Advice Goddess Blog

Porn Without A Brain
There are some sick people in this world, exploiting teenage girls by photographing them in various stages of undress and performing sex acts, then posting the photos on the Internet. Luckily, the Pennsylvania state police are on the case this time -- arresting the perp who took advantage of this particular 15-year-old girl. Oops, except that the photographer/pornographer turns out to be the girl herself. No matter. They actually charged her with sexual abuse of a child (herself!), possession and dissemination of child pornography (photos of herself!). As Julian Sanchez wrote over at Reason:

Now, I don't know the details; probably the girl could use a little counseling if, at that age, she's shooting strangers in chat rooms pics of "herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts." But it seems a touch bizarre to punish her for exploiting...herself.

I wonder if you fail at suicide in Pennsylvania, do they send you to jail for attempted homicide? At least, then the felons in the clink with you might finish the job. All in all, this story plays like a Hair Club For Men commercial: "I'm not just the victim...I'm also the perpetrator!"

More on this over at Volokh.com.

(via Reason's blog)

Letter From Paris...Ohio
My letter to the LA Times Travel section:

Two years ago, I pitched the LA Times Travel section on writing a “letter from Paris” -- a city I’m in every three or four months, and for an entire month every summer. Travel turned me down, which, of course, is their prerogative. It was with some interest that I began reading LA Times travel writer Susan Spano’s new blog from Paris; and after I read the first few entries, it was with some disappointment.

Spano is printing the most facile, uninvestigated observations about Paris. Each entry, so far, has at least one glaring error; each, in my opinion, an error that could have been corrected by an extra moment or two of effort on Spano’s part to be astute in her observations, and/or do a little backup investigation as to whether her appraisals were, in fact, correct. For example:

1. Monoprix is not the “Wal-Mart Of Paris.” Monoprix sells wonderful (and often expensive) wines, cheeses and meats, and fruits and vegetables of the quality you’d find at Whole Foods (not marked “biologique” [organic], but not the crap sold in grocery stores here, either). Moreover, they sell extremely sexy lingerie -- contrasting Wal-Mart, which won’t even carry mass-market consumer magazines like Maxim, due to Wal-Mart’s puritanical bent. A more accurate description would be that Monoprix is “Target with a foie gras section.” When I wrote this to Spano, she commented that I wasn’t the only one who’d told her that. Not a surprise!

2. “Camembert Rustic” is actually “Camembert Rustique.” “Rustic Camembert” wouldn’t really be accurate, because it’s not really “rustic” -- it’s just called that, much like French fries and French toast. Check it out for yourself! They sell it at Whole Foods.

3. The superette Proxi is not like 7-11. Most are not open 24 hours, first of all. In fact, I would venture that few or none are -- although it seems likely at least some would be open way past Spano’s bedtime, considering that the Paris she blogs about seems more Paris, Ohio, than Paris, France. Moreover, the Proxi’s I’ve shopped at sell fine wine, cheese, and chocolate, and fruit -- of Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods’ caliber.

4. Despite the fact that Spano observed people eating while walking down the street, it is not considered “acceptable” to eat while running around. It is considered rude and unacceptable. (There are a lot of murders in South Central LA, too, but it doesn’t mean murder is okay.) Perhaps Spano should notice who eats running around -- only 14-year-olds and plumbers and plasterers. Because she wrote that while I was in Paris last week, I took the liberty of asking several Parisians if her observation was accurate. All three confirmed my observation above. One Parisienne, a midlevel editor at a French publishing house that I spoke to at Bar du Marché, told me (in French, of course) that only lower classes do that.

Yes, these are small details. But if you’re going to have somebody writing for you from Paris, who is known as a journalist, perhaps she should offer more than her most cursory (and incorrect) observations of the city. I really would rather read her blog for enjoyment than for errors.

Finally, Paris is, at least for me, at once hilarious, absurd, and challenging. I see little of that reflected in Spano’s blog. It’s a shame that the LA Times is so, apparently, terrified to have anyone write for them who might have something exciting or interesting to impart. If your paper, like so many dailies, is seeking readers who won’t be dead in five years, you’re certainly going about it the wrong way. --Amy Alkon

UPDATE: Because it’s important, at least to me, to fact-check what I write before printing or posting it, I sent the piece above to a close friend who’s French; born in Paris, who lived there most of her life, but is now living in Los Angeles. Here’s her response.

Hey miss amy, Welcome back! WOW... I completely agree with everything you're setting the record straight about. You can tell the LA times that French people absolutely endorse 100% your observations.

Gros bisous
N

Conservatives And Your Fetus
In yet another big step in the slow and sneaky march to stomp out abortion, Jim Abrams of AP reports:

In a major win for social conservatives, Congress is sending to the president legislation that would expand the legal rights of the unborn by making it a separate crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act cleared the Senate on a 61-38 vote Thursday, a month after the House passed the bill and five years after conservatives first tried to move the legislation through Congress.

The measure is limited in scope, applying only to harm to a fetus while a federal crime is being committed against the pregnant mother, such as terrorist attacks, drug-related shootings or attacks on federal lands or military bases. But proponents on both sides of the fetal rights and abortion issue saw far-reaching consequences.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said that with the president's signature, "our nation will be one giant step closer to rebuilding a culture of life, where every child, born and unborn, is given the protections they so clearly deserve." President Bush (news - web sites) has urged Congress to send a bill to his desk.

But the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Kate Michelman, said it would be the first time ever in federal law that an embryo or fetus is recognized as a distinct person, separate from the woman. "Much of this is preparing for the day the Supreme Court has a majority that will overrule Roe v. Wade (news - web sites)," the 1973 Supreme Court decision affirming a woman's right to end a pregnancy.

Bye-bye women's rights! Hello, coat hangers! Sound farfetched to you that women could soon become Margaret Atwood-style baby pods? It sounds less and less farfetched to me every day.

Two Plus Two Equals Paperweight
The Bush Administration has a bad habit of hiring people to add up all the facts, then looking the other way when the facts don't add up the way they like, writes Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect:

Step back a minute and look at who has left this administration or blown the whistle on it, and why. Clarke enumerates a half-dozen counterterrorism staffers, three of whom were with him in the Situation Room on Sept. 11, who left because they felt the White House was placing too much emphasis on the enemy who didn't attack us, Iraq, and far too little on the enemy who did.

But that only begins the list. There's Paul O'Neill, whose recent memoir recounts his ongoing and unavailing battle to get the president to take the skyrocketing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. There's Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. There's Richard Foster, the Medicare accountant, who was forbidden by his superiors from giving Congress an accurate assessment of the cost of the administration's new program. All but Foster are now gone, and Foster's sole insurance policy is that Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress were burnt by his muzzling.

In the Bush administration, you're an empiricist at your own peril. Plainly, this has placed any number of conscientious civil servants -- from Foster, who totaled the costs on Medicare, to Clarke, who charted the al Qaeda leads before Sept. 11 -- at risk. In a White House where ideology trumps information time and again, you run the numbers at your own risk. Nothing so attests to the fundamental radicalism of this administration as the disaffection of professionals such as Foster and Clarke, each of whom had served presidents of both parties.

The revolt of the professionals poses a huge problem for the Bush presidency precisely because it is not coming from its ideological antagonists. Clarke concludes his book making a qualified case for establishing a security sub-agency within the FBI that would be much like Britain's MI5 -- a suggestion clearly not on the ACLU's wish list. O'Neill wants a return to traditional Republican budget-balancing. The common indictment that these critics are leveling at the administration is that it is impervious to facts. That's a more devastating election year charge than anything John Kerry could come up with.

There are a few of us out here -- me, for example -- who aren't glued to one party or another, but would simply like to see a little common sense, rationality, and respect for science and data from the people running this country. Evidently, that's too much to ask.

Bush Tough On...The Truth
A former FBI translator testified that the FBI had detailed information, prior to 9-11, that terrorists were planning to attack the US with airplanes. Eric Boehlert writes in Salon:

Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

Edmonds' charge comes when the Bush White House is trying to fend off former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's testimony that it did not take serious measures to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism, and al-Qaida specifically, in the months leading up to 9/11.

Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination conducted by FBI investigators. She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and worked part-time for the FBI, making $32 an hour for six months, beginning Sept. 20, 2001. She was assigned to the FBI's investigation into Sept. 11 attacks and other counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, where she translated reams of documents seized by agents who, for the previous year, had been rounding up suspected terrorists.

She says those tapes, often connected to terrorism, money laundering or other criminal activity, provide evidence that should have made apparent that an al- Qaida plot was in the works. Edmonds cannot talk in detail about the tapes publicly because she's been under a Justice Department gag order since 2002.

"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."

Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February for more than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations, documents and dates. This week Edmonds attended the commission hearings and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify. "I'm hoping the commission asks him real questions -- like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who'd been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn't say no," she insists.

Edmonds first made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle on the FBI's translation department, which was suddenly thrown into the spotlight as investigators clamored for original terrorist-related information, often in Arabic. Edmonds made several reports of serious misconduct, security lapses and gross incompetence in the FBI translations unit, including supervisors who told translators to work slowly during the crucial post-9/11 period to ensure the agency would get more funds for its next annual budget. As a result of her reports, Edmonds says she was harassed at the FBI. She was fired in March 2002.

Calling all the disingenuous Republicans, who were quick to call for Clinton's impeachment when he lied about the whereabouts of his penis. Isn't it time to impeach Bush and Co. for lying about stuff that really matters? At the very least, join the Anyone But Bush parade: I'll vote for Kerry...or my movie wardrobe lady-next-door neighbor before I vote for Bush.

Worried about huge Democratic-style entitlements? Well, that's what a vote for Bush gets you. Like the Medicare package the administration slimed through Congress by hushing up the real numbers. There's no Big Democrat like a lying Republican giving handouts to ensure his re-election.

UPDATE: Four 9-11 moms go to the intelligence failure hearings in the Senate, and don't like what they hear -- especially that nobody takes responsibility for being less-than-vigilant.

Dumb Crap People In Authority Believe
The TSA actually caused a flight to be canceled because a "psychic" thought there was a bomb on the plane.

They Just Want To Get Drunk And Have A Lot Of Sex
Martyrdom, Palestinian-style: How to sell a 16-year-old on blowing himself up:

The teenage suicide bomber, caught by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint, said he wanted to reach paradise where 72 virgins were waiting for him.

Hussam Abdo, 16, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, he had learned about paradise in school.

“A river of honey, a river of wine and 72 virgins. Since I have been studying Koran I know about the sweet life that waits there,” he said.

He was caught yesterday with a suicide bomb vest strapped to his body at a crowded checkpoint, setting off a tense encounter with soldiers the army said he had been sent to kill.

Soldiers, taking cover behind concrete barriers, sent a yellow army robot to bring scissors to the teenager so he could cut off the vest and then made him strip to his underwear to ensure he was unarmed before detaining him.

Leaders in the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades denied they were responsible for dispatching the boy.

However, local members of the militant group – which has ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement – in Nablus’ Balata refugee camp said they had sent the boy to the checkpoint.

The teenager’s family said he was gullible and easily manipulated.

Well, maybe our side could be the side doing the manipulation. Bill Maher seems to have it right:

...We should hire women to infiltrate al-Qaida cells, and fuck them.

Things would change quickly. Because young Muslim men don't really hate America, they're jealous of America. We have rap videos, the Hilton sisters and magazines with titles like "Barely Legal." You know what's barely legal in Afghanistan? Everything.

Young men need sex, and if they don't get it for month after month after month, they wind up cursing the day they ever decided to go to Cornell.

Have you ever wondered why the word from the Arab street is so angry? It's because it's a bunch of guys standing in the street! Which is what guys do when they don't have girlfriends, or aren't allowed to even talk to a girl -- of course they want to commit suicide. Unlike this country, where it's the married guys who wanna kill themselves.

Pull out the troops, send in the hookers with vats of Gallo? Maybe it's not such a crazy idea.

(72 virgins article via Reason's blog)

Refresh Princess Of Venice Beach
I've been a little lax about updating my columns on my Web site...there's a new one up now -- Thighs Matters -- the column that generated a fat mail bag of complaint letters from the "fat-acceptance" girls. (If you can't see it, click "refresh" on your browser.)

Homeland Stupidity
The Feds give Wyoming, that near-empty hotbed of terrorist interest, $61 per person for homeland security; here in California, where Hollywood is a de facto red flag at a bull for terrorists, they dole out just $14 per citizen. Then there's Alaska, with $58 per citizen, and New York, with only $25. Time Magazine's Amanda Ripley calls funding "almost inversely proportional to risk," and attributes it to directing money based on emotion rather than actual assessment of risk. Then there are all the greedy senators from small states, like Leahy of Vermont, who pretends to think the frozen ski slopes there are as important and in as much danger as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In Ripley's article, she quotes Tim Ransdell, who "authored one of the few comprehensive assessments of homeland-security money on behalf of the Public Policy Institute of California":

Wyoming and South Dakota are important states, but it's a bit counterintuitive to say an individual in those states is manyfold more important than someone living in a state that has a border with a foreign nation, some of the nation's icons and almost half of the nation's containerized cargo.

Then Al O'Leary of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association weighs in:

It goes against every fundamental precept of fighting crime. If you're having a robbery pattern in a particular community, you put detectives there. It's actually a no-brainer, but there's apparently no brain in Washington, D.C.

Abstaining From The Facts
Naomi Ninneman of Planned Parenthood explains the "only" in "abstinence only" sex ed:

OVER THE PAST year, Planned Parenthood's educators have been hearing a frightening new question from Massachusetts high school students: Why bother using condoms when you have sex, since they don't work anyway?

We teach sex education classes in more than 50 of the Commonwealth's high schools every year, so we are used to answering tough questions. We are used to combating myths. But we are not used to students challenging established scientific facts about the effectiveness of condoms.

Ask students where they are getting this information, and they almost always point to an abstinence-only-until-marriage program.

Abstinence-only education has been in the news recently. In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed doubling federal funding for it. But many people are surprised when they find out what the "only" in "abstinence-only" really means.

It means, under the federal regulations governing these programs, that educators are prohibited from telling students that condoms can prevent pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.

They cannot discuss the facts even when talking to sexually active teens who are at high risk of contracting HIV. According to these guidelines, condoms and other forms of contraception can only be discussed to emphasize their failure rates. Some programs, for example, provide students with two lists: one of diseases they can get when having unprotected sex and another of diseases they can get when using a condom. The lists are the same. Both include HIV, but the fact that condoms are roughly 96 percent effective in preventing the spread of this disease is nowhere to be found.

This marks a radical departure from traditional sex education, which focuses on a comprehensive approach to preventing teen pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases. It also makes abstinence-only programs dangerous.

It's not only the individual child of the nutbag fundamentalist who's affected by this. Private religious fanaticism affects public health -- potentially endangering anybody who has sex with anybody trained by the birth-control luddites. And anybody who has sex with them...and so on, and so on.

And excuse me, but why is it wrong to have sex as a teenager, if you happen to be emotionally ready and if you protect yourself? Why, exactly, is sex "wrong"? Oh, and please -- any reason but "because the bible tells (you) so" will do.

Ruth Seymour Gets Loh-er And Loh-er
She'll show everyone! And she does! By releasing a letter Sandra wrote to the station immediate after being fired, KCRW station manager Ruth Seymour will tell the real story about Sandra. Unfortunately, the only bombshell she drops is that Sandra is kind, graceful, and polite -- and extremely concerned that the engineer won't lose his job. Not exactly the stuff Page Six is made of!

Whine And Filthy Lucre
A mid-list author complains bitterly that she isn't making the big bucks as a novelist, thanks to meanie publishers who wouldn't take on her second book after her first book lost money, and other such tales of woe. To keep her daughter "in Nikes," she was forced to clean septic tanks with a toothbrush and three pieces of Kleenex; ie, suffer the indignity of writing copy for the dot-coms and penning a celebrity bio. A tragic tale of woe. As movie critic Peter Stack once wrote: "My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked."

Cutting Off An Arm to Cure A Brain Tumor
That's pretty much what George Bush did, in going to war with Iraq, as supposed retribution for 9-11. I'm not one of those doves who thought we should sit around picking our collective nose after the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked. But it made sense to me to go directly after Bin Laden. And yes, we have done a humanitarian thing, freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. And I support our military people fighting in Iraq (and even sent the soldiers a case of tuna fish [via an army chaplain]) and I have a box of goods I'm packing to send to an orphanage in Iraq (per the suggestion of another army chaplain [via a blog ad on Instapundit]).

That said, there are many countries that could use a humanitarian overthrow of their repressive, murderous, and anti-democratic regimes. If it's on that basis we went into Iraq, we have a whole lot of other countries to invade. If it's truly about Weapons Of Mass Destruction; well, when are we going to take over North Korea?

Former Security Advisor Richard Clarke has a few harsh words (on 60 Minutes Sunday night) for the Bush administration about how they ignored pre-9/11 warnings about al Qaeda, and about their manic panic to find justifications for invading Iraq:

"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."

Clarke went on to say, "I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."

Is the Bush administration as tough on terror as they make themselves out to be? Probably not. But they sure are hell on DJs and rock stars using dirty words! (Unfortunately, it's airborne bio-weapons, not flying fucks, that we really need to worry about.)

Bush-League Contradictions
Children do better with married parents says the data trotted out by the republi-nannies behind the $1.5 billion dollar marriage promotion budget -- but we still aren't going to let gay parents marry. Here's how Gabriel Damast, the 13-year-old child of two moms, felt about his parents' marriage, according to a New York Times story by Patricia Leigh Brown:

"It was so cool," said Gabriel, 13, who served as the ringbearer, after standing in line overnight with his parents. "I always accepted that `Yeah, they're my moms,' but they were actually getting married. I felt thick inside with happiness. Just thick."

Here's how it worked for Max Blachman, 13:

"Before it was, `Oh, your parents are just partners,' " said Max Blachman, the 13-year-old son of lesbian parents in Berkeley. "Now, they're spouses. So it's a bigger way of thinking about them."

Here's how it worked for Alex Morris, 11:

Speaking of his mothers' marriage, Alex said: "It is something I always wanted. I've always been around people saying, `Oh, my parents anniversary is this week.' It's always been the sight of two parents, married, with rings. And knowing I'd probably never experience it ever."

That changed in the City Hall rotunda as his mothers exchanged vows. "The atmosphere was just springing with life," Alex recalled. "I just couldn't hold myself in. It was oh my god oh my god oh my god. I felt so happy I wanted to scream."

It's unfortunate that our fundamentalist-in-chief was told by his religion that gay sex was wrong, but how, exactly, does that make the needs of Gabriel, Max, and Alex different from those of any other children?

The Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy
Don't laugh. Hillary Clinton knew a thing or two.

(via Metafilter)

Après Le Déluge
I just arrived in Paris, to find hundreds of pieces of blog spam scattered all over my blog. Engaged in heavy cleaning. More blog items tomorrow.

Butt Pillow
A present for your ass. And here's a present for your cow's ass. Butt benevolence, all around!

(via Cruel Site Of The Day)