tag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846life in mokievisionalways a cameron, never a ferrismokie2015-01-12T09:39:01Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:886792Holiday o' the day: I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore Day2015-01-09T23:05:56Z2015-01-10T09:50:49Zaccomplishedpublic0On my merry little calendar of daily holidays, today is listed as I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore Day. Given that the past week has been full of reams of legal documentation that is only English on a technicality - not because it's translated but because it's legalese, <i>boo</i> - that is indeed pretty much where my brain is at. "Words? No. No more words. NOPE."<br /><br />So I took a look at what absolutely had to give today.<br /><br />Someone trying to squeeze a manifesto into a tagline? NOPE. I can summarize, I can epitomize, I can capture the spirit of the thing, but I cannot take the client's list of eleventy things that absolutely must be mentioned specifically and squeeze it into a five-word tagline.<br /><br />Glitchy file? NOPE. Pure stupid stubbornness on my part to keep fighting with it this long, instead of asking for help, but that's what legalese does to me - makes me irritable and bitey, even against software.<br /><br />The flu? NOPE. Okay, it's not that easy. I wish it was that easy.<br /><br />Maybe this should be 2015's theme song...<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/V9AbeALNVkk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><br /><br />(No video embedded above? Sorry, journal sites are inconsistent that way. Try viewing it at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9AbeALNVkk">Youtube</a> instead.)<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=886792" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:876389The obligatory Hobby Lobby post.2014-07-01T18:47:07Z2014-08-09T05:09:31Zso, so tiredpublic0I don't know if I can take another guy saying the Hobby Lobby decision is no big deal.<br /><br />Let's set aside that the Supreme Court has said it's OK for employers to insert their religious beliefs into an employee's private life, by specifically limiting that employee's options in areas where they should have no say. No, your employer should not have say over your health care decisions.<br /><br />Let's ignore that the Court has given employers the go-ahead to insert their political beliefs into an employee's medical decisions, by ignoring how certain medications actually work according to <i>doctors</i>, in favor of their own 'interpretation' of how it works based on their political agenda - this even though that incorrect interpretation is still <i>perfectly legal</i> in this country. No, your employer should not get veto power over your <i>perfectly legal</i> health care decisions.<br /><br />We can even sidestep the fact that the Court has said it's OK for companies to selectively ignore parts of laws they dislike by claiming a religious exemption, even if they're for-profit outfits and not actually people, and definitely not churches. No, your employer's religion should not affect your health care decisions.<br /><br />Basically, your employer does not own you and should not have control of your private life.<br /><br />Guys, the Supreme Court has given employers the right to veto preventative care for a specific class of employees.<br /><br />If a woman gets pregnant and decides to have the child, she's going to see a doctor for prenatal visits, for tests and check-ups to ensure things are OK, and for intervention if things aren't going OK. When time comes to pull a human being out of her body, she's probably doing it in a hospital, and given statistics in recent years, she'll quite likely have surgery. Pregnancy and childbirth involves a chain of <i>medical</i> procedures and is very much a big deal, one that has permanent physical repercussions for the person doing it aside from the impact on their lives in general. That's why lots of women decide not to have the child, and lots more - 99% of American women at some point in their lives - take steps to avoid conceiving in the first place. That's what makes birth control 'preventative care'.<br /><br />No, Hobby Lobby was not being forced to foot the bill for abortions. Don't forget that employees pay into these packages, which are meant to cover the health care needs of employees, not the political agenda of the employer.<br /><br />No, it does not matter that Hobby Lobby covers some other types of contraception, because they've <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/07/01/hobby-lobby-birth-control-coverage/">opened the door for other employers to deny contraception</a> entirely, which gets us into the sticky fact that, apart from pregnancy being a real risk for some women, 'birth control' often has medical uses outside of preventing pregnancy - treatment of endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and reduction of ovarian cancer risks, for starters. You should not have to sit down with your boss and prove you're not just horny in order to get medicine prescribed by your doctor, dammit.<br /><br />No, "They shouldn't have to pay for you to have sex!" isn't relevant, because these insurance packages sure as hell cover prenatal care and treatment for STDs, so by that logic they're already paying for people to have sex.<br /><br />No, "It doesn't cover my condoms!" isn't remotely the same thing, because even if the condom breaks, that guy is never, ever going to risk having a person pulled from his dick nine months later.<br /><br />Yes, it is a big deal, because contraception is expensive, but so is getting pregnant, and if you're working retail at the fucking craft store level, in all likelihood you can barely afford either.<br /><br /><i>Update:</i> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-lgbts-from-work-20140715-column.html">Oh look, folks are already trying to use Hobby Lobby's "sincerely held religious belief" precedent to skirt LGBT anti-discrimination legislation.</a><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=876389" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:875571A month full of can't even.2014-06-01T16:17:36Z2014-06-29T14:09:31Zdrainedpublic0May started with a <a href="https://medium.com/@reifman/shining-light-on-cutoff-culture-5ebf4e53294c">terrible essay</a> (broken down fabulously <a href="http://captainawkward.com/2014/05/12/entitlement-much/">over at Captain Awkward</a> and by <a href="http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/05/cutoff-culture-and-the-myth-of-closure/">Dr. Nerdlove</a>), in which a man tried to shame his ex for refusing to maintain a relationship with him. Not <i>the</i> relationship, but <i>any</i> relationship. By his own account, she had moved on and found someone new, and she didn't want to hang out with him and rehash the drama of their now-defunct relationship over and over. She did not want to be in a relationship with him, and she did not want to be in that dysfunctional not-relationship with him, either, and so she called it quits - except he doesn't think she has the right to do that. He believes he has veto power over an ex-girlfriend's right to decide who she associates with, because he hasn't got closure (read: the change to debate-to-death her decision to end the relationship). His response to her cutting off contact was to ignore it, keep poking, keep popping up, even after being threatened with a restraining order.<br /><br />And he painted her decision to cut contact with him as abusive. Yes, seriously. He suggested it was abusive of her to expect to decide for herself who she did or did not interact with. He also suggested that abusive men are abusive because they feel powerless, <i>hint hint, ladies</i>.<br /><br />Y'know, in case you wondered <i>why</i> she threatened him with a restraining order.<br /><br />Then, less than two weeks after that essay made the rounds, an asshole declared war on women, and a world that would give women to other men but not him. He killed his roommates, grabbed his guns, and set out for "the hottest sorority" on campus, because. Because girls never approached him, and would have rejected him had he ever bothered to approach <i>them</i>. Because girls pick jerks (who actually ask them out) instead of 'gentlemen' like him (who sit around waiting for ass to be handed to them, like Sleeping Booty, and never put themselves out there for outright rejection). Because when he attempted to assault some women months earlier (what a gentleman!), some nearby men had intervened and kicked his ass. Because he was a misogynistic shitstain driven to obtain riches and women, and frustrated with a life that did not magically hand him these things. Because he was an entitled, spoilt rotten adolescent piece of walking, talking crap who'd had everything handed to him, and his response to adulthood and the requirement that he grow up and work for things was magical thinking (use <i>The Secret</i> to win the lottery!) and an inevitable tantrum.<br /><br />Because girls aren't psychic - but thank God for instinct and intuition. <br /><br />And the apologists poured out. It wasn't misogyny because look, he killed more men! - despite the videos and the manifesto and forum posts in which he declared his hatred for women and that he was going to kill as many as possible, and the fact that he only failed because he was utterly incompetent even at being a super-villain. It wasn't misogyny, because look, he had Aspergers, and oh why did no one get him treatment! - despite the fact that autism isn't a mental illness, the mentally ill are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence, he <i>was</i> receiving help and his family <i>did</i> attempt to get him committed out of fear he was a threat to himself and others. It wasn't misogyny, because he was probably gay! - and what the fuck is in the water over at Fox News? Seriously now.<br /><br />And worse, there were the creepy comments. "If even one girl had put out..." What? Pussy would have cured him? No. Or the NYPost's naming and shaming of a girl from <i>grade school</i> that didn't even remember the asshole, though her father did - specifically, he remembered him as a creepy little fuck.<br /><br />May ended with <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23yesallwomen">women on Twitter sharing</a> times they were harassed, intimidated or assaulted - and being harangued by men who were upset because this conversation about women being harassed, intimidated and assaulted was not taking place within the context of how it hurt <i>men</i> to be associated with this and discussed this way. They insisted that the conversation must begin with how feminists discuss men, and must include caveats that specifically let certain men (them) off the hook, because somehow, simply saying that a man raped you and the police didn't take it seriously is slandering <i>all</i> men, because this is really all about <i>men's</i> feelings, isn't it?<br /><br />So let's start June off better, with <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html">Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds</a>, in which a nerdy guy calls out the pop culture nerd narrative as insulting to and unhealthy for nerdy guys and women alike.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=875571" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:874118Immaturity is not a legal defense.2014-04-21T00:11:10Z2015-01-12T09:39:01Zdisbeliefpublic0If you ever needed a clear example of what's wrong with society:<br /><br />A 20-year-old man in Oklahoma was arrested for rape after it was discovered he'd been engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old. He played Truth or Dare with the two girls and dared them to engage in sexual acts with him and with each other in his room at his parents' home. The reports don't say why the girls were there, but they do say that the 15-year-old "was successful in fending off one other sexual attack," and that the charges include forcible sodomy, so they're not just alleging statutory rape here.<br /><br />The facts: an adult engaged in sexual activity with two minors.<br /><br />Society: those wicked girls!<br /><br />"He's still a kid himself!" says someone trying to justify an <i>adult</i> engaging in sexual activity with <i>two minors</i>.<br /><br />"Why did they keep coming back?" says someone who assumes the girls were sneaking in to play games with an older guy, ignoring other possibilities - like that the girls were relatives spending the night, pressured into playing games with a creepy uncle that also lived in the house. (That's a scenario that also explains <i>his parents'</i> reaction: they immediately kicked him out of the house, and are on the record stating that these 'games' took place when they were asleep or not home. That doesn't sound like they were unaware of the girls' presence - or, possibly, their son's proclivities.)<br /><br />"Those girls aren't so innocent," says someone who's never met anyone involved in this story, and who assumes that the <i>female teens</i> bear responsibility rather than the <i>adult male</i>.<br /><br />I emphasize the gender because the gender is important - it's why the teens are being demonized, and why their rapist is being excused. He's just a poor boy, barely out of his teens, but they're teenage girls, and therefore brazen hussies.<br /><br />It's bullshit, ladies and gents. The adult is always responsible. That's what being an adult is: being responsible. I don't care if the teens were willing participants - and remember, the charges specifically say they weren't. (No, being in a man's room is not the same as consenting, even if they were old enough to consent, which they weren't.) But even <i>if</i> the girls were up for it, it was still his responsibility <i>as the adult</i> to say <b>NO</b> and to <i>not</i> take advantage of the situation.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=874118" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:852570NEXT: Men who think they invented teen girls and the former teens who mock them2013-04-28T21:51:17Z2013-06-07T05:39:09Zirritatedpublic0Sometimes you get a look behind the curtain, and you realize that the little man back there is pulling so many more levers than you imagined. Stephen King's <i>On Writing</i>, for example, opened my eyes to how he thought about and structured stories. Suddenly those weird elements in his stories that just don't work (you know the ones) made more sense: they still didn't work, but I could see the reason, the intention and framework behind them.<br /><br />Other times, though, you pull back the curtain and discover that the little man has no clue what he's doing--but it won't stop him from congratulating himself without cause. That's what it felt like to read an <a href="http://splitsider.com/2012/02/explaining-clarissa-explains-it-all/">interview with the creator of the classic Nick show <i>Clarissa Explains It All</i></a>.<br /><br /><blockquote>"You have to remember that before <i>Clarissa</i>, girls were given outfits to wear. Matching clothes. Girls didn’t pick their own clothes and make their own styles. Now we take it for granted. Annie Hall was a good example for adults. People didn’t create their own styles except in minor ways. Punky Brewster wasn’t fashionable. She was being 'quirky, goofy girl.' She was really Pippi Longstocking." (Mathew Klickstein, <a href="http://splitsider.com/2012/02/explaining-clarissa-explains-it-all/">"Inside Clarissa Explains It All with Creator Mitchell Kriegman,"</a> <i><a href="http://splitsider.com/">Splitsider.com</a></i> 27 February 2012)</blockquote><b>Bullshit.</b><br /><br />We'll put aside the fact that kids bucking their parents' ideas of suitable hemlines and haircuts, and <i>picking out their own clothing</i> to <i>make their own styles</i>, is half the history of modern pop culture, most frequently and fondly remembered in the '60s tug-of-war between mod and hippie and the '70s war between glam and punk. Sure, as a Boomer, Kriegman should remember those days, but let's keep things closer to the era of the show in question.<br /><br />Before Clarissa came along in <i>1991</i>, we had three seasons of Becky Conner's fab fashion sense <i>and</i> Darlene's descent into demi-goth territory on <i>Roseanne</i>, not to mention Denise Huxtable, not just a fashionista but a fashion student, and her sister Vanessa, who seemed to change up her personal style a couple times per season.<br /><br />What did Clarissa Darling do? The same thing Punky Brewster did: brought a watered-down version of a specific style to television five years after the hip kids started it. In Punky's case, it was defanged and pastelized punk, and yes, she was fashionable: the show hit as whitebread department stores began selling blue lipstick and multicolored converses to decidedly non-punk teens. For Clarissa, it was eccentric layers loaded with patterns and vintage and accessories, straight out of <i>Pretty in Pink</i>--of whose costume designer <a href="http://onthisdayinfashion.com">On This Day in Fashion</a>'s Ali Basye says, <a href="http://onthisdayinfashion.com/?p=11761">"Vance excels at capturing, without irony or kitsch, the instinctive thrift and <i>experimental, sometimes awkward dressing that is distinctive to adolescents</i>."</a> (Emphasis mine.) ("The WTF Prom Dress of Pretty in Pink", 28 February 2011)<br /><br />What Clarissa did was nail (not invent) the vest + untucked shirt + shorts + tights/leggings + boots look that is so very, very '90s, and which Kriegman seems to think is the first time teens picked out their own clothing. He's wrong about that.<br /><br /><blockquote>"It was amazing that they accepted that first episode with Clarissa trying to kill her brother. In those days, people did not talk about sibling rivalry at all. It was kind of taboo. But we went right at it with her trying to kill him. No one seemed to give me any trouble about that. They just let me do it. I don’t think you could <i>ever</i> do that in a show now. But I think it was healthy to bring out the fact that people can talk about sibling rivalry in shows like this."</blockquote><b>Bullshit.</b><br /> <br />Did this man not watch TV at all? Sibling rivalry is the bread and butter of sitcoms. Jan and Marsha, Marsha, Marsha (1969 - 1974), Thelma and J.J. (1974 - 1979), Raj and Dee (1976 - 1979), Willis and Arnold (1978 - 1986), Vanessa and Rudy (1984 - 1992), Mike and Carol (1985 - 1992), DJ and Stephanie (1987 - 1995), Bud and Kelly (1987 - 1997), Darlene and Becky (1988 - 1997), Bart and Lisa (1989 - 3043), Eddie and Laura and Judy, till she went into porn (1989 - 1997)... Not to mention <i>every other TV show that has ever featured siblings, ever</i>.<br /><br />How taboo can something be if the <i>Smothers Brothers</i> built a comedy act around it?<br /><br />Does Kriegman believe sibling rivalry is defined by acts of cartoonish violence? Even there, he's not even breaking new ground on television: Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp had him beat by nearly 60 years. Not even on modern TV, as Darlene's torment of DJ bordered on criminal and started three years before Clarissa first aired.<br /><br />It's irritating. I want to give Kriegman kudos for an awesome show that legitimately did break ground: while it didn't invent the 'teen sitcom', <i>Clarissa Explains It All</i> did re-popularize it and bring the target age down a few years to include pre-teens; it was one of the first non-animated Nick shows to be carried by a single character instead of a concept that allowed for an ensemble cast; and it was one of the first teen-aimed shows to feature a female lead. Given how '90s Nick shaped the network and influenced later tween programming, that's a pretty big deal.<br /><br />But I can't shake the annoyance of the irrational teen fashion claim, and the nonsensical sibling rivalry claim. It makes me want to offer <i>less</i> praise, because unwarranted pride is just arrogance. Sure, <i>Clarissa</i> was OK, but she wasn't <i>All That</i>...<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=852570" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:848178What a way to start the morning...2013-01-15T14:29:42Z2013-06-05T20:54:13Zshockedpublic0Things there are: <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/01/15/this_man_helped_save_six_children_is_now_getting_harassed_for_it/">Sandy Hook 'truthers'</a>.<br /><br />Things there aren't: words. There are no fucking words.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=848178" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:847984White guys co-opting non-white tragedies for politics!2013-01-15T10:54:07Z2013-11-09T15:02:56Zshockedpublic0Yes, <i>seriously.</i><br /><br />First, there's the very popular "Hitler took everybody's guns! If the Jews had guns, maybe the Holocaust wouldn't have happened!", which <a href="http://www.salon.com">Salon</a> answers nicely:<blockquote>Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/79328777/It-is-Dangerous-to-Be-Right-When-the-Gov-Andrew-P-Napolitano">put it</a>, “those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to self-defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.” But as the Tablet’s <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/author/mmoynihan/">Michael Moynihan</a> points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality, only about 20 Germans were killed, while some 13,000 Jews were massacred. The remaining 50,000 who survived were promptly sent off to concentration camps. (Alex Seitz-Wald, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/">"The Hitler gun control lie"</a>, <i><a href="http://www.salon.com">Salon</a></i> 11 January 2013)</blockquote>The same article also points out that Hitler did not come for <i>everybody</i>'s guns, as the much-cited 1938 law actually <i>de</i>regulated gun ownership for most residents. It restricted gun ownership for Jews, but was just one of many restrictions on the Jews.<br /><br />(Those wondering when Jews became non-white might as easily ask Google when Italians became white, or when the Irish became white, or ask why some Iranians get upset when referred to as non-white. Race isn't as simple as skin color--it has lots to do with social and historical context and power, us vs them dichotomies, and at times with who is and isn't considered fully 'people' at all. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Price-Whiteness-Jews-American-Identity/dp/0691136319">You can find books on it from the Jewish perspective</a>, if you're curious. In the meantime, you can think of it as 'ethnically specific tragedies', if you find that easier.)<br /><br />Then there's <a href="http://www.gawker.com">Gawker</a>'s story, with a title that speaks for itself: <a href="http://gawker.com/5975961/al-sharpton-rips-into-gun-appreciation-day-chairman-who-thinks-slavery-might-not-have-happened-if-we-had-just-given-black-people-guns?popular=true">"Al Sharpton Rips Into ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ Chairman Who Thinks Slavery Might Not Have Happened If We Had Just Given Black People Guns"</a><br /><br />Yes, <i>seriously</i>.<br /><br />Of course, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/?single_page=true">it was a different story when groups of black people actually <i>were</i> arming themselves</a>, and the NRA helped to draft gun control measures instead of fighting against gun control. Meanwhile, remember when the neo-cons argued that <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2011/08/08/michele-bachmann-promoted-bizarre-revisionist-view-of-slavery">slavery wasn't so bad, bred mutual respect between the races</a>, and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/oshadavidson/2011/07/08/michele-bachmann-salutes-the-upside-to-slavery/">at least kept black families together in 2-parent households</a>? Or when Quentin Tarantino decided he was an expert on history and <a href="http://newsone.com/2114168/quentin-tarantino-roots-inauthentic/">declared "Roots" 'inauthentic'</a>? Okay, that last one's unrelated...<br /><br />Except that, for both "Inglourious Basterds" and "Django Unchained", Tarantino has been criticized as exploiting another race's past tragedy and rewriting it as a revenge fantasy, ignoring history and, some believe, implying that the oppressed could have taken care of themselves had they just grabbed those bootstraps and gotten a little more inventively violent.<br /><br />Huh. Guess it does apply.<br /><br />And this is just the headline-level racial fuckery emerging from the gun control debate. It's not touching on comment sections, where eyes are rolled, racial slurs are tossed out, and the threatening specter of the gangbanger is waved. It comes together as a disjointed vision of a Mad Max future, in which armed and melanistically-rich criminals roam free and run Bartertown, formerly known as the US of A, and by the way, their ancestors could have saved themselves from us pasty bastards in the first place if only they'd had guns.<br /><br />Except nobody is enslaving us. Nobody is forcing us into concentration/<a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/bachmann-warns-of-re-education-camps-for-young-people.php">re-education camps</a>, or sending us off to Thunderdome.* There was a whole lot more going on in pre-Civil War America and the Third Reich than the oppressed parties not having guns, and much of that had to do with those parties being considered barely (or not even) human by the Powers That Be.<br /><br />Guns aren't what's keeping society from suddenly imploding on itself. Society isn't imploding because, despite all the gloom, doom, school shootings and terrible cable reality shows, it works pretty well for the most part. Rethinking our stance on guns to take military weaponry off the streets isn't going to change that, or leave us bare and defenseless against barbarians at the gate. It might, however, stop a mass-murdering fuckhead or two from donning body armor and walking into a school to make himself famous.<br /><br />Meanwhile, as some folks are suggesting that the only thing those other folks needed to fix their problems was more guns, completely different folks are uncomfortably wondering exactly <i>why</i> killers who arm themselves and walk into schools almost always turn out to be young middle-class white men. Is it just statistics? A dramatic rise in mental illness, or a dramatic drop in effective treatment? <a href="http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2012-07-why-most-mass-murderers-are-privileged-white-men">A pathological reaction to stressful times, changing demographics and social norms, and/or loss of status?</a><br /><br />This is progress of a sort, given that a decade ago, we were uncomfortably discussing whether these killers were monsters created by video games or monsters created by bullying. Now that bullying is an openly discussed issue, video games aren't just for easily-demonized geeks anymore, and more killers clearly fall outside the stereotype of the kid playing out his revenge fantasy in real life, we can stop asking why <i>that</i> person committed this <i>one</i> horrible crime and start asking what it is about our <i>culture</i> that's incubating this <i>trend</i>.<br /><br /><hr><font size="-2">* I know there's a tangent on the American penal system in here waiting for someone, but I've only got the one rant in me today.</font><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=847984" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:846259A week after Newtown2012-12-22T02:13:46Z2013-07-10T08:05:23Zmelancholypublic1What can I say that hasn't already been said? News of the shooting was devastating. The national discussions it started on gun control, mental health access and the role of the media have been frustrating, but were overdue. The national discussions some people tried to start using the tragedy suggest that any mental health care reform needs to start with our politicians and celebrities. Please, won't someone think of Victoria Jackson?<br /><br />On the same day that a man shot 20 children and 7 adults in Connecticut, a man in China slashed at least 22 children with a knife, a man in Indiana was arrested after threatening to set his wife on fire and then shoot up a nearby elementary school, and a teen in Oklahoma was arrested after plotting to lure students and faculty into the school gym and open fire. In the week since, a man walked into an Alabama hospital and opened fire, a Maryland teen was put in psychiatric care after concerned students reported that he had detailed information on the school building and security, and a Utah elementary school student brought a gun to school and threatened his classmates, citing fear of being killed like the kids at Newtown.<br /><br />Maybe the world is always this crazy, and we just spend so much of our time focused on our own little corners that it's usually easier to ignore.<br /><br /><b>Mental Health Reform</b><br />Yes, please.<br /><br />Though speculation abounds about the attacker's mental health, his actions point to a larger societal problem, and if we can't see it objectively in our own backyards, we can observe it unfolding in China, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%932011%29">where attacks on schools are on the rise</a>. Some experts attribute these attacks to mental illness, while others talk about frustration with rapid social changes, unemployment and general disenfranchisement.<br /><br />I don't think that's an either/or. Dismissing these attacks as mental illness fails to address seriously the debilitating stress that drives people to the point where exploding seems like a solution; talking about them only as frustrated men downplays the value of access to good mental health care in favor of talking up punishment and armed guards. We need a healthy middle ground, where a person doesn't need a diagnosis of mental illness to get serious help, and doesn't feel stigmatized for seeking out the help they need.<br /><br /><b>Gun Control</b><br />Social media has been rife with strife, hasn't it? In one corner, people waving photos of an armed Israeli teacher with her students as proof that we need guns in schools--nevermind that the photo is of a guard, not a teacher, and that under Israel's restrictive gun control policies, citizens wouldn't even have access to as much firepower as the attacker had that day. In the other corner, people pointing out that the 22 children involved in the Chinese knife attack will all survive, so eager to make the point that they gloss over the alarming larger reality that schools are increasingly seen as a viable target by the disgruntled.<br /><br />To share my biases upfront: my grandfather was a hunter, my cousins still are, and I know people who work in dangerous vocations that have to be armed for their own protection, so I know that there <i>is</i> such a thing as a responsible gun owner. At the same time, I also believe there's no reason for your average everyday citizen to have an assault rifle in their home, and that the discussion about gun control in our country is muddled by an unhealthy combative mindset that has latched onto guns as symbols of power and agency.<br /><br />Examples of that mindset? Start with <a href="http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-republican-solution-to-preventing-school-shootings-armed-teachers/">politicians pushing to arm teachers</a>, under the assumption that at least one <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/12/can_armed_citizens_stop_mass_shootings_examples_of_armed_interventions.html">teacher with a gun could easily take out a gunman</a> and reduce the danger. In reality, all armed teachers would introduce to the situation is crossfire: <a href="http://faculty.ncwc.edu/mstevens/205/205lect02a.htm">statistics</a> tell us that accuracy drops among <i>trained police officers</i> when shooting moves from target practice to real situations, and <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_18858_the-biggest-star-wars-plot-hole-explained-by-science.html">psychology</a> tells us that humans are consciously unwilling and subconsciously sabotaged when firing on other humans. (Yes, that's a <a href="http://www.cracked.com">Cracked</a> article. Their explanation is a more interesting read.)<br /><br />This kind of thinking is dangerously related to the kind of thinking that says, <a href="http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/national/adam-lanza-aspergers-rumors-a-look-into-masculinity-mental-illness-and-guns---a-lethal-equation">"I'll get a gun and show them all that they messed with the wrong guy."</a> This kind of thinking isn't the solution--it's the problem. It's the kind of thinking that got an unarmed teenager stalked and shot by an armed junior detective wannabe after the real police told him not to engage, and which had half the country arguing if the wannabe had the right to 'stand his ground' and fire on the <i>unarmed</i> kid that <i>he was stalking</i> through the kid's own neighborhood. It's the kind of thinking that led a grown man to fire into a minivan full of teenagers because their music was too loud.<br /><br />Whether or not we manage to come to a consensus on the issue of accessibility to guns, we have to address the connection between anger and armament in our culture. We've gotten the idea that <a href="http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2010/01/03/tea-party-protesters-threaten-armed-revolt/">waving weapons around is a legitimate way to express our frustration</a>, even to the point of bragging about it on cable news stations. Is it any wonder a segment of the population carries out that threat?<br /><br /><b>The Media, the Politicians, the Deities and the Wingnuts</b><br />By midweek, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20763752">even the media was questioning its presence in Newtown</a>, and <a href="http://entertainment.time.com/2012/12/14/kids-at-tragedies-turn-off-the-cameras/">the value of the story vs. the empathy of its actions</a>.<br /><br />Sadly, some of us have gotten so entrenched in the politics of empathy that we've started to lose hold of the real thing.<br /><br />Politically and/or religiously-minded individuals tried to stick the tragedy to their favorite hobby-horses. On the right, Mike Huckabee blamed the 'removal' of God from schools (nevermind what that says about attacks in places of worship), Victoria Jackson tried to equate it with abortion, James Dobson blamed it (and everything else) on the gays, and <a href="http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/jackson/index.ssf/2012/12/ted_nugent_blames_connecticut.html">Ted Nugent blamed 'political correctness and moral decline'</a>, if you're inclined to take a tongue-lashing about morality from a man who gained legal guardianship over a teenager so he could have sex with her. On the left, there were snark remarks about 'arming those evil union teachers' and a demand to talk gun control before the families even knew if their children were among the slain.<br /><br />For me, none of that tops <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335996/newtown-answers-nro-symposium">Charlotte Allen's error-ridden misogynistic New Review essay</a> in which she blames the "feminized setting" of the school, stating that "women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers," lamenting that there were no men on staff to leap into action, that "even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys" might have taken the attacker out had they not been pushed to hide like scared little girls. It's a batshit revisionist view of events that ignores two brave women who rushed to try to stop him, insults the custodian who saved lives not by flinging a pail at an armed man but by running through the building warning teachers and students to take cover, and denigrates teachers who saved lives by concentrating on getting kids out of the line of fire rather than throwing themselves into it.<br /><br />And, on the other side, those pointing out that the heroes of Newtown were all women (sorry, custodian!), and waxing philosophical about the differences between the genders, as if male teachers would not have given their lives for their students in the same situation.<br /><br />But can we say that they're at least learning? Between Anderson Cooper's refusal to use the attacker's name on the air, and the media's greater focus on the victims rather than the gunman, the media seems to have figured out that they don't <i>have</i> to feed that morbid curiosity or give the attacker a posthumous platform. If this holds up, it's already a great step forward.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=846259" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:845924As if millions of sperm suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...2012-12-19T22:19:15Z2013-06-17T10:48:49Zweirdpublic1Feminism exploded all over my Internets from unexpected sources!<br /><br />The other day, <a href="http://www.cracked.com/">Cracked</a> offered a lesson in tough love with <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/">6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person</a>, and in the process nailed <a href="http://www.shakesville.com/2007/12/explainer-what-is-nice-guy.html">Nice</a> <a href="http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Nice_guy_syndrome">Guys</a>: "Don't say that you're a <a href="http://xkcd.com/513/">nice guy</a> -- that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to them 36 times a day. [...D]on't complain about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks because those jerks <i>have other things they can offer</i>."<br /><br />Today, <a href="http://gawker.com/5969878/nice-guys-of-ok-cupid-are-not-really">Gawker</a> points out [the now-defunct site] "Nice Guys" of OKCupid in all their glorious douchebaggery, complete with a handy flowchart.<br /><br />I'm surprised. I mean, you expect it of <a href="http://jezebel.com/">Jezebel</a>, which even offered <a href="http://jezebel.com/5838994/a-field-guide-to-nice-guys">a field guide to Nice Guys</a> recently, but Cracked? That's dude-central!<br /><br /><i>Edited for clarification:</i> In much the same way that 'killer whale' as a <i>term</i> refers to a specific breed of whale and not just random homicidal cetaceans, 'Nice Guy' is a term for a specific type of guy engaged in a specific type of behavior, which is described in-depth at the sites linked above.<br /><br />Essentially, a Nice Guy is a manipulative man who befriends a girl but has ulterior motives in doing so. He has a sexual/romantic interest in her but fears he'll be rejected if he asks her out directly, so instead he attempts to weasel into her circle of friends. There he encourages her to rely on him for emotional support, and often tries to sabotage her relationship by badmouthing whoever she's with ("Why are you with him? He's a jerk!"). The Nice Guy does these things under the mistaken belief that the girl will have a magical epiphany about how great he is, and he'll be upgraded to boyfriend/rewarded with sex. Unfortunately for him, girls can't read minds either, so the object of his affection generally thinks of him as a friend—you know, since that's how he's putting himself out there.<br /><br />Since he's not actually her friend and it's all a sham, he will eventually turn on her for being a bitch who only likes jerks, and then wander off to whine about friend-zones and how girls only go for assholes who treat them like shit by, oh, asking them out directly and interacting with them like people instead of "machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out."<br /><br />Naturally, Nice Guys don't grasp the difference between themselves and actual nice guys.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=845924" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:842649Conspiracies 'R Us2012-11-15T17:52:27Z2013-05-26T00:12:35Znot mad, just disappointedpublic2I will not dream about politics tonight. I will <i>not</i> dream about politics tonight. I <i>will not dream</i> about politics tonight...<sup>1</sup><br /><br />But I'll sure as hell write about it. I seem to be writing more about politics now than I did during the year leading up to this election.<br /><br />For a few minutes this week past, it seemed as if the crazy spell was broken. The shrieking prophets of doom were temporarily dumbstruck. The viewers blinked out the sleepy dust, stretched and asked what time it was. The moderates dared to raise their hands and suggest rethinking the party's policy of political martial law. Everyone took a little step back from the Cliffs of Insanity.<br /><br />A few folks asked if we could stop catering to the fringe now, and start work on "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/david-frum-breaks-down-wh_n_2130767.html">a message that works for people who represent all of America</a>."<sup>2</sup> There were many nods; turning a blind eye to the tinfoil behatted birthers was not only embarrassing, it was also counterproductive in reaching out to "<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/why_romney_was_surprised_to_lose_his_campaign_had_the_wrong_numbers_bad.html">a segment of society whose members have often been discriminated against through the types of disqualification-hunts that [rabid birther] Donald Trump engaged in so vigorously</a>."<sup>3</sup> And, as liberal <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#49736294">Rachel Maddow pointed out</a> (with only moderate gloating), the idea behind the two-party system is that those two parties come at problems from two different angles and hash it out; it breaks down if one party dedicates itself entirely to keeping anything at all from getting done in the name of destroying the political career of one particular president.<br /><br />Alas, it was not meant to be. Or at least, not yet.<br /><br />Despite his attempt at a classy concession speech, <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/romney-blames-loss-on-obamas-gifts-to-minorities-and-young-voters/">Romney threw out a snarky parting shot</a> about Obama winning on the basis of 'gifts' to targeted voters. The gist of the message is common sense: the Democratic campaign tailored its approach to a wide range of voting blocs, emphasizing Obama's stance on reproductive rights to female voters, on immigration issues to Latino voters, on student loans to young voters, etc.--while the Republican campaign seemed to target only <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-republican-convention-emphasizes-diversity-racial-incidents-intrude/2012/08/29/b9023a52-f1ec-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html">angry white guy</a> voters. The language of the message, on the other hand, is loaded with the same angry white guy rhetoric that the party has used for four years to slyly stir Teapublicans into a foaming rage of willful misunderstanding. Off in a family room somewhere, someone's uncle is ranting at his family that Obama <i>literally</i> handed out presents in exchange for votes, and that's the goal of this rhetoric. The stupid, counterproductive goal.<br /><br />And now the conspiracy engines at Fox News have smelled fresh blood, proclaiming voter fraud because <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/philadelphia_voter_fraud_is_it_possible_that_barack_obama_won_100_percent.html">areas of Pennsylvania went 100% to Obama</a>. It seems incomprehensible to them that in predominantly black urban areas, Obama got nearly all of the vote, despite the campaign writing off black voters and urban voters in the first place, and pre-election polls showing Romney's support among black voters to be so ridiculously low that it registered as 0%. But again, beneath the bewilderment that they can't find a single Romney voter in some areas, the message they're sending is one of disenfranchisement: there shouldn't be that many black people voting, and if there are, it must be fraud. It can't be that they were motivated to get out and vote--it must be that they're dishonest and cheating the system.<br /><br />With the Right torn between those who want to 'double-down' and those who want to pull back to a more moderate platform, I've seen many suggestions that this is not the end of our partisan woes, but just the beginning of the GOP's own less-than-civil war.<br /><br /><hr><font size="-2"><sup>1</sup> I wrote this bit last night, and it worked! I didn't dream of politics! I dreamt of editing text...</font><br /><font size="-2"><sup>2</sup> "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/david-frum-breaks-down-wh_n_2130767.html">David Frum: Why Mitt Romney Lost the 2012 Presidential Election (VIDEO)</a>," <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com"><i>The Huffington Post</i></a> 14 November 2012.</font><br /><font size="-2"><sup>3</sup> John Dickerson, "<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/why_romney_was_surprised_to_lose_his_campaign_had_the_wrong_numbers_bad.html">Why Romney Never Saw It Coming</a>," <a href="http://www.slate.com/"><i>Slate</i></a> 9 November 2012.</font><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=842649" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:840393The road back to sanity?2012-11-08T06:21:38Z2013-06-09T05:35:22Zcontemplativepublic0Now that the election's over, there's a lot of chatter about why Romney lost and what it means for the Republican party, as well as the significance and repercussions of other races like Bachmann's narrow victory and the universal defeat of the <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/gops-rape-apologist-caucus-did-not-fare-well-tonight/58770/">"GOP's Rape Apologist Caucus"</a>. I'm not referring to the talking heads whining about how "<a href="http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/07/glenn-we-are-going-to-double-down/">half of the country doesn’t put value in honor [and honesty] anymore</a>," or '<a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/bill-oreilly-the-white-establishment-is-now-the-minority-148705.html">it's the damn minorities and women who think they're entitled to a hand-out that are killing traditional America</a>' (Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, respectively) but actual <i>Oh shit, how did it come to this?</i> discussions. Most are focusing on the issue of compromise--insisting that the President needs to, naturally, while ignoring that it was their party digging its heels in, even on its own bills, specifically to prevent anything useful from being accomplished for which he might be credited. (Sigh.)<br /><br />It's no secret that the <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2004/06/What-Conservatives-Really-Wanted.aspx">Republicans hitched their wagon to the evangelicals in the '80s</a>, and they've been paying off that loan ever since. The problem with defining the GOP as the party of both God and Wall Street (apart from that whole Matthew 6:24 thing) is that it leaves out in the cold old-fashioned and fiscal conservatives uninterested in pandering to, or even associating with, a religious fringe that looks increasingly bigoted, behind the times and batshit crazy.<br /><br />Despite Fox News' occasional attempt to panic your uncle with talk of taking God off the money, polls this year showed an increasing number of people uncomfortable with the large role religion plays in our politics, and the worries underlying these numbers aren't new. In the '60s, some voters feared Kennedy's election would invite the Vatican into US politics. During this election, some expressed the same concerns about the Mormon church, particularly given its role in the passage of Prop 8 in California. Yet for twenty years, Republicans have sat back as evangelical Christians hijacked their party to inject religion into national politics while ranting about any politics that sniffed near religion or religious issues (legal and tax exemptions for quasi-political religious organizations! no <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/article1258390.ece">oversight in children's care homes</a>! no contraception for anybody!). Republican voters put up with it, because what else were they going to do? Vote Democrat?<br /><br />Meanwhile, as the pundits cite shifting demographics in favor of Obama, they're missing a generation of young conservatives who find the evangelical control of the GOP skeevy, the conservative media's shit-stirring among the old folks laughable, and the Libertarian candidates not such a bad option anymore.<br /><br />A conservative friend pointed out how far down the rabbit hole and up their own asses the party is these days. "Their worldview now is literally, 'We need some supernatural divine intervention up in here.' [...] The truth is, they just don't know what to do anymore. They just want to pray to Jeebus to set the world back to what they want." Where I (cynically) saw the Becks and Palins as charismatic con men scamming the unsuspecting, he assured me they're for real, and that's part of the problem. "Imagine all the worst, most fucked-up appeals to theology a person can invent in their own mind to explain why the world should be how they want it to be, then multiply that by ten. That's what is going on in the heads of these people."<br /><br />To be clear, I'm not saying Romney lost because of irreligious conservatives voting for third party candidates. I'm saying that the Republicans are losing the most valuable part of their audience entirely, as the younger generation shakes their collective head at the nouveau televangelists and looks for alternatives to the crazy old man party.<br /><br />Instead of wondering which ethnic group it should concentrate on winning over for 2016, the GOP would do better to step away from the Kool-aid entirely, and refit its platform to embrace a wider swath of the conservative base that they've been actively scaring off.<br /><br /><i>Update:</i> Or maybe they'll lock themselves in the echo chamber and cry for a while...<blockquote>“Turnout was the big problem, since we didn’t get all of McCain’s voters to the polls, but we really should have been talking more about Benghazi and Obamacare,” an adviser says, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Those are major issues and Romney rarely mentioned them in the final days.” (Robert Costa, "<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/332937/romney-adviser-it-was-messaging-robert-costa">Romney Adviser: It Was the Messaging</a>," <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com">National Review Online</a> November 7, 2012)</blockquote>Compare and contrast the comments with those at <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/">The Atlantic Wire</a>'s <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/romney-advisers-begin-floating-theories-romneys-loss/58807/">reposting of the article</a>, if you'd like.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=840393" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:837520Just imagine the Yelp reviews the USA would get...2012-09-16T06:29:32Z2013-06-09T05:45:23Zcynicalpublic0<blockquote><a href="https://twitter.com/Berryhillj/status/246830833820897280">When they say we need to "run government like a business", ask them to name a business that's run like a democracy.</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/Berryhillj"><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /><b>berryhillj</b></span></a>)</blockquote>There's a thing. <br /><br />It's all well and good to suggest that the budgetary aspects of governing would be better handled by a politician with business experience, but a political system run like a corporation would be an oligarchy, in which faceless and disposable labor ideally (to said corporation) has no voice, no rights, and no protection against abuse, under a chairman and board that have all the power and ideally (to said corporation) don't have to answer to the masses--only to the power brokers and money-men behind the scenes. Wave the flag of rugged individualism all you like, but it's highly unlikely that anybody on the factory floor is going to bootstrap themselves into the boardroom. Invade Colorado and fight a football team, maybe...<br /><br />Why don't we run America like a business? Because they're two different things. A business is an organization of willing workers under a management team with an overall agenda which is, ultimately, to make money, while a country is random people from a geographic blob overseen by officials whose agenda is, hopefully, to keep life in that geographic blob running smoothly. Because the first rule of business is that the business itself and profit always comes first, while the first rule of government should be that the good of the community and its members comes first. Because businesses institute policies specifically to thwart customer attempts to hold them accountable for their services/merchandise because it's all about saving that buck, while countries institute laws specifically to ensure that politicians are held accountable to the public, because it's all about maintaining the integrity of that office.<br /><br />I admit that my bias is showing, but I don't understand how anyone who's ever worked for a corporation would want to vote one into office, even by proxy through politicians who hold them up as an ideal.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=837520" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2010-04-20:501846:837327'Tis the season (for political rants)2012-09-13T12:12:03Z2013-06-09T05:47:14Zpissed offpublic0While I'll happily rant up a storm about specific issues that get under my skin, I'm usually less interested in ranting about politics in a general sense. I see the whole conservative/liberal spectrum as a pendulum, a balancing act for long-term social order rather than a winner-take-all tug-o-war over a societal death pit. <br /><br />But Romney's calculated moves to appeal to the Far-Right, long past the "Dude, have you no dignity?" line, have finally squeaked into "Dude, have you no soul?" territory with his comment on Libya:<blockquote>I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.</blockquote>He not only ignored what was actually said, he tried to twist it into something completely different, in order to score political points through American deaths.<blockquote>[Romney's statement] conflates a statement from a staffer in the Egyptian Embassy, who was trying to calm a potential mob, with the Obama administration. It conflates unrest in Egypt with the murder of an American diplomat, among others, in Libya. And it accuses the Obama administration of something that they not only didn't do, but that would have been horrific of them to do: To sympathize with terrorists who had just murdered one of their ambassadors. (Ezra Klein, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/12/the-romney-campaign-gets- desperate/">"Romney's comments on Libya show desperation,"</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/">Washington Post</a> 12 September 2012)</blockquote>And of course the cockroaches pour out of the woodwork--Palin, Perry, Blunt, et al., the "Oh us poor oppressed Christians!" crowd--all happy to wallow in the blood and condemn a tweet calling for religious sensitivity.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mokie&ditemid=837327" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments