This is a pretty good summary of the last month or so to commemorate International Women’s Day. When is International Men’s Day, you ask? Every day but March 8. Open thread.
Early Morning Open Thread: Embracing the Ugly
(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
In case anybody missed Gene Weingarten’s snarkalicious assault-by-pig-bladder on this week’s biggest pig:
Were you as gratified as I was when Rush Limbaugh finally admitted on the air yesterday that he has gotten rich and famous by “pandering to the prejudices and insecurities of marginally literate, unfathomably ignorant jackasses who have to be told what to hate”?…
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The most interesting element of his mea culpa yesterday was his frank contempt for Republican politicians “who were without the testicular fortitude” to unambiguously criticize him for his unjustified, vicious, baffling, and falsehood-filled three-day-long sexually obsessed attack on the blameless Georgetown law student. Singling out Mitt Romney and John Boehner, Limbaugh surmised that neither of them dared to take him on because “they know I can turn the bucktoothed rubes and nitwits against them in a heartbeat, and bucktoothed rubes and nitwits are now pretty much the base of their party, which has splintered into competing posses of angry, intolerant, ill-informed pinheads braying at each other ungrammatically.”…
Much more at the link. And while we’re on the topic of coldblooded unregenerates, here’s Tom Junod of Esquire on Georgia’s own “Goodtime Gingrich”:
… At a hotel in a Cobb County shopping-mall-and-office complex that used to be the last word in suburban fancy, there was liquor, there were men and women of a certain age who had real-estate licenses, and there was Newt, as the voluble and surprisingly sentimental toastmaster. I had spent the previous day among Santorum Republicans in Gwinnett County, and now I realized that Gingrich Republicans are a more familiar breed, and at the same time a much more endangered one. The conservatism of Rick Santorum is a cult of renunciation, and so the men pray before they eat, the women are as modest as Mennonites, and the devil is always at the door. At the Gingrich victory party, the devil was not only already inside; he was right there on stage, with a red-dressed Callista at his side, and one woman slurred her determination to get on the floor and crawl through people’s legs if that’s what it took to shake his hand. There was no pretense that he had the ticket to some special claim of virtue; that his relationship to sin was anything but personal; that he was a particularly good man or even a particularly nice one. The only thing that mattered was that he was theirs, and that he would fight to keep the party — their party — going a little while longer, even if he had to grow horns and sprout a forked tail in the process…
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I talked to one of them on my way out, after Newt and Callista had made their way through the cologne-and-cocktails scrum and out the door… I told him that if Santorum won in Ohio, it would change the party as well as the race, and make Newt completely irrelevant if he wasn’t already. He thought about that for a bit; then he said, “People like Santorum because he’s a conservative. Newt’s not a conservative. He just gives lip service to being a conservative because he has to. He’s a radical. If he gets to Washington, he’ll be just as radical as Barack Obama, just on the right side and with more respect for the Constitution. I like him not just because he thinks like me but because he has fallen down like me. I’ll tell you what I know about him — he’s a dirty dog. He’s still a dirty dog. He’s a reptile. He doesn’t have the same blood running in his veins that we do. I’ll get out there and get in people’s faces, but when they get in mine my feelings get hurt. That just shows I’m human. But Newt’s not human. He doesn’t have feelings. And you know what? That’s why we need him. Isn’t that wild?”…
“Evolution is overrated. Go old school — vote Reptile in 2012!”
Early Morning Open Thread: Embracing the UglyPost + Comments (42)
For all the Douchebags
This is why I want ABL posting here. This is why I think she is a great blogger:
“Apparently, Negroes hugging is the lesser known fifth horseman of the apocalypse.”
She makes me laugh out loud when I read her stuff, and if you didn’t snort when you read that, well, wtf is wrong with you?
My Kid
My wife got called by the junior high school my daughter attends today. Normally, one dreads calls from the school in the middle of the day. Broken bones, allergic reactions, a fight or some other problem and it ALL flashes through a parent’s mind. They wanted her to know that my daughter had talked one of her friends to come forward and talk about the harassment that she, the friend, had been dealing with. My kid and her friend are both thirteen and in the 7th grade. This other young lady has apparently matured physically more than most of her peers, and this has made her a target for taunting and harassment by both boys and girls at the school. This particular incident involved a group of boys. They wanted my wife to be there while they questioned my kid as a witness to the misbehavior. So she goes to the school, and sits with my daughter as she relates the mistreatment her friend has been suffering all year. She named the boys involved in this latest incident as well as the other kids who have been repeatedly mistreating her friend. She told them about how most of the boys were just being stupid boys and that the ringleader is a boy that most of the girls think is creepy and is always trying to touch them. She later told my wife that this particular boy has been in trouble for this kind of thing before and that “he’s scary and a real a-hole.” On the way home from school, she begged my wife not to tell me, because apparently she’s of the opinion that I’m overprotective, and that she can take care of herself. The boys got a week of In School Detention, a couple of girls got written warnings, and a letter was sent home with all of the 7th grade class. Well, obviously I know about it. Wife told me about it and made me promise not to make a big scene. So I only told my girl that I’m proud of her for standing up for another person and for herself, too.
I’d also like to mention that I’m proud of our school. They acted swiftly and decisively and they did not overreact. Things like this give me hope.
Open thread, too.
Open Thread So You Don’t Screw Up the Site Rebuild Thread
You people are impossible.
Open Thread So You Don’t Screw Up the Site Rebuild ThreadPost + Comments (114)
Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth
Steve M. finds Kinsley waxing cleverly contrarian about the hypocrisy of Democrats’ attacking Rush Limbaugh when they themselves blah blah blah. And you-know-who is heh-indeeding it like it was a new edition of “The Bell Curve”.
Kinsley’s counterinuitive ironies have their place — in Harvard dining hall wankfests about Derrida, for example — but I don’t see how they contribute anything to a discussion of a political system that’s been dominated by race-baiting brownshirts for the past 35 years. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have bullied the country for too long, and now it’s time to punch back. If a few fee-fees get hurt in the process, well that’s what happens when bodies start slappin’.
I feel the same way about my totebagging friends’ complaints about how it’s sad Obama wasn’t able to “change our discourse”, about how Democrats could win if they just explained things clearly and fairly. It’s one thing to muse about the possibility of reasonable disagreements and intellectually honest arguments, it’s quite another to put this into practice when Fox/Rush/Drudge are up your ass.
Maybe it’s best to wank high-mindedly only in quiet rooms, and leave the real discussion to people who’ve been mugged by right-wing reality.
Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouthPost + Comments (81)
Speaking of Videotape…President Obama in 1990 (Updated x 2)
Man, I sure hope Breitbart’s Big Heirs have something more than this harmless little clip to unleash on the world this week:
‘Cause if this is all they got, that’s kind of sad. Aside from the ‘fro, Mr. President hasn’t changed a bit, has he?
UPDATE: Just to clarify, I don’t know what the Breitbartlettes are planning to release. It’s pure speculation on my part that it’s something totally innocuous like this. But at his final CPAC, Breitbart did mention something about “racial division” and tape from the president’s college years. And given the BigBamboozle organization’s propensity for deceptive editing and outright lying, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were even now busily splicing this vid with Malcolm X clips and conflating “diversity” with “get honky.” It’s how they roll.
UPDATE THE 2ND: OMFG! I was kidding about this being THE Breitbartocalypse tape, but apparently ‘tis true! As JenJen in comments put it: “Oh, this is rich… Breitbart’s surviving minions are claiming the video Ben Smith released to Buzzfeed ‘has been selectively edited.’ Hahahahahaha.”
[H/T: TPM; X-POSTED at Rumproast.]Speaking of Videotape…President Obama in 1990 (Updated x 2)Post + Comments (166)