii-ight.
How these whack-jobs managed to stay in power for four years is beyond me. (Sorry - I don't mean to sound flippant, but seriously, can you think of a better word than "whack-job" to describe people who think this way, and are willing to torture or kill those who disagree with them???) Pol Pot fled the country when Viet Nam invaded Cambodia in 1978, eventually to die in Thailand 20 years later. He'll never be brought to justice for what he did, but at least many of the men who helped him will.
Today, Cambodia still struggles to rebuild its infrastructure, after a 10-year occupation by the Vietnamese and another 13-year-long civil war that only ended in 1991. For most of the 90's, the U.N. cobbled together democratically elected governments. The CIA Factbook entry on Cambodia calls 1999 "the first full year of peace in 30 years" - 20 years after the defeat of Pol Pot's social experiment, Cambodia finally got the breathing room to start recovery.
I'm glad that the U.N. is backing the tribunal. As Isabel Allende said last week when she was speaking here on campus, you can't have reconciliation without truth first. She was talking about her native country, Chile (the rare socialist economy that might have succeeded without Henry Kissinger's interference), but it's true for Cambodia as well.
I hope that the MSM continues to cover this story with 10 per cent or so of the energy it devotes to Lindsay Lohan's latest DUI and Hillary Clinton's laugh.
BTW - I've always been fascinated by how our MSM tends to treat phenomena like the Khmer Rouge as if they came out of nowhere, when in fact one could clearly see Pol Pot coming for a good 20 years earlier. History is riddled with similar examples. Pol Pot's contempory Ho Chi Minh was at the Treaty of Versailles talks to end World War I, for heaven's sake...Oh, but that's a rant for another time. (Kind of sad how few strong references there are for this available online...) I just wish that the gatekeepers of our information were better stewards.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Some unsolicited advice for Senator McCain
By now, you may have heard about a question that Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain was asked out on the campaign trail recently. A woman (!) in Hilton Head, S.C., asked McCain simply, "How do we beat the bitch?"
For the moment, I'm going to put aside my disgust that any sane person could refer to another candidate using such a derogatory term, let alone express it out loud in a public forum. (Hey, question-asking woman - you want a cookie for your incisive political analysis? What an f-in idiot...) And I won't comment on the irony of the fact that it was a woman who said this about another woman, yet another piece of evidence supporting the argument that it's "mean girl"-type tactics as much as the evil patriarchy that keeps women in their subservient place.
Let's just address Senator McCain's half-baked response. Sure, he looks somewhat taken aback, but not at all appalled as he should be, considering the blatant impropriety and obscenity of the question. In any public Q&A, you get inappropriate questions. One of the marks of a good politician is the ability to handle those questions by appeasing the anger of the questioner without going too far to the extreme. I won't pretend it's easy to walk that line ... but I have personally seen Rep. Mel Watt point-blank tell constituents that, for instance, he's not going to support an impeachment inquiry against President Bush or VP Cheney. Real leaders aren't afraid to tell their supporters what they don't want to hear.
But after however-many years in the public eye and a previous presidential campaign, McCain should know better than to brush off a question like this. His response was a golden opportunity to strike a blow for mature political discourse, and he whiffed it.
If I'm McCain's media person, this is what I'd hope he says here:
Rude woman: How do we beat the bitch?
McCain: Pardon me??? [coupled with suitably appalled expression]
Rude woman: How do we beat the bitch? [accompanied by a few more scattered sniggers from the crowd]
McCain: I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. [Because it would be bad, you know, to admit publicly that you hear "bitch" and immediately think "Hillary Clinton." This is one of those times it's best to play dumb.]
Rude woman: Hillary. [Maybe a few more sniggers, though starting to sound a mite uncomfortable.]
McCain: You mean Senator Clinton? [Pause for icy stare at Rude Woman, during which time audience is silenced by the power of McCain's awesome integrity] Well...[launch into discussion that poll he talked about, which no one remembers because in real life it was preceded by McCain's tacit calling of Sen. Clinton a bitch.]
See? This is much better. It makes McCain not look like a misogynist dick, or at least a man who's afraid to call out a misogynist dick. Now the story is not "McCain a misogynist dick," but something more positive.
C'mon people, this isn't rocket surgery. I still fail to understand why so many candidates think I should hire them to run my country when they don't have the judgment to navigate a simple frickin' Q&A.
And since when did words like "bitch" become appropriate public commentary? I hope the kids in that woman's church see that clip. Sweet Baby Jesus, I hope she's proud of herself. I'd love to hear what choice descriptions she has for the candidates who are racial minorities. Does she call Barak Obama "the n-word"? I'll bet good money she doesn't call Rudy Giuliani "the adulturer."
And - though Hillary Clinton is not the Democrat candidate I support - what exactly makes her a bitch? Wikipedia defines "bitch" as "malicious, spiteful, domineering, intrusive or unpleasant" - I've never met her personally, so I can't comment on her personality. What in Clinton's public actions puts her in the "bitch" camp? She's never, to my knowledge, just as a for instance, told a Senate colleague to go f@ck himself - something I would characterize as malicious, spiteful and domineering.
So, is it just being an unapologetically powerful female that makes Clinton a "bitch"? Because if so, I believe that to be true of a number of politically conservative women, too. Or is it okay to start calling Senator Elizabeth Dole a bitch, too? (Probably not, since she hasn't actually accomplished anything.) How about Margaret Thatcher? Or the late Tillie Kidd Fowler, once the highest-ranking woman in in the GOP? I hope not, she was a personal hero of mine...but if we're painting one strong woman with the "bitch" brush, why make an exception based on political philosophy, right?
For the moment, I'm going to put aside my disgust that any sane person could refer to another candidate using such a derogatory term, let alone express it out loud in a public forum. (Hey, question-asking woman - you want a cookie for your incisive political analysis? What an f-in idiot...) And I won't comment on the irony of the fact that it was a woman who said this about another woman, yet another piece of evidence supporting the argument that it's "mean girl"-type tactics as much as the evil patriarchy that keeps women in their subservient place.
Let's just address Senator McCain's half-baked response. Sure, he looks somewhat taken aback, but not at all appalled as he should be, considering the blatant impropriety and obscenity of the question. In any public Q&A, you get inappropriate questions. One of the marks of a good politician is the ability to handle those questions by appeasing the anger of the questioner without going too far to the extreme. I won't pretend it's easy to walk that line ... but I have personally seen Rep. Mel Watt point-blank tell constituents that, for instance, he's not going to support an impeachment inquiry against President Bush or VP Cheney. Real leaders aren't afraid to tell their supporters what they don't want to hear.
But after however-many years in the public eye and a previous presidential campaign, McCain should know better than to brush off a question like this. His response was a golden opportunity to strike a blow for mature political discourse, and he whiffed it.
If I'm McCain's media person, this is what I'd hope he says here:
Rude woman: How do we beat the bitch?
McCain: Pardon me??? [coupled with suitably appalled expression]
Rude woman: How do we beat the bitch? [accompanied by a few more scattered sniggers from the crowd]
McCain: I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. [Because it would be bad, you know, to admit publicly that you hear "bitch" and immediately think "Hillary Clinton." This is one of those times it's best to play dumb.]
Rude woman: Hillary. [Maybe a few more sniggers, though starting to sound a mite uncomfortable.]
McCain: You mean Senator Clinton? [Pause for icy stare at Rude Woman, during which time audience is silenced by the power of McCain's awesome integrity] Well...[launch into discussion that poll he talked about, which no one remembers because in real life it was preceded by McCain's tacit calling of Sen. Clinton a bitch.]
See? This is much better. It makes McCain not look like a misogynist dick, or at least a man who's afraid to call out a misogynist dick. Now the story is not "McCain a misogynist dick," but something more positive.
C'mon people, this isn't rocket surgery. I still fail to understand why so many candidates think I should hire them to run my country when they don't have the judgment to navigate a simple frickin' Q&A.
And since when did words like "bitch" become appropriate public commentary? I hope the kids in that woman's church see that clip. Sweet Baby Jesus, I hope she's proud of herself. I'd love to hear what choice descriptions she has for the candidates who are racial minorities. Does she call Barak Obama "the n-word"? I'll bet good money she doesn't call Rudy Giuliani "the adulturer."
And - though Hillary Clinton is not the Democrat candidate I support - what exactly makes her a bitch? Wikipedia defines "bitch" as "malicious, spiteful, domineering, intrusive or unpleasant" - I've never met her personally, so I can't comment on her personality. What in Clinton's public actions puts her in the "bitch" camp? She's never, to my knowledge, just as a for instance, told a Senate colleague to go f@ck himself - something I would characterize as malicious, spiteful and domineering.
So, is it just being an unapologetically powerful female that makes Clinton a "bitch"? Because if so, I believe that to be true of a number of politically conservative women, too. Or is it okay to start calling Senator Elizabeth Dole a bitch, too? (Probably not, since she hasn't actually accomplished anything.) How about Margaret Thatcher? Or the late Tillie Kidd Fowler, once the highest-ranking woman in in the GOP? I hope not, she was a personal hero of mine...but if we're painting one strong woman with the "bitch" brush, why make an exception based on political philosophy, right?
Feet are killing me...
...but I'm *finally* home. We had the second event in our Bryan Series tonight, a lecture by Isabel Allende. I didn't stay for the whole thing, having gotten to speak with her this afternoon during the student session. I knew she'd be fabulous, and she was. She's also about three-and-a-half feet tall, and quite possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever met in person.
This was technically my first Bryan Series event, seeing as how I didn't make it too far into the first one. Yep, I spent the evening getting steroid shots and cursing the catering staff at the Coliseum for not labeling the peanut sauce. (Seriously, in this day and age, you'd think that would be a no-brainer...) And apparently the word got out, because I had no fewer than four dozen people either ask me if I were okay or warn me not to eat the brownies - which is nice, but it's not the obvious, apparent nuts that bother me. But it's nice to be known for something, I guess!
Even one of the wait staff remembered me. When I was going through the buffet line, I noticed the exact same chicken entree that nearly killed me last time. She leaned across the table and said, "It's okay, it's a different sauce this time." Nice, but I skipped it anyway.
My main responsibility for the evening was to gather the cards with audience-member questions, cull the dopey ones and pass them off to the Q&A moderator. Simple, right? Except that, as of about five minutes into her lecture, we still only had maybe four or five questions. I'd been told to mix in a few "ringers" - questions I wrote myself - if necessary, which I really didn't want to do, since a) it struck me as a trifle unethical, and b) I've never actually read any of Allende's books (though I did have the Antonio Banderas-featuring movie poster from "House of the Spirits" on my wall back in the day).
If all people wanted to hear about was the 1973 military coup against Allende's uncle Salvador, then the socialist (but democratically elected) president of Chile, I could've popped out the Q's all night. I might've even managed to write one about why Latin America produces so many writers in the magical realism genre (is it cultural, or is it simply that those are the authors that get published? Isn't there a Chilean Sebastian Junger or Anne Rice or Elmore Leonard out there?) - but alas, someone beat me to it.
I was beginning to mildly freak out about this, when an usher who'd apparently been hoarding a stash of audience cards found me in the lobby. Whew! I handed them off to the moderator, and I was out of there.
So now I'm home, sipping a Rolling Rock, checking MySpace for the first time in days and fuming about that high-handed SOB Henry Kissinger, U2's "Mothers of the Disappeared" running through my head. (Great song, by the way.) There's no way I'm going to be able to stay up for "Nip/Tuck" later tonight, and that's probably a good thing - I don't think I could handle the cognitive dissonance right now.
This was technically my first Bryan Series event, seeing as how I didn't make it too far into the first one. Yep, I spent the evening getting steroid shots and cursing the catering staff at the Coliseum for not labeling the peanut sauce. (Seriously, in this day and age, you'd think that would be a no-brainer...) And apparently the word got out, because I had no fewer than four dozen people either ask me if I were okay or warn me not to eat the brownies - which is nice, but it's not the obvious, apparent nuts that bother me. But it's nice to be known for something, I guess!
Even one of the wait staff remembered me. When I was going through the buffet line, I noticed the exact same chicken entree that nearly killed me last time. She leaned across the table and said, "It's okay, it's a different sauce this time." Nice, but I skipped it anyway.
My main responsibility for the evening was to gather the cards with audience-member questions, cull the dopey ones and pass them off to the Q&A moderator. Simple, right? Except that, as of about five minutes into her lecture, we still only had maybe four or five questions. I'd been told to mix in a few "ringers" - questions I wrote myself - if necessary, which I really didn't want to do, since a) it struck me as a trifle unethical, and b) I've never actually read any of Allende's books (though I did have the Antonio Banderas-featuring movie poster from "House of the Spirits" on my wall back in the day).
If all people wanted to hear about was the 1973 military coup against Allende's uncle Salvador, then the socialist (but democratically elected) president of Chile, I could've popped out the Q's all night. I might've even managed to write one about why Latin America produces so many writers in the magical realism genre (is it cultural, or is it simply that those are the authors that get published? Isn't there a Chilean Sebastian Junger or Anne Rice or Elmore Leonard out there?) - but alas, someone beat me to it.
I was beginning to mildly freak out about this, when an usher who'd apparently been hoarding a stash of audience cards found me in the lobby. Whew! I handed them off to the moderator, and I was out of there.
So now I'm home, sipping a Rolling Rock, checking MySpace for the first time in days and fuming about that high-handed SOB Henry Kissinger, U2's "Mothers of the Disappeared" running through my head. (Great song, by the way.) There's no way I'm going to be able to stay up for "Nip/Tuck" later tonight, and that's probably a good thing - I don't think I could handle the cognitive dissonance right now.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Your campaign staff and you
Not that I'm a fan of racial or gender quotas - I'm kind of a meritocracy gal, myself - but this breakdown of the ethnicities of staffers on several of the major presidential campaigns is worth a look.
On my old blog, I wrote in a post way back that, in my opinion, it's unrealistic to expect a candidate to be all things to all people. It's not important to me that the person for whom I'm voting shares all of my experiences, but he or she needs to understand that there are perspectives other than his or her own - especially with respect to economic differences.
This is where one's staff comes in. President Bush may have an ethnically diverse gang at his side, but if they all think the same way, what's the point? In my experience, the best managers and leaders were the ones who invited differing opinions and experiences, knowing that varied viewpoints sharpened their own perspectives.
So, while the ethnic make-up of a campaign staff certainly doesn't tell the whole story, for me it's a piece. If nothing else, it reflects the candidate's consciousness of the fact that most Americans do not get the Rich White Guy Experience. I like knowing that my future president cares about these things.
So what do we have here? Stereotype alert! Democrats are more diverse, and Rudy Giuliani (in addition to being a shameless sports bigamist, adulterer and uniformed civil servant whore-er) isn't much into hiring people of color. (Full disclosure - because DiversityInc, who did this study, is subscriber-based, I have no idea who they include in their Caucasian classification. It seems to not include African American, Latino, Asian American and Native American people.)
What's more interesting to me is that the Democratic campaigns cooperated with the survey, while the Republican campaigns did not. C'mon, guys - especially you, Rudy the Allegedly Pugnacious. From a PR view, what the hell is that? Why appear to be hiding something? You can't spin your way out of an all-white campaign staff, but you want me to send you to deal with Congress and that whack-job in Iran? Puh-leeze. Go back to your third wife and your fat consulting job, and call me when you're REALLY ready to rule the world.
And pick a baseball team and stick with it, you chickensh*t.
(BTW, props to my man Bill Richardson for being the only campaign to employ a Native American.)
On my old blog, I wrote in a post way back that, in my opinion, it's unrealistic to expect a candidate to be all things to all people. It's not important to me that the person for whom I'm voting shares all of my experiences, but he or she needs to understand that there are perspectives other than his or her own - especially with respect to economic differences.
This is where one's staff comes in. President Bush may have an ethnically diverse gang at his side, but if they all think the same way, what's the point? In my experience, the best managers and leaders were the ones who invited differing opinions and experiences, knowing that varied viewpoints sharpened their own perspectives.
So, while the ethnic make-up of a campaign staff certainly doesn't tell the whole story, for me it's a piece. If nothing else, it reflects the candidate's consciousness of the fact that most Americans do not get the Rich White Guy Experience. I like knowing that my future president cares about these things.
So what do we have here? Stereotype alert! Democrats are more diverse, and Rudy Giuliani (in addition to being a shameless sports bigamist, adulterer and uniformed civil servant whore-er) isn't much into hiring people of color. (Full disclosure - because DiversityInc, who did this study, is subscriber-based, I have no idea who they include in their Caucasian classification. It seems to not include African American, Latino, Asian American and Native American people.)
What's more interesting to me is that the Democratic campaigns cooperated with the survey, while the Republican campaigns did not. C'mon, guys - especially you, Rudy the Allegedly Pugnacious. From a PR view, what the hell is that? Why appear to be hiding something? You can't spin your way out of an all-white campaign staff, but you want me to send you to deal with Congress and that whack-job in Iran? Puh-leeze. Go back to your third wife and your fat consulting job, and call me when you're REALLY ready to rule the world.
And pick a baseball team and stick with it, you chickensh*t.
(BTW, props to my man Bill Richardson for being the only campaign to employ a Native American.)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Dude...
Check out this picture...
Now, I've met Kris Jenkins. He's about as giant as you'd expect him to be. But unless he's slouching and Jerry Richardson is wearing heels...DUDE. No wonder Richardson always gets his way in those owners' meetings. Would YOU want to go up against that guy?
Now, I've met Kris Jenkins. He's about as giant as you'd expect him to be. But unless he's slouching and Jerry Richardson is wearing heels...DUDE. No wonder Richardson always gets his way in those owners' meetings. Would YOU want to go up against that guy?
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Easily the most f*cked up thing I've read today...
I stumbled on this kind of by accident this evening. I can't tell whether I'm more pissed off or sickened.
Background: Lawmakers in Montgomery County, Maryland, are considering adding language to include gender identity in its non-discrimination laws. Yes, I know this sounds like nothing more than a bunch over overly conscientious liberals with too much time on their hands. But unfortunately, discrimination against trans-gendered people is alive and well in America, a country whose Constitution specifically allows for equal protection under the law for ALL people, whether you personally approve of their lifestyles or not.
And I realize that gender identity may not seem like a hot topic to the 9 out of 10 of us who fit comfortably at the straight ends of the spectrum. But it's real. Witness the case of this woman, who was thrown out of a women's restroom in New York (that stronghold of gender-pure conservatives) because she didn't look enough like a woman. At least according to the male bouncer who did the kicking-out. Because, as we all know, men are the only real arbiters of what constitutes womanhood.
So I completely support the idea of the Montgomery County Council's proposed legislation, recognizing that, in its real-world application, there will obviously be some practical issues to iron out. But I have to confess that how to keep pedophiles from showering with little girls wasn't really something for which I'd game-planned .
But then again, I'm not a right-wing pervert. I don't know about the Larry Craig/Bob Allen set, but in the restrooms and locker rooms that I frequent, we have stalls. And we use them, judiciously, if we have qualms about being seen stark naked by perfect strangers. Yet for some reason, the primary opposition to the gender identity bill seems to be the alleged danger that public facilities will be wide open to whatever Tom, Dick (he-he, I wrote "Dick") or Harry should wander by in a dress.
*Sigh*
A) Once again, WE HAVE STALLS. Go hide in one if you're that terrified of the chicks with dicks.
B) A trans-gendered man is trans-gendered because HE LIKES DUDES. And vice versa for the trans-gendered women. The bill would allow people to use the restroom/locker room etc. that corresponds with his/her/zher preferred identity. Force a gay woman who'd rather be a man to use a women's restroom, and you're doing the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to accomplish.
C) It's 2007. Can we PLEASE drop the notion that all non-heterosexuals are predators? At least in the absence of some actual empirical evidence? Thank you.
D) I thought you anti-LGBT rights folks were all about American Gothic family values. If you're so worried about Little Susie seeing some dude's duct tape, then why aren't you in the locker room with her?
E) Should a clever pedophile cross-dress and spend his/her days camping out in the locker room at the public pool...that's why God invented PRISONS. And COPS. Try calling them. Sheesh.
And finally...Why does the conversation focus on men in the women's rooms? It works both ways, you know. Oh, right, I forgot. Women who prey on boys are hot. The rest of us wimmins need 'round the clock protection, despite the fact that the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by non-strangers.
Which brings me to the most f*cked up thing I've read today. TeachTheFacts.org has posted a few letters that the Montgomery County Council has received opposing the bill. Now, I can absolutely respect that people might have issues with the bill, but these are BEYOND f*cked up. Especially the second one, which reads in part:
"Allowing men who think they’re women into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms?
ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MINDS?
Hopefully, it will be one of your daughters who gets raped first!"
Ooh...Yes, rape is such an appropriate punishment for a relative of lawmaker who has the temerity to actually enforce the law. I want to find this SOB (his name is Gabriel Espinosa) and just...talk to him. I wouldn't bother exploring the deep-seated misogyny in his remark, though it screams out at me like a flashing neon sign reading "I hate women! To me women are nothing more than objects and sex is the tool of their degradation!" because anyone who uses that kind of language in a civic discussion most likely lacks the intellectual capacity to grasp my meaning.
I'd just say this, to Mr. Espinosa and anyone who read his letter and thought, "Yeah! You go, Gabriel!":
I sincerely hope you never have to learn from personal experience how deeply traumatic rape is. It's the theft of the one thing over which you have true control, your body, and it can never be given back. I hope you lose just a little sleep tonight after wishing this on someone else's child in order to prove your own wrong-headed political opinion.
I sincerely hope that neither you or anyone about whom you care is the target of discrimination or violence due to an incontrovertible fact of your/their person-hood.
I sincerely hope that you aren't so repressed that you view your own gender identity as nothing more than a sex thing, which is apparently what you believe to be true of anyone who isn't hetero-normative like you.
But mainly, I would say this: I'm a woman. And I don't need your F*CKING help.
Background: Lawmakers in Montgomery County, Maryland, are considering adding language to include gender identity in its non-discrimination laws. Yes, I know this sounds like nothing more than a bunch over overly conscientious liberals with too much time on their hands. But unfortunately, discrimination against trans-gendered people is alive and well in America, a country whose Constitution specifically allows for equal protection under the law for ALL people, whether you personally approve of their lifestyles or not.
And I realize that gender identity may not seem like a hot topic to the 9 out of 10 of us who fit comfortably at the straight ends of the spectrum. But it's real. Witness the case of this woman, who was thrown out of a women's restroom in New York (that stronghold of gender-pure conservatives) because she didn't look enough like a woman. At least according to the male bouncer who did the kicking-out. Because, as we all know, men are the only real arbiters of what constitutes womanhood.
So I completely support the idea of the Montgomery County Council's proposed legislation, recognizing that, in its real-world application, there will obviously be some practical issues to iron out. But I have to confess that how to keep pedophiles from showering with little girls wasn't really something for which I'd game-planned .
But then again, I'm not a right-wing pervert. I don't know about the Larry Craig/Bob Allen set, but in the restrooms and locker rooms that I frequent, we have stalls. And we use them, judiciously, if we have qualms about being seen stark naked by perfect strangers. Yet for some reason, the primary opposition to the gender identity bill seems to be the alleged danger that public facilities will be wide open to whatever Tom, Dick (he-he, I wrote "Dick") or Harry should wander by in a dress.
*Sigh*
A) Once again, WE HAVE STALLS. Go hide in one if you're that terrified of the chicks with dicks.
B) A trans-gendered man is trans-gendered because HE LIKES DUDES. And vice versa for the trans-gendered women. The bill would allow people to use the restroom/locker room etc. that corresponds with his/her/zher preferred identity. Force a gay woman who'd rather be a man to use a women's restroom, and you're doing the exact OPPOSITE of what you want to accomplish.
C) It's 2007. Can we PLEASE drop the notion that all non-heterosexuals are predators? At least in the absence of some actual empirical evidence? Thank you.
D) I thought you anti-LGBT rights folks were all about American Gothic family values. If you're so worried about Little Susie seeing some dude's duct tape, then why aren't you in the locker room with her?
E) Should a clever pedophile cross-dress and spend his/her days camping out in the locker room at the public pool...that's why God invented PRISONS. And COPS. Try calling them. Sheesh.
And finally...Why does the conversation focus on men in the women's rooms? It works both ways, you know. Oh, right, I forgot. Women who prey on boys are hot. The rest of us wimmins need 'round the clock protection, despite the fact that the vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by non-strangers.
Which brings me to the most f*cked up thing I've read today. TeachTheFacts.org has posted a few letters that the Montgomery County Council has received opposing the bill. Now, I can absolutely respect that people might have issues with the bill, but these are BEYOND f*cked up. Especially the second one, which reads in part:
"Allowing men who think they’re women into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms?
ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MINDS?
Hopefully, it will be one of your daughters who gets raped first!"
Ooh...Yes, rape is such an appropriate punishment for a relative of lawmaker who has the temerity to actually enforce the law. I want to find this SOB (his name is Gabriel Espinosa) and just...talk to him. I wouldn't bother exploring the deep-seated misogyny in his remark, though it screams out at me like a flashing neon sign reading "I hate women! To me women are nothing more than objects and sex is the tool of their degradation!" because anyone who uses that kind of language in a civic discussion most likely lacks the intellectual capacity to grasp my meaning.
I'd just say this, to Mr. Espinosa and anyone who read his letter and thought, "Yeah! You go, Gabriel!":
I sincerely hope you never have to learn from personal experience how deeply traumatic rape is. It's the theft of the one thing over which you have true control, your body, and it can never be given back. I hope you lose just a little sleep tonight after wishing this on someone else's child in order to prove your own wrong-headed political opinion.
I sincerely hope that neither you or anyone about whom you care is the target of discrimination or violence due to an incontrovertible fact of your/their person-hood.
I sincerely hope that you aren't so repressed that you view your own gender identity as nothing more than a sex thing, which is apparently what you believe to be true of anyone who isn't hetero-normative like you.
But mainly, I would say this: I'm a woman. And I don't need your F*CKING help.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Symbolism of the Slutty Neurosurgeon
There’s this phenomenon that’s been gaining steam (if you believe the MSM) in recent years. It’s been dubbed “slut-o-ween,” referring to the tendency of women to use Halloween as an excuse to doll up in outfits that would make a hooker blush. I don’t know if this is true or not … I can remember at least some of my mother’s friends dressing up as flappers, hookers and sexy vampires/witches/nurses when I was a kid, and that would be in the mid-80’s.
There’s some anecdotal evidence, in the form of reader comments in this posting today on Feministing.com, that the “let’s dress like strippers today” concept is creeping into costumes marketed to girls – again, I wouldn’t know, because a) I never had a store-bought costume growing up, b) I wouldn’t have been able to fit into a store-bought costume until recently and c) I haven’t gone costume shopping with any kids lately. Okay, ever. So I can’t say one way or the other whether “slut-o-ween” is in fact more prevalent than in years past, or if lazy columnists are just cribbing from Tina Fey.
What interests me is that, at least to some degree, “slutty” costumes for women have always been with us – and that they’re something women have inflicted on ourselves, as opposed to something with which the Big Bad Man has saddled us. If women collectively decided that nuns and bag ladies were the coolest costumes EVER, even the most chauvinistic costume-manufacturer would flood the market with them. They don’t make ’em if we don’t buy ’em, ladies.
Seriously – what do we women get out not only revealing, but suggestive costumes? There’s the argument that pretty much any dress-up occasion, from Halloween to proms to weddings is and has always been treated as an opportunity to show off our goods in a way we don’t get to do every day. Maybe the (alleged) escalation of “slut-o-ween” is nothing more than a mirror to the ever-astronomical weddings, proms, quinceaneras and Sweet Sixteens we keep reading about in the New York Times. (Me, I didn’t get a Sweet Sixteen, so what do I know?)
But I have to wonder why, on the one occasion where there are pretty much no social expectations as far as appearances go, so many of us choose to go “look at me” trampy. Hey, I’m counting myself in this, too. When I was a girl, my costumes included Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” a box turtle (literally…), Cyndi Lauper and the ugliest witch you can imagine (the year that all my sisters dressed as pretty princesses). But I was also, memorably, a French maid. (I still can’t believe my mother let me get away with that one).Looking back on it, as an adult the times when I deliberately chose “slutty” costumes were times when I was desperate for approval from the opposite sex. Once, I had just dropped out of college and was living back at home with NO prospects, and the other was when I had just (and I mean JUST) gotten out of a relationship with the guy I thought I was going to marry. SO unhealthy.
Some people argue that Halloween costumes are nothing more than an innocent outlet for people to express the sexual identities we have to hold back 99% of the time. But WHY? Why do we have to bottle it all up 364 days out of the year, only to let our sexual power boil over into a carefully assembled slutty president costume? Maybe if American society weren’t so frickin’ puritanical, we wouldn’t feel the need for a “slut-o-ween.”
I’ll close with a recap of my costume last year. I hadn’t really planned anything, and then on Oct. 30 bell hooks gave a lecture at the college where I was working at the time. She mentioned what she saw as the mildly – okay, maybe not “mildly” – pathetic tactic of rolling up into a Halloween party dressed like a stripper who fell off the bang bus.
I felt a little guilty, being only one year removed from my epic Lara Croft costume. So that night after her lecture I went home and pieced together a look that would evoke a strong, sexy-but-not-slutty and, I felt, clever icon of womanhood – Annie Hall. I only wore it to the campus Halloween party, and no one under the age of 50 knew who I was supposed to be. But I felt good. I had fun. And isn’t that the point?
So from here on out I pledge no more slutty costumes for me. I’ll be goofy, scary or downright obscure – but not slutty. I don’t feel the need.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Whaaaaaat?
Yes, I know I'm at work, and I shouldn't be reading SportsIllustrated.com. I stipulate that I'm a horrible slacker.
But you know what I'm not? The kind of unrepentant pond scum that would sell out my team for a few primary votes, that's what.
(Note: I'm being mildly facetious here. But only mildly.)
So, for those of you out there contemplating a vote for Rudy Giuliani...you've gotten past his penchant for trading in wives, and maybe you've managed to gloss over the fact that the FDNY firefighters on whose tragedy he's trading hate his guts. But how on earth in good conscience can you get past this?
This great republic of ours can withstand a lot...But a patented sports bigamist in the White House? Whatever will we tell our children?
But you know what I'm not? The kind of unrepentant pond scum that would sell out my team for a few primary votes, that's what.
(Note: I'm being mildly facetious here. But only mildly.)
So, for those of you out there contemplating a vote for Rudy Giuliani...you've gotten past his penchant for trading in wives, and maybe you've managed to gloss over the fact that the FDNY firefighters on whose tragedy he's trading hate his guts. But how on earth in good conscience can you get past this?
This great republic of ours can withstand a lot...But a patented sports bigamist in the White House? Whatever will we tell our children?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Don’t think so frickin’ much, or, How the Post-Modern Voter is Ruining America
I was looking for something else entirely today when I came across this New York Times article from earlier in the month about Bill Richardson’s campaign in
One big concern of
“I like his foreign policy statements,” Laurie Dahms of
Her friend Diane Muchatka, also of
After listening to Mr. Richardson at the Fiesta restaurant, Bob McMahon of
Right. Because that worked so very well for Democrats the last time around, when many voted for John Kerry in the primaries because he was “more electable” than the 2004 Obama, John Edwards (whose window has sadly closed, I’m afraid). When are we EVER going to learn?
Interestingly, I’m hearing more and more Republican voters debate the same types of things about their party’s prospective candidates. (This is entirely anecdotal – no links – but believe it or not I do have Republican friends.) They muse not about the candidate’s policy positions, but whether however many times it is-divorced Rudy Giuliani can win the Christian fundamentalist vote, or whether a Mormon like Mitt Romney can win in the Bible Belt. (News to the blogosphere – Mormons are Christians, too, even if you don’t believe what they believe.)
When a paid consultant who hasn’t lived outside of D.C. since grad school asks these questions, it’s condescending, a way to justify one’s salary. When your Mom, your boss and the check-out person at the gas station are asking whether soccer moms will stomach a vote for Hillary, we’ve got a deeper problem.
Chalk it up to too many years of “Hardball” and “West Wing” re-runs – the average American is now an expert not only on policy (that goes back to the days of Thomas Paine), but on political strategy. Except that we’re not.
Rather than voting for the candidates we like and think will best represent our individual interests, we’re turning into mini-Roves (pause for a full-body shiver), throwing our support behind the people we think “they” will support. We’re up in the war room with James Carville, and the air up here is mighty thin.
A vote is the most obvious of self-fulfilling prophesies. If you elect someone – guess what? He or she is by definition “electable.”
So don’t think. Okay, think, but not about what “they” want, because – guess further what – “they” is YOU. Think about what you want for your family, yourself and your community, and vote that way. Spend more time on the news than on the commentary – your great-grandkids will thank you, I promise!
(BTW, it pisses me off that the Times doesn't have Richardson on the main page of its election coverage. Who says the MSM doesn't frame our issues for us? B*stards.)Thursday, October 18, 2007
Can't hate the Pats
Interesting column today on ESPN.com: Patrick Hruby explains why, despite all the "Cameragate" and garbage-time touchdowns brouhaha, he just can't find it himself to hate the New England Patriots.
I keep hearing more and more people this season unloading on the Pats, and I just keep my mouth shut. I'm mystified by the vitriol - where'd it come from, out of nowhere, overnight? I can only conclude that some level of resentment for New England's continued excellence has been simmering for years, and needed only that BS signal "stealing" in Week 1 to boil over.
I'm with Hruby. True brilliance comes along so rarely in any sport, and almost never in the salary-cap NFL. This isn't pro baseball, where wealthy owners can buy up all the best talent, or Division I college athletics, where...yeah, they're still pretty much buying the talent. Now, that, I can resent. Or, on the flip-side, a team or athlete who's patently NOT excellent, yet is shoved down our collective throat because Nike likes his attitude (Exhibit A: Michael Vick).
Neither applies to the current Patriots dynasty. Hey, I'd love to hate them, too - they kept my Panthers from winning the Super Bowl. But...*sigh* I just can't.
I keep hearing more and more people this season unloading on the Pats, and I just keep my mouth shut. I'm mystified by the vitriol - where'd it come from, out of nowhere, overnight? I can only conclude that some level of resentment for New England's continued excellence has been simmering for years, and needed only that BS signal "stealing" in Week 1 to boil over.
I'm with Hruby. True brilliance comes along so rarely in any sport, and almost never in the salary-cap NFL. This isn't pro baseball, where wealthy owners can buy up all the best talent, or Division I college athletics, where...yeah, they're still pretty much buying the talent. Now, that, I can resent. Or, on the flip-side, a team or athlete who's patently NOT excellent, yet is shoved down our collective throat because Nike likes his attitude (Exhibit A: Michael Vick).
Neither applies to the current Patriots dynasty. Hey, I'd love to hate them, too - they kept my Panthers from winning the Super Bowl. But...*sigh* I just can't.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Pic of the Week: I should find something productive to do with my life…
...but movies make me happy, so there ya go. I haven't had the time that I would like to devote to my first love here of late, what with work, personal drama and football. But I've managed to squeeze in a few in the last few weeks.
"Blowup" (1966)
This one has been on my "You Call Yourself a Film-Lover and You Haven't Seen (Fill in the Blank)???" list for some time. It came out 40 years ago and it doesn't feature Lindsay Lohan, so of course you won't find it at Blockbuster. Thank Heaven for Netflix! Anyway, it's the first English-language film from director Michelangelo Antonioni (who wins my award for the most fun-to-say name of all time). I was all hopped up to see it…and I'm glad I did, not because I loved it, only so I can check it off my list.
"Blowup" is – I think - about the nature of reality. A cynical
I think this is the movie Stanley Kubrick was trying to make with "Eyes Wide Shut," except that "Blowup" is a million times better. Still, don't expect a linear, easy-to-digest plot. This movie has none of the standard
"Bright Leaves" (2003)
"Hi, I'm Ross McElwee, homespun documentarian from
"So I spend months, possibly years of my life on what might have been a lovely meditation on my family's complicated relationship with tobacco farming, replete with gads of borderline-erotic shots of voluptuous green leaves swaying in the breeze. Unfortunately, I did this interview with the woman whose husband wrote the book on which the Gary Cooper movie was based, and she assures me that it was entirely original story, not in fact based on my family. Rather than admit that my founding theory was erroneous and a waste of time, I decided to place this tidbit at the end of my film, so that you the viewer would have to sit through two hours of my rambling, gorgeously lit footage before realizing that you, too, had wasted your time investing in said narrative. Aren't I homespun and brilliant? Give me a grant."
Okay, so it's not a waste of time, per se. It's a pleasant little movie that has absolutely no throughline beyond giving privileged urban Yankees the opportunity to feel superior those of us who grew up in towns where they still have beauty pageants for every age group. And I don't think McElwee intended the film to be at all condescending; I think it comes from a place of great affection for his home state. But I wonder what the people who aren't "from here" take away from this movie – and I can't help thinking McElwee could have done better.
[This is probably just me, but the scene shot at the NC School of the Arts is incredibly cool – just 'cause I go there regularly – the "this scene was shot five minutes from my house!" factor. But I'm also the person who listens to that Ben Folds Five song "Brick" solely for the line about going to
"Stranger Than Fiction" (2006)
Another recent movie, so you can find reviews galore. This is one I didn't see in the theatre for some reason, so again, thank Heaven for Netflix. Another entry in my Maggie Gyllenhaal crush-category. This is one of those scripts that you could see winning a billion awards, but as a movie it really works because of the cast. Will Ferrell, especially, in the lead as an accountant whose comically bland existence is rocked when he discovers a strange psychic connection to a novelist who – oops – plans to kill him off, is brilliant. This is surely the film that signals Ferrell's transition into Tom Hanks/Robin Williams/Jim Carrey territory: Now that I've sneaked into your hearts through years of slapstick comedy, it's that much easier for you to identify with my character in a dramatic role. Since I like Ferrell, I'm hoping his trajectory turns out to be more Forrest Gump than Patch Adams.
My observations: great soundtrack. Ferrell is sweet and sexy, especially in his scenes with Maggie. And while I love Maggie here, I'm calling BS on a baker that scrawny. But I can't imagine anyone else in her role – fiery, yet open-hearted enough to give a stiff like Ferrell's Harold Crick a shot. May we all find a little Maggie in ourselves. (I TOLD you I have a crush on her…) I can be forgiven for momentarily forgetting that Queen Latifah's in this movie – her character is so one dimensional, her dialogue so "just what the other character needs to hear in order to proceed" that I started to wonder if there weren't some "A Beautiful Mind" hallucination sh*t going on with her. But nope.
"Fracture" (2007)
I really was looking forward to this, but I'm glad I waited for video. If I'd dropped $7 to see it in the theatre, rather than a portion of my monthly Netflix fee, I'd have been pissed. But I guess it goes well with pizza.
Am I the only person in
It's a plot-driven film. And the plot's not bad, except that I quickly tire of movies whose plots dictate what the characters do, rather than the other way around. I'd prefer to see wholey drawn people deciding with realism upon certain courses of action…you know, like in good movies. "Fracture" frustrated me because it could have been that movie with only a little more effort – I was begging for more exploration of Hopkins's character's profession as an aircraft engineer, whose job it is to find the weak spots in machines, as he's so adept at doing with people (the film tells us, but we seldom get to see. I don't like taking a movie's word for it. SHOW ME.). And the resolution was way too "Law & Order: SVU" for me to really respect it. And what's really sad is that this was one of the better
"Bull
Lots of people my age look at that decaying bag of flesh known as Kevin Costner, and we remember back to the distant days of childhood, when we heard our mothers swoon over him, and we think to ourselves, "WTF?" Let me say, I understand. In response, I present you with the following:
ANNIE
What do you believe in?
Crash at the door. Annie's question is slightly taunting. He stops, and speaks with both aloofness and passion:
CRASH
I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, long foreplay, and that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I believe that there oughtta be a constitutional amendment outlawing astro-turf and the designated hitter, I
believe in the "sweet spot", soft core pornography, chocolate chip cookies, opening your presents on Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last for three days. Good night.
ANNIE
(breathless)
Oh my...
[BTW, Tim Robbins narrowly beat out David Duchovny for the role of Susan Sarandon's "dim pretty boy" love interest. And of course, this is the film where Sarandon and Robbins met. I can't help imagining some alter-universe where Sarandon coupled up with Duchovny instead – maybe the "X-Files" conspiracy theories would have taken on a whole new dimension…]
[Further BTW…Sarandon's character, Annie Savoy, is my personal hero, for her love and knowledge of sports, her unabashed sexual confidence and her fabulous retro-cool house paid for solely with her salary teaching part-time at the fictional Alamance Junior College. The woman clearly has gads to teach us.]
This makes me extremely happy...
From the BBC:
"Rock legends Led Zeppelin are to make their complete back catalogue available for digital download from next month.
"Rock legends Led Zeppelin are to make their complete back catalogue available for digital download from next month.
The band, one of the last major acts to embrace the digital market, will now offer classic hits like Whole Lotta Love from all online music retailers."
This could be the killer app that finally pushes me over the edge...iTunes, I'm ready when you are.
They're also going to offer ringtones through Verizon, which just happens to be my provider...So, to recap, the Panthers won, the Cowboys lost and Led Zeppelin's catalogue has finally been freed from the vault. Sara's having a very good week so far...
Let them eat SCHIPs
I'm a little late in commenting on President Bush's recent veto of the bill that would have funded the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), because I figured the topic just didn't need any more screaming. Quick refresher: the bipartisan bill would have expanded the long-running health insurance program to include children in families earning up to three times the Federal poverty guidelines (see the chart for more detailed info, but for most of the country that's $61,950 for a family of four). This expansion would have been funded by increases in taxes on tobacco products (somebody in Congress has a wicked sense of humor).
The opponents of the bill argued that the threshold was too high, covering families who could actually afford private coverage. Okay, fair point. Reasonable people can differ on where exactly the cutoff should be, and that should absolutely be part of the debate.
Unfortunately, when you're talking about the far-Right blogosphere, "reasonable" isn't the most accurate description.
Rather than pushing the substantive policy argument (the income level of the covered families), the artists formerly known as the "vast right-wing conspiracy" set about attacking the families who have benefitted from SCHIP, even going so far as to Swift Boat a little kid.
Geez. Most of the time I tune out the screaming heads on both ends of the political talk show spectrum - I just don't feel the need for that kind of negativity in my life. I didn't even know who Graeme Frost was until that whole thing was over. Can we all agree that attacking ordinary people with the same zeal we go after elected officials who've voluntarily put themselves in the spotlight is going WAY too far? What if that were your neighbor, or your church's choir director, or your child's teacher, in Michele Malkin's sights?
At the worst part is that they learned nothing from the Frost family; they're at it again. I generally avoid Salon.com editor Joan Walsh's columns (again with the negativity), but her latest, about another family targeted by anti-SCHIP commentators, is a must-read. Among the things she points out is that no one is claiming that the families covered by SCHIP are impoverished - they're what we call the working poor. THAT'S THE POINT.
When you read the "positions" of so many of the people bashing SCHIP, it becomes uncomfortably clear that classism is still alive and well among a certain segment of conservatives. This is why I will never understand in a million years why so many of the people I knew growing up - people who will work, and work hard, every day of their lives, and do so without complaint - think that the Republican Party represents their interests.
Pay attention to the scorn with which Malkin says that Dara Wilkerson, the waitress referenced in Walsh's story, should've known better than to have a child when she didn't have health coverage through her employer. Oh, right, I guess she should've gotten an abortion. WAIT, no! Can't do that.......I guess people making under six figures just shouldn't have sex.
Once again, I flash back to one of the many days in Mrs. Sawyer's little classroom at East Surry High, when yet another of my conservative-leaning classmates attempts to patiently explain to me how the Democrats want to control our personal lives. Remember that the next time someone lectures you on the choices you should have made in order to be able to spend hundreds of dollars each month on insurance provided by one of President Bush's corporate contributers.
You should have known not to have a child with a congenital birth defect! You should have anticipated that you'd get laid off from your white collar job-with-great-benefits! You should have psychically sensed that that drunk driver was going to plow into your car, leaving your three children with life-long disabilities!
(BTW, this is largely coming from people who didn't have the foresight to anticipate that conquering and rebuilding an entire country would take more than six weeks...but that's neither here nor there.)
A further BTW...the SCHIP bill vetoed by President Bush would have cost $35 billion dollars and insured 4 million American children. Congress authorzed spending two-and-a-half times that amount ($89 billion) in the initial authorization to use force in Iraq. So far, America has lost just under 4,000 soldiers in Iraq. Math isn't my strong suit, but that looks like a hell of a lot more lives potentially saved than lost, at less than half the cost.
UPDATE: Here's a better link to the story about the Wilkerson family that does a good job of refuting the attack made on them by one right-wing commentator.
The opponents of the bill argued that the threshold was too high, covering families who could actually afford private coverage. Okay, fair point. Reasonable people can differ on where exactly the cutoff should be, and that should absolutely be part of the debate.
Unfortunately, when you're talking about the far-Right blogosphere, "reasonable" isn't the most accurate description.
Rather than pushing the substantive policy argument (the income level of the covered families), the artists formerly known as the "vast right-wing conspiracy" set about attacking the families who have benefitted from SCHIP, even going so far as to Swift Boat a little kid.
Geez. Most of the time I tune out the screaming heads on both ends of the political talk show spectrum - I just don't feel the need for that kind of negativity in my life. I didn't even know who Graeme Frost was until that whole thing was over. Can we all agree that attacking ordinary people with the same zeal we go after elected officials who've voluntarily put themselves in the spotlight is going WAY too far? What if that were your neighbor, or your church's choir director, or your child's teacher, in Michele Malkin's sights?
At the worst part is that they learned nothing from the Frost family; they're at it again. I generally avoid Salon.com editor Joan Walsh's columns (again with the negativity), but her latest, about another family targeted by anti-SCHIP commentators, is a must-read. Among the things she points out is that no one is claiming that the families covered by SCHIP are impoverished - they're what we call the working poor. THAT'S THE POINT.
When you read the "positions" of so many of the people bashing SCHIP, it becomes uncomfortably clear that classism is still alive and well among a certain segment of conservatives. This is why I will never understand in a million years why so many of the people I knew growing up - people who will work, and work hard, every day of their lives, and do so without complaint - think that the Republican Party represents their interests.
Pay attention to the scorn with which Malkin says that Dara Wilkerson, the waitress referenced in Walsh's story, should've known better than to have a child when she didn't have health coverage through her employer. Oh, right, I guess she should've gotten an abortion. WAIT, no! Can't do that.......I guess people making under six figures just shouldn't have sex.
Once again, I flash back to one of the many days in Mrs. Sawyer's little classroom at East Surry High, when yet another of my conservative-leaning classmates attempts to patiently explain to me how the Democrats want to control our personal lives. Remember that the next time someone lectures you on the choices you should have made in order to be able to spend hundreds of dollars each month on insurance provided by one of President Bush's corporate contributers.
You should have known not to have a child with a congenital birth defect! You should have anticipated that you'd get laid off from your white collar job-with-great-benefits! You should have psychically sensed that that drunk driver was going to plow into your car, leaving your three children with life-long disabilities!
(BTW, this is largely coming from people who didn't have the foresight to anticipate that conquering and rebuilding an entire country would take more than six weeks...but that's neither here nor there.)
A further BTW...the SCHIP bill vetoed by President Bush would have cost $35 billion dollars and insured 4 million American children. Congress authorzed spending two-and-a-half times that amount ($89 billion) in the initial authorization to use force in Iraq. So far, America has lost just under 4,000 soldiers in Iraq. Math isn't my strong suit, but that looks like a hell of a lot more lives potentially saved than lost, at less than half the cost.
UPDATE: Here's a better link to the story about the Wilkerson family that does a good job of refuting the attack made on them by one right-wing commentator.
Newness...
This blog started on my MySpace page as nothing more than a place for me to deposit all those random news articles (and rants on the random news articles) that I used to obsessively email to everyone I knew. I'm sure my grandmother, former coworkers, people I haven't talked to since high school and everyone else in my address book are eternally grateful that I found a way to redirect my energies.
The thing is, I like to bring things up. I love reading something and thinking, "So-and-so would be so into this!" And I was surprised to find out that people I never thought would've been into a story were in fact into it...okay, that made no sense, but you know what I mean. One of the greatest things about this li'l Internet of ours is how much easier it is to connect with people - not just to meet people or chat them up, but to discover that the person with whom you never thought you'd have anything in common also thinks Andrew Meyer is a douchebag, or is also madly in love with Russell Crowe, or also loves the Carolina Panthers. When I posted things on my MySpace blog, it wasn't just this masterbatory process by which I could see my own words in print, live online. I legitimately wanted to know what the people reading the blog thought about the things I was posting.
I also firmly believe that the mainstream media has let us down when it comes to reporting the news that affects our daily lives (but Britney and Anna Nicole, they've got down). Right or Left or in the middle, I don't know a single person who wouldn't agree with that. So my blog was also a way to bring up issues that I thought my friends should know about, but that weren't necessarily being addressed by the media accessible to the 90% of Americans who don't spend all day in front of a computer getting alerts from 14 different media outlets. There's a lot of screaming out there; I just want to cut through it a little bit.
So you won't find me doing the typical blogger thing: reposting and rehashing some other writer's material (whether to rip it to shreds or praise it as the greatest work of journalism since Watergate). I try to stick to primary sources, because frankly I think we need the reminder that those sources exist. I don't know about you, but I'm beyond fed up with this post-modern orgy of Trackbacks and spin cycles.
I may repost some things that have recently gone up on my old blog...but please feel free to check it out if you're curious. And by all means leave some comments. I may not agree with you, but I won't delete you unless you're an obvious spammer. So, let's start talking...
The thing is, I like to bring things up. I love reading something and thinking, "So-and-so would be so into this!" And I was surprised to find out that people I never thought would've been into a story were in fact into it...okay, that made no sense, but you know what I mean. One of the greatest things about this li'l Internet of ours is how much easier it is to connect with people - not just to meet people or chat them up, but to discover that the person with whom you never thought you'd have anything in common also thinks Andrew Meyer is a douchebag, or is also madly in love with Russell Crowe, or also loves the Carolina Panthers. When I posted things on my MySpace blog, it wasn't just this masterbatory process by which I could see my own words in print, live online. I legitimately wanted to know what the people reading the blog thought about the things I was posting.
I also firmly believe that the mainstream media has let us down when it comes to reporting the news that affects our daily lives (but Britney and Anna Nicole, they've got down). Right or Left or in the middle, I don't know a single person who wouldn't agree with that. So my blog was also a way to bring up issues that I thought my friends should know about, but that weren't necessarily being addressed by the media accessible to the 90% of Americans who don't spend all day in front of a computer getting alerts from 14 different media outlets. There's a lot of screaming out there; I just want to cut through it a little bit.
So you won't find me doing the typical blogger thing: reposting and rehashing some other writer's material (whether to rip it to shreds or praise it as the greatest work of journalism since Watergate). I try to stick to primary sources, because frankly I think we need the reminder that those sources exist. I don't know about you, but I'm beyond fed up with this post-modern orgy of Trackbacks and spin cycles.
I may repost some things that have recently gone up on my old blog...but please feel free to check it out if you're curious. And by all means leave some comments. I may not agree with you, but I won't delete you unless you're an obvious spammer. So, let's start talking...
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