Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
@ProducerMatthew
Update #3 (from Wed, 2/22): Aaaaannnnndddddd…@ProducerMatthew has stopped following me on Twitter. That was actually quicker than I thought it would be.
Update #2: Also, this.
Update: Keys contacted me tonight on Twitter and said:
You’re right. That’s the wrong idea to put out there. And if that’s what you took from my post, then I absolutely apologize.
That definitely was not my intent. I don’t like making my personal opinions known — because, honestly, I don’t think they matter.
But if I did, and this once I will, I would say this: I don’t think it’s okay in any circumstance. I think we can both agree on that.
It’s not what I took away, it’s what you said, the space you opened up with that line of questioning.
I appreciate that it wasn’t your intent but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t offensive.
And I still believe there is a HUGE distance btwn what we say about ourselves and what others say about us.
If one doesn’t mean to offend, and yet they do it anyway, they’re still at fault. It wasn’t my intent, and I do apologize.
There already exists a Rush Limbaugh and a Glenn Beck. I don’t aspire to join their ranks.
Thank you. And – WOW – one would not ever aspire to that, right?
I like being honest with people: I worked at a FOX station for 2.5 years. I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I think there’s another point that even I missed: Just because Lin used the word then doesn’t mean he doesn’t regret it now.
Now he and his boss (@AntDeRosa) are following me on Twitter. Sorta think they’ll unfollow me tomorrow when I’ve moved onto something else.
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This morning, while scrolling the dashboard on Tumblr, I came across a post written by Matthew Keys, aka Producer Matthew (@producermatthew):
“Is Mommy making Mommy Sad?”
I haven’t been diagnosed with depression. But I have, off and on throughout my life, had darker periods.
Celebrating my friend, who is my family
My 3yo is going through a phase. He is defiant, quick to anger, often exasperated and exasperating. This has been a struggle for my partner and I for a few months now. I wrote one of my best friends about this recently and today she wrote me an email that took my breath away and touched my heart. I’m not going to share all of it but I want to share one part where she discusses the silver lining of my son’s defiance:
I have to say, if I could (every once in a while) tell my authority figures to fuck off (by my behavior or whatever) and was so secure, knowing they would continue to love me and take care of me…. Well I might spend whole days telling them to fuck off.
Both she and I grew up in families that were built on conditional love. How much of it is perceived to be conditional versus actually being conditional, at least in my case, is hard to know – I was always too terrified of it being conditional to test it (and when I did test it, I retreated quickly back to the safe path).
These words my friend wrote me, this idea of my own child existing in a familial space where he doesn’t feel the love and comfort we show him/tell him as a condition of correct behavior is just…breathtaking.
Sometimes I literally do not know what I would do without my friends. My partner and I talk often about our decision to only have one child and what that will mean when our child is grown and we are gone. What will he do for family then?
When my friends send me emails like my friend did today, I am reminded that as we grow older, our friends are the families we choose for ourselves. And if my partner and I do this parenting thing at all correctly, hopefully our son will not have a problem finding his own family of friends to care for him, love him, hold his hand, hug him, comfort him, right him when he is on the wrong path, give him advice, and see him through life the way my friends do for me.
I happen to have a sister whom I adore and, despite whatever flaws exist in my family, I love them thoroughly and with my entire heart.
But today I want to celebrate the amazing thing that is a good, true, chosen, loving friend.
A History Lesson for Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Trump
Gingrich, who found himself in hot water last month for saying America’s child labor laws are “truly stupid,” called on Trump to create an “Apprentice”-style program for 10 inner-city New York children to teach them “work ethic.”
“We’re going to be picking 10, young, wonderful children, and we’re going to make them ‘apprenti,’” Trump said after a high-profile meeting with Gingrichon Monday. “We’re going to have a little fun with it, and I think it’s going to be something that is really going to prove results. But it was Newt’s idea, and I think it’s a great idea.”
While it is unclear if the program will run as a reality TV show, like Trump’s NBC show “The Apprentice,” Gingrich said the program is intended to give students “an opportunity to earn money, and get them into a habit of showing up and realizing that hard work gets rewarded.”
Gingrich, the current GOP front-runner, has been a target of fierce attacks from unions and liberal commentators after he said poor school districts should fire unionized janitors and replace them with schoolchildren.
“Young children who are poor ought to learn how to go to work,” he said, defending his stance in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper last week. “What I’ve said is, for example, it would be great if inner city schools and poor neighborhood schools actually hired the children to do things. Some of the things they could do is work in the library, work in the front office. Some of them frankly, could be janitorial.”
Maybe I am biased because I know history, but when I hear about white guys wanting to offer apprenticeships to children from poor neighborhoods, especially since Mr. Gingrich is talking specifically about “inner city” children, I think of another time when white dudes “apprenticed” black people: post-emancipation Jamaica.
This is what post-emancipation Jamaica’s “apprenticeship” program was:
Although emancipation laws required former masters to provide apprentices with lodging and food, many owners charged for food or for rent in the form of extra labor. The special magistrates were intended to put a stop to these injustices, but they could not be at every plantation at once, and the majority worked extremely hard to improve the conditions of the apprentices.
Another problem of apprenticeship was the division of labor hours. The apprentices were required to work 40.5 hours per week for the master, but the hours were not divided. While special magistrates fought for a nine-hour day – leaving the apprentices half a day on Friday as well as Saturday free for other work – planters almost always insisted on eight-hour days, meaning the apprentices were not given much time for their own.
The plantation owners also charged exorbitant rates to former slaves who wanted to buy their own freedom, though nearly 1,500 did in two years – the highest recorded sum being more than £100. Planters were also known to work their apprentices more harshly than they had when the blacks were slaves, with more brutal punishments as well.
Such brutal punishments included the treadmill: This had been introduced to Jamaica by Lord Sligo in an attempt to help the apprentices because he had always hated the use of whips, particularly on women. The treadmill is not like those we know today, but instead was a large cylinder with a series of steps attached to it. The person’s weight on these steps caused the cylinder to spin, and they would have to step quickly to remain standing. If a person fainted or fell, he would hang by the wrists tied to a handrail while the steps hit him.
Image of said treadmill:
Occupy Austin’s Carols
Tonight in downtown Austin, there was a community sing-along, followed by the lighting of the Christmas tree at the state capital and a parade down Congress Avenue.
During that parade, members of Occupy Austin caroled for the crowd three original songs that they create, which were, you guessed it, occupy-themed.
I asked multiple members of their community if I could post the lyrics on this blog and they said that was fine as long as I gave credit to the movement. As far as everyone knew whom I talked to, the songs were a collaborative effort and attributed to “anonymous.”
So, here are my two videos of them caroling.
Why this NPR article on Siri and Abortion = FAIL
[I'm so ready to NEVER again write about Siri and abortion]
Siri’s Position On Abortion? A Glitch, Not Conspiracy, Apple Says
by Julie Rovner
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re out to get you.
Feminists are paranoid nitpickers, amirite? Sigh.
That could be the motto this week for abortion rights groups that immediately sprang into battle mode when it was discovered that Siri, Apple’s new artificially intelligent personal assistant, wasn’t so, well, intelligent when it came to abortion.
And feminists as militant. Yay! Because women can’t possibly draw attention to systemic failures in a major piece of technology without “springing into battle mode.” (But, of course, me even writing this post tonight is just simply evidence of me being in battle mode, I guess)
It turns out, however, that it was all much ado about not so much.
The Eviction of Occupy Philly
One of my best friends lives in Philly and has participated with Occupy Philly since the beginning. Here are all of his Facebook posts last night. He went down to the site, filmed a bit, feared his own arrest, and returned home. He then posted on Facebook what he saw going down on the livestream.
Rape Culture, meet Siri >> WAIT, you’ve already met.
@amaditalks tweeted: “@ShelbyKnox @WentRogue @abortioneers If you say “I’m hurt” she’ll give you hospitals. Say “I was raped” she replies “Is that so?”"
All I have to say in response to this is…WOW. I don’t think Apple is trying to be mean or anything. I just think the guys who programmed Siri didn’t even consider this. And really, Apple can do better. Once I hear of any coordinated efforts to contact Apple about this issue, I’ll post about it.
Whoops, you’re being racist: appropriation of Native culture on Thanksgiving
On Thursday, my partner and our son participated in Austin’s Turkey Trot. I had my camera with me to document our son running his first 1K. I ended up using it to also document some of the people who chose to “celebrate” Thanksgiving by running in a race while wearing a “costume” that was supposed to represent Native Americans and/or their culture (I guess).
This is not okay.
“Hitting them with a fire hose and a bar of soap first was kind of a given…”
Two guys I went to high school with. Le sigh.
