Month: July 2008

I remembered to do it this week! Applaud me.

Now self-promote.

The fucking New York Times strikes again with their abysmal coverage of issues relating to women’s activities in the public sphere. In this article entitled “Blogging’s Glass Ceiling”, Kara Jessela covers the BlogHer conference held last week in San Francisco, California.

First of all, does it surpries you one fucking bit that this article–about the business activites of women bloggers–is in the Fashion/Style section of the Times? Cause you know, anything women do is all about fashion and style, it’s not real manly-man shit like business and sports and technology. The Times article about how “blogging can KILL YOU!!11!!!!1!ELEVENTY!1!1!!!!” was in the Technology section of the paper. You know why? Cause the article is about how manly-man Cheeto-huffing bloggers could DIE!!!! from manly-man stress-induced disorders like HEART ATTACKS!!1Q!!1!! Cute little laydeez chit-chatting about blogging and other little cute shit they do on the Internet? Fashion/Style.

Here’s the first two paragraphs, which basically set the dismissive feminizing tone of the entire piece:

FOR two days last week, many of the men’s bathrooms at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here were turned into women’s bathrooms. The stalls on the second floor were lined with note cards featuring nurturing messages like “You are perfect.” Nearby, women were being dusted with blush and eye shadow, or having the kinks in their necks massaged.

There was a lactation room, child care, and onesies for sale emblazoned with the words “my mom is blogging this.” No doubt they were.

Yeah, those fucking laydeez are so heinous, they even took over the manly-man bathrooms!! And they’re such feeble-minded superficial silly bitchez, all they care about is “nurturing messages”, neck massages, and the trappings of femininity. LACTATION!!1!!!!11!1!! Why aren’t those bitchez at home taking care of the damn baybeez properly, anyway!?!?

Check out the pernicious hidden rhetorical trick embedded in these two paragraphs:

A few months before last year’s conference, Kathy Sierra, a technology blogger, received death threats from commenters on a variety of blogs. It prompted a flurry of discussion at BlogHer about whether women were the targets of particularly vituperative online attacks.

This year, women seemed to have moved on to other issues, such as gaining influence and making money. There were practical workshops on issues like building Web traffic and using open source software, sessions that dealt with emotional issues related to blogging, and specialized meet-ups (like one for baby boomer bloggers).

A “flurry of discussion” about whether women are disproportionately targets of vituperative attacks on the Internet? How about doing some actual, you know, motherfucking journalism, and investigating whether women are, indeed, subject disproportionately to vituperation on the Internet? It’s not real hard to find the answer.

And here’s the nasty rhetorical trick: “Women seemed to have moved on to other issues, such as gaining influence and making money.” Yeah, because dealing with a daily barrage of sick-fuck violently misogynist e-mails and comments is, like, totally irrelevant to women’s pursuit of influence and profit on the Internet. “There were practical workshops on…” Yeah, because sick-fuck violent misogyny on the Internet has nothing whatsoever to do with the practicalities of women’s blogging activities on line.

There were tears at many emotional panels, and also much hooting and applause, whether in response to news that Michelle Obama had just written her first blog post on the BlogHer Web site or that Michelin would be giving away a set of tires.

Those silly Fashion/Style blogging bitchez are just so irrational and emotional, crying and hooting and applauding! Not like the manly-man Technology bloggers, who are so manly, that they KILL THEMSELVES with manly HEART ATTACKS!11!!!1! Goddamn, the NY Times just never fails to piss me the fuck off.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

No, it’s not April Fools Day, and I’m not just kidding around and posting an Onion article. This is your Mainstream Media at work again with Teh Awesum Jernalizm!!! I’m telling ya’, the deranged fucking wackaloon right-wing is losing it completely.

My blog post the other day about the surgeon who committed battery by placing a temporary tattoo on an unconscious patient has generated quite a bit of, shall we say, consternation among some physicians and surgeons. In re-reading the post, I see that it was written in a way that was overly hyperbolic and generalized even for PhysioProf.

And for that, I am genuinely sorry. As bloggers, we always try to create controversy and argument, but I see that in this case I went too far.

Although I am not an MD, I love being a peripheral part of the medical profession, love being a basic science faculty member at a medical school, and love teaching medical students. I care very deeply for my medical students, and spend a lot of time and effort on effective teaching. I also have great affection for them, and wish them only the best in their future medical careers.

And that is why I am so concerned about the behavior of the “tattoo surgeon”. I do see an issue with paternalism, arrogance, and omnipotence in the profession, and I do not see the behavior of this surgeon as being solely attributable to a “lone bad actor”. Bad acts occur in a context, and I believe that to at least some extent, the medical profession includes a context that makes bad acts like this one more likely.

Accordingly, I disagree strenuously with something PalMD posted today about this issue:

The days of systematic pathologic paternalism on the part of doctors is long gone. It may linger in places, but it’s just not part of the culture anymore.

I believe this is not true, and it harms the medical profession to pretend that there is no longer an issue to be addressed.