Category Archives: Misogyny

12/22/2015
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Barack Obama, CBGB, Chicago Police Department, Donald Trump, FactCheck.org, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Hillary Clinton, ISIS, Lamon Reccord, Laquan McDonald Shooting, Misogyny, Police Brutality, Racism, Seymour Hersh, Syrian Civil War, Uncategorized

Hot Air

One Shot, One Year

For my money, this is the picture of the year, 2015:

ct-ct-lamon-reccord-met-1221-jpg-20151220

[Image: John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune, November 25, 2015]

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That’s a young fellow named Lamon Reccord, a participant in street protests against Chicago police brutality and the killings of black people in general around this holy land. The protests broke out this fall in the aftermath of the release of a video showing a CPD officer shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times on a South Side street some 13 months earlier.

This particular confrontation took place at the corner of State and Randolph streets in the Loop the day after the video footage was released. Reccord already had gained national notoriety when he was video’d staring down another Chicago cop the day before. He’s either a symbol of morally-justified resistance to police racism and the use of deadly force or he’s a troublemaking punk, depending on where you stand on police/black relations in Murrica these days.

Loyal Pencillistas know where I stand.

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Insurrection?

Correct me if I’m wrong, lawyers and military experts, but if Sy Hersh is right about this*, Gen. Martin Dempsey has committed a clear violation of military chain of command, putting the himself at risk of court-martial, incarceration, and even death. It seems like treason, pure and simple. It doesn’t matter if the president’s decision is right or wrong. That’s not how the military works. In fact, it borders on a coup.

And, really, haven’t you been expecting one or another Obama opponent to lead some kind of mutiny, even at this late date in his presidency?

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 11.12.50 AM

Dempsey (L) & Hersh

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Remember when the big panic going around held that Obama was secretly planning to get us involved in a big war or some such emergency so that he could declare martial law and remain in office even after his term(s) expired? Then again, that particular paranoiac delusion might well have gotten lost in the flood of all the other psychotic reactionary hallucinations to Obama’s election. There were so many of them, after all.

In any case, at least one reactionary was sure to commit some act of overthrow, given all the panic surrounding the first black prez.

[ * Just in case you’re too pressed for time to read the piece, Hersh asserts in the January 7, 2016 issue of the London Review of Books that Dempsey engaged in a secret plan to lure the Russians into the Syrian civil war and simultaneous battle against ISIS. Further, he ignored the White House’s strategy of attempting to remove Bashar al Assad from power. Dempsey, acc’d’g to Hersh, thought Obama was all wet in his Syria strategy so he freelanced his own plot.

Hersh, BTW, is a dogged, fearless investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and the US Army’s abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. He also occasionally cooks up the occasional crockpot conspiracy theory. The question, then, is where does this latest revelation fall in Hersh’s spectrum? ]

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Cashing In

CBGB’s in New York City’s Bowery district was the chic-est place for punks to hang out in the late 1970s and into the early ’80s. The seediest bar imaginable, run by a guy named Hilly Kristal on a side street rife with the homeless, junkies, broken glass, and discarded syringes, the place introduced the world to the likes of the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, the Dead Boys, Patti Smith, and countless other heroes of punk.

cbgb-1983-nyc-billboard-650

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Even inside the place, CBGB was littering with trash, vomit, dog shit, and strung-out mainliners. The very ugliness of CBGB became its selling point. Punk — and CBGB — symbolized a violent reaction to Middle American sensibilities, corporatism, advertising, music marketing, and the use of personal hygiene products.

CBGB served food, after a fashion, because its liquor license demanded it do so. Nobody went there to eat, believe me. The place has been closed for years now, its frontage now redone a la gentrification moderne.

Nevertheless, an entrepreneur named Harold Moore is opening up a CBGB restaurant in Newark Int’l Airport. Moore says he’ll serve $9 deviled eggs, an $11.50 iceberg lettuce salad, and a $14 hamburger to travelers hoping to recreate the Bowery/punk experience. The only thing is, Moore isn’t going to be serving Hilly’s legendary chili which, acc’d’g to lore, usually contained cigarette ash, spit, and other bodily fluids you can only imagine.

Need I remind readers that this holy land is one weird fking place?

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Duh!

FactCheck.org has named Donald Trump its political liar of the year. The truth-digging organization selects an annual top lying bastard and, really, who else could it be in 2015?

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 11.41.50 AM

Our National Shart

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Girl Cooties

Ugh! Hillary’s got lady parts. And stuff comes out of them! Gross.

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 11.48.36 AM

Please, Click This Link — It Gets Better!

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Okay, can we all admit now that Donald Trump is the worst excuse for a human being this holy land has produced in many, many a year?

Okay then.

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08/27/2015
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Misogyny, Planned Parenthood, War on Women

Hot Air

Pathological

Well, now they’re just flat-out lying to our faces, these Republicans who screech and squeal that Planned Parenthood does nothing more than perform abortions so they can get rich selling baby parts.

They’re not even making the pretense of trying to slip an obfuscation or two into an otherwise reasonably true paragraph. I mean, that’s what politicians are supposed to be expert at, no?

All politicians lie. My argument long has been we want our politicians to lie. Comfort us with falsehoods, we beg them, rather than tell us the straight story which just might be a tad too real to bear.

The art of the politician is to present his or her fudge with just enough truthiness on the side so that the whole plate will be palatable.

Now, that paradigm is being shoved down the garbage disposal.

Many of the top Republican contenders for president are foisting the new party line that Planned Parenthood is nothing more than a back-alley abortionist. Why, Jeb Bush just the other day said PP is “not actually doing women’s health issues. They’re involved in something way different than that.”

Here’s a graphic from PP’s 2013 annual report, showing how the different aspects of its medical services are delivered:

From PP Annual Report, 2013

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Y’know, I’ll bet everyone who reads this knows someone who has used PP to get some form of birth control, a breast exam, or a pap smear. Your sister, maybe. Even your mother. Hell, some guys actually take advantage of PP’s medical services.

See the little sliver of light blue denoting what percentage of patients use PP’s abortion services?

In Jeb Bush’s world, as well as that of his rivals for the GOP nomination, 3 percent = everything. Nobody’s that dumb.

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02/20/2015
3 Comments
Bloom Magazine Book Club, Malcolm Abrams, Marijuana, Michael Koryta, Misogyny, Scott Russell Sanders, Superdawg

Hot Air

Blockbuster

Looks like Malcolm Abrams is a genius with his Bloom Magazine Book Club idea. Not only did his event with Michael Koryta pack the house earlier this month, the club’s current selection, Scott Russell Sanders, looks to be just as successful — maybe even more so.

Bloomingtonians have wiped out the Book Corner‘s stock of Sanders’ Divine Animal, the title BMBC participants will discuss at the club’s meeting next month in FARM Bloomington’s Root Cellar Lounge. Book Corner honcho Margaret Taylor flashed an urgent message yesterday afternoon directing me to order dozens more copies and so I have.

If I know Scott, he’ll be lugging a carton of …Animals in on his shoulder first thing tomorrow morning. “Malcolm’s book club is a boon to the community — and to writers,” Sanders says.

Sanders

Sanders

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So, don’t worry — if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, amble on by. That is, if you have the fortitude to amble in these godawful frigid conditions.

The Bloom Book Club gathering featuring Sanders will be Tuesday, March 31st, at 5:30pm.

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Self-Loathing

A lot of women out there must hate their vaginas. That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reading “The 6 Weirdest Things Women Do to Their Vaginas” in Mother Jones online.

So, here’s what enough sisters do to their nethers to make the vaginal-cosmetic-industrial complex swim in billions:

  • They use vaginal deodorants

Vaginal Spray

Um, I Think Her Aim Is A Bit Off

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  • They douche
  • They get their vaginas tightened by plastic surgeons
  • They get their labia sculpted by plastic surgeons
  • They put mints in their vaginas to make them smell and taste better
  • They get their labia bleached and dyed

BTW: Those mints? They’re branded for vaginal use but, Mother Jones reports, the mints — called Linger, the “internal feminine flavoring system” — aren’t all that different from candy. Which, the mag reminds us, is hard, dissolvable sugar. And which, MJ warns, is a formula for a monster yeast infection.

BTW II: A few years ago I came upon the startling discovery that there are scads of women in this mad, mad, mad, mad world who get their anuses bleached. So vaginal lip bleaching would seem to be a natural outgrowth from that creative craft. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ordered a lover out of my bed for having the wrong color anus or vagina. Some people!

[h/t to Tanisha Caravello]

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Uh, I’ll Have Three Wit’ Everything, Man

If a fiction writer came up with this scenario s/he’d either be laughed out of the business or declared a mad genius.

Superdawg is one of my beloved hometown of Chicago’s most well-known hot dog joints. I cannot adequately describe the humongous snap-skin wienee in a steamed poppy seed bun, surrounded by crispy crinkle-cut french fries, accompanied, of course, by a chocolate malt so think the straw can stand up in it indefinitely.

Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I type this.

Superdawg

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Anyway, the great state o’Illinois is considering allowing medical marijuana clinics to open up therein and just take a wild guess where one of them might be. Yeah, that’s right, directly across the street from Superdawg!

Superdawg’s owner, Scott Berman, should be up for Businessperson of the Year based on this quote alone:

We’re in favor of anything that brings customers to the area. This will help people. I see it no differently than a doctor’s office or dentist’s office opening there.

Next time you’re in Chi., take a spin up to Superdawg and give Berman your business.

Sometimes life is indeed good.

[h/t to John Spencer Bergman]

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To Your Health

One of my fave cocktails is vodka with V8 juice. See, I get 1 cup of vegetables with an 8-ounce serving. It’s really health food.

Vodka & V8

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12/09/2014
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Book Corner, Chicago Police Department, Christiana Ochoa, Homophobia, Jack Dopp, Jackson Lynch, Michael Dopp, Misogyny, Racism

Hot Air

Sympathy For The Devil

How scared do you want to be this AM? Plenty scared? Okay, Click on over to the weblog, Second City Cop. It’s an anonymous clearinghouse for the opinions, beliefs, and rants of some Chicago police officers.

Natch, since no one’s name is attached, the true and unadulterated feelings of the blog’s author as well as commenters come through loud and clear.

CPD 1968

Not Much Has Changed In 45 Years

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What do we learn by reading Second City Cop? A significant number of sworn officers of the law in the nation’s third largest city:

  • Are chronically aggrieved
  • Exist in a state of permanent rage
  • Consider themselves persecuted
  • Are contemptuous and insulting of those they disagree with
  • Despise protesters
  • Deny or minimize the existence of police misbehavior
  • Are homophobic
  • Are misogynist
  • Are adept at concealing their racism with weasel words and code
  • Are xenophobic
  • Disdain everything from simple altruism to government programs designed to help the less fortunate among us
  • Are four-square against minimum wage
  • Hate the NFL as a result of five St. Louis Rams players protesting the decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson
  • Believe that FEMA concentration camps will be established soon

I can go on and on but I won’t. Read for yourself and weep. Chicago has a total of some 13,000 police officers. They carry deadly weapons. They are authorized to take your freedom away for probable cause or on a true bill of indictment. They work hand in hand with prosecutors and the courts against the accused in our adversarial system of justice. Under these simple, basic criteria they can be described as the most powerful members of our society.

If a mere eight percent or so of those 13,000 hold any fraction of the above-mentioned feelings, then a thousand of them are F-U’d and dangerous bastards whom you’d be loath to want to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. But they have guns and badges.

Now, try to breathe.

[h/t to Neil Steinberg.]

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Art Sells

A huge slap on the back for the son of one of Bloomington’s most beloved citizens, Jack Dopp.

Jack’s been delivering newspapers in our town for decades now through his Bloomington News operation. He’s the guy who makes sure the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Indy Star get to your doorstep or your neighborhood merchant every single day, regardless of the weather. Pushing 70 but still wiry and quick on his feet, he continues to play for several local slow-pitch softball teams.

His son Michael is an artist based in the Los Angeles area. Michael teaches art at Chapman University in the town of Orange. He also produces scads of paintings and is represented by LA’s Roberts & Tilton Gallery.

Michael Dopp

Dopp Art

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Jack tells The Pencil that Michael’s work was exhibited in the big-time Art/Basel show in Miami Beach last week. Art/Basel is an annual series of international contemporary and Modern Art exhibits held in south Florida, Hong Kong, and Basel, Switzerland. This year, the Miami Beach exhibit featured several hundred artists from our hemisphere.

The big news is Michael sold a painting on the first day of the show. Jack whispered a figure in my ear; suffice it to say loads of folks in this holy land would be able to live for a year on the check Michael pocketed.

Who sez all artists are starving?

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Smart Kid

Have you been worrying about kids today not reading?

Stop.

Working at the Book Corner, I know that countless imps are gobbling up books even in this age of smartphones and dumbing down. For instance, Indiana University Maurer School of Law  professor Christiana Ochoa tows her three sons into the Book Corner with some regularity. She tells me if it were up to the boys, they’d park themselves at the shop twice or three times as much as they do already.

The lads dig the BC so much that one of them, Jackson, the oldest at 12, created a video love letter the other day. Watch:

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My fave line: “From the outside, it may look small. But inside, it opens up entirely new universes.”

And this kid is only 12?

The future, babies, is in good hands.

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10/11/2014
2 Comments
Answers in Genesis, Ark Encounter, Creation Museum, Creationism, Domestic Violence, Establishment Clause, Karen Ogden, Ken Ham, Misogyny, NFL, Verizon Wireless

Hot Air

An Advertiser Is Getting Itchy

A woman named Karen Ogden, who describes herself as “a part-time writer who works within a variety of communities as part of domestic violence outreach programs,” read one of my screeches about domestic violence and the National Football League. She sends in this communique about Verizon Wireless, one of the NFL’s big ad partners:

Hi,

I was checking out this page on your site: http://electronpencil.com/2014/09/10/hot-air-144/

Amid all the recent horrific domestic violence reports from the NFL, Verizon Wireless, one of the league’s biggest partners, has stepped up to reaffirm its stance on domestic violence: We must all band together to end domestic violence.

The company’s CEO, Lowell McAdam, made it clear in a recent editorial that the real issue at hand is not the image of Verizon or the NFL, but “the scourge of domestic violence itself.” He noted that it’s highly likely that you know someone who have been abused, physically or emotionally, by someone close to them. 

According to the Avon Foundation for Women, 60 percent of Americans know someone who has been abused while 22 percent of people are victims themselves. Those staggering statistics only further drive home McAdam’s main point: We need to talk about domestic violence, because that is the only way we can eliminate the culture of denial surrounding the topic.

To help accomplish this goal, Verizon launched a new public awareness campaign this past June called Voices Have Power. You can see it here:

http://www.voiceshavepower.com/

It is an online, social media platform that allows users to send messages of hope to victims of domestic violence. And for every message sent through the service, Verizon will donate $3 to domestic violence prevention organizations throughout the U.S. 

If you would like to participate in Voices Have Power, you can do so via text at 94079 or through social media using the hashtag #VoicesHavePower.

Voice Have Power is run through HopeLine (http://www.verizonwireless.com/aboutus/hopeline/index.html), a program started in 1995 to provide domestic violence organizations and shelters with recycled wireless phones and accessories. Victims then receive the refurbished phones with free minutes and texting plans. Since 2001, they have donated more than $21 million in cash grants and 180,000 cell phones. 

In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, can you help spread the word about the #VoicesHavePower fund raising campaign? Every message shared provides hope for victims and is $3 raised for domestic violence prevention.

Thank you so much!

Sincerely,

Karen

Generally, I don’t pay attention to companies trying to burnish their images through supposed community awareness programs but, oh, I dunno, maybe I’m feeling generous this AM.

Again I’ll remind you, if you hear what sounds like a violent domestic disturbance, drop a dime. If you’re wrong, so what? Also, if you know of somebody who slugs a lover, a wife, a daughter, or anybody of any sex just so he can get his way, shun the hell out of him. And don’t bug me with bushwa about how there are men out there who get beaten by their female partners. That’s misdirection, folks. Domestic violence is a guy thing. Guys have muscles; women are taught to blame themselves for “misunderstandings.” It’s a lousy equation that harms and even enslaves far too many females.

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The Right To Be Wrong

Now comes news that one of those weird fundamentalist theme parks wants the Commonwealth of Kentucky to foot a multimillion-dollar chunk of the bill to operate its fabrication machine.

Yeah, some joint under construction called Ark Encounter and run by the Answers in Genesis cult wants KY to give it an $18 million tax break so it can spread its bizarre mythology. AiG also runs the Creation Museum, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati and, in general, tells the world that scientists are wrong and the Bible, word-for-word, is right. The whole shebang is overseen by a zealot named Ken Ham, which is ironic because of the biblical injunction against eating pork.

Ham

Ken Ham

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Anyway, AiG somehow snookered Kentucky officials to approve a hefty tax break for them which, a cursory understanding of the US Constitution indicates, violates the Establishment Clause. Ark Encounter is under construction in Williamstown, near the Petersburg home of the Creation Museum.

As you can imagine, the tax break raised a frightful din among church/state separationists and civil liberties fans. Next thing you know, Kentucky officials withdrew their break. Now AiG is claiming it has a First Amendment right to the tax break. See, the outfit is only trying to exercise its free speech rights and the Commonwealth, by denying the tax break is crushing its voice. Like the Nazis did. And Stalin. And what the hell do you expect in a nation now run by a Nazi/Stalinist/Kenyan phony president?

Me? I don’t care what these religious fanatics believe. They have every right in the world to have faith that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow morning. But if they’re looking for any federal, state, or municipal dough to spread their speciousness, they’ll hear from me and a lot of others like me.

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Enemies?

How does the above entry fit in with yesterday’s sermon here about how we all — Right and Left, Democrat and Republican, believer and non-believer — should stop seeing each other as mortal enemies out to destroy our beloved nation as well as civilization itself?

Hitler

Nowadays, Everybody Is Hitler

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Pretty well, I’d say, with a bit of explanation. Neither President Barack Obama nor Governor Mike Pence are fascists intent on crushing all our hopes and dreams. Now, I disagree with pretty much everything Mike Pence stands for, sure. I wouldn’t vote for him if he were running against Justin Bieber (I just wouldn’t show up on election day — and, BTW, how prescient will I seem if and when JB ever runs for public office? You think it couldn’t happen? Are you new to America?)

Anyway, guys like Pence have what I consider to be a misguided faith in free market capitalism. The Invisible Hand makes about as much sense to me as an invisible father in the sky. Pence wants, I’m sure, all the homeless to have homes, all the uninsured to get medical care, and all god’s children to be able to vote. But only after those who have get even more — so much more that letting a little bit trickle down to the have-nots isn’t going to affect them one way or the other.

Funny thing is, Barack Obama’s worldview isn’t all that terribly far off from Pence’s. Yet too many in the Pence crowd still see Obama as the bastard child of Angela Davis and Fidel Castro. No matter, my non-vote for Pence and others like him does not infer that I view him and his gang as the spiritual brothers of Heinrich Himmler.

I merely disagree with them.

Now then, what about my snarky, disrespectful, insulting take on people like Ken Ham? Why won’t I embrace him and tell him he’s my brother? For the same reason I don’t embrace the guy walking the streets who, interspersed with random obscenities, is shouting about people following him and how all woman are whores. I may wish him well; I may hope his derangement is ameliorated one day. But I’m not going to say to him, “I respect your opinion, my good man.”

His opinion deserves no respect. Nor does Ken Ham’s.

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09/10/2014
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Janay Rice, Misogyny, NFL, Ray Rice, Violence Against Women

Hot Air

This Must Stop

When do we stop treating grown women like children?

When do we stop making excuses for adults who make blatantly self-destructive decisions?

When do we stop men from beating up women?

All the above questions are tied together and only when we answer them — unemotionally, tactically, and strategically — will we make progress against the warthogs who slug people, specifically the women they purport to “love,”  into unconsciousness?

The general consensus is we should tread lightly upon the feelings of Janay Rice, the victim of a videotaped assault and battery in an elevator last February that left her unconscious and caused her fiancé to drag her like a sack of trash to their hotel room where who knows what ensued.

Rices

Newlyweds

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Janay Rice has married that man in the intervening seven months. She told the world yesterday that she and Ray Rice share a special love, one that mean people are trying to destroy. Their method of destruction? Raising Cain about the beating and dragging incident that so far has earned Ray Rice a wink-and-a-nod plea deal wherein he must attend some kind of counseling sessions while avoiding jail time.

Janay Rice owes the girls and young women of this holy land a better course of action and narrative. There is only one proper and fitting reaction to Ray Rice’s assault upon her: that is criminal prosecution and Janay Rice’s firm commitment never to allow him within a thousand feet of her for the rest of their lives.

To wax poetic about their special love only ensures that more young women will be punched into a transient brain trauma — and worse.

Some say Janay Rice has suffered enough. She, apparently, does not share that opinion because she’s remaining intimate with the uncharged criminal who battered her.

Janay Rice doesn’t love herself enough, others say. To which I’d add she doesn’t give the slightest shit about the millions of females at risk of suffering a similar fate.

By staying with Ray Rice, by marrying him, by extolling their special love, she’s telling those millions of females that the crime he committed upon her is a blip, a hiccup, a silly little mistake, the kind we all must endure in the strange, confusing process of coupling. That, too, is a kind of crime.

Janay Rice didn’t ask for all this but reality has a fascist streak; it imposes upon us roles we have no desire to play. Reality jackbooted her that February night in the casino/hotel elevator. She no longer has a choice about being a spokeswoman for violent abuse. The incident became notorious solely because Ray Rice is good at running around with a football. Millions of impressionable young females are watching Janay Rice, taking cues from her.  She has told them that the ugly violence Ray Rice visited upon her not only is forgivable, it’s excusable, understandable, and even, she has implied, partially her fault.

I want Ray Rice to spend a good long time in jail. I want Janay Rice to stand up for herself and for countless girls and women.

And I’m tired of excuses. We all should be.

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09/02/2014
1 Comment
CalTech, Carrie Brownstein, Key & Peele, Michael Brown, Misogyny, Quantum Electrodynamics, Racism, Richard Feynman, Rosalind Franklin, Ross Gay, The Sun

Hot Air

Gay’s Rights

Extremely tall poet Ross Gay is back in town after a year-long sabbatical. The assoc. director of the Creative Writing Dept. at Indiana University, Gay took the year off to practice his penmanship, churning out scads of new poems and even an essay or two.

Gay

Ross Gay [Image from The Cortland Review]

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For instance, his take on the dicey relationship between this holy land’s cops and its darker-hued citizens ran earlier this summer in The Sun magazine. The Sun is a neglected jewel, tackling issues and featuring voices that the corporate media usually only sniff at. Search me as to how The Sun survives: There aren’t any ads for Chevrolet, Subway, or Home Depot. Its cover price is competitive with periodicals that are chock-full of pimpings for vodkas and boner pills.

I’ll take The Sun over Time eight days a week.

Anyway, Gay revealed some very personal experiences he’s had with cops making traffic stops on him. He is a respected member of the community, tenured, a leader in his department. He’s also Black. Well, light brown. His dazzling smile can brighten any room. To associate the strictly chromatic descriptor black with him seems somehow amiss.

To many cops, though, that’s all he is. Black.

Police Stop

Just Another Stop

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You have to check out Gay’s piece, written even before Michael Brown was whacked. I direct this especially to those who can’t seem to grasp why all the rage over the Brown killing. Don’t worry — Gay’s argument is not all anger and righteousness. This guy can write, of course. He cites, as an example, a  joke about blacks and the cops:

The African American comedy duo Key and Peele have a skit in which President Obama is teaching his daughter Malia to drive. When she runs a stop sign, a cop pulls them over. Astonished and a bit embarrassed at having detained the president of the United States, the cop tells them they can go. But Obama, earnest as ever, says, “No, I want you to go ahead and treat us the way you would if I weren’t the president.” In the next shot we see Obama getting slammed on the hood of the car and handcuffed. It’s funny. And not only black people laugh at such jokes. Everyone does, because everyone knows. [The counter-italics are Gay’s.]

If the comedy duo’s bit appeals to you, sneak a peek at Paste mag’s “10 Best Key & Peele Sketches.”

For the Gay essay, go here.

[h/t to Bryce Martin.]

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A Fine Man

One of my personal heroes is the late Nobel Prize-winning scholar Richard Feynman. The Bronx-born theoretical physicist who helped develop the frustratingly arcane study of quantum electrodynamics was named one of the ten greatest scientists of all time by a Physics World poll, played the bongos, and worked on his formulas while sitting in a booth at the local strip club.

In other words, my kind of guy.

It tickles me to note that his second wife (his first died of tuberculosis) sued him for divorce, describing him in her complaint thusly:

He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night.

Feynman gained national renown through his books and lectures. His memoir Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and his collection of lectures on basic physics, Six Easy Pieces, are are valued parts of my core library.

Feynman

Feynman

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Now comes news that his most famous lectures are available for free online. The California Institute of Technology has published his seven-hour-long “Feynman Lectures on Physics” in three volumes, readable on any device.

Say what you will about the internet — that it has turned us into a nation of screen-gawking zombies, that it makes nude pix of Jennifer Lawrence available to every drooling knucklehead, or that it is now the primary outlet for the likes of Glenn Beck — it allows us to learn the ABCs of physical existence through the words of one of the smartest human beings ever to walk the Earth.

[h/t to The Loved One.]

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Church Girl

Speaking of drooling knuckleheads, who do you think makes the decisions about what you hear on your MP3 player? Not only are record company execs knuckleheads, they’re knuckle-draggers.

In their professional opinion, it seems, every artist who possesses a vagina must strip down and shake as much of her toned flesh as possible in order for her to be worthy of distribution through the corporate music system.

Here’s how bizarre the music biz is when it comes to gender politics: Rihanna earlier this year tweaked, bumped, grinded, and exposed herself while caterwauling the songs from her latest album — and she was praised for “empowering” women. The men who determine what we see and hear in popular music and the critics who shill for them view women as nothing more than fap fodder.

At least the strippers plying their trade while Richard Feynman worked on his calculus notes at a corner table didn’t claim they were the ideological daughters of Margaret Sanger, Rosalind Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Which brings us to Charlotte Church. Remember her? Back about 15 years ago, she made a huge splash as a cute, virginal 12-year-old, belting out arias and other classical and religious pieces in a debut album entitled Voice of an Angel. The Barnes & Noble music-buying crowd snapped up the disc by the millions. PBS ran a special featuring her, further endearing her to the faux-sophisticated crowd.

When she reached the age of 19, she decided she wanted to sing pop tunes. The first bit of advice she got from the bosses at her record company? Show ’em your tits.

Church

Church: The Virgin & The Whore

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Well, that was essentially what they said. Here, let Church explain it herself:

When I was 19 or 20, I found myself… being pressured into wearing more and more revealing outfits. And the lines I had spit at me again and again, generally by middle-aged men, were “You look great, you’ve got a great body, why not show it off?”

Or, “Don’t worry, it’ll look classy, it’ll look artistic.”

Church revealed this in an eye-opening speech she gave at the BBC-6 Music annual John Peel Lecture.

Still a very young woman, Church felt enormous pressure to bare her skin. Those record co. execs made it clear that since they were paying her their good money, they had a say in how much jiggle she was to display. She continued:

… I was barely out of my teenage years, and the consequence of this portrayal of me is that now I am frequently abused on social media, being called slut, whore, and a catalog of other indignities that I am sure you’re are also sadly very familiar with.

How’s that for the voice of an angel?

You ought read the entire speech. It’s not long but it’s loaded with bombshells about the abuse of women by their record companies.

Me? I’ll still take Carrie Brownstein.

Brownstein

Brownstein [Image from Stereogum]

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07/19/2014
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Al Jazeera America, Alliance Defending Freedom, Armchair Homesteader, Chickens, Clarence Thomas, Contraception, Flat Earth Society, Hobby Lobby, ISIS, Jana Wilson, Misogyny, New Yorker, Samuel Alito, Sara Hellwege, Sharia Law, Susan Orlean, Tampa Family Health Centers, The Islamic State, US Supreme Court, Wonkette

Hot Air

Chicken Checkin’

One of our town’s most talented copywriters spends her time outside the corporate cubicle raising chickens. Jana Wilson lives with her family on a nice 20-acre spread nearby. She writes about Gallus gallus domesticus husbandry in her blog, The Armchair Homesteader.

Tons o’folks these days are growing the birds, mainly to be able to eat fresh eggs and even for the fresh meat to liven up their cacciatore. (Hey, wait a minute: Do peeps eat alla cacciatore around here?) Anyway, the City of Bloomington, for instance, allows residents to raise chicken flocks, although said flocks can’t number more than five birds and none may be roosters. Apparently, that crowing rooster next door might cause some little friction in the n’hood. That and chicken coops often stink.

The chickens-in-the-city trend got a huge jump start about five years ago when author Susan Orlean wrote about it in the pages of The New Yorker. “[R]ight now,” she wrote, “across the country and beyond, there’s a surging passion for raising the birds.”

Chicken

“A Surging Passion”

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When my grandmother, Anna Lazzara, lived in Chi., she was quite put out because the city wouldn’t allow her to keep chickens in the backyard. But back in the 1930’s people could still turn fresh chickens into dinner that night by buying the birds live at the butcher shop. Anna would tell my mother, Sue, to go get a chicken on a given weekday, a chore Ma loathed. She’d have to squeeze the bird between her arm and her chest in order to prevent it from fleeing, the critter pecking and clawing at her all the way home. Then Anna would grab the chicken from my mother, wrap her two fists around its neck and yank. Within minutes, the chicken’d lie still and be ready for plucking, singeing, and washing.

Ma always said those weekly walks from the butcher shop produced in her a phobia of all birds.

Yesterday, Wilson wrote about the problem of newbie chicken-raisers who purchase a passel of chicks and soon discover that one of the purported hens is actually a guy. She writes:

You anticipate these adorable little chicks growing into egg-producing hens and the speed at which they grow is just amazing.  They’re growing more feathers every day, their little combs beginning to develop, their legs lengthening. It’s all very fun and exciting. Fun until the day when little Sue emits the strangest sound. It sounds like a strangled screech. Could it be… oh no, surely not. But yes, its a crow!

Oh dear, little Sue is really little Stan.

Remember, cities that allow residents to keep chickens usually frown on or outright ban the keeping of males. “And for good reason: they are quite noisy and don’t crow just at daybreak,” Wilson writes. “Trust me on this one… they can crow just about any time of the day or night.”

In any case, check out Jana’s blog. You’ll even learn what a Sicilian Buttercup is. (And, no, it’s not me.)

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Après Ce, Le Déluge

It turns out those who’ve been wringing their hands over the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision, predicting that all manner of Christianists would start suing to get out of certain laws and responsibilities because their “sincerely-held beliefs” preclude them from doing so, really aren’t just being Chicken Littles. Any number of “sincere believers” have made moves to get out of things like not firing employees because they’re gay and other expressions of deep spirituality.

It would be hard to top this one, though: Pro-life activist attorneys in Florida have filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a nurse who applied for a job with the Tampa Family Health Centers. The attorneys claim the medical center refused to consider her for employment because she is Christian.

How horrible, right? What’s this crazy land coming to?

Christians/Lion

Persecution?

■

Natch, the case isn’t that simple. The nurse made a point to tell the clinic’s HR director that her Christian beliefs forbid her from prescribing certain contraceptives, which just happens to be one of the primary tasks of the place. I suppose it’d be be rather like a newly graduated cartographer applying for a job at the local globe factory and saying he would not be able to draw maps on the co.’s product because he’s a member of the Flat Earth Society. The wags at Wonkette explain the impasse thusly:

Let’s play a game. It is sort of a choose-your-own-adventure make-believe game. Costumes optional.

You are about to graduate from Thing-Doing School and apply for a job as a professional Thing-Doer, as one does after attending Thing-Doing School. You inform your potential employer that you are interested in the Thing-Doing job but will be unable to perform Thing-Doing duties because of your religious beliefs. Your potential employer tells you, “LOL, that’s hilarious, but we are actually looking for a real Thing-Doer who is willing to perform Thing-Doing duties, because that is the job. Thanks but no thanks.”

For this, nurse Sara Hellwege and her handlers, the Alliance Defending Freedom, will be taking up time and space on the federal district court’s docket to right what they see as a horrible wrong — although the sane among us see it as pretty much a cheap stunt.

Thanks Justice Alito and the rest of the straight, male, white, Catholic majority of SCOTUS. (And don’t write to correct me that Clarence Thomas is not white; he’s whiter than an albino wearing a lab coat in a snowstorm.)

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Stoned, Again

Speaking of regressive fundamentalist extremists, Al Jazeera tells the tale of The Islamic State‘s latest contribution to civilization. The erstwhile ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), fresh off its successful campaign to capture and control a significant swath of Iraq and bits of Syria, is now turning its attention to the behavior of women, AKA sluts.

The Izzy State is bringing back that fave from yesteryear, public stoning for women who dig sex. Acc’d’g to AJ’s report, members of the gang that scares even al Qaeda stoned a woman to death in the public square in the town of Tabaqa, in Syria, because she’d committed adultery.

R. Crumb

Flashback

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An important corollary to the story is the fact that the man with whom she sullied all of Islam was charged with no crime at all because, well…, because he’s a man, you dope.

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07/13/2014
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Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Misogyny, Neil Steinberg, Rape

Hot Air

Rape, Redux

My man-crush newspaper columnist Neil Steinberg addresses that stickiest of topics today: rape. I jumped into the same morass the day before yesterday on the Pencil.

Both columns in q. deal with rape on campus. Kids, you couldn’t get into a stickier mess than that of campus rape. Tons of frat boys and their running partners seem to believe all women want them in the worst way possible, and they only say no initially in some kind of perverse charade of chastity. No, to too many young males, means yes — after some strong persuasion that may or may not include physical intimidation.

Frat Boys

Surely They’ll Be Caring, Sensitive Lovers

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Some college females, it’s been argued, seem to be defining rape as something they feel uncomfortable about only in retrospect. For my part, I asked some pointed questions in these precincts. For instance, why would a college-aged woman sleep in the same bed as her accused rapist and even make him breakfast the morning after the alleged act occurred?

Recently, many colleges have re-written their policies concerning rape accusations. One or two are even recommending negotiations in flagrant delicti along the lines of “May I now touch this?” which, I imagine, might throw a splash of cold water on the proceedings.

Sadly, way, way, way too many of our male college students haven’t the foggiest idea how to read the non-verbal signals a young woman is issuing. Those boys, of course, can’t see the forest for their wood.

Anyway, Steinberg says the efforts by colleges and universities to control the problem misses the point. He refers to a big front page article in today’s New York Times about how Hobart and William Smith Colleges mishandled one student’s accusation that members of the Hobart football team gang-raped her. [Males attend Hobart and females go to W. Smith, even though the two are considered part of one institution.]

NYT Front Page Story

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The accusing student was harassed after the football players were exonerated in an apparent whitewash. Other students were enraged that she’d accuse the football guys of such a heinous crime even as they were on their way to an undefeated season. Winning, you know, excuses many crimes and misdemeanors.

Steinberg says rape victims are fools for turning to colleges for satisfaction. He writes:

[C]olleges have a hard enough time fielding competent professors. They are not in the crime-detection business, and while their bobbling such an investigation is not acceptable, it’s not surprising either.

He concludes:

The message from this story, a message that I believe is not driven home enough, and should be, is that if someone rapes you — a football player, a priest, a friend, anybody — you should always call the cops. Immediately. The cops might mishandle it, God knows they do that. But they’re the ones with experience in investigating crime, the ones in the best position to have a chance to get it right. Calling the police, I believe, is an important step in a crime being taken seriously.

Both Steinberg and I admit that we’re men, so what do we know? Again, I call for comment from loyal female Pencillistas.

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07/11/2014
2 Comments
Kate Bush, Kay Kyser, Misogyny, Philadelphia Magazine, Rape, Sexism, Trigger Warning: Breakfast, University of Illinois-Chicago

Hot Air

Old Hat, New Head

The very sophisticated barista at the Pencil back office (AKA Soma Coffee) sent me reeling back to my college years by playing Kate Bush this AM.

Bush

Kate Bush, Then & Now

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Now, Kate Bush was viewed by the hip college intelligentsia (your humble correspondent, for one) as the cat’s miao some 34 years ago. That, my babies, is antico. Please consult your Italian-English dictionary. Natch, it’s not just emo-arty-baroque pop princesses who are still spun by the youth of this holy land these days. Had the rather sensitive-looking barista been, say, an aficionado of lunkhead rock (as remote a possibility as Michelle Bachmann attending her current husband’s inevitable gay marriage) he might have been playing, oh, Blue Öyster Cult’s Godzilla.

To fully grasp this phenomenon, one must consider whom I might have been listening to in those heady, smoke- and acid-filled afternoons spent lolling about in the University of Illinois-Chicago’s A. Montgomery Ward Student Lounge. In the year 1980, it follows, I’d have had to be grooving to the strains of Kay Kyser and His Orchestra or, IDK, something like  I Can’t Begin to Tell You, a duet by Bing Crosby and Carmen Cavallaro. Need I point out that I was doing no such grooving?

Kay Kyser’s Kollege Of Musical Knowledge

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I know of countless parent-child combos who attend rock concerts together, with the younger halves of those unlikely pairings not cringing in deathly embarrassment. My brother and his sons catch Steely Dan every time that act hits the Chi. area. My friends Kim (a mom) and Harmony (her issue) recently took in the Arrowsmith show up in Indy.

I would have run away from home and sold myself into white slavery had my parents suggested we all attend a Perry Como show at the Auditorium Theater.

Who knows? Perhaps the generation gap has become a crack in the sidewalk.

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Rape

Scroll through this strip. It’s called Trigger Warning: Breakfast. It’s raw. It’s heartfelt. It’s powerful.

From Trigger Warning: Breakfast

Panel From “Trigger Warning: Breakfast”

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Its first line is “The morning after I was raped, I made my rapist breakfast.”

It is, therefore, puzzling.

I don’t get it. And, considering the fact that I’m more feminist-y than even half the women I know, I’m going to suppose 99.9 percent of my gender confreres don’t get it either. So we need help.

Help us understand this.

Help us understand why a woman who considers herself raped would make the perpetrator breakfast.

Help us understand why she wouldn’t plunge a steak knife into his heart.

In April, Philadelphia magazine ran a piece about campus rape that included a story told by a former Swarthmore College student who says she was raped by a man in her dorm room. Here are some details about the rape: she and the man had been lovers for several months but had recently agreed (she thought) to be just friends; he fell asleep on her bed; she changed into her pajamas and laid down next to him; he woke up and became frisky; she told him she wasn’t interested in sex; he ignored her and carried on. Here, let’s let her finish the story:

“I basically said, ‘No, I don’t want to have sex with you.’ And then he said, ‘Okay, that’s fine’ and stopped,” Sendrow told me. “And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.”

The woman considers what happened to have been a crime. A crime she did not report for a month and a half.

I understand why a woman would be loath to report a rape, especially on campus. The man whom the woman says raped her was a frat boy. The person she eventually reported the rape to was a frat brother. When she told the person about the rape, he was aghast that “such a good guy” would do such a thing.

For years, accusers have been battered in rape trials. Tens, hell, hundreds of thousands of them have been called sluts, flirts, opportunists, drunks, whores, man-haters, reckless idiots, and even the Devil in courts of law. No defense attorney calls a homeowner the Devil himself when he appears in court for the trial of someone who, allegedly, broke into his home and stole the family jewels.

Mamie Van Doren

Every Rape Victim In Every Court Of Law

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So, I’m not unaware of how the legal system and society winks at rapists. For far too long, we’ve considered the only real victims of rape to be husbands whose wives were so molested or parents whose teenaged daughters had been assaulted. In other words, rape has been officially viewed as a property crime. And the property in question has never really been the vagina, the mouth, or the anus of the true victim. Nor has the true victim’s dignity, sanity, or physical health been of much concern to the courts.

Until more women are elected as legislators, this take on rape will continue to be predominant.

Now that my cred has been established, I ask loyal female Pencillistas to come forward and explain something to me. I want to know.

I want to know why the Swarthmore College woman continued sleeping in the same bed until morning with a man she says raped her the night before. I want to know why she didn’t tell him to go fuck himself when he continued to press for sex after she’d said no.

I want to know why the earlier-mentioned woman didn’t add arsenic to her former boyfriend’s eggs.

In each case, the upshot might have been a fight. So be it. I want to know why the women elected to avoid a fight at the cost of their future sanity and self-regard.

Teach me.

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