Let’s start off with talking about a concern of mine: Don’s alcoholism. Not in that I’m concerned that Don, a fictional character, is an alcoholic. I’m not worried about his health or anything. What I worry about is this as a plot device. I’m allergic to giving a character a disease, whether self-inflicted or not. Whether a character is struck with cancer or an addiction, it’s a short leap from “fascinating TV show with some amount of suspense” to “afterschool special”. The only show I can think of that avoided this trap---and even then, it was only barely---was “The Wire”, and part of that is that Andre Royo, who played Bubbles, has charisma to burn. (The other part is that they made his recovery process an opportunity to make the character more complex.) The problem with introducing disease as a plot line is that the disease often becomes the defining feature of the character, especially when the character is an addict. It’s kind of boring and often moralistic in ways that just don’t make for good TV. But I remain hopeful. If anyone can pull it out, it’s the writers of “Mad Men”.
Still, the season premiere indicated a freshness and energy to the show, and then the past couple of episodes have been about establishing what a loser Don has become. They were interesting episodes, but last night’s episode, “The Rejected”, was the most fun of the season by far. This in itself doesn’t make me despair, because that’s their pattern for each season---start slow, build up background, and then things get crazy. But watching Pete and Peggy both come into their own a little more, and find some kind of peace between themselves, was just fun to watch. Contrasting their triumphs with Don’s despair made Don’s despair far more interesting. Old Peggy used to seem like she was becoming more Don-like all the time. New Peggy makes out with sexy journalists at bohemian parties that get raided by the cops. I think last night’s episode was about Peggy getting way closer to the realization that following in Don’s footsteps is not going to work out well for her. Thus, the best shot of the night (hat tip Anna Holmes for grabbing it).
Let’s talk about how Peggy seems like she could be choosing another path, because I saw some folks on Twitter last night suggesting she’s still just like Don. It’s true that Peggy has the nice, boring boyfriend that she’s considering marrying and she went to this awesome party without him and cheated on him. But she’s not married to the guy yet. And if we thought that perhaps Peggy was going to make her new bohemian friends an escape from her life, she actually has them come to her work to pick her up for lunch. That’s far from the only way she looks to live openly and honestly. When she’s at the party and her new friend introduces her as a writer, she doesn’t go along with the ruse, instead asking one of the guests if he’d like some paid work with her. She doesn’t compartmentalize like Don does. She struggles throughout the episode with longings for marriage and babies and good old-fashioned patriarchal validation, and at the end, she nods at Pete (who represents a lot of that in her mind) and steps into the elevator with her new friends, including an unabashed lesbian. Let’s hope my read on the symbolism is right, and that we don’t see too much Don-like backsliding.
I think the Peggy/Allison scene is important here, as well. Peggy is so offended by Allison’s assumptions about her and Don that she can’t be kind to Allison, even though Allison was undoubtedly spouting the common wisdom around the office. I was so upset that Peggy couldn’t be kind that I didn’t initially get what that meant in the larger scheme of things. But upon reflection, I realized what Peggy was saying when she snapped at Allison to get over it. The whole focus group situation reconfirmed my suspicions that Allison was hoping that sleeping with Don was meaningful, and upon realizing it wasn’t, she hates on herself for “giving it up”. Peggy has struggled in this season with the lie that a woman’s vagina is a bargaining chip to be used to get a man. When Freddy tells her to keep her legs shut to get the husband, the first thing she does is sleep with her boyfriend in a thumb-nosing rejection of that narrative and all that it implies. Snapping at Allison to get over it is cruel, but if you think about it, Peggy’s right. Flopping around waiting for a man to validate you is a pointless exercise. The ads promise that this is the path to happiness, but the focus groups show that it’s actually a path to blubbering in front of a bunch of near-strangers because you buy the belief that beauty is your only asset and you don’t have enough of it to compete. The only time Don pulls himself out of his stupor and says something that’s true is when he says that there’s a path beyond just finding out what people already want because of the toxic narratives they absorbed growing up and feeding it back to them. There’s also imagining new possibilities. And that’s what Peggy is doing.
So, last night on Formspring, someone asked me about the Penny Arcade controversy. I like Penny Arcade, but I confess I don’t read it regularly, because my life as a gamer is a shadow existence mostly built around Rock Band and occasional forays into Mario. So, I was unaware of the controversy, and had to be educated by Jesse. (Thanks, Jesse!) So, the timeline I’ve constructed is this.
1) Penny Arcade writes a comic where the joke is about contrasting the demands of a video game with the moral precepts of the real world. The comic involved the line, “raped to sleep by the dickwolves”. I personally found this joke hilarious, because I’ve played enough video games that I’ve also gone down the path of finding humor in the contrast between the game world and the real world. For those who don’t get it, the humor comes from the fact that video games raise the stakes a lot of the time by having the hero do things like rescue slaves from hell, but the goals often undermine these stakes by having you only save, say, five slaves. “Raped by dickwolves” didn’t bother me---it’s obviously a play on the long history of imaginative tortures of hell that everyone from Dante to video game writers have come up with.
I did not think this was a “rape joke” in the classic sense of the term, which is a joke where the punch line expresses the idea that raping is awesome. The joke of the comic was that the moral universes painted in video games are often horrific in a way that contrasts with the light-hearted nature of gaming. That strikes me as a perfectly appropriate thing to make fun of, tame even.
2) Someone at Shakesville takes offense. I found the blog post an annoying rationalization for disliking humor in general, which the blogger admits she does. I find the “but rape is real!” argument against jokes of this nature to be a disingenuous one. Slavery is also real, as is murder and general violence. But there’s no way that the blogger would have gotten mad about jokes in those veins, but a joke about a form of torture that is supposed to sound over the top and mystical got her into offended mode.
Corn
Zucchini
Cucumber
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Jalapenos
Bell peppers
Onion
Eggplant
Fruit:
Watermelon
Apples
Plums
Peaches
Necatarines
This was the week of extremes. I spent much of my day cooking on Saturday, but then the rest of the week kicked back and made simple dishes out of laziness.
Lunch
1) We had a bunch of nectarines left over, and they were starting to get wrinkly by Saturday, so I chopped them up, coated them in cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, salt, and chili powder. Tossed them in the skillet. It only took like 5 minutes to cook. They were awesome.
2) Grated one of the giant zucchini, chopped up an onion, and scrambled all that with four eggs and some garlic and chili powder. (Plus salt & pepper, of course.)
3) Toasted sourdough bread and sliced a tomato. Ate some eggs over this, but the rest were leftovers. Had some of the nectarines, but a lot were left over.
Well, this strikes me as the most irritating non-story I’ve read in a long fucking time. I suppose I’m supposed to be shocked and mildly distressed at the release of a study (conducted by Nutrisystem) that shows that half of American women would “give up sex” rather than gain 10 pounds. But I find the whole thing too suspect to take seriously. And it’s not because, or at least just because, of what Tracy Clark-Flory pointed out, which is that 66% of survey respondents felt like they have to lose weight to feel sexy, which is a sad result of the widespread fat-shaming in our culture. (The survey suggested the average amount that had to be lost to reach that goal was 23 pounds, which is such an abstract number as to be meaningless. Is that a number that includes all the women that feel they’re 5 pounds away from getting into a size four averaged with people who want to lose 100 pounds, or is it just a lot of people who feel they need to lose 23 pounds? No idea.) But it’s because they poisoned the well to make sure they got the results they wanted.
See, they didn’t ask if people would give up sex rather than gain weight. They asked if you’d give up sex for the summer rather than gain weight. Considering that’s only 3 months, I’m surprised more people didn’t say yes. A lot of Americans go 3 month stretches without getting laid all the time, often even if they’re in relationships. I’m sure people who’ve had 3 month dry spells outnumber people who haven’t many times over. It’s not a super fun idea to go 3 months without sex, but most of us have plenty of assurance we’d survive. (Unless they’re rolling masturbation into their definition of “sex”, which I’m almost positive they aren’t.)
But what really pissed me off about this survey was that it’s indicative of the entire problem with the American diet industry, which is basically built to encourage yo-you dieting. You’ve heard the statistic that 95% of diets don’t work? That’s because they’re designed not to. The entire pitch of diet programs is, “Deprive yourself of pleasure for short periods of time, and then, when you reach a goal, go right back to your old habits. In a few years, when you’ve gained it all back, come back and we’ll do it all over again.” There’s no natural reason to connect sexual deprivation with weight control---on the contrary, I’d guess frequent sex actually burns a fair number of calories---but the diet industry’s logic is just this. The whole notion is that you “earn” pleasure by being skinny enough to deserve it, and the only way to earn it is to lose weight.
Silvana has a really long, interesting post on the way that getting married can provoke body anxiety in even the most stalwart opponents of that kind of crap, and she mentions something that has always bothered me, too.
As a fat chick, I am well aware of the MUSTLOSEWEIGHTBEFOREWEDDING cultural imperative. I was aware of this before I ever knew what Fat Acceptance was. And I knew before I ever got engaged that I would be doing no such thing. Frankly, I wasn’t even tempted. I know people who have gone on serious diets in the year or so before they get married, women who have attended “boot camp,” and companies who have made a lot of money off of fueling those anxieties. I wanted no part of it.
They’re such a new band that Genius hasn’t even picked up on them yet, but I still have to share, because they’re so amazing. Last night, we went to see The Hounds Below, and it was one of those all-enrapturing, amazing shows that you wish every show could be, except that if they all were, then you wouldn’t have those stand-out shows. This is just a shitty show video that someone took of their first single “Crawling Back To You” (which they had for sale as 45s---250 pressed, so I had to grab one), but even in this, you can see how great they are:
The lead singer is also the founder of the Von Bondies, and I guess he’s just decided---wise choice, this one---that you can’t beat the 50s rock sound. They channel Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, but they also do so while covering modern songs by the Pixies and the Mekons (plus original material). It was amazing. Here’s their MySpace.
So, in honor of that show, my Genius Ten is based on a Von Bondies song. Leave yours in comments, or comments on whatever you like. Open thread.
Original song: “Tell Me What You See” by the Von Bondies
1) “When I Hear My Name” by The White Stripes
2) “Tick” by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3) “What’s Mine Is Yours” by Sleater-Kinney
4) “Shout Bama Lama” by The Detroit Cobras (who we’re seeing next Friday, whee!)
5) “Cuts Across Land” by The Duke Spirit
6) “Work Work Work (Pub, Club, Sleep) by The Rakes
7) “Blood On Our Hands” by Death From Above 1979
8) “Underdog” by The Dirtbombs
9) “She’s White” by The Electric Six (this band is so trashy that they’re kind of a guilty pleasure)
10) “My Friend Goo” by Sonic Youth
Even though we’re being encouraged to pretend that Robert Gibbs’ bullshit about the “professional left” and cable news wasn’t an attempt to shame the netroots and especially the folks at MSNBC for their refusal to be Fox News-style sycophants, Rachel Maddow isn’t buying it. And her revenge is spending half her show reminding the Obama administration that her job is calling it as she sees it, which includes calling out the administration when they fail to do the right thing.
Rachel tackled this from a human rights standpoint, but I’m going to shame the administration for being bad team players for the Democratic party. Gibbs not only admitted, but smirked as he said it, that the administration feels it can renege on its promises to progressives and engage in hippie-punching because those progressives will vote for them anyway, because hey, they’re not Republicans.
This confirmed to me that they’re more interested in finding ways to blame the base when the Democrats take a bath in November than in actually winning the fucking election for Democrats in the midterms.
You would think that the Obama administration would understand the importance of getting out the vote, especially since the Obama campaign put so much of its resources into one of the most efficient, effective GOTV campaigns the country’s ever seen. You might think they realize that it’s true that progressives will pull the lever for you, but only if they’re in the voting booth to begin with. You might think they get the fact that Democrats typically have voter turnout problems because their working class, younger base is often the first to skip voting.
From the ugliness of earlier discussions about this, I fully expect to be told that I’m a bad person who is threatening not to vote. This is stupid; I’m going to vote. I’m going to encourage people to vote. Shooting the messenger when progressives tell you that the “least bad of two options” campaign strategy reduces voter turnout is the thinking you get in to when you’re more interested in assigning blame than winning elections. It’s stupid and it’s childish, especially when progressives are telling you this because they want you to stop crying and start winning.
This is about brutal realities. You can point fingers at the voters and whine and cry when lack of motivation meets lack of time and people don’t bother to vote, but again, that’s not how you win elections. You accept the public as they are and give them a reason to carve out time to vote. Your single mom working class voter who has to get the kids fed, dressed, to school, and then has to go to work and then pick the kids up and feed them and put them to bed may genuinely feel that carving out half an hour to vote is an onerous task, and if you give her reason to believe you don’t really care about her or her vote, she may find it’s just easier to skip it. Yes, the odds are high that woman would have pulled the lever for a Democrat, but you’ll never know, because she didn’t fucking vote. Too bad she’s likely seen no improvement in her circumstances or hasn’t heard about real progress that would make a better life for her children that would entice her to get up a little earlier than usual to vote.
And let’s talk about money. “Screw you” is roughly the worst fund-raising strategy I can think of. The “professional left” that Gibbs smirks at, so reassured of our support? Those are the people who put time and energy and money into crafting a donation strategy or building an Act Blue page. Being told that their contributions don’t matter is likely to make them wonder if they wouldn’t be better off finding another, more useful way to spend their time and money. I know that I’m really not interested in giving to candidates myself. I’ve done it, but on the whole, I hate it. I hate it because I hate feeling like my money goes to people who a) are more interested in assigning blame than winning, b) make fun of me and mine, and c) sell out the issues I care most about first.
Imagine, if you will, those liberal elite who actually give money and/or spend time fund-raising for causes that matter to them. Say, folks who think gay rights is the major human rights issue of our time. After the dawdling over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, what do you think those folks are going to do with the money they have to give away or the time they spend fund-raising? Are they going to give it to campaigns, or are they going to figure their resources are better given to non-profit activist groups who actually work really hard on goals that are important to them? I have my guess.
Or take me, for example. Reproductive rights is a top tier issue for me, and I tend, when I have money to give, to give it to organizations that help women in need get reproductive health care, like Planned Parenthood or the National Network for Abortion Funds. Imagine what would have happened in health care reform made sure that every woman who had an abortion in this country had coverage for it. Money and time that I and folks like me (all those bowl-a-thon people!) would be freed up. If we were assured that our representatives would be effective at improving women’s access to health care, we’d probably turn our attentions to getting them elected. But right now, people who think this is an important issue believe that the Democrats will never really do much to help women on this issue. I don’t even have an Act Blue page. I often mean to get around to it, but when I have bandwidth to spend time working on that kind of stuff, I tend immediately to think first of feminist organizations. And I know lots of folks like me. The way to get those resources directed at campaigns is to give those folks reason to believe you a) give a shit and b) will actually do something about it.
This isn’t about the base being naughty because they don’t do enough to support politicians who tell them to piss off, or about how evil the Republicans are. This is about being a grown-up and seeing votes, money, and time as limited resources that must be nurtured instead of demanded. I can’t believe that we even have to have this discussion, since it’s so obvious.
Yesterday at Double X, I blogged about Oklahoma Republican representative and gubernatorial candidate Mary Fallin, and how she’s an example of how she’s an example of how crazy right wing politics have gotten. She couldn’t be bothered to go back for the emergency session to get more funding to the states, because she was that against it, but she was enticed to rush back to DC to vote for a bill that put $600 million towards a pointless display of beefing up border security. Since she bothered to show up, she voted against the state emergency funding bill. In other words, for Republicans, there’s not enough money to pave roads and pay state employees, but there is no such thing as too much money spent on pointless showboating to pander to racists. (Not that Democrats are off the hook---the showboating waste of money wouldn’t have passed without them.) Of course, at the end of the day, Fallin doesn’t have to pay a political price for her ideological stance against basic government services that her Tea Cracker base pretends they don’t use. At the end of the day, the bill was passed and Oklahoma is going to get $300 million.
And knowing the way Republicans operate, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fallin shows up at some event where the money is being spent and takes credit for it.
I used to be adamant that it was morally wrong to leave out districts and even entire states for this kind of funding when they routinely elect representatives who vote against it. Sure, it’s annoying when Republicans get to have it both ways, but not everyone voted for them, and it seems wrong to deny employment and services to innocent people who often did their best to vote for Democrats and were simply outnumbered. But I’m beginning to have second thoughts. The main reason is that the utter lack of consequences for Republican districts means that Republicans keep getting elected, and they are reducing the size of the pot. Everyone loses out, even if Republicans are in the minority, because Republicans are able to use what power they do have to keep tax cuts for the very wealthiest and to reduce the size of relief bills and social spending. And if it weren’t for Republicans simply making up problems---like pretending violent hordes of illegal immigrants are raping and pillaging on the border, when no such thing is happening---we wouldn’t be wasting precious resources on crap like this border security bill. I’m beginning to wonder if the price we pay for shielding voters from what it means to vote Republican is simply too steep to be tolerated any longer.
I don’t know if there’s a legal way to create a system where, if your representative doesn’t vote for the bill, you get no funding from it. But as a thought experiment, it would be interesting to think about what it would mean. The first thing that occurred to me is that doing such a thing would dramatically exacerbate the already-existing wealth and living standard differences between red areas and blue areas in the country. Initially, this would be devastating to the poorest people---but I have to point out that in red states, those people tend to be fucked already, as the local governments do everything in their power to keep them from getting services. Still, this is such a morally indefensible position, I have to think that maybe you carve out an exception for services that offer direct assistance to the poor, like Medicaid.
I rarely find myself---with the exception of watching Fox News, or reading something in the “we’re dudes who think sexism is daring and funny” genre---filled with blinding, searing hatred towards everyone involved when I engage with some media product. I’m just a cheery person that way. But I made an exception when reading this article in the NY Times about the battle over vegetarian or even vegan weddings. I blame Jill for exposing me to this. I found myself in a boil over the vegans who, in a bout of sanctimonious idiocy, refuse to eat honey.* I loathed the writer for assuming that wedding planning is strictly the bride’s business. I hated the rigid people who think someone else’s dietary choices are somehow a great offense to them. The only person spared the wrath of me was Fernanda Capobianco, who sensibly and generously served meat at her wedding, even though she’s a vegan pastry chef. Though, I’m sure her husband is also a great guy.
And a special shout-out to the idea of having felt flowers instead of real, environment-destroying ones at your wedding. Too bad it was the “we’re too good for fucking honey” people who had that idea.
Not that I think that vegetarians or vegans are obliged to serve meat at their weddings. Far from it! I just think that the spirit of flexibility and generosity is the smart one to have in any circumstance, but especially around diet, and so if you feel that’s best met by serving meat, go for it. But vegetarian food is also diverse and delicious, so there’s no reason not to go vegetarian at your wedding, unless you simply cannot resist making a sanctimonious fuss over it. I’ve been a vegetarian/occasional pescatarian for so long that I honestly forget that most meals eaten involve meat on some level. I tend to reflexively serve only vegetarian food when I’m hosting something, not because I’m making a point, but because meat isn’t really in my vocabulary of cooking and serving. With a few notable exceptions (Anthony Bourdain is coming to your wedding, you’re working a Texas BBQ theme), there’s no real reason that anyone should even notice that you’re not serving meat if you serve tasty vegetarian food.
Unless, of course, they are one of those sanctimonious meat eaters who has to make a big fuss about it. And while there’s an obsession with sanctimonious vegetarians out there, I have to say that sanctimonious anti-vegetarians seem to be as common, if not more common, and they can be real assholes. Such as the one featured in this article:
When Patrick Moore, a salesman from Attleboro, Mass., arrived at an old friend’s wedding in 1999 to discover nothing but vegetarian options, he made an excuse about leaving the gift in his car so he could visit a sandwich shop across the street.
“I remember coming back carrying the bag of half-scarfed chicken Parmesan, only to be caught red-handed by the groom,” Mr. Moore said.
Part of me almost flinched to imagine the lip-smacking glee that reporters got out of pushing Marco Rubio---the son of Cuban immigrants---on the issue of whether or not he supports the 14th amendment. The problem here is that there’s no way to ask the question that doesn’t carry the implication, “How much of your basic dignity are you willing to peddle out to get votes?” Because there’s exactly no chance that there’s enough political momentum going to repeal the 14th amendment, which means the entire issue is one of racist grand-standing. Rachel Maddow explained the issue on her show:
In sum, asking the question, “Do you wish to repeal the 14th amendment?” is a way of saying, “Is your campaign angling to get the racist vote by taking potshots at the children of immigrants?” And lest any motherfuckers whine that this is just about the children of illegal immigrants, let me point out that without birthright citizenship, there’s a strong possibility that the children of legal immigrants would lose a whole shitload of rights as well. One thing the birthright citizenship does is expedite the process of integrating an immigrant family into the U.S. If that was replaced with a system where the baby also had to go through an onerous citizenship process, then that would not only be an unnecessary headache, but would likely create a bunch of stateless people. I don’t imagine Rubio enjoys having to answer a question that is functionally, “Would you prefer to rewrite the laws of the country so someone like yourself is a second class citizen?”
The crusade against illegal immigration is interpreted by many Hispanics as a crusade against Hispanics.
Which is a way of saying, “Many Hispanics perceive reality accurately and adjust their votes accordingly.”
That this election cycle is being dominated by racist resentment is a matter of fact, not opinion. This is all very simple. A lot of loud-mouthed Tea Crackers are spreading racist myths like it’s gonna get them laid, Republican politicians feel this is an issue to demagogue about, and this increases the presence of these myths and stereotypes in the mainstream media. The end result is, I suspect, that none of the racist legislation the Tea Crackers want gets passed, but the Republicans do a bang-up job of establishing themselves as the Party of Racists right when the country as a whole is becoming more racially diverse and less racist.
For some reason, Jesse’s excellent post mocking a bunch of wingnuts for their “brilliant” plan to build a gay bar by the Cordoba House has brought a shitstorm of illiterate Twitter rantings at me from the sexually repressed and those lacking self-awareness or reading comprehension. You know, even though I didn’t write it. Their urge to gang up on a lady will not be thwarted by the fact that it wasn’t a she that called them out so much that they have nothing left to do but rave like lunatics.
I just have one thing to say. Just because their kids set them up on Twitter doesn’t mean they’re computer literate, or they may have done the first thing that occurred to me, which is to look and see if there are any gay bars within the vicinity of the Cordoba House. And lookie here, there are!
If you look at this picture, and you’re not too stupid to breathe (sorry, wingnuts!), you should immediately see two things that make this whole “let’s put a gay bar by the Cordoba House and see liberal heads explode!” wishful thinking look even stupider than it is on its surface: 1) There are three gay bars within .1 mile of the Cordoba House and 2) They are all as close or closer to the Cordoba House than the WTC is.
So, wingnuts, remember this when trying to craft “jokes” in the future. Just because you’re so uptight and repressed that the mere idea of seeing the front door of a gay bar makes your blood pressure rise in a combination of bigotry and sexual excitement that you fear ever speaking aloud doesn’t mean that everyone else shares your freakishness. Especially not in New York.
Since Muslims have decided to piss off conservatives by being Muslim on American soil, the inevitable response has finally come: an extended gay joke.
So, the Muslim investors championing the construction of the new mosque near Ground Zero claim it’s all about strengthening the relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world.
As an American, I believe they have every right to build the mosque - after all, if they buy the land and they follow the law - who can stop them?
Which is, why, in the spirit of outreach, I’ve decided to do the same thing.
I’m announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.
This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance.
As you know, the Muslim faith doesn’t look kindly upon homosexuality, which is why I’m building this bar. It is an effort to break down barriers and reduce deadly homophobia in the Islamic world.
It goes on, but you get the point.
You see? People are angry about something a group of Muslims did. Therefore, it is a perfect and totally proportionate response to do something that you think will totally piss Muslims off, except it’s actually just asinine and completely disingenuous. It’s like that time your neighbors dropped their leaves on your lawn, so you converted your house into an S&M-themed clothing store called “Fuck 908 Higgins Avenue”. Totally rational.
And of course, Twitter is getting into the swing of things by naming Greg’s gay bar. Here are some ideas:
Al Gayda — Chuck_Dizzle
The Velvet Sword, Jihard and/or Dome of the Cock — AceofSpades
United 69 — Iowahawkblog
Ba’ath House — DuchessRebecca
Now, I’m not particularly offended that these people are assembling to engage in the world’s biggest gay joke ever, or that they’re juvenile assholes. This is America - we were founded on the premise that everyone’s allowed to be a juvenile asshole! Megan McArdle is waiting for the outrage to arise:
I am hoping that at least one person will attempt to explain why we should support the mosque near Ground Zero, but not the gay bar next to the mosque near Ground Zero. I would find that very entertaining.
I’m sure she would.
Now, if there’s anything wrong with this plan, it’s not a gay bar qua gay bar next to a Muslim community center qua Muslim community center. It’s that it’s a gay bar qua people who are not gay and don’t particularly like gay people and don’t particularly like Muslims next to a Muslim community center qua Mohameddan obelisk of terror and jihadist victory.
The plan only works for the builders of the gay bar if they think that Park 51 is being built as a disingenuous effort to piss off specific sensitive groups of people, which makes this simply a mirror effort to (you guessed it) piss off specific sensitive groups of people. Oddly enough, this makes it eminently worthy of criticism if you believe that the community center is being built for one set of clearly stated reasons and the gay bar would be build for another set of clearly stated reasons that are based on a deliberate misunderstanding of the former set of reasons. (This isn’t even to mention the fact that another group, gays and lesbians, gets their identity appropriated for a cheap and insulting political stunt. If it works, the best that’s happened is that a bunch of straight Christian Republicans have made life harder for Muslims, gays and lesbians at no actual risk or harm to themselves. Well done!)
Personally, I just think if you can get together the money to build a fake gay bar just to piss off a bunch of people who are getting together to take Pilates classes, you’ve got enough money to start an actual business that would make actual money and employ actual employees. But fuck it, we’re not in a recession, and I know nothing about business. Fake gay bar it is.
UPDATE: Glenn Beck clip on this under the fold. Swear to God.
Regardless of the nit-picking in the mainstream media about whether we’re in a “recession” or a “downturn” or a “recovery”, for the American public, we’re living in a straight-up Depression. There’s 10% unemployment, and many of those lucky enough to hang on to their jobs are seeing their hours and wages cut back. Foreclosure rates are sky-high and people who are managing to hold it together stay up at nights in fear that the bottom is going to fall out any day now. Our Village idiots seem to take arguments about how it’s more important to avoid taxing the rich than to keep our roads paved and our lights on. But Americans know that things are bleak.
Which is why you’ve seen not one, but two stories this week that are folk legend ready that share the theme of telling The Man to fuck off. Most Americans can’t even dream of doing it; things are so bad that they fear that anything short of keeping their head down and working for free when asked will result in their name getting on the list of those to ax during the next round of layoffs. But we can read and we can dream.
After a dispute with a passenger who stood to fetch luggage too soon on a full flight just in from Pittsburgh, Mr. Slater, 38 and a career flight attendant, got on the public-address intercom and let loose a string of invective.
Then, the authorities said, he pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also from his airline career.
On his way out the door, he paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart. Then he ran to the employee parking lot and drove off, the authorities said.
Like John Cole, I must say that grabbing the beer on the way out is the sort of touch that propels this from “funny story” to “folk legend”. I’ve seen some grousing about this guy’s actions from people, but I have to say, complaining about Steven Slater just makes you sound like an elitist. I fly somewhat frequently, and I wish someone would tell the imperious fuckheads who break the rules and end up wasting everyone’s time to fuck the fuck off. And even when the rules don’t make any sense, I think it’s an asshole move to disrespect the flight attendants who have to enforce them. They’re not the ones who decreed that your iPod that doesn’t transmit any signals is a danger to the aircraft’s communications systems.
And since this post will inevitably bring about, “But but but I’ve seen flight attendants who are legitimately bad at their jobs!”, no one is defending some motherfucker who takes out his anger at the world by riding your ass or making stupid mistakes that cause flight delays. But for anyone who’s worked in the service industry, it’s hard not to smile at this one.
In fact, the point of these stories isn’t that they’re true, but the opposite. People eat them up because they’re fantasies of what they can’t have, which is a chance to tell an overbearing boss to fuck off. On the contrary, one of the great underdiscussed aspects of unemployment is the emotional toll it takes on many Americans, who have lost leverage at work. While many of us are blessed with coworkers and supervisors we like, if you hate your boss---and a lot of people do---then the increased pressure to keep a job means even more subservience, word-swallowing, and daily humiliations. No wonder these stories make us smile.
You know what I don’t enjoy? Waking up and reading, before my coffee pot has finished producing my lifeblood, the press secretary for the White House engaging in a spate of hippie-punching so broad as to sweep up the folks on this blog. If I thought like Robert Gibbs apparently does, I would be unleashing my anger on Glenn Greenwald, because he was the messenger who put the link up on Twitter. But I’m a grown-up, so I’m going to hold Gibbs responsible for his tantrum-throwing statements like this:
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
Which is, of course, pure bullshit, since the PL he hates so much backed Obama up, and many of us were openly critical of Kucinich for being a weirdo who is ineffectual and attracts people who like lost causes. Which is why this statement from Gibbs is straight up self-defeating:
Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.
If he believes that, I have a bridge to sell him in the city he forgot to mention in his anti-hippie tirade. I know I sent money to the Obama campaign, as did practically every person I know who nonetheless feels like it’s our job to hold Democrats’ feet to the fire when they go off on one of their missions to sell out on the grim chance that one of those Tea Crackers waving a sign about “Obamacare” will suddenly have a change of heart. The ugly reality is that the netroots that Gibbs is generically castigating, as well as cable TV hosts like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, are a major reason that Obama won. Good luck with those midterms distancing yourself from the people that got you elected! What’s really annoying is Gibbs is basically freaking out because Maddow and Olbermann do their jobs. Sorry that the Obama administration doesn’t have a bunch of professional sycophants like Bush did with Fox News. But it’s actually a good thing to have honest journalists who do their damn job of holding the government accountable.
Remember, Gibbs: You work for us.
I had two competing thoughts when confronted with this bout of hippie-punching, besides the initial, “So, like, Gibbs really wants the Republicans to sweep in November as a bunch of disenchanted liberals stay home, then?”
1) I am not a hippie. Seriously, these broad-based attacks on “The Left” for refusing to be sycophants are called hippie-punching for a good reason. The problem is that while there are still some Baby Boomers that are fond of being barefoot and a few trustfarians out there with white boy dreadlocks, most of us aren’t fucking hippies. On the contrary, a lot of us relate to the very people that work in the Obama administration---hell, some on the The Left have friends and family in the Obama administration. It’s an Othering of your own fucking people. I don’t wear patchouli or sleep in a van. I hate smoking pot and don’t do it. Being supportive of gay marriage, being against torture, and believing that the government should do more during a depression, a la FDR? These simply aren’t out-there crazy hat opinions, as much as cowardly Democrats would like to pretend otherwise. As one of the non-hippie hippies who had the specific audacity to call bullshit on the Obama administration’s willingness to sell out the pro-choice movement that offers so much support, I’m especially annoyed. I’ve often defended the Democrats against some attacks I thought were a tad unfair---for instance, I’m really not sure how much you could have done to corral Bart Stupak, who was so self-absorbed on the abortion issue he actually ruined his own career over it---but when the Obama administration does something straight up cowardly they didn’t have to do, then hell yeah, I’m going to say something. That doesn’t mean that I abhor shoes and showers.
Adam Serwer and Steve Benen have had their fun attacking the logic of Ross Douthat’s incoherent anti-gay marriage column, and now it’s my turn. Douthat is caught up in a trap that catches many, probably most conservatives. The official values, as I’ve said before, or our nation are liberal values. We believe in equality and justice. So conservatives who want to argue for inequality have to work themselves into pretzels trying to claim that inequalities we see aren’t really inequalities. Often, this works well enough to convince people that are mostly invested in preserving inequalities that they aren’t bad people, but sometimes the logic is so inane, that even people who harbor prejudice can’t be convinced. (Such as when you’re talking about segregation under the “separate but equal” rationalization.) We’ve come to that point with gay marriage.
Judge Walker did us all a favor by attacking the issue head on, using feminist arguments grounded in equality to make his point. Since Walker brought feminism and women’s equality into this, conservatives are put in a position where they have to argue for the primacy of patriarchal marriage while pretending that they support egalitarian marriages, though this is a direct contradiction. The way they play this game is, as usual, to play the “patriarchy? I don’t see no stinking patriarchy!” card, trying to argue that feminists made up “the patriarchy” in order to pretend women are victims, though they sometimes will admit that there was a patriarchy at some point in time, or that other countries that they wish to invade do have patriarchies, but we don’t. Douthat spews this nonsense all over his incoherent column, often contradicting himself directly.
He wants to be taken seriously, so he concedes that there was such a thing as a patriarchal marriage, though he doesn’t use that term. But after immediately conceding that “traditional” marriage doesn’t necessarily mean monogamous marriage or the nuclear family, he switches straight into patriarchy-denial mode:
Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If “natural” is defined to mean “congruent with our biological instincts,” it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available. Hence the historic prevalence of polygamy.
This is a favorite patriarchy denial tactic, though you rarely see it get so boldly stupid. The idea is to deny that there’s a long history of this thing called a “patriarchy”, where men own and control women’s bodies through economic, social, and violent means, and instead argue that inequalities that exist are strictly due to inherent desires and lack of intelligence on women’s part. In this case, Douthat’s going so far as to argue that polygamy is the result of women’s natural desires to be sexually exclusive plus greedy. This, of course, is so incorrect as to be laughable. Polygamy is a logical outcome of assuming one gender is human and the other is functionally livestock to be collected and sold by the human gender. Women didn’t invent polygamy in order to make life easier for men and their pockets fatter. But it is amusing to realize that Douthat thinks that those Mormon polygamists marry off 12-year-old girls to 70-year-old men because this reflects a 12-year-old girl’s innate, biological (Darwinian!) desire to get it on with a wrinkly old misogynist.
So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.
Which is to say, Douthat’s arguing that since evil old patriarchy is our natural inclination, our ideal of marriage is a way to fight back against our deepest, ugliest natures. Marriage is great because it’s anti-nature! Of course, this doesn’t explain why it has to be male-female. Nor does it explain why money-grubbing monogamist women have to swear to be faithful (and often fail), when the only person whose nature is being thwarted are promiscuous men. (I’m beginning to feel like I have to blame the wives of conservative men for the current state of evo psych blather. By taking on the duty of being good, reassuring wives all the time, their poor husbands are convinced that their wives never look sideways, and therefore feel assured when they claim that women’s nature is to be monogamous to men who are promiscuous. If women married to conservative men told the truth about how much they look, perhaps said men wouldn’t spout bullshit with such self-assurance.)
The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.
So, Western marriage is basically an imposition of civilization over our natural desires (as defined by Douthat), but the reason that it has to be male/female is because that’s the combo that produces natural children, right? So, marriage is good because it’s unnatural, but it’s actually because it’s natural. It’s both at once and nothing at all! Just as long as the gays don’t get a piece of it.
As the fact-finding in the Prop 8 case found, this argument is groundless. They have yet to find one divorce caused by gay marriage. The notion that straight married people will somehow lose support if gay people can get married makes about as much sense as arguing that 12-year-old girls, given the choice, prefer to leave childhood to wear prairie dresses while waiting on and having sex with old men.
Was there any doubt that Don was impressed by what Dr. Faye Miller said to him at the Christmas party? On last night’s episode, he echoed her sentiments to Lane, suggesting he stop asking what’s expected of him, and starts asking what he wants. What’s expected of me vs. what I want---according to Dr. Miller, it’s that simple.
Dr. Miller should have familiarized herself, as a psychologist, with the concept of rationalization, because that’s what she was doing when she suggested she works with advertising agencies not because it works well, but because she wants to help people. That they who work in advertising are somehow liberators, freeing people from what’s expected of them and giving them permission to pursue what they want (as long as they spend money doing it). And so Don gives Lane that permission, and he’s done some good in the world, right? So why does he look so sad?
In part, it’s because his only true friend in the world is dying, of course, but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s because Don’s existential crisis is eating him alive, and he’s trying to drink all the time to blot it out, and yet, it won’t leave him alone. And it’s because the phrase “what I want vs. what’s expected of me” was so profound to him. He really has reduced life to this equation. In this episode, however, we’re reminded there are other options, other complications.
For instance, where does doing what’s right fit into this neat little equation? I’m sure a glib marketing psychologist would say “what’s right” is just another example of “what’s expected of me”, but Don’s little trip out to California was all about the difference between those two things. Hiding from Anna that she’s dying of cancer is what’s expected of him, but is it right? You could say it’s what he wants to do, but Anna’s family pitches their expectations at him based on what he wants, which is the past of least resistance. And that’s what Dr. Miller’s neat little equation leaves out---expectations are sometimes foisted on us by appealing to what we want, especially our laziest, most conflict-averse sides. This question of how what’s right can be completely different from what’s expected is brought up in other ways. The conversation about the sit-ins is particularly telling, especially since the young woman actually straight up says she agrees with what they’re doing (even if she doesn’t do it). What I want vs. what’s expected isn’t the question here---the measurement of value is what’s right. What you want is less of a factor, especially since the young woman makes it clear that for many anti-war protesters, what they want is what’s expected. They want to go to class, they’re expected to go to class, but they feel that they have to protest this war. The older people laugh cynically at her. They don’t deal in these terms of right vs. wrong, and in fact find the whole thing strange and silly. Don tries to impose his worldview, suggesting the only thing that matters about the younger generation is those things they want, like rock and roll records and miniskirts, things that can be sold to them. But the young woman laughs it off. Not that those things don’t matter, but there is simply more to life than this.
The what I want vs. what’s expected equation breaks down with Joan and her husband, as well. When you look at Joan’s situation, the simplistic theory that there’s a real self with wants underneath all those layers of expectation seems inadequate to explain Joan’s pain. On the contrary, Joan is caught in a tug-of-war of different expectations. Her work expectations conflict with her family expectations. Her expectation that she and her husband should start a family conflicts with his duty---which is another word for “expectation"---to serve in Vietnam, where he will undoubtedly be deployed. Even, I think, the discussion about Joan’s previous abortions indicates how much life is often just a matter of conflicting expectations. Is there any doubt that she had to get those abortions? But if the one non-physician abortion resulted in sterility that prevented her from filling the expectation that she have children, then we can imagine that there would be much tongue-clucking about that.
It’s interesting to me that it’s now, when Joan and her husband are basically stuck in this trap, that we finally see a spark of love between them. It’s like hopelessness has given them a little space to look at each other for the first time.
We know what Joan wants, of course. She wants a calm, peaceful life full of love and a work environment where she’s respected for her immense professionalism and talent. But what’s expected of women at that time is to be too feeble-minded to handle all that. Is Joan’s ability to defy what’s expected---and get Lane to apologize---a triumph over what’s wanted over what’s expected? Or is it just a matter of what’s right and frankly what’s obvious winning out?
And let’s not forget about the role chance plays in life. Lane does what’s expected in sending flowers to his wife, but by a sheer accident, the flowers end up bringing an end to his marriage. (By the way, that scene more than any was causing flipping out in our living room. It was a small but cutting example of how the writers on “Mad Men” don’t shy away from the various ways that life can really screw you over.) Lane likes to exert control over his world, but that is impossible some times. Still, I have a suspicion that he’ll be able to walk away from his night of debauchery with Don and back into his regular, controlled life. Meanwhile Don is laying on his bed, staring into the abyss. Glib little slogans that would reduce our choices to slot A or B don’t work in the real world. And now, more than ever, there are no rules.
Obviously, I’m of the opinion that Don should have told Anna. But what do you think? Was he in the right keeping the news to himself?
Let’s start off with talking about a concern of mine: Don’s alcoholism. Not in that I’m concerned that Don, a fictional character, is an alcoholic. I’m not worried about his health or anything. What I worry about is this as a plot device. I’m allergic to giving a character a disease, whether self-inflicted or not. Whether a character is struck with cancer or an addiction, it’s a short leap from “fascinating TV show with some amount of suspense” to “afterschool special”. The only show I can think of that avoided this trap---and even then, it was only barely---was “The Wire”, and part of that is that Andre Royo, who played Bubbles, has charisma to burn. (The other part is that they made his recovery process an opportunity to make the character more complex.) The problem with introducing disease as a plot line is that the disease often becomes the defining feature of the character, especially when the character is an addict. It’s kind of boring and often moralistic in ways that just don’t make for good TV. But I remain hopeful. If anyone can pull it out, it’s the writers of “Mad Men”.
Well, this strikes me as the most irritating non-story I’ve read in a long fucking time. I suppose I’m supposed to be shocked and mildly distressed at the release of a study (conducted by Nutrisystem) that shows 
Yesterday at Double X, 
I rarely find myself---with the exception of watching Fox News, or reading something in the “we’re dudes who think sexism is daring and funny” genre---filled with blinding, searing hatred towards everyone involved when I engage with some media product. I’m just a cheery person that way. But I made an exception when reading 
Part of me almost flinched to imagine the lip-smacking glee that reporters got out of pushing Marco Rubio---the son of Cuban immigrants---
Since Muslims have decided to piss off conservatives by being Muslim on American soil, the inevitable response has finally come: 
Regardless of the nit-picking in the mainstream media about whether we’re in a “recession” or a “downturn” or a “recovery”, for the American public, we’re living in a straight-up Depression. There’s 10% unemployment, and many of those lucky enough to hang on to their jobs are seeing their hours and wages cut back. Foreclosure rates are sky-high and people who are managing to hold it together stay up at nights in fear that the bottom is going to fall out any day now. Our Village idiots seem to take arguments about how it’s more important to avoid taxing the rich 
You know what I don’t enjoy? Waking up and reading, before my coffee pot has finished producing my lifeblood, 
Was there any doubt that Don was impressed by what Dr. Faye Miller said to him at the Christmas party? On last night’s episode, he echoed her sentiments to Lane, suggesting he stop asking what’s expected of him, and starts asking what he wants. What’s expected of me vs. what I want---according to Dr. Miller, it’s that simple.