Via Sweetmachine:

The inaugural Fat Women of Color Carnival will be held over at saskaia.livejournal.com on July 23. The theme is general and open to anything pertaining to being a fat woman of color and our experiences in our communities, experiences on how our fat and bodies are racialized, myths about fat women of color, and so on. Please link all entries here by July 20. Please promote as applicable and appropriate.

I’m not naturally a bitter person. I spent a lot of years trying to make a go of political cartoons. I never made a go of it, but I think I’ve made some nice cartoons over the years.

But everyone once in a while, I see work by a paid newspaper political cartoonist which…. well….

Matt Bors has the scoop; the NY Post’s Sean Delonas, never exactly renowned for originality of approach, did the exact same cartoon twice in two months.

Not a variation on a theme. Not a twist on a gag. He just did a bad, transphobic cartoon once, and then was so empty of ideas, two months later he did it again. What a waste of newsprint.

Via Kate at Shakesville, Sarah Haskins’ “Target Women: Suffrage” makes fun of the rather obvious, and similar, ways Obama and McCain are trying to court “female voters” and “Clinton voters,” two overlapping categories that are too often talked about as if they were the same. “The strategy seems to be just stick yourself in the middle of a bunch of women, and it’s almost like you are one!”

Makes me wonder how the candidates would court Black voters had Clinton won the primary. It might have been the first election in which the Democratic nominee was eager to be seen photographed in the middle of a bunch of Black people.

(By the way, another entry in Haskins’ “Target Women” series, Yogurt, is brilliant.)

McCain vs McCain.

Apart from agreeing with the political point, I like the visual design — much better than others of the genre I’ve seen.

Curtsy: Pandagon.

Via Ann at Feministing, I read a good Susan Faludi op-ed about gender and the campaign for the presidency:

…A Barack Obama versus John McCain match-up still has the makings of an epic American gender showdown.

The reason is a gender ethic that has guided American politics since the age of Andrew Jackson. The sentiment was succinctly expressed in a massive marble statue that stood on the steps of the United States Capitol from 1853 to 1958. Named “The Rescue,” but more commonly known as “Daniel Boone Protects His Family,” the monument featured a gigantic white pioneer in a buckskin coat holding a nearly naked Indian in a death’s grip, while off to the side a frail white woman crouched over her infant.

The question asked by this American Sphinx to all who dared enter the halls of leadership was, “Are you man enough?” This year, Senator Obama has notably refused to give the traditional answer.

I agree with what Ann, Faludi, Hilzoy and Dana said about gender, but what about that statue?

The statue is by Horatio Greenough, who has the unfortunate distinction of being the most embarrassing of America’s great sculptors. He produced two Great Works, and both of them are cringeworthy.

Greenough’s most famous statue depicts a musclebound, toga-clad George Washington (inspired by a famous sculpture of Zeus). From the moment it was installed in the Capitol Rotunda¹, the half-naked Washington was considered a scandal by those who didn’t consider it a joke. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “Did anybody ever see Washington naked! It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine, was born with his clothes on and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.”

According to one theory, Greenough originally designed the statue to be sitting on a chariot being drawn by six horses — the outstretched left hand was to be holding reigns reins — but Congress was unwilling to pay for all that. But looking at the statue now, I can see that the pose — which I find very awkward, with its slight backwards lean and the outstretched left foot — would have been better if Washington was leaning back against reigns reins.

I remember seeing this statue when I was a kid, in the Smithsonian in D.C., and being shushed because I broke out in giggles. But at least I got to see it. Greenough’s other great sculpture, described in Faludi’s op-ed, started life on the steps of the Capitol building. Now it’s hidden away in storage (except for one small piece of it, as we will see), and probably will never see daylight again.

And that’s for the best, because it would be hard to find a more blatant piece of racist, sexist propaganda. Take a look at this thing:

“The Rescue” brings two images from pop culture to my mind:

1) In one of the Harry Potter books, in the Ministry of Magic, there’s an enormous statue of a heroic Wizard, surrounded by lesser beings (witches, elves, giants, etc?), which Harry finds embarrassing to look at, because the self-aggrandizing racism is so transparent. In my mind, that atrocity was sculpted by Horatio Greenough.

2) In the climax of the movie True Lies, the hero, played by monument to unstoppable ambition Arnold Schwarzenegger, winds up facing the Evil Terrorist Mastermind, who is armed only with a knife clenched between his teeth. Arnold is armed with a Harrier Jet. Are we really supposed to find the guy with the frakkin’ Harrier Jet to be the brave one? Similarly, Greenough’s sculpture makes Boone so huge and dominating that the result looks like God wrestling a ten-year-old.

I imagine that when this statue was installed on the Capitol steps, Greenough thought he had achieved immortal fame. But, instead, it apparently became all too embarrassing by 1959, when it was taken down and put into permanent storage. Four decades later, the only part of this statue that wouldn’t make modern viewers cringe — the dog — was sent to Middlebury College to join an exhibit of Greenough’s drawings.

And as far as I can tell, that’s the closest “The Rescue” has come to a public showing in the last half-century.

1. It had to be moved just a few years later, when it was discovered that the twelve-ton marble statue was cracking the Rotunda floor. (back)

From Joel Stein’s column in the LA Times, entitled “Camp Hollywood”:

After studying the book, I focused on the photo from Camp Modin in 1980. It demonstrates that by age 11, the kids at Modin had mastered the basics of not only the bowl haircut but networking. Standing side by side are future Hollywood players David Wain (of MTV’s “The State” and Comedy Central’s “Stella”), Stuart Blumberg (Ed Norton’s producing partner and writer of “Keeping the Faith” and “The Girl Next Door”) and Craig Wedren (composer on “School of Rock” and “Wet Hot American Summer”). When I asked “Camp Camp” coauthor Roger Bennett how this one tiny camp in Maine produced so much success, he said it “was a machine created by Lew Wassserman to make your town run on time.” People who write books think Hollywood runs on time.

I asked around and found out that Wain’s cabin of about 20 kids also housed comic book artist Barry Deutsch, jazz bassist Avishai Cohen and designer Laser Rosenberg — though his name suggests that even without the camp influence, he wasn’t getting pushed into the doctor-lawyer choice. Robert Smigel (creator of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and “Saturday Night Live’s” “TV Funhouse”) was a counselor that year.

I’d really love to see that photo.

You know a writer is stretching to make their point when I’m included as an example of success. Nonetheless, it’s striking that we all knew what we wanted to do even then; even in the early 80s, David wanted to make films, Craig wanted to make music, and I wanted to make comics. (Of course, I kind of assumed I’d get around to it quicker than I did).

I didn’t know Robert Smigel was a Modin counselor; I don’t think he was ever my counselor. David and Craig I’ve seen once or twice in the last several years, and we occasionally exchange emails. Laser and Stu, I haven’t had any contact with in two decades, but I remember them fondly. I especially adored Laser; he made seeming different and outstanding seem so natural (although as I recall, it wasn’t easy for him). I don’t remember Avishai Cohen being there, but my memory is famous for how awful it is.

Dave’s movie Wet Hot American Summer is partly based on Camp Modin days. Two of the characters are, Dave admitted (although maybe he was just being nice), partly based on me — the geeky kid who runs the D&D club, and (alas) the kid who smells horrible because he never showers.

Hat tip: Mari.

Use this thread to post anything you’d like to post. Self-linking is encouraged.

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

Guantanamo detainees can challenge their detention in civilian courts.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.

and

The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.

It’s about damn time.

First, Camille Paglia: An inch of perspective gained vs. the mile of perspective lacked:

Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He’s a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He’s “not that bright”; he can’t talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It’s gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.

And I know quoting Townhall columnists is just too easy, but this is amazing even for Townhall:

An Obama presidency would signal the final salvo by the Left in the culture wars. Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices.

Via G Spot and Shakesville.

I didn’t know it would feel this bad. I didn’t know it would feel this personal. I’m all for a united Democratic party. But losing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit. [...]

Sexism is hard to see because most of it is so petty we don’t want to mention it. Nutcracker thighs? A novelty like that seems beneath contempt. But it isn’t one small offense that does women in — it’s the steady accretion of many offenses. It’s death by a thousand cuts. Even mentioning the problem seems ungracious. As women, we’re supposed to specialize in graciousness. And there isn’t a gracious way to talk about sexism. Perhaps there is no way to talk about sexism at all — which is the way sexists want it.

I will work my tail off for President Obama. We need a Democratic in the White House more than ever. But I can’t help feeling that we’ve buried a topic that needs unearthing. Please, Mr. Obama, turn your attention to sexism and tell us how you plan to address it. Then we can all be gracious with a good conscience.

I agree with Jong about the death of a thousand cuts, and on how sexism is made “unspeakable.” But I disagree with her on one point: I don’t believe Clinton was our “last chance” to see a woman elected President.

One thing I’ve been certain of my whole life is that no Jew could ever be elected President. The success of Obama and of Clinton (who just barely lost, and who probably would have won if she had opposed the Iraq war, or if she hadn’t listened to Mark Penn) has made me rethink that. I don’t think that racism, or sexism, or for that matter anti-semitism, have ceased to be barriers. But they’re no longer the insurmountable barriers they once were. Clinton was the first viable female candidate for President; but she won’t be the last.

Via Attempts.

This is an excellent article from the New York Times on why safe and legal abortion is important. And it’s from from an interesting perspective . . . that of a retired pre-Roe-v-Wade gynecologist who saw first-hand the kind of damage homemade abortions could inflict. As you can imagine, the linked article is not for the faint of heart, so take care.

My favorite bit comes at the end:

It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.

What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.

Amen.