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"+1%"
Much like Sarah Palin in 2008, "The 1%" was this year's lazy Halloween costume. People should really just not wear a costume at all if they're clearly going to show off how they cared just enough about a big gathering their friend spent a lot of time and money on to write something on a piece of paper and tape it to their shirt.
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How to not write a story about assaulting someone
Reuters writes a lighthearted "oh those wacky celebrities!" piece on, umm, a celebrity physically assaulting a woman.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Omar Sharif sure is a stickler for manners.The 79-year-old "Lawrence of Arabia" star got a little too hands-on with a female fan Thursday morning at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar, slapping the woman when she cut in line for a photograph with him, TMZ reports.
The exchange occurred after the woman approached Sharif on the red carpet and asked for a photograph -- despite the fact that there were other people waiting before her. Sharif didn't like it, and instead of rocking the Casbah he yelled at her in Arabic to wait her turn before letting fly with a hearty slap.
Amazingly, the fan not only didn't flee in terror, but stuck around to have her picture taken with the actor, plastering a smile on her face as if she hadn't just gotten pummeled by one of the foremost actors of his generation.
Maybe she was collecting evidence?
Sharif has a history of hot-headed physical exchanges with strangers. He attacked a police officer in a Paris casino in 2003, and copped to misdemeanor battery in 2007 after brawling with a parking attendant in Beverly Hills.
So... umm.... the story is that a man just hit a woman. He hit a woman. In the face. Why are there attemps at jokes in this article?
I'm trying to figure out if Reuters just passed this off so lightheartedly becuase Sharif is a legendary celebrity, which of course means they are "allowed" to slap women or if it's becasue the woman was Arab, which of course means she's "allowed" to be slapped. Seriously, go ahead and read this article to yourself and imagine it was a black celebrity slapping a white American. Fox News would be wondering why there isn't a warrant out for him.
"The Conservative Choice"
Because there remains a spectacularly high number of people who think Herman Cain could actually be president, there remains an obligation on my part to point out that they are spectacularly high.
This week's installment pays homage to Cain's recent attempt to pretend that he doesn't actually want to make abortion completely illegal, because that would upset sane people, by acknowledging that there are understandable exceptions to being against abortion in the real world, which upsets very crazy people. This is especially problematic for Cain since his core demographic is the very, very crazy, as evidenced by their belief he will be president.
But it's also about a larger and more frequent aspect of conservative thought, which is that actually being a true conservative requires you to be a monster and most people actually aren't. And so conservative voters have to go out of their way to pretend that they aren't actually "pro-choice," because that's what awful liberals think: they just think government shouldn't have the right to, umm, control people's lives or something.
Cain later struggled to defend his total, 100% "end of story" opposition to abortion by insisting that there should be a Constitutional amendment banning it, which he would happily sign. You know, in a parallel universe where presidents actually signed Constitutional amendments. Your frontrunner, half of America.
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Makes us women and Batmen
A somewhat healthy discussion on the level of misogyny in Batman: Arkham City made its way to MetaFilter today. I've been, let's go with "psychotically obsessed" about getting this game for months and I'm about 8-10 hours into it since it arrived Tuesday. Consider the rest of this post a big spoiler warning but again, I haven't played much of it either so I'm going with what I know so far. So please don't email me anything with spoilers either unless you'd prefer to never have me read anything you write again. I also feel like I should point out, perhaps hypocritically, in advance that none of this changes that I love the game. I just feel like it's a valid point worth highlighting and hope that mistakes can be corrected in the future.
To be honest, I didn't really notice the main argument being raised here--that the word "bitch" flows like a comma throughout the game--and I imagine now it's all I'm going to hear as I play it. Or maybe I won't. I understand and appreciate the points being made here but while this comes off as a cop-out I really don't see how anyone could have fully played a game that came out two days ago and carefully prepared a comprehensive feminist examination of the game based on its entirety. Myself included.
What I am seeing here, however, is an (understandable) assessment of the first few hours of gameplay and the previously-released promotional material for the game. For example, I only saw today a pre-release trailer that revealed Catwoman as a playable character and everything about it is more sexually evocative than the gameplay so far. The music, the ass close-up shots--they're just not in the game anywhere to that extreme. I haven't seen the "kiss, followed by body slam" move yet, but if that's really in the game I'll be surprised and kind of disappointed. It's sexual marketing and I don't mind if and when a handful of teenagers get disappointed.
That said, the constant "bitch" references are there. As are conversations between thugs throughout the game that have already gotten repetitive. Maybe it's understandable in the sense of the plot (lots of criminals locked up in an abandoned city with little else to do) but man, do these guys talk about how they want to sleep with, or in some cases flat-out rape, Harley Quinn. They talk about it a lot.
I honestly see both sides of the argument here, which mostly boil down to "this isn't necessary" and "that's what evil rapists and murders would actually say." And yeah, the truth is, "that argument" vis-a-vis there are also people in the game who murdered hundreds of people sort of still applies here. But as far as what I don't like in the game in terms of sexualizing characters, it's this:
I have reached the point in the game (it's early on) where Harley Quinn first shows up. If you've seen any of the promotional material, you'd know she is wearing a different outfit than the first game, which itself was different from her original attire in the cartoon and comics. So the very first thing Harley Quinn says in the game--her very first line-- is a comment about her own new outfit.
Which is the first thing she said in the first Arkham Asylum game. In other words, In both Arkham games, the very first thing they have one of the major villains of the game and perhaps at this point DC universe in general say is... "check out this outfit that shows off my tits."
Now, you can ascribe the constant "bitch" talk to sloppy writing or following the same group of thugs for too long or any other combination of coding and laziness, but with Harley, this is just deliberate. Not a single other character in the game (or for that matter, the first game) takes time to point out they are wearing particular clothing or look different than how they might have looked in the comics. Batman's suit gradually wears and tears throughout gameplay to show time progression, and no one mentions it. But it was apparently of vital importance to point out that Harley Quinn is now in skintight leather. I found this epically more misogynist and offensive to female gamers and fans of a previously-awesome female comic character than the concept of convicted killers and rapists not being sensitive to women.
A blasthole from the past
Oh man, I was surprised to hear a name this morning I hadn't heard in years, and that it was still a name attached to a gaping asshole.
So, my fun little Inside Baseball story: when Campus Progress (the nonprofit I used to work for in DC) first launched in 2004, one of the first things we did was try to promote a campus tour of a small documentary film made by Steven Greenstreet. We sent him to college campuses across the country to do a Q&A; with students and put him up in hotels and expensed him. The relationship went sour when we started getting expense invoices back from him with hotel bills that included charges for pornographic movies. Then he called one of my female co-workers a "F___ C___" during a phone call. And that's the last time anyone at a major progressive organization ever worked with Steven Greenstreet again.