It's that time of the day again...

...I'm scoffing and bitching at the TV.

[Note: This is in the larger context of President Obama's reaction to the arrest of Professor Gates.]

Watching the news here, you get the impression that 1) the President called the arresting policemen stupid, and 2) that he started a race controversy when he did so.

As for 1) "...acted stupidly..." does not equal "are stupid". Adjectives and adverbs...my English tutees also have trouble with those. Still...condemning actions or condemning actors. I would say the difference is somewhat significant. But that's just me.

And about 2) the tensions regarding race, and the controversy around racial profiling in particular are not Obama's creations. In a very twisted way, it would be great if they were. Because then it would be easier to resolve...6 months worth of baggage are a lot easier to work through than a country's entire history and the history of colonialism and imperialism before that.

And yet, shocking as it is, that merely made me roll my eyes.
What really bugged me was one simple question, from the news anchor to their correspondent:

Can a black president really be neutral in a conflict about race?

Such a simple question, yet so very revealing. I hate this assumption. That Caucasian isn't really a race. That a cottage cheese-complexion precludes a racial agenda whereas all other complexions come with one automatically (and it's completely uniform, too). That isn't just preposterous, it also flies in the face of reality. Blatantly. Sometimes it's even wearing distinctive white robes and hoods, or brown uniforms.

En lieu of a lengthy and half-informed diatribe about othering, I'd like to humbly suggest somebody who can be neutral in a conflict about race:

More from the Pope

During the busy schedule of his visit to Angola, the Pope found time to ridicule the idea of abortion for health reasons:

"He also criticized what he called the "irony of those who promote abortion as a form of 'maternal' health care." The pope was referring to an African Union agreement signed by Angola and 44 other countries that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is endangered." [From here.]

If he weren't all about apostolic gravitas, he would totally have added the airquotes to that.

But - fear not - there was also time for genuine irony:

"Particularly disturbing is the crushing yoke of discrimination that women and girls so often endure, not to mention the unspeakable practice of sexual violence and exploitation which causes such humiliation and trauma."

From anybody else, I would greet this statement with energetic agreement. From him, I can't quite get rid the taste of bile in my mouth.

Oh please...

Yesterday, Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in a psychiatric institution. For those who have been spending the last year underneath a rock, in a cave in Antarctica, or on a space station, feel free to google. This post is not about him.

This post is about something I read here this morning.
The Times of London has seen fit to borrow a page from her tabloid cousins and achieved a hattrick of righteous preaching.

First of all, note the large picture at the top of the first article. If they had photoshopped it to include fangs and fiery red reptile eyes, and stamped "Monster!!!" across the man's face, the message couldn't have been more clear. The picture is the first thing we see, taking in the headline only afterwards.

And what a headline it is: "No plans for investigation into police and social service failings"
That combines willful ignorance of the fact that people have been asking those questions for almost a year, with the wonderfully enlightening powers of hindsight. Clearly, something went terribly wrong, here. Nobody is denying that. But saying that "it should have been obvious" or that "questions should have been asked", is a pretty cheap shot by itself, especially if it comes from such a completely safe distance.
Next, the author takes issue with the fact that there are no plans "for new laws such as a sex offenders list". This assumes that reactive legislature is always a good idea, which I'm not so sure about, and that sex offenders lists are effective, which, again, I'm not entirely sure about. But they are flashy and high profile, playing as they do on both the public's fears and the need to *see* the authorities take decisive action. Anyway, the rationale for bringing up a sex offenders register in the context of this particular case eludes me. A previous rape conviction does not automatically mean that the man was bound to turn on his own daughter or her children next. And what was the register supposed to accomplish? Ban the man from having any contact with his children and grandchildren? On what grounds?

Later on comes the following gem regarding Elisabeth's testimony:

"That was the decisive moment in one of Europe’s most extraordinary trials – Elisabeth the martyr had become an avenging angel."

Maybe, just maybe, she will eventually even become Elisabeth the human being. But I'm not holding my breath.

On to the second headline, another one for the ages: "Josef Fritzl: Austria locks up a monster and shuts its problems away"

And here we go:

"It seems like closure for a country that has worried more about its tarnished image than about the alarming deficiencies that the case has exposed in society, in its welfare and judicial systems, even in its attitude to manhood."

Here it comes - sweeping judgement about the entire society of phony under-the-rug-sweepers. Cue the Kampusch-reminders, and hey presto, we're back to the tried and tested narrative of Austrian denialism. This is not to say that this denialism doesn't exist, on the contrary, we're even better at that than we are at skiing. Rather, this is to say that people whose understanding is superficial at best, from societies with their own issues and horror stories (Jersey, anyone? Soham?) set my teeth on edge with that kind of sanctimonious tone. I was actually waiting for the Hitler allusion at that point, but it didn't come. Small mercies.

"That is how Austria wants to see this man: as a once-in-a-century freak, a devilish criminal who has no bearing on the rest of the country."

Because isolating a country as the only place where such things could happen is a far more reasonable thing to do.

And then, there's this: "Josef Fritzl: Austria must examine itself"
Yes, do you hear that, my fellow countrypeople? We must. Mummy told us so.

"The trial of Josef Fritzl has only answered the question of his guilt or innocence. More urgent questions for his country have been left cloaked in shame an silence."

First, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the evocative, almost poetic language of this subtitle. "Cloaked in shame and silence" - beautiful. Entirely free of fact or even actual content, but definitely beautiful.

Here, the author complains about the fact that the trial lasted only three and a half days. Why? We've all seen the evidence, Fritzl had confessed and entered a guilty plea, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. What else was there to be done? Should the family been put on the stand, in front of cameras, for a couple of days worth of cross-examination each? Should there have been reenactments?

Then, this author contradicts her colleague in a sudden attack of reason -

"And it serves no useful purpose to generalise about a nation or culture on the basis of an aberration. More particularly, legislation designed to ensure that no such crimes could be committed again, even behind the locked doors of private homes, would be intolerably intrusive for any free society."

- just to follow up with a swipe about how Austria isn't really trying all that hard to come to terms with what happened. Look! It's our old friend denialism!

"What it needs is answers; answers to questions that go to the heart of Austria's national character even if the original case does not; answers to questions that, for the most part, have not yet been asked."

This thrilling insight is followed by what I assume are meant to be those hard questions, except that they really aren't all that hard, if you know the meaning of the word hindsight. The author also kindly provides the answers to those hard questions herself.
For example, social services visited the house several times...

"but never reported any anxieties about the “upstairs” children or a father who later told his court-appointed psychiatrist that he was “born to rape”. Why not?"

Leaving aside the obvious solution already contained in the sentence (I give you a hint, though, - "later"), I'll say it was because the "Born2rape"-shirt was always in the wash when socialworkers came to visit.

The article poses several more of those hard questions and follows up with a chaser of victim blaming about Fritzl's wife, Rosemarie.
But in the end, we're back at the beginning:

"As Fritzl begins his sentence in a secure psychiatric hospital, Austria must ask itself the tough questions that were not asked at his trial. Among the most fundamental is whether a culture of cronyism and secrecy has shielded incompetent police and social services from urgently needed reform. On the evidence of the Kampusch and Fritzl cases, the answer is yes. And that means, sooner or later, that it will happen again."

And this is where my real problem lies. The tone is wrong, wrong, wrong. And so are the questions.
Of course there are questions that have to be asked, and measures that have to be taken. But this needs to be done by people who understand the context.
What the Times fails to take into account is that this crime took place in a country that regards itself, crime-wise, as an island of blessed innocence. Women walk home in the dark, children walk to school on their own, and ten years ago people outside the major cities didn't lock their doors, because people knew each other and nothing ever happened. Suspecting horror in such a context would have been as absurd as suspecting horror on "The Waltons". It wouldn't have occurred to people.
As I said, questions have to be asked, and measures have to be taken. But righteous wanks from a safe distance are not helpful.

More Church Ranting

In the last few days, I have learned more about the laws and procedures of the Roman Catholic Church than I ever wanted to know. As it turns out, the bishops whose excommunication Pope Benedict revoked are still under suspension. I'm not entirely sure what that looks like - maybe they are back in the arms of the Church, but held at arms' length.
On the other hand, excommunications are traditionally only revoked once certain pre-set conditions are met. It's the same basic system as confession - your sins will be forgiven, IF...
The Society of Saint Pius X, for the first time ever, was not given conditions. There were none. Not even three Hail Marys. Officially, this step was taken to start a dialogue towards reconciliation.
This, in turn, begs the question whether reconciliation is an option, considering that we're talking about a group that called Pope John Paul II an apostate. They reject Vatican II as a whole, from the part about priests facing the congregation during mass, all the way to the part about Jews being our "elder brothers in faith" rather than "the unenlightened murderers of Christ".
The latter is why the current issue is about more than one Holocaust-denying nutjob who clings to debunked "theories" in the face of a reality he doesn't care for. Williamson is extreme, if not actually in his opinions (I wouldn't know...although I have my hopes, and my suspicions), then at least in his willingness to publicize them. The SSPX advocate a return to that deep-rooted antisemitism that has taken centuries to cultivate.

The message this sends is worrying.
It's clumsy, because the current Pope is a German man above a certain age and will therefore always have to be wary of being perceived as antisemitic, even if he were morally flawless and actually knew what all those Communications Staff in the Vatican were there for.
It's embarrassing, because the Vatican's refrain of "This was not anti-semitic because the Pope is not an anti-semite" is a fallacy anyone calling themselves a scholar ought to be ashamed of.
It's disingenuous, because the other common theme from apologists, about the importance of reaching out to those who can be brought back into the fold, seems to hold true only for those to the far right of the spectrum. Theology of Liberation is discouraged, to say the least, Feminist Theology is, at best, laughed at, and even ecumenical dialogue has been scaled back.
But all of this could, probably, be explained in some way or another, if it weren't the last in an ever lengthening string of worrying messages.
It follows the re-instatement of the old-fashioned lithurgy for Good Friday Mass, complete with the prayer for Jews to see the light and accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Historically, progroms along the lines of "Baptism or death!" were likely to start after Easter. That's just one of those odd coincidences, I guess.
There have been other messages, too, harkening back to the good old days before God became "dear": Stating that the indigenous population of Latin America was "yearning" to be conquered and christianized was a feat of revisionist history that puts Holocaust-denial to shame. There were voices lower down the church hierarchy that called the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina divine punishment for "moral pollution". (The priest who used those actual words in a sermon has just been appointed by Rome to become a Bishop in Austria. Just to let you know that such callousness Has Consequences.)
Apparently, it isn't enough to go back to the 15th century. It's time to go right back to the Old Testament. Whee!

But I'm afraid it will rain manna from heaven before this Pope apologizes, let alone changes his course.


[My internet connection is trying my patience today, so you'll have to forgive me for not citing/linking my sources. Der Spiegel has good coverage online, and Google, as always, is omniscent.]

On a roll...

I was raised a Catholic.
Having been born in one of the most important sites of Catholic pilgrimage in Europe, there never seemed to be much of a question about that. It is the way things are. The way it is done. Alternatives were (and still are), at most, something purely theoretical that happened to other people.

The issues I have with my faith as a whole and the institution of the church in particular don't belong here. Suffice to say that I'm not happy, and I haven't been happy for a long time.

But lately, the church has really been on a roll.
Let's recap:

- Homosexuals are as big a threat to civilisation as global warming (and they go to hell).
- Women who take the pill make men impotent (and they go to hell).
- Women who don't dress the way Bishops would like them to are basically asking to be raped and mistreated (and they probably go to hell).
- Women who marry Muslims are in for a pile of trouble (and probably go to hell).
- Men who wear condoms, because they want to be safe are just being stupid (and probably go to hell).
- The President who repealed the Global Gag Rule is "arrogant" and aiding and abetting the "slaughter of innocents" (he's SO going to hell).

But there's no reason to worry, because denying the Holocaust is perfectly alright.
Great move, Ratzi!
Stay classy.

Seriously...if I weren't absolutely sure that it would break my grandmother's heart, I'd be out of this club in an instant. (And if they go on like that, I might just chance it anyway.)

Note: I should probably have added links to this post, but it's the middle of the night and I can't be arsed, so I'll just refer you to our Google overlords.

Erm

This list of the "20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2008" gives an honorable mention to Christopher Hitchens, and an actual place on the list to Chris Matthews.

There are only two ways to explain this:

1. The list came from a parallel universe and came to us through a distortion in space-time. Or

2. The definition of the word "liberal" has been changed to "any person/media outlet with the audacity to say shit I, Selfrighteous Rightwing Judgmental Fuckface, don't agree with" while I wasn't looking.

Switching off...

I watch and read lot of international news. What that means is that while I get live coverage of war, famine, pestilence, and all the lesser known Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I miss the uplifting stuff that makes it bearable. No surfing dogs or miraculous quintuplets or images of the Virgin Mary appearing on slices of toast.

So, every once in a while, my brain will just take the decision out of my hand and switch me off out of sheer self preservation.
Today, that meant that instead of watching this, I spent my afternoon playing a hidden object game that didn't require any higher brain function.

I don't normally do that. I'm not a serious gamer anyway, but once I get hooked, I will stay hooked. And if, after five hours straight of riddle-solving and finding 25 white quills in the white snow outside the white window, I do not want to reach a screen that says "Congratulations, you have solved every riddle and freed the soul of the Headless Horseman. The curse of eternal torment has now fallen onto you. Har har har." Yeah...great. Way to lighten up my day.

The Global Gag Rule

via Shakesville:

The Global Gag Rule has to go. Now.

A couple years ago I spent a week compiling a briefing paper about how the Gag Rule is a violation of Human Rights (not to mention state sovereignty).
This video makes the case a lot better than I ever did:



You can sign the petition here.

And in case you needed another argument on how repealing the Gag Rule and thus giving more people access to contraceptives would be an excellent idea, how about this? The idea that Coca Cola douches aren't a useful contraceptive shouldn't be news to anybody. In fact, a study on the matter was awarded the 2008 IgNobel Prize in chemistry. And yet...

...soft drink douches are apparently still used to prevent pregnancy in resource-poor settings.

The study goes on to mention that not only do Coke douches not prevent pregnancies, they may even be harmful to a woman's health. Lovely.
Now, if only there was a way to tell people this, to talk about methods of family planning that actually work, to provide them with contraceptives...

Rom-Coms - They're Bad For You...

...apparently:

Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life, a study by a university in Edinburgh has claimed.

Oh dear.

Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love.

They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner.

Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.

Oh dear.

Students watching the romantic film were later found to be more likely to believe in fate and destiny. A further study found that fans of romantic comedies had a stronger belief in predestined love.

Oh dear.

So, the stereotypes are true. I will be unable to have a relationship with a person, because in my heart, I will always be holding out for Mr Right (TM) who calls me "Princess" and who had me at hello. Damn.

But shouldn't there be some mention of gender in this?
Could there be a difference between male and female participants?
Could it be, say, that more women than men love rom-coms?
Could it be that girls are fed stories about The Man For You pretty much from birth? You know the guy...he's the one worth waiting for, the prince who will always rescue you, the one who will be your husband, the one who will be right for you in every way, the one for the happily ever after without any trials or tribulations or arguments about who forgot to buy the milk.
Could there (and I'm going out on a massive limb on this one) be a correlation?

Also, if rom-coms are the only genre to promote unrealistic ideas about relationships, or anything else, for that matter, I will eat my (one and only, much beloved) hat.

Reviews and Other Disasters

I've been thinking about this discussion thread for several hours now, because it's interesting and because it beats the hell out of preparing basic grammar exercised for the poor souls whom I shall have at my mercy tomorrow.

The question was the following:

Which movie, generally regarded as an otherwise good film, has one or more messages that bug you so much that it's hard to enjoy the movie for its good points?

And while I was thinking about films and about the excellent points the other commenters were making, "Love and Other Disasters" popped into my head.
Frankly, I liked that film. It was just the adorable piece of fluff I needed for my Saturday afternoon. (And I don't think I ever liked Brittany Murphy better than I did in this one.)

Sure, they used every single cliché in the book, but I didn't care. The film wasn't so much a rom-com as a satire about rom-coms. And even if it had been all that shallow...I like all those clichés, sometimes. I didn't watch "Con Air" for the intellectual stimulation, either.

Anyway, my biggest criticism of "Love and Other Disasters" was probably the fact that Jacks was always at least half naked when she was in her flat.
So what if you're Brittany Murphy and have worked hard to get that body, that is not an excuse. So what if your flatmate is gay, that is not an excuse.
No, not even reading a cookbook called "The Naked Chef" is an excuse.
You are not in some 3rd rate anime, so put some clothes on, dammit!

Anyway, I tried to figure out why this movie, of all things, should spark in my memory while I read the above thread. Was there a message in there I didn't like? (Apart from the gratuitous nudity that was so ridiculously overdone they couldn't have been serious about it.)
So I googled some reviews and stumbled over a review from Variety.

Needless to say, they didn't like it. They didn't like the clichés. They didn't get the fact that it was quite a clever satire.
Yes..."Love and Other Disasters" is the "Starship Troopers" of rom-coms. There, I've said it. Mock me at your leisure.

But the worst part of the review, by far, was this (emphasis mine):

Keshishian's script is sloppy in both setting up and sustaining the sexual identity confusion that fuels the comic engine. This hinges on tasty Argentine photographer's assistant Paolo (Santiago Cabrera), whom Jacks mistakenly thinks is gay, despite such giveaways as his disdain for the fashion world and passion for gritty photo-reportage.

Thank you so much for that illuminating piece of wisdom, Variety.
Congratulations - in a disdainful review about the over-use of cliché, that sentence is zen-like perfection.

I still haven't figured out why I came to think about "Love and Other Disasters" in the first place. But I have a strong need to not read any more of that stuff, so I'm going to be very OOC and just drop it.

Shopping for Frustration

I love to shop.

I love to look around for that perfect gift for somebody.
I love to come out of a shop with a bag full of DVDs I hadn't even known I wanted.
I love spending hours on end in a bookshop and browsing until the stack of books I want to buy becomes too heavy for me to carry.

And yet, shopping for clothes makes me want to cry and scream after about five minutes.
There is nothing that will destroy my morale and my will to live quite so quickly as a clothes shop.

You wonder why? Me too.
The last time I checked, my anatomy was "normal". One head, two arms conveniently linked to the body at the shoulders, one torso, two legs ending in two feet, which point the right way (as far as I can tell). My joints bend in the directions they should, I have no tail, no wings, nor any other appendages not normally associated with Homo sapiens.
Granted, my body is closer to Rubens' idea of beauty than to Karl Lagerfeld's...but still.

It's the same pattern every time. I walk into the first shop with a clear idea of what I want and what it should look like, full of naive hope that *this time* will be different.
Five minutes later, my hands are full with stuff I like (just like in a bookshop).
Then follows the dreaded ritual of Trying It On.
In small, enclosed spaces with far too much light and far too many mirrors for self-delusion.
At this point, my mood takes a nose-dive into the deepest depths of self-loathing, because the clothes don't fit.
After the fourth item, I become convinced that nothing will fit. Not today. Not ever.
That the search is hopeless and therefore not worth continuing. But I know that I still need those clothes, because going naked and/or freezing is not an option. At that point, I want to either scream in frustration and trash the entire shop, or curl up in a corner and cry...or both.
I'm not kidding - clothes shopping regularly brings me to tears.

By far the worst is the sacred quest for Trousers That Fit (TM).
Finding the Holy Grail seems easy by comparison.

There are billions of trousers out there, and a portion of those are (nominally) my size.
Of those, some are basically imposters, which aren't really my size at all, but have been labelled as such purely to increase the feeling that there is something wrong with me.

Others are, in all obvious respects, more or less my size, but there is a wrongness about them that makes them look weird on me or at least uncomfortable for me. Some even look good right up until the moment when I first sit down and get back up again.
Those are Ill-Fitting Trousers, some of which live in my closet by necessity, because I'm not much of a skirt-person, and even less of a going-naked-person.
Jeans are the worst. I like jeans, but somehow they always make me look as if I had a penis because they bulge in all the wrong places. For the record, I don't have a penis and I don't want one. And no Freudian jeans-conspiracy will convince me otherwise.

I actually can't remember if I ever owned Trousers That Fit (TM).
If I did, it must have been at least 10 years ago.
But I still haven't given up hope that somewhere out there, they do exist.
I have a clear idea of what I want and what it should look like, and I'm absolutely sure that next time, everything will be different.

The mothers of missing children...

...are going through a kind of hell I cannot even begin to imagine.

Which is why I was so speechless (and then so angry) when I read this, this, this and this today, followed by one of the articles the others were talking about, in the Daily Mail.

I already knew that some missing children receive more media attention than others. Al Jazeera Int did a short feature contrasting media coverage of Madeleine McCann and several other (non-white, non-British, non-Middle class) missing children only a few days after Maddy went missing (I remember this because it was probably their 2nd week on the air, and that was the moment when I became a truly committed fangirl).

Back then, I tried to rationalize this knowledge (studying PR will do that to you) - those media outlets were catering to their target audiences, who, in turn, are more likely to respond to a human interest story if they feel that it affects them (or their own group) intimately.
Yeah, I know...that didn't exactly satisfy me either.

However, as if it weren't vile enough to be make victims of crime almost invisible based on sales projections, some journalists seem to have taken it upon themselves to go one step further.
Apparently, it is not enough to spend days (or months) in complete anguish because you don't know where your child is. No, it is also important that the media tell you exactly how wrongly you are handling the situation, how you are a miserable failure as a mother (and as a person, obviously), and how everything is really your fault.

So, Kate McCann was attacked for being too thin?
I suppose not knowing where your daughter is and what happened to her will diminish a person's appetite. Had she gone to some of those renowned Spanish restaurants she would have been attacked for being callous and then, presumably, for being too fat.
Resorting to this kind of attack is not just cruel, it's also pathetic enough to be completely ridiculous. But I suppose there was little else to criticize her for, what with her being middle class and married to the father of her child, and all...

...unlike Karen Matthews and Fiona MacKeown.

I can't even articulate how disgusting this is.

Random Rant

I just spent my entire morning proofreading a 16-page report in what was probably supposed to be English (I'm honestly not sure at this point)...It might have broken my brain. It definitely broke my morale.

So I did what I usually do...comfort-surfing (about films).

Here's what I found: The 10 Moviegoing Commandments

No 1 - "Thou shalt not have stupid trendy hair that sticketh up and obscureth my view" - is particularly important. I am not a tall person. In fact, I'm so short that the seats in front of me come up to my chin in certain cinemas (which I try to avoid because of their vertically discriminatory furniture). People who make it worse by sporting hair that would put Sonic the Hedgehog zu shame are not my friends.
Sometime soon, I will implement my plans of liberally decorating that hair with some colourful additions...chewing gum comes to mind. Or I could sacrificially impale gummibears. The possibilities are endless.