Since we got on Matt Taylor’s case about his choice in celebratory threads, Citizen Commissar commentor Morzer points out it’s only fair we also run his apology. From the Guardian:
The scientist who caused a furore by wearing a sexist shirt as he gave a progress report on the Rosetta mission on Wednesday has made an emotional apology for his “big mistake”. Matt Taylor was more plainly dressed on Friday as he broke down in tears at a briefing, apparently struggling to speak before confessing: “I made a big mistake and I offended many people, and I am very sorry about this.”…
His apology during an update on the progress of the European Space Agency mission was greeted sympathetically by particle physicist Clare Nellist. “Impressed with Taylor from @ESA_Rosetta for admitting shirt choice was a mistake. Takes strength of character.”…
There is video, at the link, if you need it to verify that Taylor may be a schnook or even a schlemiel but he’s capable of learning better, when corrected.
Next time he’s facing an important milestone on camera, maybe Taylor should take a hint from Rob Bricken at io9:
Today is a good day. Oh, I’m sure there’s plenty of terrible things going on in the world right now, but today is the day that Underoos, the incredible t-shirt-underpants-minimalist cosplay underwear returns to stores! For adults even! And with awesome characters to choose from!
Right now, Hot Topic is selling seven sets — Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Captain America, He-Man and Skeletor — for just under $20 each (new Batman Underoos definitely exist, but they seem to be sold out online)…
…[G]iven how many licenses Hot Topic carries, do you know what kind of Underoos we could possibly get if we’re lucky? Deadpool! Transformers! Supernatural! Halo! Harry Potter! Rocky Horror Picture Show! THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS AND AWESOME….
I’m sure I’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show underoos already, but that was probably at Frederick’s…
***********
Apart from contemplating cosplay by proxy, what’s on the agenda for the day?
bago
PSA, this tool is going to rock everyone who is not fully patched up.
http://www.metasploit.com/
Hit your update functions now, and again on Tuesday.
Keith G
Sigh
Karen in GA
I was given Underoos once when I was a kid. Once.
(For subsequent gift-giving holidays, my mother just let everyone know I already had a set and never wore them, so don’t bother.)
raven
@Karen in GA: Did you see the picture of me at St Simons last night?
Tommy
@Karen in GA: Yeah I am a pretty proud “nerd” and can’t see myself ever wearing them. I have some pretty basic rules about my underwear. They fit and are comfortable. Not so worried they look nice or are “sexy.”
Anne Laurie
@Keith G: Oh, c’mon. If I were thirty years younger, I would absolutely buy some Wonder Woman underoos! (I wouldn’t show them off to anybody who hadn’t already seen me naked, but then, I was always better at private performances… )
Tommy
Oh this story at Wonkette is just great, in a sad sort of way:
I maybe an Atheist, but I can respect others have faith. It also seemed to me that it would be a good idea to read things like the Bible and Koran. I was frankly a little stunned that many if not most of the “main” players in each book are the same. Of course there are differences, but when folks like Gohmert freak out I know they have never read the Koran (or even the Bible) nor have any idea what they are talking about.
Tommy
@Anne Laurie: Oh I get it. As a kid I wanted to be Aquaman. I don’t think they made Aquaman Underoos. But mom got me a tee shirt and socks. Wore those to bed each day as a young kid. Might have even asked a few hundred times to wear them to school (that didn’t happen BTW). As an adult. No thank you.
But from a sales and marketing POV brilliant. I mean just look at any of the pics from Comic Con and it would seem many would love something like this. I clicked the link and found they are sold out. Might not be my cup of tea but clearly others think differently. I learned a long time ago in business just because I like or dislike a product doesn’t mean it will sell. Got to know your target audience.
Keith G
@Anne Laurie: On no Anne, I was not commenting on the “bottom” of your post (I have seen much more than my fair share of entertaining underwear choices – some quite well chosen).
No, it was about the notice of apology.
I was thinking that there probably needs to a taxonomy which will allow us to more completely immerse ourselves in this very new cycle of events that the internet has wrought.
With some variation, it goes like…
Action…..Outrage….Drumbeat to further outrage….Peak outrage….Apology….Evaluation of apology
Jesus wept.
JPL
@Keith G: Also, too.. There has been many posts about Matt Taylor and his apology and not enough posts about Philae.
Keith G
@Tommy: As boy born in the late 50s and beginning my media awareness in the early 60s, I was (as a 4 yr old) a proud owner of a Mighty Mouse T-shirt that had an attached cape. Now, the cape may have been an after-market add on as back then many in my family had mighty sewing skills.
Shorts were required, but not included.
Botsplainer
In Day 3 of The Great Silence from wife of nearly 25 years. She’s in Africa still, still refusing to talk to me in response to my declaration that I wasn’t going to text fight with her over something petty involving a child and a forwarding scam.
I’m leaving town for a dive week, and she’s just simply shut down despite having limited web access. She comes back Monday night late and has been gone since 11/2. I’ve left her a clean house, her favorite daily food and a handwritten note.
The silence is what is killing me.
Morzer
@Tommy:
The GOP Interfaith Diversity Outreach is now accepting applications from any and all religions that are straight, white, male, knuckledragging and Christian.
Tommy
@Keith G: Amen brother. I am sick of the cycle you noted. Sure I have a few “ironic” tee shirts that could maybe piss somebody off. I do not try to piss people off. Like to think most times I am overly polite. If say a local TV station talks to me and I have on my Breaking Bad shirt will I incur anger I am for killing and meth? I just don’t know anymore.
I know why Matt Taylor broke down and cried. I’d do the same. He was at work, doing his job, keep in mind he wore that shirt to work and nobody seemed to care at NASA, but the Internet just savaged him. IMHO you go after the guy because it is an ugly shirt. Terrible fashion sense.
Not because nude women were one it.
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
Botsplainer, I have to say something to you which may come across as harsh, but is well-meant:
What’s killing you here is not her silence, upsetting as it may be, but the fact you are spending a lot of time thinking about it and telling yourself stories about all the horrible things it may mean for your future. This is working you up into a state of extreme misery and stress and will only make matters more difficult when she finally gets home and you meet and talk. I know this because I used to be the same way and it made my life much harder than it had to be. I honestly advise you to find something else to do that you genuinely enjoy and give yourself a break from the cycle of nerve-shredding imagined terrors and self-blame. The more you talk yourself into panicking, the worse things will seem. You’ve made an excellent plan for the next few days. Follow that plan and, for your own sake and, frankly, for the sake of your relationship, take a break from worrying yourself sick. If it turns out that things are just fine, you’ll have wasted days being miserable and achieved nothing. If you do end up having a fight/serious conversation about issues, you are better off facing it in a somewhat rested and relatively stress-free mode.
I am not making light of your concerns, but I really do think you are making yourself unhappy here and I hate to see that happening to you.
Tommy
@Botsplainer: I am so sorry.
As I have said I am not the best person to give relationship advice. But if after an extended time away I came home to a clean house, food in the fridge, and a note saying heat that top dish for dinner and I LOVE YOU! I’d be hard pressed not to calm down and count the days until my loved one was home.
Morzer
@JPL:
In brief, Philae is taking a nap:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-philae-lander-hop-comet
Tommy
@Morzer: What is the phrase? It is easier to give advice than take it. I’ve been told I am a good looking guy. Got a job. A good job. Fit. Educated. Told I am a gentleman. But I am 45 and never married. Tons of girlfriends. I am sure that is because I overthink things. Get myself all worked up. Twist things in my mind and then obsess about all that. Question this or that action I take to the point of obsession. Cycle starts over again. And again. This can’t be sexy nor the future a women would want to live/deal with.
I know this and working on it. With this said I think the advice/suggestion/idea “Morzer” just gave might be the best I’ve seen offered to you. Again easier to give advice than take it. But I suggested you go for the drive last night. Get out. Breath. Relax. Will the wind in your hair. Try to shut off your mind worrying.
Botsplainer
@Morzer:
I’m going to take that advice and quit checking to see if she’s been online without saying anything to me. Yesterday, I fluctuated between anger and worry.
Once I start diving, it’ll be better. I have to be aware, and I’ve done it long enough so it is automatic.
NotMax
@Tommy
Oh, they made ’em, all righty.
Or maybe, just maybe, your alter ego is Hank Venture. ;)
Anne Laurie
@Keith G: I lived through the great “Aiee, feminists! Die, chauvinists!” science-fiction-fandom wars of the mid-1970s, when we had to do our furious accuse-pontificate-threaten displays on paper through the mails. Society survived, and by the end of it, most of us had learned a few things & some of us were happier than we’d ever expected to be. We’ll live through this new social phase, although there may be some sprained orbital muscles from people rolling their eyes so hard…
satby
@Morzer: that is excellent advice.
@Botsplainer: I feel for your pain, but she has Africa to distract her and you are home ruminating. Leaving her a clean house, favorite food, and a lovely note is perfect. Let her come home and decompress and you go enjoy your dive as best you can.
I hope she contacts you while you’re away, but after 25 years, I think you’ll weather this storm too.
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
I think that’s your best course. Until you hit the water, or however divers put it, I would try and find something fun to do that will take up your time and attention. I used to play computer games or read a fun book (something in the fantasy/mystery/history genre usually). Old favorites seem to work best.
One thing that really helped me to think more about my own way of viewing the world was reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S.Lewis, in which an older, experienced devil advises his younger protege on how to corrupt a particular human being, referred to as his “patient”. One passage that made a great impression on me described how the younger devil is chastised for committing a serious error in allowing the “patient” to get away from the various temptations he had been subject to and do something he genuinely enjoyed – which exposed all the temptations for the empty sham that they were. I am not a religious person, but that passage seemed wise to me, if one replaces devils with one’s own mind urging one to think and do a variety of unhealthy/bad things.
Tommy
@NotMax: Bookmarked. Going to yell at my mom the next time I see her face-to-face, pull up this link, ask WTF how didn’t you buy me these? My love for Aquaman was pretty epic.
Morzer
That’s the passage in The Screwtape Letters to which I was referring (from Letter XIII).
NotMax
@Keith G
Can kind’a, sort’a remember scooting around while wearing a Davy Crockett hat and a playshirt* with Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog on it (no idea where anyone got that, may well have been homemade).
*T-shirts were strictly undergarments in those days, with the exception of so-called juvenile delinquents who also sported a D.A. haircut and pegged jeans.
@Tommy
Not a NASA endeavor. A European Space Agency project, launched from the spaceport in French Guiana.
JPL
@Morzer: Supposedly they have received a lot of data that they have to sort through. It will be interesting when some of the results are released.
Botsplainer
@Morzer:
In the plane now, not quite wheels up, but taxiing(sp? – that seems wrong).
I’m with my group, which is delightfully distracting and taking away some of the feelings of isolation I’ve been feeling nights and weekends. I know some of my group, so that’s helpful, too.
Thanks for the encouragement guys! It’s helped.
NotMax
BTW, while rightfully praising the cometary mission, it should also be noted (albeit a month belated) that applause is due India as well.
Tommy
@NotMax: That comment was lazy on my part. I knew it wasn’t a NASA project. But I think the comment in its whole still stands. Most days for work I wore a suit and french cuffs. Half the people I worked with, the creative staff, wore gosh knows what because they were “edgy.” On the off day I could wear anything I am sure I wore a few things not PC, but nobody got mad at me because they knew me. They knew I wasn’t sexist, racist, or this or that. It was a shirt.
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
You have fun with your diving, Botsplainer. If you feel like reporting in on any wonders of nature/heroic feats to us, I am sure we’d all enjoy dabbling our toes in your lagoon.
Morzer
@Tommy:
French cuffs? French cuffs?!!! To the guillotine with Counterrevolutionary Oligarch Tommy immediately!
Tommy
@Morzer: If you are going to get dressed up. Get dressed up. Do not play around.
Morzer
@Tommy:
So, tricorn hat and knee breeches, plus a powdered wig?
Tommy
@Morzer: No that is a little too much. But a suit and a bow tie? Or just a nice fitted suit? Tailored for you to fit. That is a nice thing. Something every male should have if they can.
Morzer
@Tommy:
I have to be honest and say that I hate wearing suits and ties. I find them the most impractical, uncomfortable get-up ever devised (although I’ve often thought that high heels must be pretty darn hard for women to wear). Give me the choice and I’ll slop around in a hoodie and sweatpants and feel perfectly happy.
Tommy
@Morzer: 99% of the time, because I work out of my house, I am in jeans (baggy, not Mom jeans) and a tee and hoodie. But I do like getting dressed up from time to time. Go to a place like Tom James and be fitted for a suit by hand. Pick every option to the number of buttons on your shirt. Put that suit on, take a lady to dinner, and tell me how nice it feels. It feels nice.
Morzer
@Tommy:
I must be candid and say that in my time as a wild young thing I took quite a number of young ladies to dinner and I cannot now, in my late summer years, remember whether I wore a suit or not – but I do remember their faces and the conversation. Plus, on occasion, displays of affection. Sed de hoc satis.
MomSense
Last night a friend called and said that a local band was playing a free concert at one of the inns in town. What fun! It was a townie party and everyone was dancing, singing, and having a ball. Turns out the auto mechanic is a helluva dancer. I looked over and saw him dancing with a group that included a beloved teacher who retired a few years ago.
Hal
Sigh. I have a terrible feeling about what’s coming down in Ferguson. I read on another blog that there are a 1000+ police and the national guard on stand by. Humvees, military grade equipment.
I’m hoping we don’t end up with multiple protestors dead in the streets, but if we do, I have to wonder how many people will care. I’ve been disappointed at so much of the response to Michael Brown’s death. Facebook should be a hoot.
Tommy
@Morzer: Get your point. I also recall their faces and conversations like it was yesterday. I just think every man ought to have a nice suit. We can leave it at that :).
Morzer
@Hal:
I think that this sort of gratuitous and provocative escalation of the police presence in Ferguson can only make matters worse, especially as the Ferguson police are clearly incompetent, racist and violent – precisely the combination one would hope to avoid in the guardians of law and order.
I feel that Democrats should make a sweeping reform of the “justice” system one of their major priorities. It’s terrifyingly clear that the (majority white and male) police are often out of control and abusing their ability to carry weapons. I don’t see how we can hope for anything like a genuinely equal and free society while these circumstances continue.
Morzer
@Tommy:
I’ll save a hoodie and sweats for when the revolution comes and you need to be a conspicuous member of the unwashed masses.
MomSense
@Hal:
I’m really worried, too.
RSA
@Tommy:
Some of the commenters on the io9 article mention having had Aquaman Underoos and wearing them into the tub because, hey, you never know what might happen. (Something like going up on the roof in Superman Underoos, though…)
Morzer
On a lighter note, any of youse tried Googling “Hodor” lately?
Tommy
@Morzer: I live about 40 miles from Ferguson. To think racial tensions are a new thing is not to know the area or the history. The undercurrent is real and been around for generations. This is just throwing a match on the fire. It will not end well. Mark my words.
MomSense
Anyone read Jamelle Bouie’s article at Slate about why Democrats lost white working class voters?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/democrats_can_t_win_white_working_class_voters_the_party_is_too_closely.html
Tommy
@RSA: LOL. My parents might not have gotten them for me because maybe I thought I could breath underwater. Pretty sure at around 5 I thought if I tried hard enough I could. And wearing Aquaman how couldn’t I :).
Morzer
@Tommy:
My deepest fear is that those bringing the extra police in may be hoping for an incident so as to unleash their officially sanctioned thugs. Stand Your Ground laws are already functioning as a white man’s free murder charter – and this could be like Stand Your Ground multiplied a thousand times. I suspect that Jay Nixon has panicked and is doing exactly the wrong thing to try and save his own ass at the expense of justice and decency.
debbie
@Botsplainer:
Have a great, safe week, and know that pre-rehearsing arguments is totally self-defeating. Deal with it when (and if) it happens.
Morzer
@MomSense:
Yes. Depressing, but true, IMHO. We’ve been asking ourselves for many years why white voters support a party that screws them consistently, while voting down Democrats who are, sometimes too tepidly, trying to provide something like a safety net for their future. I suspect that fighting for a higher minimum wage/more economic populism isn’t going to change the underlying dynamic at play here very much. I wish I could think otherwise.
MBunge
There is video, at the link, if you need it to verify that Taylor may be a schnook or even a schlemiel but he’s capable of learning better, when corrected.
Yeah, there’s nothing creepy and “Cultural Revolutiony” about that phrase.
Mike
Schlemazel
@bago:
I have been using it for years in my job – it is basically the swiss army knife with 500 ‘blades’.
Yes, keep your shit patched up to date. Its not much but its a start.
RSA
@Botsplainer: Good luck, Botsplainer. I’ll offer encouragement by saying that you have a good plan: Do something for your relationship, do something for yourself, and try not to worry too much about what’s out of your hands.
MomSense
@Morzer:
President Obama won both 2008 and 2012 without white, working class voters and I don’t think we should do the Clinton version of dog whistling lite in order to win them back. I’m not convinced that the white working class vote can be won back at all.
BTW Dean is on my teevee wondering why we don’t fight for state offices and predicting we will see a third party with people who want to talk about issues.
Tommy
@Morzer: It is going to be terrible. The previous protests were not violent. Some property damage, but in every occasion local people showed up that night or 5 AM to help out. I recall asking the cops in my small rural town what they’d do, and they said let us protest. As long as you are not breaking the law we got no issue with you.
In this nation we have a right to protest. I am stunned by the Occupy and Ferguson movements. Met with police force. But Clive Bundy can have people train sniper guns on law enforcement offices and get off. How is this possible?
Baud
@MomSense:
Well, it’s Slate, so I haven’t read it, but that passage makes sense to me.
mai naem
@MomSense: It’s not just blacks. It’s minorities. In that Esquire piece about the dysfunctional congress from a couple of weeks ago, there’s a comment from a wife from the GOP congressman who goes to the SOTU and tells him how the GOP is all white on one side but the other side is overly black/minority. I just wonder with the FDR dems dying off, enough minorities who’ll vote for the GOP and working white people who don’t want to be seen with the “coloreds”, that the Dems are going to have a hard time putting together a majority either.
Morzer
@MomSense:
Yes, but Clinton never got to 50% of the popular vote. I don’t see much future in dogwhistling, because that will just lose us another chunk of our coalition (not to mention the ethical issues). I think Dean is right that we should fight for state offices – and I’ve thought for some time that a third party that did focus on local issues and was well-organized might well give the two old parties a serious fight. The mistake third parties make is to go for the big time straight off the bat, which means they lose big and vanish overnight. Win your local races, build up to winning House and Senate seats – and when you’ve got a big enough base, then go for the White House. Hell, if you have enough House and Senate seats, you could even be the kingmaker party and get enough of your program adopted to sell the voters on your party as the party that actually delivers.
NotMax
@Tommy
Loathe, loathe, loathe suits and ties.
A major selling point for moving to the Aloha State and joyfully flee the workaday concrete canyons of Manhattan was that (at least then) suits and ties were seen on this island about as often as tartan hogs.
Heck, back then shoes (or any type of footwear) were not required for school students until the 6th grade.
MomSense
@Tommy:
Don’t you think the cop said that to you because your town is so white? Cops evaluate white protesters differently than black and latino protesters even if they are engaged in exactly the same behavior. How confident are you that if that same cop were called to assist in Ferguson he would have the same attitude toward protesters?
Protesters who were not breaking the law in Ferguson were met with tear gas. Journalists were threatened.
Morzer
@Tommy:
How is it that we don’t face the horrifying number of people kiled by guns every year? How is it that we never face the fact of widespread police corruption, violence and racism? How is it that we never call white people domestic terrorists?
I have a theory that it’s because white people of a right-wing/weak tea centrist disposition control enough of the media that the news isn’t going to be presented in a straightforward and factual way to most people. We do a lot of brainwashing of the people via the media – and the results are pretty grim.
Woodrowfan
@NotMax:
technically he was correct. No one at NASA cared what he wore at ESA. (grin)
thruppence
I’ll be spending most of my day on Craigslist, trying to find a room to rent in the San Jose area. I have replied to dozens of ads, and have not received one reply. Judging by the ads I’ve seen, it would be easier if i were female, much younger, spoke Mandarin 環境好,or if I were far more wealthy than I am. None of those characteristics are going to change anytime soon. Does anyone know of any alternative resources for finding housing?
ThresherK
A Wonder Woman just ordered coffee at the shop I’m in. She was not two weeks late to Halloween, but when asked, said she simply was still wearing the pajamas which were warm enough for the trip outside.
I wanted badly to know whether she bought the PJs herself, or was awarded them by someone, but refrained from asking.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: Agree on the suit; have several, including black tie. But I also have to say there are few better feelings than returning home or to a hotel room after a black tie evening and removing all your clothes.
NotMax
@NotMax
Just an aside, but I own well over 300 ties. It became a tradition that every time a relative kicked the bucket, any and all ties would mysteriously find their way to my closet.
Got some real howlers, too, including ones I wouldn’t wear to a clown convention. But the collection did come in handy when I was involved in live theater – the costume people loved me. “What’s that you say? You need a tie that’s shiny silver with humongous black polka dots? Extra-wide, wide, average or narrow? Okay, will bring it in tomorrow.”
MomSense
@mai naem:
I think we can put a majority together if we work for it but I don’t see any future for us if we chase the white voters who left the Democratic party because of racism.
@Morzer:
If people want third parties, then we need to first make sure we have ranked voting. We actually had a good number of races here in Maine with R, D and Green Independent candidates. We had to do a lot of serious fighting to elect the D candidates.
Woodrowfan
maybe we’re got the cart before the horse. Win with the coalition we have (liberals, persons of color, religious minorities, urban young, etc). and enact the policies we know help the country as a whole. If the policies work then we can start working to peel off those white voters that the repubs depend on because we can point and say “see, we did that, it helps you, and the repubs will kill it). We could have done that with the ACA this year, but too many candidates were too scared to try it.
For the foreseeable future there will always be a Jim-Crow “screw the darkies” party and it will get most of the white vote. Some of those voters will never, ever listen to anything but dog-whistles that they hear as “n****r”. But some will listen to their pocketbook, and even to their better natures, if we point to something concrete.
Applejinx
I like that guy. Heavily tattooed junglist/death metal guy, with Cannibal Corpse T-shirts. In the mosh pit if you don’t like his shirt just body-check him. Good on him for figuring out that contexts differ, and that it ain’t fair to take people in a ‘science!’ context and smack ’em with crazy provocative shirts when they are NOT allowed to body-check you.
If they gotta be very polite about you, you gotta be contextual in return. You can’t give people the right to be all mosh-pit JUST by bringing a Cannibal Corpse shirt to dinner.
MomSense
@thruppence:
Does San Jose State University have a housing/rooms wanted or available website or office?
Morzer
@MomSense:
I think it’s worth noting that there are two big problems for the Democratic coalition:
1) Mid-term turnout is preposterously bad. If voters don’t want to get the GOP kleptocretinocracy by default they need to get off their asses. Some voters can’t be blamed because of 2) below, but this is not universally the case.
2) A rigged system by which the poor are now effectively excluded from voting by spurious, but expensive, ID requirements. The GOP with a helping hand from SCOTUS has effectively reintroduced a form of poll tax for voting – to the lasting shame of all involved.
I do think that the Dems ought to consider setting up some sort of PAC to pay for ID for poorer voters, regardless of political affiliation. The ads almost write themselves – “We don’t care how you vote. We just want to help you get back the ability to vote that the GOP has tried to steal from you.”
thruppence
@MomSense: I’ll check; I’ll check with all the colleges in the area, but I suspect access may be limited to current students. Still, no stone left unturned, right? There might be a room under that last stone to the left.
Violet
@Botsplainer: Morzer has given great advice. I don’t know if you’re still around but wanted to add something related to what you said here:
No, you’re the one who is killing you. The silence is just a thing. You decide how you feel about the silence. You can think it’s hilarious if you want. You can laugh until you can’t breathe about the whole situation. You can also choose any emotion or way to feel about it–upset, angry, think it’s hilarious, frustrated, sad. The point is YOU decide how YOU feel about it. And whatever positive or negative consequences of that feeling are ones that YOU feel.
Your wife is a continent away with limited communication ability. She doesn’t know how you’re feeling. You are only hurting yourself by choosing to feel upset about it. It’s easier said than done but the hardest part is changing how you look at it. The feelings will follow.
Have a great trip!
Belafon
I’m curious what you women think about the woman that made the shirt for Taylor. Here’s her Twitter page.
And I’m serious.
ETA: Obviously, I haven’t been closely following it, but I like the twitter hashtag: #shirtstorm.
MomSense
@Morzer:
I think corporate media is the biggest problem. I’m listening to a sort of postmortem on MSNBC that has segment after segment of all white panelists acting like it is only issues and lack of fight that caused midterm losses for Dems. They are completely ignoring race on UP.
For months before the election MSNBC pushed the toxicity of President Obama, the ACA, and other issues. Chuck Toddler famously declared his Presidency over six months ago or more because of one poll result. Too many Democratic candidates and their operatives (who often appear on MSNBC) believed these media memes and avoided the ACA, lowered deficits, low unemployment, the doubling of the stock market, etc.
Booman asked what his readers would do if they suddenly were in control of the Democratic Party and they went on and on about Howard Dean, the 50 state strategy, who they would bring in to win elections, etc. They sort of skipped over the guy who actually won elections, won the last election even. Jumping Jesus on a bicycle we don’t need to go back to 2006 to figure out how to win elections. Two years ago we won big and reclaimed a number of state offices in the process.
There is also some Obama campaign resentment in many many state, county, town Democratic Party organizations. I’m not going to get too much into it but it is definitely a factor.
MomSense
@thruppence:
Or you could be just what a nice, retired professor wants in a boarder–someone mature who won’t play rap at 2 a.m.
Local papers might be a help, too. Best of luck!
Morzer
@Belafon:
IANAW, but….
She herself says:
http://ellyprizemanupdate.blogspot.kr/2014/11/decisions-and-comments.html
I don’t think either she or Matt Taylor had any bad intentions – but that’s never been enough to stop people from screwing things up, sometimes disastrously. No-one ever means to cut themself with a kitchen knife while making dinner, and yet…
Baud
@MomSense:
I don’t have any negative feelings towards Howard Dean or the 50-state strategy, but if I hear that mantra one more time, I might just have to punch someone in the neck.
MomSense
@Baud:
HA! Same here.
Morzer
@MomSense:
This “rap” you speak of – it is a card game popular among the young, no? Something on the order of lansquenet, perhaps? One smites the table when a victory it is achieved, and so it calls itself “rap”, is it not so?
Cacti
@MomSense:
Obama thumped Romney and carried only 39% of the white vote in doing so.
The Dem Party needs to accept that nationally, their winning coalition is about 40% white and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Tommy
@Morzer: Lets just take your first comment. Guns. I flipping hate them. You could not make me want a gun. But almost everybody I know owns a gun. I was always taught not to handle a gun. I don’t know how they work. They were locked up and away from me. What I’d call Firearms 101 I never passed. I love wild game but my friends would NEVER put a gun in my hands to hunt. They know owning one matters and maybe you know how they work.
I say this because IMHO we ought to have a test you have to pass to own a gun. If the people that love and care about me want this, is it so hard to ask others I don’t know to do the same?
Morzer
@Tommy:
I sometimes think that the Second Amendment says something about bearing arms and a well-regulated militia – but doesn’t specify that such arms must be kept in a person’s private residence. Why not require that arms be locked down in a public armory unless being used in war or as part of a well-regulated militia drill session?
Alternatively, argue that the National Guard IS the “well-regulated militia” and that this means that those who wish to carry guns must qualify to join the National Guard and meet fairly stringent standards.
I could see an exemption for single shot hunting rifles or shotguns to cover families that have to hunt to have enough food.
MomSense
@Morzer:
Why yes, a game of cards. Of course that is the rap to which I was referring!
@Cacti:
I agree. Why demean ourselves to chase after something we’ll never get?
Amir Khalid
If I am hat-tipped again, I would like to be Saudara Pengulas Amir Khalid. (Please?)
I saw this interesting story on the BBC website. Has anyone here read The Debunking Handbook, and if so what do you think of it?
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
I heard it was a lone gunman, but I have seen people blaming the debunkers online, although I don’t think their evidence is very convincing.
Also too: Saudara Pengulas? Isn’t he the new owner of the Buffalo Bills?
Morzer
@MomSense:
Ah, the Jets franchise quarterback paradox.
Starfish
@Tommy: Some people at NASA should care about this stuff. There are some people at NASA that have more clout than others that do whatever they want, and no one says “boo” to them.
However, this was not a NASA mission. This was an ESA mission. I would think that European Space Agency would have a little more sense than this.
The Rosetta mission is a big deal. There is discussion of it in the National Geographic Kids book on space that we have at my house and read to a 4-year-old. What are girls who want to work on space missions supposed to think when they see stuff like this?
Amir Khalid
@Morzer:
With regard to that phrase “well-regulated militia”, for me it defies common sense to see private militias as anything but a threat to the security of a state. Private militias are led by warlords.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
I think that the idea behind the “well-regulated” militia was to ensure some measure of state control over what had, historically, been very much a local institution, often controlled by the local squirarchy and used for their political ends. Standing armies raised and controlled by the state were just becoming something like the norm in the English political world, having been regarded as potential instruments of tyranny for a malevolent king who wanted to destroy parliament and regain a (somewhat mythical) absolute power. This fear of armies and potential Caesars overthrowing the Republic is largely responsible (along with fiscal caution/cheapness/desire for minimal taxes) for the rather limited numbers of the US army up until the Civil War.
Morzer
re: Matt Taylor and the Shirtstorm, the eternally aggrieved Rod Dreher wails:
I don’t even want to think about the Freudian implications of that particular sentence and its rather liquid imagery, except to note that Brother “Straight, damn you, straight” Rod has quite an obsession with men’s butts in general.
Amir Khalid
Oh, by the way: Now that someone has finally had a quiet word with the Last Son of Krypton about how to dress like an Earthling, them Superman Underoos should come with blue underpants.
Morzer
I must confess that I find the term Underoos rather too redolent of signs of Rush Limbaugh’s passage across the groaning earth.
I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think of the children!
Comrade Dread
I missed shirt-gate and having seen the video, I must confess that I must still have some asshole Republican in me because my first thoughts are ‘Doesn’t seem like it should inspire that much outrage…”
My second thought was “I guess the ESA doesn’t have those annual harassment seminars that corporate drones have to sit through to remind everyone how not to be an asshole, or at least an insensitive asshole that could get the company sued…”
My third thought was, “Okay, I am trying to encourage my daughter to love and be interested in science and I really wouldn’t want her to have to deal with shit like this in her workplace.”
And my last thought was, “Okay, I guess I can see being a bit pissed about it.”
Cervantes
@Saudara Pengulas Amir Khalid:
Doesn’t “saudara” technically mean “relative” or “friend”? What does “pengulas” mean?
ruemara
I never got underroos. Ever. Boys only. Or Captain Crunch. Only my brothers got that. I want some underros before I die.
Steve from Antioch
Sure he apologized, but the Eurpoean Space Agency hasn’t apologized. The woman who made the shirt for him has not apologized!
schrodinger's cat
Its no big deal, women in science just get over yourselves, responses in Balloon Juice, kinda showcase how mainstream sexism is. Even on a liberal blog.
schrodinger's cat
Its no big deal, women in science just get over yourselves, responses in Balloon Juice, kinda showcase how mainstream sexism is. Even on a liberal blog. Thanks guys.
satby
@MomSense: @Woodrowfan: I agree. There are hardcore racists and Dems will never get them, but there are lots of white folks barely hanging on to a working class status and we could get them if they saw the point of voting for a party that would get out there and advocate for them.
Also, even the hard-core reichtwing nutters I know don’t expect the Republican policies to apply to THEM, just to immigrants and “others”. They howl like crazy when those policies bite them in the ass; and still blame the wrong people, but the depths of what they don’t know because they only are exposed to TV media is breathtaking.
Mayken
@Comrade Dread: Thanks for sharing your evolution in thought on that. It’s an important thing, to be able to see things from a different point of view.
And keep in mind it really isn’t just about the shirt. Also calling the mission “sexy but not easy” (I paraphrase) was more than a little insensitive.
Anyway, it’s not even just about Matt Taylor and his insensitive choices. It’s about what he revealed to the world that could not be ignored – the sexism that is still very much real in STEM. It’s about a conscious and unconscious attitude about women that creates at very least an unwelcoming environment for women in STEM. It’s about the fact that NO ONE at ESA thought perhaps he should have a wardrobe change before appearing on international television and being photographed for international news, magazines etc.
Cain
Next time wear a Rush T-shirt.
dance around in your bones
@Botsplainer: Jeez, Botsplainer- that sucks.
I don’t know why married people get into these messes (my husband and I were married since I was 18 yrs old – he died about 3 years ago – and I miss him every single fucking day.).
Just try to hang in there and keep calm and carry on. maybe she just needs some space for a bit.
ETA: Also, my best friend and I were in a Victoria’s Secret shop the other day looking for polka dotted underwear that a dog had chewed the crotch out of?
MUY expensive. I like the ‘boy shorts’ kinda underwear which I bought really cheap of of Amazon. No butt floss for me!!!
dance around in your bones
@Morzer: I do NOT wear Cruel Shoes.
I remember once being in a shoe store, and the lady looking at my feet said “I can tell you don’t wear high heels or pointy toed shoes, because your toes are so even and nice”. Why would we do that to ourselves??!! Because it makes our legs look sexy or some bloody thing?
Fuck that shit. I’m a Croc wearing, flip flop kinda gal. I live in SoCal, so that’s doable :)
dance around in your bones
@thruppence: I’ve had good luck answering every single ad on Craigslist that seemed even vaguely possible.
And I am in Santa Barbara. I’m also pasty white, 60 yrs old, female and no threat to anybody. Really – check it out! I even put an ad ‘looking for temporary housing’ and got a few replies – one of which was so incomprehensible that I had to read it about 5 times before deciding to ignore it.
Keep on keeping on!
Citizen Alan
I remember being a child (7 or 8, I think) and being absolutely horrified by Underoos when their commercials showed up during The Superfriends. All I could think of was how humiliated I would be if my friends saw me on TV dancing around in multicolored underwear. I did not understand the concept of child models and assumed that their parents were forcing them to do that, possibly even standing off screen with whips or something.
Ted and Hellen
Matt Taylor should have very calmly told all y’all bluenose weirdos to go fuck all y’all’s bad selves.
It seems like as the influence of religion fades, prudes and busy bodies will always find a way to nag and bring people down.
The man’s shirt was fun. Get a life, Anne.