March 2010 – Page 6

Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday

Post a short description of something you’ve written this week, along with a link. Make it specific — don’t link your whole blog.

And, ugh, Happy Daylight Savings.

WEEKEND ARTS SECTION: Nothing That Happened This Week Was Ever Going To Be As Important As The “Telephone” Video

It’s true. Like: do you remember when Michael Jackson died, and folks were lamenting the death of “monoculture?” They thought there would never again be the experience of knowing that everyone you met had seen the same music video that you had. This same thing happened when John Updike died, as I recall — like, it was thought that never again would there be a writer that everyone recognized as important, except for Phillip Roth, who is very old. The Internet was blamed a lot, in these discussions: it fragments our national discourse, it allows everyone to attend to their own little interests instead of allowing us all to have one big compulsory interest, it dissolves the human community and creates “communities” instead, etc. People talk about the Internet the same way they talk about the “divisiveness” of left-wing politics, sometimes, have you noticed that? Often on the very Internet itself, they do this! But also, these people seem to know very little about the Internet, or how the culture is going, because all Lady Gaga needs to do is show you her vagina in a YouTube video and the whole world stops to talk about it. It doesn’t even matter if they like Lady Gaga! Or if they listen to Lady Gaga! Some people will just post to be like, “so I don’t want everybody to keep talking about Lady Gaga!” BUT THEN THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT HER. That, my friends, is how the Internet creates “monoculture.” I have dropped a little science for you, this evening, it would appear.

So, the “Telephone” video! Have you perhaps… READ ABOUT IT ON THE INTERNET SOMEWHERE???? Or… SEEN IT ON THE INTERNET??????? Perhaps you have…. COMMENTED ABOUT IT ON THE INTERNET, ON THE POST IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THIS ONE, PERHAPS?????????????? Well, too bad. This is YOUR Arts Section, Internet, and this week The Arts are pretty much the “Telephone” video. Let’s go, scene by scene, through The Most Important Film of the Year or Perhaps of All Time (Until Next Week Starts, Which Is Tomorrow).

The – N! S! F! W! – video is below the cut. Watch with caution.

Friday Random Ten – the Natural Born Killers edition

So obviously this week’s Friday video is this, if by some chance you have not seen it (warning on the video — there is nudity and violence and lots of, to put it gently, problematic content):

…that is a lot of Tarantino and a lot of product placement, and Gaga going on with her latest girl-power thing, and I’m kind of surprised that Beyonce went along with all that weirdness. But yeah, damn. That is a video. Unsure how I feel about it, and Gaga is always controversial, so have at it.

Now, the Random 10. Leave yours in the comments.

1. Lykke Li – Everybody But Me
2. Grizzly Bear – Lullabye
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Shame and Fortune
4. Portishead – Over
5. Cass McCombs – Jonesy Boy
6. Ecstatic Sunshine – Little Dipper Big Dipper
7. Band of Horses – St. Augustine
8. Rufus Wainwright – Across the Universe
9. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Army Bound
10. MGMT – Electric Feel

Bits and Pieces

A New York subway ad campaign tells women “Abortion changes you.” Lori’s take says it all — forced pregnancy changes you, too.

Elsewhere in New York, one of our many worst New York nightmares came true — a woman was out at a bar, turned down a man who wanted to dance with her, and then he followed her into the bathroom and beat the shit out of her. According to the New York Times, “The attack was so vicious, according to the police, that the woman sustained a broken eye socket and a broken nose, and possibly a fractured skull.” And the guy who did it still hasn’t been found.

A Mississippi high school decided to cancel prom rather than allow a lesbian couple to attend. Because it’s ok if girls go to prom together because they can’t get dates, but not ok if they go because they actually like each other. The ACLU is suing.

Is banning abortion about “morals,” or is it about theocratic intrusions into our personal lives? Amanda says it’s theocracy, in a very compelling piece.

Nickels for Change: College students Cassie and Rebekah are adding nickels to their jars every time they hear bigoted language around their school. At the end of the year, they’ll be donating all the money to a social justice organization. Head over and see how you can help.

Hero Granny!

One million women are hospitalized every year in Latin America and the Caribbean due to complications from unsafe abortion (pdf). There are more than 4 million abortions in Latin America and the Caribbean every year; of the 4.1 million abortions performed in 2003, all but 200,000 were unsafe. The majority of those safe abortions took place in Cuba, Guyana and Puerto Rico, where abortion is permitted under some circumstances and performed by trained medical professionals.

Men have it bad when it comes to unemployment, but statistics may obscure the hit taken by single mothers.

Heavy Metal: Angela Gossow on women, rock and kicking ass. I’m not a metal fan, but she’s an inspiring woman.

Missionary Position: Yup, Christian evangelists actually call their strategy for converting Muslims “the camel method.” Not to mention the offensiveness of this kind of missionary work in the first place.

Rape victims world-wide are denied justice and dignity. A report from Amnesty International.

Liz Cheney’s smear campaign targets Obama officials and the most basic Constitutional principles. It’s shameful, and this piece is a must-read on an important issue.

Passion, Freedom and Women: A fascinating BlogTalk Radio segment.

The Race and Gender Wealth Gap: The median wealth for Single Black Women: $100. Single Hispanic Women: $120. Single White Women: $41,000.

Thursday LOST Roundtable: Dr. Linus

LOST spoilers below the image!

Screencap from LOST. Characters Benjamin Linus and Miles Strom stand on the island in conversation. They are near the beach, and the ground is covered in dirt, with some foliage in the background. Ben holds a digging device, and is partially bent over, while looking at Miles. Miles stands facing towards Ben, speaking to him and holding a large leaf in one hand.

This week on LOST, Ilana learns that Ben killed Jacob and seeks out revenge, while Jack tests his new-found faith at the same moment that Richard Alpert has lost his own. Meanwhile, Sideways Ben has to choose between power and someone he cares about.

Check out the discussion after the jump, and leave your own reactions and theories in the comments (with no spoilers for upcoming episodes).

Exciting times for women’s political representation in India.

From the New York Times (link via this ain’t livin’):

The upper house of India’s Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women, after the measure stirred two days of political chaos that could whittle the governing coalition’s majority to a dangerously thin margin.
[…]
Tuesday’s vote was the first of four hurdles the measure must clear. The lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, must pass the bill, then the proposed amendment will need to win approval from at least half of India’s state legislatures. Then India’s president, a largely ceremonial post, must sign off.

Click through for some context and criticisms of the bill, for instance there’s concern ‘that it will favor wealthy upper-caste women at the expense of the lower castes and Muslims’.

The Indian Express provides some regional and international context. They also have an article on latest UNDP report, which suggests that ‘that quotas for women-held seats in political bodies can be “effective” and are “necessary” for overall growth.’ And here’s an article at the Hindistan Times that is well worth a read. cim from Refusing the default has an analysis of how quotas work and might work in various political systems, jumping off from the criticism mentioned above.

Hump-Day Reads

Only some conspiracy theories are welcome at the Huffington Post. 9/11 Truthers are out, autism-vaccine-linkers in. Scary, since the Jenny McCarthys of the world are bringing a lot of disease and death to the children they claim to care about.

Is this article for real? (via Jezebel). Treating fat people like people should do just fine.

Law, Lies and the Abortion Debate: the Times on the various anti-choice infringements upon women’s health and rights.

Bart Stupak, he of the anti-abortion activism in health care reform, has a pro-choice Democratic primary challenger. Let’s hope the party gets behind her.

And that Stupak guy? He’s not actually against subsidizing abortion. He’s against subsidizing abortion for poor women.

Apparently old ladies don’t like sex! Echidne breaks it down.

Ms. Magazine has a new blog. Check it.

Hiram Monserrate, who was booted from the New York State Senate after slicing his girlfriend’s face with a glass bottle, is running to replace himself. His platform? Family values. His opponent will apparently “destroy our way of life” by supporting gay rights. Unlike Monserrate, who will keep our way of life perfectly in-tact by living — unmarried! — with a woman he physically abuses.

Finally: If LOST were Baywatch.

The New Jim Crow

A must-read article about race, class, caste and the American prison system. A few facts from the piece:

There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

The mass incarceration of African Americans over the past 30 years is primarily related to the War on Drugs — a convenient cover for a program essentially targeted at the black community. The talking points all came back to the supposed rates of drug-related violence, but that doesn’t exactly compute with historical fact:

President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

The vast majority of people arrested for drug-related offenses are non-violent, and are arrested for possession rather than selling. Just read the whole thing.

National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers

Today is the U.S. National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers.

In a different world, doctors who provide abortions would just be regular doctors. In this one, they — along with the nurses, administrative staff, and volunteers who work along side them — are uniquely courageous. For providing routine medical care, abortion providers face harassment, ostracization, protesters, threats, violence, and as with Dr. George Tiller, even murder. Giving up their jobs would be far, far easier than doing them.

But legalization of abortion is absolutely nothing without access. Just like those who try to frighten them out of their work, abortion providers know this. And so they continue, even in the face of danger. They do the best they can, in spite of the restrictions they must adhere to and the roadblocks thrown in their patients’ way, to ensure that everyone has a right to their own body, and that no one is forced to carry a pregnancy to term when they cannot or do not want to. Abortion providers are, quite frankly, heroes.

If you know someone who works in an abortion clinic, take them out to dinner, buy them some flowers, or just sit them down and tell them that you appreciate what they do. If there’s a clinic that performs abortions near you, drop in and say a quick thanks. And if you’re online reading this right now, head on over to the National Abortion Federation website, and write a note of appreciation.

If you’re able, today would also be an excellent day to financially support those organizations that make abortion access possible. The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is a professional association of abortion providers in the United States and Canada, that offers training for abortion providers and referrals for patients. The National Network of Abortion Funds helps women with limited funds to afford their abortions. And Medical Students for Choice work to destigmatize abortion care and make it a regular part of medical training. They would all be worthy of any donation you could give.

Much as you might expect

To recap: See Women owe society neither babies nor excuses. As this post does, it jumps off from the following remark by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Nina Funnell:

At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the “excuse” that “all” young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I’ve come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.

I’d like to think this was a one-off thoughtless comment, but it’s not. It’s just a slice of the “wimminz are for babiez” pie. I’d like to share with you another slice, one Rudd might have thought of before making his comment, as this kind of sentiment is heaped on his deputy all the time.

Julia Gillard is Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister. And the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and also the Minister for Social Inclusion. She became the first woman to run the country (well, you know, apart from the Queen) when in 2007 she assumed the role of Acting Prime Minister while Kevin Rudd was overseas. I don’t like everything she’s done, but you’ve got to hand it to her, Gillard is an accomplished politician. Yet her short red hair is a constant topic of national conversation. In fact, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail has a whole gallery of her changing hairstyles! There’ve been rumours and jokes that she’s a Sekrit Lesbian because apparently some people (read: straight men) can’t deal with the idea of a powerful woman who doesn’t take shit and thus must, um, well, the logic fails, really. (I must say I am rather amused that my blog’s the number one result on google for the search term ‘julia gillard dyke’.) But the thing that has disgusted me the most have been the assertions that she’s not fit to lead and that her opinions don’t count because she hasn’t any children.