This 11-year-old boy, Sebastien De La Cruz, can really belt them out. Here he is singing the national anthem:
It’s an awful song, but De La Cruz can cope — I hope he’s getting some serious voice training.
But…do you want to hear how people reacted to “a beaner singing the national anthem”? No, you probably do not. There are so many proud and unabashed racists in this country.
The facts are that De La Cruz is a native American citizen and the son of an American Navy veteran. But he’s brown.
Are you a film crew person looking for work in the UK? Multiple opportunities have opened up for the crew for a documentary!
A new Covent Garden-based film company seeks a producer of marketing and distribution, a researcher/presenter, a camera operator, a sound person, a runner, and an editor, for its first documentary, called Laughing with Women. Why are women, on average, slightly less funny than men? Does gold-digging in particular impair women’s joke-making ability? If women publicly reject gold-digging, do they become as funny, or funnier than men?
If the radical and revealing street-based social experiment at the centre of our documentary proves gold-digging does make women less funny (as pre-production research suggests) then our findings will make headlines around the world, our film’s two minute teaser trailer attached to all those news and blog articles. The full documentary will be shot to a broadcast-quality standard and format, giving mainstream television companies worldwide the opportunity to purchase broadcasting rights (if they’re feeling brave enough) whilst we maintain a virtually guaranteed revenue stream from our already established hardcore of supporters and fans around the world, who, along with everyone else we intrigue, will be able to enjoy Laughing with Women on newly launched pay-per-view channel, Vimeo on Demand (VoD) – where VoD itself takes a very modest 10% cut. The documentary has the potential to be translated into several languages – gold-digging a familiar if hidden story in every country, until now.
Positions available…
Producer of marketing and distribution
Researcher/presenter
Camera person
Sound person
Editor
All positions paid at the minimum national wage or above, to be negotiated.
Shooting dates…
The main shoot, testing the documentary’s key hypothesis, and the kind of fireworks it will generate, will take place from August 1st, for 10 days, in central London. Eight to ten other shooting days will be organized for soon after. If interested in getting involved, please email your show-reel and/or CV, along with a paragraph or two saying hello, explaining in a little detail why you are specifically interested in working on Laughing with Women – and what your individual take on it all might be – also outlining your availability. Interesting respondents will be contacted for a Covent Garden meeting soon, where the whole plan, and a closely linked follow-up project can be discussed.
That isn’t a documentary. They’re not building a story around an established science fact, they’re inventing a premise that they simply assume is true, and are then designing an “experiment” (more likely a contrived set of sight gags) to “prove” their claims on video. I can roughly predict what they’re going to do: they’re going to approach women, insult them by suggesting that they’re venal gold-diggers, and then demonstrate that angry women don’t have much of a sense of humor about sexist assmonkeys harassing them. Hypothesis proven! Of course, if women were actually funnier than the men in their sample, you know that wouldn’t get aired — they have a prejudice, and by god, they’re going to make it appear true.
And then they hope that people will be “brave enough” to make their video go viral when it confirms conventional bigotry. If their little dog-and-pony show doesn’t get picked up any broadcasters, it isn’t because they’re afraid to pander to stereotypes — turn on your TV and look, that’s never a problem — but because this “documentary” will be so patently slanted and dishonest that it is a slap in the face to real documentaries everywhere.
Wait a minute…they’re looking for a people to do camera and sound, a produce, a presenter, and an editor, for a show that is going to be a series of confrontations and requires almost no writing. So there is basically no crew at all right now, just a no-talent hack sitting on his ass in his office dreaming of putting together a show to prove to the world that women lack a sense of humor and are all gold-digging bitches. He sounds like every MRA in the world.
I called it. This is the dream of no-talent hack Tom Martin, who brings nothing to the project other than a resentment of women.
Anyone else remember when Rush Limbaugh called President Clinton’s daughter Chelsea a dog? It wasn’t just petty and cruel, but it was an attack on a child, and it was disgusting. It was symptomatic of the derangement of the right wing that people actually laughed and defended it.
Now Bill Maher is laughing at Sarah Palin’s Down syndrome child. It’s the same thing.
Futrell didn’t think he’d hear the HBO personality mock former Gov. Sarah Palin’s special needs child or hear the crowd laugh right along.
Futrell, a former Las Vegas sports broadcaster and Breitbart News contributor, says on his blog that Maher used the term "retarded" to describe young Trig Palin during the comedy performance.
The one thing I can respect about Palin, that she seems to treat all of her children equally, is a joke to Maher. Thanks, guy, for being such an awful, ghastly, horrible liberal, and for lowering yourself to mocking the children of your political opponents.
(via Joe.My.God)
Yet another Republican has once again argued that the trauma of rape makes women infertile: Trent Franks of Arizona claimed “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are [sic] very low.” He’s just one more in a long line of thugs spouting pseudoscientific lies.
“In the aftermath of Akin’s statement, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a 1972 essay by an obstetrician named Fred Mecklenburg, who cited a Nazi experiment in which women were told they were on their way to die in the gas chambers—and then were allowed to live, so that doctors could check whether they would still ovulate. Since few did, Mecklenburg claimed that women exposed to the emotional trauma of rape wouldn’t be able to become pregnant, either. (He also argued that rapists are infertile because they masturbate a lot.) The essay was published in a book financed by A.U.L.”
A.U.L. is Americans United for Life, a pro-life advocacy group with increasing clout because of its success in drafting model state laws to restrict abortion. The line from the Nazis to Mecklenberg to Akin and Frank runs through Jack Wilke, a doctor who is the former head of the National Right to Life Committee. He said, "What is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that’s physical trauma." And he stuck with this when the Los Angeles Times called to ask him about Akin last year. When I asked A.U.L. head Charmaine Yoest about the claim that rape rarely results in pregnancy, she was smarter and called it “a distraction.” Abortion opponents sure do keep bringing it up, though.
Right, the “argument from hideously unethical evil Nazi experiment” is just what I’d expect Republicans to do.
Colin McGinn may be pompous and privileged, but he also writes philosophy papers. Philosophy papers that get reviewed. Philosophy papers that get scathingly hilarious reviews (pdf). An excerpt from Strohminger, in Emotion Review:
Another property of McGinn’s text, of which potential readers should be aware, is its unintentional hilarity. The humor derives less from the unblushing content than from the unblushing purpleness of his prose. Of the male genitalia, McGinn writes: “Life and death coexist in complex and subtle ways in the penis and testicles, telling a story of triumph and tragedy.” On feces: “I have no wish to romanticize the turd.” Pubic hair is referred to as “nature’s furry bounty.” Semen is a “pointless sticky daub once it is spilled on the ground, only to be consumed there by unfussy insects or whatever.” Or whatever. Unfussy cavemen, perhaps.
In pursuit of a grand unifying theory, Freud saw phalluses everywhere; McGinn sees only crap. Snakes, being dun-colored and slithery, are deemed unmistakably poop-like. The brain “resembles nothing so much as a mound of dung”, a proclamation that forces us to ask whether McGinn has ever actually seen a brain. “The rectum is a grave [obviously!]… but is the grave also a rectum, with corpses featuring as large turds?” These are the questions McGinn is not afraid to ask, not that the answers could be anything other than nonsense.
I almost want to read the original paper, except that it’s 200 pages long.
Pretentious philosophers, here’s another reason not to abuse your graduate students, besides the obvious one of basic human decency: it encourages deeper scrutiny of your work.
How many more stupid tragedies will it take?
Authorities in northern Arizona say a 4-year-old boy has accidentally shot and killed his father at a Prescott Valley home.
Prescott Valley police say the shooting occurred just after noon Friday.
The 35-year-old man and his young son were visiting from Phoenix and were at a friend’s house.
Police say the boy somehow found a gun in the home’s living room and accidentally fired it and a bullet hit his father, who was rushed to a hospital where he died.
“Somehow” found a loaded gun lying about in the living room, in a place where a child can find it. “Somehow”. Maybe the gun fairy dropped it there, or perhaps Jesus miraculously poofed it into place.
Is the “friend” facing criminal negligence charges? Or is this just part of the freedom of owning guns?
I can’t believe…YOU CAN DO WHAT IN TEXAS? Jesus Fuck, but it’s time for a national intervention in that goddamn state. Redirect the drones from Afghanistan to this bloated tumor in our own country now, or if that’s politically untenable, rip out their rotten political core and replace it with something decent.
Decent Texans are bowing their heads in shame right now. Or planning to move.
I have received a dreadful rebuke. A user on reddit has announced that I have driven him to become an MRA.
against atheism+ which is largely a feminist ridden anti-male/mensrights movement, hiding behind the guise of atheism.
like PZ myers, a popular atheist/science blogger who is probably responsible for my becoming an mra. i had been following his blog, because it seemed pretty reasonable. posts like burning a dawkins’ book along with the koran/bible to show that it’s not something to take so seriously.
however, one day i saw him posting about feminism, i thought "women’s rights, nothing wrong with that"
then he said something along the lines of "if you are a man, you aren’t even ALLOWED to talk about sexual equality." and i lost all respect for him. just because i’m male doesn’t mean i can’t understand anything, or that i shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion.
timewarp to the future, he is a popular voice in the "atheism+" movement, which is as i said, pretty feminist/anti-male.
I said what?
All right, I want you all to bow down in gratitude and thank me profusely because I have single-handedly driven yet another fool away from our brand of atheism. You are welcome. You can send checks directly to me, or you can find my paypal account.
Recent surveys have shown that 4 out of 10 American households are headed by a woman. Wanna watch four pampered men lose their shit over this fact? Here you go.
Juan Williams is angry — having women as the primary breadwinner heralds the disintegration of the family and something is terribly wrong with the country!
Professional Racist Lou Dobbs chimes in with some non-sequitur about abortions. Women are working and not having babies! Alert the police! Catastrophe and disaster! The social order is being undermined!
Oh, but smug jerk Erick Erickson takes the cake.
I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science, but this is liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complimentary role.
We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complimentary relationships in nuclear families, and it is tearing us apart.
WTF?
I’m used to conservatives mangling science and telling us that their lies are true, and Erickson does not disappoint. Listening to that I turned purple and tried to blurt out four sentences simultaneously, and then my larynx exploded and my brains geysered out my ears.
It’s not true! Many species exhibit different patterns of dominance, and some have no system of dominance at all. It’s quite common for females to be larger than males, for instance. Erickson is claiming that something common in primates is a universal.
NATURALISTIC FALLACY, ASSHOLE!
You don’t get to spend your pundit career blithering about human (and American) exceptionalism and then turn around when it’s convenient to your argument to point to some monkey over there and say, “See? That’s the natural order!”
Erick Erickson is one hella confused dingleberry. Why does anyone listen to a biblical literalist pontificating about science?
Here’s the deal, Fox News. The world is changing. It’s not getting worse, it’s getting different, and I know that’s the kind of thing that makes bitter, cranky old conservatives weep into their scotch and water, but deal with it. Besides, you’ll be dead soon and won’t care any more.
And it’s not just getting different, it’s getting better — those women in the workforce are more independent, more free, and living more fulfilling lives that matter. Welcome it. And hey, how about getting off your privileged butts and making sure that they get paid the same as men, so those families and children you’re so fucking concerned about can get by?
Big fangs, horns, a hideous face, wielding brutal instruments of torture? Or maybe something sleek and military that can explode in a gout of flame? Sure, those are evil all right, but real evil can be distilled down to something as simple as a lawyer signing a piece of paper, a doctor averting their eyes, a citizen ignoring an act of inhumanity because the victim isn’t worthy…or an entire nation so soaked in godly lies that they will let a young woman die to protect their sanctimony.
I wrote about Beatriz’s case in El Salvador before. She’s 22, she’s very sick, and she’s pregnant with an anencephalic fetus. The fetus is doomed and can never live outside the womb, but the pregnancy is worsening Beatriz’s condition, and could kill her, too. The solution is simple: an abortion would give Beatriz a chance.
But no, El Salvador has an absolutist law on the books that completely outlaws all abortions, no exceptions, not even to save the life of the mother. It is a very Catholic country — yet again, religion poisons everything. This is a law very much like what the far right pecksniffs in the US would like to impose on us, and it’s operating effectively in El Salvador.
Beatriz’s only hope was that the El Salvador Supreme Court would see the light of reason and make a rational exception. They didn’t. They condemned her to die.
That’s what pure evil looks like. It’s a bureaucrat hearing the pleas of a dying woman and turning their back on her to worship the letter of the law. It’s a whole nation with their heads stuffed up their asses as an act of piety. It’s symbolized by this man, with his rituals and rites and his bullshit theology.
That’s the face of evil, neatly coiffed, smiling, seemingly benign. People are petitioning the Pope to save Beatriz’s life, and I find that offensive as well. By what goddamned right does this foolish old man have the power of life and death over anyone? Shouldn’t everyone have autonomy and a right to live?
That’s evil too, that we accept that some people have the power to inflict death and destruction, directly or indirectly, on others.
