Number of the Day

Zero: The number of shits I give about any defense of Ron Paul that tries to argue he didn't know full well what the content was of the racist newsletters that bore his name and signature.

I will say again: Does anyone seriously think that radical feminist literature could have been distributed under his name by an organization with which he was affiliated without his knowledge?

That's rhetorical.

And it puts paid to the lie that he was an innocent bystander to the distribution of that racist swill.

News I Don't Want to Write About

Here are all the news items I don't want to write about today!

[Please Note: This is sarcasm. I am actually writing about them! Mostly, I just don't have very much to say about them. Saying I don't want to write about them is just a literary conceit, which I find amusing! You are not obliged to feel the same.]

There is the news about Google's new privacy policy, which will probably be very scary and/or rage-making for some people and probably not scary and/or rage-making for others, owing to various individual thingies like privilege, personal history, and levels of cynicism regarding privacy in the technological age. I don't like it! For at least four different reasons! But I also feel very resigned about it. Google's probably counting on lots of people feeling that way, which makes me feel guilty. I'm sorry, the part of my brain that is very disappointed in me! I only have so many spoons!

There is the report, right from the Tim Geithner's mouth, that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner prooooooobably won't be asked back by President Obama, if he is reelected. Tim Geithner says he'll do "something else." That's good. I don't really like Tim Geithner, but I would be sad if Tim Geithner just laid down on the ground and never did anything ever again just because he can't be Treasury Secretary forever.

There is the news that this jerk mayor in Connecticut has apologized "for saying that he would help Latinos in his town by eating tacos" in response "to the arrests of four East Haven police officers by FBI agents Tuesday for their alleged roles in abusing Latino residents and business owners, performing illegal searches, making false arrests and harassing immigrant rights advocates." He's very sorry. "Unfortunately, I let the stress of the situation get the best of me and inflamed what is already a serious and unfortunate situation." True Fact: Stress makes you racist, just like alcohol. No word on what Mayor Jerk T. Jerksworthy actually will do to help Latin@s in East Haven. (Resign, maybe?)

There is the terrible news that the Marine squad leader charged with alleged war crimes in connection with the Haditha massacre in Iraq has been sentenced by a US military judge to "a maximum of 90 days in prison and a reduction in pay and rank. But because of a plea deal with prosecutors, Staff Sgt. Frank G. Wuterich won't serve any time in the brig. The military judge was obligated to abide by the plea arrangement between prosecutors and the defense. In the end, Wuterich's sentence amounts to a reduction in rank—to private—and a pay cut." To paraphrase the othering parlance of my friends on the other side of the aisle, maybe "they" hate us for his freedom.

There is the settlement of $22 million for suffering inhumane treatment awarded to Stephen Slevin, who spent two years in solitary confinement in a New Mexico prison, without trial and denied necessary medical care, after being arrested in August of 2005 for driving while intoxicated. I can't decide whether it's our garbage priorities or our garbage prison system that's more screwed up. Let's call it a tie. Meanwhile, this story was filed under "Odd News."

And finally! There is the spectacular news that The Hangover 3 is close to being a sealed deal, with the impending trilogy's stars getting the big pay increases they definitely deserve. Handshake handshake backslap. Good negotiating all around, I'm sure. Couldn't happen to a nicer franchise. Barf bags for everyone!

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.

This Story Is Too Bootylicious for Me

The fascination/fetishization of black women's backsides... will it never end???

From the Associated Press:

A newly discovered horse fly in Australia was so "bootylicious" with its golden-haired bum, there was only one name worthy of its beauty: Beyonce.

Australian researcher Bryan Lessard, 24, says he wanted to pay respect to the insect's beauty by naming it Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae. Lessard said Beyonce would be "in the nature history books forever" and that the fly now bearing her name is "pretty bootylicious" with its golden backside.

This is not an honor. He is not doing her a favor. In fact, Lessard is evidencing an ongoing, problematic fascination with black women's bottoms. Dr. Janell Hobson, in an essay in which she analyzes "the prevalent treatment of black female bodies as grotesque figures, due to the problematic fetishism of their rear ends," (88) on the history of this bullshit:*

[A] history of enslavement, colonial conquest and ethnographic exhibition-variously labeled the black female body "grotesque," "strange," unfeminine," "lascivious," and "obscene." This negative attitude toward the black female body targets one aspect of the body in particular: the buttocks (87).

Dr. Hobson delves into the longstanding fascination with/assumptions about black women's alleged hypersexuality, a hypersexuality symbolized by our deviant bodies and an "emphasis on the black female rear end, with its historic and cultural tropes of rawness, lasciviousness, and 'nastiness'," (97). And though this history extends much farther than two centuries into the past, she highlights the heartbreaking and dehumanizing display of Saartje Baartman, arguing that "perhaps no other figure epitomizes the connections between grotesquerie, sexual deviance, and posteriors than the 'Hottentot Venus'," (89), put on display primarily for the " 'strange,' singular attraction" of her rear end (88). As crunktastic noted over at the Crunk Feminist Collective, about Lessard's naming of the fly in Beyonce's "honor," "The legacy of Saartjie Bartmann lives."

Lest you think this is purely a compliment (I say purely because I am sure, in some strange way, Lessard meant it as such), ponder Dr. Hobson's words on Sir MixALot's Baby Got Back:

This so-called "appreciation" of black women's bodies does not necessarily challenge ideas of grotesque and deviant black female sexuality. Interestingly, both the song and video uphold and celebrate the black body precisely because it differs from the standard models of beauty in white culture, (96).

Substitute "the naming of the fly" for "both the song and video."

If you're still leaning towards, "compliment," think of this: The recent "global desirability of a Black girl's ass" is not complimentary; it grows out of a history of othering and "exotifying" black women's bodies and "excuses her allegedly less desirable dark complexion, full lips, and kinky hair," you know, the still grotesque and "ugly" parts of us.** But the appeal of black women's butts is not always enough to "excuse" our deficiencies/lack of beauty in other categories. In fact, a curvy backside becomes even more desirable when it is not attached to a black woman. As Dr. Hobson notes,

[P]erformer Jennifer Lopez offers a slightly different take on rear-end aesthetics. Her Latina body, already colored as "exotic" in a so-called changing American racial landscape, bridges the desires of black and white men, because she can serve as the "racial other" for both. More importantly Lopez's derriere does not carry the burden of Baartman's legacy.

[snip]

Dominant culture came to celebrate Lopez's behind as part of a recognition of "exotic" and "hot" Latinas, women perceived as "more sexual" than white women but "less obscene" than black women. In this way, Lopez's body avoids the specific racial stigma that clings to black women's bodies (97).

Or, as I read in my Facebook feed the other day,*** part of the adoration/fascination with Kim Kardashian is the desirability of having physical features typically associated with a black woman unencumbered by the history of racism, colonization, and devaluation.

I guess what it boils down to is the naming of this fly as symbolic of a culture of what crunktastic calls "disrespectability politics":

This is a world where disrespectability politics reign, a world where black women's bodies and lives become the load-bearing wall, in the house that race built, a world where the tacit disrespect of Black womanhood is as American as apple pie, as global as Nike. (Just do it. Everybody else is. ) In this world, Black women have moved from "fly-girls to bitches and hoes" and back again to just, well, flies. Insects. Pests.

Please spare us honors like these, Mr. Lessard.
_______________

* Janell Hobson, "The 'Batty' Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body," Hypatia 18, no. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn - Winter, 2003): 87-105.

** From this sentence by crunktastic: "In this world, the global desirability of a Black girl’s ass excuses her allegedly less desirable dark complexion, full lips, and kinky hair." I know, I know; someone might argue that full lips are all the rage, but remember they can't be too full and they are much "better" on a non-black woman--hello, world's fascination with Angelina Jolie!

***paraphrased from a note or article posted by one of my friends for which I have searched desperately and cannot find. Please let me know if you know the citation. Update: Here it is! Thank you, checarina!

Working My Last Nerve

[Content Note: This post contains a discussion of ABC's new sitcom "Work It," which is profoundly misogynist, transphobic, racist, and classist, and also uses rape jokes.]

Last month, Eastsidekate wrote about a new sitcom coming to ABC called "Work It," about, in Kate's words, "dudes who pretend to be chicks so they can get a job, because that's totally how things work in the world."

"Work It" premiered this week, to rave reviews. And by "rave reviews," I mean Deeky and me ranting and raving about what an absolute fuckshite garbage nightmare disaster it is.

LAST NIGHT:

Deeky: I am watching "Work It."

Liss: I am watching a re-run of "Big Bang Theory."

Deeky: Holy fucking god! This is soooo terrible! You MUST watch it! Really. Watch it before it disappears down the memory hole. It's fucking amazing.

Liss: LOL! Okay. I'll put it on when this is over.

Deeky: It is just soooooooo fucking misogynist. Who thinks women behave like that?

Liss: Is it OnDemand?

Deeky: Yes. That's how I'm watching it.

Liss: Ah, found it. Starting it now…

Deeky: Enjoy!

Liss: Thirty seconds in and there's a rape joke. Awesome. "Stop comparing prostate exams to the pinball scene in The Accused." Wow.

Deeky: I know, right?!

Liss: Mancession. Oh dear.

Deeky: LOL!

Liss: "When the women take over, they'll just keep a few men as sex slaves."

Deeky: For cuddling and kissing and talking.

Liss: Not talking. Listening. Even worse!

Deeky: LOL!

Liss: "I'll just go out with my friends and wake you up for sex later." OMG.

Deeky: Oh god. Then how he says "you seem mad"?

Liss: This is so misogynistic.

Deeky: I don't think I've seen such a misogynistic TV show ever.

Liss: I don't think I have, either. And it's so transphobic. Like, it manages to make fun of trans women by playing on the dude-in-the-dress stereotypes (and have you seen the poster for the show? it straight-up plays on trans bathroom panic) while simultaneously disappearing trans people and their experiences by having every woman just axiomatically receive these guys as cis women.

Deeky: Totes. And I refuse to believe that there are people who think women actually behave like this! "All women are saintly wives, annoying dipshits, or sinister cunts. That's the whole spectrum of womanhood for ya!" Who thinks that?!

Liss: And who is this show for?! Men who hate women but love men who dress up like women to get one over on women? Women who hate women and love men who trick women? Men who hate men and love watching shows that make men look like complete fuckos? Who is the audience for this show? WHAT IS GOING ON.

Deeky: I know. And who are we supposed to be rooting for? Everyone on this show is terrible!

Liss: Very terrible and very stupid.

Deeky: Did you like the scene where the boss-lady, who only hires women like the law totally says you're allowed to do, tells the man in the dress that "she's" the smartest person she's interviewed?

Liss: Uh-huh. And all the other (actual) women are stupid. It's like this show is an MRA wank-fantasy of anti-feminism, but all the female solidarity on the show is inexplicably built on hatred of other women? Whut.

Deeky: It's a mess.

Liss: The only thing that is clear is that this show is the worst.

Deeky: LOL!

Liss: And now for the racism: "I'm Puerto Rican—I'd be great at selling drugs."

Deeky: LOL! Yup!

Liss: Plus I love how it's "shameful" to be employed at a fast food place.

Deeky: I know, right?

Liss: This is actually shocking. I am actually shocked.

Deeky: LOL! This show is so unbelievable, isn't it?

Liss: It's gobsmacking. Iain just said it's the best show he's ever seen, lol.

Deeky: It's 2012. How did this get made?!

Liss: Me: "This is the most misogynistic show I've ever seen." Iain: "I dunno. I think the jury's still out on that one." Me: "Nope! I am the jury, the judge, AND the executioner, and I am MURDERING THIS SHOW!" Iain (trying not to laugh): "Well, I think it's interesting on a number of sociological levels." Me: "So is divorce."

Deeky: Tell him his b-hole is interesting on a number of sociological levels.

Liss: He says he's very flattered, lol.

[In case there's any confusion about whether Iain actually enjoyed this plop of dogshit, he did not. He was, in fact, quoting statistics at the show about workplace gender inequality and informing it tersely that the "mancession" is misogynist folklore and 2/3 of all new jobs created are filled by men.]

Deeky: I am kind of in awe that this show exists.

Liss: This show hates women more than Bill Maher.

Deeky: LOLOLOL! I almost made the same joke, braintwinz!

Liss: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL! I love how he's the benchmark for woman-hating.

Deeky: Well he is!

Liss: He really is!

[See also: Work It Doesn't Work.]

MLK Day Bomber Gets 32 Years for Not-Terrorism

[Trigger warning for terrorism, violence, racism.]

In January of this year, I wrote about an incident of Totally Not Terrorism that our Liberal Media failed to widely report with the breathless intensity reserved for brown-skinned terrorists who target white men: An undetonated backpack bomb, in which the packed shrapnel was coated with an anticoagulant to prevent blood clotting, was found along the parade route of a Martin Luther King Day event in Spokane, Washington. Fortunately, the device was discovered before its engineer could remotely trigger it, and no one was injured.

By March, what was obvious was confirmed: The suspect, Kevin Harpham, is a white supremacist, and for years had been on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, despite his not even being a significant player in organized white supremacy.

Harpham is a terrorist.

The good news is that he was found, charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to commit a federal hate crime, pleaded guilty in September, and has now been sentenced to 32 years.

The bad news is that this is still barely a blip on the radar, and the linked story at CNN does not even use the word "terrorism," despite quoting a Justice Department statement reading: "Harpham admitted that he is a white supremacist and white separatist, and that he placed the explosive device at the march with the intent to cause bodily injury to the person or persons in order to further his racist beliefs."

Meanwhile, Harpham, from whose home FBI agents excavated "racist books and magazines, and information about domestic terrorism ... an AK-47 assault rifle, a handgun, and a digital clock that had been modified as a timing device," was described by his federally-appointed defense attorney Kailey Moran as someone who "cared for others" and was viewed by his friends and family as "a kind-hearted and gentle soul who would go to any length to help someone in need."

Moran's just doing her job (hoo boy, I would not want that job, and I am grateful to the people who are willing to do it); the media, however, is under no obligation to report the irrelevant sentimental bullshit that a federal defender presents to the court on a confessed terrorist's behalf.

Is it newsworthy that Harpham's family thinks he's a swell fella? Nope. And I daresay I don't remember reading what Zacarias Moussaoui's BFFs thought of him during his trial. "He was always there to help us move to a new underground hideout!" Great. Who cares.

But suddenly when it's a white man (who served his country!) who conspires to murder people of color, it is of the utmost importance to report that the people who loved a dude who made no secret of his violent racism thought he was a nice guy.

Yeah, he's a real goddamn charmer. Rot, fucko.

[H/T to Pam.]