To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good

Only 20 days left, America. Who will it be?

So Rev. Fred posted this really interesting video of Margaret Thatcher pwned by a British housewife while answering questions about the Falklands crisis. Thatcher's exchange with the British citizen is fantastic because it's a direct question from a real person about a foreign policy decision. :



And it reminded me almost immediately of Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, shooting down the Sycorax ship in season two and the Doctor's ability to follow through on the threat to take down her administration with six words. This Harriet Jones sequence has always bothered me. It seems rather petty for the Doctor to stoop so low as to play up society's eagerness to judge women on their appearance instead of their political decisions and leadership ability in order to teach Harriet a lesson:



Which then made me think of this Fox News segment where Sarah Palin tries to beg off her completely disastrous performance in the Katy Couric interview with a pathetic "it was rigged!" excuse. She's basically sulking because Katy didn't feel the need to spend an hour talking about all those non-existent Obama tax increases and instead "clobbered" her with really hard ones like "what newspapers do you read":



Shielding politicians from the questions of the general public really kills Democracy better than any PR spin ever will. Couric didn't ask Palin anything unreasonable or even particularly hard in her interview. Neither did Gwen Ifill during the VP debates this week. And yet Palin has felt the need on both occasions to say the equivalent of "f*ck you" to both of them, though it was even more appalling when she said it to Ifill's face on Thursday. "Talking straight to Americans" does not include repeating the same five talking points (as illustrated by the Sarah Palin Debate Prep Flowchart).

Furthermore, there are still way too many asshat male pundits out there still making off-handed comments about her supposed hotness and female pundits claiming she's "relateable" because she has kids (as if Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi didn't raise kids, too!) and meanwhile the rest of us are trying not to panic because this politician obviousy has little to no idea how to answer a simple question even if she doesn't "feel like it," let alone what it takes to be second in line to run the country!

So basically I wish we could set Sarah Palin down in a room and have real, live citizens ask her questions that she answers directly. Even if the answers are bad, at least she can't claim the media is "filtering" them and it would a hell of a lot harder for her to look an average citizen in the eye and say "I'm not going to answer your question" without suffering the wrath of public opinion. And then I wish the media would do it's job and analyze her answers, not her glasses or her hair or her dress or her kids or her husband.

Is that too much to ask?

This is absolutely fantastic:



Also, in other random links, this site is mildly amusing as well: Barak Obama Is Your New Bicycle

I swear I will post something for realz soon, but I'm just tired. Tired of tropical storms screwing up my weekend plans, tired of pundits who suddenly acknowledge sexism, tired of Conservative asshats trying to hijack Feminism, and tired of the High Holy Days (yes, I know they haven't even happened yet).

In the meantime, Larry King can't read! Watch a surprisingly gracious Michael Moore gently correct Larry King as he's stopped short by that new-fangled word "misogynistic." I can just hear him padding around his dressing room, mumbling about those "damn kids" and their "crazy slang." Heh.

I'm a Christian. I don't identify with it now, but I did grow up in the Evangelical Fundamentalist community (in Oklahoma, no less!). But I still can't tell you how this is anything but completely batshit crazy:

I don't know why I'm so obsessed with this whole John McCain and the Internet thing, but now there's an actual video of the forum during which his "deputy e-campaign manager" Mark SooHoo tells the us that:

"You don’t necessarily have to use a computer to understand, you know, how it shapes the country. … John McCain is aware of the Internet."

Well, now. That totally eases my mind. I'm completely convinced that McCain has the technical skill and progressive savvy to lead us into the 21st century that's already revoutionized the way that people interact with information. You know, because he's aware of its existence.

( Watch the video )

Geez. Anyone into feminism/fandom/culture/science/programming has probably caught wind of this by now:

GropeGate at ConFusion

The story exploded like wildfire all over LJ. Even Feministing picked up on it this afternoon. I really hope this turns into a positive dialogue about the treatment of women in the con subculture, but I'm a bit fearful that it will quickly dissolve into a "you just don't understand how we do things" debate. In my personal experience, sci-fi cons are simultaneously excellent places to witness fantastic leaps in breaking gender taboos and  excellent places to observe some really effed up notions of objectified and grossly misunderstood female sexuality. It's hard to argue with something as delightfully indulgent for one's inner geek as a convention where you can dress up like Sailor Moon and nobody will make fun of you. But the same crappy gender issues that characterize our political and social systems exist in our sub-cultural groups; if we want to continue to enjoy such events in future, we must demand that the same standards of basic human respect apply at our gatherings.

Oh, BTW: Happy St. George's Day!

From the Rocky Mountain News yesterday:

Liston used the derogatory term during a Republican caucus lunch on health care to express his view that unmarried teen parents are sexually promiscuous and to complain that society condones premarital sex.

"In my parents' day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are," Liston said at the lunch. "There was at least a sense of shame.

"There's no sense of shame today. Society condones it ... I think it's wrong. They're sluts."

Liston fails to mention a rather important detail: in his parents' day, unmarried teen girls were sent away and shunned. When was the last time you heard about a Magdalene House or Maternity Home for boys? This isn't about curbing teen pregnancy. If it were, he'd stop supporting abstinence only education because it's obviously not working. It's about slut-shaming and it's about damn time for it to end. Instead of withholding information and then condemning a teenager for his/her ignorance, how about we stop condescending to adolescents and start listening to what's going on in their world. Geez.

I think I might have to become a Nerdfighter. Actually, I think I might already be one. If all you need to to do is be strange in public places in an ongoing fight to beat the boring people, then I'm fairly certain that publicly discussing topics such as rampant opium use among Romantic poets, Utopian ideals in BSG vs. Star Trek, "Why contemporary YA Lit blows most contemporary non-YA Lit out of the water," and how sad it is that Doctor Who isn't more popular in the US--all in one sitting--totally counts. If it doesn't, it should.

Anyway, this video is an interesting rant against censorship by YA author John Green (co-creator of the Nerdfighters), whose book is currently being debated at Depew High School in Buffalo, NY:



A simple cure for ridiculous censorship:
1. Locate stick hiding in ass
2. Remove it

I can't help but squee and laugh a little when my favorite authors go all politico and make fun literary connections to current events (even when it's in their own books). Scott Westerfeld posted some interesting thoughts on the "Missing Black Woman formation," or MBW, in his book So Yesterday. It's an advertising, entertainment, and political phenomenon that we actually see everywhere in American society. Whenever you see an obviously manufactured image of a racially diverse group of people, there's almost always a missing black woman. You'll have a white woman, white man, Latino man or woman, maybe an East Asian woman. But you rarely see a black woman in the mix. He uses The Mod Squad, The Matrix, and the Democratic presidential candidate line-up as examples of this in contemporary culture.

[Okay, I confess. My favorite bit of the post was the Mr. Smith reference with regards to the Republican candidate line-up. Hee. ]

In honor of the upcoming Iowa caucus and looming inundation of media coverage on the primaries, here's another Bateman video, this time on recognizing Despotism in your community (best part: the "Is Karl Rove Anywhere Near Here" meter):

There's an interesting article over at the Salon about how Iowa college students might skew the results of the upcoming Iowa Caucus on January 3. Michael Sherer basically concludes that nobody who is legally allowed to vote should be prevented from doing so, but perhaps the law deserves further examination in light of fears that the results will be "skewed." I take issue with this interpretation of the law.

( Why out-of-state college students don't  )

 

Back in the summer of 2006, a group called www.PayAttention.org started running these hilarious commercials on several different Virginia stations:

They did a whole line of different videos featuring candidates such as "Someone's Old Teddy Bear," "Bag of Frozen Peas," and "Spoiled Yappy Dog." This ad is one of the more humorous and insightful answers to the "Swift Boat" phenomenon of the 2004 presidential race. Sadly, the link is no longer active and you are instead directed to a stupid website about karma. I took the "Karma Test" and scored 125 points. Wow, it feels really great to have a random website tell me that the universe doesn't think I suck. I must have some mad baby-saving skills. That or I just read enough to stay culturally literate. Since when does having a grasp on facts such as Dick Cheney's job title or where Darfur is located give one extra karma points? Do we really think it's a good idea to tell 18 year olds that the universe smiles down on them because they happen to have read an issue of Newsweek (or even just the Wikipedia article on the United States) at some point in the past twelve months? No.

One of the more fascinating and difficult questions discussed over at Feministing is the Problem of Pornography. Not just a contentious issue among self-proclaimed "anti-feminists," even the liberal second wave camp is split over this issue.

My interest in the subject has more to do with pornography vs. erotica and it's social stigma or taboo. It's a fascinating question covering questions of how one defines genre, how genre operates in Western culture, how men and women respond to sexually explicit visual images versus sexually explicit images written on the page, how society judges men and women for consuming and/or producing porn/erotica, etc. But, hands down, the very best article I've read on this subject is by none other than Alan Moore of graphic novel/comic book fame. His article in the November 2006 edition of Arthur magazine is a thoroughly interesting look at visual portrayals of sexual images throughout the history of Western culture--where we are now and exactly how we got there.

Read Alan Moore's excellent essay: "Bog Venus versus Nazi Cock-Ring: Some Thoughts on Pornography."

This is amazing: