[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Think of the Children: When Explaining Gay Marriage to Kids Results In Cute
- I’m home sick today, so excuse me if I have chosen to displace my blogging duties on to adorable little boy Calen (above), who has just learned that his two uncles are “husband and husband” who are married—not to wives!—but to each other. Watch the video to remind yourself that explaining same-sex marriage to the youth doesn’t have to be a process marked by legal complaints filed over the child’s loss of innocence. A lot of times it just involves some really cute mental gymnastics, followed by a blanket invitation to ping-pong.
- The Washington Post Parade of Stripper Jokes
- Today, the Washington Post published a story about Quansa Thompson, a local exotic dancer who has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against her former place of employment, Georgia Ave. strip club The House. Thompson is suing over a widespread problem in adult nightclubs—that owners illegally treat their nightly dancers like independent contractors instead of real employees, a practice which denies the dancers health benefits, an hourly wage, and—
—wait a second, are we talking strippers? Shake it! Sh-sh-sh-shake it! To hear WaPo’s Paul Schwartzman tell Thompson’s tale, the real news here is that exotic dancers exist, and it is super easy to make jokes about them. Let’s start with the lede…
Even though it’s obvious from the entire tenor of this piece that the writer does not respect women who are employed in the sex industry, why not finish with a plea for everyone else to get serious about this issue? Because when it comes down to it, strippers are people, too, and—ooooh. Jiggly.
- Stars on Ice sponsors deem Olympian Johnny Weir not “family friendly” enough to join tour
- Is it me or has the world gotten even more hyperparanoid and confused about sexual orientation and gender expression? In what is both an absurd and incomprehensible decision, GLAAD reports that Stars on Ice sponsors are so concerned about the flamboyance of Olympic ice skater Johnny Weir (or is it his costumes?), that they don’t want him on the tour.
When was the last time male figure skaters and BUTCH coexisted in your mind? Why does it matter anyway? Are Dick and Jane going to be gender confused after a 90-minute ice show? I think these people have lost their minds.
- We’re losing the rhetorical battle of global warming
- It’s time to take a serious look at why anti-science arguments are gaining an edge in our society and think very hard about what it’s going to take to fight back. I think part of the problem is that pro-science people feel that the twin pillars of evidence and moral responsibility to not ruin the only planet we have is argument enough, and we just keep running on this hamster wheel of pointing to the evidence and thinking that settles it. Why on earth are conservatives winning this rhetorical battle? [...]
He then goes on to talk about the baffling effectiveness of beating up on Al Gore as an “argument” against global warming. It’s so fucking disturbed. Every fucking Republican I know melts into giggles at the very sound of Gore’s name. I tend to take it personally, too, not because I’m in love with Al Gore or anything, but because the “joke” is that he’s a smarty-pants that has the audacity to educate himself thoroughly on topics and then share what he knows with the world. [...]
But this all does show exactly how we’ve come to this place. The global warming denialist industry intuitively (or perhaps not intuitively—I’m sure they’ve spent their money on collecting thorough cognitive research on how to persuade) understands that playing on people’s prejudices tends to be a lot more effective than a straightforward facts-based argument. [...]
It’s arguable, however, that the Gore thing is only a minor issue in selling denialism to the general public. Where the right wing is really making inroads is convincing people they know better than the scientists, because they have “common sense”. Americans eat that shit up. [...]
The other part of this is plain old fear of change. I loved Peter’s piece, but if we’re really serious about winning the rhetorical battle—and if we really need to view this as all-out war over the fate of the planet, which it is—we need to start being as thoughtful about language and working with the audience where they’re at, like conservatives do. And so I object to Peter’s use of the term “sacrifice” to describe what needs to happen to fix this problem. Environmental changes often have all sorts of unexpected benefits that make them seem less scary after the fact than you might have initially thought. I see no problem in highlighting this fact. In fact, a lot of what I do in my brand new book about liberal politics (see how I did that?) is that cultural changes that need to occur to clean up the environment can be sold as beneficial in and of themselves. For instance, we should really not talk about urban density so much as walkable neighborhoods. [...]
…How to make people not only not fear change, but to embrace it? Part of what we need to do is really create a vision of what the world looks like after we get the environmentalist policy wish list. And that means all the details, not just vague visions of cleaner air and water. Will it be a world of smaller homes and more walkable neighborhoods? What does a society that doesn’t have much use for cars look like? [...] After we have the details down, we need to start selling this shit out of this vision, using every tool we’ve got. The pitch has to be positive and upbeat. No talk of sacrifice, no guilt trips.
[...] Being able to get out of traffic jams will make people salivate. In an ideal world, people would vote for these reforms because it’ the right thing to do. But in our world, they’ll vote for it if you can promise them immediate improvements to their daily existence.
The Link(s): Fri, Mar 12th, 3am by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.