The General, in a report on “tax internment” of the wealthy, excerpts a letter from one Chris Jolley of American Fork, Utah, to University of Washington’s alumni magazine.

If I belonged to a group that had members who threatened the security of this country, I would willingly go to an “assembly center.” It seems like a logical sacrifice. It wouldn’t be enjoyable, but if it meant saving my country from destruction, I would rather spend some time in a camp than have my family beheaded for practicing a Christian religion. But then I’m conservative, and I put my country ahead of myself.

I would have posted this five minutes earlier, but I had to pull myself off the floor and grab a change of undies first.

Thanks for the laugh, Chris.

 

Yes, I was, uh…I was thinking about ordering the tape, the videotape…
about the college girls and the…the wild…the wildness.
They’re going wild or something?
Somebody told me…about going wild.

 
Yes, that’s your young featherhead circa 1981. Apparently trying to order softcore porn over the phone. Hey, you can’t say I didn’t have balls. A real trend-setter I was.
 
Then again, I’m not even sure what a “sex positive” feminist is. Does that mean I don’t weep uncontrollably during intercourse? Or do I just cry a bit more softly? I am so confused.
 
During my fruitless efforts to edumakate myself, I stumbled upon the inter-feminist implosion, which I followed with a strange mix of amusement, frustration, and horror. Like a highbrow version of Jerry Springer on teh internets. Pro-sex feminists vs….what? Anti-sex feminists? Progressive Bloggers of Color vs. (pseudo?-)progressive honky bloggers. Gestapo-esque mods vs. substitute teacher-ish ones. Can’t we all just get the fuck along and, like, learn to disagree on some points?
 
I don’t get it. Someone please to explain? 
 
I fucking ♥ that picture, though.
 

The writers over at Slate seem to be obsessed with Sarah Silverman. The potty-mouthed comedian and proud JAP is celebrating the recent release of Jesus Is Magic, a film based on her stand-up act. I’m generally too cheap to spring for first-run viewings at theatres, but perhaps I’ll make an exception for Silverman. After all, I highly doubt that my local library will buy even one copy. Hell, if Senator Brownback has his way, Sarah’s obscenities won’t even see the light of day in the good state of Kansas (is it just moi, or does the man’s name sound like a thinly disguised racial slur?).

Of the three Slate pieces, Irony Maiden: How Sarah Silverman is raping American comedy is by far my fave. Sam Anderson writes:

Silverman’s work is a natural byproduct of the high-stakes game of contemporary American identity politics—the emotionally volatile generalizing about our moral right to generalize. But she’s not just a critic of PC culture: She’s a connoisseur. She handles the complex algorithms of taboo—who’s allowed to joke about what, to whom, using what terminology—with instant precision: “Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ, and then the Jews try to pass it off on the Romans. I’m one of the few people that believe it was the blacks.” (The joke exposes not the ancient perfidy of any particular race but the absurdity of blaming entire races for anything.) Her best jokes are thought experiments in the internal logic of political correctness: “I want to get an abortion, but my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving.” A Playboy interviewer, probing for something salacious, once asked Silverman if she had a nickname for her vagina. She answered “Faggot”—a throwaway joke that manages to kink sexual identity into such an ingenious pretzel it could fuel a doctoral dissertation. […]

Through her stand-up, however, Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the “meta-bigots”—other members include the South Park kids, Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Ali G”, and the now-AWOL Dave Chappelle. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes. It’s a dangerous game: If you’re humorless, distracted, or even just inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspiciously like actual bigotry.

Silverman is particularly vulnerable to such confusion because, unlike other meta-bigots, she doesn’t insulate herself with fictional characters: Her persona—an incestuous, genital-obsessed, racist narcissist—looks and sounds exactly like Silverman herself. She delivers even the most taboo punch lines with almost pathological sincerity. It looks like her face isn’t in on her own jokes: Her nostrils flare, her mouth cocks meaningfully to one side, her teeth (of which there seem to be a few extra) hide and reveal themselves in strategically earnest formations. It’s like a Juilliard exercise; you’d need stop-motion film to track all of her expressions. Deadpan is nothing new, of course, but Silverman’s deadpan is extra dead: She stretches the distance between delivery and message almost as far as it will go. While she neutralizes mass death with self-help wordplay (”When God gives you AIDS, make lemon-AIDS!”) or relinks the historically unfunny tandem of sexual assault and anti-Semitism (”I was raped by a doctor, which is a bittersweet experience for a Jewish girl”), her body language suggests she’s just a concerned citizen talking about property taxes at a city council meeting.

“I don’t care if you think I’m racist,” Silverman says in her act. “I just want you to think I’m thin.”

See, Mom, I told you that South Park has socially redeeming qualities! Nyah-nyah-nyah!

Also check out Silver Showers: Sarah Silverman’s great geysers of filth, by David Edelstein, and a November 10th interview with Slate’s Pamela Paul.

Oh, how I ♥ Sarah Silverman. Call it a girl crush if you want, but Sarah rocks. Hey, did you expect any less? - the girl’s Jewish (and an atheist, at that!).

- K

On September 28, conservative radio host Bill Bennett had the following exchange with a caller to his ‘Morning in America’ radio program (transcript from Media Matters for America):

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I’ve read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn’t — never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they’re all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don’t know what the costs would be, too. I think as — abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don’t know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don’t know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don’t know. I mean, it cuts both — you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well –

CALLER: Well, I don’t think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don’t think it is either, I don’t think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don’t know. But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Naturally, the media jumped on the “But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could abort every black baby in this country” portion of the conversation. That, along with claims of racism, has been making the rounds, both online and off - as well it should. Although most liberal commentators have removed all context surrounding the quote - as those on both ends of political spectrum oftentimes do - it doesn’t change the fact that Bennett is a racist.

Conservative analysts are quick to point out, and rightfully so, that the statement must be viewed in context. Take, for example, this argument from Jonah Goldberg of NRO:

Now, many of you probably know all of this so far. But some probably do not because you’ve heard about this second hand. And Democrats and many liberals have been trying to distort what Bennett said. Former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe: “The point he was trying to make, I guess, he said, you know, if you were to go out there and kill the black babies, the crime would go down.” Ted Kennedy and a predictably long list of others have called him a racist. Radio host Ed Schultz said: Bennett is “out there advocating the murder of all black babies.”

Yet, no matter how conservatives try to spin Bennett’s comments, they’re unable to whitewash the racism that underlies his reasoning.

No doubt, anyone who actually read the entire transcript should know that Bennett certainly was not advocating the murder of black babies. Anyone with a brain stem, anyway. The only way to read that level of racism into his statements is to consider them completely out of context. Unfortunately, that’s what many libs - such as NOW* - are doing. This only makes us all look like stupid reactionaries, so stop. Seriously. Stop it. Bad liberals, bad!

However, Bennett apologists can’t dismiss allegations of racism outright. The reasoning behind his statement was both ignorant and bigoted. Let’s take another look:

But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

Although he doesn’t come right out and say it, the insinuation is that there’s something inherent about black people that makes them more likely to commit crime than whites. The implication is that, if there were fewer black people, there would be less crime - not just because there would fewer crime-prone blacks on earth, but also because the levels of crime among other groups would not increase.

What Bennett doesn’t acknowledge is that poverty, not race, is linked to increased levels of crime. Blacks are more likely to be the have-nots (and whites, the haves); thus, they are at an increased risk of engaging in criminal behavior. If we were to wipe all blacks from the face of the planet, another disadvantaged group would just be knocked down a peg to take their place. In other words, the second-poorest group would then become the poorest; and because crime is linked to poverty, this new group would engage in a disproportionate amount of crime. Off the top of my head, I don’t know what group that would be, but let’s say, for the argument’s sake, that it’s Hispanics. Does this mean that, over the course of a generation or two, Hispanics developed some genetic defect that caused them to commit crimes? Of course not - that’s preposterous! It’s all about income and class, baby.

“Aborting every black baby” wouldn’t affect the crime rates much, at least not over the long term. As long as there’s poverty, there will be crime. Blaming the victimized group is just - well, racist.

- K

* An interesting side note on NOW: the action alert they sent out to subscribers reflects the same liberal bias that pisses me off (i.e., unfairly and irresponsibly taking Bennett’s comments out of context); yet, their recent press release offers a more rational and balanced analysis of the situation. I wonder what the reason is behind the seeming discord?

Ooooh, oooh, oooh!

Looks like I got my first angry comment this morning. (Well, at least the first that isn’t possibly a forward.)

I doubt that many readers go back and browse through months-old posts, so I decided to post the comment here, along with my reply, so y’all might actually read it!

The original post can be found here.

- K

______________________________________

Darren,

Let’s start at the beginning here.

You said that:

“Your blog here is fundamentally wrong. Ok, yes there may be something sexist in that Men sit at the front of the powhiri and the poroporoaki.”

The point of this post was two-fold: that the Maori culture is sexist, and that’s it’s wrong to indulge and even encourage such sexism in more socially progressive societies such as New Zealand. In the above statement, you freely admit that my first argument - that sexism does exist in Maori culture - is correct. So I’ll move right along to the second half.

You went on to say that:

“That Auckland probation officer represents the western feminist who wishes to have everything, and if they cannot get something they will cry out as a sex discrimination. However, if one does not wish to sit at the back of the powhiri or the poroporoaki, then the best thing is to NOT ATTEND IT. This just represents the Western trying to impose their “superior” beliefs onto the ‘barbaric tribe’.”

I have two problems with this line of reasoning. First of all, asking women to sit in the back and imposing sanctions when they refuse is sexist whether you’re there to see it or not. Let me phrase it another way: if a man discriminates against a woman in the wilderness and no one’s around to witness it, is it still discrimination? YES!

Furthermore, this was not a ceremony held by the Maori in their community - IT WAS SPONSORED BY AND HELD IN A NEW ZEALAND PRISON! The warden who was reprimanded worked in said prison, and had every right to attend the ceremony - it was held in her workplace by her employer and was thus a workplace function. When she refused to move to the back, she wasn’t scolded by the Maoris in attendance, but instead received an oral warning FROM HER SUPERIORS - government workers funded by public taxes. This amounts to 1) workplace discrimination and 2) discrimination on behalf of the government. I don’t know about New Zealand’s constitution, but if it’s anything like America’s, this incident would be grounds for a serious lawsuit.

My main problem here is that the discrimination in question was tolerated, encouraged, and even perpetuated BY THE NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT. Political correctness run amok, indeed.

But let’s return to those kindly Maoris. Your claim seems to go as such: yes, the Maori culture is somewhat sexist, but that’s ok, because ultimately they have a tighter knit, less violent community. Oh, and women who want to be treated the same as men - not worse, not better, just THE SAME - are “western feminists who wish to have everything, and if they cannot get something they will cry out as a sex discrimination.” Angry crybabies, in other words.

You also point out that:

“in Maori culture the woman is regarded as Tapu or sacred” and “the Maori culture is one of balance between the sexes, where each has their own areas.”

In regards to the woman as sacred in Maori culture - this does not necessarily mean that she’s treated “better.” I’m not an anthropologist, nor have I extensively studied Maori culture, but the concept seems somewhat paternalistic, i.e., women are sacred so they have to be protected, coddled, and handled with care - a sure pretext to denying them rights and equality. As for the “balance between the sexes,” this amounts to a “separate but equal” argument, which the US Supreme Court ruled as discriminatory and unlawful in 1954.

So my answer to your question:

“What is worse, may I ask you. The tribe who looks after each other and may possibly have sexist ideals, but ultimately help each other as a family. Or the Western capalist ideal where the only thing that matters is the individual, lying, cheating and deceiving their way to push themselves up the corporate ladder.”

would be “b,” albeit with a qualifier.

You see, the question itself is flawed and misleading - by providing two widely disparate choices, the implication is that I can only have one or the other; a sexist but nonviolent community or a gender-equal but aggressive one. However, this isn’t so. Just as I don’t want to live in a community where I’m denied the same rights as my male peers, nor do I want to live in the sort of capitalistic culture that you describe. Unfortunately, that does seem to be the direction in which American society is heading - but that’s not the fault of angry Western feminists (as seems to be your implication). We can certainly have a country where 1) women and men are treated equal and 2) people strike a fairer balance between altruism and selfishness. It need not be either/or. And, just for the record, if I WAS forced to make an either/or choice, I’d still choose b - I certainly don’t think it’s preferable to ask one-half a culture’s population to sacrifice their dignity for the greater good.

Judging from the language in your post, you seem to have a serious problem with feminists (and assertive women in general). Do we (feminists) “want it all”? No, we just want (and deserve) the same opportunities and respect as men. What’s wrong with that? Seriously, what’s your basis for denying us such rights?

Finally, one last issue I had with your post. When I said “Pushing your silly superstitions on others? Very wrong, and reprehensible, to boot,” I linked the text to a series on Intelligent Design (and conservatives’ push to get this pseudo-scientific garbage into American public schools). In your post, you referred to this comment in such a way that tells me that either 1) you didn’t bother clicking through the link or 2) you don’t know the difference between superstition and science:

“You also say that it is wrong to push your silly superstition on others. Um, what are you trying to do to this minority groups. It sounds as though you are trying to change their cultural practices which is equivilent to pushing the silly superstitions onto others.”

Evolution is a scientific theory; Intelligent Design is a religious tenet disguised as a scientific theory in order to circumvent the legalities of teaching religious doctrine in public schools. Evolution = objective facts; ID = superstition. It’s wrong to push superstitions on other people’s kids, using my tax dollars to boot.

I hardly see how equality of the sexes is a “silly superstition”?

Dictionary.com defines “superstition” as:

1. An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.

2. a. A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance.

b. A fearful or abject state of mind resulting from such ignorance or irrationality.

c. Idolatry.

Issues of sexism, discrimination, and equality are moral, ethical, legal, and perhaps even scientific in nature. The idea that men and women should be treated equally, i.e., that neither should be denied rights on the basis of their biological sex alone, is not superstitious. There’s no irrationality, ignorance, or belief in magic behind it; rather, Western societies arrived at such a conclusion after following centuries of LOGIC.

While I don’t know the reasoning behind the Maori’s dictate that women park their butts in the back, I’m going to bet that their rationale is way more superstitions than the premise that “all men and women are created equal.”

- Kelly

Anyone else care to jump in and tell me what an angry, evil, baby-hatin’, bile-filled femiNazi I am? Should I be ashamed for - gasp! - wanting to sit in the front alongside my male coworkers?

______________________________________

I am not sure if you will read this but I hope that you do. Your blog here is fundamentally wrong. Ok, yes there may be something sexist in that Men sit at the front of the powhiri and the poroporoaki. But that is not the only thing of Maori culture. The same could be said that it is sexist that a man cannot lead the visitors onto the maori for the powhiri. The Maori culture is one of balance between the sexes, where each has their own areas. In fact, you mis-informed angry feminist, in Maori culture the woman is regarded as Tapu or sacred. She is not allowed to be violated. That Auckland probation officer represents the western feminist who wishes to have everything, and if they cannot get something they will cry out as a sex discrimination. However, if one does not wish to sit at the back of the powhiri or the poroporoaki, then the best thing is to NOT ATTEND IT. This just represents the Western trying to impose their “superior” beliefs onto the “barbaric tribe”. What is worse, may I ask you. The tribe who looks after each other and may possibly have sexist ideals, but ultimately help each other as a family. Or the Western capalist ideal where the only thing that matters is the individual, lying, cheating and deceiving their way to push themselves up the corporate ladder. You also talk about Female genital mutalation. Yes, of course it cannot be compared to circumcision. Circumcision is done to keep the penis clean and so it a good thing. No the female genital mutalation which you refer to is clitoridectomy which is female castration. And guess what that is compared to, it compares to male castration. You know the removal of the testicals on the male, which can be completely compared to clitoridectomy as both tend to remove the enjoyment of intercourse and attempt to control the castrated person. You also say that it is wrong to push your silly superstition on others. Um, what are you trying to do to this minority groups. It sounds as though you are trying to change their cultural practices which is equivilent to pushing the silly superstitions onto others. Maori aren’t trying to push heir beliefs onto others, the respect other beliefs but the want you to respect their cultural practices when you go to their ceremonies, a simple request isn’t it.

Comment by Darren — October 3, 2005 3:34 am @ 3:34 am

The other night I caught a few reruns of Comedy Central’s newest gem, Mind of Mencia. Good shit. Now that I’ve finally figured out when new episodes air, I’ve got my DVR programmed and ready to go. Damn Comedy Central with their unending repeats! (Seriously, is it just me, or does Jon have a 10-hour workweek, with every 5th week off?)

So anyway, I wanted to comment on one of the segments from Episode 106:

This week Carlos tackles the delicate subject of the “N word” with rapper Method Man. He also tells us what the film critics won’t about all the big summer movies releases with “Mencia’s Real Reviews.”

One guess which part of the episode got me riled up.

In the “N Word” segment, our hero Carlos takes to the streets in order to ask the common folk about the dreaded N-Word. Answers generally differed with the respondent’s race, albeit with a few surprising exceptions. Most white people, of course, thought it was hypocritical for blacks to throw the word around while branding whites racist for doing the same, while blacks largely said it was only acceptable for blacks to use the term to refer to one another. (The exception, if I remember correctly, was a black woman who hated the word, period, and chastised her boyfriend/husband for following the race line.)

Interspersed with the interviews was commentary by Carlos and Method Man. Method Man’s take was predictable - in so many words, that the “N-Word” can only be used as a term of endearment among blacks. No whities, please.

Now, I’m your typical whiteass liberal cracker. (Well, OK, maybe not so “typical” anymore, since I’m not calling for Bush’s impeachment while absolving the Louisiana Democrats of all responsibility for their lackluster response in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But that’s another post.) I can’t even type out the “N-Word” in its entirety without feeling uneasy. On the other hand, one of my favorite lines on Reno 911 (another masterpiece from Comedy Central) comes from resident cracker cop Trudy Wiegel - quite appropriately, during a discussion of the “N-Word”: “What if I were to say ‘Which nigger took the last doughnut’?” (Ouch.)

Method Man’s comments got me a-thinkin’. As a rapper, he freely refers to women as �