Comments

I'm a week late but I wanted to say, I worked for Kiva last year and it was absolutely amazing. Everybody who works there is wonderful and fully committed to the people they're serving and insanely mission-driven. I was afraid working there would uncover some terrible garbage lurking under the surface of the organization I had loved for years, but it turned out they were exactly as awesome as I hoped they would be.
Meryl, sit down and give your Oscar to Viola Davis, who deserves it.
While I'm happy the rest of the world is realizing what a lazy asshole Ricky Gervais is, I still don't understand why it took so long when the evidence is right there in, you know, everything he's ever done. Years ago I put on his standup to watch with my mom and the first ten minutes straight were nothing but fat jokes. Not self-deprecating fat jokes, not even funny fat jokes, just incredibly mean-spirited abusive remarks about fat people, treating them as though they were the scum of the universe. I thought my (overweight) mother was going to cry. I kept waiting for that segment to end but IT DIDN'T. I turned it off with a terrible taste in my mouth and have hated his work ever since. What a lazy asshole.
Disregarding the obnoxious male-gaze/"I'll allow it" bro-comments, what's with these disingenuous comments about how women can choose to be sexual objects if they want to? Everybody knows famous women can be funny AND sexy. And everybody definitely knows famous women can be sexy. The question here is whether it's acceptable for famous women to just be funny. Show me one major cover story about women in comedy where all of the involved parties are fully clothed, and THEN we can talk about women's options when it comes to professional development via pandering photo shoots. There is not a choice between "participating in this sexy cover shoot!" and "participating in this fun, professional cover shoot!" when it comes to career development. There is a choice between the sexy cover shoot and no cover shoot at all. Don't even try to pretend to me like that's a real "choice". Do you guys really think that the goal of feminism is to allow women the freedom to be sex objects? Woohoo! We got the world to accept the idea of women as objects for male consumption! Glass ceiling SHATTERED! The point is to make as much room for Roseanne as we do for Larry the Cable Guy.
"Yes, it is depressing. It depresses me to think this is the world that my potential future daughter would live in. I’m not excusing it. I just don’t know why everyone’s so mad about it. " Wait, what? What are you even saying??? "Yes, I agree that this is awful. This is a terrible world and women are forced to overcome difficult obstacles which set them back in their personal, public, and professional aspirations. But whyyyy are the ladies so upset about it?"
Of everything you've ever posted on this website, I've never disagreed with a post more vehemently. Jon Hamm the goofball? My body says YES but my mind says YEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS with puppy eyes and little keening sounds.
Man, your comment just reminded me of Elyse Sewell's amazing livejournal. I didn't know she abandoned it a few years ago! That's really sad, she is hysterical and interesting and had all kinds of great adventures. She's precisely the kind of reason blogs exist.
You mean besides devoting the rest of her life to charity work? By the end of her life, her charity work grossed more money than her acting career. She was an admirable lady.
Well, luckily for me I live in San Francisco, where all our public transportation is just full of your average Bay Area citizens, going back and forth from work, reading the newspaper or perhaps browsing through a book, doing just about anything you would expect on public transportation, really, including PEEING AND POOPING AND COVERING THE SEATS WITH MRSA BACTERIA FROM YOUR OPEN WOUNDS. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/us/06bcseats.html
Hillary Clinton already gave an incredible speech about this in 2009. I have watched this like five times already. No equivocation, no apologies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH9rC0MaBJc
Your tax dollars don't pay for abortions, and haven't done so since the Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976, so shut up about it. Your tax dollars pay for cervical cancer screenings, STI and HIV tests, and routine gynecological care. In addition, they also provide basic medical care and routine physicals to low income families. Abortions at Planned Parenthood are paid for by private contributions and grants from other philanthropic organizations, or by the women themselves.
Just looking at a picture of jelly sandals gives me heel blisters.
I'm giving you extra points because this was written just like a piece on The Hairpin, and that is my favorite new website right now.
I FINALLY got my mom to watch Inception, which is weird because she loves all of Nolan's other movies. Anyway, I particularly enjoyed the look of righteous indignation on her face when I told her that it didn't even get a nomination for editing. BECAUSE RIGHT?! RIGHT?! Not even nominated. That movie would have been literally incomprehensible without its brilliant editing. Just boggled.
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgeuns6LZA1qz7fz0o1_400.jpg
I have an ancestor who lost a leg on his right side and an arm on his left side in the Civil War. Apparently the youngsters in town couldn't pronounce their S yet, so he became "Uncle 'Tump". Despite his injuries he was still able to ride a horse, don't even ask me how. One day a lady's carriage got stuck in a rising stream and he came across it. He hopped off his horse, hopped through the stream, grabbed her horse's reins, and hopped them across the river. Then he hopped back through the stream and hopped back onto his horse and they rode into town together. And here I sit at 2 in the afternoon and I'm too lazy to change out of sweatpants. I am the disgrace of my family.
What the fuck does this argument even mean? People say this kind of thing to invalidate feminism but how does that even work? When one group is systematically privileged over another, and has had that privilege reaffirmed over literally thousands of years across almost every social environment, why the fuck is the disempowered group supposed to be sad about the stuff happening to EVERYONE? It isn't happening to everyone. It is happening to them. PEOPLE aren't treated poorly - WOMEN are treated poorly. WOMEN are discriminated against, WOMEN are disenfranchised, WOMEN are barred from getting an education, WOMEN are saddled with the burden of childrearing, WOMEN are denied access to adequate health care, WOMEN aren't allowed control over their reproductive organs, WOMEN are et fucking cetera. When we act as though every bad thing that has ever happened to a being is just a misfortune falling on that atomized individual, it's an easy way to ignore systemic prejudice and privilege. "Complaining about it" is the only way systemic privilege has EVER BEEN CHANGED. Martin Luther King, Jr. "complained about it." So did Gandhi, Betty Friedan, Margaret Sanger, Elie Wiesel, Harvey Milk, and just about every other force for change the world has ever produced. Where exactly do you think change comes from? Telling people to "stop seeing things in terms of ___" is something that privileged people tell to those who are suffering from the fact that the world is viewed in EXACTLY THAT WAY. Black people see the world in terms of color because their lives are constricted by virtue of their race. Women see the world in terms of gender because the fact that they're women limits their opportunities in the world. If feminists stop talking about the patriarchy, it doesn't go away, because it was there BEFORE they started talking about the patriarchy - that's the whole reason feminism exists. Oh, ugh, indeed. TL;DR Tina Fey version: "Bitches get shit done."
To be fair, I thought there was at lease ONE positive aspect about the Black Eyed Peas' halftime show. I've been telling my father to check out the Puppy Bowl for years, but he refused to switch away from the game. This year, at long last, while I was watching Usha fulfill his contractual flying split requirements, my dad called me up sounding all giddy to say, "These puppies are so cute! Look at all the ones with big paws! They're going to grow up to be soooo big! I like the hamsters in the blimp too!" Meanwhile, speaking of puppies, this happened during the halftime show in our neck of the woods: http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs282.snc6/181093_1632195958460_1043460005_31417023_5964501_n.jpg In case you can't tell, that's my friend trying to pull her puppy's paws down because she was COVERING HER OWN EYES while the Black Eyed Peas performed.
To be fair, that sounds fairly delicious.