For today I suggest peevulate.

Your challenge: Find me a better example of the above phenomenon than the below monstrosity.

I do not actually know whether this is the only song ever to feature a Muzak solo. I only know that it hurts me.

Challenge for elderly Pandagonians: Rate the contents of your back-in-the-day closets in comparison to that gruesome striped shirt, or anything any of these guys are wearing, really. For extra credit, estimate the percentage of time you wore plaid in a week.

Challenge for younger Pandagonians: No, on second thought, I think you’ve suffered enough for one weekend. I’m terribly sorry. It won’t happen again.

UPDATE: Bananarama? That was mean, Mr. Clarke, a very mean thing to do to someone who still covets Keren Woodward’s hair. And her complexion. And her body. And–well, you get the idea.

The real tragedy is that anyone ever allows Michael Bolton near a microphone for any reason.

But Mnemosyne–oh, Mnemosyne. I don’t know what we’re going to do about Mnemosyne and the horror she hath unleashed this day. I have put this horror beneath the fold to spare you. Click only if . . . okay, honestly? I can’t think of a valid if.

(more…)

Clockwise from top left: Lapamela, gweebay, jackiejoice, lets_breakthrough, & rivviepop

The very first Carnival for Radical Action has been posted, and it’s an impressive effort, not to mention a handy guide for people like me who don’t have the first clue about organizing, speaking out, or acting up. They didn’t teach me any of that at Republican school, though luckily I dropped out before completing the course in “How the Existence of Suspect Documents Actually Means the Occupation of Iraq Is Going Just Swell, Really, We Swear.” Those of you with better things to do with your time than analyze the properties of .PDF files (and sweet mother of mercy, that had better be all of you) will definitely want to check out the Carnival for Radical Action.

I am also informed by one Thinking Girl that there exists a feminist comic book entitled Rainbow Girl Stars in SEXY WAR. Yes, the SEXY WAR is in all caps, just like that, and no, I have no idea either, really, but does it matter? The important thing to grasp here is that a feminist blogger has authored a feminist comic book! And you can buy the damn thing! Available through Paypal for the low, low price of $6 Canadian! And–AND–all proceeds will be donated by Rainbow Girl to the Umoja Women’s Village in Kenya. What? Oh, come now–you certainly recall the Umoja Women’s Village:

Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community.

Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic and self-assured woman with a crown of puffy dark hair, decided no men would be allowed to live in their circular village of mud-and-dung huts.

So how cool is this? Feminist comic book. Umoja Women’s Village. SEXY WAR. It’s almost enough to make me stop feeling ashamed of being a nerd, I tell you.

Jena High School: The school’s colors are black and gold, but the preferred color is white.
Photo: LaSalle Parish Schools

It’s 2007, isn’t it? I’m a little scatterbrained sometimes, and not always aware of the date, but I just checked the little clock in the corner of my computer screen, here, and, yes! It’s 2007.

Or, my computer’s messed up.

Let’s assume my computer is right about something for a change. And then let’s ask, all together now: “What the hell?”

One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman’s nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard.

The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school’s 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree’s cooling shade.

“Sit wherever you want,” school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.

You can imagine the effect that sorry sight had on the students. The hanging nooses were placed to intimidate, and intimidate they did. But when the school superintendent overruled the school principal on whether the culprits should be expelled from school, or merely suspended for less than a week–

But Jena’s white school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt, ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt and suspended the students for three days, angering blacks who felt harsher punishments were justified.

“Adolescents play pranks,” said Breithaupt, the superintendent of the LaSalle Parish school system. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”

–that’s when all hell broke loose in Jena.

(more…)

From writers more productive than I:

Feel free to drop me anything interesting you’ve read (or written) lately in the comments. Yes, I am sneakily trying to connive you into doing my work for me. Is that so wrong?

UPDATE: Okay, let’s try this again: NORMAL PEOPLE, please feel free to drop me anything interesting you’ve read or written lately. Men’s rights activists with lame links to Livejournals relating anecdotes–shocking, shocking anecdotes!–about matricide in primates killing their little monkey babies, and how that proves bitches is evil, please commence shutting your fucking pieholes.

For who-knows-what reason, there’s been a small influx of nasty comments from the Apologize to the Duke Lacrosse Team NOW brigade. Don’t know what set them off–I suppose it could just be a periodic hormonal fluctuation–but stalwart lacrosse team defenders, it’s time to move on. This is fixing to outstrip (!) the Clenis fixation with you people.

Which brings up a good question: If Clinton had hired strippers for a party, hurled racist slurs at them, and later emailed his cabinet to notify them of his Patrick Bateman-inspired murder fantasies, would Republicans have come out swinging against a rush to judgment? I believe the answer is spelled “HAHAHAHAHAHAyouhavegottobefuckingkiddingme.”

Green Zone money changer, 2004. Here’s hoping he got out alive.
Photo: hdroads

–we can maintain our military presence in Iraq for guess how much longer?

Sixty days:

House Democrats are beginning to coalesce around a $19 billion bill — enough to fund the war for about 60 days — without any withdrawal dates, according to aides. The measure would include additional funds for military health care; new standards for resting, training and equipping troops before deployment; and prohibitions on torture and permanent bases in Iraq. Benchmarks would be included, but with no punishments for failing to meet them.

Punishment is so negative, you know, and so unnecessary when we’ve got an administration that responds so well to gentle suggestions about how to end this disaster.

I’m really baffled by this love of useless benchmarks, although the next paragraph provides a clue to what motivates Democrats to propose this asininity:

The idea would be to pass the measure quickly, as soon as early next week, to deprive Bush of the argument that Democrats are withholding needed funds from the troops. Then negotiations would begin immediately on yet another bill.

Okay, look:

(more…)

My coblogger, Genni, is crazy talented. She made this bag and a few others.
Photo: gennimcmahon

Stuff I didn’t get to this week because I am all trying to have a work ethic these days:

SEMI-BREAKING

THE TILLMANS’ WAR IS OUR WAR, TOO

JUST “DUH,” DUDE

EVERYTHING GIVES YOU CANCER

EVERYTHING GIVES YOU CANCER–EXCEPT ABORTION!

BROADS ABROAD

And another thing: When will the feminists speak out against injustice in space?
Photo: John Sloan

You probably didn’t know that my local mail is for shit. It is, and today they screwed up big time, delivering to me a buncha stuff addressed to Rob Taylor, of the blog (I’m not making this up) Red Alerts.

Rob, incidentally, is a little concerned about the feminists. Concerned enough to make a list, y’all, a whole list of all the suddenly silent feminists who don’t care two figs about the plight of Iranian women, if by “don’t care about” you mean “don’t in fact think we should invade Iran right now, this minute, so Iranian women can start getting raped and murdered by young Christian men instead of Muslim ones, the way God intended.”

Anyway, the mail: I don’t know what I’m going to do with this fetish mag devoted to smutty pictures of James Doohan (RIP, Scotty!). But the rest of it I opened by mistake, if by “mistake” I mean “totally on purpose, just so I could share it with you,” and I do indeed mean that most sincerely.

(more…)

Howard Roark, about to brandish the sweet lust-club of PURE REASON on that ass.
Photo: fortinbras

Hey there. Anything happen while I was away?

I count one or two little things here or there, yes. One or two really fucking horrible atrocities, I suppose. I am not worrying about them, because I am trusting to the expert class in all distressing matters from now on. It’s just easier, you know?

And it saves so much time. Now, instead of worrying about what to do when someone harasses me online, I can just make any old decision I want to with complete confidence that it will be judged the stupidest decision I could possibly have made. I can let go of anxiety and fear now, and rest easy, knowing that I am completely fucked from the start, before I even have to do anything. That’s efficiency! And greater efficiency means greater productivity. I’m going to get so much more laundry done.

I don’t have to worry about what could happen to me if some guy on campus loses his shit and opens fire, because really, it just doesn’t matter. It’s my fault. I should have fucked him before he went Rambo on the student body. At the very least, I shouldn’t have been fucking anyone else because think, just think how heartbreaking that would be for a man who felt lonely, to know that other people were getting some. Honestly? If I behaved as selfishly as that, I think I might deserve to die in a hail of bullets.

And I can quit agonizing over that abortion at last! No matter what reason I offer for having it–even “I was unable to consent so my husband made the best decision he could under the circumstances“–it will be inadequate. Silly husband! Women’s lives are expendable, no matter how fond you are of them. I am fond of my cat, for example, but you can bet if it were between her life and the lives of her soon-to-be adorable, fluffy kittens, it’d be so long, Sally.

(more…)

Even when you feel bound to say “yes,” you can still say “no.”
Photo: everyday_stranger

Hugo’s got a terrific post up about the way we socialize women to say “yes” even (and especially) when they want to say “no,” and the exercise he uses to help his students become more aware of that:

In the past, I’ve asked my students and youth groupers to keep a “log� of how often they say “yes� when they’d rather say “no� over the course of the week. Some of them actually have developed spread sheets, with columns! (People-pleasing taken to the platinum level!) They list to whom they said yes when they’d rather have said no; they list the request itself; they are encouraged to journal about why they said “yes�, and to speculate what the consequences would have been (both for themselves and the other person) if they had said “no.�

I don’t usually ask them to start practicing saying “no� right away. I find it’s often more effective to get young women to see just how often — and to how many people, and in how many varied circumstances — they say “yes.� Saying “yes� to things we would rather not do is of course part of living in community. But we raise women to find “no� a much more difficult word to say.

[Emphasis mine.]

I don’t want to imply that my experience is universal among women, but I do know I used to have a terrible time saying “no” when I meant “no,” often because I didn’t know (or didn’t know in time to say it) even that I wanted to say “no.” That’s because I didn’t know what I wanted in the first place, because since when did what I wanted ever matter?

That reminds me: Does anyone here need anything? Are y’all doing okay out there? Anyone thirsty? Can I get you something to drink? I have iced tea or water or diet ginger ale, but I could probably run to the store right quick if you’d like something else. Iced coffee? A beer? Say, how about a sandwich? I would love to fix you a nice sandwich.

(more…)

See?–If only you had obeyed the law, this would never have happened.

For a brief period of my childhood, I used to have nightmares about having acid thrown in my face.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” would say some sensible adult or another. “No one is going to throw acid in your face. But if you don’t dust the living room this minute, someone IS going to ground you from riding your bike.”

“By the way,” that adult would sometimes add, “if you can’t borrow your brother’s comic books without having nightmares about them, maybe you should quit borrowing his comic books altogether. It annoys him.”

And so I warn you: If you suffer from nightmares about someone, masked villain, intimate partner, or both, throwing acid in your face, right here in this post is a good place to quit.

(more…)

Photo: Triangle Factory Fire

Sheila O’Malley reminds me that today marks the 96th anniversary of the Triangle Factory fire. Sheila has a link up to some pictures, or you can visit Cornell’s Triangle Fire web site.

Fortunately, nowadays workers are treated much better than the workers who died at Triangle, and even if they are not, at least it’s no longer happening on U.S. soil as much, and that is what matters.

We have come a long way since Triangle Shirtwaist.

You said death first, uh-uh, death first!*
Photo: yoshiko314

I had intended just to cross-post something from my own blog over here regarding the raids at the Michael Bianco leather factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but Sheezlebub, as befits a demon queen, screwed all that up. Now I’m resigned to just riffing off her a little bit and hoping she doesn’t smite me for it. Wait: Demons don’t smite, do they? That’s God’s domain.

Anyway, this:

This issue grinds my gears because it’s so huge. You can’t just point to one thing and say, If we just do X it will be better or If so and so was out of office, things would be better. Go on, try it: If we just bought less things would be better. Except they wouldn’t be because the things we buy would still be produced by people who are treated as just so much fodder for our needs and wants. Brown people in poor countries who we don’t see, brown people from poor countries here in the US who we choose not to see. We can choose not to buy as much, but thanks to planned obsolescence, we’re going to have to eventually replace things.

. . .

I can proudly declare myself the queen of personal purity if I forgo TV and buy my clothes at thrift shops only and never, ever drive anywhere. But even if I managed to find used clothes made of fabric that wasn’t woven by glorified slave labor in an EPZ somewhere, even if I ate only food grown in a local farm, even if I participated as little as I could in a rotten system of global feudalism, the system would still exist, and all of the smug high-five’s I’d give to my fellow travelers wouldn’t change this one whit.

–is what engenders that hopeless feeling, that learned helplessness feeling: The enormous scope of the problem. And that’s what makes the choice to do something or not to do something feel a little like the choice between tea and cake with the vicar, or death.

(more…)

“Intellectual Drunk” by commanderpho1

I was tagged weeks ago by Sage of Persephone’s Box to list five blogs that make me think. I put off responding because I didn’t want to have to narrow it down to just five of them. Even though I don’t always read blogs in order to spur my thinking–thus my addiction to some downright silly ones–there are nonetheless plenty out there that kick my brain into gear, often daily. So this list could easily be 20 or 30 blogs long.

–but it isn’t going to be, because life is cruel and them’s the rules! Suck it, bloggers who didn’t make my list! Rejoice, five thinkful bloggers who did!

(more…)

Ann Althouse, Dr. Helen, Glenn Reynolds

Via Lawyers, Guns and Money, this video of bloggers Ann Althouse, Dr. Helen, and Instapundit features an in-depth discussion of last week’s grand AutoAdmit adventure, reported in the Washington Post but given more context, and sadly sordid history, by Jill at Feministe.

(Oh, hey, I apologize for that AutoAdmit link up there! It was pretty raw, but then, that sort of prestigious discussion is fairly typical for that crowd. Don’t believe them when they try to tell you otherwise, and never believe them when they say the point is to celebrate free speech and to bring hatred and bigotry out into the light, to be crushed like a pair of fleeing cockroaches. No, you won’t find too many posters at AutoAdmit complaining about this behavior, because most of them love it. They love free speech the same way the Ku Klux Klan loves free speech.)

Problem is, the in-depth discussion had by Althouse, Reynolds, and Reynolds isn’t actually about AutoAdmit, or its history of cyberstalking, or the damaging effect postings on that message board are having on female law students as they go about their studies, pursue employment, and try to lead lives offline. Most odd for a discussion that includes two law professors, it doesn’t even provide any lawyerly thoughts on how to reconcile the freedom we enjoy on the internet with the controls we would need to shut down an obvious problem site like AutoAdmit. For that discussion, you’ll need to see The Poor Man’s resident nerd and diehard Shannon fan, Sifu Tweety. While I don’t fully agree with Sifu’s take on the matter, at least he got people talking about an issue only likely to come up more, not less often as the internet continues to grow.

Instead, the in-depth discussion at BloggingHeads is about Ann Althouse, foul-mouthed feminists, and foul-mouthed feminists. I told you you wouldn’t get this story anywhere else!

(more…)

Photo credits (l-r): girl from finito, laurie ♥, and cherry mary

As we don’t seem to be having much luck discussing the environmental and human costs we incur through our use of technology without everyone putting on her best Gloomy Face, whaddya say we turn those frowns upside down and talk about how gollygeewhiz cool it is when technology comes in pink?

PINK, I said! That’s right! Pink! “Pink,” as in, “pink is the new pink!”

Hmm. Tough crowd tonight.

Look, this is what happened: I couldn’t think of anything really good to do for Blog Against Sexism Day, all right? But then I had an email from a friend and she happened to mention the age-old question of why, when companies are trying to sell more products to women, the best many of those companies, especially the tech ones, can seem to come up with strategically is simply to make the same product available in pink.

(more…)

Wanted for the crime of being “average-looking:” Next time try to porn it up more, Lindsay.

Writing in Slate, Seth Stevenson laments the “cheap feminism” of the Dove Cream Oil ad first shown during the Academy Awards broadcast on February 25. You can tell Seth’s an expert on real, premium feminism right away:

I liked the consumer-generated ad for Doritos that ran during this year’s Super Bowl—the one with people acting out adjectives like “crunchy” and “cheesy.” That ad was clever, and competently produced. By contrast, this Dove ad is just atrocious. It uses a cheap video camera and murky lighting, and stars an average-looking woman being filmed as she takes a shower. The result bears a queasy resemblance to amateur pornography—though I’m told that even bargain-basement porn features flashier production values and more compelling actresses.

The background, in case you watch as little television as I do: Dove put out a casting call for the “next Dove Real Woman,” and applicants submitted their own ads for the Dove Cream Oil product. The winner, creator of the ad Seth is panning, can be viewed at Dove’s website if you aren’t already familiar with it.

In addition to not watching much television, I don’t watch much pornography, so I could just be a little mixed up here; but, personally, I’m not seeing what’s so pornographic about this ad, let alone what might give it “a queasy resemblance to amateur pornography.” Lindsay, the Dove contest winner, is indeed shown taking a shower–you know, the way people with good hygiene do sometimes? And then she kind of dances around, like she’s singing into an imaginary microphone (a hair brush stands in for the mike). No, the more I read the above paragraph, the less certain I am that Seth really finds the ad pornographic, either, and the more convinced I become that his real problem is that it isn’t pornographic enough. Where’s the beautiful (as opposed to average-looking) woman? Where are the compelling actresses, and why aren’t they fellating that hairbrush? Or you know what would be really good? If they made out with each other! Now that’s feminism.

(more…)

How adorable! It’s another angry white man resisting the Stalinism of political correctness!
Photo: newsfrombabylon

I mean, of course, use of the term “political correctness” as a slur that any thinking person should bother giving a shit about, not the idea behind it. The idea behind “being politically correct” is actually this wild concept called “showing consideration for the feelings of others,” sometimes abbreviated to “being sensitive,” and also colloquially known as “not being an asshole.”

It wasn’t always this way. I have beat hell out of Google for two hours now, trying to track down the origins of the phrase, “politically correct.” I have it in my head that it was popularized unironically in the late 80s to early 90s by a newspaper columnist, but my research isn’t backing me up on that. Score another blow against my lazy, scatterbrained, wholly unintellectual head.

Here is what I have been able to find for its origins. Corrections (with cites, please!) welcome:

The term “political correctness” probably originated in the seventies. But, according to writer Barbara Epstein, it was widely publicized by the media in October 1990, when the Western Humanities Conference held an interdisciplinary forum entitled “‘Political Correctness’ and Cultural Studies” at the University of California at Berkeley. She explains that what was initially a wry joke on the Left became a rigid standard against which both liberals and conservatives were being measured—by themselves and by each other.

Or maybe it originated this-a way:

According to Gary Kamiya, writing recently (1995) in the “San Francisco Examiner,” the term “politically correct” or (PC) first attracted a sizeable audience with the popularity in 1987 of the Allan Bloom surprise bestseller, “The Closing of the American Mind.”

But so far, the origin theory I favor is a composite one, offered by various participants in a linguistics forum:

The term seems to have entered common use in anglophone Canada first of
all as social democrat teasing of the Maoists and the Stalinists
for their pomposity. “Correct analysis” could be used in the same way, as
in, “You have the correct analysis, comrade,” for “I agree with you.”
this could be said only to other socialists, of course; the totalitarian
left never got the joke. “Politically correct” was - and in safe company
still is - used by the democratic left in self-mockery, as in: “We have
politically correct fruit salad tonight, _no_ California grapes.” The term
seems to have become pejorative as it has been taken over by people who
are incapable of seeing the comic side of their own ideals.

And:

I don’t know where the term “politically correct” first entered English, but the etymology you give would certainly be consistent with my experience. Back in the early ’80s I knew “politically correct” as a term that leftists might use to poke fun at those whose (putatively leftist) politics seemed too doctrinaire. Later, various writers, commentators, and politicians hostile to the left seized on the term as if it had been used seriously–in other words, as if there had been leftists (in the US) who applied the term to themselves without irony. Now, what had been something of an inside leftwing joke has been turned into a weapon brandished against the left.

Emphasis mine, and I add it because it leads to my question: Why have some of us grown so committed to using this same weapon, once “brandished against the left,” against each other? Why? Who said this was a good idea?

(more…)

I have a question, New Zealand: Is Hell Pizza any good? I find myself inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is, for some reason.

Come on, sing it with me, you’ve certainly heard it before:

If feminists care so much about women’s rights, why don’t they support our mission to bring democracy to Iraq? Isn’t suffrage a right?

If feminists care so much about women’s rights, why don’t they support all women Michelle Malkin? Isn’t Michelle Malkin a woman?

And so on, ’til you’re like to puke.

I think it’s worth recalling that this can be turned around and shown for the fallacy it is–that this silly business of “you don’t talk about my subject (as much as I wish you would)” can ever mean “you don’t care about my subject (at all).”

(more…)

This was a perfectly integriful surface until some liberal blogger defaced it.
Photo: marmalade brat

It has come to my attention that some no-good liberal bloggers have been editing comments posted by people who annoy them. This is absolutely unconscionable and must stop immediately.

(more…)

Paris Hilton, rumored to have described her unnamed
companion as “one of the good ones who doesn’t steal.”
Photo: parosjet

No? Well, me neither, but looks like I’ll be well-stocked for some time regardless:

Through out the video, she is mocking African Americans by claiming “I’m black and I steal.� Paris Hilton is also heard verbally degrading other group of people other than African Americans in the video, she is heard saying, “blacks … bitch … ni_ … I steal … whore … slut … Jew … I got fucked in the butt for coke … poor desperate blacks … I’m black and I steal.�

. . .

When Paris steps into the camera again to vent about a run-in with a woman at the party, she described her as a “fuckin’ hoodlum, broke, poor bitch from like, Compton – public school bitch.� It is ironic that Paris taking on an elitist attitude about the girl’s schooling . . . When it comes to Paris Hilton’s own education, she really shouldn’t be talking because opted to live life of a socialite instead of graduating from high school. She dropped out of Dwight High School, a selective, private school on the Upper West Side in New York City. Soon after her short-lived engagement to Paris Lotsis, a Greek gentleman known to be heir of a shipping business Hilton relocated to Hollywood Hills, in L.A. County to live with her sister, Nicky where she earned her GED. The point is, the words she chose, like Joe Biden, she too saw black people in America as different from the “norm� - unfamiliar and not equal, unlike her former best friend, Nicole Richie, who is African American.

Oh, I’ll bet Paris had a few similarly choice words for Nicole after their friendship ended, don’t you think? That’s how it works with people like Hilton: One vocabulary for the “good” minorities, another for the “bad” ones–like she’s doing all these lesser beings a huge favor by NOT being a bigot to their faces. It isn’t that she doesn’t harbor racism towards her friends, it’s that she’s willing to keep it in check for the poor things because, after all, they’re her friends and they can’t help it. Once they’re no longer her friends, however, I really doubt she holds back.

(more…)

When I became a feminist I was, of course, immediately issued a cat. Except there was some glitch in the database at Feminazi Headquarters, apparently, because they kept issuing me cats, and now I have three of ‘em, all lollygagging about the apartment and refusing to do anything to help pay the rent. Would you like a couple?

Photo below.

(more…)

If one more social-conservative-in-centrist’s-clothing tries to put this “No, really, this decision is going to hurt Edwards, for whom I had every intention of voting, I swear,” nonsense over on me, I’m going to start the cocktail hour early tonight.

Bar’s open. What’ll you have?

UPDATE: And this one goes out to all the masters of civility in the intertubes: “In all my years at The Shrinking Violet Finishing School, they never prepared me to deal with such rank profanity.”

Bill Donohue won’t like this picture very much, either.
Photo: cpurrin1

I’ve deliberately refrained from writing about the wingnut witch hunt of Amanda and Shakes here for many reasons, not least of which being that I’d be preaching to the choir. Plus, I’m not going to be able to top Pam’s summary anyway.

But that Nezua guy, he sucked me back in by highlighting one of the things I think is most important about this:

Bloggers are not a new species. They (WE) are nothing special, nothing strange, nothing unknown. BLOGGERS ARE PEOPLE. It’s just been so long since real people’s voices were actually represented in media or politics that when you begin hearing them, they sound so—ew—so…human! I mean, they take STRONG stands n shit! They actually let themselves get eMOTIONal about war and human suffering and stuff. Surely not glossy enough, not powdered, puffed, sanitized, fumigated, or fluffed enough!

Exactly–and that’s why I think Amanda and Shakes ought to be supported whether people agree with all their positions or not. I realize not everyone sees it that way; probably most people don’t see it that way. Down somewhere in the comments to Pam’s post, someone suggested that, hey, we’d all be doing the same thing the right-wing blowhards are doing to Amanda if, say, the McCain campaign were to hire Jeff Goldstein, right? All’s fair in dirty, dirty politics. No blow too low! Play to win, win to play.

(more…)

When you can’t win on the merits, exhaust ‘em with tantrums
Photo: Lana 182

Burnt out on the unabashed thuggery of wingnut nation? I know I am. Thankfully, Sylvia at The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum reminds me that the 31st Carnival of the Feminists is up at Truly Outrageous–and it’s a two-parter! See Part 1 and Part 2.

And then, if you haven’t done so already, show your support for Melissa and Amanda. I nag, because I love. And because it’s important.

I initially read this report on the conviction of Marlon Brando Gill, the former Marine who shoved his girlfriend’s cell phone down her throat, as saying he’d serve a seven-year sentence for second-degree assault. Turns out my eyes were just tired; the jury in fact could not decide on a sentence, and seven years is the maximum time Mr. Gill might serve, if that’s what the judge decides to give him:

It was Gill’s second trial since his arrest more than a year ago. Jurors in July were unable to reach a verdict on a first-degree domestic assault charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Jurors could not agree on a sentence for Gill, which means that decision will be left up to a judge. The assault charge carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison.

Well, you know, it’s tricky: On the one hand, the victim, Melinda Abell, did nearly die of a blocked airway. On the other hand, she didn’t actually die and . . . and . . . now see here, is this really worth ruining a man’s life over? Is any woman’s welfare worth ruining a man’s life over? Besides, women love talking on the phone; maybe he was only trying to make that hobby easier for her, perhaps supposing she could dial faster using her tonsils.

(more…)

Photo: “Dartmouth Turtle,” by Kiwi Betsy
Don’t be fooled; this turtle is actually standing atop another turtle.

I wandered into an online argument yesterday and I got to thinking, you know, it’s true: The political weblog environment really IS turtles all the way down. Except that these are not ordinary turtles. These are Overton turtles.

For example:

September 2006 Washington Post article/book excerpt:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O’Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

The freaking point: The political affiliations of job applicants were given at least as much consideration as, and perhaps more consideration than, their actual qualifications.

Conservative response:

You said the bodacious Simone Ledeen had no accounting background and that is not true, she has an MBA, okay, and while that isn’t exactly the same as having a CPA, I am nonetheless certain math was involved somewhere. Besides, she didn’t manage the budget for the Coalition Provisionial Authority, she executed it. I DEMAND A CORRECTION.

(more…)

Last week*, The National Organization for Women posted their letter to the Senate (PDF) supporting the minimum wage increase that the U.S. Senate is expected to pass today.

Included as an attachment to the letter are what libertarian and conservative bloggers would doubtless term “a bunch of anecdotal data that doesn’t prove anything,” but what NOW simply calls “real people’s minimum-wage stories,” because that’s what they are. I wrote earlier this week about the tendency of right-wing pundits to abstract human beings right out of existence when calling for greater civility in online discourse, but really, it’s a habit that permeates nearly all conservative thinking: If I can reduce you to a lone data point on the great big scatter plot of life, I can deem your lived experience irrelevant, and that makes me feel better about ignoring your problems.

(more…)