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| CARVIEW |
Man. The smallest gesture can mean the world to you. Robin Williams made such an impact on me and didn’t even know it. He named checked all of us in the elevator during the 2001 Grammys. I know y’all think I do this false modesty/T Swift “gee shucks” thing to the hilt. But yeah sometimes when you put 20 hour days in you do think it’s for naught and that it goes thankless. Grammy time is somewhat of a dark time simply because you just walk around asking yourself is it worth it or not: all the sweat and blood. I just felt like (despite winning grammy the year before) no one really cares all that much for us except for a select few. Especially in that environment I’m which people treat you like minions until they discover what you can do for them…if you’re not a strong character you run the risk of letting it get to you. This particular Sunday we were walking backstage and had to ride the elevator to the backstage area and we piled inside when suddenly this voice just said “questlove…..black thought….rahzel….the roots from Philadelphia!!!! That’s right you walked on this elevator saying to yourself “ain’t no way this old white dude knows my entire history and discography”….we laughed so hard. That NEVER happened to is before. Someone a legend acknowledged us and really knew who we were (his son put him on to us) man it was a small 2 min moment in real life but that meant the world to me at the time. Everytime I saw him afterwards he tried to top his trivia knowledge on all things Roots associated. Simply because he knew that meant everything to me. May his family find peace at this sad time. I will miss Robin Williams. #RIP.
(h/t)
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Sad news via CBC News:
“Father Raymond Gravel, a well-known Catholic priest, an advocate for Quebec sovereignty and a social activist, has died.
[…]
“He served one term as the Bloc Québécois MP for Repentigny, before he was ordered by church authorities to choose between his priesthood or politics and returned to the pulpit.
“He was a progressive force in the Catholic Church and an outspoken supporter of gay and women’s rights.
“At one point Gravel called the Vatican’s opposition to same-sex marriages “discriminatory, hurtful and offensive.”
“Gravel challenged the Catholic Church to adopt a more compassionate tone and get in touch with the beliefs of its adherents.
“”The Church must evolve beyond the language of interdiction and condemnations,” he wrote in an open letter dated April 23, 1999. “Such language only proves, once again, to the entire world just how disconnected the Church is from reality.”
[…]
“Gravel personally opposed abortion except in cases of rape, but he said he also opposed rules and regulations that “infantilized” women.”
Listen to an interview with one of Father Gravel’s parishoners, Gregory Baum, a retired professor of religious studies at McGill University, after the fold:
h/t Zerb.
]]>Wouldn’t you have just hated to have been the poor shmucks scheduled to follow James Mother-Effin’-Brown that night?
(h/t)
Bonus:
Meanwhile, in Chicago…
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This:
]]>The #CancelColbert supporters have a very valid point in arguing that radical action and racial outrage should not require that people of colour temper our actions and reactions to appear more acceptable to the mainstream, particularly when this is in conjunction with needing to silence valid expressions of racial anger and pain. Race activists should not need to be “well-behaved” to be taken seriously; and we should not be dismissed when we are not. Tone policing is not okay, particularly if it is used to marginalize oppressed voices.
However, what also struck me clearest in watching tonight’s Colbert Report was the disservice that the radical choices made by #CancelColbert had on the very conversation it hoped to start. I tend to be an action-oriented “activist” (in so much as I am an activist): I am focused on what goals that can be achieved and what changes that can be made; every activist action is, for me, purposeful — and usually with the purpose of educating and convincing others. Consequently I am always viewing campaigns through the lens of how each action will affect the likelihood of achieving certain tangible goals; this is just my starting point, one no more or less valid than any other.
But applied here: if the purpose of radical action in this instance was to initiate a dialogue on an instance of racism for the purpose of either a) expressing a point-of-view and convincing someone who might not a priori understand or agree, or b) agitate for some sort of apology from Colbert Report, I have to wonder whether that conversation was challenged or facilitated by making actual (or unintended) demands to “cancel” Colbert? Such demands could only be expected to inflame defensiveness from the show’s rabid fans, and alienate those who might otherwise agree in principle.
Speaking for myself alone, I cannot fathom structuring a campaign around a political demand that I did not actually want to have happen (or around a hashtag that could reasonably be mistaken as being the actual goal of the campaign). Or, I cannot fathom launching a campaign where the goal of my campaign was not immediately clear to movement members or the casual observer.
Jamilah King breaks down #CancelColbert:
What’s important to understand here is that Park’s aim wasn’t necessarily to get The Colbert Show kicked off the air. Instead, it was to, as point out that satire isn’t always the best activism. “Well-intentioned racial humor doesn’t actually do anything to end racism or the Redskins mascot,” Park told the Jay Caspian Kang at the New Yorker. “That sort of racial humor just makes people who hide under the title of progressivism more comfortable.”
While I think Suey Park is entirely in the right (even if I share some of the middle ground staked out by Melissa Fong), part of me wishes that she had chosen a less alliterative and more immediately representative hash to define her campaign. “Cancel” erroneously projects a censorious sentiment that doesn’t reflect the actual end being sought. None of this excuses the subsequent rank, reflexive racism and misogyny in response to Park’s efforts (as if anyone could have cancelled Colbert over this, even if they wanted to). Nor do I believe that a less inflammatory hash would have made much difference when it comes to vicious, dickhead Colbert Nation fanbois and their vicious, dickhead fanboi-ism (oh, and Deadspin/Gawker can go piss up a flaming rope). But I do think that it was ill-chosen, counterproductive rhetoric.
Of course, since, as noted, Park (and pretty much any WOC who dares to do a digital end-around structural impediments to social justice — perhaps this will help) is damned if she does or doesn’t mind her P’s and Q’s, what’s the point in nominal allies (eg, yr’s truly ^^) honing in on such messenger-killing minutia anyway?
I am left…with Park’s own statement that “There’s no reason for me to act reasonable because I won’t be taken seriously anyway.” For one thing, this is obviously true. When we are told that Suey Park “does not make any claim to objectivity or fairness,” we are seeing a sharp limit to how much a journalist in a fact-checked journalism publication can fully see from her perspective, or allow himself to, without bringing his own narrative frame into peril. Sympathizing with an activist makes it hard to make claims to objectivity or fairness; it makes people wonder if you might be an activist too, and therefore untrustworthy. Quick, better make her unsympathetic!
An activist is, in the end, a living medium; thanks to overwhelming dudebro aversion to empathy, the ultimate message of #CancelColbert has been completely distorted, not amplified, by the superficial meta of indifference (and in many instances outright hostility) couched in dehumanizing demands for impossible perfection.
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Via Bob Mann:
Gay people, more often than not, throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to religion. But we have a good reason. We’ve been scarred. Religion has damaged us. And I try to share with them the light I have seen in the Episcopal Church. But every time I get close to a breakthrough, something happens that brings out the worst in people.
One year it was Chick-fil-a. This year it’s Phil Robertson.
Thanks to Phil, I now know where everyone in my family stands on the issue of whether or not I’m a human being.
I even saw a “friend” of mine post something about how gay people can’t be Christians. Wow. Not only will they keep us from having equal rights, but they’ll keep us from equal salvation. We can’t just be second-class citizens. We have second-class souls.
]]>The worst of my problems from being openly gay is that I get some nasty email. That means I have it really easy. In a country where gay teenagers are being bullied at school and thrown out of their homes by their parents and told by their clergy that they’re going to Hell, we should not count my inbox as a hardship.
Rather than hurting me, these emails are a reminder that I have not just an opportunity but an obligation to be out of the closet — an obligation of which other people in my position should be mindful.
[…]
The only reason these emailers make me angry is that I think about how their insults affect other people. I’m too arrogant for self-loathing, but that’s not true of everyone. A lot of gay people still live in communities where these hateful attitudes are dominant. A lot of gay children and teenagers are at the mercy of parents, teachers and clergy who hold bigoted views.
Being open and unashamed about being gay is just one small thing I can do to change the culture and make life easier for people who haven’t had my luck.
Despite a precocious childhood obsession with all things heavy in the 80s, I somehow missed the original incarnation of NWOBHM OG’s Satan the first time ’round (though vaguely recall Pariah). Their ripping 2013 comeback LP Life Sentence (featuring the classic Court in the Act line-up) totally cold-cocked me with its timeless, taut intensity, nimble dual guitar heroics, and soaring clean vocals. No rust to be found anywhere as these veteran metal warriors bring it full throttle from start to finish with unrelenting, unexpectedly inspired drive.
Check out the full album stream below, courtesy Listenable Records:
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Check out ‘I Wake Up Screaming’ by Cinerama, the first single in ten years (!) from David Gedge and co.:
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While your’s truly managed to make it out for The Dirty Nil at Fanshawe College last night (an effervescent performance, bee tee dubya), I neglected to take any pics. Which is a shame, considering all the half-ironic cock-rock posing that went down (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Oh, and I also drank PBR draught for the first time in several years.
At a certain point irony and masochism become entirely indistinguishable (a rhetorical juncture located somewhere in the small intestine from the sound of things).
Must-reading to keep you occupied while US legislators play Hot Potato with an extremely fragile global economy (because Teabaggers won’t be dissed by the Negro-in-Chief, natch):
Plutocrats at Work: How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy (h/t Diane Ravitch)
Warning bells: Is US shutdown a brewing African-American revolt? (h/t)
Do Racial Issues Still Push Some Over the Edge?
A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall (h/t)
Canadian spies targeted Brazil’s mines ministry: report
U.S. Military Operations Against al-Shabaab/al-Qaeda—and Who Exactly is Ikrima?
Hillary Clinton: It’s Not Her Turn
From Zulu to the ‘White Widow’, why do all African stories need a white face? (h/t blacklooks)
Still Insufficient: Child Care in Canada
Why the rebirth of manufacturing is bypassing Canada
]]>Rest assured that the ongoing US government shutdown (or slimdown, if one prefers the wingnut parlance) won’t stop the prescription opiates overmedicated veterans are now hooked on post Iraq/Afghanistan from flowing like wine.
PS – it’s not just opiates.
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“I don’t feel like a hero at all. That girl who ran towards me is brave. That’s bravery.”
‘Hero’ is indeed an extraordinarily over/misused word these days. But despite his insistence to the contrary, Westgate Mall rescuer Abdul Haji deserves — no, embodies — the title.
LAMF.
Not only because he risked his life to save countless innocent civilians (including the especially iconic moment portrayed above) caught up in al-Shabaab’s deadly 4 day assault that began on September 21st, leaving at least 72 dead and scores injured and/or traumatized. Haji’s willingness to put his safety in further jeopardy by taking a public stand as a Muslim and ethnic Somali for tolerance and unity, despite the attempt to drive a destabilizing wedge between Muslims and non in Kenya, is a whole ‘nother level of courageous.
That said, the little girl is still without a doubt the baddest of ’em all.
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I’m not exactly keen to join in on the collective online WTFery re: heterosexual manly-man Canadian author and sessional University of Toronto lecturer David Gilmour’s steadfast refusal to allow girl germs and POC cooties to infect the pristine, middle-aged white male sterility of his syllabus. There have already been ample creative rejoinders (and demonstrations — Serious Heterosexual Literary Scholar Northrop Frye never had it so goddamn good) to fulfill even your wildest schadenfreude-fueled fantasies (this highly-sophisticated ‘Gilmour-penned’ Woolf bio is a particularly fine example). But I am undeniably curious about one thing Gilmour said in his insta-infamous over-the-shoulder with some icky giiirrrrrrlll (who was probably just trying to make a name for herself by accurately quoting what was said on the record, amirite guys?):
Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren’t any women writers in the course. I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall.
“[I]f you want women writers go down the hall.”
Ok, well, not to cast aspersions upon Mr. Gilmour’s highly-selective passion for what Belle Waring recently dubbed ‘Important [sic] Male Novelists’ (if not his apparent inability to untangle it from the accumulated navel lint prior to entering a lecture hall), but, speaking for myself, anyway, I kinda sorta *do* want exposure to a variety of perspectives. Most people who aren’t 60-something upper-middle class straight white dudes nursing their sexual hang-ups like a bloated, neurotic teat (ie, the overwhelming majority of 1st and 3rd year undergrads) probably want that too. And it’s kinda sorta Gilmour’s ethical mandate as an educator to give students exactly that, rather than offering a guided tour of the fragile male ego (now with extra menstrual-pad munching).
Sure, Gilmour may genuinely cherish his life-long diet of mayonnaise sammiches on white with the crusts cut off, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to indulge his demonstratively infantile palate. Therefore, as a public service to future students before they are forced to endure such a dreary literary diet, how about U of T offer a sample of what they are serving down the hall, this estrogen-saturated smorgasbord of women, Chinese and Friends of Dorothy that is so unappealing to David Gilmour’s narrow pedagogical appetite? I dunno ’bout the rest of the non-middle-aged upper-middle-class white guys out there, but this one is definitely starving for writers that don’t fit on the rote Important Male Novelist comfort food menu.
Indeed, as shocking as it may seem, some folks actually use higher education as a means to expand their horizons, as opposed to painting themselves into a safe, narrow corner of the same house that they’ve always lived in.
]]>Quite possibly the most unfortunate lynching metaphor ever (or so far this week, anyhow — bear in mind, it’s only Tuesday):
The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitchforks and their hangman nooses, and all that — sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.”
Yes, clearly AIG CEO Robert Benmosche was only a few comment threads away from becoming the Emmitt Till of financial plutocracy. And that’s not just whistlin’ ‘Dixie’ (or any whistlin’ at all, period. Natch).
(h/t)
Related: 2,400 reasons why Benmosche’s egregious criticism/genocide analogy was beyond inapt.
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I just– just–had one of those painfully awkward thirty-something moments when I realized that Atheist’s breakthrough sophomore full-length, Unquestionable Presence, is now a robust 22 years old (insert pimple-faced nostalgia featuring the requisite imagery of generic teenage wasteland, a life reduced to reverse-chronology disaster pr0n). That it sounds so fresh today only emphasizes just how ahead of its time this progressive jazz metal masterpiece truly was. Check it out after the cut, courtesy the fine folks at Seasons of Mist (h/t):
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Without getting into the merits (or the politics) of Justin Trudeau’s call for the legalization of marijuana (of which I think there are many — one of the numerous reasons why I support the NDP), it does represent a rather brazen 180 degree pivot from his previously-stated position in support of the status quo. As recently noted by budding Western Gazette journo Bradley Metlin, “[I]n a 2010 issue of Maclean’s magazine, Trudeau said that decriminalization was a step in the wrong direction, cautioning that smoking pot was unsafe today because marijuana is much stronger than it used to be a generation ago.”
Let’s take a look back, shall we:
The Liberal party’s position has been for decriminalization for the possession of small amounts of marijuana. But Liberal MP Justin Trudeau is not in favour of decriminalization at all and feels that would be a step in the wrong direction. “It’s not your mother’s pot,” notes Trudeau of the stronger marijuana grown today, in contrast to the weed from hippie days. “I lived in Whistler for years and have seen the effects. We need all our brain cells to deal with our problems.
Now, this is not to say that the current Canadian policy of prohibition is at all sustainable or desirable, nor that Trudeau’s somewhat self-serving (ahem) proposal is misguided. But it does make one wonder why Jay-Tee suddenly turned on a dime and so demonstratively embraced his inner (and outer) pothead. As Metlin put it: “It seems the reefer of 2013 suddenly has become less dangerous than it was three years ago.”
Word to your mother.
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Hey, remember when the US almost detonated an atomic bomb (260 times more powerful than either Fat Man or Little Boy) over North Carolina?
The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.
Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans’ lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that “one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe”.
It really is a wonder we made it out of the Cold War alive, considering.
Bonus: Schlosser on Democracy Now, talking Damascus (the other one, natch):
and in the Slaughterhouse:
(Oh, and yes, Schlosser’s latest has vaulted to the top of my looming tower of must-reads.)
]]>Suppose that Syria does not turn over all its chemical weapons. Suppose that Russia knows this. Russia has still staked its credibility, such as it is, on this lie. If Syria uses CW afterwards, it is basically burning its major ally and arms supplier.
I do not think that Assad would do this. And my reasons for thinking this have nothing at all to do with trusting him.
Related: More from Brookings scholar Fiona Hill on Russia’s ongoing realpolitik maneuvers re: Syria and why Western media and analysts are fundamentally misreading Putin’s pro-status quo Mideast policy.
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In a recent interview with the Times magazine, Richard Dawkins attempted to defend what he called “mild pedophilia,” which, he says, he personally experienced as a young child and does not believe causes “lasting harm.”
Dawkins went on to say that one of his former school masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts,” and that to condemn this “mild touching up” as sexual abuse today would somehow be unfair.
Wait — it gets better:
“I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today… .”
Judging by his response to Dawkins’ obtuse, it’s-not-rape-rape-amirite vapidity, Peter Watt, director of child protection at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, clearly recognizes the value in wearing a fresh pair of Cap’n Obvs undies:
“Mr. Dawkins seems to think that because a crime was committed a long time ago we should judge it in a different way,” Watt said. “But we know that the victims of sexual abuse suffer the same effects whether it was 50 years ago or yesterday.”
Indeed. For someone who has steadfastly claimed the mantle of elevated reason as his demonstrative trademark, Richard Dawkins seems to cavalierly ejaculate his neuroses — and, especially, his wholly unchecked privilege — all over the face of the body politic rather frequently and with little regard for the outcome.
Though I’m certain the good doctor believes it to be but a mild violation. Natch.
(h/t)
Update: The full interview, liberated by Dawkins’ site from behind the Great Wall of Murdoch, compounds previously-excerpted remarks with until-now undisclosed gems such as this:
“Although I’m no friend of the Church, I think they have become victims of our shifting standards and we do need to apply the conventions of the good historian in dealing with cases which are many decades old.”
Which nicely dovetails with prior downward-spiral statements from Dawkins re: systemic Papal abuse (shorter: God-bothering > buggery):
‘Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.’
Yeah. Fuck this guy.
]]>George Zimmerman’s estranged wife called police officers to her father’s house in Florida Monday, saying the former neighborhood watch volunteer who was acquitted of murder threatened her with a gun.
Shellie Zimmerman called police shortly after 2 p.m. Monday, said Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell.
Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested and officers were at the house trying to determine what happened, Bracknell said.
In George Zimmerman’s defense, his estranged wife was apparently wearing a hoodie, high on reefer, and armed with a sidewalk at the time of the incident.
Update: George Zimmerman has been detained. CNN:
Shellie Zimmerman, who filed for divorce last week, called 911 just after 2 p.m. ET, Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell said. She told police that George Zimmerman was inside the house with a gun and was threatening her family, the chief said.
Bracknell added that Shellie Zimmerman claimed her husband “battered her father,” according to the call report. It was unclear if he received medical treatment from first responders from the fire department.
Also:
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