Seriously? This is a thing?

You really really really need to read Kyle Wagner's entire GamerGate article for Deadspin. But, because I love you, I am going to give you a shorter version below:

What has happened is that a bunch of basement dwelling, still living with their parents gamer dweebs ("Hey, I want my pop and grilled cheese sandwich now, Mom!") have become incensed over the fact that a fair amount of those icky beings happening to possess ladyparts have decided that they wanta play video games, too.  So, instead of the girls just hanging around, watching the boys play video games, and being on call for them, now they are wrenching the controllers away, and busting the boys nuts at all those first person shooters online.  If that was not bad enough! More recently, the Ladyparts Brigade have also begun to ask the (predominantly male) game producers some really uncomfortable questions.  Questions like, Why do so many of the females in these games all look like Tinkerbell in a chain-mail bikini? Or, Are these really the kind of games that speak to women? Maybe we could try something new? Do I really want to play games that let you rape women?

What a flipping bummer, right?!

Then, one of the loudest and shrillest of the Ladyparts Brigade used her magical ladyparts to seduce a gaming journalist in to giving her brand new Ladypartscentric video game that she created a fabulous review.  Or, so says her spurned ex.  And, he said it online.  And, that is where the fun really begins.  The basement dwellers finally had a cause to cloak their misogyny with! This was really all about journalistic integrity, don't you know! They were tired of the game makers and reviewers litrilly being in bed together.  They had proof.

These asshat gamers then went about doing what they do nearly as well as play First Person Shooters.  They flooded 4chan with hateful comments about all the loudest of the Ladyparts Brigade, and theorized on the hateful things they could do to these women.  They even did some doxxing of these ladies, posted nude photos of them, threatened to kill them, and you know, just regular good fun.

But, you gotta hand it to the troglodytes, they were savvy enough to get an anonymous random Baldwin Brother to become their spokesperson for freedom.  The fact that the best thing on said Baldwin Brother's CV were some character voices for the Halo games was just gravy!

Now, they upped the ante, and are threatening to kill even more of these outspoken ladies.  One event had to be cancelled at Utah State because the campus, like the state, is open carry, and no one there felt confident in protecting the safety of the young woman.

What the fuck, man? What is up with this country sometimes?

UGH!







mds

Alright, so Jan Brewer vetoed the bill.

Well, holy heck and hoo-ray.  But, do not think for a minute that this tortuous decision of hers had anything to do with 'doing the right thing'.

She did it to save face for her neanderthal knuckle headed asshat representative body that passed the god-awful legislation in the first place, and because Arizona might have lost the Super Bowl! (She really did it for the latter reason.) Watch the Jon Stewart video from last night.  None of these 'public servants' ever once even hinted that the bill was wrong.  Nope, the bill was misunderstood, or misinterpreted, or could backfire on Christians, or was just plain bad for a healthy bidness climate.  Because that is all they really frickin care about.

So, I am not throwing no parades for Ms Brewer.  Especially since there are still other states out there with similar legislation in the pipeline.  And those states do not have a Super Bowl Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

************

Meanwhile, this happened yesterday, too.  We are going to win on this eventually.  It is just going to take time.  And, honestly, I think we are going faster than I ever thought we would.

And, this is great, as well:  Senate candidate from Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, had this to say about her opponent, "And I think what people – not just Kentucky, but the nation – are seeing is that Mitch McConnell, kind of like heating a biscuit twice, never tastes good the second time, no matter how much jam or jelly you put on it. That’s my grandmother’s saying, by the way… "











mds

Yup.

Word.  And, for that matter, Word.

Do not ever forget that Reagan and all his young Republican acolytes all hated Mandela, and wanted to see him rot in prison forever.  It was the same old excuse they use every time:   Mandela was a dirty Commie Pinko, don't you see?

In fact, Jack Abramoff and Dana Rohrabacher and a whole bunch of  other Young Republicans held their own personal Freedom Woodstock with Angolan despot butcher, Jonas Savimbi, in 1985.

All those Young Republicans who completely supported Apartheid, and hated Mandela? They are the asshats still running the GOP today.

Trains of Thought Redux, or The Collective Subconscious At Work (Part One)

I am embarrassed that I did not make the connection.  And, I had just watched Andrzej Wajda's film Danton a couple of days ago, to boot.

The first stop on my Eurail Pass was at Balloon Juice this morning.  Where I saw this, Anne Laurie's open thread post about the damage done to the economy by the shutdown, and her link to Harold Meyerson's brilliant column last week.

The next stop on my journey was on the platform of my recollections of seeing Danton for the first time.  While watching Danton, which is a fine film, if not the ultimate Masterpiece it seems to have been swinging the fences for, I was far too busy recognizing the obvious Polish Solidarność allegory that Wajda was making, comparing Lech Wałęsa's struggle to that of Georges Danton's. How obvious is the allegory? Plenty.  Wajda shot the film, which was released in 1983, at the height of Solidarność's battles with their Soviet overlords, in France, and had Polish actors play all the Jacobin roles (the dominant bloodthirsty "East"), and French actors play the more moderate Danton throng (the underdog Wałęsa-led "West").  Naturally, the film was banned in Poland at the time.

"The last mass trials were a great success.  There are going to be fewer but better Russians."

************

But, per your indulgence, let me arrive at the next train station, which is a Hollywood version of Warszawa in 1942.  

Ernst Lubitsch is an absolute hero of mine, and one of the finest filmmakers who ever lived.  He was a German jew who escaped to Hollywood before Hitler took power.  Lubitsch was always testing boundaries, but before World War II his main battle was with the Puritanical way Americans looked at sex.  Lubitsch was one of the Pre-Code directing/writing legends that projected a sophisticated European  attitude towards sexuality and relationships.  And, he was no flop.  In fact, the phrase, "The Lubitsch Touch" (a way of describing the seemingly artless verisimilitude that pervades all his best pictures) was attached to him during the Pre-Code era, and is perhaps only rivaled by Hitchcock's moniker as "The Master of Suspense." Lubitsch was a smash at the box office his entire career, and a critical darling, as well.  Peter Bogdanovich said (I am paraphrasing), "Looking now at Trouble in Paradise, or any of Lubitsch's Pre-Code pictures, you wonder, 'What happened? How were American audiences so sophisticated at that time? And what has happened since then?'" 

But, two days after Hitler invaded Poland, and on the same day England declared war on Germany, an English cruise line ship was torpedoed and sunk, the SS Athenia.  Lubitsch's ten-month old daughter, Nicola (and her nurse) were on board and were saved.  Ninotchka, Lubitsch's brilliant satire of Stalinist Russia and Communism was already in the can (Billy Wilder was one of the co-writers), and would be released the following month.  

Everyone at the time must have known that Lubitsch would push the envelope again, this time politically, in answer to Hitler and Nazi Germany.  And he did.

... to be continued ... 

Thin Mints for all the Socialist Heathen Moochers!

The Right Wing's War on Women has always included girls and gays, too:

Well, excellent.  That leaves a lot more for me then.  

And, now that The Boy Scouts of America are considering lifting their ban on gay scouts and scout leaders, we can be safe to conclude that the end-times are truly nigh.

Good grief.

Serious h/t to John Cole and Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice where I got the photo.

UGH!

Michael D Spitler

What can you say?

Really? What can you say? Once again a GOP candidate has come out and told us what they all really think.  Mourdock did the standard non-apology apology, and Mittens was disgusted, naturally. (Not disgusted enough to remove his ad for Mourdock in Indiana, though.)

And, then Sarah Palin starts talking jive on the friendface, today.

What the eff? And this OEE is close, really close, ...

Or, maybe not so much.  This will get you off the ledge, perhaps.  Some good news for today, at least.







Ardent