An Observation

I'm alternating watching the House debate on the Bipartisan Debt Plan, and the Senate debate on same, and it is very, very depressing.

(With the usual exceptions: I'm looking at you, Senator Bernie Sanders!)

It's not just that the deal stinks (although it does); it's that this entire fiasco, born of a manufactured crisis during which a very real jobs crisis is going ignored, underlines how fundamentally dishonest, devoid of facts, and indifferent to the needs of average Americans the conversation in DC has become.

That's not news, of course. That's the reason I started this blog seven years ago.

This is just one of those moments in which the grim intractability of that mendacious detachment is put into such stark relief that it takes my breath away all over again.

Why, Tim Gunn, Why?

[Trigger warning for transmisogyny, gender policing, body policing.]

Fucking hell:

Apparently, it never gets old to mock Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "cankles" and pantsuits, at least if you're Tim Gunn and George Lopez, who took the sexist trash-talking to the next level on Lopez's show last night.

...After paying lip service to Clinton's actual accomplishments, Gunn demanded, "Why must she dress that way? I think she's confused about her gender!" He added, "No, I'm really serious, she wears pantsuits that are unflattering." Then it went on to "cankles."

Gunn finished, "I have great respect for her intellect and her tenacity and for what she does for our country in her governmental role. I just wish she could send a stronger message about American fashion."

1. That is not in the job description of the Secretary of State. 2. This is the exact reason why it's bullshit when ostensibly progressive publications lay into female candidates for spending money on their appearance: The expectations on women in the public sphere are outrageous.

(Yes, expecting Hillary Clinton to give a fuck about "sending a message about American fashion" while meeting with foreign dignitaries is outrageous, or the word has lost all meaning.)

I could spend the rest of the day debunking the heaping shitloads of garbage embedded within Gunn's and Lopez's exchange (of which there is video at the link, if you're inclined to protract the agony), but I wouldn't say anything I haven't said a thousand times before. Fuck it.

I will instead just note that when a woman stands up and says, "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all," and then says, fifteen years later, "Human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights," thus allying herself with a ginormous swath of the fashion industry in a fight for recognition of our basic personhood, anyone who gives a flying flunderton if she wears a goddamn potato sack for the rest of her days, no less sneers at her cankles in a fit of misogynistic and objectifying and dehumanizing pique, is an asshole of epic proportions.

And, seriously, if you look at this AP photo of Clinton with other foreign ministers and officials at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Bali last Saturday—


—and its most important aspect to you is how her suit fits, you have lost the plot.

Of Course

Actual Headline: Chris Brown Cast in Romantic Comedy Based on Advice Book.

Immediately, I knew exactly which "advice book" it would be, and my intuition was soon confirmed:

The singer-actor's rep tells Us Weekly that Brown, 22, will play a role in the upcoming comedy Think Like a Man. The highly-anticipated film is an adaptation of Steve Harvey's New York Times best-selling book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

Perfect.

Let's keep our fingers crossed there's a role for Charlie Sheen in this forthcoming cinematic masterpiece!

[Related Reading: Steve Harvey is back with more of his wisdom about men and women and relationships.]

Stormy Weather

There's the green sky of a threatening storm outside my office window, accompanied by an ominous wind, and, because my neighborhood has the infrastructure of an abandoned ant colony (thanks, Mitch Daniels!), my electricity is already starting to flicker.

So I may disappear here for awhile. Again.

Perfect

Charlie Sheen is reportedly getting a new sitcom in which he will play a character "very similar to the one he played on Two and a Half Men" but "the show will be a lot racier."

Way to go, universe.

Today in Rape Culture

[Trigger warning for sexual violence; physician assault.]

I would say this is unbelievable, except, by virtue of writing about this garbage day in and day fucking out, it is all too believable: The Florida Board of Medicine has decided in a 7-3 decision that being convicted of rape should not be an impediment to practicing medicine in the state.

The board, meeting in Ft. Lauderdale, made the decision in the case of Tampa doctor Mark Seldes a former Air Force flight surgeon who was serving in South Korea when he was accused of raping a civilian co-worker [while she was unconscious]. He was convicted in a military court-martial in 2008, served 3 years in prison, and was dismissed from the service for rape and adultery. He was also forced to be registered as a sex offender, and appears in the Florida Sex Offender Registry.

...[T]he board voted 7-3 to allow Seldes to practice, so long as he completes 300 hours of community service, remains in a monitoring program for troubled physicians, and works in a government facility.

The state agreed not to put him on formal probation, after Seldes argued that probation might make it hard for him to get a job in the future.

Wow.

[H/T to @ShelbyKnox.]