Shit that pissed me off this week – 3/30
Anti-Gay group starts Dump Starbucks Campaign
You know, the whole “we don’t hate gay people” drumbeat gets pretty old when you keep doing hateful bullshit like this. The campiagn is in response to the following:
On January 12th, 2012, Starbucks issued a memorandum declaring that same-sex marriage ‘is core to who we are and what we value as a company.’
As annoyed as I am at this petition, I note that some other folks have started a “send a thank you card to Starbucks” campaign, which, as of this morning, had almost twenty times as many supporters. Their initial goal was 40,000. They are almost at 500,000, which doesn’t piss me off – it’s fantastic.
If you haven’t followed the link and thanked Starbucks yet, make sure you do. They earned it.
I’ve read the quote a few times and I think what he was saying is that women need to plan ahead for the possibility of getting raped. After, all, you have a spare tire in your car. Why doesn’t every woman have a morning after pill in her purse?
That wouldn’t work, though, because I’m sure he’s agaist the morning-after pill as well.
If he’s like most Republican ministers these days, he’s also against birth control.
So how, exactly, is someone supposed to plan ahead for being raped?
And what if she’s a minor. Does the responsibility of planning ahead then fall to the parents?
What an asshole.
The basic idea behind this one is that the candidate in question was an astronaut but he left the astronaut corps and therefore can’t call himself an astronaut any longer.
I try to keep this column to a reasonable length and that is why I shall whithold any comment beyond this one: what a crock of shit.
Racist “Hunger Games” fans have a Problem that Rue was Black
I’m not going to spoil the story for anyone by delving into the character. If you’ve read the book or seen the film, click the link. If not, there be spoilers there.
At issue here is a bunch of people complaining about the casting of a black actress to play a character from the book who is black because they thought she was white.
Yeah, that really seems like it is their problem, doesn’t it?
Bully to be Released unrated because the MPAA is worried about swearing
I’ve read a lot about this documentary and as the parent of a child who faces bullying issues, I think it may present a terrific opportunity to advance the dialogue about bullying in our schools. Problem is, the MPAA slapped an R rating on the film so it couldn’t be shown in schools.
Why did they do it? Because one child swears at another child, the MPAA rated the film as inappropriate for children.
Who, I ask, do they think they are protecting? Kids hear swearing all the time and yet a few swear words in a film will be a problem? Does the MPAA so distrust parents in this country that they need to protect the virgin ears of our children.
According to Chris Dodd, the head of the MPAA, the rules surrouding the PG-13 rating are strict and if he allows a PG-13 rating for Bully, other movies with “excessive” swearing will try to get the same rating.
So…um….tell them “no.” Tell them that the situational swearing in Bully is less of a problem than John McClean saying “Yippee kay-yay motherfucker” when it comes to what is appropriate for kids to watch.
How about a nuanced system that ensures children have access to films the really should be able to see?
The result of this mess is that Bully will be released unrated and will need to engage in a major publicity campaign to help people understand what that really means.
I hate any situation that puts my on the side of Harvey Weinstein but we have one right here. Dammit.
P.S: Salon had a great article about this issue.
People use Racist Example to call Other People Racist
This one bothered me so much I blogged about it separately. Bottom line is this: you don’t excuse racism by saying “other people are racist too!”
Maryland County Employees “urged” to attend Religious Traning
This is fantastic. If by “fantastic” one takes me to mean “messed up, stupid and probably unconstitutional.”
Thing is, if you read this article, it is clear that the county board of comissioners didn’t actually do any research about the training course, being led by a group called the “Institute on the Constitution.”
I didn’t link to their website because fuck them.
If comissoners had done their research, they would have seen that the Institute believes “There is a God, the God of the Bible. Our rights come from Him. The purpose of civil government is to secure these God-given rights.” It’s right there, on their freaking banner!
How do you suppose the Institute views the separation of church and state, hmmm?
I didn’t know this comission existed and I’m annoyed that it does. The idea is to defend religious freedom around the globe (or some nonsense like that) but I think it is probably more about defending the right of American Christians to impose their idea of morality on the rest of us. After all, they just appointed a guy who said this:
There’s a massive assault on religious liberty going on in this country right now, it is coming from the left and the Obama administration’s coming to power three years ago placed a powerful weapon, the entire apparatus of the federal government, at the disposal of those whose agenda it is to undermine religious liberty.
Gee, I wonder why John Boehner likes him so much?
NOM, by the way, was just forced to release internal documents about their fight against gay marriage in Maine and here’s a gem from those documents:
The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks–two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…
Yeah, because if you disagree with an African American, it is because you are a bigot.
There is a difference between disagreeing with a black person because they are black and disagreeing with them because they are wrong.
Rick Santorum decides to enforce Gender Stereotypes on the Campaign Trail
GLBT groups are up in arms because Santorum has shown once again that he is anti gay. That is no suprise.
My problem with Santorum’s insistence that a little boy shouldn’t use a pink bowling ball comes more from the intimation that a boy should have a problem with the color pink.
My eldest’s favorite color was pink until he was about ten. We never for a moment suggested to him that the color was too effeminate because it isn’t. It is just a color!
Of course, if either of our sons tells us that he is gay, we will accept it and support him in any way possible.
How ridiculous is it that we assign gender to colors? If a girl had picked out a blue ball, Santorum would have said nothing at all. A little girl playing with a blue ball is not a tomboy. But a little boy playing with a pink ball….well we can’t have that!
I also have to pull this quote from Santorum:
I was bowling in Sheboygan yesterday with a bunch of folks at a tournament and threw three strikes in a row…That’s a turkey. That tells you that you’ve got someone here who can relate to the voters in Wisconsin, just like those of us in western Pennsylvania who grew up in the bowling lanes.
So…um…….what????????
Spike Lee re-tweets the wrong Address of George Zimmerman
Spike Lee (and others) gave out the wrong address to George Zimmerman’s house. Zimmerman, you may remember, is the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in, he claims, self defense.
The result of this tweet campaign was an innocent couple being harassed. That’s bad.
You know what’s worse? The fact they tweeted it in the first place. We don’t live by mob rule in this country, people! Whatever Zimmerman did, you don’t send a bunch of pissed off people after him or you are no better than you believe him to be.
If you are pissed off at Zimmerman for taking the law into his own hands, you don’t make things better by doing the same thing.
If the Trayvon Martin story doesn’t upset you, this one probably will
I don’t have words for this one. A 68 year old man was, allegedly, harassed and killed by police after his medic alert bracelet went off accidentally. There is audio. What the hell is wrong with people?
Bad Satire about how Adults shouldn’t read Kid’s Books
I think this article by Joel Stein is supposed to be satirical. If it is, it isn’t very funny.
If it isn’t supposed to be satire, he’s an ass.
Why should he care if an adult reads a book written for young adults? If it is a good book, he shouldn’t give a rip. Does he have the same objection if kids read books meant for adults?
He also claims that books are one of our few chances to learn and implies that you can only learn if you read adult because books for kids are clearly just for entertainment.
You see, that seems kind of funny to me in the whole “what idiot would think that way” kind of funny. Except it doesn’t read like it is supposed to be funny.
So I return to where I began. Either this article is bad satire or just bad. Either way, I’m glad I didn’t write it.
Grail Diary 