Syndicate and Hague

So I was at this thing today on the “mobile web” and, mostly, how to market to whom and blah blah blah. I often like going to more corporate-ish things because they tend to be light years ahead of Universities about conceptualizing and implementing ways of using technology. I’m pretty good at parsing the data and coming up with ideas based on the concepts, but less evil and more relevant to the work we do at the University.

Sometimes, however, I want to strangle presenters.

Look, I know advertising as a field is demonic. I do. This is a field in which you spend all your time thinking about how to sell people things that they:

• don’t need
• don’t want

“Oh, but Sara!” you might say if you’re in advertising and pretending what you do isn’t mostly evil, “we’re just giving people options/trying to tell them how to make their lives easier/no one is forcing anyone to buy anything.” Pshaw.

Here’s what set me off.

First, the keynote spoke–I have no inherent problem with what he was saying. He was really telling it like it is. People want to make money on mobile tech. Ad people are trying to figure out how to do that. It’s not really my scene and creeps me out a bit, but whatever.

But then this…this…ignorant, trifling woman gets up as part of a duo and repeatedly says horrific, offensive things that wound up causing me to blow the joint after she finished. (I couldn’t believe how much more I would want to strangle her by the end of the presentation).

It started with slides. Her point was to prove the pervasiveness of mobile. Fine. She called it (I paraphrase) the first truly democratized medium. I stifled a laugh. I mean, I think cell phones have done a lot of great things, but anything you have to pay a chunk of money for every month isn’t really “democratized,” and it’s not like the library has a bunch of cell phones lined up for free usage. Plus…we’re at an event that is centered around targeting and tailoring content to individuals and trying to find out as much as we can about people so that we can inundate them with messages to get them to buy things. C’mon.

As proof of her concept (yay mobile happy fun democratized equality!), she showed slides of people of varying races/nationalities using cell phones. Whoopee. It’s common knowledge to me, and probably to many of you, that cell phones really have revolutionized communication in a lot of areas that don’t have landline infrastructures. Poorer areas/countries and developing areas/countries have used mobile phones for some time now because throwing up cell towers is way cheaper than landline wiring a whole country.

Saying that isn’t offensive, because it’s true. Saying “and mobile phones have allowed people in places like Africa who didn’t have jobs to start businesses” (picture of a cell phone kiosk) is. Which was all kinds of ridiculous, but got worse. There was a photograph of a girl outside a small, circular house with a thatched roof in a pretty treeless, desert-looking area and she was holding up her phone. This girl lived in the country of Africa. You know, that country…the really big one…anyway, but the comment about that picture was something like “You see the funny house and clothes, but she looks just like a normal 13 year old with her phone.”

Because, you know, she was a normal kid with a phone.

Of course, the woman at the front probably doesn’t spend much time thinking of people in ways other than what demographics they happen to fall into and how she can sell things to them, but her assuredness and confidence in what she was saying made me ill. The utter elitism and exoticism and ugh. I was so angry that, when her next part of the presentation started, I just about lost it.

She started talking about the sectioned off demographics of cell phone usage. The first were “mobile moms.” Because, and I paraphrase, moms are really busy! they have to manage the family and their friends and they used to manage from the kitchen and hear about everyone’s goings on at the bfast/dinner table, but now everyone is busier and cell phones help mom feel like she’s there because she’s the ultimate multitasker blah blah blah blah. No mention of career. Lots of qualifications about “of course, not all moms are like this, but…”

And this (way way late, Sara) gets to what drove me away. Or, rather, what drove me to my bike and made me decide that reading through documents for tomorrow’s meeting was more important/interesting than being there.

Today’s multitasking mom? Is a creation of the ad industry. We can make choices. We can change how we live–buying less means you don’t have to make as much means you don’t have to work as much. Your kids don’t need $800 strollers or ten activities a week. They don’t need all their time scheduled. You don’t need to do it. You don’t need to look 30 when you’re 55. You just don’t.

And I had a revelation. It takes me a really long time to make decisions on purchases. But not on life. For instance, I decided it was what I wanted to do to move in with Megan, so I did it. I decided I should apply to grad school, so I did it. All of these major life decisions were quick and easy.

But trying to figure out what new cell phone I should buy? I’ve labored over the decision for eight months. It took me 2 years to figure out what kind of car I wanted to replace my crappy car with. And the reason is that I hate being marketed to. I’m filled with WANT from advertising, but there is a larger part of me that says waiiiit a minute, Sara. What do you need, what do you want, and where is the happy medium? Or, is there a happy medium? I’m not immune to impulse purchases, but I really try to fight the excess consumerism. As much as I can in this society.

Anyway, in honor of all that is evil and here to make women feel like crap, here are some great episodes of Sarah Haskins’ “Target Women” segments of Current TV.

“Feeding your fucking family”

Botox

Hey! Did you hear? Russia and Georgia are pretty much at war. There had been a build up of Russian troops in South Ossetia and then all hell broke loose. This is what the Georgian prez had to say about it:

Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, said Russia’s ambitions were even more extensive. He declared that Georgia was in a state of war, and said in an interview that Russia was planning to seize ports and an oil pipeline and to overthrow his government.
(NY Times)

Gosh, you might say, I don’t even know where Georgia is in relation to Russia! Well, I’m here to help with that.

Sadly, the U.S. has no moral authority to say anything the Russians need to take seriously. How can this not make you laugh?

The Bush administration said it would seek a resolution from the United Nations Security Council condemning Russian military actions in Georgia.
(NY Times)

UN Security Council, eh? Well. We’ve always cared so much about what they think.

As one top adviser described the argument, Mr. Bush must decide ”whether to go it alone or go to the U.N.” with one final if largely symbolic effort to force Mr. Hussein to re-admit arms inspectors, who left Iraq three and a half years ago.

…

Secretary General Kofi Annan seemed to confirm those fears at a news conference today in Botswana, when he said, ”The U.N. is not agitating for military action” against Iraq.

China and Russia, which both have veto power in the Security Council, oppose military action. France, which also holds a veto, has demanded a Security Council vote and has made it clear it would oppose military action without evidence of an imminent threat from Iraq.
(NY Times, 2002)

And now,

The Russians issued an ultimatum to Georgian forces to disarm or face attack, and proceeded to occupy government buildings there, the Georgians said.

And the South Ossetia conflict also appeared to have widened, with Georgia accusing Russia of capturing the town of Gori in central Georgia.
(BBC)

Sooooo…wait…I did promise to tell you why everyone should STFU about John Edwards, didn’t I? Yeah, that was kind of a bait and switch. But not really, because the lack of reporting (outside more “global” news outlets) on this conflict is partially because the news fucking sucks. They spend a ridiculous amount of time going over the details of Edwards’s affair, and nothing on a war breaking out.

But here are my thoughts about Edwards:

It was dumb. But is an affair really our business? My philosophy on sexual ‘improprieties’ is that if it’s personal, it’s your own business, but if you spend your days as a moral crusader trying to invade other peoples’ bedrooms, then it’s public business. I think it’s a bit melodramatic to say, as Andrea Mitchell did on Countdown on Friday, that Edwards’s public service career is over. And, by extension, Elizabeth Edwards’s.

Do you hear that? That is the sound of my eyes rolling so far into the back of my head that they snapped whatever attaches them to my body.

Did affairs affect the careers of John McCain (HuffPo, LA Times)? Newt Gingrich (See below? Did toe-tapping in a Minneapolis airport destroy Larry Craig? What about David Vitter going to a prostitute?

Nope. They hung onto office.

A taste of Gingrich’s affair:

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, “Let Our Family Represent Your Family.” (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.’” Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.
(Washington Monthly)

How about the criminal behavior of other Republicans (Well, Vitter is in this group as well) Here’s a list from Kos. I’ll give you some highlights (links to sources are found on the page I just linked to).

• John Bolton: George W. Bush’s latest Ambassador to United Nations. Corroborated allegations that Mr. Bolton’s first wife, Christina Bolton, was forced to engage in group sex have not been refuted by the State Department.
• Robert Bauman, Republican congressman and anti-gay activist from Maryland, was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
• Bob Barr, Republican Congressman from Georgia. Sponsored the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, saying “The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit.” Was married three times. Paid for his second wife’s abortion. Failed to pay child support to the children of his first two wives and while married to his third and present wife was photographed licking whipped cream off of strippers at his inaugural party.
• Jon Grunseth, Republican businessman and candidate for Minnesota governor, withdrew his candidacy after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter, and tried to grope one. “I’ve made some mistakes” he said.
• Newt Gingrich, Republican from Georgia, married three times. Gingrich campaign worker Anne Manning admitted that she gave Newt oral sex while he was still married to his first wife. Informed one wife he was filing for divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer treatments.
• Henry Hyde, Republican Congressman from Illinois, Judge who oversaw Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, prominent opponent of reproductive rights, who had an extramarital affair with a woman who was married and had three children, during the course of which she and her husband were divorced.
• Bob Livingston, former Congressman (R-La.), Speaker of the House; resigned from the House in the wake of revelations about his past adultery — at the same time he was leading calls for impeachment of President Clinton.
• Jeff Miller, (R-Cleveland), Senate Republican Caucus Chairman in Tennessee and the sponsor of Tennessee’s Marriage Protection act, getting divorced (as of April 2005) because of an affair he was having with an office aide. Miller described the Tennessee Marriage Protection Act as a means of preserving the sanctity of marriage. He opposed an amendment, however, which stated that “Adultery is deemed to be a threat to the institution of marriage and contrary to public policy in Tennessee.”
• John Peterson, Congressman (R-Pa), accused of sexual harassment and creation of a hostile work environment by six women. Peterson has refused to admit a crime, saying only “I may have been an excessive hugger.”
• Jim West, Spokane Mayor. Supported a bill, which failed, would have barred gays and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. Voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS. Proposed that “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person” among teens be criminalized. Had a sexual affair with an 18 year old boy.

And then there’s the stuff that crops up on a daily basis.

• Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.
• Yesterday afternoon, Allen was sentenced on a misdemeanor count of solicitation for prostitution (in lay terms: they done punished him for trying to blow that guy in the potty room).
• The complaint, filed by Clearfield police Chief Jeffrey Rhone and signed by [District Attorney] Shaw, accuses Walker of using his cell phone to videotape a former girlfriend in an intimate moment with another man on Aug. 25, 2007. The complaint also alleges that he had contact with her on two other occasions, despite being told by a police officer on Aug. 25 that he should avoid further contact and that charges were pending.

As I’m sure you could tell, I could go on and on and on and on and on.

All I’m saying is: I don’t care who the hell you sleep with unless you go around making homophobic statements/legislating things like Defense of Marriage Acts/trying to outlaw abortion/promoting abstinence-only education/acting like a puritan freak about sex.

By the way–have you heard there’s a war a-brewin?

Not to be crass, but seriously, all y’all libertarians and Republicans can go screw yourselves. Live on an island where you don’t care about the society you live in. Tear each other to pieces in some Lord of the Flies fantasyland where the strong survive and blah blah blah.

This is a note I might otherwise post on my Twitter feed. A 140 character WTF, but this is serious.

First, I’ll tell you why I’m beyond outraged. The Star Tribune wrote today that police and fire calls may start to be billed to the recipients of said services in Duluth.

Let me quote from the article:

Duluth city administrators are considering charging fees to property owners and drivers for police and fire responses.

City spokesman Jeff Papas says the amount of the fees haven’t been set yet.

If the Duluth City Council agrees to charge fees, it would then set an amount. The council could vote July 28.

Papas says the city is looking into whether it can charge different fees for residents and nonresidents. If so, fire and vehicle extraction fees would apply to everyone, but only nonresidents would pay to have accidents investigated.

Papas says the fees could bring in an extra $100,000 per year for the city facing a $4.5 million deficit.

Screed ahead.

If our economy/society is in such shambles that we can’t provide basic rescue and protection services to ourselves based on a shared pool of resources, we have a problem.

And here is the problem we face in general. Since the 1980s, certain members of our society have been reaping the tremendous benefits of deregulation, while society itself is cracking under the weight of economic and structural disrepair that has happened with the abandonment of checks and balances on the free market.

Laissez faire economic policy is a dumb idea. The fairy tale that what is good for “the market” is good for the society is preposterous. The current crisis with foreclosures is a fantastic example. “The market” drove up prices and encouraged greedy and corrupt mortgage brokers to get home buyers/refinancers to sign on with loans they had no perceivable way of paying off.

Why would they do this? Huge, huge commission. The bigger the “sale,” the bigger the haul. Lack of oversight and regulation allowed this to continue on a grand scale. There were home buyers/refinancers who made greedy/bad decisions, but if you read the personal stories that have been reported, some were just outright deceived.

Conned. Conned because a lot of people were making a lot of money.

And what happens to the people who really profited on this? They lose a tiny percentage of their ghastly wealth? That’s hardly punishment for hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and the destruction that wreaks on neighborhoods.

But forget that. We could talk about deregulation of mining, all those cranes that keep crashing down and killing people, the airline industry.

Deregulation=no oversight. No oversight=no one to call you out on fraud.

And now we’re in a situation where a city in this great state, and this is a great state, is considering charging for basic rescue and protection.

Minnesota is not perfect, but we used to value our communities. We knew that in order to have a functional state with a good quality of life, you had to invest in the society. We are responsible for the quality of our communities and neighborhoods.

If there’s no money, raise taxes. Forget this “fee-based” Republican crap. We are a society. We stand together or else we will fall apart. Hardly any of us could afford as a single household to create the kind of life that we have when we combine our resources. It is beyond my personal comprehension that people can ignore this simple fact.

I could scream right now, I’m so frustrated. Our physical infrastructure is disintegrating, and now our rescue/protection infrastructure is something we might have to consider the cost of the charges against the benefits of getting help.

Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. Raise the damned income tax. Taxes are your obligation to the society in which you live.

Know what’s worse than taxes? A society where no one is accountable. Make people pay for rescue/protection services and some will opt out. You’d better hope those people don’t live next door to you if it happens.

This post crosses a couple of topics that have been on my mind lately. Little things, you know, like pervasive racism and the second-class status of GLBT folks in this country.

Jack and Jill Politics wrote on a particularly heinous op-ed in the Chicago Tribune last week. The article embodies a lot of the problems I’ve had with Clinton’s campaign–which has used racist sentiment…actually, let’s be honest…it’s used white supremacist sentiment to rally rural and older white voters. Obama is too uppity for his own good, know what I mean?

Anyway, Kathleen Parker’s nasty piece dwells on the concept of “full-blooded” Americanness.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that’s gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Now, I understand that Parker may think her own audience is blind to their own motivations, but how is something about “heritage” and “made in America” and not about race?

She’s hardly masking her racist white supremacist sentiment:

It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Man, you really can’t get much more KKK than that.

Here’s the thing, it’s all code. She’s not talking about my background. Fuck all that Mayflower and Daughters of the American Revolution bullshit. The WASPs never did think much of the Irish or the Slavs. But when she talks about full-blooded Americans, she’s also not using that code to slur me. It’s not about the old immigrants who are now neatly rolled up into whiteness, it’s the new immigrants…like Obama’s dad.

Now, where this does become about me is when the issue of…

Yet, white Americans primarily—and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially—have been put on the defensive for their concerns with “guns, God and gays.”

And the justification for both their racism and their general hatred of anything not like them is:

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Today, Governor Pawlenty vetoed the SF 960 bill that the Minnesota House and Senate passed. It would have allowed local governments in Minnesota to provide domestic partner benefits. I realize that “teh gayz” are a big selling point for the Republicans in a time when their economic and international policies are being shown for the shams that they are, but damn if it doesn’t break my heart every time they try to make life harder for us.

We’re part of this “multiculturalism” that Parker and her allies are scared of. (Or, rather, that she exploits this line of thinking to advance her name and get a book deal at some point. Controversy sells!)

And why are they scared of it? Because their heritage is being swept under the carpet? Bullshit. It’s the time-honored tradition of: if you’re doing better, it must be at some cost to me, so I don’t want your lot to improve.

Does it actually hurt heterosexual couples if I got Megan health insurance through my job or vice versa? I mean, unlike y’all, we have to pay taxes on the amount paid (FYI: that’s approximately $100 a month in taxes for health care at the U. On top of the normal cost of adding someone to your insurance.).

In order to be against gay marriage or domestic partner benefits or civil unions or black people becoming president or women becoming president or whatever, you have to believe that if any of these things occurs, you will have lost something.

And, you know what? If you think that people don’t deserve the same rights and privileges that you have because you’re afraid of a level playing field, you need to really think about what that means. It means you don’t think you’re good enough, it means you’re insecure about your position in the world, and it means you are petty and exploitative and just plain mean.

Congrats to Californians, by the way, whose largely Republican (I believe 6 of the 7 judges were Republican appointments) court said that not allowing gay marriages in CA was unconstitutional. It’s going to kick off a firestorm, but if marriage is going to remain a thing in this country (um, that’s a definite), then it needs to be across the board. Knock it down like miscegenation was knocked down.

/rant

Via Slog:

A public high school principal in Memphis, Tennessee, outed a pair of gay male students—to their teachers, classmates, and parents—after she found out that they were a couple. The principal also called the mother of one of the boys to tell her that she, “didn’t like gay people and wouldn’t tolerate homosexuality at her school,” and posted the names of the boys on a publicly posted list of known students couples in order to prevent public displays of affection, “hetero and homo.”

…

In Tuesday’s letter to the Memphis City Schools Board of Commissioners, the ACLU points out that the principal ordered the boys not to even walk or study together at school.

Emails of the school board and principal:

Principal:
Daphne Beasley
BeasleyD@mcsk12.net

The Board of Commisioners:
hartt@mcsk12.net
jonesmartaviusd@mcsk12.net
williamsf@mcsk12.net
whalumkennetht@mcsk12.net
gatewoods@mcsk12.net
MallottBettyJ@mcsk12.net
robinsonp@mcsk12.net
warrenj@mcsk12.net
webbsharona@mcsk12.net

Superintendent:
superintendentward@mcsk12.net

My response that I emailed them:

What you did to those two gay students of yours is absolutely shameful. I am appalled at the lack of compassion, empathy, and judgment that went into such a flagrant violation of the relationship between the student and the school. By outing the students, you intended them to be subjected to harassment, hoped for them to be shamed, and misused your authority. What you succeeded in doing is contributing to the long and storied history of oppression that GLBT people face in our society and others–and I am proud of those kids for standing up to you instead of internalizing what you did, which decades of young GLBT people have done. I am proud of them because they’re not letting you lead to depression or suicide. I am proud of them because they have taken what you thought would shame them and turned it into something that is shameful for you.

I am horrified that you hold such an advanced position in educating our youth.

(just a sidenote: that list in general strikes me as strange and overly, um, zealous on the part of administrators.)

Be warned: listening to this will make you upset.

But listen to it and email her. Via Blogactive.

Give Oklahoma representative Sally Kern a ring/email:
(405) 557-7348
sallykern@okhouse.gov

God, I hate Ron Paul so much.

He’s going to be at Northrup this evening. Because, you know, all this federal funding of educational institutions is bad…so let’s hold a campaign rally in a building that exists because of this money.

He should hold his rallies on private property only. No parks, no public spaces, no public buildings. Yeah, that might make his campaign a little harder — but isn’t it worth it to adhere to your values?

/dripping, vicious sarcasm

I mean. Really. It never makes sense to me when people veer politically towards someone who is so anathema to their best interests. But, sure, who needs education? Not the students showing up for RP rallies, I guess.

So hey…did you guys know that there’s no difference between Al Gore and George Bush?

Ah, remember back then? Remember when Ralph Nader was going to lead the Greens to 5% and create a viable 3rd party? Back when Al Gore was gutted by the press…

For instance, remember the oft-repeated “Al Gore says he invented the Internet.” Follow that with lots of derisive laughter.

Thing is: he never said that he invented the Internet. Thing is: Al Gore was instrumental in developing the Internet as we know it. From Snopes:

[H]e sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic)he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic)

In a time before people had any idea what the Internet would become, he was a driving force. Take that.

Back to Nader, however.

Angie and I have joked that Ron Paul could “Naderize” the Republicans this year. (Her term).

Naderize, v., “To sway an election by adding a spoiler candidate.”

Anyway, the formerly useful consumer advocate who has been overtaken with self-importance over the last ten years announced today that he is going to run for president this year.

He said, this morning, that

I’d go after Bush even more vigorously as we are in the next few months in ways that the Democrats can’t possibly do because they’re too cautious and too unimaginative, but they can pick up the vulnerabilities and the failures of the Bush administration that we point out.

This worked much better the first time around, Ralph. Why go after Bush? He’s out. That whole “two terms” deal. This time, we should be more sensible–you are a megalomaniac. A narcissistic, egotistic asshole. This isn’t about choice or expanding the conversation, this is about you. Fuck you.

All you need to scare Chris Matthews is, apparently, a vagina. You know how I mentioned how Matthews pinched Senator Clinton’s cheek? Well, get ready for a list of things he’s said about Clinton over time. It’s frightening. From Daily Kos via Jezebel.

To get an idea of the type of language Matthews regularly uses when covering Clinton, take a look at this sampling:

• “I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for.”
• “She Devil”
• “Anti-male”
• “She’s going to tell us what to do.”
• “[L]et’s talk about the troops …Will they take the orders?”
• “[L]ike a strip-teaser saying she’s flattered by the all the attention”
• On Sen. Clinton’s endorsers: “castratos in the eunuch chorus”
• “Is she a convincing mom?”
• “[S]he’s clapping, like she’s Chinese. I know the Chinese clap at each other, but what is she clapping at? I mean, it’s like one of these wind-up things.”
• “[S]he was giving a campaign barn-burner speech, which is harder to give for a woman; it can grate on some men when they listen to it — fingernails on a blackboard, perhaps.”
• “[T]he reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around.”

Let me say—that list? Is edited. There’s more on Daily Kos where that came from. Plus Matthews’s not-misogynistic-at-all ruminations on Michelle Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and more.

I don’t even know what to say except: REALLY?! I know you’ve got air time to fill, but REALLY?!

Thank you, Chris Matthews, for proving yet again that blatant, overt sexism is alive and well–and not just on right wing websites or talk radio. CNN MSNBC. You’re awesome. Truly.