[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Kids Today!
Five-year-old pre-K student Cloe Woods is a hero after rescuing her grandmother and the family dog after a fire broke out in her family's kitchen:
Back in October, her class went to the Kenner Fire Department to learn something else, if there is a fire then get out of the house.She is the cutest hero I've ever seen.
Cloe was listening and learning, and it came in handy. Early Wednesday morning (2/17), the stove in her home caught fire setting off the smoke alarm. That's when little Cloe sprang into action.
Cloe's mom, Shone Arceneaux, said the 5-year-old jumped out of bed and ran to her blind grandmother's room and told her to get out of the house.
Once she was out of the house, Cloe made sure her grandmother and dog were ok before running door to door looking for water to pour on the fire.
When Arceneaux returned from bringing her older children to their carpool stop nearby, Cloe brought her the news.
Kenner Fire Department Chief John Hellmers said thanks to this little girl paying attention on a field trip, tragedy was avoided.
Kids today! Get ON my lawn!
[H/T to Elle.]
Who "Millenials" Support
[Content Note: Racism.]
On Tuesday, I quoted a piece by Leela Daou, in which she observed that the fact a majority of black millenial voters were supporting Clinton was at odds with the ubiquitous narrative that millenials overwhelmingly support Sanders and noted: "Unless someone in the media wants to argue that black millennials don't matter, let's see some coverage of this. Because 'millennials' shouldn't just mean white millennials."
Case in point: "In South Carolina Poll, Younger Blacks Lean Toward Clinton, not Sanders."
The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of South Carolina Democrats shows Hillary Clinton leading among African-American voters under age 45. That finding suggests that the former secretary of state's much-ballyhooed problems with younger voters may be limited to young, white voters and that she can find greater support among young people of color.To be abundantly clear, I'm not sharing this information in order to suggest that there is a "right" (or "wrong") way for millennials to vote, or for black people to vote. I am not in the business of telling people how they should vote.
...The South Carolina survey showed that among blacks under age 45, Clinton had 52 percent support, Sanders 35 percent, with 13 percent undecided. (A survey released Thursday by Monmouth University poll showed a similar gap: Clinton led 60 percent to 26 percent among black voters under age 50 in South Carolina.)
In short, at least in South Carolina, Clinton's advantage among younger black people is cutting into Sanders' lead among younger voters overall.
I'm sharing this because I am deeply contemptuous of the contention that millennials overwhelmingly support Sanders, when, although it may be technically accurate in straight numbers, is is predicated on concealing that a large majority of black voters support Clinton. Which effectively writes black millennials out of definitions of their own generation.
That isn't fair to black millennials, and it isn't decent on the one hand to recognize black voters as a dedicated Democratic voting bloc and on the other disappear some of those voters in order to perpetuate a white supremacist narrative regarding support for a Democratic candidate.
Daily Dose of Cute
If Sophie were any tinier, she'd slide down the drain!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
RIP Harper Lee. "Harper Lee, whose 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird became a national institution and the defining text on the racial troubles of the American deep south, has died at the age of 89. ...Within minutes of the announcement of the novelist's death, encomiums began to flow. Her literary agent Andrew Nurnberg said in a statement: 'We have lost a great writer, a great friend and a beacon of integrity.' He added: 'Knowing Nelle these past few years has been not just an utter delight but an extraordinary privilege.'" My condolences to everyone who knew and loved her and/or her work.
[Content Note: War; terrorism; child abuse; death] Fucking hell: "Islamic State has been dispatching children and teenagers into battle and sending them as [redacted] bombers at an unprecedented rate, analysis by US researchers has found. Examining Isis death notices of 89 children and youths on Twitter and the encrypted communications app Telegram, a study by Georgia State University found that the minors came from at least 14 nationalities, with just under two-thirds aged between 12 and 16. According to the analysis, which ran from the start of 2015 until the end of January this year, the death rate has doubled for those aged 18 and under being used by Isis. Overall, 39% of them were used to drive cars or trucks laden with explosives at the enemy. A further 33% died as foot soldiers. ...'The Islamic State has so heavily championed the mobilisation of children—on a scale rarely associated even with violent extremist organisations—that it suggests organisational concerns that far outweigh short-term propaganda benefits,' the report said."
[CN: War on agency] Damn: "A clinic that has provided abortion services in New Orleans for nearly four decades closed its doors this week after its primary physician retired, according to advocates, leaving pregnant people in the state with one less option for reproductive health care. ...A Planned Parenthood facility that will provide surgical abortion care has been under construction in New Orleans, but it is unknown when that clinic will open. There are three other clinics that provide abortion services in the state, located in Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Bossier City." This is another way that anti-choicers are eroding abortion access: By intimidating doctors so that there are fewer and fewer of them who are willing and able to provide abortions.
[CN: Homophobia] This girl is so brave and tenacious, although I deeply resent that she was obliged to be by homophobia: "Taylor Victor will now be allowed to wear a T-shirt that identifies her as a lesbian, after reaching a settlement with her school district that resulted in an update to the student dress code. Last fall, Victor wore a shirt to her Northern California school that read, 'Nobody knows I'm a lesbian.' She said she wore it ironically because she is open about her sexuality. The administration reprimanded her and gave a slew of defenses for that decision, saying the T-shirt was 'disruptive' an 'open invitation to sex,' could be 'gang-related,' and that students couldn't wear shirts that stated their 'personal choices and beliefs.' In response, Victor sued two administration officials with the representation of the ACLU. The Manteca Unified School District reached a settlement with the ACLU this week. Although the school district denied wrongdoing, it agreed to change its dress code to make it clear that students can wear clothes that support either their own identities on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, and other identities, or support their classmates identities, without retribution from the administration."
Wow: "It's time to add another item to the list of Black firsts: Yesterday (February 17), ABC announced that Channing Dungey is the television network's new entertainment president. Variety reports that she is the first Black person to control programming for a major broadcast network. You might not know Dungey's name, but you know the shows she developed during her tenure as senior vice president of drama development. They include Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, Quantico and American Crime."
YES: "Scalia was not a great judge: he was a bad one. And his badness consisted precisely in his contempt for the rule of law, if by 'the rule of law' one means the consistent application of legal principles, without regard to the political consequences of applying those principles in a consistent way. One of Scalia's many obnoxious qualities as a jurist was his remarkably pompous, pedantic, and obsessive insistence that the legal principles he (supposedly) preferred—textualism in statutory interpretation, originalism when reading the Constitution, and judicial restraint when dealing with democratically-enacted legal rules—were not merely his preferences, but simply 'the law.' ...[T]he truth is that, far more than the average judge, Scalia had no real fidelity to the legal principles he claimed were synonymous with a faithful interpretation of the law. Over and over during Scalia's three decades on the Supreme Court, if one of his cherished interpretive principles got in the way of his political preferences, that principle got thrown overboard in a New York minute."
"Bush machine running on fumes." I guess that means if we all stop farting at him, he'll have nothing left.
Neat! "The Hubble Space Telescope has given scientists their sharpest-ever look at a known galaxy containing an enormous black hole. The supermassive black hole is in a galaxy called NGC 4889, one of several in the Coma Cluster, officials said Thursday. ...Even though NGC 4889's black hole measures 130 billion kilometers in diameter, you can't see it in the picture. Black holes are invisible because light can't escape their gravitational pull, according to NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). But scientists were able to measure NGC 4889's black hole by using the velocity of the stars moving around it and found it to be one of the largest known black holes."
Aww precious wee beastie: "Also known as Limacina helicina, the sea butterfly navigates cold ocean waters in the northern Atlantic and Pacific. Its shell measures about 1 to 4 millimeters (0.04 to 0.16 inches) in diameter, and it swims using a pair of winglike appendages. It can retract these into its shell when threatened. Many types of zooplankton, tiny ocean animals, have structures like the sea butterfly's, which they use as paddles to propel themselves through the water. But when researchers conducted the first-ever analysis of how the sea butterfly's appendages move, the scientists found that the creature swam in a completely unexpected way. ...'The more we looked into it, the more we found that the sea butterfly is an honorary insect,' said study co-author David Murphy, from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 'We looked at the wing kinematics—how it moves its wings in a figure-eight pattern—and it's very similar to how a fruit fly beats its wings.'"
[CN: Moving GIF at link] And finally! "You'll Never Be as Chill as These Lizards Truly Living Their Best Life." LOL!
I Support Transgender Access to Bathrooms
[Content Note: Transphobia; sexual assault.]
Yesterday on Twitter, @EmmaCaterine urged: "I need every cis person to say that they support transgender access to bathrooms NOW. Your silence will permit this violence against us."
I absolutely and unequivocally support transgender access to bathrooms. And I reject being used as a prop in the transphobic campaign to deny trans people access to bathrooms, under the auspcies of "protecting me."
You know, there is actually a place where people are pissing where they shouldn't, flashing their junk at people, and committing sexual assaults against people who share the space with them. It's called the subway. Maybe these moral crusaders could look into making that space safe for women. From cis men.
I Am Just Baffled
[Content Note: Misogyny; racism.]
I honestly don't even understand, at all, what the Sanders campaign is doing at this point. Yesterday was another totally confounding day, leaving me struggling to make sense of what Bernie Sanders is even doing.
On Wednesday, I wrote about rapper Killer Mike, who has been campaigning with and for Sanders, saying during a Sanders rally that a "uterus doesn't qualify you to be president."
Sanders finally issued a statement on that incident, and it is truly astounding:
What Mike said essentially is that is that politics should not be, people should not be voting for candidates based on their gender, but based on what they believe. I think that makes sense. I don't go around, no one has ever heard me say, 'hey guys, let's stand together, vote for a man.' I would never do that, never have. I think we—in a presidential race we look at what a candidate stands for and we vote for the candidate who we think could best serve our country.Welp. A couple of thoughts here:
1. No one has ever had to say, "Let's stand together; vote for a man," because there's literally never been a female presidential nominee for which people could vote from a major party. So this is some aggressively disingenuous shit.
2. Some people's beliefs include, all things being relatively equal, that a vote for a marginalized candidate is a valuable and legitimate choice. That Sanders doesn't acknowledge voting "based on what [you] believe" and voting for a woman because she's a woman aren't mutually exclusive options is a big problem.
3. Sanders may be able to legitimately claim he's never explicitly said that he's never called people to "stand together; vote for a man," but when he has run against women, he has very pointedly made issues of his opponents' gender. When he ran for governor of Vermont in 1976 as the Liberty Union candidate, against Republican Richard Snelling and Democrat Stella Hackel, he said: "The only difference between Richard Snelling, a Republican, and Stella Hackel, a Democrat, is that one of them is a man and one a woman." A decade later, when he ran against then-Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin: "He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a 'sexist position,' he declared."
He also said, of Kunin and her Republican opponent Peter Smith, "It is absolutely fair to say you are dealing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee," despite "Kunin's solid, groundbreaking record on women's issues." In 1974, he called Connecticut gubernatorial candidate Ella Grasso, against whom he wasn't running, "nothing more than a political hack," singling her out after saying he was "not impressed with other women candidates elsewhere."
Over and over, he has said that voters should not support women just because they are women, and repeatedly called female candidates part of the establishment, virtually indistinguishable from Republicans.
So, sure, he's never said the words "vote for a man," but he has sure stuck to the same shitty critiques of female candidates for 40 years. None of them are progressive enough; all of them are shills; no one should vote for them just because they're women. This is a pattern. And it's an ugly one.
* * *
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Then, in an interview with BET, there came this:
BERNIE SANDERS on the Obama presidency: "You know, Hillary Clinton now is trying to embrace the President as closely—as she possibly can. Everything the President does is wonderful. She loves the President, he loves her and all that stuff. And we know what that's about. That's trying to—win support from the African American community where the President is enormously popular. But you know what? I have enormous respect for the President. He's a friend. We have worked together. I think he has done a great job in many respects. But you know what? Like any other human being, he is wrong on certain issues."Wow. There are a lot of problems with this: Tactical problems, logic problems, decency problems, and racist problems.
And then there's this: Obama is Clinton's former boss, but also, as they have both said a lot, they are friends.
I find it really objectionable that Sanders would say Clinton only embraces Obama cynically. Her face when she defends him against GOP—woo. That look. That's not cynicism. That's not even collegial. That's a person defending her friend.
And honestly? If someone worked for me, publicly defended me, called out bigotry against me, promised to continue work I'd started, used words like "brilliant" to describe me, challenged me in good faith, complimented my efforts all to "pander," I'd say: "Pander away!"
But of course it's not pandering. You think when HRC says repeatedly PBO doesn't get enough credit, it's because she's pandering? Fuck that. It's because she believes in him.
And it's because they are friends.
And erasing that friendship? Well, fuck. That plays into a lot of ugly shit. Obama is divisive. Clinton is cold. Their observable personal and professional relationship is a direct counter to those narratives. So it's extra shitty to conceal it, in order to accuse Clinton of gross cynicism.
But maybe I'm just literally the tiredest of hearing a white dude shit on what I think is a cool relationship between two people who aren't white men.
* * *
Last night, there was another Democratic Town Hall in Nevada, hosted by MSNBC and Telemundo. MSNBC has a complete transcript.
The evening opened with Sanders being given the opportunity—twice—to walk back his comments on Citizens United being his only litmus test for a Supreme Court nominee. He was even asked directly about Roe, and he stuck to his guns.
MSNBC ANCHOR JOSE DIAZ-BALART: Senator, let me start by telling you a little bit about Secretary Clinton, who's been describing you recently as a single issue candidate. You disagree with that characterization. But this week, you told my colleague, Jon Ralston, that your one litmus test for a Supreme Court nominee is overturning "Citizens United." So why doesn't that prove what Secretary Clinton says about you? I mean you didn't say that you have a "Roe v. Wade" litmus test. You didn't say you had an immigration—Where to even begin? "I'm not a one-issue candidate—now listen to me talk about wealth inequality some more!"
SANDERS: (INAUDIBLE). I don't (INAUDIBLE)—
DIAZ-BALART: —action, litmus test, a marriage equality litmus test—
SANDERS: No, I don't think that's what Secretary Clinton is actually talking about. If she happened to come to one of my rallies, I—which she has not yet, but I welcome her, she would hear me speaking for about an hour and a half, for an hour and 15 minutes. And we would cover 15 or 20 separate issues. So I'm not quite sure where she comes up with this single issue idea.
But do I believe that there has to be a major focus on the economy when the middle class is disappearing, when people in Nevada and all over this country are working longer hours for lower wages and almost all new income is going to the top 1 percent? Yes, I am going to focus on that.
To answer your question about "Citizens United," why is that a litmus test to me? Because if we continue going the way we are going, Jose, in terms of a corrupt campaign finance system, you know what's going to end up happening? A handful of billionaires are going to control the political life of this country and undermine American democracy and what men and women have fought to defend. So to me, this is a underlying enormous issue.
DIAZ-BALART: But that is the priority. It is the litmus test, not one of them, it's the litmus test—
SANDERS: Oh, but that's not—I think that's not what she is talking about. I think she is talking, actually, about my focus on Wall Street.
But if you are asking me, do I think we have got to overturn this disastrous "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision so that billionaires will not be able to pump unlimited sums of money into super PACs and buy elections, man, I do believe that is an enormously important issue.
Again, abortion access was being eroded long before Citizens United was decided. Again, abortion access is a key economic issue for more than half the population. Again, breaking up the banks and campaign finance reform and free college don't restore abortion access.
And I frankly can't put it any more plainly than this: Why am I supposed to fucking care if the country is being led by a billionaire who doesn't prioritize abortion access, or a pauper who doesn't prioritize abortion access?
Or, as the case may be, a not-billionaire-but-still-wealthy Democratic Socialist who doesn't prioritize abortion access?
What difference does that make to me? NONE.
But naturally, I am supposed to understand that Sanders is a "strong feminist."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good evening. Thank you, Senator Bernie Sanders. My question is, do you consider yourself a feminist? If so, how do you, as a white male, understand the intersectional identities that people of color face, especially when entering high positions of power within business or government?Good grief. So: Don't vote for a woman because she's an actual woman, but definitely do vote for a man because he's an honorary woman. Noted.
SANDERS: I consider myself a strong feminist. And, in fact, Gloria Steinem—everybody knows Gloria is one of the leading feminists in America—made me an honorary woman many, many years ago. [laughter] I don't know exactly what that meant, but I accepted it when she came to campaign for me.
* * *
Bernie Sanders says he's running to stage a revolution. But I don't see anything revolutionary. What I see is a hell of a lot of thinly veiled misogyny and racism, embedded in messaging that is tailored to appeal to white privilege, male privilege, and the economic insecurity of young white people.
That's not agitation for a revolution. That's agitation for a change in management.
I am exhausted with this campaign, which is increasingly unrecognizable to me as a progressive campaign with every passing day.
Good Morning! Or Whatever Time of Day It Is in Your Part of the World!
Video Description: A thin man who appears to be white sits on the opposite side of a windowed enclosure from a young orangutan. The man holds a styrofoam cup. He tilts it, to show the orangutan that there's a sweetgum seedpod inside of it. The orangutan watches him intently as he puts the lid on the cup, then shakes it up, then lowers it, so that it's just out of the orangutan's field of vision, where he quickly empties it. He brings the cup back near the window, shakes it again, then removes the lid and reveals that the seedpod is gone. The orangutan looks at it curiously, then breaks up into laughter and falls over. The man and a woman holding the camera laugh.
[H/T to Spudsy.]
The Thursday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by a lamp.
Recommended Reading:
Nerdy Wonka: [Content Note: Disablism; war] Young Minds Matter
Kath: [CN: Fat hatred; classism] Let's Talk Classism in Plus-Size Clothing
Keith: Marley Dias Reaches Her #1000BlackGirlBooks Goal
Monica: Honored to Be Named a Transformative Leader by Planned Parenthood
Cat: [CN: Fat hatred; weight loss talk; privacy violations] On Irresponsible Reporting (Just Another Day in the Fatpocalypse)
TLC: [CN: Transphobia] TLC Congratulates SPLC on Settlement in Transgender Prisoner Case
Sameer: [CN: White supremacy] #TBT to When Toni Morrison Checked Charlie Rose on White Privilege
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Candidates Who Listen—And to Whom They're Listening
[Content Note: Privilege; monolithizing.]
One of the themes of this presidential election (of every presidential election), at least on the left side of the aisle, is which candidate is better for marginalized people.
Bernie is better for black people! Hillary is better for women! Bernie is better for LGBT people! Hillary is better for people with disabilities! Etc ad infinitum.
You'll never hear me make such a blanket claim, for reasons I've already explained, not least of which being that no marginalized group is a monolith with a universal set of interests. And because there are people whose identities straddle multiple axes of marginalization.
But lots of people make those blanket claims, without regard for individual needs and intersecting identities.
And as proof, they submit single votes on individual bills, or single quotes from long-ago speeches. Or, they say, this candidate listens.
Now, don't get me wrong: Listening is great! And I think it was important when, for example, Hillary Clinton said during her address in Harlem this week that white people need to listen to black people about their lives and experiences and believe them—especially because that comes embedded with the promise that she's going to do what she urges other white folks to do. And when she also said, "Hold me accountable," it is an invitation to do precisely that if she fails to listen.
But listening, even if that does indeed result in being a stronger advocate for marginalized people, is what presidents in a representative democracy are supposed to do.
It is my bare minimum expectation that a Democratic candidate for the presidency would listen to every community of color, to women, to LGB people, to trans people, to people with disabilities, to documented immigrants, to undocumented immigrants, to refugees, to people from marginalized religions, to atheists, to young people, to old people, to people who are poor, hungry, homeless. (That is not a complete list, nor are those mutually exclusive categories.)
Because no group is a monolith, different people within those communities are going to have different ideas of what constitutes a trustworthy and effective candidate, but there are common themes and needs, and the more listening one does, the more one hears the harmony, instead of what at first may seem like a cacophony of discordant expectations.
It is the job of a president who cares about justice to find those harmonies.
So listening is necessary. And a willingness to listen, meaningfully and in good faith, is terrific.
But what's getting lost in all the discussion of which candidate is better for what community is the fact that however good they may be is not only because of their own ability to listen, but because of the people who are giving them something to which to listen.
If I had a dollar for every time I've seen a white person hectoring one of my black colleagues on Twitter for criticizing Bernie Sanders, shouting at them that they're stupid if they don't realize Sanders is the best candidate for black people, well, I could mount a third-party vanity campaign faster than you can say "Michael Bloomberg."
These white supporters lecture black critics while ignoring that, if Sanders is indeed, in any measure, a good representative for black people, it's because he's listened to and learned from black people.
Which is not a credit to Sanders, since that's what he's supposed to be doing. It's a credit to the people to whom he listened.
Being a marginalized person who endeavors to educate a privileged person on your needs can be a daunting task. And often a waste of fucking time. It means risking that they might not listen, but giving and time and energy to talk to them anyway, on the chance that it will make a difference.
No marginalized person is obliged to provide education to a privileged person (especially not on demand). But it's something we have to do, when we are choosing one person to represent our needs in a national agenda, a person who will serve as both head of government and head of state.
Not everyone wants to do it, or will. Not everyone will have the sort of access that gives them the chance to be heard by a (possibly) future president. But there are people who do get that access, and make use of it. There are people who make criticisms of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, in their own spaces, in the hope they might get heard. Maybe their concerns will be amplified by someone with access they don't have.
People who want presidential candidates to listen to what they have to say about their own lived experiences are brave and tenacious—and an integral part of the electoral process.
After all, what difference does it make if a candidate is willing to listen, if there's no one to listen to?
So, maybe the best way to honor one's candidate, if one has a preferred candidate, is to knock it off with the brazen claims about who will better for what community, and instead show some gratitude and respect toward the people in that community who have put their trust, often precariously at best, in a candidate to listen.
I can't be the only person who is tired of being told that I'm fixing to vote against my own best interests, by people who haven't even bothered to listen long enough to find out what my interests are.
I'm glad we've got candidates who listen, to varying degrees of success. But I'm even more glad for the people to whom they can listen, who are willing and able to raise their voices. Who advocate for their needs and compel better policy.
I endeavor to remain among them, working my teaspoon.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Carcerality] This piece by Josie Helen on who's responsible for mass incarceration is so, so good: "Here's the reality: if you want to fix mass incarceration, stop talking about Hillary and start talking about your local district attorney. If you want to fix mass incarceration but you don't know the name of your local district attorney—or you don't know when the primary is, or who is opposing them—you are making the biggest mistake you can make as a voter and as a responsible citizen. You cannot improve this problem if you don't know who is prosecuting cases in your county. ...[G]enerally, criminal justice reform lives or dies at your local prosecutor's office. These decisions are made there. That's where prosecutors make the choice to send someone to rehab or jail, where the rules are followed, where the plea deals are made. ...Prosecutors also have a remarkable amount of discretion, meaning that they often get to choose which crimes to charge people with and what sentences to recommend. That power is especially pronounced at the plea bargain stage, where prosecutors are constrained by little more than their whimsy." I urge you to read the entire thing.
[CN: War on agency; misogyny; Christian Supremacy] FUCKING HELL: A pregnant woman who was taken by ambulance to Mercy Health Partners hospital in Muskegon, Michigan, was miscarrying—and a specialist apprised of her situation said the fetus would definitely die, and the woman might, too, if labor was not immediately induced. But hospital staff "would not induce labor for another 10 hours. Instead, they followed a set of directives written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that forbid terminating a pregnancy unless the mother is in grave condition. Doctors decided they would delay until the woman showed signs of sepsis—a life-threatening response to an advanced infection—or the fetal heart stopped on its own. In the end, it was sepsis. When the woman delivered, at 1.41am, doctors had been watching her temperature climb for more than eight hours. Her infant lived for 65 minutes. This story is just one example of how a single Catholic hospital risked the health of five different women in a span of 17 months, according to a new report leaked to the Guardian." Goddammit. This makes me want to smash things.
[CN: Police brutality; racism; death] An enragingly familiar tale of a person of color killed by police and questions about the police version of events: "Just before midnight on January 28, a Tacoma police officer fatally shot Puyallup tribal member Jacqueline Salyers, 33." And although police assert that Salyers "sped toward the officers" in her vehicle, "Associated Press photographs of the car show that it was struck with multiple shots. Bullets struck the driver's side door, shattered the passenger's and driver's side windows, and punched holes in the passenger's side of the windshield. ...Tacoma Police Department spokeswoman Loretta Cool told ICTMN that additional information cannot be released until the department's investigation of the incident is complete." There is much more at the link.
[CN: Flint water crisis] Well, this certainly doesn't seem good enough: "The Michigan House approved $30 million on Thursday to help pay Flint residents' water bills in the aftermath of the city's lead-contamination crisis. The lawmakers unanimously OK'd the measure, which now goes to the Senate, which is expected to approve it and send it to Gov. Rick Snyder for final approval. Residents would have about 65 percent of the drinkable water portion of their bills paid by the state. Residential customers would still have to pay for water used to flush toilets or do laundry."
[CN: Stalking] Y'all know I am not a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, but I have all the sympathy and anger for her that her stalker of 17 years (!!!) has been acquitted by an Ohio jury, who apparently believed the unmitigated horseshit that he "was a Christian who was writing to Paltrow in an attempt to minister to her," was seeking forgiveness for previous harassment, and was just "lonely [and] wanted to have a penpal." Fuck. That. I hope she is safe, although she understandably doesn't feel like she is, which itself can be terribly traumatic.
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] RIP Big Ang: "Mob Wives star Angela 'Big Ang' Raiola died early Thursday after a difficult battle with throat, lung, and brain cancer. She was 55." Like her or hate her, she was a true character.
"Trump Goes to War with the Pope." Sounds about right.
WANT! "Our favorite sassy squad, the women of The Golden Girls, are officially being turned into Funko Pop! Vinyl figures. The toy company had previously confirmed that the fabulous foursome would be getting the Funko treatment, and now we're getting a look at just how perfect they are." So perfect.
And finally! Pig + sheep + dog = Mangalitsa Pig!
Daily Dose of Cute
"Oh hello. Might I trouble you for a treat, a race around the house,
some ear scratches, a treat, a walk, and a hug? Also a treat?"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
On That Garbage Holtzclaw Piece
[Content Note: Rape culture; misogynoir.]
Yesterday, the sports site SB Nation published a 12,000-word longform piece on Daniel Holtzclaw, the former Oklahoma City police officer who stood trial on charges that he sexually assaulted 13 black women, was found guilty on 18 of 36 charges, and was sentenced to 263 years.
The piece, which has since been removed, was a lengthy apologia written by a freelance sportswriter who had covered Holtzclaw's college football career. It was a collection of the usual rape culture tropes: Holtzclaw was a great guy; his victims were suspect; he didn't do it, but, if he did, it was because of one of a number of reasons none of which are that he's a gross predator.
After the piece was taken down, the editorial director of SB Nation published a note that admitted: "It was tone-deaf, insensitive to the victims of sexual assault and rape, and wrongheaded in approach and execution. There is no qualification: it was a complete failure." Naturally, he has promised to review "all of our processes in light of this failure."
My friend Jessica Luther, who writes eloquently and passionately and sensitively at the intersection of rape culture and sports, has written a terrific piece about the verbose rubbish published at SB Nation. I highly recommend reading the entire thing, but I was especially struck by this bit:
The thing about assigning a story about sexual assault to a sports writer who is good at writing about athletes is that you get 12,000 words about an athlete without any understanding on his part about how society talks about sexual assault, how journalists cover it, anything about it at all. Arnold's starting point is as a man who watched Holtzclaw's entire college career, who sees Holtzclaw as an athlete first, and who imagines Holtzclaw's story as a tragic arc. The victimized women are simply an anomaly to be explained away in the otherwise successful life of a nice guy who happened to become a convicted rapist.Yes. Because Jeff Arnold wasn't writing a story about sexual assault at all, like most of the sports writers who write about men who harm women. They write stories about Tragic Men.
As Jess notes, the entire framework was "a tragic arc." It is a familiar arc in sports writing: The high-flying athlete who succumbed to injury, or addiction, or impoverishment.
The Tragic Man who had to sell his trophies to a pawn shop. The Tragic Man who had to go to jail after raping women.
It's all the same story. And Holtzclaw's 13 victims are just things that mark his tragic fall from football hero. Jess again:
It's also a failure because it does the worst of what sports writing does when it tries to tackle issues of violence against women, including domestic and/or sexual violence: it centers the athlete and almost completely ignores the victims. In the nearly 12,000 words, I count just under 500 were about the thirteen (13!) women who came forward and testified against Holtzclaw (you can read their stories in their words at BuzzFeed). In telling the story of a man known almost exclusively because he is a convicted rapist, Arnold spent 4% of the many words he was allotted on the people who were harmed by Holtzclaw.Unlike most men, most women don't have the luxury of being able to disregard the ubiquity of sexual violence, to casually cast it aside in order to write an epic tale of a Tragic Man with whom we're meant to sympathize, instead of sympathizing with his victims.
...Also, more than almost any other media, sports media disproportionately has men writing about sexual assault and as the sources in their stories about it. Yet so often this is the group leading the national conversation around this topic. It's not that men cannot or should not write on this topic; certainly men have as much capacity as women to imagine a well-rounded story, to seek out female voices and experts, to recognize that both perpetrators and survivors will always be reading whatever they write, and to remember that the stakes are very high whenever you write on this topic in a society that victim blames and minimizes sexual violence.
But, as the Women Media Center recently found when looking at how men and women report on sexual assault, "Women journalists interviewed alleged victims more often than male journalists, and a higher proportion of women journalists wrote about the impact of the alleged attack on alleged victims." Women bring a different set of cultural experiences to the table, they ask different questions, and they seek out voices often left out. We need more of that or we will end up with more of this.
[Related Reading: On That Salon Piece.]
All Right, I've Had Enough of This
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Over and over and over, I read variations on this concept: "My criticism of Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with her sex."
My saying I just have a vague but insistent distrust of her has nothing to do with her sex.
My calling her a liar has nothing to do with her sex.
My holding her to standards to which I wouldn't hold any other candidate has nothing to do with her sex.
My calling her a corporate shill has nothing to do with her sex.
My hatred of her voice has nothing to do with her sex.
My calling her part of a dynasty has nothing to do with her sex.
My shitty comments about her hair and clothes have nothing to do with her sex.
Yes, it does. It all does.
Lots of positive commentary on Hillary Clinton has to do with her sex, too—although that tends to be more frequently viewed through that lens. That Clinton is seen as strong and resilient and capable is largely because she is a woman who has overcome decades of misogynist garbage.
Even when I straightforwardly reference the gendered dynamics in a male candidate being credited for a female candidate's personal and professional growth, I am told that "making this about sex is beyond the pale."
But it's always about Clinton's sex.
I know this not because I am a mind-reader and can see the intentions of the people who are asserting that whatever commentary on Clinton has "nothing to do with her sex."
I know this because I am a woman—and not a single thing I do, not single thing I say, choose, think has "nothing to do with [my] sex."
I am indelibly who I am because I am a woman.
Even when I am not consciously thinking about my behavior and actions within that framework, the fact that I was socialized as a woman in a patriarchal culture, the fact that I am marginalized as a woman, the fact that I am always and unavoidably seen as a woman, with all the stereotypes and assumptions and expectations that entails, means that there is not a single goddamn thing about my life that can ever have nothing to do with my sex.
To suggest that any commentary about any woman could have "nothing to do with her sex" is just another way of asking women to wrench our personhood from our womanhood.
But our womanhood is inextricably tied to our personhood. The fact that we are not even given the right of full personhood is tied to our womanhood.
It's not fair and it's not just and it's not reasonable to suggest that you are ever regarding a woman in a manner that has nothing to do with her sex.
The good things I do are attached to my womanhood. The bad things I do are attached to my womanhood. Whether I want them to be or not.
I can't look at a choice I've made and know whether I would have made the same choice if I weren't a woman.
Even if I could, it's a theoretical construct that has nothing to do with reality, because I am a woman. And it is the patriarchal culture that defines me that way, which doesn't ever, ever, let me "just a person."
So I find it spectacularly objectionable when people argue that they're engaging in commentary on Clinton, or any woman, that has nothing to do with her sex.
Now, that doesn't mean that the commentary is inherently illegitimate, even when it's criticism. But it does mean that it's bullshit to pretend womanhood can somehow be set aside in making it.
I can't set aside my womanhood. Hillary Clinton can't set aside her womanhood. So no one else gets to set our womanhood aside, either.
Again: During the 2008 campaign, I wrote, in response to a commenter saying he wanted to "punch Clinton the person, not Clinton the woman":
Hillary Clinton can't escape the context of womanhood by wishing it away, and you can't wish it away, either. She can't wave a magic wand and erase it to her benefit, and you can't declare it irrelevant while discussing how you want to pummel her. She doesn't get to say, "I'm not running for president as a woman; I'm running for president as a person," because being a woman still matters in this culture; womanhood still precludes full personhood. You don't get to pretend that's not the reality in which we live to declare you're punching "Hillary Clinton the person," not "Hillary Clinton the woman."What it means to treat personhood and womanhood as mutually exclusive concepts, as if any woman can somehow be a person without being a woman, is asserting the fantasy of an egalitarian culture at the expense of the people whose perpetuated inequality means it stubbornly remains a fantasy.
Consider what it means, just for a moment, that we are still meant to regard those as mutually exclusive concepts.
And doing so with the objective of concealing or denying misogyny ultimately serves to more deeply entrench the subjugation of women.
Asking me to stop talking about gender dynamics and make distinctions about Clinton's personhood vs. Clinton's womanhood—or any woman's, including my own—is asking me to participate in my own marginalization.
That is a request I will not accommodate.
Meanwhile, at Blue Nation Review...
...I've got a new piece up: "No, Bernie Didn't Make Hillary a Better Candidate, She Did That Herself."
One of the common narratives of this election is that Bernie Sanders has "pushed Hillary Clinton left" and "made her a better candidate."Head on over to Blue Nation Review to read the rest.
In the sense that competition obliges competitive people to become their best selves, and that criticism urges people to do better and gives them an opportunity to reflect and refine their arguments, it's probably true that a primary challenge has served Hillary well.
But that, of course, is not what the narrative that Bernie has made Hillary a better candidate actually means.
It functions to impugn Hillary's progressive credentials—indeed to imply that they don't exist at all—and, if there are any demonstrable traces of progressivism in her candidacy, they are attributable to Bernie, not her.
I have a problem with that. I have a problem with it because I intensely dislike a narrative that says a man owns the responsibility for all the good things in a woman's campaign, and I have a problem with it because it is simply not true.
Polls: Trump Is Down! Trump Is Up!
[Content Note: Video may autoplay at second link.]
NBC News: "Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has fallen behind Ted Cruz in the national GOP horserace, according to a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. In the poll, Cruz is the first choice of 28 percent of Republican primary voters, while Trump gets 26 percent. They're followed by Marco Rubio at 17 percent, John Kasich at 11 percent, Ben Carson at 10 percent and Jeb Bush at 4 percent."
CBS News: "Donald Trump (35 percent) continues to hold a commanding lead over the rest of the field, with a 17 point lead over his closest rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz (18 percent). John Kasich (11 percent) has now risen to a virtual third-place tie with Marco Rubio (12 percent). Trump leads among nearly every demographic group. ...Data collection was conducted on behalf of CBS News by SSRS of Media, PA."
Reuters: "Donald Trump has taken a more than 20-point lead over U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the Republican race for the presidential nomination, bolstering his position ahead of the party's primary in South Carolina on Saturday, according to a national Reuters/Ipsos poll. Among Republicans, Trump, a billionaire businessman, drew 40 percent support in the poll conducted from Saturday to Wednesday, compared with 17 percent for Cruz, 11 percent for U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, 10 percent for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and 8 percent for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush."
So, Donald Trump has a commanding lead or is now losing to Ted Cruz!
Either way, the Republican primary contest is a nightmare and whoever gets the nomination will be terrible! 100% of respondents in my poll of one me agree!
In related news: With three leading candidates in a maybe (?) tightening race, the Republican convention could be interesting.
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