“Mad Men” isn’t a documentary, is it?

I really don’t get it. Somehow, a pair of ads for Ford were ‘leaked’, and Ford (or rather, the ad agency representing Ford) has hastily apologized.

We deeply regret the publishing of posters that were distasteful and contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within WPP Group. These were never intended for paid publication and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the internet. This was the result of individuals acting without proper oversight and appropriate actions have been taken within the agency where they work to deal with the situation.

Here’s one of the ads.

silvio-berlusconi-ford-ad

So the car has a large trunk, and the selling point of the ad is that Silvio Berlusconi can haul around a trio of bound/gagged women in it? WHAT?. They were “never intended for paid publication”…but what were they intended for? I am totally baffled. Was Ford contemplating an ad campaign to market this specific car to bondage fanatics and serial killers?

None of this makes sense. It should have been killed when someone first sketched it out in pencil…yet there they are, two professionally done, well polished images. I’m trying to imagine under what conditions this misbegotten mess would be considered a viable example of a serious campaign to sell a mass-market vehicle, and totally failing.

So…has the agency been dismissed for flaming stupidity and gross incompetence yet?

War on Easter?

I’ve been slacking. I haven’t been fighting the War on Easter with the fervor I should. Bill O’Reilly has identified our open hostility to Easter already.

Gosh, I didn’t realize that our assault on Easter was a linchpin of our plan to get abortion on demand and free drugs, or I would have engaged in the battle earlier.

I was also amused by O’Reilly’s statement that “Easter is a good holiday, you don’t have to believe in Jesus…” Does he realize that that is a wonderfully secular statement?

Hooray! We’ve already won! Check your mailboxes for your free packages of cocaine and marijuana!

(via Kick!)

Adria Richards did everything exactly right

We keep talking about making appropriate responses to sexism — not just those of us who are strongly pro-feminism, but even the regressive thugs on the other side will say that, although we’ll argue about what level of response is appropriate. But this is where I lose patience every goddamned time: apparently no response other than silence and submission is acceptable.

We’ve all seen how “guys, don’t do that” was turned into cause for outrage. Here’s another instance: Adria Richards was at a tech conference when, during a presentation that was about women coders no less, a couple of guys behind her started cracking suggestive jokes.

The guys were clearly in the wrong. They were being rude, distracting, and trying to assert their dudely privilege in one of the few moments granted women during a conference dominated by men. So Richards turned, snapped their picture, and tweeted it to the conference organizers, asking them to handle it.

This was a measured response. It wasn’t a blast of anger, it was a request that the conference enforce its code of conduct. It disrupted the meeting less than a couple of chattering smart-asses did. This is exactly what we should want people to do: polite confrontation through appropriate channels.

The conference organizers also did exactly what they were supposed to do: they called the two men aside and asked them to stop and behave themselves.

I assume the two men also reacted appropriately. There are no tales of angry shouting or rejection of the admonishment. I charitably presume that they were chagrined and a little embarrassed, nothing more.

This should have been the end of it: a happy story of a minor breach of manners handled by grown-ups who moved on to do their jobs professionally. Lessons learned all around; don’t disparage or harass minorities (women were only 20% of the attendees), trust the organizers to manage hiccups smoothly, deal with problems through official channels. Except you know more happened or it wouldn’t be news.

A whole bunch of otherwise uninvolved people completely lost their shit. This is ridiculous.

But instead, the internet decided to throw one epic fucking tantrum. First, one of the men pictured in Richards’s photographs was fired from his job (his company was one of the sponsors of PyCon). Richards did not call for him to be fired, nor did she celebrate the decision, according to this post. Nonetheless, Richards’s company SendGrid—NOT the company that fired the dude—was subject to a DDoS attack courtesy of 4chan (their express purpose was to “ruin her life”). She’s also been subjected to the usual avalanche of violent harassment and rape threats that descends upon any woman who dares to criticize male-dominated tech culture (see: Sarkeesian, Anita; also everything else ever). Sidenote to tech dudes: GET A FUCKING GRIP.

SendGrid subsequently fired Richards.

Firing one of the men over a brief incident of inappropriate behavior: totally inappropriate and excessive. That would only be reasonable if there were far more severe breaches of courtesy.

4chan getting involved: disgraceful. Launching a denial of service attack against Richards’ employer: what the fuck is wrong with these people?

Worse: Richards’ employer, SendGrid, caving in to extortion and firing her. I hope she’s considering legal action. That was incredibly craven.

Worser, appallingly disgusting: the violent reaction by some assholes.

Richards has been called practically every name under the sun. Some Twitter commenters demanded she kill herself. A 4chan user allegedly released Richards’s personal information. But few reactions were more disturbing than this one, sent to her Wednesday evening: a photo (blurred but still NSFW) of a bloody, beheaded woman, bound and stripped, with the caption “when Im done.” Next to it was a home address and phone number, ostensibly Richards’s.

And of course the usual slymepitters are crowing over all this on twitter, taunting via the #ftbullies and #wiscfi hashtags, as they always do. This is the kind of behavior they love to applaud.

This is the heart of the problem. We can build all the protocols for reasonable responses we want; women like Adria Richards can use them; responsible people can implement appropriate reactions.

And then, beneath it all, lies the festering sewer of rape culture that rises in rage at any damned uppity woman who dares to speak out against our very own homegrown Taliban.

And one last bit of insult: the conference organizers retroactively revised their code of conduct to exclude public shaming.

Public shaming can be counter-productive to building a strong community. PyCon does not condone nor participate in such actions out of respect.

Cowards. Just remember, ladies, decorum must be maintained, and the proper young woman will be meek and silent in the face of offense. The men can’t build a strong community if women keep speaking out publicly.

I wonder how many women will now think twice before complaining about asshole behavior at their job or at a meeting? If they’re inhibited, congratulations, scumbags: you got what you wanted. On the other hand, maybe we’ll finally reach a critical mass of outrage, and the next time some dudebro starts with the sexist shit at a conference, a dozen people, men and women alike, will rise up and tell him to grow up or get out.

I know I’m even less inclined to let casual smears slide now. I hope you feel the same way.

What about Richard Littlejohn?

Everyone is talking about Lucy Meadows. Who was she? Just some schoolteacher in the UK. But Richard Littlejohn: he’s a big name. He publishes books and columns and gets his words spread all over the country.

Lucy Meadows was ignored by policy makers…but Richard Littlejohn has clout. We should pay close attention to Richard Littlejohn.

Lucy Meadows was a transexual. Richard Littlejohn was proudly and flamboyantly cis and heterosexual! He has spent years reinforcing his dominant sexual status by railing against poofters, dykes, and buggers. It’s one of his obsessions. Did Lucy Meadows ever have a public forum in which she could suck up to the expectations of a patriarchal society? No!

Lucy Meadows, after all the torment, finally killed herself. Well, we don’t have to worry about her anymore. But notice: Richard Littlejohn is still loudly alive! In fact, his employer, the Daily Mail, has been so friendly and protective that they went into the archives and helpfully deleted all of his past columns in which Richard Littlejohn abused and threatened Lucy Meadows for her crime of identifying as a woman.

So I ask…what about Richard Littlejohn?

More specifically, I’d ask the UK media: do you still hire Richard Littlejohn?

Why?

Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!

Ah, remember the good old days back in 2003 when every right wing blog in the country was proudly reciting that phrase? There was Dean Esmay, and Instapundit, and I recall that even James Lileks was flaunting it on the sidebar to his web page. We had invaded Iraq, and we were victorious, and the cute adorable Iraqis loved America and were asking for all the things we loved in their charming broken English.

It made me wanna puke. It was patronizing colonialism all over again, with every chickenhawk proudly patting themselves on the back for a ‘victory’ gained in bloodshed and destruction.

They aren’t saying it so much any more.

It’s ten years later. The invasion failed to bring democracy or whisky to Iraq, and no, it certainly wasn’t sexy. It was damned expensive: almost 4500 US dead and 32,000 wounded, and so many dead Iraqi civilians, on the order of hundreds of thousands, that every time the topic comes up the right-wingers still start squealing that all the numbers are wrong, no matter what they are.

Eventually, the U.S. spent $60 billion to rebuild Iraq and the special inspector general estimated in its report that at least $8 billion of it might have been wasted. The Pentagon estimates that the long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq cost $728 billion.

It makes me sick every time I consider it, so just go read Charles Pierce’s commentary on the war.

This is the one event on which the country’s chronic historical amnesia cannot be allowed to bring itself into play. The country was lied into a war by a raft of criminals, greedheads, and geopolitical fantasts. These latter were enabled by a cowardly political opposition and a largely supine elite press. Hans Blix was right. Paul Wolfowitz was wrong. Robert Fisk was right. David Frum was wrong. The McClatchy guys were right. The late Tim Russert was wrong. Eric Shinseki was right, and Anthony Zinni was right, and Joe Wilson was right, and George Packer, Michael O’Hanlon, and Richard Perle were all wrong. George H.W. Bush was right (in 1989) and his useless son was stupid and wrong. There is no absolution available to any of the people who helped the country down into this epic political and military disaster no matter how lachrymose their apologies or how slick their arguments.

George W. Bush should spend the rest of his days dogged by regiments of wounded veterans. Richard Cheney should be afflicted at all hours by the howls of widows and of mothers who have lost sons and daughters. Colin Powell — and his pal, MSNBC star Lawrence Wilkerson — should shut the hell up about how sorry they are and go off to a monastery somewhere to do penance for what they didn’t have the balls to try and stop. This catastrophe killed more actual people than it killed the careers of the people who planned it and cheered it on. We should all be ashamed. And we’re not.

None of the people who perpetrated this long national nightmare have ever suffered any consequences for it. They still idle languidly in wealth and respect, drawing encomiums and hefty speaking fees from the extremist think tanks that all also promoted the war. George Bush paints pictures of dogs that he cheerily signs with his presidential number. Meanwhile, Bradley Manning is tortured for their sins.

Every one of those goddamned pro-war media pundits ought to be rounded up and stuffed in Manning’s cell, while he is released. The establishment politicians — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice — who lied us into this destructive debacle deserve worse, and it makes me question the wisdom of our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, because every day they should be doused in buckets of blood and forced to walk a gauntlet of war widows throwing offal at them. Monsters, every one.

Democracy. Whisky. Sexy. That phrase should fill us with shame.

An object lesson for those who doubted

About 48 hours ago I posted a link to the Twitter feed of the egregious Michael Crook, who had used that fine microblogging service to share loathsome, horrible, explicitly pro-rape opinions regarding Steubenville.

Within minutes, this clown — in the very first comment on the thread — objected, saying that my calling attention to Crook was “feeding a troll.” Twenty minutes after that first comment, this other clown chimed in.

Both claimed that by calling out an egregious “troll” — not a rape advocate, but a “troll” — I had played right into Crook’s game of trollish 12-dimensional chess. Given him “what he wanted.” etc.

That’s manifestly not true, as it turns out. I don’t know what percentage of the attention Crook got came from my link. Perhaps it was a large amount, given the Pharyngula Phyrehose. Perhaps it was just a couple of percentage points. But Crook got a lot of unfavorable attention from all over the feminist and anti-rape sections of the Webonets. Should have made him utterly gleeful, right? As a ‘troll.”

Crook’s Twitter feed is gone. His website seems to be down. Is it reasonable to conclude that he decided there was too much attention being paid to him? Seems so to me. Though perhaps both Twitter and his web host decided to take him down against his will. Which seems less likely, given that the stuff Crook was saying was merely among the most egregious of the hundreds of rape supporters opining on Steubenville, most of whom seem not to have been censored.

I’m guessing he found the public response unpleasant.

Yes, forestalling further trollish objection, Crook is indeed entitled to freedom of speech. And so are we. It would seem sentiments like Crook’s in favor of rape don’t stand up to actual discussion. If people had decided not to “feed the troll,” Crook would very likely still be spreading his pro-rape views online at the moment. But enough people used their own rights to freedom of speech to let him know they found his views repugnant. If he’d been out to troll, he’d have relished that. If he’d had the courage of his convictions, he’d still be arguing.

But instead, that fearless defender of rapists seems to have shut the fuck up for the moment.

That tiny minority of commenters on that thread who scolded those of us who wanted to call Crook’s garbage out publicly: if we’d all listened to you, the world would be a slightly worse place than it is now. I suggest you go to your rooms and think about what you did.

And for those of you who think your voice doesn’t matter? It does. And thank you.

Fair’s fair

I was mean to the History Channel yesterday — I mocked them for portraying Satan as a dark-skinned man with a resemblance to Obama. But you know, that wasn’t fair. It’s not as if that show about the Bible is full of coded racist references to appeal to the yahoos of America.

Why, look here: they also include European white dudes! Racial diversity for the win!

20130319-093023.jpg

That’s Jesus, by the way. After the Sermon on the Mount, I think he took a break to go surfing off Malibu.

How not to read a graph

This ought to be on Skepchick’s Bad Chart Thursday. The Daily Mail — hey, why are you already groaning? — put up a graph to prove that global warming forecasts are WRONG. They say:

The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.

The estimates – given with 75 per cent and 95 per cent certainty – suggest only a five per cent chance of the real temperature falling outside both bands.

But when the latest official global temperature figures from the Met Office are placed over the predictions, they show how wrong the estimates have been, to the point of falling out of the ‘95 per cent’ band completely.

Now here’s the graph. Let’s see if you can detect where they mangled the interpretation.

mailgraph

(Note: I haven’t looked to see whether the underlying data is correctly presented. I’m only examining the Mail’s ability to read their own chart.)

One error of interpretation is the claim that the ‘predictions’ were plotted in retrospect…as if the scientists had just made up the data. That’s not true — what they did was enter the same kinds of measurements available in the past as we have now, plug them into the computer as inputs, and let it generate predictions. This is an important part of testing the validity of the model — if it gave a poor fit to past data, we’d know not to trust it. That it worked well when giving the past 50 years worth of data is a positive result.

The big error of interpretation is to look at that graph and claim it demonstrates a “spectacular miscalculation.” To the contrary, it shows that the predictions so far have been right. As Lance Parkin says,

It’s an argument presented entirely in their own terms, using only data they presented, framed in language of their choosing. It’s been spun and distorted and shaped as much as they possibly can to get the result they want to get and it still says that the scientists who have consistently and accurately predicted that the world is warming were right. That’s their best shot? It’s rubbish.

Need a cleanser after seeing that? Here are ten charts interpreted correctly and demonstrating the reality of climate change.

People actually read the Daily Mail in the UK, huh? I guess it’s like the US’s Fox News…unaccountably popular.