What’s going on in ‘Merica today?
A substitute for another guy
Then they came for the legos (via):
First it was The Muppets. Then it was The Lorax. Now, the Fox Business Network has found another children’s movie that is clearly promoting an “anti-business” agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, beware The Lego Movie.
The first thing you need to know, according to Fox Business host Charles Payne, is that the film features a character who is actually named President Business. He’s voiced by Will Ferrell and “looks a little bit like Mitt Romney.”
The resemblance is uncanny!
Sports Open Thread: Good for Michael Sam
From the NYTimes (h/t commentor Yatsuno):
Coaches at the University of Missouri divided players into small groups at a preseason football practice last year for a team-building exercise. One by one, players were asked to talk about themselves — where they grew up, why they chose Missouri and what others might not know about them.
As Michael Sam, a defensive lineman, began to speak, he balled up a piece of paper in his hands. “I’m gay,” he said. With that, Mr. Sam set himself on a path to become the first publicly gay player in the National Football League.
“I looked in their eyes, and they just started shaking their heads — like, finally, he came out,” Mr. Sam said Sunday in an interview with The New York Times, the first time he spoke publicly about his sexual orientation.
Mr. Sam, a 6-foot-2, 260-pound senior, went on to a stellar season for Missouri, which finished 12-2 and won the Cotton Bowl. He was named a first-team all-American. He was the defensive player of the year in the Southeastern Conference, widely considered the top league in college football. Teammates voted him Missouri’s most valuable player….
Mr. Sam, 24, is projected to be chosen in the early rounds of the N.F.L. draft in May, ordinarily an invitation to a prosperous professional career. He said he decided to come out publicly now because he sensed that rumors were circulating.
“I just want to make sure I could tell my story the way I want to tell it,” said Mr. Sam, who also spoke with ESPN on Sunday. “I just want to own my truth.”…
Thanks to commentor Raven for the video. Not gonna pretend I know from football (or any other sport), but it seems like the NFL should be able to find a place for Sams, since the league has hardly hesitated from “problematic” rookies in the past?
ETA: For the experts among us — Any chance of an NFL coach risking a ‘reverse Tebow’ pick for Sam, giving him a chance to demonstrate his skills for the screw-the-haterz publicity? I know there’s probably a lot more ‘good Christian’ homophobes paying the NFL ticket & cable fees, but surely there’s an under-served clatch of progressive fans as well?
ETAA: Smart talk from Marc Tracy, at TNR:
… Sam killed it this past season, leading his team to the conference championship game with a conference-leading 11.5 sacks. And his teammates knew. And they—dozens of college kids!—were respectful and discreet enough that we are only learning about this now, because Sam wanted us to. “There are guys in locker rooms that maturity-wise cannot handle it or deal with the thought of that,” one NFL assistant coach told SI. Whichever NFL franchises believe their locker rooms aren’t ready for Sam might want to consider cutting everyone and starting afresh. They could do worse than by drafting this Missouri Tiger—or any Missouri Tiger.
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Sunday Evening Open Thread: All the Broken Hearts in the World Still Beat
Via the Washington Post. Don’t know how I missed Ingrid Michaelson earlier, but there you are.
What’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?
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Long Read: “What Does Pussy Riot Mean Now?”
Via the Atlantic, Miriam Elder at Buzzfeed with history lessons on Pussy Riot, “holy fool” protest artists, and the connivance between Putin, the Orthodox Church, and Russian biker gangs:
… I asked Masha what this global tour, this Amnesty show, could achieve back in Russia. It’s a country ruled, for now, by the will of one man. Masha and Nadya have often said so themselves, not least when they called their release from prison a “PR stunt” carried out by Putin to win him points ahead of the Olympics. So when Steven Hawkins, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, says things like, “Amnesty’s network of activists were instrumental in the outcome of their case,” does that not undermine things?
“You can see it as naive or idealized,” Masha said, staring through the windshield onto the slushy streets of New York. “But with each action, you see that you’re doing what you exist for.”
Nadya was more blunt. She turned from her computer and said, “Why are you so cynical?”…
They would spend another few days in New York before finally flying back home to Moscow. What’s set to follow are endless days of filing documents with Russian judges, prison administrations, and human rights ombudsmen. Masha’s and Nadya’s days will be filled with papers and stamps and fax machines as they seek to make incremental improvements in the lives of Russia’s growing number of political prisoners. It’s a thankless task, but one to which they’re committed.
Masha took to Facebook late Thursday night to voice her frustration, linking to a piece in The New Yorker about the Amnesty show. They’re talking and no one is listening, she wrote. People focus on the messenger not the message.
“We start every interview abroad with the fact that people in Russia are being jailed politically for the May 6 case. And there have definitely been more than 50 interviews this week,” she wrote. “Then we see how afterwards, the subject of May 6 is consistently wiped out from the final texts and we decide to talk only about this case. We turn any talk about the Olympics or Ukraine toward our political prisoners,” she continued. “And they don’t hear us.” She thinks she understands why. It’s “not by any fault of their own, but because it’s our domestic political problem.”
But maybe the real reason lies deeper. Pussy Riot always insisted on anonymity, not wanting their faces or personal backgrounds to interfere with their message. Now that they’ve been unmasked, they are rock stars.
I remembered what Masha said, standing in the Amnesty International office, right after having landed at JFK. On the drive into the city, she’d received news from a prison in Mordovia and managed to write a quick complaint to the prison administration; a small success. Meanwhile, New York City was streaming past her outside the car window. “There was a certain dissonance,” she admitted. “Of course my head is spinning.”
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For Your Sunday Amusement
Alternative announcements for the London Tube, voiced by the woman who does the real ones.
My favorite?
Number 6.
Though 10 has its partisans.
Discuss.
Images: Luigi Loir, Underground Railway, 1899
Sunday Morning Happy News Open Thread
From the macro to the (very) micro. First, from the Washington Post:
The Justice Department on Monday will instruct all of its employees across the country, for the first time, to give lawful same-sex marriages sweeping equal protection under the law in every program it administers, from courthouse proceedings to prison visits to the compensation of surviving spouses of public safety officers.
In a new policy memo, the department will spell out the rights of same-sex couples, including the right to decline to give testimony that might incriminate their spouses, even if their marriages are not recognized in the state where the couple lives…
“This means that, in every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States — they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections, and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a speech Saturday night at the Human Rights Campaign’s Greater New York Gala at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, where he announced the new policy…
The Justice Department will also recognize same-sex couples in a number of key benefits programs it administers, such as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program, the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, which provides death benefits and educational benefits to surviving spouses of public safety officers…
We know it was a good move, because the grossly misnamed National Organization for Marriage is already “decrying” it.
Second Happy Sunday news, the AOL douchecanoe whining about ‘distressed babies’ and Obamacare has crawfished:
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong told employees in an e-mail Saturday evening that he was reversing the company’s 401(k) policy and apologized for his controversial comments last week…
Third, Taneisha Berg’s Kickstarter campaign has succeeded, so we can look forward to The Tenor from Abidjan documentary!
And, finally, Coca-Cola has bought an interest in Keurig’s new “cold beverage platform… for the production and sale of The Coca-Cola Company-branded single-serve, pod-based cold beverages“. I can’t be the only addict who dreams of a Coke fountain in my own kitchen…
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Large or small, what’s on the agenda for the day?