15 hours ago
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Permission to speak freely, sir?
It has become apparent lately that I make the people around me uncomfortable when I speak passionately or emotionally. More than one person has told me to calm down recently. (It is then extremely difficult for me to fight back the need to go ballistic on their ass.) What the hell? Does passion now equal irrationality? I want to know when expressing oneself with fervor became too unpleasant for society to handle. Why is it that people say they value individual expression, but when you actually express a feeling or mood that is not upbeat you've become an hysteric in need of calming?
How can people claim to love a person when in reality they only want to see the parts that don't make them squirm? I am not happy all the time. I am not an automaton. I need occasionally to express anger, or grief, or displeasure, or sadness. This is a need, not a choice. I am an emotional human being, not a mannequin.
Every once in a while I'm going to be vociferous. Sometimes I'm going to need to yell. Or cry. Or speak forcefully. I believe I should be allowed to lament my regrets, if only for a moment or two, without judgment. Please stop trying to stifle me. It only makes me feel worse, less valued, and ultimately like an apologetic idiot (because I always end up fucking apologizing). If there's one thing I despise, it's having to apologize for being ME.
Well, that's that. Thanks again for listening, dear blog - at least you don't tell me when to shut up.
How can people claim to love a person when in reality they only want to see the parts that don't make them squirm? I am not happy all the time. I am not an automaton. I need occasionally to express anger, or grief, or displeasure, or sadness. This is a need, not a choice. I am an emotional human being, not a mannequin.
Every once in a while I'm going to be vociferous. Sometimes I'm going to need to yell. Or cry. Or speak forcefully. I believe I should be allowed to lament my regrets, if only for a moment or two, without judgment. Please stop trying to stifle me. It only makes me feel worse, less valued, and ultimately like an apologetic idiot (because I always end up fucking apologizing). If there's one thing I despise, it's having to apologize for being ME.
Well, that's that. Thanks again for listening, dear blog - at least you don't tell me when to shut up.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday not-so-funny
I agree with the cartoonist. Roman Polanski is an admitted - and convicted - child rapist; there is no excuse for his behavior for the last 30 years. Actively fleeing the jurisdiction and getting away with it for 3 decades because he's a famous movie director does NOT exonerate him from the crime or the conviction!
Via Women's Enews & Mikhaela Reid
Friday, October 23, 2009
Rest in Peace, Soupy
I remember as a child watching The Soupy Sales Show and wondering why Mom laughed so hard when he was on. The only thing I ever found amusing was the pie-in-the-face gag he would do on pretty much every show. As an adult type person, I have a much greater appreciation for his ad-libbing and studio antics. Go to YouTube and check out some of his 60s era stuff...
Soupy Sales, slapstick legend for generation, dies at 83
Soupy Sales, slapstick legend for generation, dies at 83
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The falafel suit
The Smoking Gun reminds us that this week marks the fifth anniversary of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former FOX producer Andrea Mackris against BlowReilly. Y'all should read the pleading, it's a masterful piece of lawyering filled with verbatim ravings by a sexually stifled lunatic - especially considering it drew a complete settlement a mere two weeks later.O'Reilly Falafel Suit Turns Five
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
They can't help themselves
Obama's High Bar
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world's most prestigious honor? The Republican National Committee issues a statement sarcastically mocking our nation's leader -- elected, you will recall, by a healthy majority -- as unworthy of such recognition?
Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?
Okay, I know, it's just some conservatives who've been exhibiting what they, in a different context, surely would describe as "Hanoi Jane" behavior. Others who haven't taken leave of their political senses -- and are familiar with the concept of manners -- responded to President Obama's unexpected award with equanimity and even grace. Sen. John McCain, for example, offered his good-natured congratulations.
Some of Obama's most strident critics, however, just can't give it a rest. They use words like "farce" and "travesty," as if there were always universal agreement on the worthiness of the Nobel peace laureate. Does anyone remember the controversy over Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk?
The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they are concerned, couldn't possibly do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition. If Obama ended world hunger, they'd accuse him of promoting obesity. If he solved global warming, they'd complain it was getting chilly. If he got Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu to join him around the campfire in a chorus of "Kumbaya," the rejectionists would claim that his singing was out of tune.
Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they're only bashing themselves. As Republican leaders -- except RNC Chairman Michael Steele -- are beginning to realize, "I'm With the Taliban Against America" is not likely to be a winning slogan.
More interesting, but no less goofy, is the recommendation -- by otherwise sane commentators -- that Obama should decline the award. This is ridiculous.
If the award just represented the political views of a handful of left-leaning, self-satisfied Norwegian Eurocrats, as some critics have charged, then it wouldn't matter whether Obama had won it or not. But of course it means much more. The Nobel Peace Prize, irrespective of the idiosyncratic process that selects its winner, is universally recognized as a stamp of the world's approval. For an American president to reject such a token of approval would be absurdly counterproductive.
Obama has shifted U.S. foreign policy away from George W. Bush's cowboy ethos toward a multilateral approach. He envisions, and has begun to implement, a different kind of U.S. leadership that I believe is more likely to succeed in an interconnected, multipolar world. That this shift is being noticed and recognized is to Obama's credit -- and to our country's.
The peace prize comes as Obama is reviewing war strategy in Afghanistan. Some advocates for sending additional troops are complaining -- and some advocates of a pullout are hoping -- that the award may somehow limit the president's options. But the prize is nothing more than an acknowledgement of what Obama has been saying and doing thus far. He hardly needs to be reminded of his philosophy of international relations -- or that he once called Afghanistan a "war of necessity." Threading that needle is not made any easier or harder by the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision.
What I really don't understand is the view that somehow there's a tremendous downside for Obama in the award. It raises expectations, these commentators say -- as if expectations of any American president, and especially this one, were not already sky-high. Obama has taken on the rescue of the U.S. financial system and the long-term restructuring of the economy. He has launched historic initiatives to revolutionize health care, energy policy and the way we educate our children. He said flatly during the campaign that he wants to be remembered as a transformational president.
The only reasonable response is McCain's: Congratulations. Nothing, not even the Nobel Peace Prize, can set the bar any higher for President Obama than he's already set it for himself.
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world's most prestigious honor? The Republican National Committee issues a statement sarcastically mocking our nation's leader -- elected, you will recall, by a healthy majority -- as unworthy of such recognition?
Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?
Okay, I know, it's just some conservatives who've been exhibiting what they, in a different context, surely would describe as "Hanoi Jane" behavior. Others who haven't taken leave of their political senses -- and are familiar with the concept of manners -- responded to President Obama's unexpected award with equanimity and even grace. Sen. John McCain, for example, offered his good-natured congratulations.
Some of Obama's most strident critics, however, just can't give it a rest. They use words like "farce" and "travesty," as if there were always universal agreement on the worthiness of the Nobel peace laureate. Does anyone remember the controversy over Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk?
The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they are concerned, couldn't possibly do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition. If Obama ended world hunger, they'd accuse him of promoting obesity. If he solved global warming, they'd complain it was getting chilly. If he got Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu to join him around the campfire in a chorus of "Kumbaya," the rejectionists would claim that his singing was out of tune.
Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they're only bashing themselves. As Republican leaders -- except RNC Chairman Michael Steele -- are beginning to realize, "I'm With the Taliban Against America" is not likely to be a winning slogan.
More interesting, but no less goofy, is the recommendation -- by otherwise sane commentators -- that Obama should decline the award. This is ridiculous.
If the award just represented the political views of a handful of left-leaning, self-satisfied Norwegian Eurocrats, as some critics have charged, then it wouldn't matter whether Obama had won it or not. But of course it means much more. The Nobel Peace Prize, irrespective of the idiosyncratic process that selects its winner, is universally recognized as a stamp of the world's approval. For an American president to reject such a token of approval would be absurdly counterproductive.
Obama has shifted U.S. foreign policy away from George W. Bush's cowboy ethos toward a multilateral approach. He envisions, and has begun to implement, a different kind of U.S. leadership that I believe is more likely to succeed in an interconnected, multipolar world. That this shift is being noticed and recognized is to Obama's credit -- and to our country's.
The peace prize comes as Obama is reviewing war strategy in Afghanistan. Some advocates for sending additional troops are complaining -- and some advocates of a pullout are hoping -- that the award may somehow limit the president's options. But the prize is nothing more than an acknowledgement of what Obama has been saying and doing thus far. He hardly needs to be reminded of his philosophy of international relations -- or that he once called Afghanistan a "war of necessity." Threading that needle is not made any easier or harder by the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision.
What I really don't understand is the view that somehow there's a tremendous downside for Obama in the award. It raises expectations, these commentators say -- as if expectations of any American president, and especially this one, were not already sky-high. Obama has taken on the rescue of the U.S. financial system and the long-term restructuring of the economy. He has launched historic initiatives to revolutionize health care, energy policy and the way we educate our children. He said flatly during the campaign that he wants to be remembered as a transformational president.
The only reasonable response is McCain's: Congratulations. Nothing, not even the Nobel Peace Prize, can set the bar any higher for President Obama than he's already set it for himself.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
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