Let’s go ‘Stros!
Well, after two whole days of crisp fall weather, we’re back in the grip of a tropical system. But it’s baseball time anyway.
Open thread!
Florida woman, still rocking a punk rock ethos in the 2020s, which is kind of sad. Betty Cracker has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2012.
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Let’s go ‘Stros!
Well, after two whole days of crisp fall weather, we’re back in the grip of a tropical system. But it’s baseball time anyway.
Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 106 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment
It’s good that women are naming and shaming highly placed sexual harassers / predators in the entertainment and media sector. But I don’t think it will change anything.
The reactions make me pessimistic. Several conservative media figures showed how clueless they remain by suggesting the solution is to further constrain the behavior of victims — e.g., “Wish you’d followed the Pence Rule now, huh, libtards?”
Others, like WaPo’s Dana Milbank, are horrified to learn they were oblivious to the hostile environment their female colleagues confront, but they’re still clueless about how their own oafish behavior contributes to it:
I and many other male alumni of the New Republic, feminists all, are shaken by what we’ve learned this week. We weren’t a conspiracy of silence, but we were in a cone of ignorance. My friend Franklin Foer, a former editor, recalls being uncomfortable with Wieseltier’s lewd comments when he first arrived at the magazine. But “they just seemed accepted. I said nothing — and certainly didn’t think hard enough about how those remarks would be suggestive of private behavior or created a hostile environment.”
That would be Dana “Mad Bitch Beer” Milbank. His co-sketcher, Chris Cillizza, seems to bob to the top of the media tank somehow, like a particularly buoyant (and untalented) turd. And his takeaway from the Weinstein scandal was that Hillary Clinton allowed X number of days to pass before speaking about it publicly. Hey, maybe y’all are part of the problem, even if you keep your paws off your coworkers’ boobs?
The disheartening thing is that, for the foreseeable future, we are doomed to live in the world these schmucks built. Rebecca Traister published a powerful piece making that point in New York Magazine. An excerpt of “Our National Narratives Are Still Being Shaped by Lecherous, Powerful Men” follows:
In hearing these individual tales, we’re not only learning about individual trespasses but for the first time getting a view of the matrix in which we’ve all been living: We see that the men who have had the power to abuse women’s bodies and psyches throughout their careers are in many cases also the ones in charge of our political and cultural stories…
And while it may feel cathartic for some women to finally get to say things they’ve been waiting years to say, this does not undo the damage. We can’t go back in time and have the story of Hillary Clinton written by people who have not been accused of pressing their erections into the shoulders of young women who worked for them.
We cannot retroactively resituate the women who left jobs, who left their whole careers because the navigation of the risks, these daily diminutions and abuses, drove them out. Nor can we retroactively see the movies they would have made or the art they would have promoted, or read the news as they might have reported it.
This tsunami of stories doesn’t just reveal the way that men have grabbed and rubbed and punished and shamed women; it shows us that they did it all while building the very world in which we still have to live.
Yeah, what she said. It’s really not surprising Trump could get elected in such a world, when you look at it from that perspective.
by Betty Cracker| 121 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Sports
Some of the games on tap for today:
Of most interest to me is Florida-Georgia, of course. Like I told Dawg fan Raven in the early morning thread, I’m surprised Florida is only a two-touchdown underdog. We suck this year.
The good news, from my perspective, is that the ‘Noles got walloped by Boston College last night, so the obnoxious FSU fans in my life won’t have standing to taunt me, even if Georgia blows Florida out.
Open thread!
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Let’s go, Astros!
Mostly, I want to see a great game, like the last in this series.
Open thread — for all topics!
ETA: Well!
CNN Exclusive: First charges filed in Mueller investigation https://t.co/rtFYm17utY
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 28, 2017
Personally, I think KFC and McDonalds have a better shot at ending the Trump nightmare than Mueller does. But kettle corn all around!
by Betty Cracker| 104 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Assholes
Here’s a photo submitted by valued commenter LAO:
I like the idea as a novelty gift but not for practical use. If I ran out of toilet paper and exhausted all other suitable household paper products, I’d consider shredding magazines before I’d resort to allowing an image of…that…near my bum.
It’s a gorgeous day here on the west central coast of Florida — mid-seventies and cloudless blue skies. The weather has put my lazy old dogs in high spirits; they want a walk every hour or so.
This weekend, we’ll wander around the marshes in search of migratory birds, watch sportsball and probably cook out. What are you up to?
by Betty Cracker| 106 Comments
This post is in: Meetups and social events, Open Threads
Valued commenter opiejeanne and mister opiejeanne will be in the Los Angeles area from Friday October 27th until November 13 and are interested in a meetup. LA jackals, please feel free to hash out ideas about where and when in comments, and when you’ve reached consensus, let me know the details via the email form thingy so I can post particulars for all to see.
Meanwhile, here’s the fabulous Cate Blanchett, whose native Aussie accent always surprises me because she’s Streep-level good at American and British accents (IMO), and I expect her to sound like she does in the roles she’s played:
Cate Blanchett at tonight's #InStyleAwards: "We all like looking sexy, but it doesn't mean we want to f—k you." pic.twitter.com/3FKFjJJVzC
— Andrea Mandell (@AndreaMandell) October 24, 2017
Love how she links the “women wearing slut clothes are askin’ fer it” issue to Trump’s disheveled Svengali: “No one says to Steve Bannon, ‘You look like a bag of trash; do you want me to throw you out?’” ?
Open thread!
PS: Let’s go, Rastros! (Sorry, LA jackals.)
by Betty Cracker| 199 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity
The topic of Trump’s official presidential portrait has come up in comments a couple of times recently. According to The Washington Post, the official portraits are scarce in federal buildings for mysterious reasons.
I’ve yet to be confronted with Trump’s hideous, glowering visage (nor experienced renewed horror at its replacement of President Obama’s smiling, handsome photo — worst downgrade ever!). I’ve not been in a government building all year.
But that streak will end soon when I visit the DMV to renew my driver license. To be honest, I can’t remember if the DMV has presidential photos up. Might be just Governor Scott, which would be nearly as heinous in its own way. Anyhoo, I digress.
As I mentioned when the topic of Trump’s photo came up in a thread, I used to have a job that required me to evaluate and sign off on graphics prior to publication. I wasn’t particularly skilled at that aspect of the job, but even I would have sent Trump’s official presidential photo back to the design team with a note reading, “Are you fucking kidding me?!?”
I can appreciate the Trump design team’s dilemma: the subject is repellent. Even world-class food photographers would struggle with making a turd look appetizing.
But it’s always amateur hour in Trumpland, and that fact is underscored by how often they screw up the little things that a halfway competent Dairy Queen manager would get right, like the typo-riddled press releases.
The current official photo is a testament to that incompetence — or perhaps can be explained by malice toward the subject. (I hope it’s the latter, but the general ineptitude in that communications shop makes me suspect the former.)
I laughed aloud when I first saw the official portrait, and I’ll explain why below the fold, where I’ve placed the grotesque image so as not to mar the front page of this blog with it…
Official Portrait: An AnalysisPost + Comments (199)
So, here’s the current, awful official photo:
He’s wearing an expression that is meant to convey toughness but instead suggests constipation. Nothing anyone can really do about that: “constipated” or “Mussolini jaw-jut” seem to be the binary choices in Trump facial expressions. But the graphics team could have done something about the fucking hair:
Note how the gap in the north-south comb-over configuration (figure 2) reveals the east-west orientation of the comb-under layer beneath (figure 1). There’s just no excuse for that shit in the age of advanced cosmetology and image-editing technology. Plus, all the greasy, product-laden loops sticking out from his pumpkin-like noggin in figures 3 and 4.
It’s just gross. I’ve seen annual reports for small companies that feature more professional photo-editing than that — performed by art school interns. This is just basic stuff, and you’d think a TV personality / flaming narcissist would be on it. Who knows — maybe that’s the hold up to general photo distribution.
Anyhoo, not important, but revealing nonetheless as an example of rank incompetence in the single sphere minimally informed voters might have expected Trump to excel in: self-promotion. Open thread!