didja hear that? that's the theme song of sodom and gomorrah
HELLO EVERYONE. MY NAME IS JESSICA HARALSON, AND I HAVE A DEEP, DARK, HORRIFYING SECRET:
I ATTEND NAKED PARTIES.
Actually, I attended a grand total of one of these dens of debauchery. (Not plural, CBS. And for the record, I didn’t get naked, just showed off my purchases from the Victoria’s Secret Semi-Annual Sale). And I’m not only an attendee, I’m a sex blogger/sex editor/self-styled cultural critic of sorts on college rumpy-pumpy. And that sound bite of me talking about a sex room? I wasn’t at that party—I was recounting an urban legend I’d heard about some other Penn soiree. Not that there’s anything wrong with orgies—it’s just Caligula style swinging romps ain’t my bag.
But hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And if there’s anything I learned from the experience (besides the fact that Insider reporter Lara Spencer’s wardrobe is to die for) it’s that there ain’t nothin better than practicing the art of the sound bite.
JESSICA HARALSON: ATTENDS NAKED PARTIES.
I think that should be on my epitaph.
wally world loves the nazis
Apparently, Wal-Mart has been selling a “No Boundaries” t-shirt with Nazi iconography.
That’s some real American family values, Wal-Mart.
I can’t even think of anything witty to respond to this, really. All I can say is, “Wow.”
cheers and jeers -- self-righteous conservative hypocrisy edition
This very first cheers and jeers o’ mine is dear to my heart because of my alma mater: dear ol’ Penn. And by golly, when my president dresses up as a Tinkerbell-Cinderella-fairy-princess and takes a photo with an Arab dressed up as a suicide bomber, I’m gonna defend my fellow Quakers and their rights to be as sarcastic as they wanna be!
Cheers to:
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Modern Demagogue, the anonymous Penn alums who have hit this issue square on the nose. I really can’t paraphrase the beauty that is their entry on Saad Saadi, so I’m just gonna quote the motherfucker:
Your statements are representative of the thoughtless, short-sighted, and solipsistic conservative right that through bold lies and subtle misdirection, clever rhetoric andoutright criminal action, hijacked our modern democracy.
The United States is at War but with a select few radicals in a far away land, not its own citizens. To you Saadi’s costume represented the manifestation of your own irrational fears; to him it illustrated a real and very-present day-to-day concern. He is clearly of Arab descent and has recently become subject to a vast array of prejudices that simply did not exist in his youth. I am sure that many in our community do not make him feel welcome even when he dresses as an affluent Ivy League student. Where then is your moral authority to denounce his expression of this concern?
Amy Gutman did not show deplorable moral character; she showed compassion, understanding, and support for a fellow human being who’s only outlet for his own fears and anguish was through a costume.
Um… is there a way to start a slow clap over the Internets? ‘Cause, like, I’d totally be doing it right now.
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The Volokh Conspiracy has also managed not to lose their minds in a pearl clutching snit:
“You’re told to dress as someone scary. A suicide bomber is scary. It should probably be scarier than a skeleton or a ghost. Sounds like you did your Halloween duty. And I don’t think that wearing a costume for Halloween endorses the likely sentiments of the person being depicted, be he pirate, bomber, gangster, or zombie.”
I”m glad to know that ridiculous moral posturing and fake indignation are limited to “pundits” Anne Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Michelle Malkin. And speaking of our shrill, pro-internment friend Michelle…
Jeers to:
- Michelle Malkin, for being a big ol’ hypocrite, as usual. When her conservative Danish friends lampoon Islam, it’s all A-OK ‘n dandy, but when one of dem damn liberals like Gutmann makes a photo-op with an Islam satirizer, well… GEEZ, THAT SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED BECAUSE A LIBERAL IS DOING IT, SO I’M GONNA GET ALL PC UP IN DEY ASS, !!!11111!!!!111!!! Isn’t that right, Michelle?
Compare her post about Gutmann:
The woman on the right is the president of the university, Amy Gutmann. Sick, sick, sick.
Click on the thumbnails for more photos of the “healthy and non-violent values” on display at UPenn
to the entry in which she stops short of performing fellatio on her Muslim mockin’ friends over at Jyllands-Posten:
Last October, I blogged about a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and its cartoonists being threatened by Muslim extremists for publishing cartoons about the prophet Muhammad deemed offensive by Islamist p.c. bulllies. See here and here.
For the past four months, The Brussels Journal has relentlessly covered the ensuing uproar from the Muslim world and the battle over the newspaper’s freedom to publish provocative speech.
So, uh, Michelle, when you publish all 12 cartoons satirizing Islam to point out the ridiculousness of Islam p.c. bullies, how is that any different than an Arab man dressing up as a suicide bomber to satirize his cultural heritage and make transgressive humor out of what scares us? Have a good answer for me, Michelle? Or could it be that you’re feigning your offense as a diversion tactic from Republicans sinking at the polls, Republican spend and spend behavior, our quagmire in Iraq, and Ted Haggard/Mark Foley/every anti gay Republican out there getting outed out to high heaven? Huh? Huh?
‘Cause honey, I’m really not sure what the difference is between this “tasteless” image is:
And this “tasteless” image:
Gotta love the anti-PC conservatives going all PC on our ass when it suits them. And the saddest part is, I’d vote Republican if it wasn’t for their ridiculous moralizing, fiscal irresponsibility (Barry Goldwater, what HAPPENED?) and absolute disregard for, y’know, the First Amendment. Remember that? Anyone? Malkin? Bueller?
And some final cheers over to the campus free speech watchdogs at FIRE for injecting some plain ol’ common sense into this debate:
Lest Halloween parties become the next frontier for the campus sensitivity police, people need to recognize that Halloween is a good time for satire, and that sometimes a costume is just a costume.
Damn straight, Fire. Damn straight.
cream in my coffee
I've been gabbing lately with my nouveau gal-pal/sex-blogger Elle over at Sex and the Ivy, whom has taken on the Sisyphean task of playing Asian Ivy League yenta for her Harvard girlfriends. At the end of her schpiel for each Crimson co-ed, she implores the rest of us to describe our own tastes in men. We had privately griped about our success (or lack thereof) with Ivy boys, so when she ended with:
"Let’s not get PC here. Be honest. If you don’t dig the white ones, ditto (ahem, Jess). Ready, set, go."
I smiled to myself. Is my dating history that transparent? I thought. Sad story is, it is. Time to unpack.
A laundry list of my laddy loves:
- A Chinese cyberpunk beau
- A Mexican Catholic sweetheart
- A supa-FOB Indian
- A nice Jewish boy
But of course, no one whose last name ends in Smythe or Carbunkle or something more subtle, like Whitelyle McCrackerton the Third. When I ran this laundry list by a male acquaintance of mine, his response cut to the chase:
"Your dating history looks like a United Colors of Benneton ad!"
Question's this: I'm(clearly) an open-minded girl, a progressive libertarian whom has crusaded for gay rights and wants to bring on a sex revolution. WASP-phobic? Me? Is this some sort of internalized affirmative action on my part, some subconscious PC-dom rearing its reverse racist head? Jesse Jackson would be so proud.
It could be guilt -- the whole bi-ethnic complex I've got going on. See, I know I look whiter than a ham and mayonnaise buffet at an Episcopal church picnic, but the truth is I'm half-Cuban. Yet you wouldn't know that from visiting my mother's house, where the garage is rife with my step-father's auto parts, Texas A&M flag, and a 1983 Harley Davidson lying akimbo alongside our all-American barbecue grill. I am half Cuban, but because of the color of my skin in a 95% Hispanic-populated section of South Texas, I grew up nicknamed "Casper," "Bollio" (white bread), "Gringa." "You can't be Cuban," little ol' Southern ladies will hiss, "Look at you!" As if Hispanic denoted skin tone; as if blondes can't be biracial. Perhaps having a brown beau on my arm reassures myself that I have that little bit of ethnic in me; that I'm not really like the rest of the white trash that populates the sleepy fishing town I'm from? I dunno.
There's also this strange (and prejudiced, no doubt) fear I have that an upper-crusty WASP just wouldn't get the vagaries of my bizarre family. I think of my Honduran half-sister's family; their plantain-and-mango orchard in the back of the house, their hog roasts, their gambling by the pier, and I cringe all My Big Fat Greek Wedding style when I think of a John Corbett look-a-like wincing at a plate of tripas and barbacoa. But this isn't fair of me. Who am I to say that John Corbett look-a-like wouldn't feel right at home putting carnitas on the grill? It's certainly not my prerogative.
Or maybe I'm beating myself up about this. Truth is, I think caramel skin and beguiling brown eyes on a boy is just... yummy. Warm. Delectable. My romantic interest in Jerry Maguire wasn't Tom-the-midget, but his show-me-the-money comrade, Cuba Gooding Jr. There is something exciting and sexy and powerful in tangling limbs to observe the contrast, making patterns on patterns on skin. Exciting. Hot.
Yet I'm always repulsed by, say, the acquaintances I know who will "only" date Asian girls. So how am I better? Beats me.
I guess my point is I'm stuck in a bit of a fixed action pattern. I'm choosing, at least unconsciously, who I'm attracted to, and harbor a knee-jerk reaction against rubio Romeos. Is it worth fixing? Time to tell.
steven spielberg's clone descendant will probably use this for a time machine remake
The year 3000: Paris Hilton, an Eloi, and Perez Hilton, a Morlock? I'm snarkily speculating after reading this laughably specious Ananova report:
"Men's willies will be bigger and women's boobs will be more pert - by the year 3000.
New research predicts some humans will be 6½ft tall, have coffee-coloured skin and live for 120 years.
The predictions appear in a new report by evolution theorist Dr Oliver Curry, of the Darwin@LSE Research Centre at the London School Of Economics. He spent two months investigating the ascent and descent of man over the next 100 millennia.
He found that social division might split humans into two sub-species of giants and goblins, reports The Sun."
H.G. Wells is probably rolling in his grave. But then again, the Sun? Puh-leaze. They consider Jen Aniston's supposed boob job front page news.
Ananova also reports that a 14 year old girl was supposedly pulled out of class by Secret Service agents yesterday for writing "anti-Bush material" on her Myspace. For those of you who called Keith Olbermann's "no more habeas corpus" prognostications beyond the realm of reality, here's your wakeup call.this just in: rick santorum has officially gone off the deep end
Didn't think Senator Rick "Man On Dog"Santorum was koo-koo after he carried around his wife's stillborn fetus outside the hospital? If you weren't convinced before, surely today's
tirade comparing terrorism to Tolkien will get you rallying to commit the crazy:
Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
Wait wait wait, where's the condemnation against man-on-hobbit action?
this is not chick lit
I'm thinking about chick lit today, because Jennifer Weiner, a true daughter of Philadelphia and best-selling author of In Her Shoes, Goodnight Nobody, and Good in Bed, is slated to attend a lunch held at my workplace, the Kelly Writers House. My former journalism teach, Dick Polman, will be there with bells on, hosting the event (which you should totally RSVP for, by the way.)
One of the perks of my job at the House is the name-dropping I can commence with after my commencement. I've dined with Margaret Atwood, played hostess to Adrienne Rich, and as you read before, met MoPo and his wife, the Divine Miss Connie Chung. There's more, but I don't want to sound like a big brag; basically, the House is a modern salon for philosophes, and you are going to meet some Really Cool People there no matter what.
Whenever I shamelessly name-drop among the literary minded, the reactions I get involve widened eyes, a "That's so cool!" and "What are they really like in real life?" I thought it would be the same with Ms. Weiner.
I was wrong.
You see, Ms. Weiner has made a grave mistake in her literary career. Unlike her Iowa MFA degree-d contemporaries, whom write Great American Novels with Grand Historical Themes and Intriguing Post-Modern Characters Whom Have Profound Revelations About the Meaning of Life (tm), Weiner has chosen to write about... Domesticity. Motherhood. Men. Quelle horror!
I can't throw a stone off of Huntsman Hall without hitting a feminist who will gladly tell me how Weiner and her contemporaries (Helen Fielding, of Bridget Jones fame, Plum Sykes, Sophia Kinsella, etc) are ruining us all by publishing "chick lit", or, in layman's terms, "books about plucky yet self-deprecating heroines who find fulfillment in snagging the right man, career, and pair of Manolo Blahniks." Instead of the raised eyebrows and "That's so cool!" I've been getting a lot of "Oh, her" and "Are you kidding?" When I say, "But I think she's great!" I am informed that my IQ had dropped about twenty points.
Seriously, fuck that shit.
I'll say it loud and I'll say it proud: I'm a Jennifer Weiner fan.
This is not to say that I worship at the shrine of all things Weiner (or all things "chick lit", for that matter.) For instance, I found Good in Bed more than a little hackneyed, and there are parts of In Her Shoes that sorely needed an editor's critical pen. I would rather drink bleach than read anything by Sophia Kinsella -- not because it's "chick lit", but because her Shopaholic books "suck ass". I do not mean to decry or downplay real criticism of women's fiction; however, it is the criticism of authors like Weiner merely because they are tackling women's topics" that I find disturbing, to say nothing of the misogynistic tinge of hurling the word "chick lit" as if it were a Devil Wears Prada-scented grenade.
Check out this editorial by a former maven in the publishing industry. While she raises some good points (see: my rant about Kinsella above), she also reveals some striking internalized paradigms of misogyny:
"The genre succeeded exactly because it looked more literary than its embarrassing romance counterpart. You could take Bridget Jones’s Diary on the T and not look like a dateless loser. And while this meant huge sales, it also meant that forever after, serious women’s literature (emphasis, mine) was either overlooked for chick lit, or worse, made to look like chick lit."
HOLD UP. The author cites Weiner as one of the biggest offenders for the federal offense of not writing "serious" women's literature. Last time I checked, Weiner tackles the issues of women's body image, abusive parents, America's prejudice against heavy people, family estrangement, and anxieties about career, motherhood, and modern marriage. I didn't realize these weren't "serious" issues, Ms. Famous Book Publishing Lady. (Interestingly enough, the same feminists who "hate" authors like Weiner are the same ones who will wax endlessly about Our Bodies, Ourselves and sport "Big is Beautiful" bumper stickers on the back of their Honda hybrids). Or could it be that our generation is unconsciously perpetuating the notion that anything having to do with women, the home, body image, and family must not be deemed "serious" enough for advanced literary consumption?
As a student of English literature, it shocks me that works by authors on the stereotypically "male" topics (you know, all that important stuff -- religion and politics and war and The Human Condition) get immediately placed into the canon, with books tackling motherhood and domesticity getting dismissed with the "chick lit" label. This does not mean I think Weiner's writing is Nobel worthy (it isn't), but it is indicative of a greater trend in putting down anything literary that has, pardon my French, a vagina associated with it. Writing about stereotypically "masculine" topics deserves its place in the canon. But so does work about stereotypically "feminine" topics as well.
It's even more troubling to realize that this is nothing new. One of the only female authors I can think of who is a universally required reading staple is Jane Austen. And rightfully so! Yet if you ignore the first novel as we know it (that would be Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe around 1719) the other first novels were about... women. Women's issues. Marriage, courtship, chastity, maternity, propriety. Sound familiar? Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Fanny Burney's Evelina are both funny, sharp novels about women's issues, but you'll rarely see them outside of the college classroom (much less considered serious contenders in the literary canon). Ditto for the Bluestocking authors Anna Seward, Sarah Scott, Elizabeth Carter, and Hannah More. "Hannah who?" you're probably asking. Exactly.
As scholar Nancy Armstrong articulates far more clearly than I can, the rise of the novel, in fact, centers on the rise of female domesticity and a female "separate sphere". The first novels-as-we-know-them were so extensively female-centered, in fact, that novels were seen as something that men shouldn't read, as "lesser". How strange! Could it be that we now feel the need to classify the Big Important Male Topics as literary canon and the Lesser Female Topics "chick lit" because we want to deny the novel's uniquely female roots? It's probably not the whole story, but there's definitely a grain of truth there.
I suppose my point is this: dislike Weiner and her ilk all you want, but don't dislike them because you want to make some big statement about how "cultured" you are for eschewing books about matrimony and mommyhood. All authors, "chick lit" and otherwise, deserve better than that.
