Posts by Zuzu

Zuzu is a regular blogger for Feministe.

McCain's Guarantee: Usual Campaign Talk or Something More?
Posted by Zuzu , Shakesville on October 27, 2008 at 8:32 AM.

John McCain, on "Meet the Press":

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he can "guarantee" a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won't be clear until late that night.

McCain spoke amid signs of a tightening race, and reports of renewed determination among his staff, which is badly outgunned in both money and manpower.

"I guarantee you that two weeks from now, you will see this has been a very close race, and I believe that I'm going to win it," McCain told interim "Meet" moderator Tom Brokaw. "We're going to do well in this campaign, my friend. We're going to win it, and it's going to be tight, and we're going to be up late."

Maybe it's just me, but there's something about the idea of the Republican candidate giving a "guarantee" of victory after a squeaker when the Republicans have been working very diligently to suppress the vote via vote caging, challenges to new voters, attempts to challenge those whose homes have been foreclosed, etc., and when voting machines in many places are changing votes from Democrat to Republican, or dropping the Presidential vote off when the voter does a straight-ticket vote, that just sort of gives me pause.

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Bush White House Explicitly Approved Torture
Posted by Zuzu , Shakesville on October 15, 2008 at 6:54 AM.

Lest we forget the pure, unadulterated lust for power and disregard for human rights and the Constitution that marks the Bush Administration:

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.

They retroactively provided cover for the CIA's torture of detainees, which the CIA knew damn well was illegal.

I deliberately stayed away from the word "evil" in my opening sentence, though I was sorely tempted. But classing these clowns as "evil" just puts them in a category separate from the rest of humanity, and makes their behavior and attitudes something exceptional and therefore easily dismissed.

It's not, though. This is human behavior, and as disgusting as it is, we have to accept that our leaders (and ourselves) are capable of it, and to not shrink from the duty of guarding against these baser impulses becoming acceptable. They way they got away with it was to keep the populace whipped up into a state of fear, because they knew that if the people were afraid, they'd be willing to hand over not only their own rights, but far more eagerly the rights of others.

What's really interesting about this is that the CIA pushed for these memos so that they weren't left holding the bag:

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Racist Anti-Obama Campaign No Longer Stealth: O'Reilly's Lynching Threat, Lies About Faith and More
Posted by Zuzu , Feministe on February 21, 2008 at 10:18 AM.

I've noticed a certain uptick in scaremongering stories and racist drivel about Barack Obama coming out of the wingnut media machine since he started to gain enough momentum that it looks like it's possible he'll be on the ballot come November. And while the wingnuts still hate McCain, they'll eventually get over it. What this uptick really says to me is that they're gearing up for the day that they no longer have Hillary Clinton to kick around anymore.

Consider the wingnuttosphere a test lab for the mainstream media and its anti-Democrat bias. They try out all kinds of wacky theories to see what will grab the attention of the mainstream media and get pushed out there as fact. So far, they've focused mostly on their favorite target, Hillary Clinton, but as Obama gains momentum, they're starting to hedge their bets and go after him. It's slow right now, because that sweet, sweet Clinton-hating is a hard habit to break, but eventually they'll have to give it up almost entirely, with only the occasional fix.

And when I saw that O RLY had magnanimously declined to lynch Michelle Obama over some comments of hers -- for the moment -- and that the Cornerites had put out the theory that Obama is the product of a secret breeding program of Communist Jewish women and black men (feel the moral panic! Black men with white women! Jewish intellectuals! Commieeeeees!), I knew it had started.

You thought the "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" and the madrassa things were the worst they had? They're just getting warmed up.

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Jennifer Love Hewitt Fights Back Against Cruel Body Image Insults, Puts Sexist Sites on the Defensive
Posted by Zuzu , Feministe on December 5, 2007 at 1:00 PM.

This post, written by Zuzu and originally appeared on Feministe

You may or may not be aware that the size 2 Jennifer Love Hewitt was recently the subject of some fat-shaming by lovely gossip site TMZ and others (to whom I won't link, but if you follow the links here, you'll see the photos and the oh-so-trenchant observations like "We know what you ate this summer, Love everything!"). Hewitt had the audacity to appear in public in a bikini while also in possession of a body that hadn't been dieted and exercised down to nothing or airbrushed to smooth perfection.

Mind you, TMZ has no compunction about running unflattering beach and other photos of celebrities with a heaping helping of mockery; it seems to be popular enough that one of their advertisers, T Mobile, is currently running a feature called "Flabulous!" with a bunch of celebrities at the beach, not in the world's best shape. How dare they not be picture-perfect at all times, *especially* when they turn 60!

Anyway, back to Hewitt: She decided that she wasn't going to take this mockery lying down, and so she decided to say a few things. Things which made me fall in love with her a little bit (even though I've only ever seen her in Party of Five, in which she annoyed me):

"I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinized," the 28-year-old actress writes on her Web site.

"To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all the girls out there that are struggling with their body image." ...

"A size 2 is not fat! Nor will it ever be," Hewitt responded in a post Thursday. "And being a size 0 doesn't make you beautiful."

"What I should be doing is celebrating some of the best days of my life and my engagement to the man of my dreams, instead of having to deal with photographers taking invasive pictures from bad angles," says the star of TV's "Ghost Whisperer" and the film "I Know What You Did Last Summer."

"To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist," she wrote, "put on a bikini put it on and stay strong."

I'd probably fall in love a little more if she weren't so defensive about being seen as fat, but hey. I'm pretty pleased that she's responded with a bit of a fuck-you to the people who are following her around with a camera and then feel entitled to nitpick her body just because she's a woman. I'm glad she tied in her treatment to the way that *women in general* are publicly scrutinized, not just the way that *celebrities* are publicly scrutinized. I'm glad she recognizes that the difference between the way that her body is held up for scrutiny and the way that other women's bodies are held up for scrutiny is simply the presence of papparrazi in her life. IOW, she realizes that all women are public property, and the difference between the way she's treated as a celebrity and the way she's treated as a woman is one of degree, not kind.

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Renegade Ex-Nuns Raise Hell In Poland
Posted by Zuzu on October 11, 2007 at 5:53 AM.

This post, written by Zuzu, originally appeared on Feministe

You gotta love any story that involves the phrase "rebellious ex-nuns." And it's kind of a doozy, too.

KAZIMIERZ DOLNY, Poland (AP) -- Police evicted 65 rebellious ex-nuns Wednesday from a convent they illegally occupied for two years after defying a Vatican order to replace their mother superior, a charismatic leader who had religious visions.

The defeated nuns walked out in their black habits -- some carrying guitars, drums and tambourines -- after a locksmith opened the gate to the walled compound and police in riot gear rushed in and arrested the mother superior. A former Franciscan friar who had locked himself away with the nuns also was taken into custody.

Several nuns, many of whom appeared to be in their 20s, screamed at police, calling them ''servants of Satan," as they were escorted out and into waiting buses.

God forbid that a bunch of nuns might have some opinions on who to follow:

The women took over the convent in Kazmierz Dolny in eastern Poland in rebellion against a Vatican order in 2005 to replace Jadwiga Ligocka as mother superior.

"They were disobedient," said Mieczyslaw Puzewicz, a spokesman for the Lublin diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican formally expelled the women from their Sisters of Bethany order last year, but has revealed almost nothing about the dispute.

The problem, apparently, is that Ligocka has become a powerful figure to these nuns. Er, ex-nuns. Because once you start being disobedient, you have no place in the Catholic Church hierarchy.

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A Case of 9/11 Fatigue
Posted by Zuzu on September 11, 2007 at 6:10 AM.

This post, written by Zuzu, originally appeared on Feministe

You all know I'm a crank. So let me get cranky: I'm really fucking sick of 9/11.

I'm tired of talking about it, I'm tired of hearing about it, I'm tired of Giuliani's continuing relevance because of it, I'm tired of discussing it on first dates six years on, I'm tired of the fighting over the fucking hole in the ground, I'm tired of the delays on reconstruction, I'm tired of the political posturing, I'm tired of the political mileage the conservatives get out of it, I'm tired of each new video by Osama Bin Laden (seriously, isn't he supposed to be on dialysis in a cave somewhere? Shouldn't he be dead by now?), I'm tired of George Bush, I'm tired of no-fly lists, I'm tired of security theater, I'm tired of tiny bottles of shampoo in clear baggies and checking my shoes.

I'm tired of every little failure of infrastructure in this city having to have the "There was no evidence of terrorism" disclaimer, I'm tired of feeling like there's a giant bullseye painted on my hometown, I'm tired of the games played with antiterror money, I'm tired of bedwetters driving our foreign policy, I'm tired of the exceptionalism (like nobody ever had any kind of terrorist attack before).

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