There I was cruising the internet, trying to forget about the baby jesus this holiday season, when I stumbled upon a conclave of persecuted christians using guerrilla tactics to fight back against the secular elitists hell-bent on destroying Christmas, by sending Christmas cards to the ACLU.

We are excited to be launching the opportunity today…between now and Christmas we are asking you to send the ACLU direct “MerryChristmas” cards.

And we aren’t talking about these generic “happy holiday” (meaning nothing) type of cards…

Go get as “Christmas” a Christmas card as you can find… something that says.. “Joy To The World”, “For Unto Us A Child Is Born”, but at least “Merry Christmas”, put some of your own thoughts into it, sign it respectfully and zip it off in the mail to…

And an impressive list of wearied persecutees have found that unquenchable human spirit and stood up for their cherished little holiday. Fuckers. As Teh lame says in the comments here, I’m sure that the Athiest and Communist Lovers are totally demoralized to discover that a bunch of private citizens on their private time and on their own dime are sending Christmas cards to celebrate their private religious convictions. Dammit. It’s as if removing state endorsements of that wretched holiday weren’t enough to end Christmas all together. Time to figure out plan B.

hat tip Gregor Samsa

Via Kevin Drum, the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee examines the Christian imagery in those C.S. Lewis books Disney’s made a movie out of:

“Tolkien hated Narnia: the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power - lord of lords, king of kings, prince of peace to be worshipped and adored. But Tolkien disliked Lewis’s bully-pulpit.

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read”.

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth.

Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, “There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory.” Well, here’s my huff.”

I don’t have much to say myself about a movie I will not see, based on books I did not read, that may have some allegorical allusions to a religion I do not adhere to. But it’s an interesting read nonetheless. On the other hand, I have stronger opinions on this piece in the London Review of Books on Brett Easton Ellis, via Dum Pendebat Filius

“Ellis’s characters come after Balzac’s in the sense that they are already inordinately wealthy – many have both inherited money and made considerable amounts of it – and are already stranded by their inordinate success, or the success of their parents. Ellis wants to show us what happens to people when they are successful by the standards of their culture, when they have got what they are supposed to want (wealth, fame, glamour and sex); when, that is, they have to live without any compelling forms of resistance to the prevailing ideology; when all they have got to protect themselves are anaesthetics. If you can’t bear what you can see you can close your eyes; but every time you close your eyes you are reminded that what you can’t see is still there. Ellis, a very remarkable writer who is in some ways as underrated by his fans as by his critics, gives us a picture of what happens to morality when there is no political life, when capitalism without optimism and without question takes hold, when inattention is the last resort.”

I’m fairly sympathetic to the notion that Ellis is underrated as an author, even by his fans. He falls victim to the tendency of many to dismiss him due to the discomfort his work provokes, and likewise many of his fans embrace that discomfort for its own sake, neither of them contemplating that discomfort, nor even looking at the broader picture, just either attracted to or repulsed by that giant pink elephant in the room of sex, violence, and misogyny. And since there is often, like in American Psycho, a seemingly obvious and shallow satire to latch onto and dismiss, it becomes easy to do so, without noticing the subtlies that mark his talent and separate Ellis’s work from the bulk of the novels you’ll find at a Barnes and Noble. Anyway, it’s an interesting review, and well worth the time spent reading it.

And just for kicks, check out this piece entitled Death to Bright Eyes. Making fun of Conor Oberst is a literal guilty pleasure of mine, in the sense that I feel legit guilt for doing it, but yet it’s also so very pleasurable. I really hate the sort of person who gets cheap glee out of ridiculing the creative efforts of others, no matter how bad it is, without respecting the effort that went into it. That of course does not apply to mersh, but there’s no fair way to characterize Bright Eyes as mersh. And I guess it’s not Conor’s fault that every dopey kid who loves Donnie Darko has thrust him into the spotlight; putting that awful trembling wail, that now and then reaches a yodel, before our jaded, critical eyes. But he’s just that bad. And suppressing that bubbling hate his precious warbling provokes, just cannot be healthy.

To compare Bright Eyes to Bob Dylan or Nick Drake, as I believe some journalists have been doing, is truly criminal. Bob Dylan writes good lyrics and Nick Drake played guitar beautifully. He is like them only in that he would like to be like them, only in that he does very badly what they do well.

Let us proceed calmly to make our case, point by point. First of all, he is unbelievably pretentious. The very name of his band is insufferable, whether taken as vanity or unctuous flattery, as is the title of his most recent album, “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning� and the monologue it opens with, about two people seated next to each other on a plane who nonetheless are unable to connect emotionally. Then, surprise, the plane crashes.

Second, his voice is incredibly annoying, as he mewls over hackneyed bar band changes and country-western musical hash still cold in the shape of the can. When Emmylou Harris is piped in to fill things out, the contrast is highly unflattering; only one person is singing.

Third, his songs are mere sketches and unoriginal. He plucks his guitar idly like a ukelele through ponderously slow tempos and old melodies lifted from the radio. Glorious Noise suggests “Lua” is stolen from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” SF Weekly thinks it’s the Replacements. Step right up, reader, name that tune and win a prize.

Read on to see what Colin Meloy of the Decembrists has to say.

Update: Annejumps sent me a livejournal on a woman who had her Valtrex prescription refused because the pharmacist wants her to suffer from her herpes. Nice.

A number of readers have sent me this article with very good news in it–the Illinois law that forbids pharmacists to use false piety to hide their desire to punish women for having Teh Sex by withholding legal contraceptives from them is getting enforced. Walgreen’s has suspenced four pharmacists already for refusing to help female customers because they disapprove of their sex lives. Naturally, the pharmacists are thinking of suing, because if there’s anything the pseudo-pious love more than getting up into someone else’s business, it’s pretending to be martyrs.

The religious claims of the woman-punishing pharmacists are so transparent as to be laughable. I live in the Land of a Million Denominations, so I’ve worked with tons of people in my time who have religious beliefs that could conceivably come in conflict with the work culture or their work duties. You know what they do ever single time? Opt out of stuff that’s not directly required by the job and otherwise do the job they’re hired to do. The rule of thumb is simple enough–we respected their private beliefs and they did not try to use their job duties or the withholding of said duties or throwing temper tantrums or something like that in order to get others to comply with their religious beliefs. In other words, they understood to have their religious beliefs respected, they had to respect others’ religious beliefs.

The irony in all this is the most discomfort I’ve ever seen revolves around public Christmas displays, since I’ve worked with a number of Christians whose particular denomination teaches that observing Christmas is sinful. Most chose to simply ignore the decorations and opt out of holiday parties. I’ve never worked for a moment with anyone who felt that they had a right to use their religion as a crutch to refuse service to someone who’s personal beliefs differed from them. Again, that’s no doubt because a) they are adult enough to know that they have to do the job they were hired to do and b) that religious discrimination is wrong, and if it’s wrong against them, it’s wrong to do it to others.

What I find interesting about this whole thing is how rarely someone points out that the pharmacists acting like martyrs and claiming religious discrimination are doing so in order to discriminate against their customers, and on two levels, no less. There’s the obvious one–they are discriminating against women, holding female customers to a standard that the customers have sex lives the pharmacists approve of or they don’t get their drugs. But they are also discriminating against customers for their religious/personal belief systems. If someone is taking contraceptive pills, she obviously doesn’t have a personal belief that women controlling their own reproduction is wrong. And it’s likely that many women who use the pill are like me and think that women controlling when and who we have children with is a moral good, so anyone who tries to force us to comply to their personal belief system instead of ours seems to me to be discriminating himself. When I worked in customer service type jobs, I don’t think that I met a single Christian coworker who would have thought themselves in the right to refuse service to a customer for having different religious beliefs, even in the transaction involved those. For instance, I’d known lots of bank tellers who believed that Islam was a Satanic religion or that all Jews were going to hell, but they weren’t going to throw a temper tantrum when given a deposit for an account in the name of a mosque or a temple. I don’t think it ever occured to them they had a right to use their job to harass a customer for having different religious beliefs.

Of course, people get befuddled on this when it comes to women’s right to have her own private beliefs about when to have children and who to have them with. (The latter is a critical point–by denying EC to someone, you are fighting her right to say that she doesn’t want children with a one night stand or even a rapist.) As a society, we tend to still think of women’s bodies as being public property, which only emboldens pharmacists who think that a stranger’s uterus falls under their god’s jurisdiction instead of her god’s jurisdiction. (Or her own, for us atheists.)

Anyway, I think that the pharmacist-cum-martyr bit is a first class case of the kind of projection that Steve Almond describes here. Instead of openly admitting that they want to use any means necessary to force their religious beliefs on women, religious wingnuts instead are pretending that they are actually being oppressed if they are forced by law to respect others’ right to their own beliefs. They’ve convinced themselves that black is white, that they’re beliefs can only be respected if they are allowed to force them on others. It’s the same urge behind the paranoia behind the war on Christmas–if there’s even an inkling of evidence that people who believe differently than they do deserve respect, all hell breaks loose and it’s martyr time. One does wonder if the theocrats ever do manage to completely take over the government and force everyone else to at least pretend to be right wing Christians if they will continue to act like they are oppressed victims because someone out there is probably thinking quietly to himself that their religion is a load of shit and she disagrees.

What’s a blog for if not publically thanking people who lavish you with gifts? Thanks Norbizness for the End of the Century DVD and the Rock Snobs Dictionary. And a thousand thanks to Brian for the iPod! With all these gifts, I’m going to be launching into a new era of Insufferable Music Snobbery. But I promise that I’ll try not to best Pitchfork, not that I could even if I did try.

What a fucking nightmare. A 17-year-old girl is allegedly gang raped, and instead of prosecuting the men she said raped her, the girl is prosecuted for filing a false report. Kevin Hayden knows the victim and has some more information on the case. Shakespeare’s Sister has a must-read post on it.

Reporting a rape to the police is a living nightmare. I can assure you that most people would really just prefer rape victims to shut up, go away, and not trouble them and definitely not cause problems for the rapist. I wouldn’t have prosecuted except I couldn’t bear the guilt if he did it to someone else. I still almost didn’t, except at the insistence of my boyfriend at the time that it was wrong to just roll over and pretend it didn’t happen. It took me a week to work up the courage. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought I’d get in trouble with the law for seeking justice.

Reader Anne sent me the marvelously bull-headed rant from Jared Wilson, who is absolutely sure that his homophobia is so universally shared that I get the impression that he thinks even gay guys think gay sex is gross. He’s predicting that Brokeback Mountain is going to bomb in theaters, not because it looks like it’s kind of a slow-moving drama that drives shallow people who don’t want to think when they go to the movies (people like me), but because gays are Teh Icky.

For all of our modern cultural “enlightenment,” and despite the pervasiveness of gay characters and stories all over American media, and regardless of the success of shows like “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye,” by and large Americans — blue state, red state, Christian and non — innately find homosexuality repulsive.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I love naked bigotry, since it’s just so much easier to deal with than cloaked bigotry. I find the idea of Republicans fucking inherently disgusting, but you don’t see me agitating to ban Republicans from marriage, though I could easily demonstrate that there’s a very public good to be had from that, which you can’t really demonstrate with bans on gay marriage.

It’s part of our makeup. It’s biological, it’s conscience-born, it’s part of the imago dei. It’s part of a “moral aesthetic” most everyone bears latent.

Which doesn’t do much to explain the enthusiasm for lesbian sex scenes in porn aimed at straight men, the majority of whom in this country who vote “red”. What’s nice about this guy is he doesn’t even try to remember that lesbians exist.

To be blunt, we know anal sex is gross, and we especially know anal sex between men is repulsive. Even for most of those who have no basis for which to call it a sin find the act itself “gross.”

Who you calling “we”, motherfucker? What planet did they beam this guy down from? At this point in history, I’m guessing a lot more Americans rightfully think Big Macs are a hell of a lot grosser than anal sex, and you know how many Big Macs they sell.

It’s there in all the jokes about prison or “dropping the soap” in a locker room. It’s there in the undiminished shock of that infamous Deliverance scene or the one in Pulp Fiction, which continue to provoke nervous laughter and revulsion even while heterosexual rape scenes occur almost weekly on the countless crime shows on television.

Translation: Rape is A-OK so long as the victim’s female.

It’s even there in the homosexual community itself, which, in my (admittedly unprofessional) sociological opinion, compensates for the grotesquerie of male-male intercourse with the ubiquitous and stereotypical “thin, single, and neat”-ness.

Wait a minute! I’m thin, single and neat! And I’m compensating for something else entirely, which is my love of mud wrestling. So there.

Americans like to believe they are tolerant.

Indeed, to the point where you’d never hear anyone brag about something like being “politically incorrect”. Or name a TV show that or something.
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Listen, I love the community of people who comment here at Pandagon, each and every one. Even the ones who think I’m an asshole. Even the ones who routinely get their scalp handed to them for failing to abide the groupthink. I love you because you and your contributions make Pandagon what it is, more so even than my own contributions sometimes. And when I get testy about something and start throwing a couple elbows, it really is nothing personal. It’s how I was raised. Unfailingly polite to strangers, but comfortable with being rude to the people you love. And yes, most of the time I’m “just kidding,� but I am, as Franken says, “kidding on the square� too.

But what I love about the community here at Pandagon is the substance of the discussion in the comments. Substantive, humorous, intelligent, vicious when need be, and rarely afflicted with moral vanity. But, you know, whether I’ve put a lot of time and effort into a post, or whether I lazily just tossed one off, the last thing I want to hear about in the comments – and for completely different reasons – is anything at all about apostrophes and homonyms, and spelling from that segment of the commentosphere who play judges in the blog-olympics. “Nice transition, but you stumbled on the landing, and forgot to dot your ‘i’ – 8.7.�

And I guess you think you’re trying to help. I understand that. But do you really think I don’t know the difference between “its� and “it’s�? Do you think I was sick that day in the second grade? It’s not that I don’t know the difference. It’s that I don’t care enough to do the proof-reading to find these errors. I have to admit that, obviously. The nature of blogging is such that one’s return on excessive proof-reading diminishes fairly quickly. That’s an excuse, but not a justification I guess. But, shit, people are going to make mistakes, no matter how excessively devoted to avoiding them they are. And the people who point them out, honestly, just seem like the kind of people who just want everyone to know that they know the difference between “you’re� and “your.� The kind of person who needs everyone in the room to know how smart they are. That guy.

Or maybe they either just don’t get or refuse to accept the informal nature of much of the internet.

(Sic) Freak’s Spouse: Honey, can you pass the butter?
(Sic) Freak: Yes, I CaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA –LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA- LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA- aaaaayun. Unh. But will I? (Derek Zoolander face)
(Sic) Freak’s Spouse: Sigh. Just pass the fucking butter, asshole.

I know. I know. William Safire is spinning in his grave.

More ranting on the subject.

Norbizness has a song on his list I saw a man doing interpretative Christian dance to once on 6th Street. Guess which song it is!

Our leader’s randomizer wants her to dance. Mine is a spaz, as usual.

1) “Mr Grieves”–TV on the Radio. 9/10, for simply putting out song after song that skirts on the edge of strange but always being relentlessly cool.
2) “Red Roses”–Betty Harris. 7/10, get out of you chair and dance like an ass.
3) “All Around the World”–Titus Turner. 8/10, chill and super groovy version of this song.
4) “Chinese Rocks”–Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers. 8/10, punk classic that is not permanently stuck in my head. (Everything is in the pawn shop!)
5) “Chain of Fools”–Aretha Franklin. 9/10, especially since it’s a live version with some really cool guitar work.
6) “Love Me Do”–Sandie Shaw. 3/10, this is a really goofy lounge cover, but I don’t think I like it at all.
7) “Monster Blues”–Invisible Eyes. 9/10, this is what I want out of garage rock–bust out the keyboards early, have a groove that will cause the audience at a live show to rock out as one, waving cigarettes in the air with so much glee they actually let the entire things burn down without dragging except the once during the blessedly brief guitar solor. Makes me want to slap on a miniskirt and a cute hat and paint the town red.
8) “Circles”–Pop Art Toasters. 5/10, not so much.
9) “Tattoo Vampire”–Blue Oyster Cult. 2/10, though I imagine in a year they’ll be the band all the IMSes are saying they loved all along. But this song blows. Skipping it.
10) “I Fought the Law”–Bobby Fuller Four. 6/10, extra point for being from El Paso, the city your blogger also had the misfortune to enter the world in.

6.6 out of ten. Started strong and petered out. I give this incident a 8/10, and would have been a 10/10 if the members of Creed and 311 got into a fight to the death.

I’ll admit it. I’m behind the plot to destroy Christmas. I ran around the country telling people to start saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. I figure after a couple of years of the words “Happy Holidays” being used by clerks and store signs, people will completely forget what Christmas even was and December 25th will just be another day in the midst of the present-buying frenzy people will refer to as the “holiday season”.

I do this with a heavy heart, but do it I must because my god the Disco Ball, working through the prankster god the Great Cat, who created the universe by throwing it up in a hairball, has instructed me to do so. It’s a shame it’s come to this, but Christmas has to go. We Discoballmouseatarians have always been fans of Christmas, since we like presents, eggnog, and sitting around hoping that no one gets into fights where they rehash sibling rivalries of their childhoods, but unfortunately Christmas has changed and is no longer the innocent holiday it used to be.

The Christmas music thing has been a major problem for awhile. As we all know, the Disco Ball thinks shaking your groove thang and rocking out and all other forms of music enjoyment are the highest pleasures known to man. Christmas music presents a threat to all this. The same 15 syrupy Christmas songs covered endlessly and usually badly by a variety of artists in every store, restaurant and other public space you go to is enough to make you want to remove those 15 songs from your head via the double barrel shotgun method. But this alone was not the reason the Great Cat instructed me to destroy Christmas.

No, what really pissed off the Great Cat is that the words “Merry Christmas” were being used as a weapon and it was beginning to cause a disturbance in the light from the Disco Ball. Seems that a few power hungry right-wingers got together and decided to spread paranoid conspiracy theories that Christmas was under attack by secular humanists. It didn’t take long for hoardes of sheeplike wingnuts to start running around telling people “Merry Christmas” with the same attitude as if they were teenagers testing their parents’ limits by telling them to fuck off. And then they’d run around on the Internet bragging about it, presumably because most of their victims didn’t react with the expected outrage at being told to enjoy their Christmas.

But the reaction of the victims is not what upsets the Disco Ball’s light field. It’s the mere act of mouthing the words “Merry Christmas” while actually meaning, “Fuck you, I’m better than you,” that offends the Disco Ball. As such, the Great Cat has determined that the people cannot have Christmas anymore if they can’t be merry about it. (Yes, the Great Cat’s sense of irony is roughly like a 2x4 to the head, but what are you going to do?) So because the wingnuts were paranoid about losing Christmas, lose Christmas they will.

How am I single-handedly destroying Christmas? Well, the Mouse Prophet has her ways. Let’s just say my plan involves a fax machine and a shitload of ABBA covers. Don’t doubt that these humble tools will get the job done. It’s the Great Cat’s version of fishes and loaves, if you will.*

*Apparently, I have more work to do. Darleen misled me about how fast the progress on the death of Christmas is going. Might have to add a cell phone and some Bee Gees covers to the effort. I almost feel bad for her, since she doesn’t get that “oppressors” doesn’t automatically mean white people, no matter what she fantasizes. And for some reason, she still hasn’t figured out that calling me “Mandy” doesn’t make her funny any more than me calling her a “pinhead” means the Ramones song won’t rock any longer.

I have the solution to this stupid debate figured out.

Men can force abortions on women who don’t want them if they agree to have their testicles removed at the same time.

I think a law like that should probably create the legal ownership of someone else’s body that the men advocating forced abortions seem to want while also creating a situation where they’ll have to consider the implications of what that really means.

By the way, and I don’t know where else to cram it, but this post on how white people need to chill when it comes to the word “racist” is a classic. I’m stashing it here, because it’s simple, really.

This is what you get for assuming that the job description you are giving describes the job you’re supposed to do.

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

“The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect,” the memo concluded.

Well, and I suppose that’s what happens when you expect that laws against discrimination are meant to be obeyed instead of flagrantly disregarded in an attempt to disempower black and Hispanic voters, because they’re so damn persistent in their refusal to vote against their interests.

I don’t have much to say about this besides the usual stomping around and exploding with profane statements about Tom DeLay and his mother. It’s not hard to take this redistricting thing a bit personally, since so much of it was aimed at slicing up Austin like a side of beef. So I’ll leave it at that–fuck the Republicans.

Inspired by his inadvertantly revealing musings on the cut-off age for women being considered sexually desirable, a Cole Porter song I hope doesn’t get ol’ John too excited.

“My Heart Belongs to Daddy”

So I want to warn you laddie
Though I know that you’re perfectly swell
That my heart belongs to Daddy
Cause my Daddy, he treats it so well

Out of all the perverted noxious fumes coming off Derbyshire’s revealing of his criminal desires, though, this might be my favorite–all you guys and gals who thought Jennifer Aniston’s boobie shot on GQ’s cover was hot are unnatural freaks, you know.

Did I buy, or browse, a copy of the November 17 GQ, in order to get a look at Jennifer Aniston’s bristols?** No, I didn’t. While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a paragon of charm, wit, and intelligence, she is also 36 years old. Even with the strenuous body-hardening exercise routines now compulsory for movie stars, at age 36 the forces of nature have won out over the view-worthiness of the unsupported female bust.

It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman’s salad days are shorter than a man’s â€â€? really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20.

As the president of the Austin chapter of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Derbyshire’s admission that he finds breasts to be gross troubled me. We Ittians are proud of our flat-chested ways, but only in the interest of diversity, because certainly we don’t find larger breasts to be anything but lovely. In fact, many of us joined the group in hopes of actually overcoming a lifetime of messages that our itty selves were somehow inadequate.

But I do adore that Derbyshire is so confident in his assertion that his repulsion to breasts is something shared by all men. I don’t find it so adorable that I’m giving him the IBTC’s meeting address, of course. In fact, I find it adorable sort of the way that a used condom in the middle of the road is adorableâ€â€?touching and yet gross at the same time. Touching in his Humbert Humbert-style assuredness that he has some access to True Beauty, though it’s a little more comically touching when it’s a fictional character making such myopic statements. Gross for the obvious reasons.

Video at Crooks and Liars on the controversy. Unfortunately, Dr. Hager, the religious nut who got pushed off the FDA after it was discovered that he liked forcing anal sex on his wife as much as he liked forcing unwanted childbirth on women, is permitted to spread a little misinformation about Plan B and egg fertilization, where he implies that if a fertilized egg doesn’t implant after Plan B is taken, that means the drug is at fault. (I haven’t seen any evidence for this–fertilized eggs don’t implant all the time for all sorts of reasons.) But otherwise, he comes off as the moralizing prick he is and on the outside of mainstream medical opinion on this drug. He actually has the nerve to say that it’d be bad for 11 and 12 year olds to get this drug, presumably because he thinks that having a baby or abortion is somehow better for them. The facts are here and they’re hard to deny–this drug is being withheld for ideological reasons.

The funniest part is that the segment shows that Dr. Hager and his fellows are blatant liars–they said they don’t want girls under 16 to get this drug without a prescription, but when that concern was addressed, they refused to approve Plan B for OTC sales anyway.

I hate to draw inferences about Virgin Ben and his unfamiliarity with women, since I’m trying to get past shallow judgements like that. But really, today’s Townhall takes the cake. I will say, however, that there are a lot of sexually active sexist men out there who are just as incapable of viewing women as anything other than emasculating deceit-machines who have to have their rights stripped from them to protect men from having to suffer from the machinations of evil females. (Exhibit #1: People protested the banning of marital rape in Mexico two weeks ago, because, you guessed it, this is just an opportunity for deceitful women to levy false accusations to get revenge against husbands. Probably for raping them, but possibly for not taking out the trash, as Twisty says.)

Anyway, Ben’s article today in in salivating anticipation of the impending overturning of Roe v. Wade is about how abortion is a wicked pleasure, not a necessary medical treatment, and therefore needs to be banned like vibrators are in Texas. (It interests me how the paranoids assume women’s greatest pleasure are things they personally find threatening and emasculating, like the reason one busts out one of these fine products is so you can say, “Ooooh, baby, this will show those men they aren’t needed!”)

Current liberal thought posits that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” in the words of former president Bill Clinton. Only by stipulating that abortion should remain “rare” can liberal politicians escape popular outrage. Yet these same politicians refuse to answer just why abortion should remain rare. If abortion is a moral good under any circumstances (as abortion-on-demand advocates declare), why should it remain rare? And if keeping abortion rare is a rational goal, why should state governments be barred from taking steps to discourage abortion?

Whee! Abortion is fun! If you’re for legal abortion, you are logically for making sure women are constantly under the fucking knife and put through that painful experience. Why pro-choicers are pro-contraceptive, then, I don’t know. Contraceptive use is the number one way to prevent abortions from occuring and yet here we are, defeating ourselves by promoting it. Don’t you ladies know every time you grab the condom or swallow the pill, you are potentially denying yourself the fabulous party that is getting an abortion?

Dr. George Tiller of Kansas has terminated over 60,000 pregnancies; his website brags that the good doctor’s clinic has “more experience in late abortion services over 24 weeks than anyone else currently practicing in the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Australia.” Most babies are considered viable (that is, can live outside the womb with the help of medical technology) at 23-24 weeks. These are viable, living children.

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Yea! It’s time for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction awards! (Via Catch.) This is an annual event I enjoy far too much for my own good. But please forgive me–in my former life before I was a Porn Liberal, I was a humble owner of a B.A. in English lit, so this combines a lifetime of favorite interests with a big dose of schadenfreude to boot.

The fun of the Bad Sex awards is that the writers targeted are generally accepted as Very Good and Important Writers. You yourself may like some of these writers. In fact, if it weren’t for the subject at hand, the Bad Sex awards would have the foul odor of a bunch of lesser writers coming up with a reason to dogpile their superiors with a trumped up excuse. But since the subject is sex, they get away with it, because writing about sex is a fucking nightmare, especially if you want the passages to come across as hot.

I think it’s for this reason that writers have a hard time talking dirty in bed. Everything that sounds hot is also a cliche. Since so many readers out there are also writers, I’m guessing you know what I’m talking about–the gentle, whispered request in the ear, the verbal agreement, the sudden dirty talking version of writer’s block–”No, no, and no, that won’t work, been done a million times before in Penthouse Letters.” And next thing you know, you’ve disappointed someone very dear to you. Or at bare minimum, someone you wanted to see naked.

So, I think we can all approach the bad sex scenes that win this year with a mixture of awe at the huevos it takes to humiliate yourself by writing bad sex scenes and pity that it’s such a difficult and often impossible task. Except Updike’s entry, because this shit is inexcusable.

Faye leaned back on the blanket, arranging her legs in an M of receptivity, and he knelt between them like the most abject and craven supplicant who ever exposed his bare ass to the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows.

Faye took him in hand. He slipped in. He became an adulterer. He went for the last inch. She grunted, at her own revelation. His was that her cunt did not feel like Phyllis’s. Smoother, somehow simpler, its wetness less thick, less of a sauce, more of a glaze. It was soon over.

The use of the term “bare ass” is the only thing acceptable in this passage. For shame.

Sent to me by a reader, discovered in a cheap Boston paper called Metro.

Over at Red State, there’s an interesting post meant to anticipate and decry lefty partisan responses to Bush’s speech tomorrow that might feature an announcement concerning the withdrawal of some U.S. troops in Iraq. It’s interesting because all it really does is capture the no-win situation Bush has put himself in with this Iraq war.

So there you have it. Tomorrow night Bush will either announce the conditions are being met that will allow a withdrawal of some American forces from Iraq in which case he will finally have bowed to the realism of Biden and Murtha… or he will not announce anything that can be roughly attributed as laying the groundwork for a US withdrawal in which case Bush is still in the thrall of the neo-cons and is too stubborn to see that his party is deserting him over Iraq… or he will announce something that can be interpreted as portending US troops withdrawals but he will not pose the answer to a raft of thorny issues associated with the withdrawal in which case Bush is succumbing to plans of arch-puppetmeister Karl Rove and just making a hollow political gesture aimed at salvaging 2006 for the Republicans.

That’s all true, no? But what’s more um, what’s the word? pleasurable? amusing? funny? are the comments the red staters are generating. Let’s take a gander.

“Now we know what Murtha was trying to do

The Left will portray success as failure, and consider the triumphant return of our troops as an ignominious retreat. And they will claim credit for making it happen. The timing of the Murtha adventure makes the strategy clear. ”

“The Right

Was sayin this when it was thought that Murtha and Pelosi had staged their event in anticipation of the President’s upcoming speech.
We’ve always known there is no low the Libs won’t stoop to to damage the President (and any collateral damage, the troops, Iraq, etc be damned), this is just another example ”

“The rotten part…

…is that their megaphones are bigger than ours. They will have a certain amount of success with this, if only because it’s approximately true that “more Americans get their news from network television than from any other source.”

“No doubt he means Murtha

I have been suspecting for a while (and this thread confirms my suspicions) that the current Dem brouhaha over bringing the troops home was in anticipation that Bush would be announcing troop drawdowns. Now, the Dems can claim credit for ‘pressuring the White House into doing the right thing’ on Iraq. “

Man, it’s amazing how those feckless, out-of-touch, latte-sipping Dems got so fucking clever all of a sudden isn’t it? I wonder what changed. Not really. I don’t care. Because finally we are back to our old tricks of duping the American people dear friends! We’ve had a rough six years, but clearly we are back in the saddle. Have your driver wax the limo, because tonight we celebrate with champagne and dreams of how undermining the war effort for partisan gain will give us a chance to bring blowjobs back to the oval office! Haha suck it Karl Rove. You’re no evil genius.

Meanwhile old Jeff G. is singing a slightly different tune.

“But what will be most clear is that control of the narrative by way of the legacy media is still the most important tool in a wealthy representative republic whose citizens are on the whole disengaged from politics and tend to follow stories only in soundbite format.

Such an information ethosâ€â€?soundbite politics and a legacy media increasingly willing to follow it’s own advocacy politics (however unconsciously)â€â€?helps Democrats, who are the party of targeted carping, bloc-voting identity politics, and big-ticket, feel-good promises that are almost always fiscally unworkable and (when they come from the left base of the party) socially damaging in the long term.”

Something peculiar about this. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Hmm. Oh yeah, that whole thing about how the media, however unconsciously, helps Democrats. I don’t want to go on a “so called liberal media” rant. But being as generous as possible, that sword has cut different ways at different times. But if you’re president doesn’t control the narrative, that’s his problem. That’s the chief advantage of being fucking president: having the biggest fucking bullhorn. But whatever. I’d imagine the Dems would have gotten more out of this media “help” the last few years were it true.

Anyway, at some point down the line, it might be worth delving more into the longterm political mistake of invading Iraq. Bush, like Reagan, could have gotten away with just about anything if he hadn’t done that. The American people don’t seem to care what their politicians actually do as long as those politicians don’t give them a reason to think about them.

Andrew Leonard just put up a post at Broadsheet about an encounter on an airplane with a guy that I’m sure we all know too well–the sort of person that is grateful children exist because they give him an excuse to relive his glory days of being a hall monitor in junior high school.

I’m settling into my window seat on JetBlue Flight 101 from New York to Oakland, when a man sitting in the aisle seat on my row points my attention to a teenager taking off her sweat shirt on the other side of the plane. Underneath the sweat shirt, she’s wearing a T-shirt that states, in large colorful letters on the back, “FUCK THIS PLACE.”

The man mutters to me an almost inaudible sentence that ends with the words “grounds for deportation.”

I’m not sure if I am hearing him correctly. Did he say “that could be grounds for deportation” — making a wry reference to the woman who was thrown off a Southwest flight a few months ago for wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and read “Meet the Fuckers”? Or did he say “should” instead of “could”?

Upon discovering that the FBI is not actually a set of vengeful angels that he can call down upon any random young woman who offends him, this guy finds his excuse to ruin the airline staff’s day.

He is not. He continues to mutter to his wife, who is seated between us. I return my attention to my own children, an 8- and an 11-year-old, who are in the row directly behind me.

As the plane starts rolling down the runway, the man, who looks to be in his late 30s or early 40s, calls a flight attendant over and tells him about the teenager’s shirt. He makes reference to “all the children on the flight.” It is true, on this post-Thanksgiving flight there is a horde of kids. None of them, however, are paying the least bit attention to the dreaded teenager. The attendant, attempting to be polite, says he’ll notify the captain but warns that the airline most likely won’t do anything.

After liftoff my seatmate goes to the bathroom. While in the back of the plane he reiterates his complaint to the attendant, who then is forced to make a phone call to the captain. When my seatmate returns to our row, he is glowing with the pride of a successful tattletale. The captain has been informed, he tells his wife. The machinery of justice has been engaged.

Unfortunately for the overgrown tattletale, Andrew is not pleased to have his children be used as an excuse to punish teenage girls for insolence and he gets into a spat with Senor Asswipe. The whole thing reminded me of a classic Lance Mannion post about the conservative mindset and the use of authority.

I think, though, that something in addition to a double-standard is at work here. It’s a kind of double-think on the part of conservatives. What Santorum is calling for isn’t really more government spending of the kind Liberals want, although they want it spent for everybody. What he’s calling for is more government policing!

Santorum and conservatives of his ilk aren’t being hypocritical because calling in the cops is an old tradition of theirs. That’s what they think government is for. They have always wanted strong armies and strong police forces—to protect them, their property, and their privileges from the riff-raff.

Government’s job, according to them, is to keep the lower orders in order.

What Santorum wants the government to do to protect the family is to start banning things, outlawing behaviors, censoring art, music, television, and movies, criminalizing whatever bad stuff isn’t already illegal and increasing the penalties and punishments for whoever gets caught doing bad stuff that is already criminalized.

He wants to call in the cops.

Emphasis mine.

There’s a lot of things that jump out of me about this particular encounter, but the number one thing, as the regular readers can imagine, is that the man wasn’t just offended at the word “fuck”. This encounter is riddled with entitlement issues, on who gets to define how others behave. Both the teenage girl and the middle-aged asshole are being obnoxious, demanding attention, and generally being unfair to the people around them. But while the middle-aged asshole’s behavior is much more irritating and attention-demanding, if for no other reason than his whining creates problems for the airline staff, which could trickle down to messing with everyone on the plane’s day if the staff has to waste valuable time to cater to this guy’s demands that he not have to tolerate a teenage girl he finds insolent, only one person was considered socially worthy of calling “the cops” on. So the question is–is the “crime” really the word “fuck” on a t-shirt, or is the “crime” more about a social inferior refusing to pay the proper respects to her social superiors?

(For the record, I’m not endorsing wearing a t-shirt that says “Fuck This Place” on an airplane. It would be hypocritical of me to say I’m against the word “fuck” on t-shirts in general, but there is a time and place for them, and crowded airports ain’t it. But I do find it telling who’s considered controllable in public spaces and who is considered not controllable.)

A number of folks have asked if I participated in Buy Nothing Day, which is the anti-term for what is more commonly known as Black Friday, the overhyped commercial for consumerism that falls on the day after Thanksgiving. I have to confess, I didn’t participate. I bought stuff. A lot of stuff.

To be fair, I mostly spent my money at resale shops. My mom was in town and we took the opportunity to go vintage shopping together, which is one of our bonding rituals, one that I was loathe to abandon to make some point about consumerism that roughly no one cares about. But being a Good Liberal, I still had to make some justifications to myself, which was hard to do considering that I ducked into Target to buy some underwear that I badly needed. For that little crime, I do want to apologize. For the rest of the shopping we did, though, I won’t.

The thing about general boycotts like Buy Nothing Day is that if they are effective at all, they’ll hurt small businesses as well as large ones. And I tend to think that supporting small, local businesses needs to be a priority, especially seeing as they are hit so hard by the expansion of big businesses like Wal-Mart, and yes, Target. But I’ll admit, resale shopping isn’t something I do out of some self-righteous desire to either recycle or to help small businesses. It’s a lot more fun for me than shopping at other stores, because there’s this sort of hunt and capture element to thrift shopping you don’t get from going into new stores with a list of things you already know you want. If my tastes were different, then I might be employing a whole new set of excuses.

But it seems to me that there has to be more effective ways of addressing what’s wrong with the concept of Black Friday than a general boycott. In fact, a general boycott seems sort of like a cop-out to me. Mostly, it’s ineffectual, especially if you patronize the businesses you are trying to punish the most on the other days of the year. A better, if more complex, method of addressing the issue is to make a very real effort to go to local, small businesses for services instead of heartless, multinational corporations–all year round.

With that in mind, the next time I need underwear, I’ll go to a local shop and pay $1extra if I have to. And the time after that. And the time after that. That will be my penance for shopping on Black Friday.

Kathleen Parker is bemused.

What a funny world. Where once it was scandalous to be unmarried and pregnant, now it is scandalous to disapprove of another’s being unmarried and pregnant.

That is an amusing fact! Here’s some others:

Where it was once scandalous to marry someone of another race, now it is scandalous to disapprove of interracial couples.

Where it was once scandalous for women to demand equal pay for equal work, now it is scandalous to automatically pay your female workers less than your male workers doing the same job just because they’re women.

Where it was once scandalous for men to refuse to hand their new brides over to be raped by their lords by right of the first night, now that sort of passing women around like they are property is considered scandalous.

Think of your own forms of progress thta sound amusing yet somehow wrong in comments!

Anyway, she has a point.

The latest episode in these morally confused times occurred in New York recently when a Roman Catholic school fired a teacher because she is single and pregnant. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn claims that teacher Michelle McCusker violated “the tenets of Catholic morality” and thus could not be employed by the school.

For her part, McCusker claims she was discriminated against and on Monday filed a wrongful dismissal complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. McCusker, 26, a well-respected teacher, according to the school’s own principal, said in a statement that she didn’t “understand how a religion that prides itself on being forgiving and on valuing life” could fire her for deciding to have a baby.

Silly rabbit! Abortion is only wrong if you get caught. Flash your rosary next time and they’ll let you in the back door at the abortion clinic for sure next time.

So what’s the answer? Do schools have any say-so when it comes to how teachers comport themselves in their private lives? Do parents have a right to voice objections when a teacher’s private behavior contradicts the moral values they’re trying to teach at home?

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Evil.

The Bush administration has extended its global gag rule to international AIDS prevention funding, according to the Maryland-based Center for Health and Gender Equity. The gag rule will affect a $193 million, five-year project for AIDS-HIV prevention programs in Kenya and requires organizations that seek funding to adhere to the administration’s policy that the health organization not provide abortions, provide any information about safe abortions to women or lobby for change in their nation’s abortion laws. In Kenya, complications from illegal abortions are a leading killer of married women in their 20s and 30s.

Family planning, maternal and child health programs are the “first responders” for women and girls who have HIV-AIDS, who make up 60 percent of infected cases in sub-Saharan Africa, said the center’s executive director, Jodi Jacobson. “The administration has broken its own written commitment not to subject global AIDS funds to these onerous restrictions.”

In August 2003, the Bush administration exempted AIDS funds from is called the global gag rule, although most other women’s health programs overseen by the State Department are included.

I wasn’t aware that groups that are earmarked as AIDS/HIV prevention programs were exempt from the gag rule, though I guess it makes sense, since you usually see the gag rule described as being for family planning organizations. This particular expansion of the global gag rule should lay to rest any quarrel that “pro-life” is anything but a code word for “anti-woman at any cost”, since the obvious result of this gag rule is that effective health organizations will have that many more hoops to jump through to save lives, which will cost lives.

What is especially maddening is that these regulations like the gag rule create a sense in the general public that abortion can be reached in and excised out of the general health care that is offered to women, no problem. But health care providers have to open to discussing a variety of things with their patients and crippling them in one area probably has ramifications across the board for the level of care they can provide. This is a first class example of faith-based instead of reality-based thinking–if we just make everyone quit saying the word “abortion”, that makes it go away, doesn’t it?

Okay, the holiday has been a massive distraction from my regular blogging, much less my mail, so I’m clearing out my email and I found an email from reader Kyso, who is doing an assignment to come up with a women’s network idea and wants the readers of Pandagon to help. Here’s some of her email:

Anyway, I have this assigment for a media programming class and could use your help if you can spare a post. The assignment is to create a cable/satillite TV network and pitch it to our professor. My partner and I thought a new style of women’s television network might be interesting. Sure, there are already networks like Lifetime and Oxygen that are geared towards women, but they are for the most part pretty lame.

My question(s) for your readers is (are), if they could have their own TV network, what would they want out of it? This is a fantasy network, so anything goes, from general genre suggestions to making up new shows. If they don’t watch women’s networks, why not? What would it take to get them to watch for even an hour a day? What would they want to watch?

Personally, I think the stigma attached when you label anything as for women is a big stumbling block for making stuff like this seem hip and interesting. For instance, there’s stuff about both Oxygen and Lifetime that I like–Lifetime has reruns of “Golden Girls”, at least and Oxygen has stuff like “Talk Sex with Sue Johanson”, a show that I found unbearably funny the first few times I saw it and actually still like to watch whenever I get a chance. What I don’t like, and what I think a lot of women I know hate, is the Victim of the Week movies that Lifetime especially focuses on. And on Oxygen, I hate the other advice-y type shows besides “Talk Sex” because they often, whether they mean to or not, promote tired gender stereotypes of the Mars and Venus variety. I’d like to see more original programming in that area that addresses a larger audience than just straight women who try to fit themselves into the Venus stereotype. “Talk Sex” would be a great model for other advice type shows. I also think there’s probably some good sitcom and other comedy show ideas that are probably ready for the taking, stuff like “Roseanne”.

Readers?

Okay, I’ll admit I’m of two minds on this.

CRAWFORD, Texas â€â€? About a dozen anti-war protesters, including Daniel Ellsberg and the sister of Cindy Sheehan, were arrested Wednesday morning while camping on a roadside near President Bush’s ranch in violation of a new county ordinance.

The group returned to Texas this week as Bush arrived at his ranch to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. They came in hopes of reigniting the international attention they attracted in August, when hundreds came to join Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, as she camped outside Bush’s ranch for 26 days…..

After the August protests, McLennan County commissioners passed new ordinances that prohibited parking or camping in the ditches along the winding two-lane roads leading to Bush’s ranch.

The protesters have been invited by a local rancher to camp on his land, where they have erected a large white tent and hung a banner that reads “No Pardon for Crawford’s Turkey.” But they have also challenged the constitutionality of the county’s new rules. Wednesday morning, a small group set up tents on the small patch of public land that had originally been dubbed Camp Casey in August, after Sheehan’s 24-year-old son.

I saw the first Camp Casey and I have to admit, the circus that it attracts causes traffic jams on the road out there. I have some pictures of it here and an article about the trip here. But seriously, the issue isn’t bad enough to justify arresting war protesters. Of course, if the people in Crawford didn’t want Camp Casey to continue to get national attention, they wouldn’t have passed the law and created a situation where arrests could be made and draw that national attention. But that the law was shortsighted and played right into the protesters’ hands doesn’t make it right, of course.

This is a classic example of how the Shrub plays his supporters for chumps. Most of the people in Crawford are in such awe that the President bought a ranch by their town, and I’m sure few have stopped to think about how Bush is now using the local police department as a way to squelch dissent. In other words, he’s using the people of Crawford’s well-intentioned patriotism against them by making them tools to do an end run around inconvienent First Amendment protections. I had the same stirrings of anger about this when I first went and saw local citizens of Crawford at an anti-Cindy Sheehan rally. It was as upsetting as hell to see people who just want to be good patriots led so far astray by BushCo that they were lining up to trash a woman who had lost her son in the war.

A bunch of food, two glasses of wine, and one game of Trivial Pursuit later, I’m trying to stave off a coma long enough to clean my kitchen before my mom comes over tomorrow. Naturally, that means I’m drawn to blog when I should be scrubbing. Well, que sera sera.

I have to weigh in and side with Shakespeare’s Sister on this.

That’s some nasty sexism right there. I would point out that Us Weekly has a self-interested reason to try to shame Angelina Jolie into marriage, which is that they stand to make lots of magazine sales by covering the wedding. In a larger sense, I think the monetary motive is in place with all these tabloids and their bottomless interest in promoting the notion to their female audience that women’s worth should be defined by the ring on the finger and the baby in the belly, because weddings and babies? Cash cows. If there wasn’t money in it, I have a feeling that the tabloid press wouldn’t give two shits about pushing their twin idealized images of women as either beatific brides in expensive gowns or beatific expectant mothers resting patiently while surrounded by a gazillion dollars worth of the latest baby crap.

Emasculation watch: Ann Coulter links leaving Iraq with abortion.

New idea for Abortion Party: Aid the enemy

Of course, “aiding the enemy” is her loaded phrase for withdrawing the troops from Iraq.

Sometimes I am just in awe of Ann Coulter, who is a masterful button-pusher. I love hearing that feminists are man-haters when there are much better examples out there of genuine man-hating, like Coulter here, who has carefully studied the emasculation anxieties of conservative men and ruthlessly exploits those anxieties for BushCo’s ends. Really, I admire the way that she doesn’t even pretend that fear and loathing that the word “abortion” generates has shit all to do with babies. If anti-abortion folks were simply against killing, they’d surely be against American troops killing with the same simple-minded zeal that they are against women killing tiny clumps of cells.

But if abortion is about emasculation anxieties and control, well then, implying a connection between those who want to withdraw from Iraq and pro-choicers makes a lot of sense. If women have the right to an abortion, that means that women can just go about doing whatever the hell they want with their bodies after a man, well, withdraws. Same with Iraq–if the U.S. withdraws, Iraqis will be able to do what they want with their own country.

Well, I’m sure Coulter is pleased as punch with herself for exploiting the bundle of emasculation anxieties that informs the “pro-life” movement by calling the Democrats the “abortion party”. Meanwhile, in the real world, actual mothers and fathers are getting their actual babies home in body bags.

Our leader is under the weather, but that’s not why she doesn’t have up an FRT. That’s because it’s not Friday. Here’s wishing her a speedy recovery.

1) “Matthews Comes Alive”–Don Lennon. 8/10, because it made me blow soda out of my nose laughing. Sweet mockery of Dave Matthews. Lauren turned me onto this, for which I thank her.
2) “The Water Is Over My Head”–The Rockin’ Berries. 5/10. Kinda boring.
3) “Crazy Fever”–High Noon. 8/10. Rockabilly with an evil kick to it, exactly as it should be.
4) “Gambling Bar Room Blues”–Jimmy Rodgers. This has to be a 10/10, don’t you think?
5) “U.S. Teens”–Half Japanese. 9/10, for being both HJ and for even rocking a little.
6) “Groove is in the Heart”–Dee-Lite. 8/10 and if you disagree, I refer you to this. Speaking of, this next song:
7) “Ballad of a Teenage Queen”–Cowboy Jack Clement (with Johnny Cash). 7/10, one Lauren gave me.
8) “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”–William Bell. 8/10, gorgeous version of this gorgeous song.
9) “Paul Revere”–Asylum Street Spankers. 5/10, corny but fun Austin swing band doing a cover of a Beastie Boys song. Dunno if they did this after The Gourds’ notorious cover of “Gin and Juice”, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Points deducted for coattail-riding.
10) “Bambina Sola”–I Profeti. 8/10. Points added for being Italian garage rock and having cool instrumentals, points deducted for having vaguely annoying vocals.

Bonus, non-random song: “Rumble” by Link Wray. 10/10. Here’s a better blog post than I could write on one of the coolest cats ever to grace rock music with his presence.

This is just heart-wrenching.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas man executed in 1993 for a robbery-murder was probably wrongfully convicted, according to a prosecutor, the jury forewoman, an alibi witness and even a victim, the Houston Chronicle said on Tuesday.

“Ruben Cantu had nothing to do with the murder, attempted murder and robbery of the two men … I should know,” a friend and fellow gang member, David Garza, told the newspaper.

Cantu, only 17 when the crime took place, was convicted of murdering Pedro Gomez during a 1984 robbery largely on the testimony of a single eyewitness, Juan Moreno. Moreno, then 19, an illegal immigrant wounded during the robbery, now says he is positive Cantu was not at the scene.

Out of all the arguments against the death penalty–that it’s inhumane, unconstitutional, that it coarsens our culture, whatever–the most compelling to me is and always has been that the death penalty is too final a punishment when there’s always the outside chance that the person being executed is innocent. In fact, it seems to me that in highly emotional death penalty cases, especially if prosecuters are using them to look super-tough on crime, the possiblity of sending innocent people to their deaths is especially high.

Via Majikthise.

A friend sent me a link with this headline:

CNN Employee On Tape: Cheney “X” Is “Freedom of Speech” - “Tell Bush And Cheney To Stop Lying”

I’ll admit, my first thought was, “Cheney is changing his name to “X” as a demonstration of freedom of speech? And here I was thinking he was going to his grave having done nothing worthwhile during his time on earth.” Unfortunately, Dick Cheney has not suddenly become extremely cool. No, he just happened to be on TV when this big black X popped on CNN’s screen, creating an image that was admittedly appealing.

And the right wing bloggers were off! Here it was, certain proof that the second most powerful person in the entire fucking world is the victim of oppression by the Librul Media. Not of course that you need any proof. After all, if the VP meets with anything less than ass-licking admiration, then we know for a fact that he’s being oppressed and so are those out there who know that any media that’s not administration-run propaganda is traitorous. Oppression, I tell you.

Luckily, some website no one’s ever heard of was on it and has “proof” that it was a CNN attempt to undermine the VP. Buried in their news release is roughly eveyrthing you need to about the accuracy of their report.

CNN was caught off-guard at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta by the recording. The statements that were made through their Headline News desk are not acceptable and there are calls on the Internet for investigation by the FCC, the FBI and the Trilateral Commission.

Some of the powerful paranoids called for investigations by the Illuminati, but others suggested that since the Illuminati and the Freemasons own CNN, they are most definitely behind this blasphemous attack on Christianity, which is currently residing in the person of the snarly Vice President. But how exactly is a quick, seemingly accidental flash of a black X over the VP’s face really supposed to be an act of oppression against all that’s pure and holy to Jesus, like Halliburton and bombing civilian targets?

Subliminal messaging, motherfuckers. That’s how.

I guess this means that despite the technical message that appeared below the desk, the X itself was intentional. This violates laws against subliminal messages, and casts a grim shadow on CNN. This is a strange story, but if it proves to be true, CNN has some explaining to do.

Oh, the humanity! CNN has done a great disservice to our nation! By flashing an X on the screen that appears to be accidental, they have managed to infect the minds of the 10-15 people watching Cheney’s speech on CNN that day. And now those people believe, totally against their wills no less, that Vice President Dick Cheney’s face spontaneously erupts into a black X while speaking in front of think tanks geared towards hoodwinking the public into supporting conservative causes. Do you think it’s likely that those people will vote for Cheney if he runs for President now? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Not even if he promises to invade Syria next. Probably not even if he plans to invade France. Yes, clearly CNN has some explaining to do.

Unfortunately for the eager beaver tinfoil crowd, explain they did.

NEW YORK Nov 23, 2005 â€â€? CNN has apologized for a “technical malfunction” that briefly flashed a black “X” mark over the face of Vice President Dick Cheney during the network’s coverage of a speech on Monday.

The “X” flashed twice, on the air for a total of one-seventh of a second, CNN said Wednesday….

The “X” is something used by a computer to mark a space where one visual element is to segue into another, and is normally not seen by a viewer. The network likened its appearance to a computer that inexplicably freezes.

Via Lindsay

The AP reports that FOX News won’t show an ad critical of Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito.

The ad says that as an appellate court judge, Alito has “ruled to make it easier for corporations to discriminate … even voted to approve strip search of a 10-year-old girl.” Referring to a document Alito wrote in 1985 while seeking a job in the Reagan administration, it quotes him as saying that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” [AP]

Lindsay points out that the portion of the ad objected to, while provocative, is still true. I should hope so, because I’d hate to have been calling him Strip Search Sammy all this time if it wasn’t. What’s interesting to me is that you can’t even pay Fox news to air liberal viewpoints. Neither whores nor adulterers they be as it turns out. Just your loyal outlet for rightwing propaganda, with an odd penchant for fidelity that casts years of misinformation in an entirely new light. An eye-opening discovery, even. Like a Norman Rockwell painting of Joseph McCarthy and family.

Over at Pinko Feminist Hellcat, some interesting ruminations on Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch:

I’ve just started reading Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich, and I’ve already got mixed feelings about it. I’m on Chapter Two.

It’s a very funny book–she should have written a novel spoofing the whole job-seeker culture and the psychobable-spouting parasites that bottom feed as personal/career coaches. Heck, since she didn’t do it, I might do it. And it is troubling–something you intuit by seeing all of these ads about networking events and job coaches and articles by the same coaches is that there sure are a lot of people out there profiting from others’ misery. And I have yet to find anyone who was actually helpful.

A lot of the stuff she points out is already known to those of us who haven’t worked most of our lives as full-time writers or academics: enterence into the corporate world requires fakery that Satan himself would have trouble with. It’s the weak resume puffing, constantly-networking, glad-handing optimism or die attitude that makes me twitch, but you have to fake it, you have to use the jargon in the industry in which you want to work, you have to adopt the stupid pseudo-spiritual and fake-philosophical platitudes (Sun Tzu and leadership! The Tao of the Career!), and you have to basically play the game. No matter how insipid it is. Some nightclubs don’t let you in if you’re not glam or hip enough, some corporations won’t let you in if you’re not blandly bubbly enough.
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She was also struck by the corporate mask that everyone must affect. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about–the bland but cheerful, professional and calm, busy but engaged, schmoozy but focused personna that becomes Everydrone. You don’t let your real thoughts or feelings be known. Everything is pleasant. Everydrones have their own language, with dialects specific to their industries and companies. Everydrones manage to promote themselves and be humble at the same time.
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No matter. I know unemployment is a soul-killing monster. I’ve been there, and it is demoralizing, as is all of the advice you get. One guy at Ehrenreich’s networking event was in tears. She didn’t know why–she was tuning everyone out because they’d launched into a sales pitch for a boot camp for the white-collar unemployed. And that’s something that hit me broadside when I was laid off in my early twenties–people see the unemployed as great customer prospects, as if we’re dripping with money for resume consulting and job coaching and boot camps and whatnot…

So much to relate to in all of that. I can remember vividly what a soul crushing experience job-hunting was. I in particular remember one incident while doing a half day interview for a summer position with a certain firm while at lunch with some of the younger associates. They were talking up the summer program and all of the social activities they planned for interns, including concerts they had gone to in the past such as like Dave Matthews and Barenaked Ladies or some similar group. And I couldn’t help but make some kind of crack about the bland inoffensiveness or whatever. And as soon as I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have, because you just don’t make fun of a firm’s lame assed corporate sensibilities during a job interview. But whatever, one thing I learned during the interviewing process was that I am terribly unsuited to faking my way through that world. I’d sit in long interviews pretending to like the kind of people I was talking to, just as they were pretending to like me. But the whole thing was just too transparent. They could snuff out that I was the type of person who might let some real personality show now and then, that I might have an opinion that diverged from conventional wisdom or that was at odds with the herd, or that I might tell a joke that might provoke real laughter instead of the pseudo-social chuckle of belongingness. And that’s the kind of thing provokes “soylent green is people� type moments. Hmm, well I suppose I may have inadvertently spoiled the ending of a movie there.

So I’m fairly glad that I never got stuck in that world. And though I’m a wee underemployed at the moment, I’m pretty happy with the job I have. Conversations with some people are still a little awkward though. I haven’t figured out how to diplomatically tell a certain category of careerist, whose ego and self image is derived from his work, no matter how tedious that work is, that I, personally, don’t care about my job and that I don’t really want to have conversations about it. People who spend their weekend social time talking about their jobs are fucking brutal. It’s not interesting to me, and my job is not where I derive my identity. But if you insist on the truth, I find the actual work kind of tedious, probably as tedious as your own work must be, but it pays the bills and it’s pretty low-stress. Cuz work is something you gotta do. I genuinely pity people for whom their work is who they are. That’s worse than being defined by your possessions.