That’s Facebook in a nutshell. A place for friends, sure. But pull back the curtain and it’s a place for getting people ages 13 and over to willingly offer up the most direct ways to sell them things. It’s like being at a big party with all your friends but then realizing that the party is really a Pizza Hut focus group. And also, any pictures you take at the party are owned by the focus group forever. Sound fun to you?
She was possibly the most badass woman in the history of World War II. One of the most decorated WWII servicewomen, Nancy Wake led 7,000 maquisards - armed resistance fighters - in battles against the Nazis. She rode a bicycle for more than 500 miles through several German checkpoints to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a raid. She even killed an SS sentry with her bare hands - a fatal karate chop - to prevent him from raising an alarm.
…Despite losing her husband and witnessing much bloodshed, she has never had any regrets about her war years. She said, “I hate wars and violence but if they come then I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.”
The very small number of people whose votes are up for grabs are pretty much the polar opposite of the thoughtful citizen who has an open mind and spends the weeks before the election somberly reading up on the candidates before making a well-informed, well-considered opinion. Swing voters tend to be the most ignorant ones, which is probably why they manage to keep voting for Republicans, in between voting for Democrats, even though they basically never like the results of voting Republican. The truth of the matter is that someone who actually pays a lot of attention to politics is going to become a partisan, and there’s no shame in that. It’d be like following sports or music intently without ever developing opinions about any teams or bands.
The imaging is sexist not because women politicians are attacked (male politicians get attacked all the time—there’s plenty of vitriol to go around). It has to do with the ways in which political women are attacked.
Women candidates are much more likely than their male counterparts to be characterized as crazy because women historically have been viewed as less rational then men. Notably, when male politicians are derided, it’s their manhood, rather than their rationality, that is called into question.
The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country’s income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it’s been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.
Some people might try to defend these ads by saying they’re ‘making fun of sexism’ ironically… somehow. Advertisers must believe that the use of irony distances themselves from male chauvinism but that isn’t the case. While we think we are in on the joke, the reality is they aren’t making fun of or pointing out sexism, they’re doing it.
…Marketers love the uber ironic sexist style of advertising because they can use all the racist, sexist misogynist imagery they want and simultaneously distance themselves from it with a little wink and a nod.
Yesterday, in an apparent attempt to rally their caucus, the Republicans played a clip from a cops-and-robbers movie called The Town. In the scene they chose to inspire their House freshmen, one of the crooks gives a pep talk to the other, right before they both put on hockey masks, bludgeon two men with sticks, and shoot a man in the leg. Literally, in the movie, the protagonists say people are going to get hurt, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your House Republican majority.
—Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), criticizing House Republican leadership for using violent rhetoric (AGAIN) to inspire Republican representatives to legislative action.
That would be the same House of Representatives from which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is still on medical leave after being shot by a violent asshole who did not grow up in a void.
They made a lot of mistakes with this one, but the creatives who came up with this need to get their sense of humor adjusted, stat. Their solution for promoting milk as a PMS cure is to take the oh-so “edgy” angle of “PMS makes life difficult for men.” Seriously. That’s a “joke” that’s been around for centuries. Centuries.
They also broke the 1st rule of satire, which is that you need to direct your ire up, not down. We still live in a society where men have most of the power. Thus, photos of men on a poster criticizing women’s behavior = not satiric, not funny (except to misogynists and ad dudes with tunnel-vision) but, just, a fantastic way to piss people off.
