In 1972, Pauline Kael’s infamous quote “I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon.” became a rallying cry for those who wish to paint liberals as out-of-touch northeastern elites^{[1]Which is understandable. It’s a really stupid thing to say.}. Thirty three years later, the tables have turned and it’s conservatives who don’t understand the world outside their insular bubbles of influence :

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, responding to criticism from the vice president, said he doesn’t “care if Dick Cheney likes my mother or not.”

The vice president said in a recent interview that Dean was not the type of person to lead a political party and mentioned the chairman’s mother.

“I’ve never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I’ve never met anybody who does. He’s never won anything, as best I can tell,” Cheney said in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.”

Of course you don’t understand his appeal, Mr. Vice President. People who love Howard Dean aren’t the money-grubbing pieces of shit^{[2]Pardon my “freedom”.} who would spend $10,000 a plate for a “seat at the table”. That’s your constituency.

Tonight on Turner Classic Movies : Soylent Green, Westworld, & Logan’s Run. My life clock is already blinking with excitement…

I know posting about Michael Jackson is completely played out, but you’ve gotta read this brilliant commentary by Stephen King ^{[1]Yes, that Stephen King} in the print edition of the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly^{[1]Yes, that Entertainment Weekly} :

It’s sickening that it takes a columnist in an entertainment magazine to point out that more than 2,000 newspeople covered the Jackson trial — which is only a few hundred more than the number of American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq. On the same day that crowds gathered in Times Square (and around the world) to learn the fate of the Pale Peculiarity, another four suicide bombings took place in that tortured, bleeding country. And if you tell me that news doesn’t belong in Entertainment Weekly, I respond by saying Michael Jackson under a black umbrella doesn’t belong on the front page of the New York Times.
[. . .]
The media first turned the trial into a freak-show by emphasizing Jackson’s peculiarities rather than his humanity, and stoked the ratings with constant, trivializing coverage while other, far more important stories went under-reported or completely ignored in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Washington, D.C.

The press might respond by saying, “We gave the people what they wanted.”

My response would be, “My job is to give them what they want. When he steps into a recording studio, it’s Michael Jackson’s job to give them what they want. Your job is to give the people what they need.”

Is it just me or does it seem that the worse things get with news organizations, the more we see entertainers like John Stewart, Al Franken, and now Stephen King feel like they’re forced to pick up the slack?

Now that I’m on a new host that gives me much, much more bandwidth I’ve been tossing around the idea of having an MP3 of the week sorta thing. My first offering is an example of the greatest iPod song juxtaposition ever, which starts with The Ecumenical Movement by Crystal and Robin Bernard^{[1]Yeah, Crystal Bernard was on the show Wings.} . The track has been floating around the web for a few years because the first half features the hilarious anti-evolution “Monkey Song”, but the song in the second half reveals quite a bit about the particular brand of Christianity these little girls are trying to sell^{[2]Not to mention the fact that it’s a much better song.} . Here’s a sample lyric :

You hear a lot of talk about
the Ecumenical Movement.
They say that we should get together
and all be one big family.
Catholic, Protestant and Jew,
Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu,
I bet they want the Devil too
in the Ecumenical Movement.

They always talk about the golden rule
and the sermon on the mount,
but whether you’ve ever been born again
doesn’t even seem to count.
I know my sins are all forgiven
and I am on my way to heaven.
My trust is in the Lord and not
the Ecumenical Movement.

Proving once again that shuffle mode on the iPod is better than sliced bread, this hateful, bouncy ode to religious xenophobia was followed by “I Wanna Be Sedated”. You said it, Brother Joey.

Hi Everyone, Ross here again to flog the dead horse of my inaugural post. Well, flog is far too understated a description. What I mean is that I’m flogging the dead horse until it’s nothing but subatomic particles, at which point I begin recombining it to flog some more.

NOTE: While I am singling out a particular comment in this post, I want to make it clear that I’m not doing so to make a personal attack on the commentor. It’s just that as I wrote my reply, I decided that for space/time continuum purposes, the response warranted a post of its own.

Commentor Dan wrote the following in the comments to my previous post:

I disagree, though, with your attacks on those questioning her judgement. That’s not unfair or sexist. Just because it’s normal not to steal I’m not going to leave my brand new car in a bad neighborhood at night with the keys in the ignition. If I did that and you questioned my judgement, you’re not condoning stealing.

Now I understand what Dan is saying in this comment. The old “unlocked car/flashy jewelry/running naked” in a violent neighborhood at night argument is a common tactic in favor of shaming the victim. The idea seems to be that by somehow giving temptation to rapists, the victims of rape, while not actually to blame per se for their predicament, ought to endure greater responsibility for their situation.

It’s also completely wrong.

The thing people (mostly male, though occasionally females as well) who make this argument are forgetting is that women, simply by being women, are on display at all times. Continuing with Dan’s metaphor, their situation is much closer to a car owner who, upon buying a car finds out that the locks have been removed and that the ignition doesn’t require a key. The owner didn’t ask for the security features to be removed, and in fact, feels quite rightly that they’re entitled to the same security features every other car owner gets. Instead, they’re told that this is just how the car is sold, and if they don’t like it, they may as well not drive.

Men also forget, and as a man I admit I’m equally guilty of this, that our civilization is obsessed with Female sexuality, ubiquitously obsessed with it. Obsessively obsessed with it. Hyperbolically obsessviely obsessed with it. Well, you get the idea.

As has been pointed out by far keener minds than mine, Female = Sensuality and sex in our society. From Lad Mags, fashion shoots, discussions of parenthood, birth control, and whatever else you can think of, women are the cultural indicator of sex and sensuality, and they’re constantly enduring advice, suggestions and even outright commands relating to it that men never hear.

So, women are supposed to be sexy and careful, chaste and available? Zounds, that’s tough. What this means is that they put up with a giant mountain of bullshit that would cause men, were they to experience it for themselves, to curl up in the fetal position and sob.

What I mean to say is that Women give “temptation” and “Cause” to rapists simply by having boobies. Old women are raped. Reclusive women are raped. Women walking to libraries, Women drinking at bars, and Women sleeping in their own beds at night are raped. So telling women to “behave” or be careful doesn’t do a good goddamn to help solve the actual fucking problem, you know?

It’s possible that the people who make the “robbery” metaphor argument just haven’t noticed it, so I’d like to encourage them to try a little harder to pay attention the next time they’re hanging out with a close female friend. What they’re notice is that if said friend isn’t covered in scales, and if they appear to be single (or hell, even if they don’t), they’re constantly confronted with their sexuality, no matter what the situation is. It’s hilarious, except when it’s creepy or scary.

Let’s talk about what this means.

CAUTION: ALL NAMES BELOW ARE PSEUDONYMS

EXAMPLE #1

In the fall of 2004, my friend Imelda and I went to a bookstore* so I could pick up a copy of Mojo. Imelda passed the time browsing the books by herself while I scanned music magazine. After less than 10 minutes alone in the sci fi section, a weird older guy tried to pick her up. He wasn’t creepy so much as he was inept, but what struck me about it was how unsolicited his approach was.

If they had seen each other from across the room, made the googly eyes and performed the covert-public-flirting mating ritual**, and then he decided to chance it and chat her up, that would have been completely understandable. Shit muthafucka, men and women meet each other in this way all the fucking time, and very frequently it results in make outs. Hot make outs.

However, in this case the weirdo in question just sort of appeared out of nowhere, like some kind of sexually awkward ninja, and started trying to get her digits. His pick up line also hilarious got her ethnicity wrong. Nothing scary happened, but it took him far too long to get that she wasn’t interested.

Example #2

My friend Artemis and I frequently made a point of hanging out at a local music venue. Our Monday/Thursday/Saturday experience at this place would generally follow a predictable and annoying pattern:

1) Arrive.
2) Artemis and I go to the Bar.
3) While standing in line for a drink, 2 or three guys chat her up.
4) She gets hit on on the way to the bathroom.
5) Very few of these guys bother with subtlety or politeness, or even, say, waiting to make eye contact or something. Their attitude seemed to be “OOOH, boobie under that shirt. MUST TALK TO BOOBIES!”

From the moent we entered the bar, instantly and inevitably Artemis endured a come-on gauntlet that Kung Fu movies would benefit from copying. They quite frequently got in the way of the fact that we were there to see some music, not talk about how cool her hair was, etc. She had by this point assumed an impassive, disinterested gaze, which a lot of clueless guys interpret as being “snobby”.

Final Example, I swear.

There are actually too many instances to single out, but here goes. Every Single Party In The history Of The Human Race, in which the single male population significantly outnumbers the single female population. I urge all of you to pay close attention to these nightmarishly embarassing-to-be-a-guy affairs. Watch how the single women are surrounded and picked apart by the sexually desperate men, like lone human survivors in a zombie film.

These are of course just examples of socially “normal” behavior. I’m deliberately not including the much more odious behvior, like wolf whistling, groping, or the like that women endure constantly just for owning the pussy. This normal shit goes unnoticed by otherwise intelligent people, but there’s really no excuse for it. Hell, I’m one of the people trying to get into that pussy and I noticed just by using the ancient art of paying fucking attention, something I would like to ask of anyone reading this.

What pisses me off about the aformentioned comparison is that I feel, very strongly, that equating rape to stealing isn’t fair because like it or not, people think stealing is normal to a degree. Some corporate pencils here, some downloaded music there… Ignored also is the fact that quite often, theft often doesn’t really hurt as much as it inconveniences. Theft rarely gets to the core of a person’s very existence.

Rape on the other hand? Not quite as blase. Going back to Dan’s car analogy for a moment, the thing which always disturbs me about it is that it ignores the fact that most commonly, girls aren’t raped because they were acting like ho nasty hobags from hosylvania***. Rape is more commonly perpetrated by someone the victim knows, or in wartime, when rape is used as a means of terror against the enemy population. Considering this point, the more dangerous aspect of our society’s response to rape isn’t the Blame the Victim brigade exactly, but the attendent terribly dangerous misunderstandings that accompany our view of rape.

The point is not only that women are more likely to be raped doing normal, everyday shit, but that they’re constantly forced to justify themselves when it happens. That we consider this acceptable is the fucking problem, and in my humble opinion, we need to shut the fuck up with the robbery-car-metaphors, and talk about the rape-assault-evil facts.

Anyway, as I said in my previous post, and as should be totally obvious, the problem in our civilization with sexism, sexual exceptionalism and mysogeny isn’t to say “Sorry ladies, suck it up and fucking deal.” It’s to actually try to fight the seixsm in the first place, partly by absolutely rejecting it. Say it with me people: I am not my cock.

Ross out.

*Skylight books in Los Feliz, in case anyone in LA wants to know.

** Which is this:

A) See each other from afar, make eye contact, and try to constantly position yourself so that they can see you and you can see them.

B) Wait; Look fetching, dashing, or whatever you can pull off wearing a blue jumper.

C) Try very hard to look cool at whatever you’re doing. At the book store, it’s reading really intently. At the music store, it’s looking extremely comfortable perusing the Swedish indie pop imports. At the bar, it’s being the funniest, wittiest member of your group, only loudly enough so that they hear you and think “Golly, I bet they kiss as good as they pretend to be witty.”

D) Wait until a decent amount of time has passed, preferably after at least half an hour of the ritual so that you have a clear idea that they’re playing too, and preferably when you or they are leaving, so that you don’t look like a creep and/or risk an awkwardly overextended bar conversation, and go talk to them. The conversation will be long enough to be fun, but short enough that you get to leave on a high note. Exchange e-mails or phone numbers. Rinse, repeat.

*** Used ironically. If it needs to be said, I’m pro sex and pro-women living their lives however they feel. I don’t believe in sluts, I only believe some people don’t respect themselves. Men and women are both guilty of this.

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new member of the The Talent Show family. Welcome aboard Ross, who you might know from This Space For Rent. This isn’t turning into a group blog a la Pandagon, but the pressures of running a day-to-day operation like this are hard to keep up with at times^[1] and can result in a drought of posts and some pretty bad writing^[2]. Ross, on the other hand, had been on a roll lately and I think you guys will enjoy reading his contributions. Considering that Ross is also one of my oldest friends and that we can find a way to argue about pretty much anything^[3], it should lead to some interesting discussions in the comments.

I Am Not My Cock.

There, I said it. I never thought I was going to need to, but welcome to 2005, I guess.

Before I go any further with what is likely to be a profanity laden tirade, how about some background. The Blogosphere has been alit lately with a lot of discussion about the subject of rape, mostly centering around that poor girl in Aruba and the implication that she somehow may have brought her unhappy circumstances upon herself.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I welcome you to the planet Earth. I’ve set up an Earth-orientation tent to the left of this website. Please contact my office for further questions.

For the rest of you, the discussion of the Aruba girl’s disappearance has plopped the media back into its usual comfortable position, namely the chance to replace real journalism with MORAL OUTRAGE (age age age). Naturally, because our society’s morals are strictly organized around who should have access to pussy, media coverage has inevitably tilted to the “Just what was that girl doing in that place anyway?”

Atrios noticed this odious development early on, and made the following what-should-be-blindingly-obvious observation:

My guess is that they are very angry with the missing white woman for not providing them with a sufficient number of genuine news updates, so they’ll start pushing the “she deserved what she got” angle.

Having previously made mention of media sexism over at my own website, I find it ridiculous that anyone could possibly find fault with his observation. Hell, TiVo CNN, MSNBC or Fox during any given 24 hour period and you’ll be deluged with The Girl Gotta Have it imagery.

And yet somehow, someway, there’s always some douchebag political writer storing pent up sexism like water in a camel’s hump, patiently awaiting the moment when he’ll need to feed off of it for dear life, and inspiration. I fully expected conservatives to provide such dickheadery, but I was amazed to see it pop up on the left, from the mind of normally not a dickhead Steve Gilliard.

Steve, responding to the aforementioned Atrios post, started things off on the right foot. He rightfully pointed out racial and class bias inherent in coverage of the story, but then out of nowhere he turns into a pandering, fretting Ward Cleaver:

But what surprises me is that no one asked about the lax supervision on this trip. Because these were middle class kids, their drinking and screwing around wasn’t really a factor in the news coverage. Clearly, these kids were not closely supervised while they got drunk and picked up men. The chaperones who should have put clear limits on their behavior, well, were too busy screwing around on their own.

Um, I’m sorry, but did I miss something? Are 18 year olds no longer allowed to leave their houses without minders? Or is Steve being a moralizing intentionally obtuse prude? As if to answer my (only slightly rehtorical) question, the hole he dug gets deeper and he fills it up with complete bullshit:

Now, I’ve always been confused as to why a girl would go off with three guys. Was she going to pull a train? Or did she have two spare sex organs for them to use?

Steve, let me answer this one for you: Because it’s none of your goddamned business, that’s why. Got it? Let me add also that Who gives a goddamn why she goes off with three guys? Maybe they were talking about playing trivial pursuit. Hell, I once went to a hotel with 3 girls I met at a concert, in order to play monopoly and share cigarettes. Was I annoyed that none of them wanted to make out with me? Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that Steve Gillard apparently gets turned on thinking about girls with more than one vagina. Ew.

I’m kidding, I swear!

Because otherwise, that sounds like a really bad decision. One which she should have been warned against. Boys in groups tend to do things they wouldn’t do alone. And the expectation of sex must have been high.

You know, and this is just me, but girls often do things in groups they wouldn’t do alone, just like boys. For instance, I wouldn’t think of playing soccer alone, because that would be stupid.

What also needs to be discussed with women going overseas, even to a vacation resort, is the perception of American women, courtesy of Hollywood. Which is this: they’re easy. European men see American women on vacation. In a place like Aruba, it’s even worse. So they expect American women are easy targets, and even better, they don’t hang around, so if there are any “accidents”, they deal with them at home. This was even the source of a column in the Onion, where this girl was waxing poetic about this Italian guy and the Italian guy was bragging about banging this silly American girl. Well, there’s reality in that, and I’ve seen it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. The old men can’t help it/girls are stupid monster rears it’s ugly head, and my jaw hits the floor. I have to ask if Steve has ever even left this country. Every single nation in the world believes that the women in other countries are mad sluts. My dad told me, just before going to England, that European girls do it like “shaking hands”. English people insisted to me that the Germans were ho-nasty freaks. I met someone from Poland who told me that she got tons more play in England than in Poland. The grass is greener and way, way sluttier on the other side, no matter where your yard is. To act like this isn’t the case is willfully know-nothing, and beneath Gilliard’s normal level of discourse and knowledge. It’s embarassing even having to point this out.

Which bring me back to my original point: my cock.

I Am Not My Cock.

And guys, you aren’t your cocks either.

You see, as Gillard’s oddly obtuse observations demonstrate, there is a widely held belief amongst even liberal men, that male humans are predators. That they are first and foremost nothing but a cock. After that, balls, then eyes, then rage, and somewhere way down the line, they become capable of speech, thought, and memory.

Whatever.

I want to go on record as saying a big, mean Fuck You to every single man who has ever claimed that men are incapable of stopping themselves when pussy is on the line. Here’s why:

I have never raped anyone. I have never hurt someone because they wouldn’t put out. I have never gang raped someone. I have never died from blue balls. I have never exploded because some sideboob accidentally came into my line of sight. I have never raped anyone. Shockingly, I also think this is a pretty normal state of affairs.

This isn’t something I’m proud of. That’s because I can’t be proud of not raping people anymore than I can be proud of not shitting on myself whenever I laugh. Not being a rapist is the default fucking setting. Far as I know, most men have never raped anyone. I assume this means that rapists are a minority of men, and in a normal world you’d think that not being an evil, violent monster would make one more sympathetic to the victims of rape, who are also not evil violent monsters.

Hell, you’d think that most guys, who like me have never raped anyone would think to themselves “Hey, I don’t go around assaulting people. I don’t rape women. When a girl says no, or turns me down, I handle it like an adult. And now that I think about it, I think I’m kinda normal. I guess being able to not hurt and murder and rape is the norm. Why, that means rapists are fucking evil freaks. Golly gee willikers, who’d a thunk it!”.

Apparently, that’s not the case, as demonstrated by Gilliard’s well meaning but clueless observations, and by some frankly disturbing commentary on his and other sites. Tons of male bloggers and commenters are suddenly stepping over themselves to equivocate and fiddle back and forth on the subject of rape. Sure, they lazily toss in disclaimers about their sympathy to women who have been assaulted, but that’s usually followed quickly by a lecture on how women ought to behave.

These sad douchebags state with a straight face the manifesto of all sexist dillweeds who can’t wait to castigate women for being sexual beings: “Men”, apparently meaning them, “can’t control themselves”, and therefore women shouldn’t be surprised by being assaulted. Really? From this point of view, it’s somehow the woman’s responsibility not to get raped, rather than society’s responsibility to punish and prevent rape in the first place.

I Am Not My Cock. Seriously.

Think about what the argument that you have no control over yourself says. They are arguing that men are either animals, retarded children, or monsters without self restraint. who must therefore be carefully controlled and protected from women. Rape after all being, in their worldview, an inevitable outcome of coming within 3 feet of pussy.

Honestly, why would ANYONE want to go on record as even obliquely justifying sexual assault? And with the Corky defense no less? Are you fucking insane? What’s next, going on record as “seeing how NAMBLA has a point”? As far as I can tell, rapists, like murderers, are the bad guys. Then again, you can legally kill someone who is trying to kill you. So there is, occasionally, a justification for murder. There is no such analogue for rape. Rape is, simply put, evil inflicted through sex. There is no defense for it, and anyone who goes looking for one out to be ashamed of themselves.

Is it true that some people of both sexes behave stupidly, overly trusting or even self destructive? Do people of both genders deserve to be held accountable when they fuck up? Sure! But then, I’m thinking about criminal behavior here. Last I checked, fucking isn’t illegal. Neither is drinking, singing, staying out late, or acting stupid.

And my point? I Am Not My Cock.

Contrary to what many men (even on the left) seem to think, most guys can and do meet women all the time without even once assaulting them. It’s really easy. You just, you know, not be a rapist. Most guys, far as I know, don’t lose control of themselves when they see even a hint of sideboob. So why in hell do we men feel the need to sympathize with, identify with, or justify the behavior of people who haven’t learned the first thing about civilized behavior, or worse, rapists? How can it be so difficult for us to realize that rapists are the lowest form of scum, and that their victims are, in fact, victims?

Rape Victims do not ask to be raped, and no matter how carefully or irresponsibly they may behave, they do not deserve to be raped, no matter what circumstances one may feel makes a situation hazy. Which by the way don’t actually tend to, you know, exist. Got it guys? Rape victims deserve justice, sympathy and support, not your judgment or advice.

Look, I know the majority of men, myself included, are raised in a horribly sexist culture that considers our cock-prerogatives to be of utmost cultural importance. We’re taught to look to the male perspective first, and it bleeds into everything. Sexism is a problem, and women should be ready to deal with it. But guess what dipshits – The answer to that problem isn’t to tell girls “Them’s the breaks. If you can’t handle it, fuck off!” The solution, for those of you not following me, is to fight the actual problem, which is sexism and male entitlement.

But most importantly, I am not my cock. Period. I am not my balls. I am not my hormones, my sex drive, or my lust. I am not my cock. I am a man, capable of making decisions, capable of self control, capable of thought, of reason, of love and hate and lust and boredom and choice. My cock obeys my commands, and not the other way around. Guys, you are not your cock either. You have total control and you are not a slave. Don’t fall into the trap of believing otherwise.

I am not my cock, and I’m really quite happy about it. Anyone who feels differently just isn’t a man.

Remember Heart of the Beholder? Well it looks like the movie “Hollywood is afraid to make” has been made by…well…a bunch of people in Hollywood. The site now features a trailer that’s every bit as cringe-worthy as the script. The friend I mentioned in last year’s post ended up not working on the film because the part they wanted her to audition for required some gratuitous nudity, which is featured in one of the nine clips on the Heart of the Beholder’s site. That’s right, of the clips chosen to draw people to the film, they pick the one with the boobs bouncing in slow motion.

Another thing that I just caught this time around was the producer gushing that “the film’s structure is flawless and the writing excellent in every aspect”. For those that haven’t read the film’s script, the “excellent in every way” includes a blowjob from a toothless prostitute, a Three Stooges imitation, and a guy getting shot in the nuts during the film’s climactic game of paintball. Not to mention the final scene, which is soooo bad that I’m gonna quote it again :

Mike stands face to face, listening to Bob’s plea.

BOB (CONT’D)
I’M BEGGING YOU PLEASE!! IS THERE ANYWAY
YOU CAN FIND IT IN YOUR HEART TO FORGIVE
ME?!!

Mike looks deep at Bob’s sweating face, the twitching of his
mouth, the betrayal in his eyes.

MIKE
Forgive you?

Mike takes a slow deep breath.

MIKE (CONT’D)
Not a chance.

Bob’s eyes open wide in fear. With one fast and fluid
movement, Mike throws his fist straight into camera.

BLACKOUT:

Who knows? Maybe all this crap didn’t make it into the final version of the film. We’ll find out in a few years when we accidentally catch part of the movie on late-night Skinemax or something.

There are two things I hate about art world, being knowingly offensive for its shock value “emotional expression” and unchecked pretension. This dickhead has both strikes against him :

A performance artist wearing a business suit and safety harnesses jumped repeatedly from a museum roof to create photographs that recall scenes from the World Trade Center attack, but his spectacle was scorned by some onlookers and victims’ relatives.
[. . .]
Skarbakka, 34, said he started thinking about falling after watching on television as workers jumped to their deaths from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life.

“Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself,” he said.

Duuuude…he should have waited until autumn, which is also called the fall, and done it while leaves are falling. Since he’s got the “fall” gimmick pretty much covered, my “artistic response” to 9/11 will be to call 911 on September 11th nine-hundred and eleven times in a row and read passages from the Koran until the operator hangs up. Then I’ll have those calls burned to 911 CDs, have th CDs hung on a gallery where I’ll have an opening so that all of my friends and acquaintances have a chance to tell me how wonderful I am.

The crowd response to this trite and meaningless display was also amusing :

His antics on Tuesday attracted a crowd of gawkers, who became sidewalk critics.

“It was fabulous,” said Darlene Schuff, 56. “I just wanted to be a part of it. It’s a happening.”

Others in the crowd said Skarbakka’s effort was too staged to have meaning.
[. . .]
“What kind of a sick individual is he? Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels,” Rosemarie Giallombardo, whose son Paul Salvio died in the terrorist attack, told the (New York) Daily News. “He’s an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something.”

“It’s a happening”? Are you kidding me? Fifty bucks says that woman was somehow affiliated with the art/stunt. There’s no way some stranger casually walking down the street would say something that obnoxious.

It’s a tough choice, but if I had to pick a favorite fire-breathing, immigrant-baiting blowhard, I’d have to go with Lou Dobbs^{[1] Yes, even more than Pat Buchanan.}. Why? Because if you can look past the way he sneers the words “illegal aliens”^{[2] Which is, admittedly, a very difficult thing to do.} you can find the occasional story that really deserves more attention :

DOBBS: The influx of illegal aliens into this country has reached nothing short of a crisis as we report here almost nightly. Since the federal government has failed absolutely to deal with the issue of illegal immigration and border security, my next guest proposes his own plan to handle what he calls the imminent invasion from Mexico. Robert Vasquez is commissioner of Canyon County, Idaho. He wants to sue the people who hire illegal aliens. That plan would make Canyon County, Idaho, the only local government in this country to use federal racketeering statutes against people who employ illegal aliens.
[. . .]
VASQUEZ: Well, I was listening to your previous segment. I believe that certainly those World Trade Organizations have had some influence in the passage of NAFTA, and certainly in the preparation of CAFTA. It’s merely the establishment of the 21st Century slave trade, as I see it. It affects not only my county, but the United States. And I’m pleased to see that representative Bernie Sanders and others are taking action on that.

DOBBS: Commissioner, the idea that you bring to bear, that is using racketeering statutes, to actually go after the — those firms that hire illegal aliens, how soon can you do what you propose? And precisely what will happen, in your judgment, to those employers?

VASQUEZ: Well, Mr. Dobbs, we’re on a fast track, as I see it. We initiated this action in March. We brought in Howard Foster, who’s an attorney from Johnson Bell. He rendered an opinion letter indicating that we had standing. And from there we’re proceeding with the investigation. When that investigation is concluded, we’ll proceed to the next step, which will involve the filing of a brief — and then possibly the lawsuit to follow.

[. . .]
DOBBS: Well, many farmers, construction companies, in your region tell us that they don’t feel they can survive without that illegal labor. How do you react?

VASQUEZ: Well, if your business depends on breaking the law and the exploitation of labor, then perhaps you don’t need to be in business.

Damn right. Of course, big business loves the invisible hand as long as they’re talking about cutting the costs of environmental and labor regulations, but there always seems to be a “pro-business” politician ready to save the day for a company that can’t survive when they’re forced to obey the law. Economic Darwinism gets about as much respect as the other kind these days….

More to the point, it’s troubling that discussion of immigration issues is dominated by protectionists and xenophobes because there’s a serious problem here that needs to be addressed. Of course, the President proposed his own solution last year :

Allowing undocumented workers, who make up an unknown percentage of the approximately 8 million illegal immigrants now in the United States, to work legally here would benefit all Americans, Bush argued. He said it would make the nation’s borders more secure by allowing officials to focus more on the real threats to the country and would meet U.S. employers’ dire need for workers willing to take the low-wage, low-skill jobs unwanted by many Americans.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no immigration hawk. The way I see it, somebody who comes to a country where they don’t know the language, lives in an overcrowded apartment with their extended family, and works for next to nothing in a horrible work environment^{[3] This is a archetypical example, of course.} has worked harder to achieve the American dream than I ever have. But at the same time, there does need to be a system in place to keep immigration at a reasonable level and ensure that people who “play by the rules” don’t get screwed.

But that’s not what the President proposed. His plan is just a sneaky attempt to legalize a whole segment of the labor market that should be illegal^{[4] If this all sounds familiar it’s because I’m plagiarizing myself from this post.} . Lou Dobb’s guest, on the other hand, understands that when it comes to illegal workers, it’s the employers who are the bad guys here. They’re the ones who have been working around the system of worker protections that have been put in place over last hundred years. The workers themselves are generally making below minimum wage, aren’t getting benefits or overtime pay, work in hazardous environments, aren’t allowed to form a union, etc. These are the crappy jobs the President wants to legalize.

Conservatives love to write these jobs off as “unwanted by many Americans” as if to paint us all as a bunch of sissies who are afraid to get our hands dirty or break a sweat^{[5] I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again : Republicans are elitists.} when the reality is that average Americans don’t want these jobs because (a) we’ve got a greater awareness of our rights under the law than most illegal immigrants, (b) since we’re here legally we’re harder to blackmail, and (c) it’s nearly impossible to make a decent living off a low-wage job. Beggars can’t be choosers, after all, and the GOP elite hopes to keep it that way.

If you want to control illegal immigration, an important place to start is in disrupting the basic principle that provides for business demand for cheap, disposable labor with a supply of workers who enter this country illegally. If businesses were forced to adhere to the labor laws that are already on the books, this wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, we’ve got a domino-effect where one employer breaks the law (ie. Wal-Mart) and is able to undercut the competition so much that the business community makes the argument that the need to break the law in order to stay competitive^{[6] It’s this “dire need” to break that law to which the President is so receptive.}.

It’s a bullshit argument, but don’t forget that we’re living in Bizarro world now. The best way to respond to rampant law breaking is to get rid of those pesky laws before they hurt anyone’s feelings. You gotta problem with it? Well, write out your complaint in the memo portion of a check made out to the Republican party and cross your fingers.

Speaking of stories I want to go away, the sad story of Terri Schiavo took a final breath today with the release of the autopsy. Let’s go through the bullshit that was floating around a couple months ago, shall we? Was she abused? No, there was no evidence of trauma. Was she “responsive to visual stimuli” in the infamous video? No, she was blind. Did she have the ability to recover from her persistent vegetative state? No, her brain had atrophied to half its size and she was permanently brain damaged. Was she starved to death? No, she died of dehydration.

The fact that all this hoopla came from the same people who are fighting to protect the “sanctity” of marriage (at least in terms of denying it to people they don’t approve of) adds an additional layer of hypocrisy that’s even more amusing in light of today’s revelations. Everything the Schindler family, the Republican meddlers, and the right wing X-ians said about this case was complete bullshit. They were wrong and the doctors were right. Michael Schiavo is owed a lot of apologies today, but he’d be lucky to receive even one.

After a stressful few weeks (which has resulted in a lack of posts around here), I snuck away to Santa Barbara with my gal to recharge my batteries with some much-needed rest. On Monday afternoon, as we sat in a nice Italian restaurant on State street and I ate a delicious Red Snapper filet that was lightly breaded and covered in a delicious lemon / white wine sauce, I noticed that the TV over the bar was tuned to a news station that was intensely following a car on the highway.

“Holy shit,” I thought, “Michael Jackson’s on the run.”

Not quite. That would be newsworthy. Instead it was just the dethroned king of pop slowly driving to court for the final time. You know the rest of the story. Not guilty on all counts, blah, blah, blah…nd I’m sure you’ve already read/heard more about this goddamn case than you ever wanted to, so indulge me for a minute while I write about this horrible story :

First of all, fuck the press. Not just for their obsession over another celebrity trial and ignoring more newsworthy topics, but for once again exploiting our racial differences by doing the “here’s how black / white people are reacting” bullshit. I am so fucking tired of the media trying to drive a wedge between us by showing a bunch of black people celebrating followed by a bunch of white people shaking their heads in shame as if to say “how could they support a monster like that?”. There’s an obvious cultural difference here that should be examined, but if you’re not going to examine why the black community (or at least, the members of the community they put on TV) would celebrate the acquittal of an entertainer that the media has already presumed guilty, then you’re just stirring up racial tension to fill a few minutes of airtime. Provide some context assholes.

I actually know somebody who’s got personal experience with MJ and the people who accused him of molestation ten years ago. Back when MJ was hanging out with his previous alleged victim, my acquaintance would shut down her store so that MJ could shop without being bothered by the public. When this happened, the accuser’s mother would bark orders at MJ, screaming obscenities at him, and demand that he buy presents for her son. The person I know insists that Mj is one of the sweetest people she’s ever met and that there’s no way he would have done anything to the boy in question. I’m not so sure I buy that (after all, what kind of grown man shares a bed with children?), but it’s worth pointing out yet again that there’s bad guys on all sides in this one.

OJ’s lawyer won the “obnoxious reference” contest with this embarrasingly bad post-acquittal analysis :

BLITZER: You personally, though, are pretty surprised, Bob Shapiro, you thought this was perhaps going to go the other way.

SHAPIRO: I certainly did. And I didn’t think Michael would be singing “Beat It.” Now he will be doing the moonwalk.

If Jackson’s thinking about a comeback, perhaps he can hook up with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s people. 2006 could be quite a “Thriller” of a year for a “Smooth Criminal” like Senator Jacko.

The jury’s job wasn’t to decide whether or not MJ was a child molester. They were supposed to examine ten claims and determine whether or not the prosecution has made the case. Considering that this case was soaked in reasonable doubt, the decision was obviously valid. I personally think he’s a sexual predator who deserves to be in jail, but I’m also glad that we live in a country that puts the burden on proof on the state. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best one we’ve got.

Ugghhh…that’s it. May we never have to hear about this sordid garbage again.

…then you’re getting The Talent Show from its new home at DreamHost. Along with the new hosting company, I’ve upgraded to the latest version of MovableType. Needless to say, I’m expecting some bugs to show up. So if you see anything weird, please leave a comment and lemme know.

I’ve got mixed feelings on this whole medical marijuana issue. I’ve had friends with cancer who swear by the drug as the only thing (legal or otherwise) that effectively treats the nausea and pain associated with treatment while restoring a lost appetite. For that reason alone, I fully support the use of medical marijuana, but I don’t like the way this issue has been handled by either side of the debate.

On the anti- side, the “war on drugs” crowd has been too reliant on the slippery slope arguments about marijuana being a “gateway drug” and fearmongering about healthy hippies getting fake prescriptions. The ideological rigidity against the idea that there could ever be a positive use for pot seems a bit hypocritical given that these same folks aren’t equally up in arms about the abuse of Oxycontin or Xanax.

That said, I’m not a big fan of the pro- side’s method of trying to make an end run around FDA regulation and federal law. I can understand why advocates would try to find ways around the racist, elitist, hypocritical, and mostly evil “war” on drugs. Even worse, the FDA has been notorious in their unwillingness to even consider approving marijuana for pharmaceutical use^{[1]Are their hands tied by the Controlled Substances Act or are they just too busy rubber stamping deadly drugs from big pharma to test the safety of something that people have been ingesting for thousands of years?}. That said, going the state’s rights route towards legalization was pretty wrongheaded at the outset. Even when these laws originally passed, there was always a feeling of “civil disobedience” in the air. ^{[2]Just like with S.F. mayor Gavin Newsom’s orders to allow gay marriage, we all knew that the “fun” couldn’t last forever.} The inevitable conflict with federal law was a ticking clock that hung over every “cannabis club” in the country.

So it was no surprise that the Supreme Court weighed in on the side of the feds yesterday in Gonzales vs. Raich. What was shocking to me though, is that it was decided on the grounds of the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. The dissenting opinion, as Salon points out, leaves us with some strange bedfellows :

The section that gives Congress the authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” now stretches to include, according to Clarence Thomas’ dissent, “virtually anything.” Antonin Scalia, voting with the majority, clarified: “Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.

In Raich, the two women were using California seeds and plants were following California law. No money changed hands. As Thomas writes, “By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power.” So what can’t the federal government regulate?

I’ll leave it to others to speculate about how horrible this precedent may be, but I do want to take issue with what Salon sees as the potential light at the end of the tunnel :

Fortunately, those liberal slaves of principle in the court’s majority — who compassionately lamented the “respondents’ strong arguments that they will suffer irreparable harm” if deprived of medical marijuana — have some sage advice for the millions of victims of the war on drugs. “Perhaps even more important,” croons Stevens at the end of his opinion, “is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.”

That one day could come as early as next week, when Congress is likely to vote on the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would prohibit the federal government from spending money to arrest, prosecute or incarcerate patients who use medical marijuana on the advice of their doctors in states where it is legal. Polls have shown upward of 80 percent support for this amendment in past years, so, of course, it loses every year by 100-plus votes. But if the Supreme Court told us nothing else on Monday, it was that if this drug quagmire is ever going to end, it’ll have to be stopped by the ones who started it: members of Congress. Until then, we’ll gradually build our way to a society where half the population is locked in prison and the other half is guarding the prisoners.

Which “drug quagmire” are we talking about now? Like I said before, I think the “war” on drugs is awful, but I thought we were talking about the ways marijuana helps ease the enormous pain and suffering of cancer patients. Yes, the two issues are related, but nobody should be exploiting the sympathy for the terminally ill to piggyback the larger, but tangential, issue of the excessive criminalization of narcotics onto this particular fight.

Furthermore, I can’t think of a worse way to pave the way for medical marijuana than the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment as described above. I think doctors should be allowed to prescribe pot to chronically ill patients, but the idea of allowing bad laws to remain on the books while passing additional laws that make it illegal to enforce the existing laws seems like a big, big mistake. Sure, it may provide the necessary results, but the means to that end would probably be a legal mess that could end up confusing the issue even further.

A far more reasonable approach would be for Congress to pass an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act that would move marijuana from its Schedule I status to Schedule II. While getting Congress to relax drug laws may seem like a pipe dream, the real world implications would be to simply move pot from the class that includes LSD and heroin to the one that includes cocaine, morphine, and crystal meth. While this probably wouldn’t do much to satisfy the “Legalize It!” crowd, it should give doctors the leeway to prescribe the drug for their patients, open the door to FDA approval, and subject it to more than enough regulations to keep the drug out of the hands of recreational users.^{[3]That is, assuming you think drug laws work. I don’t, for the most part, but the opponents of medical marijuana obviously do.}

Anne Bancroft has died. Reading through her obituary, I couldn’t help but think the following that I love The Graduate, but the older I get, the more I think of Ben as a fool and sympathize with Mrs. Robinson. As Roger Ebert put it in his 1997 review of the film :

Today, looking at “The Graduate,” I see Benjamin not as an admirable rebel, but as a self-centered creep whose put-downs of adults are tiresome….Mrs. Robinson is the only person in the movie who is not playing old tapes. She is bored by a drone of a husband, she drinks too much, she seduces Benjamin not out of lust but out of kindness or desperation….She is also sardonic, satirical and articulate–the only person in the movie you would want to have a conversation with.

I don’t agree with Ebert’s conclusion that Ben is a jerk anymore than I agree with my initial reaction to the film 13 years ago when I considered Mrs. Robinson to be the film’s villain. I think what makes The Graduate so interesting is that both characters selfishly project themselves on Elaine, thanks to the brilliant acting of Dustin Hoffman, who perfectly evokes Ben’s clueless misanthropy, and especially Bancroft who plays Mrs. Robinson’s overbearing protectionism under a thin veil of sarcasm and regret. While I can understand Bancroft’s dismay at being known primarily for Mrs. Robinson, it’s a remarkable performance that any actor would be jealous of.

I can only imagine how she’s react to every goddamned obituary having the title “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson”. Google News already has 17 results. Sigh.