I came across this vignette from the first season of the 1980’s Twilight Zone reprise. If you don’t want to watch the video (it’s just over ten minutes), be forewarned of spoilers ahead.
(Spoilers beyond this point.)
“Examination Day” is based on a short story by Henry Seslar first published in the 1950’s. I like this summary of the setup from All Things Dark and Magical: Continue reading
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is not happy about the most recent episode of HBO’s True Blood, which included a fundraising event, with a very large picture of him, getting shot up by the Yakuza.
Let us pause a moment to marvel at what might be the strangest sentence I’ve ever written. Who would’ve thought True Blood could put the Tea Party and the Japanese mob together in the same room (with vampires!) and have it be sort of believable? But I digress.
Cruz’s objections to the episode are characteristically incoherent:
“Of all the places I never thought to be mentioned, HBO’s True Blood vampire show would have to be near the top of the list. Sunday night, they aired a misogynist and profanity-ridden episode where Texas Republicans are murdered attending a ‘Ted Cruz fundraiser,’” he wrote on his Facebook page. [Emphasis added.]
“Well, I’m sorry to have lost the vampire vote, but am astonished (and amused) that HBO is suggesting that hard-core leftists are blood-sucking fiends,” the Texas Republican said.
Cruz also threw in a voter fraud quip, because you gotta keep your material fresh, you know?
About that “misogynist and profanity-ridden” bit, though. Senator, have you ever watched this show before? This episode was tame in the woman-involved sex department. It even had a dang marriage proposal! In fact, a considerable portion of the episode dealt with forgiveness (Andy), redemption (Jessica), and healing (Arlene and Sookie)—very WWJD? kind of stuff.
I do wonder if the Lafayette-James sandwich caught Cruz’s attention at all…..it’s almost like he didn’t personally watch the episode. I don’t recall seeing anyone else naked* this week (although I could be wrong about that).
The fundraiser scene itself was uncomfortable, nihilistic, and gory, which is not at all uncommon for this or numerous other HBO series. On the plus side, it had a brilliant homage to Terminator 2 (and I don’t mean the guy who plays Alcide’s dad).
I don’t really think Cruz considers this episode, or this show, “misogynist.” I think he threw that word out there because he knows it’s something liberals take seriously, and he thought he could put us on the defensive with it. He failed to consider, however, that while liberals may take misogyny seriously, we do not have the same concern for the words of Senator Ted Cruz.
As for the episode being full of profanity? Yeah, no shit.
Finally, I assume Cruz got the idea** that “hard-core leftists are blood-sucking fiends” from Pam’s rather clever and off-color pun about being a “Republc###.” Clearly Cruz hasn’t seen much of the show, because Pam hates everybody. Except Eric. There’s nothing political about it.
* True Blood may come closest of any show yet, at least that I’ve seen, to what I’ll call nudity parity (a shamelessly borrowed term). This is not to say it gives equal time. Far from it. Over 6½ seasons, for every naked Anna Paquin we’ve had a naked Alexander Skarsgård, Joe Mangianello, and Ryan Kwanten (all links are tasteful, if technically naked). Don’t even get me started on all the permutations of possible sexual partners on the show.
** The other possibility is that he got the idea from flashbacks showing Bill Compton being opposed to slavery and secession at the start of the Civil War, but let’s stop right there with that, shall we?
Should International Refugee Law Accommodate Climate Change? allAfrica, July 3, 2014
Ioane Teitiota, a Kiribati national, lost his asylum appeal in New Zealand this past May in a case In the case of cross-border movement, we’re looking at a gaping legal hole that would have made him the world’s first-ever “climate change refugee.” Mr. Teitiota moved there in 2007 with his family, claiming his island home was sinking and becoming too dangerous to live on. His lawyers argued that Mr. Teitiota was being “persecuted passively by the circumstances in which he’s living, which the Kiribati Government has no ability to ameliorate.”
New Zealand’s Court of Appeal ruled that while climate change is a major and growing concern for the international community, the phenomenon “and its effect on countries like Kiribati is not appropriately addressed under the Refugee Convention.” That 1951 treaty defines a refugee as a person who “has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”
“We don’t have, in international law, or any kind of mechanisms to allow people to enter a State against the will of the State, unless they’re refugees. And even then, they don’t technically have the right to enter, but they cannot be punished for entering,” the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, François Crépeau, told the UN News Centre. His mandate has been awarded by the Human Rights Council and his work is supported by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
I’m sorry for coining the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, Nathan Rabin, Salon, July 15, 2014 Continue reading
football v. fútbol — it ain’t just sports, Greg Fallis, gregfallis.com, June 27, 2014
[T]he U.S. is a football nation; the places where we’ve been engaged in combat are fútbol nations. We’re talking two different sports with radically different philosophies. Those philosophies can be seen as metaphors for the ways we wage war. American football is a great metaphor for waging large-scale land and sea wars. The U.S. totally kicked ass in World War II. But for your more modern asymmetrical conflicts, fútbol is the ticket.
***
Here’s why. Football is centralized and authoritarian. Command and authority is channeled through coaches and advisers who aren’t even on the field. The information is relayed to a single individual who reveals those orders to the players. In other words, you’ve got old guys who don’t have any skin in the game making most of the decisions. This is thought to be a good thing, because their decisions can be made in a cold, dispassionate, logical way. Most of the individual players on the field don’t need to know what’s going on overall; they just need to follow instructions and do their fucking job. On the other hand, it means if communications fail, or if the defense takes out the quarterback, the team on the field is thoroughly fucked.
We, the people are violent and filled with rage: A nation spinning apart on its Independence Day, Jim Sleeper, Salon, July 4, 2014 Continue reading
Introducing TV’s Best Female Monster Yet, Lili Loofbourow, New York Magazine, July 3, 2014
In horror, once a person has been cast as a victim, a victim they remain — or at best, a deeply damaged survivor. In Orphan Black, the victim becomes the monster becomes the victim again with bewildering and humorous ease. Just when you think you’ve settled, the camera cocks its head, says “don’t be baby,” and refuses to let things be so simple. The camera confounds our relationship to Helena by seesawing the horror script, and in doing so, makes us rethink what a female monster can be. You’re forced to shift your sympathies on a shot-by-shot basis.
Judge says man who raped sleeping woman is not a “classic rapist,” just “lost control”, Katie McDonough, Salon, July 3, 2014 Continue reading
Well, it’s sort of a thing, but not the way they portray it in the movies.
Apparently Blackwater’s people don’t know that, though.
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.
…and I get that, as an American, I will probably never understand the true magnitude of its big-deal-ness—but I truly feel that it’s not worth this:
A soccer fan in China has died from sleep deprivation after saying up for days on end to watch the matches.
China is 11 hours off from Brazil, with the games airing between 11pm and 6am. Die-hard fans who want to watch the games live pull all nighters, go to work in the morning, and repeat the ritual the next night. It’s not known exactly how long the 25-year-old man from the eastern city of Suzhou had stayed up, but IB Times reports it’s believed he’d been up “for days.” It’s also not known whether he died directly from sleep deprivation or from a heart attack related to sleep deprivation. He was found in front of his TV five hours after Netherlands defeated Spain 5-1 in their first round.
It is worth noting that this is not an isolated incident.
IB Times notes that Chinese doctors had warned fans of the risks of sleep deprivation during the World Cup. Chinese hospitals saw a spike of admissions for exhaustion in 2006 and 2010 during the World Cup, and during the 2012 Euros Jiang Xiaoshan died after staying up 11 consecutive nights to watch the games.
Clearly it wouldn’t be the same to record the games and watch them during waking hours. For one thing, there just wouldn’t be enough time to watch them all without foregoing other activities. If you can’t afford to lose your job, it’s your leisure time, your sleep time, or both that have to go. (And we don’t know if this guy worked an 8-hour-a-day job, a 16-hour-a-day job, or if he did nothing at all but sit and watch soccer football for days on end.)
For another thing, anyone in Asia is generally at a disadvantage, considering that most World Cups take place in American or European time zones (I’m including South Africa in this because it’s on the same latitude as parts of Europe, and therefore still basically on the other side of the planet from China.)
Finally, I assume World Cup fandom is like most major American sports events (the Super Bowl, the World Series, March Madness, etc.) in that it’s not just about watching games—it’s also about talking/bragging/commiserating about the games. If you didn’t catch the game live, this isn’t Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. People are not going to respect your request for no spoilers.
But damn, dude, all good things in moderation, because the World Cup (nor any other entertainment event) isn’t worth anyone’s health, let alone anyone’s life. Continue reading
The Art of the Hissy Fit, Digby, AlterNet, October 24, 2007
Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.
There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.
Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris Are Old News: A Totally Different Atheism Is on the Rise, Chris Hall, AlterNet, June 4, 2014
Tribal leader turns down thrilling chance to support the Washington Redskins, Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, May 30, 2014
It’s almost sad that someone in their PR department sincerely thought that they were going to get a tribal leader to drop everything he was doing and just jet off to Washington to pat Dan Snyder on the head and tell him it’s cool for him to use a racial slur. I mean, I guess you’re supposed to try everything, but you’d have to be a complete idiot to think that was going to happen. What’s next? Are they just going to start dialing up random Native Americans and trying to get them to hang out with Dan Snyder and say he’s an OK guy?
Game of Thrones, Sex and HBO: Where Did TV’s Sexual Pioneer Go Wrong? Bethany Jones, Jezebel, June 5, 2014 Continue reading
