I had never heard of Sessùn before this year, but it's apparently a French boutique that was started in 1995 in the South of France. No introduction necessary, I'm sold. I think I'll have that last one as my Fall uniform, thank-you-very-much!
Thursday, September 4, 2008
well hello there.
I had never heard of Sessùn before this year, but it's apparently a French boutique that was started in 1995 in the South of France. No introduction necessary, I'm sold. I think I'll have that last one as my Fall uniform, thank-you-very-much!
weltschmerz part 2423565743546577
There's an article in Salon about Sarah Palin not giving in to the "victim status" many Republicans have ascribed to her, saying that attacks by the Democrats are unfair and sexist. While it's good that Palin isn't reducing herself to that over-simplistic vision of why Democrats have a problem with her, plenty of Republicans are going along with it.
It makes me LIVID. The Democrats en masse have been so respectful towards her. They haven't questioned whether her femininity might keep her from being a good VP, they instead attacked the fact that McCain would not have picked a MALE candidate with Palin's qualifications. They haven't attacked her daughter for being pregnant at 17, they instead attacked the fact that abstinence-only sex ed is incompatible with EVERYONE'S children, even self-professed Christian "hockey moms'". Instead of petty personal attacks, the Democrats have targeted hypocrisy in the Republican party. Only a simpleton would equate the two.
Of course you get the idiots who say she's "obviously" just an airhead due to her ex-beauty queen status, and you get the ones who say that "obviously" she's a bad mother for having a child with Down Syndrome/accepting the VP position given that fact/"allowing" her daughter to get pregnant. But these sentiments aren't anything the Democratic party is standing behind. These criticisms are coming from people who railed against Hillary in favor of Obama because of her vagina. They're misogynists towards EVERYONE, regardless of their political stance. And liberal bloggers, at least the feminists, have made it a POINT not to devolve into petty sexism against Palin just because her political affiliation differs from their own.
And can you imagine if Obama had a pregnant unwed 17-year-old daughter? The racial overtones would just be the cherry on the shit sundae in their discussion of how progressives raise immoral, irresponsible children.
I'm not saying what the Republicans are doing here isn't EFFECTIVE. It certainly is. Because sensationalism in this country has clout over rationality. How sad is that?
Stuff like this leaves me with no faith in humanity. I don't know if "escaping to Canada" would work. Idiocy is universal. Maybe I take politics too personally, but it makes me want to lock myself in a room and cry and cry and cry.
It makes me LIVID. The Democrats en masse have been so respectful towards her. They haven't questioned whether her femininity might keep her from being a good VP, they instead attacked the fact that McCain would not have picked a MALE candidate with Palin's qualifications. They haven't attacked her daughter for being pregnant at 17, they instead attacked the fact that abstinence-only sex ed is incompatible with EVERYONE'S children, even self-professed Christian "hockey moms'". Instead of petty personal attacks, the Democrats have targeted hypocrisy in the Republican party. Only a simpleton would equate the two.
Of course you get the idiots who say she's "obviously" just an airhead due to her ex-beauty queen status, and you get the ones who say that "obviously" she's a bad mother for having a child with Down Syndrome/accepting the VP position given that fact/"allowing" her daughter to get pregnant. But these sentiments aren't anything the Democratic party is standing behind. These criticisms are coming from people who railed against Hillary in favor of Obama because of her vagina. They're misogynists towards EVERYONE, regardless of their political stance. And liberal bloggers, at least the feminists, have made it a POINT not to devolve into petty sexism against Palin just because her political affiliation differs from their own.
And can you imagine if Obama had a pregnant unwed 17-year-old daughter? The racial overtones would just be the cherry on the shit sundae in their discussion of how progressives raise immoral, irresponsible children.
I'm not saying what the Republicans are doing here isn't EFFECTIVE. It certainly is. Because sensationalism in this country has clout over rationality. How sad is that?
Stuff like this leaves me with no faith in humanity. I don't know if "escaping to Canada" would work. Idiocy is universal. Maybe I take politics too personally, but it makes me want to lock myself in a room and cry and cry and cry.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Republican Hypocrisy.
I've been keeping mum about Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy on purpose. I'm not exactly sure how to feel. I'm not going to say Bristol Palin being pregnant is a moral failing on her part and that we should see this as evidence that Sarah is a bad mother. How on earth am I supposed to know that? I only just heard about this woman and I don't like judging. That's why I'm a liberal.
I feel bad for Bristol, actually, because once she was pregnant, she didn't have a choice. Can you imagine the outrage if she had gotten an abortion, her mother had covered it up, and then this leaked out to the public? Her mother's political career would be ruined, since all we know about her platform is that she's "as pro-life as you can get". So, once Bristol was pregnant, of course she had to have the baby. Of course she had to marry the father. To act otherwise would display real hypocrisy in the Republican party.
Lucky for us, that hypocrisy is still seeping out. The McCain and Palin camps have used the language of choice surrounding this girl's pregnancy. That she has "decided" to keep the baby. By acknowledging her freedom of choice, they are speaking in pro-choice language and exposing a fatal flaw in their party.
This article from Salon is superb. I think, out of everything I've read, that author Rebecca Traister analyzes it best:
The first, and most serious issue raised by today's official story is that the language used in the public statement about Bristol is at odds with the McCain-Palin line on reproductive rights. According to the New York Times story, "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said." That's just peachy in its presumption that Bristol had a choice about whether or not to continue her pregnancy. It's true that in 2008, she certainly does have a legal choice. But she wouldn't under the proposed administration of her mother and John McCain, both of whom oppose abortion rights and tell us they would work to overturn Roe. Palin is a member of Feminists for Life, and once called herself, during her failed 2002 run for Alaska's lieutenant governor, as "pro-life as any candidate can be." To celebrate the decision-making freedoms of her daughter was an irrational, unproductive choice.
It's a logic loophole through which McCain himself has traveled in the past. As Kate Sheppard has reported in In These Times, McCain, who supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade, said during his 2000 run for president that if his daughter got pregnant, "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel." When reporters pointed out to him that he had just described a pro-choice situation, McCain replied, "I don't think it is the pro-choice position to say that my daughter and my wife and I will discuss something that is a family matter that we have to decide." Yes. It is the pro-choice position, or at least part of it. So McCain has already been caught in the same goof made today.
The Bristol baby is also likely to get McCain all wound up in talk of his support for abstinence-only education. The Arizona senator has a record of voting against programs that use federal money to distribute condoms; he has voted against federal funding for programs that teach medically accurate, comprehensive sex education; and he has voted down programs that would make birth control more widely available. In March 2007, he stumbled when asked about his position on contraception in HIV prevention, asking an aid to "find out what my position is on contraception -- I'm sure I'm opposed to government spending on it, I'm sure I support the president's policies on it."
As for Palin's stand on abstinence-only education, it's not great, but she hasn't been a particularly disruptive advocate of Alaska's sex-ed programs, which says something (a very little something) about her lack of enthusiasm for abstinence-only programs during George Bush's eight year roll-back of reproductive rights and his worldwide propagation of abstinence-only reprogramming. Based on early reporting, Palin has only once weighed in on the topic. When asked a confusingly worded question about whether she would "support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools," she replied, "Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." She is a member of Feminists for Life, an anti-choice group that does not take a prohibitive stand on birth control.
For the right, the story of Palin's daughter's pregnancy will also become fodder to move their ball along. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has already hopped into the conversation with this helpful statement, that teen pregnancy "is problem that we remain committed to reducing through encouraging young people to practice abstinence." Perkins also congratulated Bristol on "following her mother and father's example of choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation."
It's certainly tempting to fall into the trap of attacking back, of making Bristol Palin and her boyfriend and her fetus the football we kick around for the next two months, four years, or however long Palin survives on the Republican ticket.
But how far can that take us? The news that many politicians are hypocrites should not blow many minds. This rhetorical game -- asking politicians who make the laws to apply them to themselves or their own kin -- is an old American favorite. It happens when Michael Moore accosts congresspeople on the street asking why their kids aren't in the Iraq war they voted for; it happens when Michael Dukakis is asked in a debate how he would respond if his own wife were raped; it even happens when Barack Obama talks about getting the rest of the country the same kind of healthcare packages he and his fellow members of Congress have given themselves.
It's a strategy that can be useful, like when it comes to healthcare arguments. But when applied to personal turmoil, the unearthing of stuff that few families could survive unscathed, it becomes more troubling. It is a game that ignores the fact that there's a real person, a real family, a real kid about to have another real kid, all of whom are being used as political punching bags. When it suits us, we bypass the fact that many of us believe that what happens within the families and bedrooms of our politicians -- while diverting, even titillating -- shouldn't cloud our perceptions of how they do their jobs. It's what we believed when Clinton was witch-hunted out of his second term, when we talk about Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy, when we fete Ted Kennedy.
And while his campaign may or may not be hooting and hollering about this story line in private, in public, Barack Obama drew a very firm line on the Palin revelation, noting that if anyone in his campaign was pushing the story forward they would be fired. Bristol Palin's pregnancy, Obama said, "has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president." He also pointed out that his own mother had been 18 when she gave birth to him. "How family deals with issues and teen-age children -- that shouldn't be the topic of our politics," Obama said.
The issue here isn't why Sarah Palin's daughter got pregnant or is choosing to stay pregnant, though the narrative (and gotcha) appeals of both plotlines are evident. It's why the hell John McCain, in his attempt to pick a chick to woo Democratic woman, picked one who had a family drama that he reportedly knew about. If he understands the first thing about the American people and their thirst for scandal, he must have realized it would be all anyone could talk about.
Why, when he had women like Kay Bailey Hutchison, Liddy Dole, Condoleezza Rice, Christine Todd Whitman or Meg Whitman to choose from did he select a running mate with a pre-made family drama for voters and the media to latch onto?
Women -- the same women who may or may not have supported Hillary, and who are applauding McCain's supposedly go-girl choice of Palin as his veep -- should be furious at the Republican nominee for ensuring that the history-making woman he tapped will be considered not on her intellectual or political merits, but on her reproductive ones.
In his callous, superficial and ill-judged attempt to woo women voters with the presence of mammary glands on his ticket -- hot, young ones to boot -- McCain has committed a sickening grievance against both voters and those female politicians whom he purports to respect and support. What a failure by McCain to have this woman -- with her pregnancies and progeny and sex life and child-rearing prowess now being inspected instead of her policy and voting history -- stand in for, and someday, possibly emblemize the political progress of American women, especially at a moment at which women had, temporarily it seems, risen far enough above our gestational capabilities to be taken seriously in the race for the White House.
I feel bad for Bristol, actually, because once she was pregnant, she didn't have a choice. Can you imagine the outrage if she had gotten an abortion, her mother had covered it up, and then this leaked out to the public? Her mother's political career would be ruined, since all we know about her platform is that she's "as pro-life as you can get". So, once Bristol was pregnant, of course she had to have the baby. Of course she had to marry the father. To act otherwise would display real hypocrisy in the Republican party.
Lucky for us, that hypocrisy is still seeping out. The McCain and Palin camps have used the language of choice surrounding this girl's pregnancy. That she has "decided" to keep the baby. By acknowledging her freedom of choice, they are speaking in pro-choice language and exposing a fatal flaw in their party.
This article from Salon is superb. I think, out of everything I've read, that author Rebecca Traister analyzes it best:
The first, and most serious issue raised by today's official story is that the language used in the public statement about Bristol is at odds with the McCain-Palin line on reproductive rights. According to the New York Times story, "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said." That's just peachy in its presumption that Bristol had a choice about whether or not to continue her pregnancy. It's true that in 2008, she certainly does have a legal choice. But she wouldn't under the proposed administration of her mother and John McCain, both of whom oppose abortion rights and tell us they would work to overturn Roe. Palin is a member of Feminists for Life, and once called herself, during her failed 2002 run for Alaska's lieutenant governor, as "pro-life as any candidate can be." To celebrate the decision-making freedoms of her daughter was an irrational, unproductive choice.
It's a logic loophole through which McCain himself has traveled in the past. As Kate Sheppard has reported in In These Times, McCain, who supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade, said during his 2000 run for president that if his daughter got pregnant, "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel." When reporters pointed out to him that he had just described a pro-choice situation, McCain replied, "I don't think it is the pro-choice position to say that my daughter and my wife and I will discuss something that is a family matter that we have to decide." Yes. It is the pro-choice position, or at least part of it. So McCain has already been caught in the same goof made today.
The Bristol baby is also likely to get McCain all wound up in talk of his support for abstinence-only education. The Arizona senator has a record of voting against programs that use federal money to distribute condoms; he has voted against federal funding for programs that teach medically accurate, comprehensive sex education; and he has voted down programs that would make birth control more widely available. In March 2007, he stumbled when asked about his position on contraception in HIV prevention, asking an aid to "find out what my position is on contraception -- I'm sure I'm opposed to government spending on it, I'm sure I support the president's policies on it."
As for Palin's stand on abstinence-only education, it's not great, but she hasn't been a particularly disruptive advocate of Alaska's sex-ed programs, which says something (a very little something) about her lack of enthusiasm for abstinence-only programs during George Bush's eight year roll-back of reproductive rights and his worldwide propagation of abstinence-only reprogramming. Based on early reporting, Palin has only once weighed in on the topic. When asked a confusingly worded question about whether she would "support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools," she replied, "Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support." She is a member of Feminists for Life, an anti-choice group that does not take a prohibitive stand on birth control.
For the right, the story of Palin's daughter's pregnancy will also become fodder to move their ball along. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has already hopped into the conversation with this helpful statement, that teen pregnancy "is problem that we remain committed to reducing through encouraging young people to practice abstinence." Perkins also congratulated Bristol on "following her mother and father's example of choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation."
It's certainly tempting to fall into the trap of attacking back, of making Bristol Palin and her boyfriend and her fetus the football we kick around for the next two months, four years, or however long Palin survives on the Republican ticket.
But how far can that take us? The news that many politicians are hypocrites should not blow many minds. This rhetorical game -- asking politicians who make the laws to apply them to themselves or their own kin -- is an old American favorite. It happens when Michael Moore accosts congresspeople on the street asking why their kids aren't in the Iraq war they voted for; it happens when Michael Dukakis is asked in a debate how he would respond if his own wife were raped; it even happens when Barack Obama talks about getting the rest of the country the same kind of healthcare packages he and his fellow members of Congress have given themselves.
It's a strategy that can be useful, like when it comes to healthcare arguments. But when applied to personal turmoil, the unearthing of stuff that few families could survive unscathed, it becomes more troubling. It is a game that ignores the fact that there's a real person, a real family, a real kid about to have another real kid, all of whom are being used as political punching bags. When it suits us, we bypass the fact that many of us believe that what happens within the families and bedrooms of our politicians -- while diverting, even titillating -- shouldn't cloud our perceptions of how they do their jobs. It's what we believed when Clinton was witch-hunted out of his second term, when we talk about Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy, when we fete Ted Kennedy.
And while his campaign may or may not be hooting and hollering about this story line in private, in public, Barack Obama drew a very firm line on the Palin revelation, noting that if anyone in his campaign was pushing the story forward they would be fired. Bristol Palin's pregnancy, Obama said, "has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president." He also pointed out that his own mother had been 18 when she gave birth to him. "How family deals with issues and teen-age children -- that shouldn't be the topic of our politics," Obama said.
The issue here isn't why Sarah Palin's daughter got pregnant or is choosing to stay pregnant, though the narrative (and gotcha) appeals of both plotlines are evident. It's why the hell John McCain, in his attempt to pick a chick to woo Democratic woman, picked one who had a family drama that he reportedly knew about. If he understands the first thing about the American people and their thirst for scandal, he must have realized it would be all anyone could talk about.
Why, when he had women like Kay Bailey Hutchison, Liddy Dole, Condoleezza Rice, Christine Todd Whitman or Meg Whitman to choose from did he select a running mate with a pre-made family drama for voters and the media to latch onto?
Women -- the same women who may or may not have supported Hillary, and who are applauding McCain's supposedly go-girl choice of Palin as his veep -- should be furious at the Republican nominee for ensuring that the history-making woman he tapped will be considered not on her intellectual or political merits, but on her reproductive ones.
In his callous, superficial and ill-judged attempt to woo women voters with the presence of mammary glands on his ticket -- hot, young ones to boot -- McCain has committed a sickening grievance against both voters and those female politicians whom he purports to respect and support. What a failure by McCain to have this woman -- with her pregnancies and progeny and sex life and child-rearing prowess now being inspected instead of her policy and voting history -- stand in for, and someday, possibly emblemize the political progress of American women, especially at a moment at which women had, temporarily it seems, risen far enough above our gestational capabilities to be taken seriously in the race for the White House.
EW!
This ad makes me want to vomit. Seriously. Actually, go to www.sweetsurprise.com and click on the "Party" commercial. Or "Two Bites". They're even more gag-inducing. There is NO defending high fructose corn syrup. Read this, this or Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Isn't it funny that America's obesity epidemic coincided EXACTLY with the introduction of High Fructose Corn Syrup?
I'm not on my high horse here. I eat mostly crap (my diet consists of donuts and Nutella), but at least I acknowledge the fact that it's bad for me.
"Okay in moderation"? That's what people say about cigarettes, but we aren't handing those out to babies, are we? Fuck you, Corn Refiners Association.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
WHAT THE FUCK?
This is the second What the Fuck? of the week, but I just had to say something. Apparently Dumber (of Dumb & Dumber, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd of the View) thinks that being a mother of five qualifies you to be vice president (or president, if McCain croaks).
I have the utmost respect for all mothers, especially a mother of FIVE. I can barely stand to babysit my adorable five-year-old sister for more than a few hours without wanting to scream. But how does raising a child have anything to do with running a country?
And it's only because Palin's a woman that people are bringing up her personal life as evidence of her competence. Would we ever look at a male politician raising several kids and conclude he was therefore prepared for a certain office? Fuck no! This is the most spurious logic I've ever heard.
I have to keep reminding myself that this sentiment is coming from a woman who doesn't know if the earth is flat. Who won't let her boys play with dolls. Who thinks that the earth didn't exist before Christianity (Um...Sherri...if we're speaking theologically, what about the Old Testament? What about the period before Mary was pregnant with Jesus?!). A month ago she was ready to support Obama and now she's all up Palin's ass. I HATE Sherri Shepherd.
See the clip here.
{via Jezebel}
A logo I'll wear.
So I NEVER wear logos on my clothing. I hate them. They're tacky. It's free advertising for the company and conspicuous consumption to boot. But this is different! Donate $12 or more to MoveOn.org's Obama fund and you'll get a tastefully-designed Obama shirt, in your size, made with American Apparel tees. I just donated $25 and plan on wearing mine on days I feel lazy AND politically passionate. (That's pretty much every day.)
Watch McCain come out with some avant-garde Yohji Yamamoto latex bodysuit as a counter-gift to show he's "with those young folks".
I'm begging Henry Holland to design a "More of the Same John McCain" House of Holland tee. (Did you know his latest says "Flick yer bean for Agyness Deyn"?! Hilarious.)
Exactly.
"What's galling is this: When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!"
{credit to Clara...who found it someplace else.}
{credit to Clara...who found it someplace else.}
Monday, September 1, 2008
Myspace has "MADE IT"!
"The Department of Homeland Security has asked MySpace to help distribute information about Hurricane Gustav."
If that doesn't say important societal institution, I don't know WHAT does.
(but seriously folks...stay safe!)
If that doesn't say important societal institution, I don't know WHAT does.
(but seriously folks...stay safe!)
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