AddieStan

Tell the truth now, mes amis . (Your blogstress doesn't like it when you fib.) Now, change your ways! Here's why:

So much has been written about Michael Jackson 's life and death that there seems little else to say. But as the crowds gather today at L.A.'s Staples Center for his public memorial, I think it bears noting that the bizarreness of his life had a cause, and that primary cause is likely the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father. A secondary cause is likely the internalized racism that his abusive father apparently absorbed from the culture around him. It is not my intention to make excuses for Michael Jackson's creepy relationships with other people's children (whether or not they were pedophilic remains an unanswered question) or Joseph Jackson 's horrific treatment of his own children. I do however, ask readers to consider how people become the way that they do, and to examine our culture as one of enablement. In a sane world, Joe Jackson would have been jailed for what he did to his kids. Anyone who has watched Martin Bashir's documentary,...

cross-posted from The Huffington Post The ascent of Sarah Palin to the national political stage has yielded no shortage of material for legitimate criticism -- even legitimate derision. There's her famous lack of intellectual curiosity, her tortured syntax, and her alliance with a group of Alaskan secessionists , to name just a few. But whenever Sarah Palin makes news, as she did big-time with her decision last weekend to resign her office as governor of Alaska, more than legitimate criticism hits the airwaves and the Web. Seeping through the Web's meshes and wafting through the airwaves is the acrid stench of sexism. I'm hardly the first to notice this trend. At Jezebel, Megan Carpentier has been on the case since the presidential campaign, when Palin burst on the scene as John McCain's wild-card pick for his vice-presidential running-mate. So, too, has Melissa McEwan at Shakesville . But this latest burst of fresh hell leads me to take another approach: I...

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post There's nothing surprising in Sarah Palin's decision not to run for re-election as governor of Alaska. After all, if you've got a shot to become leader of the free world, it helps to have nothing but time to give the people of Iowa and New Hampshire in the year leading up to their caucus and primary, and that's hard to do if you have to run a state from which you can see Russia. But Palin's decision to step down this month from the governor's mansion? Now that's a whole 'nother kettle of wild salmon. Today we heard and saw Palin as we never have before. No, I'm not talking about the incoherence of her resignation statement ; her incoherence in the infamous Couric interviews became the stuff of legend . Yet with all hectoring she took for her not-ready-for-prime-time performances during the campaign, her confidence never seemed to flag. But today brought us a different picture: Her voice quavering, Palin seem...