Rita Cosby just said on MSNBC that absinthe is ILLEGAL in the United States. Um, anybody want to tell our favorite advertiser that Rita Cosby said so? (Part of the endless, pointless debate about the man who somehow disappeared from the Royal Caribbean cruise ship … he and his new wife were drinking ABSINTHE (!) the night he disappeared … and we ALL know what THAT means! (What does it mean?!))
Drudge is blaring — in about 256-point type — “EXCLUSIVE: DEMOCRATS PLAN TO DESTROY ALITO” (Well, I wouldn’t go THAT far … then again … )
OPEN THREAD:
I asked my bartender last night if he had an alcoholic equivalent to a percoset. My rotater cuff is KILLING ME. He said he had some absinthe. I was like “REALLY?”. And then he told me he was joking.
Broken Record: Please go to the doctor.
As I told you last night, I’ve had a torn rotator cuff.
The pain is so bad that NO pain medication, or booze, will give you relief.
A good orthopedic surgeon can give you a shot in just the right spot that both NUMBS the area and injects some cortisone. It truly helps a great deal.
It’s VERY IMPORTANT to go to a specialist who KNOWs how to administer the shot in just the right place. Your average doctor does not know how to do it.
However, in order for that to occur, a person must go to the doctor.
Or the ER, where you’d get an ortho person.
I’m going to call your mother if you don’t go.
he goes. No one should be in pain.
I’m going to have my mother call BooMan’s mother. But seriously, BooMan, it sounds like good advice. I have a cowoker who has suffered for years with the same thing. He has been putting off the surgery that he should be getting. I do hope you find some relief.
After putting in so much time in the waiting room of some of the top ortho docs in the country, a sports medicine ortho is exactly what you need for this Booman. My husband has one that is in pretty tough shape that he is going to have to tend to in time also but yours appears to be too painful to avoid any longer.
I just realized that, before when I told you about the cortisone shot, I forgot to tell you that it also numbs the area.
My regular doc gives me a shot in the bursa sac in my hip area when the pain gets bad — it numbs it, and it’s a wonderful relief. (There’s cortisone too.)
Two things:
Booman, get your ass to the doctor. I had a torn rotator cuff for years and endured it slipping out of the socket more times than i can count. Finally i had the surgery and had a pin put in my shoulder and haven’t had a day of discomfort since. Why do we guys avoid the doctor, it’s crazy. I do ask for directions though 🙂
Second, please refer to the dreadful Rita Cosby as Rita Skeeter, she truly is the embodiment of J.K. Rowling’s irritating tabloid on two legs.
The link for the info and office phone number for an excellent sports medicine specialist is in your email. And he’s definitely worth the trip across the river.
Appropos to nothing, here is a painting I did a few days ago. I put it in a diary over at dkos as a proposal to Markos to replace the flag guy, free of charge. Oh well, my attempt to change dkos from big orange to big blue failed. What do you think?
It’s sad … the emptiness of the landscape, devoid of humans, animals, trees, brush …
powerful imagery. And beautifully done.
Interesting. I thought that the emptiness highlighted the flag. And besides, I’m terrible at painting people. 😉
Then what I said reflects how i’m viewing the flag these days. That’s one of the wonderful things about art — one can receive it as one is able to.
Bremer says U.S. did not expect insurgency in Iraq
LINK
to just throw flowers at our troops. And I guess he still thinks that. Nobody tells him that the flowers are bombs.
is the fact he wrote a BOOk that is not properly titled. It should be titled “Viceroyal Bremer–How I lost 9 billion dollars and no one cares.”
I thought that comment was really something. Its incredible that they wouldn’t expect an insurgency, but even more incredible to say that they didn’t expect after it occurs.
I mean….how naive is that? How stupid does he make himself sound by saying that after the fact.
Where do they get these guys who don’t even have the slightest political saavy?
He’s another homegrown boy from some small town who knows “all about the world”.
Well, anyone knows that, the bigger the font, the more full of truthiness the article is!
Bit of a vent here–my dad tried again to show me what a great news source Drudge is when I was home for Christmas. I asked him to please let it go, and he commented about me “having it in for” Drudge.
That’s so funny, you meanie, you!
Darcy (daughter) likes Drudge for two reasons: 1) he links lots of animal stories, and 2) his list of links to all the newspapers, etc. are very handy. That is true.
Oh yes, I’ve acknowledged that there are things to like about it, but that the negatives outweigh them. Sort of like Walmart–gotta love those low prices, but other factors keep me from shopping there.
Of course, we have to have the Walmart discussion every time I visit too. :p (But everyone sells products made in China!”)
It’s really disgusting to open this blog and see this poster and see my sexual identity used as some creepy parallel with Republican Lawlessness and cronyism.
And, no, if it were just the word play, rather than the clever fag allusion, it wouldn’t be here.
And, no, in ethics it is pretty well established that the perpetrators don’t get to decide what their victims “ought” to find to be painful.
And for a blog whose primary rule is “don’t be a prick” it’s pretty amazing how often the leaders turn into pricks.
You & I don’t agree too often, NorCalJim. For example, I don’t think Susanhu or BooMan are usually prickish and mostly they seem to me to show an amazing amount of restraint while being treated very poorly by lots of people. But I damn sure agree that that poster is homophobic and in fucked up poor taste.
I guess this is in the eye of the beholder. I saw this as a political parody of a movie poster and saw absolutely no “clever fag allusion”.
In my opinion, your characterization of “the leaders” is way off the mark.
but I am not in your shoes. I’m delighted with the film and the subject matter that it sheds light on and the rave reviews it is getting. Sorry that the poster with those two assholes worked into it has hurt you, I don’t think that was what Susan had in mind at all by using it. Because of the films success and our familiarity with it I think the thought here was to use the poster to get our attention.
I’m sorry, Jim! I’d never do that to make fun.
A friend sent that to me — and she’s about as liberal as they come — and it made me laugh, so I tossed it up.
My feeling is that the title of this film — plus its current popularity — make it a perfect foil for satirists.
Also: The relationship between Delay and Abramoff had nothing to do with sex. It had only to do with, as the poster spoofs, “kickbacks.”
P.S. I haven’t seen the film, but my daughter did when she was in Seattle … she said it was remarkably moving and brilliantly acted. I forbade her from telling me what happens because TV discussion on the movie has already given me more spoilers than I care to know. (For example, I had no clue it involved a same-sex relationship until I heard that on TV the other day.)
That you thought it was funny before you had the chance to know it was homophobic is cool, Susan, but now that you know, would you please consider taking it down? It’s horribly offensive, considering that it is homophobic, and personally I’ve been so angry and hurt by it that I’ve been crying since last night. I truly believe you had no intention to cause harm, but now that you know the image is hurtful, would you please just take it down?
Hi, Susan
Maybe a little elaboration from me. Those of us who are old enough have been working for gay rights since the mid sixties. And gay rights isn’t just about equal treatment under the law, it’s always been about equal treatment, especially equal respect and dignity.
For example. Back then i can remember laying on the floor and reading some psychology book from my much older brother’s library. THis learned book managed to conflate every kind of deranged and criminal behavior with being a homosexual. The feeling of the turmoil in the pit of my stomach is still fresh as I contemplated the prospect that i might be one of these creatures. So i still recoil when see gay used as a negative where it is not valid. But it is an important, important part of the abuse of gay people over he last half century.
And there has been, and continues to be, a strong association between “gay” and “bad” as in “that is so gay”. And taht has been a mainstay of Rove’s use gay imagery and allegations to smear someone. And i’m really shocked and frankly outraged when perusing progessive blogs to see the same thing going on….attempting to malign our opponents by painting them as gay, or alleging that some Republican is gay…it’s the same old thing, using gay as a negative adjective. That is just so sad and so wrong.
In this particular context, that to me is what is happening here, the artist is painting Delay as gay, not only is he a crook, he’s even worse, he’s gay, ha ha.
Those of us who read the gay press have been aware of this moving for a long long time and looking forward to it so much. Finally something mainstream, not just about gay relationships but about gay male relationships, fully sexual realationships, tath this particular image and these two characters and actors have become a bit iconic, in some sense sacred, and so it (the soiling ridicule) seems blasphemous in an important sense. And as i have said, this movie has been 40 years in the making and it is just so sad to see this moment spoiled by something this cavalier. It’s our moment. Please don’t wreck it. Please don’t assume that everything about gay men is supposed to be a laugh line.
There have been some films in the past, but nothing like this. These are just ordinary guys, not the usual mincing, asexual, dollyboo stereotypes and that is important. My ex and I saw one with Harry Hamlin and Kate Jackson in the early 80s I think, and it was a nightmare. People were screaming at the screen, “don’t do it” when one of the characters was removing his necktie. And it got worse from there. We began to fear for our safety.
Maybe i’ll address the prick business later. My point here is to give you some visuals, some data points, if you will, from my life so you can understand this issue a little better.
Jim
By the way, I meant to apologize for not responding sooner — I retired at 8pm last night to get some reading done.
I’m not trying to be dense, but I don’t see how we can assume this:
the artist is painting Delay as gay, not only is he a crook, he’s even worse, he’s gay, ha ha.
I can’t know what was in the artist’s mind. But if it were MY mind, I’d have been using a poster from a hot movie — and a title that lends itself to all kinds of parody.
And it wouldn’t have had anything to do with the relationship portrayed in the movie.
But, out of consideration for you, I will remove it.
(I’ll put up the link so others can see what we were discussing — i hope you think that that’s fair — otherwise, it’d be censorship, and I don’t think any of us want that.)
Here’s the link to the poster:
IMAGE
JIM: Thank you for speaking up. And you can always send me an e-mail too. Also, if you do, i’ll give you my home phone number so that if something like this occurs, and I am AFK as I was last night, I can be more quickly responsive to you. I value your opinions, no matter if I agree or not all the time — your thoughts and ideas are very important to this site.
Thank you, Susan.
But I don’t think it is just me, although younger gay men may be much less aware of our history. It is actually an example of political warfare via paychological abuse of the “different”, whoever they are. Find a quality in your target which is different, not bad, just different. THen deamonize the quality as bad, and extend that to the population which is your target. Chinese. Japanese, liberals, Jews, women, homosexuals, blacks.
Let’s take a famous poli-sci example. In the 70s the Sec Agriculture said of blacks that all they want is easy sex, loose shoes and a warm place to shit. There was an uproar. But we heard the same defenses used to defend your poster. “Well, what’s wrong with that? Kinda funny, actually. I’m ok with it. I don’t think he meant anything by it. It’s taking PC to an extreme.”
Well, Susan, here’s what’s wrong with it. These are all references to traditional PR warfare against blacks which had/has been used for centuries to denigrate, dismiss, and thereby subjegate black people. Here.
Easy sex: Sounds cool to me. So what’s wrong with easy sex? This is a direct reference to the notion, even embraced by Lincoln, that blacks are intrinsically immoral, or less moral than whites, particularly sexually. Nevermind that the institution of slavery pretty destroyed the insitution of marriage and family life among slaves. (much the same thing has been said of gay men, nevermind that there are going to be different dynamics among male/male coupleing than among male/female coupling adn that gays can’t settle down and marry securely).
Loose shoes: Hey what’s wrong with loose shoes? I wear my shoes loose, especially after a day of outdoor work. Of course, slaves didn’t have shoes, and those decendants who did probably did wear them loose after a backbreaking 16 hour day in the fields. The message is, “blacks are less than”….put them down far enough and you can control them better. It also plays into the notion of the lazy, shiftless Negroe. See, this is easy.
Warm place to shit: Well golly, who wouldn’t want that? Ever taken a shit in a campground in an outhouse in the morning. Pretty nice to drop trou in a nice warm house, instead, huh? THis is an allusion ot the fact that an awful lot of blacks at the time, especially in the rural south, still didn’t have indoor plumbing, like nice civilized middle class white people. Message: you don’t belong.
So it is not surpising that blacks reacted negatively to this retelling of ancient slurs used to keep them down.
Same here.
It isn’t that language (even in graphical form) has a political dimension. Language IS politics. And one could do the same rundown on any number of “different’ groups.
Perhaps in 40 years, if i survive, there will have been so much healing that I will be able to laugh with you at the kind of connection alluded to in the poster. But that is a long way off.
Thanks for removing it.
for anti-Alito petitions, if not for Alito himself.
If you haven’t done so already, please apply your John Hancock (or a couple computer clicks) to the below:
American Rights at Work also
Oppose Alito Petition
Defending the Constitution’s Stop Alito Petition
http://ga3.org/…
Pretty fresh petition from Moveon.org (especially if you haven’t signed yet):
Move On.org’s Alito Petition
Kinda new Democratic anti-Alito petition:
Democratic Party’s Reject Alito Petition
Stop the NRA is also getting in on the party:
Stop the NRA’s Oppose Alito Petiton
People for the American Way:
Save the Court Petition
And while you’re at it: sign Planned Parenthood’s anti-Alito petition, too:
Planned Parenthood Petition
NARAL is shooting for 500,000 signatures, please add yours:
Naral Anti-Alito Petition
And don’t forget: urge Congress to support Plan B:
Plan B Petition