We spent most of the past week in Atlantic City; sadly, though, as hard as one might try, one cannot spend every waking moment at the poker table–so, at around 3 am on Tuesday night, we headed back to our room to flip through the casino hotel’s pay-per-view channels. To our surprise (and mild delight) they were offering Religulous, Bill Maher’s recently released mockumentary on religion.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD
I like babies. They’re cute. I have about 50,000 pictures of my sons as babies and with the slightest encouragement, especially after a glass of wine or two, I will happily haul them out of the closet and make you admire each and every one of them.
However, I am pro-choice. I say “however” because clearly, there is a fair contingent of people out there who genuinely believe that people who are pro-choice don’t give a rat’s ass about babies. Sometimes, they even seem to believe that what pro-choice people really, secretly want to do is rend and splatter as many babies as possible limb from limb, and the only reason women are out there still getting abortions is because they just don’t realize that that’s what abortion is really all about. For example:
Oklahoma’s new [abortion] statute dictates that either the doctor performing the abortion or a “certified technician working in conjunction” with that doctor do the ultrasound, “provide a simultaneous explanation of what the ultrasound is depicting,” and also “display the ultrasound images so that the pregnant woman may view them.” The law goes so far as to specify the doctor’s script: The physician must describe the heartbeat and the presence of internal organs, fingers, and toes.
Widdle fingers and toesies! (ahem) I repeat, WIDDLE FINGERS AND TOESIES!!!!! To be smashed, crushed, torn, shredded into bloody BITS!!!!
Next up! Addendum to the statute: “Doctor (or a certified technician working in conjuction with doctor) must describe embryo’s desperate screams of ‘No, Mommy! Noooo! Don’t let them rip me apart, Mommy! I love you!’”
(Sigh.)
Usually, I’ve tried to shoot for compassion in my dealings with the pro-life mentality. As I said, I like babies and I think they’re cute. However, I’ve noticed that with the passage of years, my patience has shrunken gradually down to, well. The size of an eight-week old embryo. This big: ——-.
I’ve gone into great detail about my abortion stance and my feelings about the pro-life stance on more than one occasion already; I won’t rehash them yet again. I believe, though, that I am officially “done” with attempting to extend any sort of respect at all towards those who self-identify as “pro-life.” Seriously, why should I extend respect to people that have codified it into law that they have not only no respect, but anti-respect for those who self-identify as “pro-choice?” That does not mean that I will cease to extend respect towards those who personally would choose to never have an abortion; that is an eminently respectable position. It definitely doesn’t mean I will cease to extend compassion to any woman who was pressured into or otherwise regrets her abortion; that is a personal, not political, matter. However, anyone who affiliates himself or herself with any group of persons seeking to pass legislation that restricts, in any way, the right of women to choose..? I consider you fair game the minute you open your mouth (or heat up your keyboard) to say so. Be warned.
“How much are YOU WORTH?” A shady computer tech school in my area begins their radio commercials asking people to pause and reflect on that question before going on to imply that a certification in information technology will be worth about 50K right at graduation, and creating a false sense of prestige by saying you have to pass a test (oh, god, not a test!) to qualify for their program. For a person stuck in some of the armpits of service jobs we have here, such an offer must sound pretty tempting – I know that at my least employed and most desperate I spent $200 on a bartending course that was laughably useless although by the time I was willing to admit that, the check had already cleared and the classroom had moved on to the next geographical set of suckers. I keep the certification just to remind myself that I’m not as smart as I think I am.
I thought about that a few days ago when Cog over at Offsprung touched a nerve on the topic of useless vs useful college degrees. Cog, who I guess got burned by his expensive but ultimately not lucrative undergraduate program, subscribes to “the idea of college is to spend lots of money to get a degree that will get you a job.” A view that drives others (like me) insane. By the middle of the thread, it was very clear that this was a highly personal subject that divided people into roughly three or four camps that were speaking different languages. And I thought about it when I ran into today’s MSN list’o'the hour, Top Earning College Degrees.
Of the top 10 starting salaries according to major, no fewer than five have the word “engineering” in them. Two or three others (depending on how you count economics) involve high finance, and the remaining ones are computer related. Unifying theme? Math, and plenty of it. And they’re freaking hard.
The participants in Cog’s conversation were heavy on the liberal arts degrees, no shock since college graduates in general are heavy on the liberal arts. As far as I can tell, they divided into camps roughly along these lines:
1) Cog’s Supporters: People who feel that since the conventional wisdom is that you need a degree to get a decent job then you should pick your major based on lists like the one offered by MSN to ensure that you’re not burning money.
2) People who feel that education is it’s own reward.
3) Sensible Educational Theory types, who’d like to agree with statement 2 but have been crushed by reality and would like us hoity-toity learn-for-the-love-of-it types to wake up to the real world, kids.
I belong to group 2, but I have to admit to being a bit of a hypocrite; I ended up trading a kind of joke major for a more impressive, and more reliably lucrative, one. You see, my original major was communications, which I studied at a University that cost as much per year as three or four years at the place I ended up graduating from. So really, I almost made the same costly mistake that Cog appears to think he made. But by the end of that year I was bored out of my mind, I hated the school, and I realized that for what I wanted to do, college was the complete wrong path.
So I quit, and spent a year in theatre, doing some prop stuff and stagehand stuff. But when I realized that I could -if I was lucky and worked my ass off- maybe someday have my boss’ job, I quit that too. I went back to school but this time I majored in physics, and it took 5 years which basically sucked the whole way through. But then I got my degree and it really was the magic piece of paper everyone thinks a college degree is, and I’ve been doing pretty OK ever since.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to use this thread to sort out some confusion I saw between the camps in Cog’s thread, because it seems that a lot of people were talking over each other. The whole thing has a tawdry Mommy-war vibe to it, with opposing camps that each have really good points but are defensive and see only where they disagree. So let’s open this can of worms with an insanely long post!
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The Young Christian Person’s Conference is all wrapped up, and photos are available online. Lots of bluish haze and fresnels pointed directly at the audience, the hallmark of an lighting designer who totally knew someone who once did the lights for a Coldplay tour, but alas will never design the lights for Coldplay himself. But he’s still cool.
Our young heroes, Alex and Brett (who, to my infinite disappointment, are NOT as hot as their blog photo would have you believe), gathered their rebelutionaries and divided them into home groups, presumably to play patriarch. Let’s compare the photos (Alex vs Brett) and see who wins!
|
Patriarchy Catagories: |
Alex |
Brett |
|
|
Size of household |
+9 |
+11 |
|
|
Gender makeup of household |
-3 |
-6/5 |
|
|
Control over the bitches |
-5 |
-100 |
|
|
Total |
+1 |
-90.2 |
|
Final Commentary:
Brett starts out strong in important patriarch categories such as overall household size and ratio of valuable boys to resource-sucking females. However, both slip when it comes to keeping the wiminz under control: despite the much-lauded Modesty Survey, both boys’ groups were heavy on the t-shirts with decorations on the bust, and both showed signs of feminine kneecap. What points Alex’s team gained for proper use of lip gloss and shiny, lustrous manes they lose for low necklines and peak-a-boo camisoles. Brett’s team loses points mostly for bust-centered t-shirtage and excessive make-up, and the harlot standing second from the right. Now there’s a girl who took the modesty survey as a how-to guide to titillate her Christian brothers, 80′s style.
I award the harlot 10 points for the flirty knee-skimming skirt, 10 points for the sexay top, 100 points for that retro perm, and 500 points for that awesome belt. She also gets 10 NYT points for being up-to-date on clavicle style, 10 Chris Muir points for holding herself in an awkward, hip-and-butt enhancing pose, and 10 smug sense of self-satisfaction points because look at that smile: she knows she’s hot.
Convention winner: Harlot, for reading between the lines of that ridiculous modesty survey and serving up a steamy dish of hawt during a rare chance to get some face time with one of our well-funded wonder twins. I’ll give her another 1,000 points if it can be shown that an eligible male took her aside to ‘talk’ to her about her dress, and she feigned shock that her attire was at all inappropriate and asked said male to help her discover what the Lord says about modest dress, starting with a sincere prayer of repentance. The other five girls may hate her guts, but if you’re gonna play the boys’ game, ladies, you’d best play it to win.
From the comments at Twisty’s place, a crotchety old man says things were better back before women were people.
British TV standards are deteriorating because the BBC is “run by women”, astronomer Sir Patrick Moore has said.
The Sky at Night host also described female newsreaders as “jokey” and called for separate channels to cater for the needs of the different sexes.
I’d feel outraged about such an opinion if the man holding it wasn’t so clearly one foot in the grave. One look at Sir Moore and I can’t be mad at the loveable old coot: I can only laugh at him and then feel kind of bad about laughing at the ridiculous old man.
“I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC – making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching.”
Yeah, yeah, we know. Things haven’t been the same since women got the vote and they stopped selling codeine over the counter. Shake your fist at the march of time, and die happy. Delusional, yes, but satisfied that we’ll see! Things were better then! We’ll all see!
It’s a good thing he’s so pissed off about women, because otherwise he’s have to punch that BBC PR guy for being so patronizing:
A BBC spokesman described Sir Patrick as being one of TV’s best-loved figures and said his “forthright” views were “what we all love about him”.
Hey, half the payoff for spending 50 years on TV becoming a national icon is so that you can spend your golden years saying whatever fuck stuff you want. That young whippersnapper at the BBC should feel proud to have to mop up after such a respectable luminary while keeping a straight face. Or, as a commenter at Twisty’s put it:
I do find it hilarious that the photo of him shows him as an entitled old white dude wearing a monocle.
Consider this an experiment in search terms. We have a tradition to keep going:
I HATE TOMKAT. These two thankless souls couldn’t even remember to invite Oprah to their wedding. Can you believe that shit? Oprah! They even neglected to invite Oprah to their post-wedding party. Shit, I’ll bet even Jennifer Aniston was there.*
Cruise and Winfrey have been friends for many years, and Cruise made his infamous couch-jumping “I’m in love” speech regarding Holmes on the media mogul’s talk show last year.
Winfrey was noticeably left off the list to the November 18 ceremony in Bracciano, Italy — even though celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez and Jim Carrey, who are not known to be friends of Cruise or Holmes, were invited.
So, TomKat can invite people who aren’t even their friends to this fabulous Italian wedding, but leave the woman who televised Cruise’s couch-jumping (half-baked) PR stunt. Does Tom Cruise hate Oprah?
Not very classy, TomKat, and I hate you.
__________________________
* Speaking of Jennifer Aniston, did you hear about The Break Up? Yes, Aniston and Vince Vaughn have broken up. I say it’s time because she’s way too good for him.
…Except marriage, obviously.
I love you amanda, but the thing is that while a burka is a handy dandy symbol of patriarchal oppression, it is not Your symbol to use you silly cracker.
You see, one of the ways the islamic patriarchy pushes hijab onto women who would otherwise prefer not to wear head scarfs or burkas or any of that stuff is to use the KultureKampf that western imperialists are waging against muslims as an excuse to guilt trip young muslim women into donning the patriarchy uniform that goes with the particular family’s cultural background.
So many muslim women have been raised and told over and over again by their famlies that they’re betraying their culture and their fellow muslims if they don’t wear the headscarf or dress super modestly that they start to go along with it as they realise how incredibly racist western society is towards them, and you can justify any patriarchal bit of bullshit with that line – way too many of the FGM victims I’ve met (all of whom were fundigelical christians) used the line to justify chopping their daughter’s clits off. (more…)
Or why you need to hate yourself and how
We all judge people (via), how we dress, the way we comb our hair, little things really, but have you ever noticed how big a deal we can make out of those little things? For instance, a man may walk a certain way or sleep with a certain gender and suddenly people start labeling him “gay”! The reason I bring this up is to highlight the carefully guarded secret that feminists don’t want you to know: Everyone is judging you, that stranger you passed in the street, your parents and loved ones especially.
Now of course a feminazi would suggest that you find a way to have self esteem that didn’t rely on other people’s opinions and judgments of you – but think about that for a second, do you really not want to care whether a stranger thinks you’ve got a fat ass? For one thing, it fails to in anyway deal with the problem at hand – namely your fat ass – and for another, it completely ignores the fact that as a woman you in no way deserve to feel good about yourself.
And that is the most important lesson of all: You are ugly and therefore worthless as a lady. (more…)
1, A white blogger cannot be racist if they can name a single POC blogger.
2, POC bloggers are always the worst racists.
3, Narcissism is the same thing as being gay.
4, The Big Bloggers are all big bloggers through hardwork and writing skill, even Kosimandius and Trexie-bell*, POC bloggers are not Big Bloggers due to their genes.
5, Nitpicking grammar and spelling is the same thing as wit.
6, Racism does not exist in Left Blogistan, that is why Left Blogistan’s Big Bloggers do not need to pay any heed to charges that Left Blogistan is racist from POC bloggers in Left Blogistan, QED.
7, There is no silver spoon.
8, Saying you’re gay makes you immune to all criticisms that you’re a racist misogynistic assbag.
8.5, Especially if you basically accuse your critics of being homophobes in an attempt to shut down their criticism.
9, Real non-racists do not care, to a given amount of care, that the people of color who they use as cheap tokens to protect them from having to actually face any charges that they might possibly have been racist, are people of color.
10, A white blogger cannot be racist if they can name a single POC blogger (via)
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When I was in high school, this guy I didn’t know died of cancer. A friend of mine who was a notorious attention whore wrote a deeply felt, incredibly bad poem about it, a gesture that went unappreciated by his friends just because she misspelled his name.
I thought about that today, shortly after reading Marc’s 9/11 post. I spent most of the day following James Wolcott’s lead: I avoided the anniversary rehash that pretty much every outlet down to my school newspaper indulged in. I didn’t avoid it completely, however, because MSN is my home page at work so every time I opened a browser this morning I saw this:
I didn’t click there. It seemed a tad inappropriate and I wasn’t interested in whatever heartfelt September 11th message they felt could only be adaquately conveyed by a better version of FlashPlayer. It got me thinking, however, about how we handle things like the anniversary of important but really, really bad events. And the answer is that there are an astonishing number of people who have chosen to handle it with tastelessness and an almost heroic lack of self-awareness.
As it turns out, there is a small army of people like my old high school buddy. People whom, even though they have no real need to spin public outrage over the events of 9/11 into midterm election votes, still needed to scooch a little closer to tragedy by preparing tacky, borderline offensive internet tributes. They were affected, you see, like we all were by the tragedy of that black day. We need to Always Remember. And Never Forget. And Visit My Website.
An important part of Always Remembering and Never Forgetting are YouTube 9/11 Tributes. (Rate this video or the terrorists win.) About 21 results for 9/11 tributes, but at least two of them are heartfelt tributes to Naruto characters, and one is about Brokeback Mountain. Pause for a second here and bask in the reverence.
How people commemorated things before the internet is beyond me…where did they get thier slow-fade slideshows of readily available pictures? How did they set the show to an appropriate Enya-style song? I wish CNN had thought to play Fake Plastic Trees over all that TV footage of smoking buildings and weeping New Yorkers I watched 5 years ago, because that really would have added some poignance to the coverage.
Clearly, things are getting out of hand. Someone has to step in and provide some boundaries, and until Miss Manners gets her ass in gear, I guess that person will have to be me.
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Lieberman needs to be destroyed, taken down, have his ears nailed shut if needs be and driven from the dems, from any possible chance of having some influence over progresive politics.
And do you know why?
Because he’s an evil assbag of the first order, that’s why.
We know this from a simple examination of his actions, and from that examination we can ascertain one of two pictures of this man who’s called “joe Lieberman”.
The first picture is of a man with no moral conscience at all, but a huge propensity towards greed, he’ll take any policy that gives him more power, no matter how many people will die becasue of this.
The second picture is of an evil person, a person who has a moral conscience, but hates POC, women and the poor so much that he actively enjoys screwing them over and supporting things that will bascially lead to them dying by the thousands.
Either way we’re talking about an evil evil person. (more…)
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