Thoughts on the Palin NYT Mag Cover: Like She’s So “Homemade”
Posted: November 18, 2010 at 3:55 pm.
Nov 18
3:55 pm
Nov 7
11:54 am
Tiger Beatdown › Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Rally
“So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?”
Why indeed, Jon? Why indeed would you say such things about people on the right, making it impossible to work with them? Except, of course, that it’s not your rights being denied. It’s not you who can’t marry your girlfriend, who when you look down the road at your potential futures see the horror of not being able to protect your assets together, or even be by each other’s side at a hospital bed. It’s not you who have had to fight all your life to get your gender accepted, even grudgingly, as a legal reality, not you who will have whispers following you the rest of your life or who fears to publish things under your own name because it outs your entire life history. It’s not you who worry that you’re getting older and a woman in an industry that is not known for accepting women, not you who are worrying that if you get fired from your job you may never find another one like it.
We’re pretty clear that you’re not up with that last one, actually.
The thing is, is that it’s not a lack of reasonableness on both sides that’s the problem. It’s that one side is completely unreasonable–whether because of true belief or cynical calculation is immaterial. It’s that ultimately you can’t compromise your own belief that you are a human being and deserve every. single. damn. right. as everyone else does. I mean, what is there to compromise? I’ll be some percentage of a person until you get around to agreeing my troubles are important? You go, and you go, and you go, and for some of us it never seems to be our turn to edge into traffic.
The ludicrousness of the idea that the left and right are equivalent, that for every Scott Roeder there’s an unrepentant Weatherman terrorist, is the most pernicious result of the fake “impartiality” of the modern media, who somehow have all become perfect postmodernists in their belief that if you present two sides to every issue you’ve somehow avoided bias–even if one side is saying that Dachshunds hold up the sun and Santa Claus wants us to nuke Iran.
If you want to take a stand for “sanity” in the media, Jon, why not ask them why the hell they won’t stand on the facts?
Posted: November 7, 2010 at 11:54 am.
Nov 5
5:32 pm
The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator!
Reading the NYT’s stories about the Iraq War logs, I was struck by how it could get through such gruesome descriptions — fingers chopped off, chemicals splashed on prisoners — without using the word ‘torture.’ For some reason the word is unavailable when it is literally meaningful, yet is readily tossed around for laughs in contexts where it means nothing at all. It turns out the NYT has a reputation for studiously avoiding the word, to the point of using bizarre bureaucratic alternatives.
It must be awfully hard work inventing these things. So I thought I’d help out by putting together a torture euphemism generator that the New York Times’ reporters can use to help avoid the T-word in their thumb removal and acid bath coverage.
Posted: November 5, 2010 at 5:32 pm.
Nov 5
2:17 pm
It bothers me just a bit that while all these reasons why the Democrats got swamped in the mid terms are floating around, very few are calling attention to the right-wing echo chamber which ratcheted up the lies against Obama and the Democrats, thereby scaring Americans and exploiting covert prejudices against Obama.
Saying “that’s just how politics is” is a cop-out. Strangely enough, the same people who always claim about how sick they are with Washington or how Washington is broken seems to always be silent when it comes to calling lies out. You can’t defeat a disease without naming it.
When will we address THIS reason why the Democrats lost the mid terms?
Posted: November 5, 2010 at 2:17 pm.
Oct 11
10:40 pm
Sep 10
5:31 pm
So! No Muslims building anything within thousands of feet of “ground zero,” which now means everywhere, as proven by this important death porn map. Never forget! 9/11 is everwhere, and always!
Posted: September 10, 2010 at 5:31 pm.
Aug 30
11:47 pm
Building a Nation of Know-Nothings
It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?
Posted: August 30, 2010 at 11:47 pm.
Aug 24
9:47 pm
Aug 20
4:44 pm
Scott Pilgrim and Foursquare vs The World
Scott Pilgrim vs the World’s video game aesthetic goes beyond just the surface look and feel of the movie; it’s also a commentary on how a generation brought up on video games seemingly prefers the tangible rewards system of video games to the ambiguities and dissatisfactions of adult life.
Posted: August 20, 2010 at 4:44 pm.
Aug 8
7:34 pm
Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered
A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.
Posted: August 8, 2010 at 7:34 pm.
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