I have something to say to every single conservative who has criticized Bruce Springsteen for singing Fortunate Son but said nothing about his performance of his own classic Born in the U.S.A.: thank you!
No, really, thank you. By “you,” I mean everyone, from The Weekly Standard’s Ethan Epstein to the random tweeter, who was outraged when Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, and Zac Brown covered Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit Fortunate Son during the Concert of Valor that took place Tuesday on the National Mall. You see, you are wrong about Fortunate Son being an “inappropriate song.” As others, including Amanda Marcotte, have already explained, the song, which was written by John Fogerty, himself a vet of the Vietnam War, is not anti-soldier. It is anti-rich-politicians-sending-poor-people-to-die-kill-and-fight-their-wars-for-them. It is pro-soldier in that it wants soldiers to actually not be killed. Get it?
But the best part of your meltdown is that you said NOTHING about another song that Springsteen performed. The Boss actually wrote this one. And it’s called Born in the U.S.A. You see, if you think Born in the U.S.A. is unpatriotic, you’d be wrong, just like you’re wrong in your analysis of Fortunate Son. But you’d at least be consistent in that you would, once again, be confusing criticism of the government and elites with criticism of Americans. Continue reading “The conservative brain: loving Springsteen’s Born in the USA, hating Fortunate Son”→
After 200 years of lying about it, the Mormon Church is finally admitting that its founder Joseph Smith had forty wives. If the Church can change its official line on the man they consider to be their prophet, they can surely update their sexist policy barring women from becoming priests.
To clarify, the news isn’t that Smith was polygamous, but rather that the Mormon Church, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or LDS, officially admitted to Smith’s so called “plural marriage” in an essay it released on its website:
In biblical times, the Lord commanded some of His people to practice plural marriage—the marriage of one man and more than one woman. Some early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also received and obeyed this commandment given through God’s prophets. After receiving a revelation commanding him to practice plural marriage, Joseph Smith married multiple wives and introduced the practice to close associates.
Most of those sealed [married] to Joseph Smith were between 20 and 40 years of age at the time of their sealing to him. The oldest, Fanny Young, was 56 years old. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday. Marriage at such an age, inappropriate by today’s standards, was legal in that era, and some women married in their mid-teens. Helen Mar Kimball spoke of her sealing to Joseph as being “for eternity alone,” suggesting that the relationship did not involve sexual relations.
While some are congratulating the Church, the revelation is most likely a smart PR move and not indicative of a significant shift in doctrine. Even Elder Steven E. Snow, the church historian and a member of the leadership explained, “There is so much out there on the Internet that we felt we owed our members a safe place where they could go to get reliable, faith-promoting information that was true about some of these more difficult aspects of our history.” In other words, it was impossible to keep Smith’s polygamy a secret anymore.
But let’s give the LDS the benefit of the doubt. If they were able to evolve on the way they present the very founder of the church, surely they can evolve on the way the church treats women. After all they were able to change their position on Black people, who were barred from being ordained as priests until 1978.
And yet, not only does the Church continue to ban women priests, but, as we covered, in June it excommunicated Mormon Kate Kelly, the founder of the organization Ordain Women, for questioning her Church’s sexism. Kelly appealed the decision to the regional leadership of the LDS Church but recently found out it was denied. She has vowed to appeal to the worldwide leadership next. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. But if the Mormon Church is interested in evolving and not just saving face, they’ll have to come to terms with their own treatment of women — not just their founder’s.
Happy Veterans Day, everyone! From the looks of it, Veterans Day is about the glory of war, the bravery of our soldiers, the awesomeness of our discounts! But it turns out that the way we celebrate this holiday has nothing to do with the way the holiday was intended.
1. It wasn’t even called Veterans Day. Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day and was a commemoration of when, on “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, the allies and Germans negotiated a cessation of hostilities to what would later be called World War I. On November 11th, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson observed the one year anniversary of Armistice Day in a speech.
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.
2. It was the commemoration of the end of the War to End All Wars. Today, there is no trace of pacifism or anti-militarism in the way we Veterans Day. But, at the time, the war which killed 10 million military members and 7 million civilians and injured 20 million people was called the Great War or the World War or, most significantly, “the war to end all wars.” H.G. Wells called it “The War that Will End War” in a Daily News article published on August 14th, 1914:
This is already the vastest war in history. It is a war not of nations, but of mankind. It is a war to exorcise a world-madness and end an age… For this is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever. Every soldier who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!
Politico published a very nuanced critique of Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama, with the equally nuanced title, “Fire Valerie Jarrett.” The piece, by Carol Felsenthal, isn’t very good journalism, since it mostly repeats and recycles the research of other people and doesn’t have any real new information or insights. But it would make for a great middle school book report, specifically a great middle school book report on Chuck Todd’s forthcoming The Strangerand the Ebook Obama’s Last Stand by Glenn Thrush from 2012. While reading the article I was struck by the tone, which reminded me of something I couldn’t at first remember. Then it came to me: Mean Girls, the 2004 comedy, starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Tina Fey about mean, cliquish, gossipy high school students. I realized that the article works perfectly when broken down into its cattiest pieces and set to GIFs from the film So, without any further ado, I present quotes from the article juxtaposed with Mean Girls GIFs. The headings are my words, by the quotes are all Felsenthal.
Someone needs to get her out of here!
“Almost since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, people who have actual, real duties in the West Wing of the White House—the working, executive part of the government, that is—have been urging him to do something about Valerie Jarrett. Push her into the East Wing, where she can hang out with Michelle Obama and the White House social secretary, or give her an ambassadorship—or something—but for Pete’s sake get her out of the way of the hard work of governing that needs to be done.”
A new study from the University of Montreal published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that a lot of sexual fantasies are pretty common and pretty vanilla.
1,516 participants rated 55 sexual fantasies and the researchers broke down the fantasies into four categories: “statistically rare” (found in 2.3 percent or fewer of participants), “statistically unusual” (found in 15.9 percent or less of participants), “Statistically common” (found in more than 50 percent of the participants) and “statistically typical” (found in more than 84.1% of the participants).
How do the results translate into a top ten list? Well… In women, the top 10 most typical or common fantasy descriptions are …
1. “I like to feel romantic emotions during a sexual relationship.” (typical, 92.2%)
2. “Atmosphere and location are important in my sexual fantasies.” (typical, 86.4%)
3. “I have fantasized about having sexual [sic] in a romantic location (eg on a deserted beach).” (typical, 84.9%)
4. “I have fantasized about having sex in an unusual place (eg in the office; public toilet).” (common, 81.7%)
Today, my fellow Americans, we have the chance to exercise our hard-earned right to vote for some people I can’t actually believe are running for office. Here’s a mere sampling of some of the most batshit crazy things said and done by candidates who want your vote.
1. Bob Quast: #GotBalls? Because He’ll Blow them Off! This Iowa Independent Senate candidate won’t let any man’s testicles get in the way of his Second Amendment rights. As Quast explained in his campaign ad, “If you are the sexual predator and sociopath who murdered my sister Lynette and you come to my front door to do harm to my girls, I’m going to use my Glock. To blow your balls off.” Quast is not afraid of hashtags, either. As his Youtube page for the ad boasts, “Bob believes in #termlimits” and “would like to serve the great, no nonsense people of #Iowa as their next US Senator. #gotballs #bobq2014.” The title of the video ad is “#GotBalls, Vote for Bob Quast.”
2. Joni Ernst. Got Pig Balls? Because she’ll cut them off and ‘Make ‘em squeal.” What is it about Iowa and testes destruction? Running against Quast for the Senate in Iowa, this Republican is proud of her experience cutting castrating pigs. For realz. As she brags in her own sociopathic ad, “I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm so when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork…. Washington is full of big spenders. Let’s make ‘em squeal.”
3. Don Young: death threats and butf***ing. It’s hard to be surprised by anything this Alaskan Republican Congressman running for reelection does. Most recently, his Democratic opponent Forrest Dunbar says, Young threatened, “Don’t you ever touch me. Don’t ever touch me. The last guy who touched me ended up on the ground dead.” Note that Young’s spokesman didn’t deny the claim. And the story is more than plausible, given Young’s “interesting” history. He once condemned the NEA for funding “butf***ing,” and once called Mexican-American farmworkers as “wetbacks” and once made silly faces while another congressman, paid tribute to a Marine from New Jersey who had been killed in Afghanistan.
4. Paul LePage: he won’t “give it to the people without Vaseline.” The current Maine Republican Governor is running for re-election. And part of me kinda hopes he’ll win. Because he’s undeniably entertaining. He complained that a Democratic State Senator of being eager to “give it to the people without providing Vaseline.” Presumably, LePage has the decency to supply the people with vaseline.
5. Glenn Grothman: anti-Kwanza, anti-weekend, anti-equal pay, pro-raw milk. I may not like what Grothman has to say or what he does, but I won’t deny that he is as sexy as his name. The Republican State Senator, who is now running for Congress in Wisconsin, doesn’t mince his words when he defended getting rid of equal pay legislation:
You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.
He also is open about his opposition to Kwanza, a holiday invented by an “African American Marxist” who, “disliked the United States and he disliked Christmas, which he thought of as white. He, therefore, made up a holiday that he wanted for blacks.” As Grothman, some of whose best friends are “blacks,” I’m sure, explains, “Of course, almost no black people today care about Kwanzaa – just white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.”
But you know what Grothman is for? Legalizing the sale of raw milk.
6. Michael Grimm: “Sometimes I get my Italian up” and threaten to throw someone over a balcony. Not only has Rep. Michael Grim (R-NY) been indicted for criminal activity related to his campaign, but he literally threatened the life of a reporter who asked him about the then-ongoing federal investigation. After NY1 reporter Michael Scotto asked the Congressman some questions, Grimm replied, chivalrously: “Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I’ll throw you off this fucking balcony… No, no, you’re not man enough, you’re not man enough. I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.”
But guys, there’s a totally reasonable explanation for all of this. As Grimm explained in a debate: “Sometimes I get my Italian up… I’m human…it’s a stressful job being in Congress.” All true things. All true things.
7. Jody Hice: outing the gay manifesto. This radio show host, political activist, and Southern Baptist reverend is now running for Congress in Georgia. Hice exposed the gay agenda he discovered when he came across a satirical essay he mistook for a true confession. In his book It’s Now or Never: A Call to Reclaim America, Hice actually cites, “These shocking words by Michael Swift,” which “have been considered part of the ‘gay manifesto’ by many, and reveal the radical agenda that is currently threatening our nation:”
We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.
And he also believes Muslims don’t deserve First Amendment protection. And Hice thinks it’s A. OK for women to enter politics: ”If the woman’s within the authority of her husband, I don’t see a problem.”
Still not convinced the mid-terms matter? Check out this great PSA video in which awesome people, including Joan Jett, Carrie Brownstein, Jemima Kirke, Lesley Gore, Tavi Gevinson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sia, Hannah Simone, and Alia Shawkat, lip synch to Joan Jet’s 1980 hit Bad Reputation to get out the vote.
In case the video isn’t enough, the Department of Peace, “an art collective geared toward creating consciousness-raising content and inspiring young people toward political participation and community-oriented action,” provides some scary statistics to show how “the most regressive, anti-woman, anti-voting, anti-equality laws are being passed on the state level.”
• 29 states in America allow a rapist to sue a women for custody and/or visitation of the child birthed from that rape.
• 87 percent of all US Counties have no abortion provider.
• 35 percent of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45.
• In 35 states, Medicaid recipients do not have abortion coverage.
• In 13 states, a pharmacist can legally refuse to disperse birth control, even if you have a prescription.
• 26 states have waiting periods for abortion; only 11 have waiting periods for guns.
• In 17 states, the government forces women to go to counseling before she can have an abortion.
• In 32 states, terminally ill women are forced to carry a pregnancy to term, regardless of her wishes or her living will.
• More than 50 abortion clinics were shut down by unnecessary laws from 2010-2013. Not including the dozens that were shut in Texas in the last month.
Cheryl Furjanic‘s Back on Board: Greg Louganis, a new documentary feature about the gay, HIV+ Olympic champion is getting great buzz and won the audience award at Outfest. Furjanic’s previous feature documentary, Sync or Swim, about swimmers trying to get onto the all women’s synchronized swim team for the Olympics received numerous awards including a Billie Award for Journalism from the Women’s Sports Foundation. She also recently signed on as the Consulting Producer for the documentary Reel in the Closet.
But that’s not all! Furjanic’s Halloween costumes are a refreshing alternative to the “sexy [insert animal or profession]” available at a store near you. And, like her films, they’ve won awards, from the now closed Brooklyn lesbian bar Cattyshack. RIP.
I asked the New York-based Furjanic about her “process,” and she explained,
For as long as I can remember I’ve always loved Halloween. But sometime around middle school something shifted. My grandmother had given me a book of creative costumes that you could make yourself. That gave me an insight into costume construction and I started making costumes from the book. People responded really well to them and I just kept going. I outgrew the book at some point and spent a bunch of years making bizarre and/or elaborate costumes (I once dressed as Hanson, the entire boy band).
At some point I came up with the idea to dress as an idiom or a play on words and things kind of took off from there. The living room of my apartment is my costume workshop. It’s a real scene with foam and tape and glue everywhere. Sometimes friends come over to hang out (or help) while I’m building. Often we’ll all make our costumes together and then go out together. The best part for me is walking around the city and having people guess what I’m dressed as. And my friends are always eager to find out what I’m going to be that year.
When I asked Furjanic if she had ever felt pressure to wear “sexy” or “pretty” costumes, she responded, “Depends on your definition of pretty/sexy. I’ve absolutely never felt pressure to dress in a revealing costume. But I find smarts and a sense of humor to be pretty sexy. So my version is a clever costume where I can’t fit through doorways and have trouble sitting down.”
Check out some of Furjanic’s costumes below. See if you can guess what they are. I put the captions under the photos so don’t cheat! Check out the Costumes
Add to the long list of “signs the church is out of touch”: really corny, eye-roll-inducing billboards that are more likely to repel than attract. I did find one funny one, which I saved for last…
We all like to be right. But when it comes to having hunches or suspicions about the things that are wrong in the world, I’d rather be wrong. I’d love, for instance, to see empirical evidence prove me wrong about my assumptions like there is a lot of homophobia in the world, or people vote against their own interests, or Best in Show is considered superior to Waiting for Guffman.
But, I don’t have any of those for you today. Instead, here are some studies which show that the things lots of us feared, felt, or thought were true, actually are.
1. Obese people have to deal with a lot of bullshit and obese women have to deal with even more bullshit than obese men. Women who are considered obese earn less and work lower-paying and less visible jobs in the U.S. workforce according to a new study by Jennifer Shinall an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School. Shinall explains that obese women are less likely to have “personal interaction jobs,” such as a salesperson, customer service representative or receptionist and more likely to have physically demanding jobs in home health care food preparation and childcare. “Employers don’t want to hire heavier women to be the face of their company.” But even when a heavy woman works in one of these personal interaction jobs, she “will earn almost 5 percent less than a normal-weight woman working in an occupation with exactly the same emphasis.” Shinall finds that the discrimination isn’t just about weight but about gender: “morbidly obese men don’t seem to be underrepresented in these personal-interaction jobs, nor do they seem to be over-represented in physical-activity jobs. That’s what’s striking about the data: We see a pattern for women but not for men… This is a sexual discrimination issue.”
2. The whole bullying thing is still happening. Though there has been increased awareness around bullying and anti-bullying legislation, bullying is still prevalent. A report by researchers from Clemson University and Professional Data Analysts Inc., which was published by the Hazelden Foundation, was based on a representative sample of more than 200,000 questionnaires filled out by students. The sample was made up of 1,000 girls and 1,000 boys from grades third to 12th. 22 percent of schoolchildren reported being bullied two or three times or more per month. Bullied students are more likely to dislike school and feel afraid of being bullied than uninvolved students. While 93 percent of girls and 81 percent of boys across all grade levels feel sorry for bullied students, most do nothing to help them.
The Report recommends, “A good evidence-based anti-bullying program [that] will have the power to restructure and strengthen the school environment by teaching everyone how to identify acts of bullying, how to react to bullying, and how to work together to reduce opportunities and rewards for bullying behavior.” Continue reading “Five depressing studies confirming everything you already knew”→
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