links for 2008-01-12
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Cool creepy paintings.
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Um, speaking like an “indian” isn’t cool, on TV or off, ass.
links for 2008-01-11
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One of the many folks who think The Wire is the best show on TV. Kohi Vinh is the Design Director of the New York Times, and writes here about why he loves the show.
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Ha ha ha! What a nice pick-me-up in the middle of an otherwise stressful day.
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Analysis of Matthews coverage shows a consistent bias, despite his claims.
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Yeah, that sounds about right.
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Battlestar Galactica Last SupperUm, in case you’re missing it – Dualla is the missing cast member from this photo (and the last unknown Cylon by definition.) This awesome graphic was in last week’s Entertainment Weekly, and it freaked me out. In a good way.
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Excellent article on why strategic voting on a candidate because you think they have the “best chance of getting elected” even if you disagree with their policies just won’t work – and is bad for your party.
Hillary is getting the bums rush
This go around, I decided to take some time to watch some of the candidates out on YouTube – listening to them speak versus what the media is saying. So for the past couple weeks I’ve been pulling up the Democratic candidates and watching what they say, then comparing to the news coverage of the same event. Here’s my conclusion:
The media are sexist, racist assholes with a (mostly right-wing) political agenda.
More sexist than racist, but they are both. The spin they put on stuff is bizarre, and completely subjective, and it’s the media pushing some sort of agenda, rather than letting candidates speak for themselves.
Especially the longer footage earlier in the same event, where there’s some utter jackhole with a big yellow sign that says “Iron My Shirt!” and he’s chanting “Iron My Shirt!” over and over at her. In 2008, for fuck’s sake. Why the fuck isn’t that the big story all over the news, rather than her crying? Come the fuck on – that’s the story. We have people in this country who are actually not afraid to go to a public event and act this way – tell me sexism isn’t alive and well in America. That should be shocking to anyone and everyone who sees it, but I see it getting almost no coverage at all.
Then watch the “crying” – she never actually cries at all. At worst, she’s getting choked up because she loves America. She’s not “having a breakdown” or “Too tired to campaign” – I’m sorry, but aren’t there times when you also get choked up about our country, because despite its flaws, this is truly a great experiment we are in. Hell, I get emotional every time I hear the friggin’ National Anthem. Hillary is made of iron compared to me, and I can kick your butt to Toledo.
Do yourself a favor, and spend some time watching the candidates themselves, rather than the “interpretation” of the news. You’ll have a lot more faith in the system and the potential than you have in the past, I tell you.
links for 2008-01-04
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This is pretty awesome – downtown’s city market now has free parking on Saturdays and $1 parking during the week with a voucher. We haven’t taken advantage of all the City Market has to offer, and we need to.
My Comments on other’s stuff….
My reply to Richard Prince’s column on Rishawn Biddle, on the Maynard Institute website. The column was being discussed in the forums.
If a white male writer in Indianapolis had written what Rishawn wrote he would have been fired, and probably a lot more quickly than Rishawn was.
What he wrote wasn’t edgy or even necessarily correct, especially in some of the original, non-cleaned up versions of the blog post which are floating around on the web. He actually revised it repeatedly and only in the fourth version did it have somewhat of a point; the originals were offensive beyond measure.
An African-American city-county council president is under investigation for ethics violations, but the end of that investigation is by no means a foregone conclusion, even though the local right-wing blogosphere has tried and convicted him repeatedly in volatile rants laced with racial epithets, all of which have little to do with the actual supposed violations and everything to do with trying to break down the democratic power base of Indianapolis’ urban townships.
Rishawn got caught up in the noise of Indy’s politically-charged, shoot from the hip blog world, and forgot he worked for a newspaper that has actual fact-checking standards and ethical requirements.
The Indy Star’s reader’s forums have repeatedly been criticized on a national level for being full of racially charged, borderline KKK rants, and the newspaper has been under scrutiny both by their corporate offices and by national journalism standards boards for it, so it’s not surprising that they were sensitive enough to the issue to go to pinks slips quickly.
Rishawn Biddle Gets Fired
I’ve been trying to avoid writing about local politics of late, just because the bile and animosity therein was way to much to deal with given my increased workload at my place of employment, and because others do a much better job of saying what I would anyway.
On occasion here, I’ve ranted about Indy Star editorialist Rishawn Biddle, who brought to the paper something less than what was actually necessary to write a good editorial column regularly.
The other day, Rishawn posted a diatribe on the Indy Star’s Expresso blog against Indianapolis City-County council head Monroe Gray, who is being investigated currently for god knows what. It’s hard to figure out in all of the racist bile being slung around. I’m sure someone will helpfully post some racist bile here to explain it.
Anyways, the diatribe was full of racial epithets towards Gray and other black members of local politics. StAllio! has a pretty entertaining reconstruction of the post, which was edited several times, although remnants of the unedited versions still exist. I guess Rishawn thought he got a pass on calling people Coons because he himself is black. Turns out, not so much. He got fired for it, and rightly so.
Schadenfreude, she is so beautiful, but deadly. I should not laugh.
Best Acceptance Speech Ever
“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Can you believe this shit? Hell has frozen over. Suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now.” — Kathy Griffin, accepting an Emmy award for her show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List.
Reportedly, the show will be censored to edit out part or all of Griffin’s acceptance speech after protests by Catholic League windbag, Bill Donohue. Once again, I’d like to say – Bill, go fuck yourself. Asshole.
Indy Star vs. Houston Chronicle: Houston has better readers
I happened to be reading this article in the Houston Chronicle about a gay male flight attendant murdered by a homophobe, and discovered something interesting while scrolling through the reader comments on the article.
Houston Chronicle readers seem to be more articulate and logical (and better writers) than the typical reader of the Indianapolis Star. It was really surprising to read comments from conservative, religious people that are not only grammatically correct but scathing in their view about what the homophobe did and where he’ll end up in the afterlife. After reading the Indianapolis Star reader comments for so long, I had a totally different expectation.
Either the Chronicle heavily moderates their comment section and edits comments from readers, or they just have a better educated populace than Indianapolis does.
I’d have to hunt around to find a really good example, but this one will do for starters. If you’ve never read the readers comments at the Indy Star, hang out and do that one day. Either a disproportionate number of Indianapolis citizens can’t think coherently – let alone write well – or there are just a bunch of nutters who do nothing but comment on the Star all day.
Feel Good Inc.
Via Shakesville, via Andrew Sullivan, via the Houston Chronicle:
Crothersville Hate Crime Murderers May Get Off Easy
Advance Indiana continues to follow up on the story I noted earlier of the brutal hate crime beating murder of Aaron Hall in Crothersville, Indiana. Gary Welsh reports the criminals are being charged lightly given the bias and brutality of the crime, and may even get off with an outrageous manslaughter conviction. Read the details.
Gary also notes that no major Indiana media outlets are picking up what should be a national news story, and that no GLBT organizations have made public statements about the crime.
In another post, Welsh has uncovered more details about the connection between one of the killers, Garrett Gray, and his father – Terry Gray, the county deputy coroner. He also notes that Hall’s body was discovered in Terry Gray’s garage 10 days after his death.