Jonathan Golob's Dear Science gets some love from my beloved MetaFilter.

Congrats to both.

I have a feeling that, just a few short months from now, we're going to feel slightly embarrassed about the mawkish overkill with which we've greeted—excused me, grieved—the death of Tim Russert. In the same way that the Brits were embarrassed by the way they lost their collective shit over the death of Princess Diana, we're going to look back on this outpouring and try to figure out just what it was, exactly, that was really going on here. The latest from the NYT:

In death, Tim Russert did on Wednesday what no living journalist has accomplished this campaign season: he got Barack Obama and John McCain to sit together and talk, quietly.

Specifically, it was Mr. Russert’s son, Luke, 22, who got the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees together. He requested that they sit next to each other at his father’s funeral at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown. Then, in remarks from the pulpit, he exhorted them and other politicians to “engage in spirited debate but disavow the low tactics that distract Americans from the most important issues facing our country.” At the end of the service, the two candidates embraced.

“Five months from now,” Luke Russert said a few hours later, “I wanted them to remember that this occasion brought them together.”

Gee, perhaps Tim Russert should die more often?

There are some folks out there who thought that Tim Russert wasn't perfect. Some even thought—and dared to write—that Russert occasionally engaged in the kind of low tactics that distracted Americans from important issues facing our country. ("Timmeh!" anyone?) Now may not be the time to say so, in the immediate wake of his death, which is a tragedy and I can certainly empathize with his son's pain. But this desire to turn Russert into some sort of universally beloved moral force for good, and the creepy emotional manipulativeness on display today, strikes me as highly bizarre and deeply unseemly.

When Titans Clash!

posted by earinc

...than pay money to see another M. Night Shyamalan film.

Nevertheless, The New Republic's point-by-point, spoiler-ridden dissection of the endless stupidity of The Happening makes me think I need to go see it right now.

(Thanks for the heads-up, MetaFilter.)

The first strike in The Village Voice’s 53-year history seems a distinct possibility. Contract talks between the Voice’s employees and its owner, Village Voice Media, center on proposed cuts in health care coverage in the latest contract offer from management, which the union considers unacceptable.

The potential strike* comes one week after Village Voice Media (formerly New Times), which also owns Seattle Weekly, was ordered to pay nearly $16 million to the San Francisco Bay Guardian in a predatory-pricing case involving VVM's SF Weekly and its lone San Francisco rival. It also comes on the heels of a series of shakeups at the Voice and throughout the 17-paper chain. According to the New York Press:

In the last three years, the Voice has gone through five editors-in-chief: Donald Forst, the paper’s editor-in-chief during the New Times merger, left shortly after the merger; his replacement, Doug Simmons, was fired after an internal scandal involving fabrications in reporting. Next, Erik Wemple from Washington City Paper was brought on, but quit within days of being hired in June 2006. David Blum served as editor-in-chief from September of 2006 until he was fired in March of 2007. (Blum is now the editor-in-chief of the New York Press.) Tony Ortega, previously an editor-in-chief of VVM papers in Kansas City and in Florida, has been the paper’s editor-in-chief since March of 2007, and has presided over much of the cutbacks.

* Although I think it's great that VVM is unionized--they're one of the only alt-weeklies in the country that is--I'm not sure they're picking their battles wisely here. Health-care costs are rising nationwide thanks to the for-profit US health care system, not greedy employers. Fix the system, and you'll fix the problem. Maybe I'm wrong in this case--hell, I love to think of the greedy New Times overlords rolling in piles of cash in their gold-plated mansions outside Phoenix--but I also know that my premiums, deductibles, and copays have gone up every single year at every single place I've worked. Is that all the work of greedy employers? I don't think so. And, as Gawker points out, strikes haven't gone so well for employees of "shaky print outlets" in the past.

[This post has been changed from its original form--the first quote from the New York Press has been properly formatted to reflect the fact that it is a quote, and the attribution has been changed to the Press to correct an earlier misattribution to the Voice.]

I'm not betting a cent on it, but it should really be Gwen Ifill. David Gregory would be all right, but Ifill has both an inquisitional style and a likeable, distinctive personality. And she's really smart. She'd be perfect. If it's Chris Matthews or Katie Couric, I'm never watching Meet the Press again.

(Yes, I know Washington Week sucks, but that's mostly because of the stupid convention in which reporters are expected to quiz each other. It's stilted, but it's not Ifill's fault.)

John Cole:

MSNBC has been running nothing but a 5 hour (and presumably it will go until 11 pm or beyond) marathon of Russert remembrance. CNN has done their due diligence, and Fox news has spent at least the last half hour talking non-stop about him.

But let’s get something straight—what I am watching right now on the cable news shows is indicative of the problem—no clearer demonstration of the fact that they consider themselves to be players and the insiders and, well, part of the village, is needed. This is precisely the problem. They have walked the corridors of power so long that they honestly think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days.

Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.

Via Sullivan.

Ryan already covered the shutdown of the Exile, the Moscow-based, American-written biweekly that Mark Ames, the Editor-in-Chief, described as "a low-tech suicide bomb designed to destroy our journalism careers and take down a few assholes with us."

I've always loved the Exile. In the aftermath of the 2004 election, the Stranger wrote Urban Archipelago issue. Too extreme? The Exile replied, Gas Middle America:

The awful reality is that George W. Bush won by 4 million votes. No, the awful reality is that he got any votes at all -- but he did... he won the popular vote. He won a mandate. He won -- get it? Bush won! They voted for him, the stupid fucking suckers, after he gave them four years of the most shocking warp-speed national decline since Franz Josef abdicated. There is nothing normal or sane about what these Americans did. There is no way to spin that. It's just nauseating, sphincter-twisting, horrifyingly stupid and evil. So the coastal elite -- and we are an elite, thank god (what moron wouldn't want to be part of the elite? "Hey, I'm not elite, I'm akshully jus' a fuckin' stupid piece of shit chump who gits used by the elite, 'n by gum that's how's I likes it!") -- and the Democrats and everyone with a brain should stop flogging themselves or falsely localizing blame on a clique of evil Republican operatives who manipulated Middle America, and put the blame where the blame lies -- on the 59,000,000 fucks who voted to destroy America. And don't just blame those 59,000,000 fucks, but blame their families, their friends, their dogs and cats, their furniture, and everything they ever touched, smelled, peed on, or otherwise left DNA samples in. They all have to go. Every last one of 'em. We don't like the thought of all that collateral damage that nuking or gassing Middle America would bring, but...aw shit, who are we foolin' here? We LOVE the thought of all that collateral damage, we DREAM about it! We're sorry for the 30-40 percent who voted blue in the red states -- just like we're sorry about Dresden and Hamburg, and lose sleep over it every night. That is to say, if you stay there, you're no longer innocent. Collateral damage in Fallujah is depressing-- but collateral damage in Alabama, a giant welfare queen state sucking from the liberal pro-Kerry states' tax dollars? A few Trident II's oughtta turn 'Bama into a Crimson Tide of Manhattan Chowder. M'm-m'm tasty!
...
Let's not whitewash what this election was about. It was about racism, bigotry and Fascism. In fact the South and Midwest, taken as a "nation," are the last and only Fascist state left in the white world, an incompetent and vulgar Fascism, without brains and without uniforms. Many of them are openly proud of this fact. They voted for a doomed war, against progress, against modernity and against culture. They are driven by envy and cult superstition and hate. And they want to slaughter other people to make up for the fact that they cannot produce anything of value, that they are nothing but welfare queens and cheap labor whose only consolations is that they aren't niggers, queers, spics, or...well, they don't openly hate Jews so much anymore, but their newfound bizarre embrace of Israel and Jews is every bit as sick as their former anti-Semitism.

When I started writing my science column about a year ago, the War Nerd column was a pretty big inspiration--hilarious, informative and insightful.

So, if you've every wondered how a government goes about shutting down a paper, check out Mark Ames' posts on Radar's blog.

At 11 a.m., four officials from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications, and the Protection of Cultural Heritage arrived—the men in shabby Bolsheviki suits, and a squat middle-age woman with pudgy arms and hands that pinched the seams of her wrists. On the advice of a Russian attorney, we greeted them with a box of dark chocolates. It was solid advice, and probably did more to protect us than a hundred attorneys' briefs could have.... The varied emotional responses to the meeting were interesting. The Westerners, who until last week supported our paper and kept it alive, immediately cut all ties with us, so they weren't there. The younger Russians on our staff were relatively calm about it. But when our Soviet-era accountant opened the office door and saw the four squat figures in bad official Soviet outfits, she turned white and vanished, the door closing on its own. When our middle-age courier arrived, she too turned white, stopped, then put her head down and walked past us, crossing herself three hurried times in the Orthodox Christian fashion before locking herself in the design room. You have to understand, to anyone with a memory of the Soviet era, those bad suits that the officials wore are extremely menacing, like red stripes on a reptile.

Great stuff. An excellent preview for the demise of the Stranger during Jenna Bush's first term as supreme president of the homeland.

Apparently you can leave newspaper boxes in the middle of sidewalks in Oklahoma City—and a swift kick to the nads is the best reason to read this particular newspaper.

And, I'm sorry, but the answer to "You ever wonder why they call this thing a 'rack'?" is... because it'll punch in the nuts? Wha? Huh?

So the news media doesn't think the news media is sexist. What else is new? (Next week: Fox News declares Fox News fair and balanced!) Meanwhile, here's the photo the New York Times used in its story acquitting the media, including the New York Times, of focusing on cackles and cleavage.

You have until 9:00 am tomorrow to discuss (safely).

Full story of the amazing Chinese wangback here.

Following up on Tuesday's fascinating tutorial on how to ride the bus (bad news, kids--"the bus doesn't take credit cards"! And it's "not going to be exactly like a car"!) the P-I's Big Blog tells people taking their first tentative steps into those "foreign"-seeming farmers' markets how to deal with, among other things, "sensory overload," planning meals, and learning to--no shit--"tell an onion from a radish."

For reference, Onion:

Radish:

Next week on the Big Blog: Walking-- For Dummies!

posted by sjohnston

The eXile—the much hated/beloved Moscow biweekly that launched the career of Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi and continued to publish the works of Russian dissident author Eduard Limonov well after it had become dangerous to do so—has reached its fatal end with the censorship authorities in the new Medvedev government.

From the English language daily The Moscow Times:

Mark Ames, editor and founder of The eXile, was scheduled to meet Thursday with inspectors from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, he said by telephone Wednesday...

Ames said he did not know which articles were of interest to the inspectors, but he suggested that one possibility were columns by Eduard Limonov, founder of the banned National Bolshevik Party and a vehement Kremlin foe.

He conceded that many other eXile editions could have riled the authorities.

The eXile, which publishes Gonzo-style journalism on topics such as drugs, prostitution and Moscow nightlife side-by-side with political analysis, has often pushed the limits of decency -- not to mention libel law.

The speculation was later confirmed by Mark Ames himself in Radar—wherein he notes the special joys of running a collapsed business venture co-owned by a member of the notoriously unkind world of Russian organized crime.

It's not to say that The eXile was always an insightful or even a particularly well written paper; when Taibbi departed for life back in America, Ames often covered for a shortage of ideas with the laundry list of things he'd inject into himself to better enjoy listening to Husker Du, or his successful transactions with Moscow’s prostitutes. But quality dips aside, The eXile was an important document chronicling the descent of Russia from Yeltsin's wild, lawless kleptocracy to Putin's new police state. They called 'bullshit!' loudly and earnestly on America's aimless privatization plan for the post-Soviet Russian state, and when the going got rough, they settled a dispute with New York Times Moscow bureau chief Michael Wines by hitting him in the face with a horse semen pie.

They were occasionally demeaning and stupid, but they were never dull—and that has to count for something in the grand scheme of media. The paper is holding a fundraiser to help get their website infrastructure hosted somewhere off of Russian soil, and probably to keep Ames from being murdered by his business partners.

...to abort this baby?

Thank you, Slog tipper Nancy.

...any opinion piece in the Seattle Times that begins with the phrase, "As a third-generation Washingtonian..." is not worth reading.

Village Voice Media, the newspaper chain that owns the Seattle Weekly, is reportedly having trouble coming up with the $15.6 million won by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in its predatory pricing lawsuit against SF Weekly, which is owned by VVM. The Guardian accused VVM of undercutting its ad rates in an effort to put the paper out of business.

According to the Bay Guardian, SF Weekly's attorney, Rod Kerr, has asked for a stay of judgment until 10 days after the judge in the case rules on the newspaper chain's post-trial motions, or as late as July 28.

Kerr argued that turmoil in the financial markets and the need for VVM to get approval from its lenders is making it difficult to secure the bond. “Without the post trial decisions, they’re not willing to release the collateral,” he said in court. “I think it’s a very reasonable request under the circumstances.”

Kerr said he believed there was a likelihood that the judgment amount would be substantially lowered during post-trial rulings, something that the company has also represented to its lenders.

The judge took the Bay Guardian's side, agreeing to grant the stay only until June 18.

It's unclear how, or whether, VVM's financial difficulties will impact the 17 papers, including Seattle Weekly, that are part of the nationwide alt-weekly chain.

Zatz Not Funny has a review of Flexplay, the new disposable DVD that's getting some play thanks to airline travel, and it may be moving into the rental market, too.

The theory is that once you open the DVD from its airtight package, it starts decomposing and in 60 hours, it will be rendered unwatchable. There's a video here. Apparently, the DVD is recyclable (the video even claims that not having to do a return trip to a video store is good for the environment). You know how you see something and you automatically recoil and you're sure it's a bad idea? I've got that right now.

I reviewed Heavy Metal in Baghdad for our SIFF Guide. It was a really fine documentary--I gave it a Don't Miss--from the folks at Vice Magazine about an Iraqi heavy metal band. I learned more about Iraq from this documentary than in a dozen reports from legitimate news sources, and it's also a refreshing new take in the kids-really-just-wanna-make-a-band-and-RAWK genre of film.

Today, Heavy Metal in Baghdad is available on DVD, which means that it's available on Netflix or at your local independent video store. I recommend it.

The Seattle Times ed board on May 28 calling for draconian new security measures shooting at Seattle Center after a shooting at Folklife...

Still, we have to face certain facts. Seattle is changing, and in some ways, not necessarily for the better. Streets are a bit meaner these days.

The Seattle Times today...

Following a trend across much of the nation, violent crime in Seattle, Bellevue and Tacoma saw a significant drop in 2007, according to statistics released Monday by the FBI.

Nationwide, violent crime appears to have declined in 2007 for the first time in three years, with major cities showing the most significant drops, according to the preliminary FBI report. Violent crime decreased nationally by 1.4 percent from 2006, according to the statistics.

In Seattle, police investigated 24 homicides and 90 rapes in 2007, compared with 30 homicides and 129 rapes in 2006.

"Last year was the lowest in either 39 or 40 years," Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said about crime rates.

Washington Post editorial...

Anyone who has used public transportation in Western Europe, Australia or Japan is struck by the fact that U.S. transit is decades behind the state of the art. China, too, is investing heavily in building public transportation infrastructure. The fact that the vast bulk of transit ridership in the United States is concentrated in the 50 top metropolitan areas, which together account for almost two-thirds of economic activity in the United States, underscores the critical link between public transportation and American competitiveness. If America continues to neglect transit, it will stunt its own economic prospects.

And for the record: Proposals for BRT, or "bus rapid transit," being floated around here aren't really for BRT at all—not unless "B" stands for "bullshit" when Ron Sims uses the acronym. Real BRT requires dedicating traffic lanes to buses only, and that would require taking closing those traffic lanes to drivers. Considering that HOV lanes are hotly controversial around here, closing hundreds of miles of traffic lanes to cars to create real BRT is a political non-starter in King County.

Bringing BRT to our area won't mean rapid transit or less congestion. It will mean more buses packed on the same streets that are already clogged with cars.

posted by thinklab

Thank God we have two daily newspapers covering the local stories that matter!

From the Times:

Homeless advocates protest at Seattle City Hall

About 20 homeless advocates have blocked a downtown Seattle intersection near City Hall to protest sweeps that have removed transient camps.

The protesters planned to be arrested Monday following an overnight camp-out at the City Hall Plaza.

The demonstration was organized by the group Real Change. It says the city needs to add shelters for the homeless before cracks down on camps.

The city removes transient camps from greenbelts and underpasses to prevent health and safety problems. Residents are given advance warning and offered social services.

From the P-I:
Homeless advocates protest at Seattle City Hall

About 20 homeless advocates blocked a downtown Seattle intersection near City Hall to protest sweeps that have removed transient camps. [...]

The protesters planned to be arrested Monday following an overnight camp-out at the City Hall Plaza. None resisted being taken into custody.

The demonstration was organized by the group Real Change. It says the city needs to add shelters for the homeless before cracks down on camps.

The city removes transient camps from greenbelts and underpasses to prevent health and safety problems. Residents are given advance warning and offered social services.

It's everywhere. This new love for Amanda.
You can find it here:
And here.

Amanda's costly PR machine is finally working. It has reversed her initial course. Now she is fast becoming the most wronged woman of our time.

Building the viaduct, 1952

posted by Seattle Municipal Archives

Whidbey News Times:

Child porn on a stick left at park

Child porn on a stick—what will they think of next?

This confessional clip from a US Marine was posted Friday at newsproject.org, though their site doesn't say when this press conference of Iraq war vets took place. It's a brutal, undeniable confirmation of every nasty thing Cheney and co. have worked so hard to downplay about our presence overseas, from embedded reporters not getting the whole story, to rewards given by commanders for achieving "the first kill by stabbing." Sorry, late-nighters, but this smattering of damning quotes and on-field video footage is worth ruining everybody's drunken pre-bed checks of Slog on Saturday night. (The squeamish should close their eyes at about 3:37 to avoid seeing a photo of a dead 12-year-old.)

Yesterday Dan deigned to sully the Slog with indirect acknowledgment of Emily Gould, the former Gawker blogger responsible for the ten-page kiss-and-tell-and-then-have-a-panic-attack-on-the-bathroom-floor cover story of last week's New York Times Magazine.

As the comments to Dan's post show, Gould got a lot of (deserved) shit for her monumental overshare. But for what it's worth, he kinda started it—he being Gawker alum Joshua David Stein, who dissected his relationship and breakup with Emily Gould for Page Six Magazine the week before Emily Gould dissected her relationship and breakup with Josh Stein in The New York Times Magazine.

Page Six versus the Times? Clearly she's the winner. However, she's also responsible for this:

I hereby promise never to mention her or him ever again, unless one or both of them commits suicide or attempts to assassinate a public figure.

You know when you read a headline like this on the Seattle Times editorial page...

Keeping Folklife open and secure

...that the Seattle Times ed board will be coming out against openness and suggesting measures that will do nothing to make anyone that attends Folklife more secure.

Today's lead editorial in the Seattle Times is colored by the same calm, measured, thoughtful hysteria that characterized the Seattle Times' reaction to the Capitol Hill Massacre in March of 2006. Back then the Seattle Times ed board called for the city to crackdown on teen dances (just as Josh Feit predicted they would) after seven people who weren't at a teen dance but had been earlier that night were shot to death by a lunatic with a gun. In the same spirit of geriatric obtuseness, today the Seattle Times has some suggestions for the folks that run Folklife.

Seattle's Northwest Folklife Festival, famous for being free and welcoming to all comers, ought to do something out of character: Folklife should switch from a completely open Seattle Center campus to one with gated security entrances.

Uh... the shooter had a concealed weapons permit—how would gates have prevented him from strolling onto the grounds of the Seattle Center campus exactly?

Such security may not have stopped a 22-year-old man with a concealed-weapons permit who is suspected of injuring three people at the festival last weekend. But a higher level of protection would work in the way that random, thorough checks at airports discourage certain behavior. Festivalgoers mindful that they face spot checks would think twice before bringing guns.

Unless, of course, the dude with the gun was a nut who wasn't thinking at all. Would someone capable of pistol whipping a stranger in a crowd with cops everywhere really be put off by a few old hippies manning security gates? Don't think so.

And those random, thorough checks at airports? Those wouldn't be the same security checks that 10 year-olds don't seem to have any trouble evading, would they?

Folklife need not start charging to attend. The free admission and open attitude are part of the event's charm. Folklife has enjoyed 37 years of relative peace. The goal is not to knock the event or the nonprofit that runs it.

One shooting in 37 years—hey, maybe it was an aberration? Gee, maybe one violent incident and one lone nut in 37 years doesn't justify the expense of putting the entire event in a cage and staffing security check points at all the entrances.

Still, we have to face certain facts. Seattle is changing, and in some ways, not necessarily for the better. Streets are a bit meaner these days.

Cities sure are scary! Never mind that crime in Seattle is at a 40-year low. You can count on the suburbanites on the Seattle Times ed board to overreact to an isolated incident, work hard to make you feel less secure when you brave a trip to Seattle Center, and then suggest measures that wouldn't have prevented the incident in the first place.

This is not the first Seattle Center event with security problems. The Bite of Seattle and Bumbershoot have their share of rowdies.

To say nothing of ruffians and scalawags and ne'er-do-wells. They're attracted to Seattle Center by the hussies and floozies and slatterns.

A broader public-safety concern centers on the suspect and his mental-health history. The prosecutor described him as someone with a "history of anxiety and schizophrenia" for which he takes medication.

Wait, what? We had to read this far into this editorial to get to the real issue: a nut had a concealed weapons permit? Why isn't this in the headline? Isn't this the real issue? Shouldn't this be the subject of the Seattle Times' editorial? The law allows nuts to get guns and concealed weapons permits—what does Seattle Center or Folklife have to do with this? That nut could've whipped his legal and legally concealed gun out anywhere—Pike Place Market, City Hall, Northgate Mall.

It is unclear if he has ever been involuntarily committed—or whether his mental-health status reached those awarding the weapons permit.

Either way, legislation should be adopted to ensure that people with serious mental-health problems are prevented from buying or possessing guns. State Attorney General Rob McKenna and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels worked last year for this type of legislation and were turned down.

What's with the passive voice here? Who "turned down" McKenna and Nickels when they worked for legislation that would've prevented this nut from getting his hands on a gun? Why aren't we naming names here?

Public safety is more important than the predictable political intimidation that takes place every time a discussion begins about sensible gun control.

Gee, public safety is important. We all agree on that. But here's the real point of this editorial: The brave men and women on the Seattle Times ed board want to avoid the "predictable political intimidation"—a.k.a. all those vewy angry letters and phone calls—that pro-gun-control editorials typically draw. So it crafted an editorial that implicitly takes Folklife to task for failing to keep the nuts with guns out of the Seattle Center—why didn't those dumb hippies know that Seattle's streets are meaner these days (even though they're, uh, not) and put up security gates before the shooting?—and lets cowardly politicians and the evil gun lobby off the hook. You see, the brave men and women of the Seattle Times ed board get sooooooo vewy many mean wetters when they discuss sensible gun contwol measures that they're just not gonna go there anymore. Their feelings might get hurt. It's easier and safer to slap around the hippies that put at Folklife.

Gated security at Folklife will not solve all problems.

No shit.

Security checks of handbags and backpacks—similar to those conducted at baseball and football games—would add a layer of protection that sadly has become necessary at Seattle Center's larger festivals and events.

Yes, let's search every handbag and backpack—that'll make us all safer. But, wait: I seem to remember reading somewhere that the shooter's gun wasn't in a backpack or a handbag. It was concealed in an ankle holster.

Nice try, gang.

Sharks attack a few tourists and it's huge news. It's a disturbing development! An ominous pattern! A threatening trend! Meanwhile American youth pastors run riot—many of them raping kids—from one end of the country to another and... crickets.

Now I know that most youth pastors aren't raping kids. But most sharks aren't eating tourists either. So what explains the different coverage of these relative threats? Either the media has an anti-shark bias and is constantly on the lookout for stories and patterns of stories that make sharks look like vicious predators... or the media has a pro-religion bias and ignores stories and patterns of stories that make youth pastors look like vicious predators.

Whatever the cause, I think this is an issue that America's ombudsmen and public editors need to address.

"Pulitzer-Nominated Breathrough Novel, Womb Child, by Author, Alethea Pascascio, Takes You into the Mind of a Fetus"

Does life really begin at the moment of conception? Is a fetus merely a mass of flesh without a soul or spirit? Are we predestined before conception to fulfill a certain God-given role? Author, Alethea Pascascio, in her newly released novel, Womb Child, takes you into the mind of a fetus named, Israel, to help you answer these questions.

Read the whole press release here.

Also, I'm really curious about this "breathrough" novel's nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. I imagine it involves a letter written by the author, Alethea Pascascio, to the Pulitzer committee, saying, "You should give my book a Pulitzer Prize." I need to remember that trick.

So announced MetaFilter back in early May, when they linked to Connors' amazing five-part series for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Beyond Rape: A Survivor's Journey.

I've been meaning to direct Slog readers to the series ever since, but didn't get around to it till today—and Memorial Day seems as good a day as any to acknowledge an experience a hideously large number of women are forced to survive. As for Connors, her attack is just the tip of the iceberg, instigating a decade-spanning saga of reflexive racism, ambitious forgiveness, and the sweetest story of a "mom tattoo" I've ever heard. It's an amazing read.

by shapefarm

Ryan Blethen marks the Supreme Court of California's historic decision legalizing same-sex marriage in that state by slapping the Washington state Supreme Court for its idiotic ruling on same-sex marriage here two years ago. From his column in today's Seattle Times:

California is the second state to allow marriage for same-sex couples. Massachusetts' Supreme Court was first in 2004.... Marriage has not suffered in Massachusetts since marriage equality was affirmed in 2004. In fact, the commonwealth has the lowest divorce rate in the nation.

How does that factoid fit into the man/woman marriage crowd's screeching proclamations that if a woman is allowed to marry a woman, the good old traditional American way of life is going to be ripped apart?

The California high court's enlightened vote makes the Washington state Supreme Court's affirmation of a ban on same-sex marriage two years ago feel more like a throwback ruling to a time of prehistoric social norms.

Kinda looks like that way.

Homage says the New Yorker; rip off says a University of Wisconsin prof/comic geek. More at the New York Post. Via Gawker.

Yesterday the Seattle P-I ran an opinion piece about Supreme Court of California's ruling on gay marriage. The piece was by David Benkof and it argued, amongst other things, that gays and lesbians "shouldn't be celebrating" this historic victory in California. Why? Because the decision harms people of faith. Says Benkof:

Because there certainly are harms—to religious liberty, to give just one example. For the past two weeks, I have been contacting "marriage equality" leaders all over California to ask about the impact of redefining marriage on religious freedom. All, including several prominent lesbian and gay legislators and other leaders, have refused to disclose their opinions, some repeatedly.

Here's the court on religious liberty:

Finally, affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.

That seems pretty clear—religious organizations, officials, and people won't be required to change their practices or bless same-sex marriages. Benkof worries, however, that this ruling denies religious individuals that own businesses the right to express their religious views by refusing their services to same-sex couples. Well, yes. But that was already the case in California, which had laws on the books banning discrimination against gays and lesbians—coupled or not—before this ruling came down last week. There's literally no point to Benkof's piece—besides, of course, stoking the persecution complex that characterizes conservative religious people in the United States.

Getting back to Benkof: There's a reason "prominent" gay leaders and legislators don't return his calls: he's a religious bigot and a bit of a nut. Here's a taste from Wiki:

In 2003, [Benkof] announced that he was going to stop having sex with men for religious reasons, and that he was shedding the label gay, preferring not to label his sexuality. He continued on to say “I believe that within a couple years I’m probably going to be married with a growing family.” He has always been a devout Jew, and says that one reason he changed was because "Gay sex is just inconsistent with traditional religious life." ... He has since become a strong opponent of same-sex marriage. In response to arguments for gay marriages, he wrote “This reasoning is not only flawed, it insults the millions of Americans whose traditional faiths call on us to defend marriage as a central institution in society defined as a union between a man and a woman."

Benkof—who claims he is not gay—runs an anti-marriage-equality website called GaysDefendMarriage.com ("A website for LGBT folks who support marriage as the union of husband and wife.") It's more than a little dishonest for the editors of the PI to allow this self-hating douchebag to present himself to their readers as an openly gay opponent of same-sex marriage who, for uniquely gay reasons, does not support marriage equality. Benkof is not, according to Benkof, gay, openly or otherwise, and there's nothing unique about his opposition to same-sex marriage. Benkof opposes same-sex marriage for the exact same reasons Pat Robertson and Pope Benedict and George W. Bush oppose marriage equality: G-d doesn't like it. "I happen to believe that God has been clear to the Jewish people that we should be pursuing opposite-sex relationships," Benkof told Gay City News, "and particularly not having intercourse between two males."

Benkof wraps up his piece with this statement:

No lesbian ever died a painful death because the government called her relationship a domestic partnership instead of a marriage.

Really?

Four months ago, Lacey resident Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Pond and their children Katie, David and Danielle, ages 10 to 13, were set for a relaxing cruise from Miami to the Bahamas.

But Pond, Langbehn’s partner for nearly 18 years, was stricken in Miami with a brain aneurysm and died. The family says the way they were treated by hospital staff compounded their shock and grief.

Langbehn, a social worker, said officials at the University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital did not recognize her or their jointly adopted children as part of Pond’s family. They were not allowed to be with her in the emergency room, and Langbehn’s authority to make decisions for Pond was not recognized....

Pond suffered the aneurysm just before the R Family Vacations cruise ship left Miami for the Bahamas in February, Langbehn said. After Pond was taken to the emergency room, Langbehn said she was informed by a social worker that they were in an “anti-gay state” and that they needed legal paperwork before Langbehn could see Pond.

Even after a friend in Olympia faxed the legal documents that showed that Pond had authorized Langbehn to make medical decisions for her, Langbehn said she wasn’t invited to be with her partner or told anything about her condition.

Before our fearless leader grabbed the network by the horns in this excellent appearance, wouldja believe CNN wrongly reported the gay marriage decision in California? How wrong? Well, see for yourself…

In case you can't see the video: A news feed read for a "just in" segment says that the court affirmed that gay marriage is illegal in California. Then a legal analyst calls in to discuss the ruling based on faulty information she gets from the anchor.

Three things:

1) Breaking news can be like that. Inaccurate, hazy, hasty. It was a 172-page decision from the court, and making a quick assessment of two-inches of bound legalese on live TV is hard if not impossible.

2) Fucking whatever about point #1. There's no excuse for CNN to be caught off guard by a potentially groundbreaking ruling that—for the 90 days prior—the court had promised it would release by 10 a.m. that day. If this were a ruling on abortion, gun rights, or OJ Simpson, CNN and every major news network would have had a reporter at the courthouse and a fleet of paralegal stenographers shooting an RSS feed to the news desk.

3) That poor anchor. I feel terrible for him. He was just reading "the feed." That mistaken, pathetic feed. And of course the legal counsel. Poor gal, she was running with the bullshit he was reading. What a mess. I feel bad for them. But I don't feel bad for the news producers; I’m kinda pissed at them.

In Los Angeles, an entertainment executive named Scott Seomin--a friend of mine--had flipped on CNN just before 10 a.m. to hear the decision. Because he was sitting on the lot of studio with a satellite bigger than Jeff Stryker's cock, he could watch every station at once. "We're flipping channels, and all I see is CNN's mistake," say Seomin (who knows how funny his last name is for a big ‘mo). He wasn't upset only about the coverage on CNN, which his partner who read the ruling said was incorrect, but the lack of coverage elsewhere. The networks were showing The Price Is Right, The View, and the fourth hour of The Today Show. So he called local stations and asked them to run a crawl—that little ticker feed at the bottom of the screen. "They run one every time there's a little earthquake in Barstow," he says. At least, he said, "Do a goddamn film at 11."

Seomin missed Dan Savage on CNN later because he had to go to a Hollywood-y meeting, populated, of course, by a bunch of fags and dykes. Having only seen the CNN coverage, they were all dejected--until Seomin told them CNN was wrong. "The news media was totally unprepared," he says. And he's right. CNN should have had Savage on the set at 9:50 a.m., preparing to respond to whatever the news might be. Not calling him on as an afterhought.

Last night, I settled in to watch Right At Your Door, a movie that I read a memorably positive review of about a year back. It's set in Los Angeles, just after an unidentified group of terrorists set off a series of dirty bombs. When I was a kid, I was simultaneously repulsed by and attracted to nuclear holocaust-type books and movies, especially the 'realistic' kind, with nuclear winter and rotting body parts. Based on a couple of reviews, I was expecting that sort of thing.

What I got was a movie where the husband spends the first twenty minutes risking his life to find his wife in a L.A. consumed by fear and martial law. This is pretty much what I was hoping for. A cheap B-movie about survival in a disaster area. But then the man gives up on his search and, at the first urging of Homeland Security, duct-tapes himself inside his house. Then his wife comes home and he won't let her in the house because she might be contaminated and then she'd contaminate him and so he'd die. So they spend most of the rest of the movie talking through duct-taped windows, while his wife slowly starts coughing more and more because the dirty bombs are some sort of biological weapon or something. There's also a little boy named Timmy.

About half an hour in, I completely lost interest. My girlfriend, acknowledging that the movie was completely horrible, wanted to keep watching it. So I decided to read the new issue of Esquire.

I don't usually read Esquire, but this issue of Esquire has a cover story on Barack Obama by Charles P. Pierce. I've become obsessed with reading glowing media portraits of Barack Obama. But I started reading this piece, titled The Cynic and Senator Obama, and it's one of the worst pieces of magazine writing I've ever read. The writer refers to himself as "the cynic" all through the piece. The cynic experiences car trouble. The cynic is cynical because he's never had someone to believe in before. Here are five sentences from near the beginning:

There is one point in the stump speech, however, that catches the cynic up short every time. It comes near to the end, when Obama talks about cynics. Obama says that cynics believe they are smarter than everyone else. The cynic thinks he’s wrong. The cynic doesn’t think he’s wiser or more clever or more politically attuned than anyone else.

It is unreadable. It's barely skimmable. It's atrocious.

So I turned by attention back to the atrocious movie. The man and wife are still talking through plastic. But then, near the end, because it's time for the movie to end, there is a twist so bad, so completely unbelievable, that it would've been more emotionally honest if everyone in the movie just stopped, looked directly at the camera, and shouted "TWIST!" in unison. Plus, I think the whole goddamned movie ripped off this post-nuclear-apocalypse episode of The Twilight Zone that I saw in the late eighties. I looked at the movie. I blinked. I looked at the magazine. I blinked again. I was surrounded by awful, awful things.

I hope that your weekend is better than this, is all I'm saying. Hell, I hope my weekend is better than this.

by Joey Veltkamp

...on live TV during last night's Hardball. As Huffington Post's Jason Linkins eloquently explains, "host Chris Matthews took up President Bush's pointed attack on the Democrats in the Knesset, asking if Bush was 'out of line.' Radio talk-show host Kevin James didn't think so, saying-and I'm paraphrasing-'RRRRAAAAAHHHH! OBAMA BLAAAAHHHH! HAMAS LOVES BARACK, YAAAAHHHH!'"

Then Chris Matthews proceeds to beat Kevin James like that pinata full of shit that he is. Enjoy.