Hee, Matt made a funny. Addressing yet another article that peddles in the idea that Keith Olbermann’s success is a miracle, because liberals traditionally fail on TV, he says:
How many failed attempts were there, exactly? My recollection of the relevant history is that first O’Reilly was successful. Then, because you’re not allowed to put liberals on television, networks responded to his success by putting more conservatives on. Then someone at MSNBC had the crazy idea of giving Phil Donohue a show. Then Donohue’s show became MSNBC’s most popular program. At which point MSNBC canceled it because you’re not allowed to put liberals on television. Some time after that, MSNBC put Keith Olbermann on intending, as Boyer reports, for his show to be a “newscast of record.” Then, by accident, Olbermann started doing some liberal stuff. And it was successful, which based on the track record (one effort to put a liberal on cable and his show became the network’s highest-rated program) is exactly what you would expect.
The myth that liberals don’t do well on TV is a classic example of an Everyone Knows myth in action. Common but erroneous wisdom is more powerful than any conspiracy, because a conspiracy can be exposed, but information contrary to what Everyone Knows, no matter how devastatingly true, just gets buried under a pile of cognitive dissonance. Why something might become that untrue thing that Everyone Knows often is indeed political, but more out of convenience. It’s convenient and appealing for network executives to believe that the general public doesn’t want to listen to those liberals who’d raise marginal tax rates if they had their way, so they persist in believing it, despite evidence to the contrary. The other thing that feeds the myth is that the unwashed right wingers here in the flyover states stick out a little bit more to the coastal elite making these decisions, and so it’s easy to decide that they’re representative of Middle America, as opposed to the more mundane apolitical people who will listen to a liberal or the mundane liberals in our mundane but fuel-efficient vehicles. And of course, the idea that people living in blue states are Middle America, too, is also discarded, with a lot of assistance from the right wing noise machine.
Fox News’ America’s Pulse host E.D. Hill must have gotten an associate-Obama-with-terrorism-at-all-costs memo from upstairs, as she desperately tried to interpret the “fist bump” between Michelle and Barack Obama in a unique segment featuring a “body language expert.”
Now I don’t know why the fist bump is worth dissecting, but if it’s some sort of secret signal to fellow terrorists, then I guess my governor, Mike “Pansy” Easley (who received one yesterday when Obama swung through Raleigh), should be on some sort of watchlist:
As I expected, the American Life League coming clean about their desires to ban the birth control pill with their “Pill Kills” campaign has had the intended effect of making it easier for those of us who’ve been busting our asses trying to get out the word that the anti-choice community is not all that worried about fetal life, and far more concerned about returning women to a life where the threat of unplanned pregnancy hangs over our heads day and night. Like Dr. Dana Stone wrote in her guest post at Feministing:
Call it nostalgia for the good old days, when men were men, sex was unspeakable, and women lived in fear of unintended pregnancies.
Well, sex was unspeakable to women, and I suspect that’s because it was largely viewed as something degrading you do to women, even as some people privately experienced it as a fun “couples’ activity”. As I mention in this week’s podcast, I was impressed by Rick Perlstein’s descriptions in Nixonlandof the sex panic that ensued when comprehensive sex education became a staple in many schools. One man bragged about how he had never spoken of sex to his wife in 17 years of marriage. I suppose the nightly wife degradations were something that they pretended didn’t happen? Related in the book: Laws against pornography in many states had an exception for stag parties, where men got together in woman-free environments like the Lion’s Club to watch pornographic films together. Hearings against pornography back then usually featured an opportunity for congressmen to get together to watch the films and hoot and have a good time. That speaks volumes, I think, about the world that anti-choicers want back.
Father Pfleger sermon is not what he said about White privilege. Melissa’s post recognizes this while properly focusing on the misogyny. In fact, for the first half of the video, I was getting ready to post about it positively, in contrast to Michelle Malkin (thanks for the transcription, Michelle, such as it is):
to address the one who says, “Well, don’t hold me responsible (gesticulating) for what my ancestors did. But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did and unless you are ready to give up the benefits (voice rising), throw away your 401 fund, throw away your trust fund, throw away all the money you put into the company you WALKED INTO BECAUSE YO’ DADDY AND YO’ GRANDDADDY AND YO’ GREATGRANDDADDY–(screaming at the top of his lungs)–UNLESS YOU’RE WILLING TO GIVE UP THE BENEFITS, THEN YOU MUST BE REPSONSIBLE [Malkin’s sic] FOR WHAT WAS DONE IN YOUR GENERATION ‘CUZ YOU ARE THE BENEFICIARY OF THIS INSURANCE POLICY! (Wild gestures, wild applause).
…We must be honest enough to expose white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head.
Malkin’s editorializing punctuation aside, I was nodding my head in agreement until after all that, when he got to the part where he became a raving misogynist. (See Melissa’s post.) But I’m not bringing it up as a 50% defense of Pfleger; merely to point out that the media attention is focusing on the wrong part of the sermon. Which, of course, and unsurprisingly, is just redoubling the misogyny at play, with the added bonus of denying the existence of white privilege!
Goddamn it. The only thing that would piss me off more is if a large portion of commenters at a place that called itself “TalkLeft” were behaving exactly the same way. (Looks like Big Tent Democrat got sick of it and closed comments.)
Update: As Incertus in comments indirectly reminds me I should have said “But I’m not bringing it up as a 50% defense of Pfleger; merely to point out that the media attention, and Obama, are focusing on the wrong part of the sermon.”
David Brooks:Gail, I watched “Recount” on HBO the other night and learned a bunch. For example, did you know that Republicans are evil yet efficient, while Democrats are noble but slightly too good for this world?
There are two possibilities here, and neither of them are very good.
1) David Brooks, who has one of the most prestigious pundit positions in the country, actually did learn this from the movie, and therefore was appointed to his position without the ability to grasp the basic facts of American politics without a movie to hold his hand.
Or
2) Brooks is trying to be ironic. Unfortunately, he fails to grasp the first rule of irony, which is that what you say has to differ from reality, preferably in a way that showcases the absurdity of that reality. Understanding irony seems like it should be the first rule of being a NY Times columnist. That’s Writing 101.
So bad pundit, bad writer, or both. But reliable disingenuous partisan for the Republicans, so I guess he’ll be keeping his job.
Okay, I’ve run out of patience. What’s it going to take? I’m young and single and write a blog. True, it’s not the Gawker, but still pretty popular and lively. I don’t live in New York, but I still live in a pretty trendy city stock full of creative types. I am not shy about frank sexual jokes. I have tattoos. I have a book out with lots of that frank sexual talk in it. I humiliate my loved ones* by telling embarrassing stories about them on the blog. I’ve dated rock musicians and writers. I drink alcoholic beverages. I own material goods that I’ve paid cash money for. I totally sleep in my make-up sometimes. I use first person pronouns. I’m ready and willing to become the girl everyone loves to describe as materialistic, self-centered, and oversexed.
Sure, I’d never describe fighting lovers as having “wild eyes and clenched jaws”, but that’s a minor issue. I’d be happy to describe myself as needy and/or vulnerable,** if that’s what it takes. So come on, where’s my big league profile in New York Times Magazine? Vanity Fair? Surely I’ve managed to check off all the requirements on the list.
In the same week that Gould was covering this “SATC”-critical terrain, she graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine—tank-topped, tattooed and lounging upside down in mussed bed sheets......
More annoying—and twisted—is that those meager spots for women are consistently filled by those willing to expose themselves, visually and emotionally…..
When magazines feature stories about writers like those smart young men over at N+1 (as the Times magazine did a few years ago) those men are not typically photographed blogging in their beds; when, as the Observer suggested, we read a first-person confessional by Philip Weiss (who wrote recently for New York about his extramarital sexual yearnings) we are not treated to a bare-limbed image of him, or any image of him at all.
Well hell, if that’s what it takes, I’m game. And I can prove it.
For those who’re impressed with my ease with the boudoir shot and would like to give me huge features in your glossy magazines, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
*Well, if you count how much I make fun of my cats by bestowing nicknames like “Lady Crapsherself” on them.
**Who isn’t?
Hee, Matt made a funny. Addressing yet another article that peddles in the idea that Keith Olbermann’s success is a miracle, because liberals traditionally fail on TV, he says:
As I expected, the American Life League coming clean about their desires to ban the birth control pill with their “Pill Kills” campaign has had the intended effect of making it easier for those of us who’ve been busting our asses trying to get out the word that the anti-choice community is not all that worried about fetal life, and far more concerned about returning women to a life where the threat of unplanned pregnancy hangs over our heads day and night. 