I've already mentioned my concern about the messages the Twilight series sends to young girls -- i.e., that "true love" involves things like ignoring a man's history of extreme violence and warnings that he wants to hurt you in particular; accepting his frequent insults as expressions of concern for your well-being; and finding it romantic when he breaks into your bedroom to watch you sleep, among other things -- but I confess I'd never given any thought to the messages it might be sending to grown men. Like that teenaged girls would like you to bite them.
That's the message one Michigan guy took from it, anyway. At a Friday showing of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, he sat directly in front of Erin Westrate and her friends, and throughout the film, she says, he would occasionally "lean back and make a sexual comment that was very unnecessary and not needed." (Point of clarification: There is no such thing as a necessary sexual comment between a grown man and teenaged girls.) On the way out of the movie, "he grabbed [Westrate] by the back of the hair and pulled her down and bit her on the neck." Whether you're a high school student or a professional writer, I'm pretty sure the only appropriate response to that is, OMGWTF?
The bite didn't break Westrate's skin, but not surprisingly, the dude freaked her right out -- and that wasn't even the end of it. The man also followed her to the parking lot and watched her get in her car to drive away. In an interview with her local ABC affiliate (video below), Westrate said, "He was just, like, smiling at me -- it was so creepy, it wasn't even funny. That's not right. I know that's not right."
Police are now looking for the creep, who faces assault charges.
We thought Google was yanking us a few weeks ago when our search for "bad fathering" turned up some memorable results. (Fortunately, those results have since changed.)
But our minds really got blown when we heard about what happens when you do an image search for Michelle Obama.
Go ahead and try it. We'll wait.
Yes, the first image that pops up is of the first lady's face morphed with that of a monkey. Stay classy, Google!
The company's go-to excuse for the image – and anything else that might offend you – is on their explanation page: "We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google. Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query."
Meanwhile, when you go to the Google Blogger hosted 0hot-girls blog, where the image orginally appeared, you get a message from October 21 that reads in very English-as-second-language, "I am very sorry for this article, and that this is the program automatically issued a document from the article. Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful."
The monkey picture of Mrs. Obama is no longer there – the entry under her name is just a collection of seemingly random recent clips and photos. That appears to be par for the course for the site itself, which is full of trending YouTube clips and pictures of cars and celebrities. That's right, it's just a useless bot blog. Perhaps the fact that the 0hot-girls blog has ads to "Save Today on Jail Calls" and for the "JCBling Girls Club" gives some indication of their target demographic.
So there you have it. It's not Google's fault if a racist image of Michelle Obama turns up in an image search. It's not even the fault of the blog that ran it – after all, it's not much of a flesh and blood endeavor itself. It is however, as one among the hundreds of recent commentors aptly summed up, "just a ploy to get more hits for the site. And unfortunately, it's working."
Yet despite the near total lack of accountability for the whole rather sorry affair, the way that single image – one that at some point was created by a person -- has ignited attention, outrage, and a fair measure of racist attaboys has little to do with algorithms or optimization. What do you get when you combine random technology with a picture of an animal? An entirely human response.
The photo depicts Sen. Mary Landrieu with a wad of semen in her hair. A Photoshop whiz clearly took the accidental spunk-hawk Cameron Diaz sported in the 1998 rom-com "There's Something About Mary" and seamlessly added it to a photograph of the Louisiana senator. (Get it? They're both named Mary! Plus: Splooge on a woman's head? Comedy gold.) I would shrug off this photo-editing disaster as yet more evidence that the Internet is forever stuck in a pubertal phase, but -- dude -- the picture was published on Time.com. As in, Time magazine.
Time. Mag. Azine.
On November 19, the image was posted to The Page blog, which is written by Mark Halperin, and ran with the caption: "Senator Landrieu's latest position on proceeding on health care debate here." The link brings you to another page -- although still on The Page -- with a throw-away quote from Landrieu's spokesperson about having "no time-line on when she will make and announce her decision on the motion to proceed. " First off: Needlessly linking to another page on your own blog with a one-sentence quote that you easily could have included in the initial post is a surefire way to piss off readers (and ensure they will never again click on your links). Second: Astute readers will note that the quote and the photograph are entirely unrelated.
At some point, the URL for the post at issue began registering a "page not found" message. So did a post that Halperin published the following day featuring side-by-side photos of Landrieu and Diaz, minus the bodily fluids. (Way to class things up.) A cached version of the missing pages -- both of which include "theres-something-about-mary" in the URL -- can be found here and here. Also, on Saturday, The Page announced that the senator would "vote in favor of bringing health bill to the floor for debate" along with the headline, "Landrieu Says Yes," and that post is no longer showing up. I called and e-mailed Time late Tuesday to ask the when, why and how of the missing posts but a press representative declined to comment.
As Media Matters points out, this only adds to "a broader, sexist right-wing narrative that the U.S. Senator from Louisiana is, as Glenn Beck put it yesterday, 'a high-class prostitute' engaged in 'hookin'' -- all because she lobbied Senate leadership for expanded Medicaid funding for Louisiana in the Senate health care bill in what was characterized by the media as an exchange for her 'yea' vote to proceed with floor debate on the bill." Naturally, Rush Limbaugh also joined in, calling her "the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution."
So, fellas, you've already illustrated her with ejaculate in her hair and called her a prostitute -- what's next? I shudder to think.
Under legislation approved Monday night by Baltimore's city council, crisis pregnancy centers that do not offer referrals for abortion or birth control would be required to post signs saying as much. It seems like such a reasonable plea for transparency! After all, these types of centers are infamous for engaging in religiously- and politically-motivated deception of pregnant women -- and yet, if the city's mayor signs the measure, it will be the very first law of its kind in the U.S.
Time and again, we've written about how crisis pregnancy centers masquerade as legitimate healthcare facilities and target young, poor and minority women by offering free pregnancy tests and counseling. In reality, these centers, which are often staffed by unqualified volunteers, provide medical misinformation as a means of coercing women into going through with a pregnancy and, in some cases, to give the baby up for adoption (to a good Christian family, natch). Some clinics have been found to delay pregnancy test results so they can first subject patients to graphic anti-abortion imagery and propaganda.
This measure is bolstered by more than crisis pregnancy centers' well-established reputation nationwide: Last year, the NARAL Pro-Choice Fund sent staff members into 11 Maryland centers in particular to pose as potential patients and reported that "every CPC visited provided misleading or, in some cases completely false, information" about abortion and birth control." For good measure, the clinics also threw in "emotionally manipulative counseling" (for example, one worker told an investigator, "You need to come meet your baby before deciding what to do"). Worse yet, many clinics "purposefully schedule sonogram appointments two-three weeks after the initial appointment to ensure that there will be a heartbeat and that the pregnancy is larger than a grain of rice." (If you're short on outrage today, I highly recommend reading the report in its entirety.)
What makes these centers so pernicious is that they calculatedly project "an aura of medical authority," as the NARAL report puts it, when in reality they are largely "amateur-run." This measure aims to chip away at that facade. Frankly, the legislation could go much farther and actually require them to cop to the totality of their dishonesty -- these clinics should be happy they're getting off so easy.
What if you threw a protest and nobody came? Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry did just that in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the first stop on a planned 13-city tour in which Terry intends to inform people that the senate healthcare reform bill "will essentially fund abortions." According to the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, "A few reporters and photographers, Terry and two passersby were the whole rally. Terry's target, U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh and Bayh's entire staff inside the E. Ross Adair Federal Building, were no-shows." "
I'm really not qualified to speculate about what goes on in the minds of anti-choice protesters, but here are a few possible reasons why folks didn't show up for Terry's rally:
1) He's full of crap. As Tracy Clark-Flory wrote in Broadsheet last week, "The key details of the Senate bill are as follows: Both public and private plans are allowed to offer abortion coverage. It empowers consumers to use government subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortion, but requires that their premiums (and not federal funds) pay for the actual procedures. The Health and Human Services Secretary is charged with evaluating plans to ensure that taxpayers do not pay for abortions."
2) "Taxpayers shouldn't have to fund things they find morally repugnant" is always a weak argument, but it's especially weak right now. I mean, I could give you a list of a dozen things I'm appalled to fund indirectly with my taxes, but these days, do I really need to enumerate any beyond "war" and "other war"? Oh, hell, let's throw in executions, too. Because if you really want anyone to take your "taxes shouldn't fund murder" complaint seriously, we've got a whole lot of dead autonomous human beings to account for at both the federal and state levels before we even begin discussing fetal personhood.
3) Most disturbingly, he's threatening violence, and not even trying to be subtle about it.
"If the U.S. Senate passes this bill and they try and force Americans to pay for child-killing by abortion, they are sowing the seeds of violence in this country," Terry said from the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building.
"We fought a war over slavery, we fought a war over a tea tax. What do people think will happen if they try to force us to pay for murder?"
Um, those most fiercely opposed to murder will start... murdering? Even more than they already have? That sure seems to be what you're saying, there, buddy. And despite a revolting amount of support for the monsters who assassinate abortion providers, most mainstream anti-choicers are not on board with that. At least, not openly.
But please, Randall Terry, do carry on with your campaign to raise awareness about made-up issues. We at Broadsheet wish you every bit as much success as you've already had.
Women have a simple plan for responding to the unpopular new guidelines on breast cancer screenings: ignore them. A Gallup poll shows that 76 percent of women disagree with the recommendation that women hold off on mammograms until age 50, and a whopping 84 percent of those between age 35 and 49 intend to reject the advice entirely. Women are going to get their mammograms when they damn well please.
The telephone poll of 1,136 women suggests that the objection to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's guidelines arises from a mistrust of the panel's motivations. Seventy-six percent of women believe the decision was based on cost, not science. That's no surprise considering that the results were released amid a contentious debate about healthcare reform and that the recommendations have been poorly communicated to the public. As Cristine Russell writes in the Atlantic, the panel's intent may have been to deliver the message "that individualized, informed decision making should replace blanket guidelines for universal, routine mammography screening of women in their 40s" -- but it failed spectacularly on that front.
No matter your personal take on the new mammogram guidelines, one thing is certain: There is a critical lack of information on the topic. The Gallup poll found that 40 percent of women believe that a 40-year-old woman has a 20 to 50 percent chance of developing cancer over the next decade, when her actual risk is only 1.4 percent. Clearly, we need to strike a better balance between effective awareness-raising -- like pink ribbon campaigns -- and communicating nuanced medical fact.
It's Hard Being An Egalitarian
40 Years After Rossi, Mommies Propagate Prejudice
