Happy 4th & About Nashville's Fireworks Celebration

Nashville's 4th of July celebration is, as usual, downtown at Riverfront Park. The fireworks start at 9:03pm (bridges close at 7:30pm!).

Not that I have anything against things that look and sound like bombs bursting in the air, but I'll be staying home and hiding under the desk with the family pets.

Wynonna will be there, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Nashville Symphony.

Road and bridges that will be closed info is here (pdf).

Nashville Fourth of July Tennessee News

The Sicko Attacks on Sarah Palin's Baby

If the price of breaking into male dominated politics is that women must endure sicko attacks on their children, even babies, I’m guessing we won’t be making much progress until women stop having children.

People who make these attacks excuse them with the absurd claim that it's okay to trash children when politicos bring their kids out on the national stage. According to this sick theory, appearing with your children during a political campaign makes your children fair game. Maybe that only applies if you are a woman.

In her resignation speech, Sarah Palin referred to the attacks on her special needs baby. Anderson Cooper says he hasn't heard of any such attacks. So maybe Sarah is making it up?

The latest attacks include gross photo-shops of baby Trig, begun by a "progressive" Alaskan blogger (Linda Biegel) and carried forward by blogs like Wonkette. More recently is a story at Huffington Post that calls Trig "retarded" (scroll down for screenshots of the sicko attacks, this is not HuffPost!.)

I thought we stopped abusing children with names like "retarded" back in the 1970s.

Feminist Politics Gender News Sarah Palin Patriarchy Equal Representation for Women

Palin's Resignation: Political Masterstroke Or Extreme Mental Instability of a Castrating Bitch?

If you pegged Josh Marshall as a believer in the latter, you've been paying attention. The good news is that unlike the Huffington Post, Marshall doesn't call Palin's baby retarded (scroll down for screenshots of attacks on Trigg).

Josh Marshall:

As David noted below, many commentators have taken little more than an hour to proceed from slack-jawed bewilderment to belief that Sarah Palin's unexplained resignation may be a political masterstroke. .

Palin insiders told Andrew [sic] Mitchell that Palin was "out of politics for good." But she told the Executive Director of the Republican Governors Association that she's resigning to campaign for more candidates in the continental US, work on her book, all with an eye to gearing up for her run for president in 2012. Call me cynical but it seems hard to reconcile those two explanations. . .

Either Palin is resigning ahead of some titanic scandal (which should emerge in short order if it exists) or her resignation was triggered by an even more extreme mental instability than we'd previously suspected.

This from the man who once suggested that Hillary was a castrating bitch out to "geld" her chief campaign strategist.

Geld, v. -- To castrate; to emasculate
To cut off the testicles, to castrate a male


Photo: June 30, 2009, AP

Runner's World

Feminist Politics Gender News Sarah Palin Alaska

Breaking: Governor Sarah Palin Will Resign!

Update: CNN has changed the story. Now they are reporting that Governor Sarah Palin is about to resign!

Update #2: Gov. Sarah Palin announced that she will resign her office in a few weeks. This appears to rule out the possibility of her running for president. I mean quitting your job as governor is not exactly the usual route to the White House. Yeah, I know, there is nothing usual about Sarah Palin. I wonder if something else is behind this decision. Scandal coming? Or problems in the family that she would prefer to keep private? No doubt she's sick and tired of the relentless misogyny and vulture media attacks on her family -- the tried and true method of keeping women out of politics.


CNN is reporting, as I write, that Sarah Palin will announce today that she will Not run for a second term as Alaska's governor.

It sounds like the Governor is planning to give the GOP dull boyz some competition for the 2012 nomination. That's assuming there are any GOP boyz left standing free from the stigma of a sex scandal by 2012.

I don't know how Sarah Palin can take the tsunami of misogyny that is surely coming, but if anyone can, she can.

Feminist Politics Gender News Sarah Palin Patriarchy

Nellie McKay: Feminists Don't Have a Sense of Humor (Video)

Yet more creative resistance. . .


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Kristen Schaal on the Burka Ban (Video)

Feminist Politics Gender News Jon Stewart Patriarchy

Debbie Rowe to Fight for Custody of Paris & Michael Jackson Jr.

The media gets its wish. The Michael Jackson story is set to go on for years.

TMZ: Debbie Rowe will fight for custody of Paris and Michael Jr., the children born during her marriage to Michael Jackson -- this, according to NBC 4 in Los Angeles.

According to the NBC 4 website, Rowe said during a 90-minute phone conversation, "I want my children."

Rowe says she will seek a restraining order to keep Joe Jackson away from the children.

Michael Jackson 1958-2009 News

Another Thing Michael Jackson Had in Common With Elvis

It appears that the investigation into Michael Jackson's death will lead to an investigation of doctors who give their wealthy patients any drug they desire. TMZ reports that one such drug - Propofol - likely "caused Jackson to go into cardiac arrest and die." Not because Michael was trying to get high, but because he was trying to get some sleep. After all the tortuous hate the media piled onto the man, I'm certain that sleep was a blessing.

Womb Envy Watch: Andrew Sullivan, OBY-GYN

Yeah, Andrew Sullivan, OBY-GYN extraordinare, is still ranting about Sarah Palin's pregnancy (of 2008). The fear and jealousy of women's power to give birth and nurture life is clearly driving Sully crazy. Why the woman didn't give birth under his direction is one of the unsolved mysteries of Sully's bizarre womb-envious universe.

The rabid loudmouth carries on with his one-lunatic campaign to try and convict Sarah Palin of the crime of giving birth without him. Hating Sarah appears to be even more gratifying for Sully than hating Hillary. Gawd only knows the depth of the man's hatred for his mother!

Palin could have gone to a major hospital in Anchorage and delivered the child and still have Trig as an Alaskan. But, no, she had to add an extra risk to her unborn child by ensuring her local hospital and family doctor could deliver the child - even if that extra 45 minutes (like the ten hours that preceded it) could have posed a deathly risk to a special needs infant, newborns who often need specialized care in delivery. It remains true that no one in the MSM will investigate the details of this truly bizarre story - and MSM journalists instead have devoted their efforts to demonizing any journalist who tries. . .

As I have said all along, I do not know what happened and the benefit of the doubt should go to Palin in the absence of actual journalism being committed. But the more her pregnancy with Trig becomes a campaign platform, a serious inquiry into exactly what happened in those few surreal days - days and decisions that she has made public and that reflect vital questions about her character and judgment - remains on the shelf of media deference. And the key witnesses who could verify it all - Palin herself, her husband, her doctor - still refuse to even take questions on the most bizarre series of events in Palin's entire life.

Sully on Sarah Or Hillary?

The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity, the white trash concupiscence and fraudulence in almost every respect: these are now indisputable. How an advanced democracy came that close to having this farce of a candidate running the most powerful country on earth reveals how deep the corruption of our politics and especially our media are.

Misogyny Feminist Politics Gender Sexism News Patriarchy Sarah Palin

Mark Sanford's Campaign Ad (Video)

Sex Scandal Politics Gender Family Values News South Carolina GOP

Sexism Watch: Graffiti As Resistance

Women or Objects?

via Sociological Images

Feminist Politics Gender News Patriarchy Misogyny

Mark Sanford: There Were More Women

Mark Sanford can't stop talking about his sex life. First he confessed to seeing Maria in Argentina (and overnight in New York) more times than he admitted in his original public confession.

Now the sex obsessed Republican Governor of South Carolina teases us with stories about more women:

He said that during the encounters with other women he "let his guard down" with some physical contact but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail.

During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife.

Stay tuned. The Governor will surely tell us more tomorrow.

Feminist Politics Gender Sex Scandal News South Carolina GOP

Fear of Women in the White House

Politico's Jeremy Mayer is all in a tither about the ambition of First Wives. Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, and now Michelle Obama just won't quit acting like women who have something to offer other than the traditional uncompensated wifely labor.

Why won't the wives stay in the bedroom?

Queen Michelle the First?:

Washington insiders haven’t seen a first lady this ambitious since Hillary Clinton, without question the most powerful holder of that unofficial office.

Clinton put herself in charge of her husband’s plans to radically reform health care, and the nation is still paying the price for her mistakes.

Bullshit, the nation is still paying the price for not listening to Hillary.

Feminist Politics Gender News Patriarchy

New Book to Reveal Sex Tape & Lies From John Edwards

Gawd. Was John Edwards stupid enough to make a sex tape with Rielle Hunter?

So says his former aide Andrew Young, who is writing a tell-all book.

Andrew Young also says that John Edwards promised to take care of him for life if only Young would lie and claim that he, not Edwards, was the father of Rielle Hunter's baby.

So there's still some humiliation left to drag Elizabeth through.

How long before the National Enquirer posts that sex tape at Youtube?

Pity the fools who supported and voted for John Edwards. Pity Elizabeth.

John Edwards Politics Gender Sex Scandal News

Sweaty Sexist of the Day: Vanity Fair's Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin

In an objectifying hit piece entitled: "It Came from Wasilla" -- one can almost feel Vanity Fair's sweaty Todd S. Purdum smacking his lips and salivating as he opines:

[Sarah Palin] is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs.

Fertile female? Dancing with the dogs? Congrats to sweaty Todd S. Purdum for finding a novel way to call a woman a bitch. A bitch in heat, no less.

Todd S. Purdum's old school sexism includes a concern about women and ambition that has also been with us throughout the ages:

[N]o political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than [Sarah Palin's] own ambition.

While the Republican agenda always leaves me cold, I owe a profound debt to Sarah Palin for bringing so many loathsome sexists out in the open.

More on Todd S. Purdum (who is currently the husband of Dee Dee Myers):
Bill Clinton: Purdum a "Sleazy" "Slimy" "Scumbag"
Bill Clinton Fights Back Against Brutal Vanity Fair Article

Feminist Politics Gender Sexism News Patriarchy Sarah Palin

Sotomayor on Sex Discrimination

Quote of the Day

"I found in my experiences that it's not that men are consciously discriminating against promoting women, but I do believe as people we have self-images about what's good. And if you're a male who grew up professionally in a male-dominated profession then your image of what a good lawyer is is a male image."

Sonia Sotomayor,
ABC's Good Morning America,1986

Feminist Politics Gender News Patriarchy

40 Years After Stonewall - Police Brutality at Gay Bar in Texas

FORT WORTH, TEXAS — In the photo to the left, about 150 to 200 people protest police brutality and old fashioned bigotry and harassment of gays by the manly Fort Worth Police Department. Police raided a gay bar and put one man in the intensive care unit. The raid was staged on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion.


Seven people were arrested and one - Chad Gibson - "is in in the intensive care unit at Fort Worth’s JPS Hospital with bleeding in his brain after officers threw him to the ground and used zip-ties to handcuff him."

The Bilerico Project writes:

Witnesses say the police showed up with a paddy wagon and began to roughly arrest men, focusing mainly on "effeminate men."

One bar patron, Chad Gibson, is in a local hospital with a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage after being "choked, pulled back, then slammed into a wall" by police during the raid. Police say he was resisting arrest and made "sexual advances to officers", a claim witnesses dismiss as outright lies. They say Gibson, who weighed "maybe 160 pounds soaking wet", did not resist and merely stumbled when police grabbed him by the arm.


"After more than a generation of progress, this action shows that there is still much work to be done to ensure that all Americans enjoy 'equal protection under the law.' It is tragic that lesbian and gay taxpayers are still abused by the very people who are paid by our taxes."

Joel Burns, Fort Worth city councilman,
Tarrant County's first openly gay elected official

Gay/Lesbian Politics Gender News Texas Stonewall

Feminist Film of the Day: Colette's Cheri (Trailer)

Cheri is about a romance between a pampered and weak young man and a strong and wise older woman. Starring Michelle Pfieffer, Kathy Bates and Rupert Friend, the women-centric film is in theaters now. Set in 1920s Paris, the film is based on novels (Cheri and The Last of Cheri) by French author Colette.


Chéri, the novel by Colette tells a story of the end of a six-year affair between an aging retired courtesan, Léa, and a pampered young man, Chéri. Turning stereotypes upside-down, it is Chéri who wears silk pajamas and Léa's pearls, and who is the object of gaze. And in the end Léa demonstrates all the survival skills which Colette associates with femininity. (The story continued in The Last of Chéri (1926), which contrasts Léa's strength and Chéri's fragility and decline).

Feminist Politics Gender News Patriarchy Women Centric Films

Bushism on Steroids: Obama Drafts Executive Order for Indefinite Detention

How long before we call him King Obama? As Rachel Maddow points out in the video clip below, Obama condemns all things Bush in one breath and strives to emulate Bush in the next.

The Obama Administration is drafting an executive order that would give President Obama the power of indefinite detention:

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war.

Obama's latest scheme is "one of the most radical proposals for defying the Constitution that we have ever heard made to the American people," says Rachel Maddow.


Glen Greenwald warns: "There has now emerged a very clear -- and very disturbing -- pattern whereby Obama is willing to use legal mechanisms and recognize the authority of other branches only if he's assured that he'll get the outcome he wants. If he can't get what he wants from those processes, he'll just assert Bush-like unilateral powers to bypass those processes and do what he wants anyway."

". . . [A]s I've written many times, the area in which Obama is replicating Bush abuses most egregiously is his embrace of Bush's secrecy obsessions. Jon Stewart last night had much to say on that topic. That Obama is adopting approaches similar to Bush's in these areas is a view that is obviously spreading -- even among Obama supporters -- and is becoming increasingly difficult to deny."

TPM: "the latest installment in the Obama administration's tendency to mimic the Bushies on war on terror tactics."

And from Big Tent Dem: "What Obama is reported to be contemplating is simply outrageous and unacceptable. It is Bushism on steroids. It would be unconstitutional. It would be struck down by the Supreme Court."

Bush Politics News Obama Hypocrisy

The Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of Cable (MSNBC) News (Video)

The MSNBC media boyz are squabbling again. Joe Scarborough defends his Family Values friend Mark Sanford by taking a low shot at his MSNBC colleagues -- presumably Olbermann and Schulz. Scarborough seems to suggest that he has some dirt on the cable news boyz. I wonder if revealing e-mails will soon be released.

And some of these people judging last night, you know, you could call them the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of cable news. I would not be making judgements were I these people.


Family Values Politics Joe Scarborough News South Carolina Media MSNBC

Sanford Asked His Wife for Permission to Visit His Argentinean Lover

So when Jenny Sanford first discovered that Governor Sanford was a liar and a cheater, it wasn't because the Family Values Governor was sorry and decided to do the honorable thing and fess up.

It was because Jenny Sanford found a letter that her cheatin' husband wrote to his lover in Argentina. Maybe that was the letter which first revealed that the Governor has a thing for Argentinean tan lines and hips.

In a recent interview, Jenny Sanford says that when she asked her husband to move out, he pestered her for permission to see his lover.

"I said absolutely not. It's one thing to forgive adultery; it's another thing to condone it."

When permission was denied, the Hypocritical Family Values Governor responded by booking a ten day junket to Argentina. Jenny Sanford says she was shocked to discover that her hypocritical husband ran off to Argentina to be with his paramour, María Belén Chapur. And now the New York Times reports that it was likely an old boyfriend of Ms. Chapur's who hacked into her e-mail account and sent the revealing e-mails to the media.

Sanford is so sorry, so sorry he got caught.


(AP) South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says she discovered her husband's affair in January when she found a letter to the governor from his mistress. Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press on Friday she told him to end the affair and was shocked this week when she found out he'd gone to Argentina to see his mistress. She says she believed Gov. Mark Sanford had gone somewhere to work on writing a book.

She wept as she displayed her boys' stellar report cards and said she most worries about how they're being affected by the scandal. Jenny Sanford says she plans to take them out of the state for the weekend. Meanwhile, Sanford was back at work today, telling his state agency chiefs that he's sorry for keeping them in the dark when he went to see Argentina to see his mistress.

"Just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis."

--Jon Stewart

Family Values Politics Gender News South Carolina Argentina Sex Scandal

Elizabeth Taylor: 'I Loved Michael With All My Soul'

"My heart…my mind… are broken. I loved Michael with all my soul and I can’t imagine life without him. We had so much in common and we had such loving fun together. I was packing up my clothes to go to London for his opening when I heard the news. I still can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. It can’t be so. He will live in my heart forever but it’s not enough. My life feels so empty. I don’t think anyone knew how much we loved each other. The purest most giving love I’ve ever known. Oh God! I’m going to miss him. I can’t yet imagine life with out him. But I guess with God’s help... I’ll learn. I keep looking at the photo he gave me of himself, which says, 'To my true love Elizabeth, I love you forever.' And, I will love HIM forever."

-- Elizabeth Taylor

Michael Jackson 1958-2009 News USA Today

Fox News Mocks Sen. Boxer For Asking to Be Called Senator (Video)

Generals can learn how to address Senators, even if they are women. You wouldn't expect Fox News to get it, but the woman anchor almost gets it.


Feminist Politics Gender News

Supreme Court Rules Strip Searching Students IS Unconstitutional (Video)

The ACLU reports that the Supreme Court did something right. All the men on the High Court, except for Clarence Thomas, listened to Justice Ginsberg, and at long last, Savana Redding has been vindicated.

Justice Souter wrote that the drugs in question - Ibuprofen! - did not justify an “embarrassing, frightening and humiliating search.” School officials ordered then 13-year-old Savana Redding "to strip to her bra and underpants and to pull them away from her body, exposing her breasts and pelvic area." This is the kind of crap that makes parents home-school their kids!

The Court ruled - 8 to 1 - that the strip search violated the 13-year-old girl's constitutional rights. The ACLU is calling this the biggest win for students' rights in 20 years, and it's because Savana Redding had the courage and patience to pursue justice. Today, Savana is a 19-year-old college student.



WaPo: The court's virtual unanimity was in contrast to the intense oral argument that seemed to exasperate the court's only female member, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She later said her male colleagues seemed not to appreciate the trauma such a search would have on a developing adolescent.

"They have never been a 13-year-old girl," she told USA Today when asked about her colleagues' comments during the arguments. "It's a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn't think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood."

But yesterday's opinion recognized just that.

Feminist Politics Gender News SCOTUS Savana Redding

R.I.P. Farrah Fawcett (Video)

R.I.P. Michael Jackson (Video)

Buenos Airhead: Is Mark Sanford on Viagra?

Oh for the days when we thought our leaders were better than this. In these cynical times, it seems the best we can hope for is that our invariably male 'leaders' are at least good for some laughs.

Speaking of jeering laughter, since the year Viagra came on the market (1996), old white male leaders caught in sex scandals have pretty well become the routine news of the day.

New York Daily News has the Headline of the Day: Buenos Airhead

And The New York Post has the runner-up: Runaway Gov: Cry for me, Argentina

Feminist Politics Gender News Patriarchy South Carolina Argentina Sex Scandal

Rihanna v. Chris Brown the Brute: Beating up a Girl Will Get You Probation (Video)

It's hard to believe that Chris Brown would have gotten off with probation if he'd beaten up anybody but a girl. Probation seems to be the standard punishment for beating up a girl. Despite the crazy rumors, it appears that Rihanna is smarter than people say -- she is no longer the girlfriend of a thuggish brute. That loss, along with the public shaming, is surely the harshest punishment of all for Chris Brown the Brute. In the video clip below, TMZ caught Chris Brown the Brute and Rihanna in the courtroom:


Chris Brown has pleaded guilty to the serious charge of felony assault against his one-time girlfriend Rihanna. The charges came after an altercation in February left Rihanna battered and bruised. While Brown will not serve any jail time, he has been assigned to six months of community service in his home state of Virginia. He will serve five years on supervised probation with quarterly California court visits and complete a domestic violence counseling program.

Brown has been ordered to stay at least 50 yards away from Rihanna at all times with the exception of music industry events they are both attending. At such times, her zone of privacy is limited to 10 yards.

Feminist Politics Gender News Patriarchy Rihanna Chris Brown Virginia Violence Against Women