AddieStan

Republican Hate Rally Pix

2009-11-06T01:44:00.005-05:00

Fist

Dome & flag.

Kiss Mao Ass

Ken-ya Trust Obama

Fist

No Gov't Run Health Care

Cowards Fear Fox 1

Cowards Fear Fox 2

If Obama's Birth Certificate is Legal

Crowd.

Meet the Press: Levin & McCaffrey call for end to DADT

2009-10-11T10:55:00.004-04:00

Responding to President Obama's speech last night to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT rights organization, Meet the Press host David Gregory asked his guests if the president will or should keep his promise to end the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that prevents LGBT folks from serving openly in the military. (The policy has led to witch hunts of gay men and lesbians within the ranks.)

Here's your blogstress's insta-transcript:

DAVID GREGORY: Senator Levin, with the president live up to this pledge? Can he?

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-Mich): I think he will and he can, but it has to be done in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the military, which I think is now possible. Other militaries in the West -- the British and other Western armies have ended this discriminatory policy. We can do it successfully, but it ought to be done with thoughtfulness, with care, and with a buy-in from the military.

GREGORY: Gen. Myers, is it time?

GEN. RICHARD MYERS (RET.), FORMER HEAD OF JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: I can't talk about whether it's time or not, but I think the process that Sen. Levin outlined is exactly right. The senior military leadership needs to be part of this, the Pentagon needs to be part of this --

GREGORY: --Do you have an opinion about whether it's time?

MYERS: Well, I think somebody said, I think Sen. Levin said -- gays can serve in the military; they just can't do so openly. And they do, and there are lots of 'em, and we're the beneficiary of all that.

[LEVIN ROLLS HIS EYES.]

I'll leave it to the current folks to decide whether it's time or not.

GEN. BARRY McCAFFREY (RET.): There's not question that it's time to change the policy. The key to it isn't buy-in from the military; it's for Congress to change the law. They ought to do so, and I'm confident that the military will move ahead on it.

LEVIN: I think we'll do that, but we'll need the support at least of some of the military.

McCAFFREY: I think that's right.

GREGORY: But does it have the political resolve to make [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

LEVIN: I think he does, and I think many of us do; I thought it was a mistake to begin with.

GREGORY: Congress, as well, as the resolve to change it?

LEVIN: I think we will gain that resolve. But we've made other changes in this country. The military are the ones that ended a discriminatory policy against African-Americans, and if they can end it here, it'd be great progress.

GREGORY: And, finally, Sen. Graham: on that question, do you think the military should end the policy?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.: Well, it's my belief that if you don't have buy-in from the military, that's a disservice to the people in the military. They should be included in this. I'm open-minded to what the military may suggest, but I can tell you I'm not going to make policy based on a campaign rally...

Outside the HRC Dinner

2009-10-11T01:12:00.016-04:00

Outside the Walter Washington Convention Center in our nation's capital, revelers arriving for the annual awards dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, which bills itself as "the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization," were greeted by members of Westboro Baptist Church -- also known as the home to the "God Hates Fags" crowd. Also on hand were members of Code Pink, the radical women's anti-war organization; Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry with a small band of followers and a giant photo of a dismembered fetus; and 100 or so LGBT activists who protested against HRC and Obama for being too passive in the march toward full equality.

Greetings, Earthlings (from the "God Hates Fags" crew of the Westboro Baptist Church).

I must not have the latest edition of the Bible. (Somehow missed this instruction.) More prophesy from Westboro Baptist.

Arguing the Bible with the Westboro Baptist android. Don't think anybody's mind got changed.

Can't we all get along?

Code Pink is peacefully annoyed with the president.

Randall Terry calls for homosexuals to stop killing babies -- wait, no, didn't anybody focus-group this? --

-- urges homosexuals to repent before a giant photograph of a dismembered fetus.

I prefer to smolder, actually...

Just because you're queer, it doesn't mean you love Obama -- or the Human Rights Campaign. LGBT advocates march in front of Convention Center.

Rick Warren has not been forgotten.

Close-up of Rick Warren sign.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Obama had promised to be a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. Evidently, some people think, "not so much."

From Davis, Calif., where they lead the Yolo County chapter of Marriage Equality USA, one married couple -- the second same-sex couple married in California in the months before Proposition 8 overturned marriage equality -- joyfully put their relationship in the face of their opponents. Together 35 years, Ellen Pontac...

...and Shelly Bailes...

...have at this guy, who stood above the crowd shouting through a bullhorn a call for repentance. "I used to be a homosexual," he crowed. But now he's cured.

Bullhorn guy's sign (partially blocked by Shelly and Ellen's).

Rainbow crowd moves in to block bullhorn guy with their signs and flags.

Shelly and Ellen show us what it's really all about.

912 signage

2009-09-12T22:02:00.012-04:00

Your blogstress spent the solemn occasion of the anniversary of the September 11th attacks observing right-wingers put their artistic skills into the service of hating the president of the United States. This sign-painting party took place at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill.

Just like arts & crafts class -- with a bit more rage.

So last month ago.

So that's the agenda!

But one envelope equals three liters of soda.

As opposed to those Christians who are all about atheism.

This image appeared on a series of signs by the same artist.

Somebody thinks his banana was taken.

And here I thought it was Bush who had that simian look.

912 March

2009-09-12T15:47:00.030-04:00

Kinda says it all.

Fashion statement.

Looks like they finally figured out what "teabagging" means.

Summertime has come and gone, my oh my.

Because God loves bullets. And guts.

Weary wing-nuts practice their Russian.

Were it not for the sign and the shirts, I could swear I saw these guys at the high-heeled race.

Stalin must be spinning in his grave.

Difference of opinion: He's Hitler, not Stalin, dammit!

Because, you know, they're all shady.

So nice I had to blog it twice.

So wholesome.

View from across the pool on the Capitol grounds. All those little dots across the water? Them's people. Lots and lots of angry white people.

Another view along the pool.

Obediently listening to the voices of the Astroturfers coming from the podium.

More around the Capitol grounds.

Pressed into service by his dad.

I didn't realize things had gotten this bad.

Because universal health care is a lot like the murder of innocents.

Nostalgic for the days when women could not vote.

Left their pashminas at home.

Amazing Grace.

The president as micro-organism.

The Tea Party aesthetic.

Marching up Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Culpeper militia flag in action.

Fixing up the militia flag for the big march.

Remembering Teddy

2009-08-26T10:35:00.005-04:00

Cross-posted from AlterNet

Photo Credit: Jocelyn Augustino

I remember thinking, he seems so much smaller in person. The year was 2003, and I stood directly behind Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on a makeshift stage constructed in front of the Department of Labor, at a rally for International Human Rights Day convened by the AFL-CIO.

I was on staff at the American Federation of Government Employees at the time, and was a member of the team that had put together the rally.

Those were dark days indeed for union workers. The Bush administration was in full throttle in its bid to take down the unions, and it had a special vendetta in its dark heart for unions representing government workers.

"We want this administration to stop being the most anti-worker, anti-labor administration that we have seen," Kennedy said.

Kennedy had just introduced the Employee Free Choice Act, a piece of legislation, yet to see the light of day, that continues to rankle the right. He dressed humbly, in a windbreaker that did little to stave off the bitter cold of a rainy December day in Washington, D.C.

"We have an agenda: the respect and dignity of workers in the United States," Kennedy told the crowd of 2,000 who gathered against the gloom. "As long as I have a voice and as long as I have a vote, I will be with you."

And he was. Today, the Employee Free Choice Act still contends for passage because of Kennedy. But that's just the politics. That day, his bond with regular people was apparent. On that stage, we had a full roster of workers from a range of unions -- parking attendants, hospital workers, airport screeners, Defense Department employees -- and Kennedy shook hands with all of them, and stuck around to hear their stories.

And that's just a glimpse of his commitment to working women and men. I hardly need to mention his commitment to health-care reform.

It's said that in exchange for his endorsement of Barack Obama for president, Kennedy exacted a promise from the young Illinois senator to make health care the centerpiece of his legislative agenda. And Kennedy didn't let Obama forget it. In his endorsement speech, Kennedy said, "With Barack Obama, we will break the old gridlock and finally make health care what it should be in America—a fundamental right for all, not just an expensive privilege for the few."

As I stood on that stage with Kennedy, the cold rain falling on me as we followed up the speeches with our motley rendition of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," I thought, this is bliss.

Washington Post columnists say Hillary Clinton deserves a bottle of Mad Bitch beer

2009-08-02T15:39:00.005-04:00

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post.

By now, you're likely familiar with the parade of racists, sexists, conspiracy theorists and hatemongers on the payrolls of mainstream media: CNN's Lou Dobbs advances the claims of unhinged birthers; FOX's Glenn Beck calls the president a racist; MSNBC pays as an analyst Pat Buchanan, who says slavery was good for black folks. Not to be left behind, ABC welcomed to its This Week roundtable right-winger Michelle Malkin, who has referred to the first lady as President Obama's "cron[y] of color," and is advancing the conspiracy theory that Democratic health-care reform is designed to euthanize old people.

Bottom line: hate sells.

Eager to bring eyeballs to its Web site, the Washington Post this week got in on the act, producing a video featuring two star columnists, Chris Cillizza (reportedly a nice guy) and Dana Milbank (reportedly not), that suggests at a future White House beer summit, Hillary Clinton be served a brew called Mad Bitch.

Once the video began circulating through the blogs, the Washington Post chickened out and pulled the video from its site -- without apology to viewers, and apparently without disciplinary action for the columnists and producer Gaby Bruna.

This should be a huge story -- two respected, important columnists for a major media outlet all but call the secretary of state a bitch -- but corporate media would have to be willing to critique two of their own were the story to get legs. Not likely to happen.

In fact, a day after the video was pulled, Chris Cillizza was featured on the roundtable of this Sunday's CNN show, State of the Union, and was not asked a single question about his role in Mad-Bitchgate.

If the presidential campaign of 2008 was the mainstream media's teachable moment, it seems the wrong lesson was learned. Instead of the corrective soul-searching one would hope for among executives and editors at major media outlets as their on-air figures grappled with their inner sexists and inner racists during prime time, media bigs seem to have reached the conclusion that hatred sells.

READ WHOLE POST AND VIEW VIDEO

Do you read a newspaper?

2009-07-10T13:46:00.002-04:00

Tell the truth now, mes amis. (Your blogstress doesn't like it when you fib.)

Now, change your ways! Here's why:

Michael Jackson: the legacy of child-abuse

2009-07-07T09:46:00.004-04:00

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, Living with Michael Jackson, knows that MJ said his father "practiced us with a belt in his hand" and "he would really cut you up". When Bashir asks MJ if his father ever used anything more than a belt, you see Michael nearly dissolve, unable to speak for a moment. Then he says that his father would throw at the children whatever was handy, or just throw the children themselves against a wall. Michael says he was often used as the example of how to do a dance step correctly, and had to watch while his siblings were abused for not being able to dance as well as he did. Imagine what that does to one's psyche.

But it's the emotional abuse MJ received in adolescence from his father that seems to have pushed him over the edge. Just as he was at that awful stage in his development when he was no longer the adorable "Little Michael" who had won the hearts of America, Joe Jackson, by MJ's account, ridiculed that shape his son's adult face was taking, especially his African nose. "You didn't get that from my side," MJ says his dad told him. Because of that, he hated being seen in public, Michael tells Bashir. "I would have rather worn a mask," he said.

And so Michael Jackson created his own mask. In his work, he never stepped back from his black identity, even as he engaged plastic surgeons and dermatologists to eliminate the traces of his heritage from his face -- to destroy what had been a truly beautiful face.

But the theme of the mask in Michael Jackson's life and work extends beyond the wounds of racism. His own children look white, and he put feathered masks on them when he took them out in public. According to biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, Joe Jackson once donned a fright mask and climbed through Michael's bedroom window while the boy lay sleeping, shouting and terrorizing him. In the film short, Thriller, Jackson himself dons the fright mask, morphing first into a werewolf, and then into a zombie-like creature, terrorizing a young woman he asks to "be my girl." In between the morphs, he's a sweet, adorable Michael Jackson. The obvious suggestion is that within Jackson himself, a demon lurks. The lyrics, to my ear, recall the terror of an abused child:

You hear the door slam and realize there's nowhere left to run
You feel the cold hand and wonder if you'll ever see the sun
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination, girl!
But all the while you hear the creature creeping up behind
You're out of time

In Beat It (a song I always took to be about MJ's father), Jackson suggests that the way to deal with abuse is simply to get out of the way:

You have to show them that you're really not scared
You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare
They'll kick you, then they beat you,
Then they'll tell you it's fair
So Beat It...

And so Michael Jackson has at last beaten it. He's released from his torment. He suffered a great deal to give us the genius of his work. He probably made others suffer, too. But his story is one about our society, not about his weirdness. May we all look within.

Stop the sexist rants against Palin!

2009-07-06T17:41:00.005-04:00

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'm asking readers to Tweet any sexist coverage they see on Palin with the hashtag: #palinsexism.

Why? As blogger Echidne of the Snakes observes, the takedown of Palin following her resignation of her office "may be mostly justified, but it allows the misogynists to join in, and they are not just attacking Palin, my friends: They are attacking women in general."

Just look what happened on CNN just moments after Palin's resignation broke into the airwaves: anchor Rick Sanchez speculated that Palin might be pregnant again. As if women don't work when they're pregnant, or make sane decisions while in the family way; as if Palin hadn't already worked through one pregnancy.

Michelle Goldberg observed that in Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair profile of Palin, several sources pegged Palin as having a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder for exhibiting exactly the same kind of self-centered traits demonstrated by male politicians who are presumed to be sane.

Even on The Huffington Post, blogger Andy Ostoy referred to Palin as "the most famous MILF in America".

But Ostoy's narcissistic crudeness (like I really care who you'd like to do, Andy) is nothing compared to some of the comments made by readers of otherwise fine, upstanding liberal blogs. The intrepid Echidne went wading into those slimy waters (so you and don't have to), protesting as she did:

I hate McCain for what he did to me as a feminist, by putting me in the position of having to wade into the sewers of lefty blogs to find out what sexist crap might be floating around on the topic of Sarah Palin. I do that not to defend Palin but to defend the women of the future who might one day run for the office, and I do it with great bitterness, because I'm going to be told off for spending time on someone like Palin by all those who don't see that certain comments are not just about Palin but about women in politics in general.

And here's a taste (blech!) of what she found in the comments sections of Eschaton and Democratic Underground:

Let's put it this way.

Sarah Palin is probably a sexual object in the sense of most porn starlets.

Good sex (there is no other kind) but you want her out of your bed before the cock crows, because the thought of having to make small talk with her over breakfast repulses you no end.

==============

Palin's not hot. She's actually pretty dick deflating, in an ignorant-stupid-moralistic way. Sorry, but she's a typical 40 - something GOP woman that thinks with that push-up bra, tummy tuck panty hose, and makeup from hell that she still has it.

she doesn't.

================

she gets on national tv and rambles for 20 minutes...
And do we get a great shot of her tits? NO!!!!!

============

I could've straightened her out with a good, hard spanking, but Cindy wouldn't let me.

Now look what's happened . . .

--John McCain Editorial note from your blogstress: of course, that's not really John McCain writing

============

palin's pregnant with levi's love child.

===========

I hope she can become a spokesperson for drilling in ANWR now, and helping this country become independent of foreign oil.

She should pose naked on a drilling rig.

===============

she thought she was pulling of a cunning stunt with her announcement.

===============

This asshole is going to be a constant reminder of what you can do with NO qualifications

Goodbye you whore.

Enough already! Whether it's a news anchor, an unnamed source, a blogger or commenter, it's time to put a stop to this barrage of gender-based hatred. It's not only right; it's smart. There's plenty to criticize about Sarah Palin, her latest gambit, and others who share her politics without stooping to the lowest forms of name-calling. Keep the critique on the up-and-up, and you'll have more credibility.

So please join me in helping to put a stop to what really amounts to a war on all women: When you see or hear a sexist quote about Palin, Tweet it, and add the hashtag: #palinsexism.

Sarah Palin Will Be Back

2009-07-03T18:22:00.004-04:00

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 seemed unsure of herself as she sought to explain without explaining her reasons for stepping down before the end of her first term as governor.

Granted, Sarah Palin has had a very tough week, what with Todd Purdum's takedown in Vanity Fair, and the release of a testy e-mail exchange between the former vice presidential candidate and McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt.

By her own account, however, the week from hell is not what drove today's announcement. The decision had been in the making for a while, she said. But why? As her reasons, Palin noted the meanness of the media, and the hail of ethics complaints filed against her (in a state in which the bar is quite low for the filing of such complaints). Yet none of the complaints filed so far have stuck, so what gives?

The governor mentioned a resulting half million worth of legal bills for her and husband, Todd, but that should be chump change with someone with Sarah Palin's standing among the G.O.P. base. Surely, she could raise that with a legal defense fund.

Palin basically said she was getting out of the way in order to take one for the team:

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me -- sports... basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win. And I'm doing that, keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities: smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom. And I know when it's time to pass the ball -- for victory.

For some reason, the very ambitious Sarah Palin finds the need to take herself out of public view. It's hard not to speculate that there's another shoe yet to drop. But don't count her out; she's as tenacious a political fighter as I've ever seen. She'll no doubt put the time gained of her early exit from the governor's mansion to good use -- perhaps studying up on issues for her visits to the people of Iowa and New Hampshire.

When I first speculated that she would be John McCain's vice presidential pick, people said, Sarah who? Despite colossal missteps, she emerged from the 2008 presidential election as the darling of the Republican Party, her running mate returning to the Senate as a has-been. Mark my words: She'll be back.

Chérie: A dazzling meditation on time and change

2009-06-25T19:14:00.000-04:00

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post

From the opening frames of Chérie, the viewer is drawn into an opulent, decadent world, at once foreign and familiar to those who have mixed with the denizens of high society in our own time. But the depiction of that world in director Stephen Frears' tour de force is no simple condemnation nor exaltation: the charms and moral ambiguities of France's Belle Epoch co-exist in this rendering of a gilded age at its apogee, most completely in the glowing figure of Michelle Pfeiffer as Léa de Lonval, an exquisite courtesan about to age out of her profession.

At its core, Chérie is a movie about time and the constancy of change -- a theme that could be esoteric and depressing, were it not for the stunning visual and aural landscape the filmmakers grant us, the stylized repartee that screenwriter Christopher Hampton draws from Colette's celebrated novel, and Pfeiffer's grounded, sexy and elegant rendering of the woman at the center of the film. Léa is both wise and playful, jaded and vulnerable, a ravishing beauty who looks every minute of her 49 years. In Léa, Pfeiffer offers a rendering of an aging woman such as I have never before seen on the big screen. Like Diane Keaton's character in Something's Gotta Give, she plays a woman with wrinkles who is undeniably sexy. But unlike Keaton's sweet and sexually uptight character, Léa is in full possession of her sexuality; she knows what she's got, knows she's still beautiful, yet has no illusions about society's contempt for the older woman as a sexual creature. Alone with her maid, preening before her mirror, Léa raises her arms above her head, and remarks, "Nice handles for such an old vase." So she opts to retire while she's still in demand.

Enter Chérie, played by Rupert Friend, who is the 19-year-old son of her rival, the retired courtesan Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), still known to her by the pet name she bestowed upon him when he was a baby. Charlotte, a relic of her time, was a disinterested mother at best, and is now eager to deliver her spoiled, neglected and costly offspring into Léa's hands. She takes him in because she likes him, because she has something to teach him and because she wants a lover of her own choosing. He goes with her to her home in the south of France because he has grown bored with his life of debauchery in Paris, and winds up staying with Léa for six years, until Mama Charlotte contrives another plan for him -- one that will ensure her a handsome pension. Along the way, the worldly courtesan and the petulant young man fall in love, a love on which Father Time, if not Mama Charlotte, has imposed his limitations.

Chérie concerns itself at once with the peculiarities of time as it shapes human relationships; one cannot escape the age into which one has been born, after all. But within one's own time, a woman can opt to cling to old glories, or move with the current of the age. The turn of the last century heralded the coming modern age: the telephone and the automobile were among its innovations. Women's clothing changed in significant ways, as well: bustles disappeared from dresses, and dresses inflected with exotic forms eliminated the need for corseting. The glorious costuming of this film cleverly points this up: Charlotte is still dressed in the fussy, old style, while Léa glides about in Art Nouveau gowns that feature kimono-inspired bodices, loose sleeves, and skirts that are sumptuously draped, not frivolously gathered into confining waistlines. (I predict that Consalata Boyle's designs for Pfeiffer will be reflected in the 2010 fall fashions.)

The film speaks to changes still percolating in today's society. Because we meet Léa at the close of her courtesan career, we find her a liberated woman, one free to do as she pleases. She has money and beauty, a good mind and business acumen, and a young lover. She has the freedom to get her heart broken, and she does. Still, we're left with the sense that hers is a life fully lived.

Yet her young charge is still trapped in his mother's time, when an arranged marriage ensured one's future fortunes, and we find him enslaved to a most female fate while Léa possesses the independence to live in beauty. Chérie himself is a jarring character, a simpering young man with a love for pearls and fine fabrics, and ultimately far more vulnerable to the pain of love than his feminine paramour. Gender norms are reversed in Colette's story, which was written in 1920, in the aftermath of the Great War, but set in its ante bellum. Throughout Frears' film, change and indeed its backlash is suggested, and a sense of foreboding provides a faint undercurrent.

Though not every element of Chérie succeeds, it is a film that haunts the viewer days after the final credits have rolled. Special kudos belong to composer Alexandre Desplat for a stunning score, cinematographer Darius Khondji and production designer Alan MacDonald who, along with costumer Boyle, create a world into which the viewer longs to step, if only for one moment in time.

Chérie opens nationwide tomorrow, Friday, June 26th.

Media analysis: no women need apply?

2009-06-23T13:56:00.003-04:00

When MediaBistro announced its upcoming panel discussion titled "Finding a Business Model for News and Online Media", it listed only white men as panelists, thus joining a list of other apparently well-meaning organizations whose leaders tend to see only men as media innovators. In MediaBistro's case, this is particularly ironic, since the pioneering Web-based all-things-media outlet and consulting company was founded by Laurel Touby, a woman.

The Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) community took issue with MediaBistro's treatment, issuing this letter, to which your humble blogstress signed her proper name:

Dear MediaBistro and Demand Studios,

We applaud your efforts to create an “an open discussion about the business models, innovation, and power of community that are changing journalism.” But your selection of presenters on this subject has forced us to wonder to whom, exactly, this discussion is open.

We won’t stand for another panel exclusively composed of white males when the future of our media is at stake. As members of Women, Action & the Media, we know all too well that white-male-dominated conversations produce white-male-dominated media models. We ask you to stand with us instead, to create a sustainable new journalism that includes and supports all of us, including women and people of color.

It’s not hard to find qualified women to serve on your “Finding a Business Model for News and Online Media” panel. Here are just a few we’ve come up with today:

Tina Brown, The Daily Beast
Ada Calhoun, Babble
Gabrielle Darbyshire, Gawker Media
Nicki Gilmour, The Glass Hammer, founder and CEO of Evolved People Media LLC
Erica Gruen, Quantum Media
Kathleen Hall Jameson, director, Annenberg Public Policy Center
Carol Jenkins, president, Women’s Media Center
Rita Henley Jensen, Women’s eNews
Esther Kaplan, The Nation Institute
Dori Maynard, president, The Maynard Institute
Gina McCauley, Blogging While Brown
Laurel Touby, your founder at mediabistro.com
Sheryl Hilliard Tucker, executive editor, Time, Inc.
Joan Walsh, Salon
Tracy Van Slyke, The Media Consortium
Deanna Zandt, media technologist

Please let us know if you need help getting in touch with any of these exceptional women - we’d be very happy to help make those connections.

Signed,

Veronica I. Arreola, Writer, Founding Board Member of WIMN
Julia Barry, media/Web producer and consultant
Sarah Blustain, senior editor, The New Republic
Tara Bracco, writer and founder of Poetic People Power
Anna Clark, freelance journalist
Denise Di Stephan, freelance writer
Ariel Dougherty, Media Equity Collaborative
Emily Douglas, editor, RH Reality Check
Gloria Feldt
Jill Filipovic, Feministe
Jaclyn Friedman, director, Women, Action & the Media
J. Goodrich, blogger and freelance writer
Nancy Gruver, founder & CEO, New Moon Girl Media
Mikki Halpin, author and contributing editor, Glamour
Carol Jenkins, president, Women's Media Center
Rita Henley Jensen, Women's eNews
Sue Katz
Elaine Lafferty, former editor-in-chief, Ms. magazine
Lucinda Marshall, director, Feminist Peace Network
Emily May, HollabackNYC.com
Liz O’Donnell, freelance writer and AvantGuild member
Katha Pollitt, columnist, The Nation
Jennifer Pozner, founder and director, Women In Media & News (WIMN)
Miranda Spencer, freelance writer, editor, and media critic
Rebekah Spicuglia, media manager, Women’s Media Center
Adele M. Stan, independent journalist and Huffington Post blogger
Shira Tarrant, PhD, author, Men and Feminism
Tracy Van Slyke, The Media Consortium
Jayati Vora, Web editor, The Nation Institute
Andi Zeisler, editorial/creative director of Bitch
Jill Miller Zimon, freelance writer, Writes Like She Talks

Since the letter was sent, MediaBistro Tweeted that another panelist would soon be announced. To add your two cents, contact MediaBistro by clicking here.

Happy Solstice!

2009-06-21T23:59:00.004-04:00

Photo by Fergus McNeill; used through creative commons license

Hope the longest day of the year was a beautiful one for you, mes amis.

From the Times of London:

Druids began their incantations, Wiccan priestesses drew their cowls tight against the damp morning air and four half-naked Papuan dancers waved their hands in the air and went: “Woo, woo, woo”.

Only the guest of honour failed to put in an appearance at Stonehenge.

A record 36,500 people had gathered at the prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain to watch the sun rise. So many turned out to celebrate the solstice that roads had to be shut and the vast field converted into a car park for 6,500 vehicles was full by 3am.

Marriage in DC: pride and prejudice

2009-06-12T18:15:00.003-04:00

Here in our nation's steamy, sticky capital, as the annual Gay Pride celebration takes shape, temperatures are rising over the issue of marriage equality for queer folk. (Check out the Washington Blade for the skinny on the antics of the religious right's Rev. Harry Jackson, who was sent in by central casting to convince African-Americans that gays are their enemies.)

This essay by noted DC poet and cultural critic Reuben Jackson (who is not LGBT) aired today on WAMU radio. In his commentary, Jackson writes of his recent experience of anti-LGBT sentiment in a District restaurant, and the link between racial prejudice and anti-gay discrimination.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO "WORDS LIKE PUNCHES" BY REUBEN JACKSON

Right wing objects to Tiller murder investigation

2009-06-10T10:37:00.006-04:00

The U.S. Justice Department has commenced a probe of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the physician who has been targeted for years by members of the far right for his willingness, at great personal risk, to perform late-term abortions to women in need. And Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, has a problem with that.

According to the right-wing Web site, OneNewsNow, Wright said:

"This may be more of a nefarious effort than it appears on its face," she exclaims, "that in fact, the Department of Justice may be trying to smear pro-lifers, as if we all belong in the same camp, as if we all advocate violence, when it's [actually] just the opposite."

The proof of the Obama adminstration's nefarious machinations, according to the right, is the fact that it has not dispatched U.S. Marshals to military recruiting stations in light of the recent murder of a recruiter by a man who says he is a convert to Islam. But U.S. Marshals have been dispatched to protect women's health care clinics in the wake of the Tiller murder.

Let's see: the murder of a doctor by the member of a movement that has a long history of violence against the employees of facilities that provide abortion services to women is somehow unworthy of measures taken to protect other employees of such facilities against any future life-threatening assaults -- all because the U.S. Marshals have not been called to protect the U.S. military.

Furthermore, the murderer of the soldier is under investigation by the Justice Department -- by the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force, to exact. The investigation began before the murder; unfortunately, there apparently wasn't evidence enough to lock him up at the time of the attack.

The comparison between the Justice Department's actions on behalf of abortion providers and its efforts to stem jihadist terrorism is a classic right-wing tactic: when one's wrongs are exposed, change the subject, even if false analogies are required to do so.

Well, that didn't take long...

2009-06-01T01:59:00.003-04:00

No sooner did your blogstress's Huffington Post piece about Ann Coulter's encouragement of violence against doctors who perform abortions then some wag who refused to even name your ecrivaine, called yours truly both dishonest and not reasonable for charging la Coulter with incitement.

Tiller Murder: Ann Coulter's happy day?

2009-05-31T17:11:00.005-04:00

cross-posted from The Huffington Post

The killing of George Tiller, a doctor who performed late-term abortions, will likely be attributed to some lone and deranged individual, acting on his or her own. (As I write, the suspect remains at large.) Indeed, Operation Rescue, the hold-no-prisoners anti-abortion group, issued an immediate statement from Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, decrying Tiller's shooting as "a cowardly act."

In fact, the hands are many in the death of George Tiller, some more directly than others. Take Ann Coulter, for example. I watched her describe, to a church full of right-wing activists, abortion-clinic doctors and health care personnel who were murdered as either having been shot, "...or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle." And she's still out there today, spewing the same bile with violent force.

Several weeks ago, President Barack Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame University spurred controversy when anti-abortion activists pressed the Catholic university to withdraw its invitation to the pro-choice president. Coulter responded with the suggestion that for next year's ceremony, "Notre Dame have an abortionist perform an abortion live on stage? They could have a partial-birth abortion for the advanced degrees."

As if that wasn't enough, Coulter added this:

Being such a prestigious institution, Notre Dame could probably get famed partial-birth abortion practitioner George Tiller to do the demonstration at next year's graduation. Obama could help -- inasmuch as Tiller the abortionist is a close friend of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

George Tiller, M.D., was unlikely national figure, but to the religious right, he was Enemy Number One.

Close watchers of national news may have known the name of George Tiller from the extraordinary actions of former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who, three years ago subpoenaed from Tiller's clinic the records of hundreds of women who had undergone abortion procedures there. Kline, a frequent speaker at religious-right gatherings, claimed he needed the records for an investigation as to whether Tiller was following the law, but many in the reproductive health community saw Kline's actions as an attempt to intimidate women who were considering undergoing late-term abortions. Kline's case against Tiller was dismissed in 2006, after Kansas voters booted the AG from office.

Tiller's name became part of inside-the-Beltway parlance with the nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services, when campaign contributions from Tiller and his associates became a bone of contention in her confirmation process. (She has since been confirmed, and is now HHS secretary.) Sometimes, it seems, having friends in high places only increases one's danger.

So my question to Ann Coulter is: Did George Tiller have "a procedure performed on him by a rifle"? Did he simply get his just desserts?

If the murderer was not a follower of Coulter's, he certainly acted from the sort of hateful sentiment she disseminates in popular and right-wing media.

Consider this comment left by a reader of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's posting of Associated Press coverage of the Tiller murder:

Although I would never do something like this, he got what was coming to him. Now he needs to answer to God for the thousands of innocent babies he has murdered.

Sounds like one of Annie's kids to me.

Half a loaf from California Supreme Court

2009-05-26T13:32:00.003-04:00

The California Supreme Court has essentially ratified Proposition 8, the ballot measure that nullified an earlier court decision legalizing marriage rights for LGBT folks. Yet Californians already married will be permitted to remain so, regardless of the gender mix of their marriages.

One suspects that the court could not agree on constitutional grounds for overturning the expressed "will of the people". Yet the legitimizing of marriages already performed calls constitutional questions of its own. The closeness of the Prop 8 vote suggests another electoral battle to come. From the Los Angeles Times

Prop. 8 upheld by California Supreme Court:

By Maura Dolan
10:08 AM PDT, May 26, 2009

Reporting from San Francisco -- The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.

The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists say they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

Sotomayor Nomination: Obama's Wedge Politics

2009-05-26T12:13:00.003-04:00

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post

President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is stunning on many levels: She's the third woman to serve on the high court, the first of Latino descent and the first to grow up in public housing.

On her own merits, Sotomayor is a deserving nominee. Yet in his choice of Sotomayor, Obama has also made a brilliant tactical move -- one that not only shores up his standing with the Latino community and the women's rights community, but also serves to further divide the beleaguered Republican Party.

In discussions of this nomination, much will be said about the debt Obama owes to the Latino community for his 2008 electoral victory. As Politico's Ben Smith recently wrote:

[McCain] got 31 percent of the Latino vote to the 44 percent that George W. Bush took in 2004, according to exit polls. And it was enough to put much of the West and Southwest out of reach for the Republican Party, to give Florida to the Democrats and to hand Barack Obama the presidency.

The flip side of of that fact is the migration of Latino voters away from the Republican Party, largely due to the party's capitulation to the darkest inclinations of its base with regard to immigration policy.

Republican Senate leaders already have even conservative Latino figures feeling disrespected by throwing their early support to Florida governor Charlie Crist even before the primary, where his opposition is expected to be a popular and youthful Cuban-American, Marco Rubio, who was Florida's youngest House Speaker.

Can Republican senators really afford to oppose Sonia Sotomayor's nomination without further bleeding the votes of Latinos? Probably not. Yet, the hard right wing, which is likely to vilify Sotomayor based on a controversial decision she made in a difficult affirmative action case, will likely demand that GOP leaders oppose Sotomayor outright.

For years, the Democratic Party lay victim to the wedge politics practiced by the Republican Party, and seemed constitutionally incapable of fighting back on those terms. President Obama has no such reticence. Let the battle begin.

The world is on fire -- but Pakistan's civil war is our problem

2009-05-14T09:02:00.005-04:00

Did you know, mes amis, that Pakistan is now officially in the throes of a civil war? Out of the Swat Valley, where Pakistan's government had tried to compromise with the ascendant Taliban, now flow some 1.3 million refugees who flee a full-scale war between the two forces.

Why should you care? First off, many Pakistanis believe that the government's offensive in Swat was taken at the behest of the U.S. Given the toll on the civilian population, that can't be a helpful perception.

Then, of course, there's the matter of Pakistan, a nuclear power, flirting with chaos.

Next up -- Afghanistan. In truth, these are not separate problems. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the same problem for the U.S., and in many ways, problems of out government's making. Even if you only care about domestic politics, you had best turn your attention to this volatile region, for this mess really could ruin everything for Obama (and the rest of us).

Your blogstress has a new essay at The Guardian that addresses the apparent lack of interest in our nation's fate abroad vis-a-vis this troubling turn of events. Here's a snip:

David Miliband Meets the Bloggers

It was billed as a newfangled sort of event: a news conference between US bloggers and Britain's blogging foreign secretary at the New America Foundation, a Washington DC think tank.

There was plenty for David Miliband to talk about on Tuesday, especially given the fierce escalation of tensions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the UK has a close alliance with the US, in a week that saw a White House meeting with the presidents of those smouldering south Asian nations, which share a border drawn a century ago by a British mapmaker.

Whither Afghanistan?

2009-05-07T13:57:00.005-04:00

When no less a sage than George McGovern warns the president against further involvement in Afghanistan, it behooves one to listen. Above, in an interview with the former 1972 Democratic presidential candidate -- who won that distinction for his opposition to the war in Viet Nam -- the American News Project's Harry Hanbury and Mike Fritz find McGovern warning President Obama of a possible fate like Lyndon Johnson's -- one in which a quagmire of a war puts an end to many grand social programs.

Still, your blogstress remains unconvinced that the the analogy is apt. For one, America was in no danger because of the Vietnamese civil war, in which we intervened. On the other hand, the al Qaeda attack on American soil was partly the result of the U.S. having walked away from Afghanistan in its hour of need just after its warlords so kindly won the Cold War for us. (No, Ronald Reagan did not win the Cold War; guys in turbans on horseback with U.S. Stinger missiles on their shoulders did. All it took was our fortification of a Pakistani tyrant, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who ran the weapons for us even as he jailed Pakistani women for the crime of having been raped.) Your écrivaine is not so sure that abandoning Afghanistan now is the moral thing to do.

Will Obama appoint a woman to the Supreme Court?

2009-05-01T12:24:00.006-04:00

With last night's news of the pending departure of Justice David Souter from the bench, all bets seem to be placed on a female replacement. The one woman on the Court today, the venerable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is elderly and suffering from colon cancer. NPR's Nina Totenberg this morning ran through a list of possible contenders:

Possible nominees who have been mentioned as being on a theoretical short list include Elena Kagan, the current solicitor general who represents the government before the Supreme Court; Sonia Sotomayor, a Hispanic judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Diane Wood, a federal judge in Chicago who taught at the University of Chicago at the same time future President Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law there.

UPDATE: Garance Franke-Ruta has more on this; women's group pushing hard.

One hundred days, poetry and change

2009-04-30T10:21:00.012-04:00

Subsequent segments of press conference found here.

So grateful to finally reach the 100th day, so that the media may come up with a new meaningless thematic obsession. (Time to stop counting days and get to the business of living a sober life.)

Because she was out reading her poetry at an open mic, your blogstress did not watch the president's press conference in real time, a circumstance she would have once deemed unthinkable. Your écrivaine is uncertain of just what this means, except that perhaps now that the country appears to be in capable hands, she no longer finds her vigilance to be quite so necessary.

Nonetheless, your Webwench could not entirely look away, and so midnight found her watching the video on her computer, marveling at the fact that it was possible to lie on a couch, netbook perched on knees, and watch tiny moving pictures (with excellent sound) that way. (Your cybertrix is sometimes easily amused.)

President Obama's customary elegance was in evidence, as he answered each question thoughtfully and with a minimum of scripted comments. Your blogstress saw him trip up only once, at the hands of NBC's Chuck Todd, who asked, "Can you reassure the American people that, if necessary, America could secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and keep it from getting into the Taliban's hands or, worst-case scenario, even al Qaeda's hands?"

I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan not because I think that they're immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban would take over in Pakistan; more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile and don't seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services -- schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of people. And so as a consequence it is very difficult for them to gain the support and the loyalty of their people.

So we need to help Pakistan help Pakistanis. And I think that there's a recognition increasingly on the part of both the civilian government there and the army that that is their biggest weakness.

On the military side you're starting to see some recognition just in the last few days, that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided, and that their biggest threat right now comes internally. And you're starting to see the Pakistan military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists.

We want to continue to encourage Pakistan to move in that direction. And we will provide them all the cooperation that we can. We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don't end up having a nuclear armed militant state.

It was that last sentence that got the president in a little trouble, when Robb pounced with a follow-up.

But in a worst-case scenario --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to engage --

TODD: -- military, U.S. military could secure this nuclear --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort. I feel confident that that nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. Okay?

But he had, just a sentence ago, acknowledged the possibility of Pakistan becoming "a nuclear armed militant state." Indeed, Pakistan, an enormous problem that barely registers as one in the minds of the American people (or much of the press corps, for that matter), looms forebodingly. I find it unlikely that the U.S. will be able to withdraw from South Asia any time soon, unless we are willing to leave both Afghanistan and Pakistan in states of civil war. Afghanistan borders Iran, which borders Iraq. Pakistan borders Afghanistan and India. Think: epic proportions.

On another matter, The Guardian's Michael Tomasky caught an Obama error when the president asserted that the British did not torture prisoners of war taken in World War II. Alas, they did.

Arlen Specter: No longer a "very good Republican"

2009-04-28T18:05:00.002-04:00

Having been ensconced in a poetry salon all afternoon, you blogstress has had no time to wax political on the peculiar turn of events that sees Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- he who pilloried Anita Hill -- becoming a Democrat. (Hooray for one more vote in the soon-to-be-filibuster-proof Senate!)

Until your ecrivaine is poised to pontificate on this glorious event, you may find amusement in her 2000 interview the same Arlen Specter, who, at that time, declared himself, rather sardonically, to be a "very good Republican."

CLICK HERE TO READ "VERY GOOD REPUBLICANS"