On Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith, who isn't interested in your bullshit.

Okay, so Zoe Smith, 18, is a weightlifter. This weekend, she competes for Britain in the Olympics. She can clean and jerk nearly 260 lbs. Her Olympic qualifying total was 211 kg, or about 465 lbs. That alone should be enough to make the wise person disinclined to mess with her.

But there are always unwise people around to make the world a shittier place, and a number of them took to Twitter after the BBC aired Girl Power - Going For Gold, a documentary about Smith and her teammates Hannah Powell and Helen Jewel. "They're probably lesbians anyway," and "I'd think you were a bloke and so would 9 out of 10 lads," and of course the classic "Now piss off back to the kitchen."

Smith held her own on Twitter, and then she elaborated further in a post on her blog.

The obvious choice of slander when talking about female weightlifting is "how unfeminine, girls shouldn't be strong or have muscles, this is wrong". And maybe they're right… in the Victorian era. To think people still think like this is laughable, we're in 2012! This may sound like a sweeping generalization, but most of the people that do think like this seem to be chauvinistic, pigheaded blokes who feel emasculated by the face that we, three small, fairly feminine girls, are strong than them. Simple as that. I confronted one guy that said "we're probably all lesbians and look like blokes", purely to explain the fact that his opinion is invalid cause he's a moron. And wrong. He came up with the original comeback that I should get back in the kitchen. I laughed.

As Hannah pointed out earlier, we don't lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we're flattered. But if you don't, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our 'manly' muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.

Weightlifting events start this Saturday; competitors in Smith's class, Women's 58kg, lift the equivalent of a grown man over their heads starting Monday.


[Cross-posted at Feministe.]

On body types, mental health, and defending the skinny girl

Alternately: The One Where Maybe I Come Across as Some Kind of Apologist for Something, or Whatever, I Don't Know

Okay, so my reader knows I hate blog posts that start with definitions, but I think this one calls for it.

The NIH on Anorexia:

A decreased appetite is when you have a reduced desire to eat. The medical term for a loss of appetite is anorexia.

The Mayo Clinic on Anorexia nervosa:

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that causes people to obsess about their weight and the food they eat. People with anorexia nervosa attempt to maintain a weight that's far below normal for their age and height. To prevent weight gain or to continue losing weight, people with anorexia nervosa may starve themselves or exercise excessively.

I share these definitions in part because I'm so very pedantic that when I see terms used incorrectly, I get an eye twitch and an itchy rash on my lower back. I also share them to clarify something: Anorexia isn't "the state of being skinny." It isn't "the state of wanting to be skinny." It's the state of having a broken brain. And that's harsh, I know, and I know a lot of people with and/or recovering from eating disorders might bristle to read that. But as someone who spent (and continues to spend) plenty of time fixing my brain after a decade of bulimia, I feel comfortable assigning broken brain as a contributor to eating disorders.

On the deadly bite of the Black Widow

Okay, so over at Feministe, I posted about my love of the Black Widow in The Avengers and my frustration with reviewers who completely dismissed her as eye candy despite ridiculous amounts of evidence to the contrary. (Warning: That post, and this one, are chock full of SPOILERY SPOILERS THAT SPOIL.)

According to movie reviewers, she's also a "token sexy female," who "spends a lot of time looking puzzled or confused" and "clench[ing] her brow," "repels invading aliens through the sheer force of her corsetry," and provides "images of Scarlett Johansson in a black bodysuit."

The funny thing is that that very reaction is one of the things that makes the Black Widow so effective at what she does. She's a sleeper--constantly underestimated and manipulative. She acrobatically defeats a team of Russian arms dealers--with both hands and a chair tied behind her back--because they had no idea what she was capable of. While normally I'd find Loki's derision of her as a "mewling quim" to be utterly horrendous, I kind of liked it here because it underscored the fact that our alien demigod villain was falling for her act and giving her everything she needed.

...

One great thing about the Black Widow is that the penalty for dismissing her and making assumptions about her generally involves blood loss. Now, far be it from me to say that violence is the answer (although I’m also not saying it isn’t...), but it would be nice if the real world had more tangible penalties for sexism. Like criticism by one's peers, censure in the public arena, or a reflexive expectation of public apology for misogyny. Or the public calling-out of idiot movie reviewers who obviously struggle with viewing comprehension. Or being hung upside down by one's ankles. Whatever.

And on that point, I'm of course completely right. In the subsequent discussion, several commenters mentioned that they'd love to see Natasha Romanoff interacting with other badass women, like Agent Maria Hill, in the next movie. I'd like to see that--and in addition, I think the Blu-ray extras for the movie would be a great place for a scene with them interacting casually, maybe blowing off some steam at the firing range after a mission. Something like this, for instance.

JOSS WHEDON, I KNOW YOU'RE READING THIS. I'VE DONE YOUR WORK FOR YOU. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE NOT TO DO THIS.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Not-Even-Random Ten: I'm Back, No Seriously, This Time It's for Real edition

Okay, so I've become irrationally obsessed with The Hunger Games. I'd heard about it from here and there, and it was always somewhere toward the back of my reading list. When the first movie trailer came out, I found it intriguing and decided I definitely wanted to see the movie and should probably read the book first.

I loved it way too much. I'm saying I loved it more than is reasonable for a book that is solidly readable but not in any way spectacular. It's a good book, but not a great one such that I should be thusly fixated on it. No explanation. But this is all by way of saying that the movie is coming out today and I'm so inexplicably excited. The Boy teases me. He's probably teasing me right now.


What's good (for the indeterminate period ending 3/23/2012):

- Dirty Signs With Kristin, wherein Kristin teaches you to say things you probably shouldn't in American Sign Language. Today's lesson: how to sign "giant cock-topus."

- Firefighters doing their job like a boss.

There's a story behind this, and I could tell you, but I'm… not. (Totally feeling for the guy who has to pull up his dress while he's running. Strapless is a pain. I have to do that all the time.)

- Getting paid to do something you actually enjoy, not just something you tolerate doing because it pays the bills

- The Motorola Droid Bionic

On elevator etiquette. Seriously. Just that.

Okay, so it started two weeks ago. That’s not a whole lot in earth time, but in Internet time, where conversations--and accusations, and examinations, and defamations--can fly around at electron speed, it’s like months. It started with a post by well-known skeptic Rebecca Watson about her recent travels and a conference she spoke at in Dublin.

In the course of her eight-minute video (around 4:30), Watson made passing mention of an experience she had in an elevator. She’d been talking with folks in a bar, and around four in the morning, she got onto an elevator, followed by one of the dudes from the bar. Dude said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?” and Watson said, “Uhhh, no thanks.” Her point in recounting this was to inform guys that inviting strange women on an empty elevator back to their hotel room at four in the morning can be perceived as creepy, and that they maybe should not do it. What she said was that.

This is good advice, by the way. Even if you sincerely want to talk and not scrog, even if you really are interested in her brain and not her body, propositioning a strange woman on an empty elevator at four in the morning will probably skeeve her out some.

So that’s the end of the story.

Except it isn’t. It was the beginning of another, far lengthier story that involved folks accusing her of being hypersensitive and then something went down at another conference, and then well-known atheist and firestarter Richard Dawkins was all, like, “Blah, he didn’t even touch her, and what’s the big deal, and privilege, and blah, and at least you’ve never had your genitals mutilated, so whatever” (paraphrased), and then he was all, like, “I don’t know when it’s time to just shut up about something” (paraphrased again). And then more discussion and other stuff.

Y’all. Asking a strange chick on an empty elevator back to your hotel room at four in the morning is creepy. That’s the alpha and the omega of the story. It’s not, on its face, all that debatable. This isn’t to say that the current debate isn’t valuable, because the fact that there’s been debate at all would indicate that there’s a breakdown in communication within the community (and a lot of other communities, frankly) on the subject of privilege (and on the subject of creepiness, apparently, which seems rather straightforward to me). That is a much longer post for a much slower day, and while I like to think I’m intellectually up to the challenge, I make no warrants.

But your opinion on that subject aside, don’t ask a strange chick on an empty elevator back to your hotel room at four in the morning. Even if you aren’t personally a creeper, even if you don’t have ulterior motives, know that some men are and do and that some women’s experiences with them are different than ones you’ve had yourself and that the sensitive thing would be to find a different way of soliciting her company. You don’t have to understand--just accept. And should it ever come to a debate, know when to quit while you're only behind a little.

On the stuff women write and the women who read it

Okay, so I’ll admit that the Daily Mail’s “Femail” section is both harmful to women and a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s a place to go to see what hideousness Kim Kardashian wore to a party and what Shia LaBoeuf said Megan Fox said about Michael Bay. Outside of not-entirely-accurate celebrity gossip, though, it’s a wasteland of woman-hate. Margaret Wheeler Johnson has the rundown: “brilliant women” turning into “slummy mummies”; the “truth” that women are responsible for any “glass ceilings”; getting skinny to gain the approval of other women. It delivers 24/7 analysis of how shitty you are, couched in advice on how a woman could, if she wanted to, become less shitty. The worst offender there is Liz Jones, and Johnson pulls a quote from a comment Jones made about the movie Bridesmaids.

The reality of the modern woman in Milwaukee or Birmingham hasn't changed much since Pride And Prejudice's Lizzie Bennet had to walk to visit her sister because she couldn't afford a carriage. Female companionship. Dreary, endless chores. Poverty and a pensionless, uncertain future.

Here’s why I’m a bad feminist. First, I’ll let you guess what you think my first thought was upon reading that quote. Got it? Okay.

My first thought upon reading that quote: The Bennet family had a carriage. Jesus Christ. They had a cook and a maid. They were hardly poor--they were landed gentry. Jane didn’t take the carriage to visit the Bingleys because her mother was scheming to get her stranded by the rain so she could spend more time with Mr. Bingley. Lizzie didn’t take the carriage to visit Jane because Lizzie was a free spirit and whatever who liked walking places. The Bennets’ only problem was that they had tons of daughters and no son, meaning all of their property would go to Mr. Bennet’s male cousin upon Mr. Bennet’s death, which is why they were trying to marry their daughters off as quickly as possible. It wasn’t because the family couldn’t afford to support them; it was because they wanted to ensure a good life for their daughters when the family assets became unavailable.

God.

If you’re going to throw in literary allusions to try and lend some air of intellect and respectability to your self-loathing essays that center exclusively around how much women suck, make sure to read the source material first. And you might want to avoid pulling from Austen to support your anti-feminist screeds--she’s got layers.

And that’s why I’m a bad feminist: because no matter how hard Ball-Busting Man-Hating Feminist charges for the lead, English Geek will always get there before her.

On girlhood

Okay, so I'm a girl. This may come as a shock to those of you who are convinced that I'm actually a 63-year-old man from Little Rock trying to fulfill his need for adulation and sexual affirmation via an assumed identity. (But seriously, folks, if I were a dude trying to adopt a sexy female alter ego, do you think i'd go for 30-year-old underpaid marketing writer writer with a steady boyfriend and an addiction to Dr. Who? It's kind of niche.)

Ask me, though, and I'll self-identify as a girl. Sometimes a lady, under certain circumstances. I was called a dame once and found it most entertaining. But generally, it's "girl"--and almost never "woman."

I don't know what it is about "woman" that doesn't sit right with me. It's not that I'm not a female of the species who presents as such. It's not even that I don't consider myself an adult, although my standards for real adulthood tend to differ from those of people who usually don't wear feather earrings to the office. And it's not that I cling to girly-girlness--I do love a brand-new hairdo, but I despise pink, ruffles, "princess," "diva," French provincial, and non-ironic marabou. So maybe I'm not exactly a girl. But I feel I'm not yet a woman.

Karen Duffy would take issue with that--"girl" is a pet peeve of hers. She writes,

I cringe when I hear the women from "The Real Housewives" accuse their cast mates of acting like "mean girls." Sure, the dames on reality television are cruel, narcissistic and self-absorbed (and I love every minute of it), but girls? For these women, girlhood was more than 30 years ago.

A not-unreasonable observation. There's definitely a disconnect between "girl" and "housewife," and it's odd to think of someone as a "girl" when she herself has given birth to several of them. But the real concern seems to be not that they're identifying as girls but that they're acting like them. I can't say I've actually seen any of the "Real Housewives" shows myself (and I'm okay with that), but they, like pretty much all other reality TV these days, seem to be heavy on the gossiping, plotting, snubbing, sniping, and backstabbing that we all should have gotten over in high school.

On the hidden enemy lurking within 49.3 percent of the U.S. population

Okay, so The Boy and I got into a lengthy discussion recently over a blog post by Dilbert cartoonist and all-around dickweed Scott Adams asserting that recent "tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive" by some "powerful men" is really just them giving in to their manly urges, urges that are "shameful and criminal" in a world that values only the natural instincts of women.

The Scott Adams part of this post

In Scott's words,

The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?

By all means, correct me if I'm drawing weird connections here, but I'm digging through my limited and dusty knowledge of propositional calculus to make sense of whatever the hell he's saying. If someone could please, in comments or via e-mail, characterize it some other way than "raping and cheating are only bad because society caters to women," I'll give you a nickel. The whole lion-and-zebra thing really reads like "Some dummy put rapey men and rapeable women in the same habitat! Man, whatcha gonna do, right?"

On personal safety: Are you rape-proof enough?

Holy mother of God!

Okay, so I had to borrow the title of this post from jfwlucy on a recent post at The Frisky, because it's both pertinent and sounds like an OK Cupid quiz that would come with little check boxes. But the subject matter is a little more serious: It's the author's assertion that being drunk is a feminist issue. (Via Feministe.)

Why does Kate Torgovnik believe that being drunk is a feminist issue? It's because sometimes, drunk women get raped. Women + rape must make it about feminism, so drunk = feminist issue it is. She's not blaming the victim, BUT (ding!) if women drank less, they wouldn't get raped so much. She even has statistics--sobering statistics (ding!)--to prove it.

O sweet Raccoon God, we're talking about this again. As if it had never come up before, we're presented with the realization that rapists prey on vulnerable women and drunk women are more vulnerable. Shocking and new and certainly worthy of the same rehashing and analysis it's been getting for decades now! Certainly something that hasn't been discussed on this very blog once or twice or thrice or whatever comes after thrice.

And there's certainly argument for drinking responsibly--it's good for the soul, it's good for the skin, and it's always better to be more in-control than less in-control. Of course, Torgovnik points out, in an ideal world, rape wouldn't exist, BUT (ding! Yahtzee!) we don't live in an ideal world. This is true. The question is how far we should be expected to go to offset that un-idealness. In an ideal world, priests wouldn't fondle little kids, but this isn't an ideal world--yet parents still take their kids to church. In an ideal world, terrorists wouldn't hijack planes, but this isn't an ideal world--yet people still fly. In an ideal world, rapists wouldn't attack runners in the park, but this isn't an ideal world--so what are we expected to do, get a treadmill and live in fear?

I'm not going to go into the whole argument a thrice-plus-one-plus-another-one time, because my view is simple: Life is a calculated risk, and everyone--man or woman--makes choices that someone else will disagree with. There is no choice that anyone--man or woman--can make that excuses the actions of the one who victimizes them. We love to harp on a rape victim's dress/sexual history/blood alcohol content/choice of parking spaces because it gives us a false sense of security that rape can be avoided by following a few simple rules. And "I'm not blaming the victim, but" is the clarion call of the person who's actually blaming the victim.

But how about that quiz, huh? How rape-proof are you? Ten quick questions, and you'll know for sure!

On birtherism, misogyny, and… math

Okay, so I'm not sure where it comes from. A few things, probably: a little blowback from all of the attention to Obama's birthplace (note: It's Hawaii. Let it go), a desire to discredit Sarah Palin any way possible, a love for absolutely anything salacious and conspiratorial. But the idea that Trig Palin is not Sarah's son but her grandson is for some reason picking up volume that seems impervious to logic.

An overview: Trig Palin (the one Sarah allegedly made) was born, as far as available evidence shows, on April 18. Tripp Palin (the one Bristol allegedly made) was born December 27 of that same year. Unless Bristol celebrated pushing out a six-pound baby by immediately getting' down and getting pregnant on the first try, and then promptly delivered a 36-week baby who weighed in at more than seven pounds, Trig can't be her kid. Math + biology. If you want evidence even solider than Obama's certificate of live birth, math + biology should do it.

There are two things that bug me about this controversy. One is the aforementioned math + biology issue. I love biology, and I particularly love math--if you want to discard math to support some wacky conspiracy theory, I'll be bugged. And the other is that I'm now forced to defend Sarah Palin. Do you know what that's like for me? Don't you like me? Why would you want me to do that?

On a "victory" for "life"

Okay, so on Friday, your House of Representatives voted to, in the interest of protecting life, completely defund women's preventive health services. in the name of protecting life. In eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the House eliminates $330 million for services that have nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with providing essential health care to millions of women--many of whom wouldn't be able to afford any care at all otherwise.

To underscore the extent to which Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services, allow me to note that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. Regardless of your personal feelings about the Hyde Amendment and abortion funding in general, one unavoidable fact is that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. So if your goal is to ensure that no federal money goes to fund abortions at Planned Parenthood, yay! You win.

But abortions account for a whopping three percent of Planned Parenthood's services. And that's one thing that bugs me about the ABC story linked above--in the first sentence, it identifies Planned Parenthood as an "abortion provider," which is like identifying McDonald's as a salad bar. It would be more accurate to identify Planned Parenthood as a provider of preventive care, cancer screenings, tests and treatments for STIs, contraception, and well-woman services, not to mention educational programs that help prevent unplanned pregnancies and promote health and wellness. But that's fairly wordy, and it lacks the dramatic punch implying an office full of white-coated Dr. Orloffs just itching to kill a baby.

On dangerous places and bad things

Okay, so I debated over posting about the attack on Lara Logan, if only because she's asked for privacy and even mentioning her on a blog kind of feels like violating that. But a strange and awful phenomenon has arisen that I want to address before letting it go.

Journalism is important. Sometimes it's done better than others, and sometimes things waving the Journalism flag are really closer to commentary or outright shilling. But journalism, at its best, shines that disinfecting light in places that need it. The first thing Mubarak did when the protests broke out was to cut off phone and Internet access, and why? Because it's easier to do horrible things to people if there's no one there to watch, and it's easier to pull one over on the rest of the world if they don't know what you've done. Whoever controls the flow of information controls the situation. Anyone from a citizen with a cell phone to a journalist with a camera crew can have a part in reopening that communication.

Was this a very dangerous assignment? Absolutely. But so was Logan's time in Afghanistan, and so was her time embedded with the U.S. military. She's a war correspondent--CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, in fact, so the idea that they'd rather send in an intern rather than a seasoned reporter who happens to be blonde and attractive is laughable. She wasn't walking down a dark alley with money taped to her back--she was on the job, a job that happens to be a lot more dangerous than most. That generally attracts admiration, although I suppose when you're an attractive blonde who's just been gang-raped it's easier to criticize.

On a weird kind of pharmacist power

Okay, so I've brought up the issue of conscience clauses a couple of times before, and the answer has always come out the same: a big, fat chunk of I Don't Know. I'd hate to personally be forced to do something to which I had serious moral objections, but at the same time, isn't there a point at which you have to stop judging and do your job? Particularly when you're in a medical field--your choice to go with your conscience may actually result in someone's death. Whether you're a pharmacist refusing to fill a birth control prescription or a hospital willing to let a woman die rather than provide a treatment that violates their Catholic charter, you're putting your own moral reservations up against a woman's physical well-being and a physician's educated and deeply considered orders.

That's a lot of power, particularly for someone whose white coat spends most of its time behind the pharmacy counter at Walgreens. And it's a lot of responsibility. A pharmacist in Idaho, for instance, had the responsibility of filling a prescription for Methergine, a drug used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or abortion. She decided not to, because the NP calling it in wouldn't tell her if the patient had had an abortion.

Now, let's be clear: The medicine in question could potentially save a woman from bleeding until she died--but the pharmacist wouldn't dispense it unless she knew the woman was moral enough to be worth saving.

The NP was, of course, prevented by HIPAA to tell a Walgreens pharmacist what had happened behind the closed doors of a doctor's office, and so the prescription was refused. And when the NP asked for a referral to a pharmacy that would fill it, the pharmacist hung up on her.

This is the discussion. This is the bright-line test for conscience clauses. If we are going to decide that a person's right to their own conscience should be honored above all things, how far are we willing to go with it? Is a medical professional required to help someone who will die? What about someone who will probably die? What about someone who will at the very least end up in the hospital if they aren't given the appropriate treatment?

And if the pharmacist is being asked to dispense medicine after the objectionable act has already taken place, isn't she just using her power to punish the patient? What conscience clause allows that?

On the Good, the Bad, and the Not-Even-Friday Random Ten

Okay, so I so I totally want an empire-waist morning dress and a leopard fur coat. That's my new look. Gotta be.


What's good (for the week ending 7/23, even though right now it's 7/25, but whatever ):

- Jane Austen's Fight Club


- 15 years of Clueless. I recall hearing somewhere that the "Haiti-ans" bit was real, that Alicia Silverstone genuinely didn't know how to pronounce "Haitians" and that no one was about to correct her because it was so funny. I can only imagine her five years down the road: "I was just so concerned about the Haiti-ans--What? It's--Hold on, it's Haitians? Ohhhh, shit..."

- AUGMENTED REALITY LEGO BOXES OMFGPONIEZ!!!!

- prawn pr0n

- the return of the Russian spy. Okay, yes, espionage is bad, yes. Yes, it's dangerous, and whatever. But admit it: James Bond films were way cooler when we had the Soviets to worry about. Admit that.


What's bad:

- the way we treat animals. Isn't there some saying about being able to measure a society on how it treats its least powerful members, or something? Man, the things we have to learn from eight-year-olds.

- Girls Gone Publicly Assaulted. So a woman is forcibly exposed in a bar and taped for Girls Gone Wild--and is saying no on the tape itself--doesn't deserve damages when her boobs made it to video without her consent. Why? Because if she was willing to go to a bar and dance in front of the photographer, she was probably cool with Joe Francis selling her boobs. Y'know, she's one of those girls.


The Ten:

1. Oasis, "Some Might Say"
2. Vertical Horizon, "Great Divide"
3. Les Nubians, "Les Portes Du Souvenir"
4. The Capital Steps, "Old Man Rumsfeld"
5. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, "Valse (I)" from Swan Lake
6. Zero 7, "Destiny"
7. Jimmy Buffett, "Margaritaville"
8. Dave Matthews Band, "Pay for What You Get"
9. Black Eyed Peas, "Let's Get It Started (Spike Mix)"
10. Evanescence, "Exodus"

And while we're on the subject of music: I was out for karaoke with a bunch of friends on Thursday night, and I appeared to be the only one who showed up without a set list. Is this something one is expected to have? Are there rules for what makes a good karaoke song? Your suggestions and your Ten go in comments.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Slightly-After-Friday Random Ten

Okay, so as we sat in the parking lot of Burger King, sipping our drinks and waiting for someone to bring our meals out, The Boy peeled the Twilight game piece off the side of his cup and looked at the little scratch-off piece.

"'Choose your team'?" he read. "Duh. I always pick Team Jacob."

He got really pissed off when I immediately pulled my phone out and tweeted it.

What's good (for the week ending 7/16):

- Verizon Wireless, and Leonard at the store on 280. We went in on Thursday to see about a) switching service from T-mobile, which has been touching goats in the bathing-suit area for a year now, and b) getting a Droid X each. Well, of course they managed to sell every X they had within the first hour, but we got an LG Ally for me and a regular Droid for The Boy with an option to trade them in for an X as soon as more come in. They're good, they're nice, and their 3G coverage map is jaw-dropping. Much love to Verizon.
- my new Ally. Sorry, I'm magpie-like in my attraction to shiny things.
- positive feedback on something you worked really hard on and felt really good about
- the Minion Berry pancakes at IHOP--tastes like lemon pound cake with triple-berry compote and whipped cream, except if the pound cake was actually pancake and the compote was... still compote. And since it's a kids' meal, you don't leave with that oh-Jesus-God-I-just-ate-at-IHOP feeling. Although you definitely leave with that oh-Jesus-God-I-just-had-dessert-for-breakfast-and-also-turkey-sausage feeling.
- this stuff right here:


What's bad:

- not napping. Long story (although not anything shameful or private--just long), but the punchline is that until my doctor can hook me up with a sleep specialist, he says I'm to "keep a regular sleep schedule." Apparently, my tendency to take a regular nap at lunchtime and another regular nap after dinner and then regularly sleep through the night isn't "regular" enough for him, so instead it's a week's worth of caffeine packed into every day to keep me up until bedtime, and then half the time I overshoot and end up wide awake at, for instance, midnight, completely unable to go to sleep despite wanting to. Thanks a heap, doc.
- this stuff. Obviously, I've already posted on this, but when I see responses like this, it just makes me wonder if people really pay attention. (Not to me, obviously, but to the world around them.) Yes, by all means, we should "listen to [Mel's] side of the story." It's actually quite easy to listen to, as it's right there on the tape. Let's please, please try to teach our friends and nieces and daughters: Yes, people make mistakes all the time, but no, beating the shit out of someone isn't a mistake. It's a felony. But it's easy to get the two confused, I'm sure.

The Ten:
1. Michael Bublé, "The Way You Look Tonight"
2. Josie and the Pussycats, "Pretend to Be Nice"
3. Bic Runga, "Sway"
4. Sonic Youth, "Superstar"
5. Etta James, "I'll Be Seeing You"
6. Marilyn Horne, "Pineapple Rag"
7. Goodie Mob, "Soul Food"
8. Buena Vista Social Club presents Omara Portuondo, "No Me Vayas A Engañar"
9. Johnny Cash (with June Carter Cash), "It Ain't Me, Babe"
10. INXS, "Not Enough Time"

Your Ten, and your home remedies for insomnia and/or narcolepsy and/or apnea, go in comments.

On his side, her side, and the ugly truth

TRIGGER WARNING for domestic violence throughout, but definitely for the tapes on Radar Online.

Okay, so Mel Gibson has been in decline for some time now. Always a devout Catholic, he descended to a rather freaky level of fundamentalism as part of Opus Dei, he started making kind of scary-weird movies like The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, and then there was his sexist, anti-Semitic tirade after being pulled over for drunk driving, followed by his trip to rehab, which of course makes everything all better. Punchline: Once a hero, Mel Gibson is undeniably in bad, bad shape, and whether or not he’s a bad person, it’s undeniable that he’s a person who does bad things.

His most recent bad thing has come out in the form of several tapes revealed by Radar Online. One was simply terribly cruel, berating ex-girlfriend (and mother of his chlid) Oksana Grigorieva and using racial epithets. But the most recent tape has been more horrifying: Unhinged and out of control, he admits to beating her (saying she deserved it) and not-so-obliquely threatens several times to kill her.

What’s nearly as scary (and just as scary, in its own way) is the way some fans are coming to his defense, demanding photos of her broken teeth, wanting to know what she said to him before she started taping, wondering why she was taping him at all. There are two sides to every story, they say, and she’s certainly no angel, and there must be something just as sinister in her past to balance out this unbelievably horrific story. It has to be about her. It has to be her fault.

This recalls the not-so-publicized case of Juanita Bynum, who was mercilessly beaten by her minister husband in a parking garage; and the more-publicized case of singer Rihanna, who was mercilessly beaten by her boyfriend, convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown, in a car. In both cases, there was evidence--Bynam’s beating was witnessed by a garage attendant, and Rihanna’s gruesome ER photos were leaked to the tabloid press. But even in the face of that kind of undeniable evidence, some people simply couldn’t accept it--there had to be some kind of mitigating factor, something to keep this from being just another flat-out case of vicious domestic abuse. Something, more importantly, to keep Thomas Weeks and convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown from being just another flat-out vicious domestic abuser.

I don’t remember the outcry when Russell Crowe assaulted that concierge in New York, wondering what the man did to provoke a phone slammed in his face. And I don’t recall anyone asking for Naomi Campbell’s side of the story whenever she assaulted her assistants. But there’s something about this particular crime that makes people suddenly stop and search for a fair hearing, an unbiased examination of the evidence.

Why? Is it because Mel Gibson (like convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown and others) is a hero, a manly movie man who protects movie women, our Braveheart and our devoted father, who would never do such a thing? Is it because beating a woman is considered to be so far beyond the pale that such an accusation requires more evidence? Is it because we’re so quick to believe that a woman would lie and manipulate? Is it because, like with so much victim-blaming in rape cases, we prefer to pretend that there’s something she did wrong, a mistake we can avoid in order to avoid her fate?

Regardless of the numerous sides to Mel GIbson’s ongoing story, there is one side that can’t be ignored: Mel Gibson beat Oksana Grigorieva viciously, breaking two of her teeth. Deniers who still demand ER photos from that event can accept the fact that he admits it on tape--she deserved it. Deniers who wonder why she was taping him, who she wanted to leak the tapes to, can accept the fact that on the tape, he admits to beating her, and he threatens to kill her. That is the side that isn’t subject to he said-she said. That is the side that would be (will be, hopefully) admissable in court. And no matter what happens, no matter what else comes out, that is the side that is completely inexcusable.

There is no “other side of the story” that justifies violence. There is nothing a woman can do to provoke that kind of a beating. There is nothing a woman can say to a man to warrant him punching her. Whatever happened in Mel Gibson’s house or Chris Brown’s car, the side of the story that matters is the one where he responds with violence. And so as much as we’d like to believe our heroes incapable of such things, when we’re faced with this kind of incontrovertible evidence, we have to stop searching for excuses and mitigating circumstances and accept that, no, boys will not be boys, we don’t all make that kind of mistake, and there is nothing she could have done to deserve it.

On not just lemonade, but SPARKLING STRAWBERRY lemonade

Okay, so optimism is important in tough times. It's good to find the cloud's silver lining. Boyfriend dumped you? Woof. But if you look at it, he was a loser anyway. No one came to your party? Aw! But now you have all those beers and burgers to yourself. Just got your wisdom teeth pulled? Ouch! But at least you have a good excuse to pop narcotics and eat ice cream. Get raped and impregnated by your father? Whoops! But look on the bright side, says Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle--now you get a baby!

Stock:What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?

Angle: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I'll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said 'I know what you did thank you for saving my life.' So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life. [emphasis mine]

This is one of those times when The Boy would tell me I'm out looking for things to get pissed off about, and I can't say for sure he's wrong. And even blogging about it here doesn't have a huge impact, because all of my reader--and, God willing, 98 percent of the rest of the world--recognize that looking for the lemonade in incestuous child rape is sheltered, thoughtless, ignorant, willful stupidity.

The reason this is significant is that she's not an inconsiderable presence in the upcoming Senate race. She's a darling of the Tea Party movement (as well as Phyllis Schlafly and Joe the Plumber), and she's up for Harry Reid's seat, which a lot of conservative voters would love to see filled with a Republican butt at any cost. In the current anti-liberal blowback culture, it doesn't take a lot for conservatives to look past an overwhelming volume of crazy if it means shifting the Senate balance even a little.

The above linked post includes an update reporting a response from Angle's campaign:

If abortion advocates really believed in choice as they claim, they would be just as eager to present women in these tragic situations with choices they can actually live with for years to come. That was the point I was making.

But this isn't about providing women (or, as discussed, girls) with choices they can live with. To Angle, it's about taking away their choices. It's about eliminating all but the choice she can live with.

It's not just her argument--wacko fundamentalist antis love to point out that "two wrongs don't make a right." And they don't. Raping a young girl, and then forcing her to carry and give birth to a baby whether she wants to or not, don't make anything even a little bit right. In that situation, the girl has been violated enough without having to cede further control of her body to some unsympathetic, Bible-waving stranger over in Nevada. But if God has a plan, God has a plan, right?

Let's hope to God his plan involves an overwhelming Harry Reid victory and a general opening of a whole lot of eyes. And maybe a little empathy, compassion, clarity, psychotropic drugs. Just a little? No? Just one? Still no? Okay, we'll get to that later.

On settling

Or, Marry Him Now, Woman, While You Still Have Your Looks, Because Who Will Want You When You're a Spinster Hag With Shriveled Ovaries and an Aura of Hopelessness?

Okay, so it was back in March of 2008 that Lori Gottlieb published an essay in The Atlantic magazine titled, "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough." One might imagine that, with such a title, the essay would advocate looking for more of a business partner than a romantic partner to share marriage and family. In fact, one would be correct, because that's precisely what she advocates in so many words and more.

I only mention it now because Gottlieb has recently released a book by the same name, expanding on her former advice to let go of all of your standards for fear of never finding a man who will love--scratch that, tolerate you enough to live with you, make a baby with you, and then disappear into the office for 80 hours a week to leave you to play with your baby. She now has new, fresh advice to let go of all of your standards for fear of never finding a man who will love--scratch that, tolerate you enough to live with you, make a baby with you, and then disappear into the office for 80 hours a week to leave you to play with your baby.

Gottlieb is a single mother. She conceived (in a "fit of self-empowerment") a baby from a sperm donor and now, in her mid-forties, regrets her decisions because all of the families in the park seem so happy and, hell, even her friends who are married to men they hate are better off than she is, because at least they're married. To men they hate. And she very much regrets not marrying the men she found intolerable when she was younger, because then, she'd have a husband. Not necessarily one she was in love with, not necessarily one she wanted to interact with, but certainly one to... be married to. I guess.

She's so secure in her fear of alone-ness and desperation to marry at any cost that she can't believe any woman of a certain age could feel any differently. In her essay, Gottlieb asserts, "[E]very women I know--no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure--feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried." Of course, it must be argued that she doesn't know me--and that I'm still ten months shy of the magic number--but I honestly don't fear eternal spinsterhood, despite my advanced age. Maybe I should enjoy my remaining 313 days before the panic sets in.

Or maybe I'm just "in denial or lying." Good call, Lori.

I will agree with her argument that the little annoyances--bad movie-theatre manners, lousy sense of style--aren't great standards on which to judge and ultimately chuck a guy. So many of my married friends are never able to say, "His video game habit/naugahyde beanbag chair/filthy car/inability to hit the hamper from a foot away bugs the crap out of me" without finishing, quite sincerely, "But I love him to death." Which is a pretty good sign that they've made good choices and done a good job of looking past the minor details to appreciate the whole man. Gottlieb seems to be taking a different approach; while she also would opt to overlook the ugly ties and inability to cook, her proposed alternative doesn't really address anything related to, say, love, or passion, or happiness.

"[I]f you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go."

'Kay. So when you say "settle," you mean settle... for any guy who's willing to marry and impregnate me.

Gotcha.

But yeah, that's pretty much her thing. She tells us, "Don't worry about passion or intense connection." "Settling will probably make you happier in the long run." "[O]nce you take the plunge and do it, you'll probably be relatively content." (Emphasis mine.) She says, "Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business" and refers to "uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family" (emphasis also mine). Because, by her reckoning, all of this beats the hell out of being by oneself.

"[I]f you rarely see your husband--but he's a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own--how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?" Yes, America, why should we give gays the right to marry when it could threaten the sanctity of unions such as these?

Gottlieb even goes so far as to bring up Mary Tyler Moore and Rachel Green (of Friends fame) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sex in the City). O how they could be married now if only they had settled! What if Rachel had just gone ahead and married the boring orthodontist? Why oh why didn't Carrie jump on Aidan while she had the chance (since Big will certainly never be seen with a kid slung in a Baby Bjorn)? After the newsroom goes dark, won't Mary find herself single, friendless, miserable, and alone? Why did these stupid women not settle?

I actually do know precisely why Ross and Rachel (and Carrie and Big) weren't settled and content. I also know why Mulder and Scully didn't hook up, why Burn Notice's Michael and Fiona keep coming together and drawing apart, and why Buffy and Angel struggled so much with their love: Because that's what it says in the script. If they put their inner children in time-out and settled down to make the relationships work, it would be boring, not in the sense that happy marriages are boring but in the sense that content people don't make good TV. Maybe, if they'd both gotten over themselves, Ross and Rachel could have found a relationship abounding in both passion and contentment. Yawn. Click. But that's what some refer to as television. If you're divining deep sociological truths and the secrets to eternal love in the 22 minutes of a sitcom, you're already twelve kinds of wrong.

I have a suggestion for Gottlieb and the many single friends to whom she constantly refers as anecdata to bolster her own otherwise-unbolsterable claims of single fortysomething misery: Maybe you're single because you're obnoxious. Maybe your superficiality glows off of you like a Byzantine halo. Maybe when you're on a date with a guy, he can tell that you're mentally listing his every fault and weighing them all against his potential to pay for your kid's soccer uniform. Maybe he sees you tearing up over the photos of happy families that come in picture frames and notices the way your fingers dig convulsively into his arm at the sight of a father carrying his son on his shoulders at the park. Maybe he saw your copy of No Time to Be Picky: Land That Pathetic Schlub Before You're Barren on your bookshelf. Maybe he saw the words "Last Resort" flash up next to his number on your cell phone. It's called desperation, Lori, and it smells like White Shoulders and prenatal vitamins.

I also have some words of advice for Gottlieb and co. And while it might be too late for them, they might be too far gone, others may be able to learn from it and avoid their fate.

(A disclaimer: My knowledge of relationships stems from a mere thirteen-ish years in the dating world, only two of which have involved blissful happiness, so it's entirely possible that, in thirty years (or ten years, or five) I will find myself proven horribly wrong. When I talk about satisfaction in marriage and happiness in the future, I do so as someone who has never been married and who (God willing) has a whole lot of future ahead of her. But I like to think that my past trial and error have given me at least a little bit of valuable perspective. I do invite the contribution of anyone with more experience to correct my assertions and assumptions where appropriate.)

When I started dating, I was looking for someone who was tall, handsome, smart, funny, looking to have a family, ambitious, and respectful of my desire to have a life and career of my own. This is because I was sixteen. I also was looking for someone who was George Clooney. Over time I dated a number of guys: Guys who were handsome but obnoxious, guys who were family-oriented but not terribly feminist, guys who were funny but not terribly bright, guys who were ambitious but not George Clooney. I put myself out there, tried a few things, and edited my list as I went--that's not settling, it's experiencing the world and learning more about myself and what I wanted, what I was going to hold out for.

After that experience and more than a few mistakes, my list had changed a lot:

- Someone who challenges me intellectually - because that will keep me sharp, and I'll never get bored
- Someone who loves exactly who I am without feeling the need to "fix" things about me, even little, tiny things - because that will make me feel comfortable and secure without fearing that he's eventually going to find me so hopelessly flawed that he has to bail. Besides, if I love and accept him and he loves and accepts me, I'll be far more inclined to try and adjust those little, tiny things myself
- Someone who doesn't just tolerate but actively appreciates my little quirks and foibles - because those are the things that make me me, and my idea of love doesn't involve anyone who merely tolerates me
- Someone who makes me shiver when he kisses me (and this one's my aunt's fault. Blame her)

And even if those standards were unrealistically high, there was no way I was going to back down from them, because I couldn't see myself possibly living my life any other way.

(Incidentally: Nailed it.)

So some hard-won advice to all who can hear (er, read) my voice (er, blog, or whatever):

- Don't lower your standards; just think about what's really important. Think about the things you value now and the things that are going to make you happy in the future. And you know what? If, in the end, you realize that you will never be truly happy without a man who will look good on your arm and make beautiful babies and enable a lifestyle that provides luxuries and puts you in contact with all of the right people, go ahead and hold out for that. I'm not going for that myself, and I sure as hell don't understand it, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life.

- Decide for yourself what happiness in life really means. A husband and a picket fence and 2.5 children might truly be a priority for you, or it might just be societal pressure to live the cookie-cutter life that is everyone else's definition of success. If, on careful consideration, you find that's your definition too, hold out for it. But if you think about it honestly and decide that your definition of success doesn't involve kids, or it involves both kids and a career, or it involves a partner who loves you deeply but doesn't hinge on a ring, go for that. If you settle for the wrong guy out of desperation to satisfy some societal standard that doesn't actually appeal to you, you'll eventually find yourself unsatisfied with the life you're living and the person you're living it with. Are a blood diamond and a picket fence really worth that? Your call.

- Learn to love yourself. At the very least, learn to like yourself. Learn to enjoy your own company, and learn to recognize your traits that make you a good friend so you can find friends who enjoy doing things other than moaning about how single they are. If the only thing driving you is the fear of being alone, you're going to be searching for someone who will fill a hole in your life rather than someone who will complement it. Learn how to be a complete person on your own, and the addition of another person to your life will make it better, not good enough.

- Don't be afraid to make mistakes--because like just about everything else in life, love is a skill to be learned over time. Learning to ride a bike involves a few skinned knees; learning to play the piano involves some truly dismal performances (trust me); hell, learning to pick out your own clothes involves going out in some outfits that will make you cringe in retrospect. And those things pale in importance next to the concept of lifetime happiness. You're going to have crappy dates, you're going to have relationships that later make you wonder what you were thinking, you're going to fall for a guy/girl who ends up not loving you back. Chalk it all up to a learning experience and maybe figure out how to laugh at it later, because if you hold yourself back for fear of failing, you're never going to learn how to succeed.

- Don't fall for the old trope, generally delivered by older generations, that you can't really know what you want now and that in ten years, you'll regret your disdainful nonpursuit of the picket fence. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll chuck it all and follow their lead and be blissfully happy, and maybe you'll regret it and feel trapped. Hell, maybe they'll look back ten years from now and realize that they aren't really happy with the choices they've made. Scientists have yet to invent a way to see into the future, and making choices that seem wrong now in case they'll feel right in the future is a risky gamble.

Don't despair. Despair isn't attractive. Besides, I can't speak personally to the challenges of dating after forty, but I do know of a certain forty-plus who managed to find true love with a woman of stunning intelligence, sparkling personality, and timeless beauty, and I daresay he wouldn't describe the process using gory-drunk-driving-accident-resulting-in-full-paralysis metaphors.

And the greatest of these is love--of yourself. Don't be such a whiny, pathetic, desperate, needy little clinger that you can't even stand your own company. See yourself as someone worthy of actual love and friendship, not just a childcare-and-garbage-removal contractual arrangement. Or don't, and learn divide your time equally between bitching with your friends that at this point you'd be willing to marry the next solvent, fertile asshole who came along and wondering why you're still single.

On unwed mothers, universal health care, and choice

Or, Sing of Mary, Pregnant and Uninsured

Okay, so I will never not be entertained by the fact that Chuck Norris (who has two speeds--walk and kill) has a column at WorldNet Daily. I believe that everyone is entitled to a voice, and I like the fact that Chuck Norris (who once shot a German fighter plane down with his finger by yelling "Bang") not only has his but has it endorsed by the fine and reasonable folks at WorldNet Daily. If there is anyone whose word should not only be considered but should, in fact, be law, it's Chuck Norris (who doesn't shower--he only takes blood baths).

This week, in honor of Christmas, Chuck (who does not sleep--he waits) takes on the question that's been on everyone's mind: What if the Virgin Mary had had Obamacare?

...[A]s we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington’s wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

It's a reasonable question, of course. There are women all over the country who do end up giving birth simply because they lack the resources to terminate their pregnancy early on. And of the women who do manage to have abortions, whether by obstetrician or by coat hanger, any might have been carrying the next Einstein (or the next Hitler) or the next Fleming (or the next John Wayne Gacy) or the next Shakespeare (or the next John Stamos). So what if the Blessed Virgin had had full access to the range of medical services available to pregnant teenagers?

I seem to have a book here that talks a lot about Mary when she was pregnant. Let's open it up, shall we?

First, we have to consider the image of an unwed girl, fourteenish, who's sitting in her room in Nazareth, hand-weaving a nuptial garment and reading Twilight when a freaking angel comes down and says (Luke 1:28-38),

"Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."

Holy crap! Mary thinks. What is up? But the angel says,

"Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end... The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."

which one could imagine is a pretty intimidating thing to hear from an angel. And yet faced with the heavy burden of gestating and delivering the son of the Almighty, this 14-year-old says,

"I am the Lord's servant... May it be to me as you have said.

Damn. Not exactly the words of a girl who's going to get rid of it using federal tax dollars later. (Also, fairly ballsy words for a girl who's going to be discussed as a mild little virgin for the rest of her life, but that's another post for another time.)

Now, Chuck (who once ate three 72-ounce steaks in one hour--and spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress) raises the entirely legitimate subject of the ostracism and persecution that would likely accompany her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. And the Bible does say that Joseph's initial plan was to divorce her. However (Matthew 1:20-25),

after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"—which means, “God with us.”


When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

So it sounds like Joseph, too, was on board with God's plan and fairly excited about the prospect of being stepdad to the savior of the world. And we can also consider the fact that, had she changed her mind, even in that time Mary would have had several (not necessarily safe) options for terminating the pregnancy had she so chosen. So it sounds like Mary’s access to abortion coverage would have been pretty moot anyway, making Chuck’s (who once ate a whole cake before his friends told him there was a stripper in it) “what if Mary had been covered by Obamacare” about as valid a question as “what if the three wise men were actually space aliens.”

But that's not the real question. What Chuck (who can, in fact, believe it's not butter) entirely misses is that the wondrous thing about Christmas wasn't that Mary got knocked up and, for lack of health insurance, went ahead and had the baby. She was young and healthy and had the support of a fiance who was (with some angelic prompting) willing to stay with her and help her. The wondrous thing was that when Mary and Joseph were faced with such a formidable and awesome responsibility, they saw it as a gift from God and wanted it very much. Would that every child be conceived under such circumstances and that every pregnant woman have those options. And would that, in modern times, we are able to provide women like Mary all of the help and options they need.

On the second verse (same as the first)

Okay, so I thought my faithful reader might be interested in an update on my recent hassle with Artur Davis in re: the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. If you'll remember, I sent him a sincere, deeply felt e-mail imploring him to sign Representatives Diana DeGette's and Louise Slaughter's letter of opposition to Nancy Pelosi. His reply went a little something like this:

Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts and concerns regarding abortion services within the health care reform package. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter.

...

I have joined other members of Congress in urging Speaker Pelosi to include language in any final healthcare reform bill that makes clear that no federal dollars can be used to finance coverage of an abortion...

As you might imagine, I was somewhat... frustrated by his response. I promptly sent a response to his response, not unsimilar to the corresponding blog post (although somewhat less profane), expressing my dismay that he obviously didn't even read my previous e-mail, that his views and values on the matter were obviously in direct contradiction to mine, and that I obviously won't be voting for him in his future gubernatorial efforts.

It took him not a week to respond:

Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts and concerns regarding abortion services within the health care reform package. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter...

Dude. You have to get better interns. Also, fuck you, Artur Davis.