When I first laid hands on Gail Carriger’s Soulless (Orbit, 2009), I began to wonder if the book had been written specifically to irritate me.

1. To start out, the novel is urban fantasy. Already we’re on bad terms.

2. Also, there are vampires.

3. Too, werewolves.

4. And romance!

5. In case that’s not enough, Carriger mixes in a Victorian setting and a hint of steampunk. Neither of these inherently annoy me, but combined with items 1-4:

6. The novel is heavily weighted down by trendy genre elements.* In my experience, this usually leads to books that are poorly constructed, badly integrated, and the literary equivalent of a chess club stereotype wearing star-shaped sunglasses – trying much too hard to be cool.**

Soulless should be like combining salmon and chocolate while I, in this metaphor, am an ichthyophobe with no sweet tooth. However, it appears that skilled chefs can pair salmon and chocolate. And sometimes a novel that’s full of everything wrong can go terribly, tragically right.

Soulless is the first book of the Parasol Protectorate, with the next book, Changeless, due from Orbit on March 30, 2010. The novel begins when a young Victorian woman, Alexia Tarabotti, finds herself alone in a library with a vampire. For any other unmarried miss, this situation would be frightening. However, Alexia has no soul which means that vampires can’t eat her and, in fact, her touch temporarily turns supernatural creatures into humans.

There are three types of supernatural creatures in Carriger’s universe: werewolves, vampires and ghosts. Werewolves come in packs, and vampires come in hives, but somehow this vampire doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. Alexia gets caught up with the Bureau of Unnatural Registry, or BUR, in helping to investigate this strange appearance as well as a number of strangely coincidental disappearances.

In the interview at the back of the book, Carriger reports having asked herself, “if immortals were mucking about, wouldn’t they have been mucking about for a very long time?” She considers the cultural implications of supernatural interference: “Those absurd Victorian manners and ridiculous fashions were obviously dictated by vampires. And, without a doubt, the British army regimental system functioned on werewolf pack dynamics… [and then I] realized that if Victorians were studying vampires and werewolves (which they would do, if they knew about them)… technology would have evolved differently. Enter a sprinkling of steampunk…” (p. 364)

In my opinion, most traditional urban fantasy fails because it doesn’t consider the long-term, global ramifications of its conceits. This isn’t helped by the fact that a great deal of urban fantasy poses a secret underworld filled with werewolves and vampires (or fairies and elves) who covertly affect the real world. Small-scale stories revolving around this conceit can be fine, but secrets are difficult to keep, and many stories pose so many supernatural events of such import that it strains credibility to believe that magic could remain a secret. Buffy – to take an at-hand example – made a joke of it. But non-humorous texts are out of luck if they want us to believe that people die every night from vampire bites and yet no one ever notices.

Carriger’s world is one in which vampires and werewolves are fully integrated. They interact with and affect politics and society, and in turn are affected by them. For instance, there’s a post specifically designated for a werewolf to advise the Queen, but simultaneously the alpha werewolf is constrained by high society mores.

Soulless also benefits from the fact that Carriger doesn’t seem to have approached the elements of her book as disparate. As she says, Victorians investigating magic lends itself to steampunk; one genre element follows from another, creating the sense of a fully integrated world.

The novel’s action-oriented main plot takes place against a Jane-Austen-like background. Alexia, the product of her mother’s first marriage to a – gasp – Italian, is a spinster with a number of unflattering traits, such as her blunt speech and tan complexion, all of which make it clear she’ll never find a proper English husband. Nevertheless, she falls in love with one of the country’s most eligible bachelors, the werewolf alpha Lord Maccon.

No, wait. She doesn’t fall in love with him. She can’t stand him. No, I’m sorry. I mean, he can’t stand her. Wait. He’s in love with her – that’s it. It’s just that he’s strong and manly, but also messy and uncivilized. While she’s proud and intractable, but also busty and tenacious. Wait, are we reading Pride and Prejudice with Werewolves?

Soulless’s treatment of romance in its early chapters is the novel’s only major misstep. The text improves once Lord Maccon and Alexia acknowledge their romantic feelings – although there is one awkward, late-chapter sex scene that occurs in the middle of an action sequence, which could have been dramatically shortened while still serving its purpose as a release valve for romance and humor. But the early romantic sallies are winceably cliché. As soon as a male character gazes upon the heroine with a passage like–

Miss Tarabotti might examine her face in the mirror each morning with a large degree of censure, but there was nothing at all wrong with her figure. He would have to have had far less soul and a good fewer urges not to notice that appetizing fact. Of course, she always went and spoiled the appeal by opening her mouth. In his humble experience, the world had yet to produce a more vexingly verbose female. (p. 8-9)

–we readers know where we’re headed. We don’t need tingling near her abdomen or stirring he can’t explain, interspersed with fury! at his lack of manners and yet–! to guide us along the way. Carriger so facilely avoids other clichés that it’s a shame this one mars the text.

Overall, though, the Austen elements are charming. Carriger’s Victorian voice is sharp and funny. Witty observations provide a plethora of humorous clashes between action sequences and rigid etiquette. The descriptions of Victorian fashion are very nice for those readers with a weakness for bustles and lace, and I suspect I’m not the only one since the book is marketed with a Victorian dress-up doll flash game.

If there’s one weakness the Victorian voice lends itself to, it’s the underdevelopment of Alexia’s mother, step-father and sisters, who play the compliant foils for unconventional Alexia. Their insipidness is fine at the beginning of the book, but grows less convincing as their roles increase near the end. Still, this is a small complaint and easily remedied. Hopefully Carriger will toss them a few lines of character development in one of the sequels.

Other characters are created quite well. Alexia, for instance, is a fun and well-portrayed heroine, full of vigor and flaws. She, her friend Ivy, and their friendship are memorably captured in a few sentences: “Ivy Hisselpenny was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that dictated she be only-just-pretty, only-just-wealthy, and possessed of a terrible propensity for wearing extremely silly hats. This last being the facet of Ivy’s character that Alexia found most difficult to bear.” (p. 33) Lord Maccon and his assistant, Professor Lydell, are good characters as well, although Lord Maccon is at times brushed in with slightly-too-broad romantic strokes and could use a little more development within his archetype. The best character is the vampire Lord Akeldama, an outrageous gossip-monger with a penchant for gaudy attire whose underlying intelligence and immortal weariness are deftly revealed as the novel progresses.

In the end, Soulless is not a profound novel. It imparts no revelations about the human experience. I don’t expect it will change anyone’s life or that I’ll remember the plot intricacies in ten years. But it was a fun, adventurous romp that diverted me for a few hours. I might even read it a second time. I will certainly pick up book two of the Parasol Protectorate and I look forward to meeting Alexia Tarabotti again in 2010.

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*It seems possible that Carriger began writing with the intent of forecasting what tropes would be popular a few years down the line. If this is the case, kudos to her for guessing correctly.

**It should go without saying that any of these things can be done well. It’s just that while 90% of everything is crap, I find these tropes to suffer from even worse odds. Nevertheless, here are some successful examples: Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (vampire), N. K. Jemisin’s “Red Riding Hood’s Child” (werewolf), Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale” (urban fantasy), and Paula Guran’s anthologies of romantic fantasy which contain Coates’s “Magic in a Certain Slant of Light,” Parks’s “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge,” and Copley-Woods’s “Desires of Houses” (romance). Michael Swanwick is famous for combining disparate genre elements with strength and grace, and I was recently impressed with new writer Tina Connolly’s “Moon at the Starry Diner” for successfully condensing an epic plotline and several incompatible tropes into a short story.

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about Bernard-Henri Lévy’s bizarre and disgusting HuffPo article, in which he does a premature touchdown dance at the prospect of the freeing of convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. Were I to do so, I’d probably start by noting that Lévy is wrong to say Polanski is about to be freed; at best, Polanski is about to be released on a $4.5 million bond, will have to wear an ankle bracelet, and remains without a passport. The extradition hearing remains, and is considered a slam dunk by most legal experts; Polanski is far from having been “freed.”

Were I to go on, I’d probably note Lévy’s deep concern that Polanski’s children have evidently been taunted in school because their dad’s a convicted fugitive child rapist. Now, that’s not fair to Polanski’s kids — they didn’t choose their dad, and one can’t blame them from the fact that their dad once forcibly raped a 13-year-old. But one can’t help but wonder whether Polanski’s children would face taunts if Polanski had paid his debt to society when it was due. Or, for that matter, if he had simply made the very easy decision not to rape a child.

I could go on in this vein for some time, pointing out the factual errors in Lévy’s piece, his pathetic attempt to paint Polanski as some sort of political prisoner, or the fact that not once in the article does Lévy even acknowledge that Polanski was ever even accused of drugging, forcibly raping, and sodomizing an underaged girl, not to mention the fact that Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape in the case, then fled before he could be sentenced.

I could note all this, but I won’t, because nothing I can say would be more damaging to Bernard-Henri Lévy’s credibility than these, his own words, as written:

I am mostly thinking about him: Roman Polanski, who I don’t know, but whose fate has moved me so much. Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthy era all over again. At least the nightmare is about to end. At least the end of the hell is looming. And this, for the time being, is what does matter.

Lévy wrote these words, sincerely, about a convicted child rapist and fugitive from justice. Nothing I could possibly say would be more damning than that.

When Hallmark lured David Ellis Dickerson to a Kansas City interview, they offered him a potential starting salary of $27,000. After interviewing him in person, they upped their offer to $32,000. “To this day,” writes Dickerson, “I am convinced that in person, I am $5,000 more charming than I am on paper.” (p 49)

I suspect this motivates the choice to promote Dickerson’s new book, House of Cards: Love, Faith, and Other Social Expressions (Riverhead Books, 2009), with a series of videos called Greeting Card Emergency. Dickerson’s audience provides him with a decidedly un-Hallmark-like greeting card scenario, such as breaking a friend’s toilet or letting your snake eat someone else’s hamster. Dickerson then documents the process of creating a suitable card.

This promotion seems to be working. I’ve seen Greeting Card Emergencies reposted on a number of well-trafficked blogs and the videos inspired me to purchase Dickerson’s book.

House of Cards is a memoir of Dickerson’s experience with the Hallmark card company, documenting the period of time between when Dickerson first hears about nearby Hallmark interviews through the time when he decides to leave Hallmark for the presumably greener, warmer, and more licentious pastures of a Ph.D. program in Florida. Along the way, the book also documents Dickerson’s journey from fundamentalism to atheism.

There are three major reasons to recommend this book:

1) David Ellis Dickerson may be more charming in person, but he’s charming on paper, too. The memoir’s light, easy writing style makes for a fast and fun read.

2) The memoir provides an intriguing (if not wholly satisfying) case study about how a fundamentalist upbringing affects a twenty-something who has lost his faith. At the beginning of the memoir, twenty-seven-year-old Dickerson has already converted to Catholicism, become liberal, and started supporting feminism and gay rights. However, he still feels that he and his fiancée must avoid sex until marriage, a conviction that shifts during the course of the book until, after the pair break up, twenty-eight-year-old Dickerson is left trying to lose his virginity approximately a decade after most of his peers.

3)It’s a great deal of fun to read about Dickerson’s work process and word play. The memoir is peppered with his silly poetry, including a love poem about free popcorn:

The popcorn that thou givest unto me
Bringeth emotions I can scarcely utter.
For thou art like this popcorn that I see:
Lively and fresh, though thou contain’st less butter.
And in the carbonated beverage, too,
Which, like the popcorn, thou bestow’st for free,
Though it consist of Brown Dye Number Two,
In it, I see thy hair, and think on thee.
My Pepsi tab would founder many banks.
I can’t repay you; please accept my thanks.

(p 18)

In chapter nine (How to Write a Card), Dickerson details the process of taking a Hallmark card category, brainstorming ideas for it, and proposing a suitable card (which editors subsequently reject or accept). He explains common card types, including cards that come with attachments like paper clips and golf tees, and cards that include pop-ups. This witty, informational sequence gives what the reader has been craving throughout the book.

The memoir suffers some flaws. The first three chapters read like an unnecessarily long build-up: It’s unclear why the book begins before Dickerson even interviews with Hallmark instead of with his Kansas City interview or his first day as a new-hire. The book is called House of Cards; we’re here to read about Hallmark.

Even at Hallmark, the text lacks focus. It gives too little information about work process and too much about petty work woes. It’s not that the latter can’t be interesting grist for a memoir, but here they’re often rendered in long narrative sequences that could be summed up faster. Work events begin to feel repetitive. Worse, they take up space that might have been devoted to Dickerson’s evolving spirituality. After all, there’s more to the journey away from fundamentalism than sex.

From a feminist perspective, the text is mixed. There’s a lovely rant on page 135 defending female humorists, but in the same chapter Dickerson theorizes that women leave Hallmark’s humor department because they can’t handle the boss’s relative masculinity. It’s possible that Dickerson has evidence for this theory which didn’t make it into the text; however, given the available information, Dickerson comes across as condescending. Perhaps women leave because being the only female in that work environment is intolerable. Perhaps they leave because the boss acts sexist in ways that aren’t apparent when there are only male coworkers. Perhaps Dickerson should just ask the women involved?

Other scenes are similarly fraught. For instance, Dickerson’s fiancée is depicted as sex-averse, but this is never satisfactorily explored. From the details in the text, the fiancée appears to be suffering from some sort of sexual trauma*, but the narrative ignores that in order to focus on how angry Dickerson feels when she refuses to fulfill his romantic fantasies, such as a shared bath by candlelight. Perhaps Dickerson decided not to explore his fiancée’s perspective in more depth because he didn’t want to violate her privacy. This is a respectable reason, but the text still feels incomplete.

Of the many scenes discussing Dickerson’s sexuality, the most compelling is a flashback to his early twenties when he was still convinced masturbation was sinful. He discovered that voyeurism gave him an excuse to see women’s bodies “by accident” and thus without guilt. For this feminist reader, at least, the scene was extremely powerful because one identifies with Dickerson’s need to navigate his sexuality within his repressive culture. At the same time, one recognizes that this is an example of how otherwise reasonable, pro-feminist men contribute to the rape culture.

Despite its flaws, House of Cards is an entertaining, engaging read full of whimsical word play. Dickerson’s memoir may not meet every possible literary expectation – what does? – but it’s fun to listen to the man talk, even on paper.

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*I might have read her as asexual except for a scene in which she reacted defensively to Dickerson’s attempts to touch her shoulders while she washed dishes. This read to me as a post-traumatic reaction; others’ interpretations may differ. In any case, the absence of any attempt on the part of the text to understand her sex-averse behavior – whatever its cause – was a noticeable lack.

This is just the week for me to be pissed off at the world, apparently. The Great Land Grab PDF Farm Land Grab One of the best resources, but is having bandwidth troubles. GRAIN statement at the joint GRAIN-La Via Campesina media briefing

For over a year a half now, we have been watching carefully how investors are trying to take control of farmland in Asia, Africa and Latin America as a response to the food and financial crises. In the beginning, during the early months of 2008, they talked about getting these lands for “food security”, their food security. Gulf State officials began flying around the globe looking for large areas of cultivable land that they could acquire to grow rice to feed their burgeoning populations without relying on international trade. So too were Koreans, Libyans, Egyptians and others. In most of these talks, high-level government representatives were directly involved, peddling new packages of political, economic and financial cooperation with agricultural land transactions smack in the centre. But then, towards July 2008, the financial crisis grew deeper, and we noticed that alongside the “food security land grabbers” there was a whole other group of investors trying to get hold of farmland in the South: hedge funds, private equity groups, investment banks and the like. They were not concerned about food security. They figured that there is money to be made in farming because the world population is growing, food prices are bound to stay high over time, and farmland can be had for cheap. With a little bit of technology and management skills thrown into these farm acquisitions, they get portfolio diversification, a hedge against inflation and guaranteed returns — both from the harvests and the land itself. To date, more than 40 million hectares have changed hands or are under negotiation — 20 million of which in Africa alone. And we calculate that over $100 billion have been put on the table to make it happen. Despite the governmental grease here or there, these deals are mainly signed and carried out by private corporations, in collusion with host country officials. GRAIN has compiled various sample data sets of who the land grabbers are and what the deals cover, but most of the information is kept secret from the public, for fear of political backlash. MORE

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanksgiving is on us. Wednesday Addams So, I thought a post would be cool. (Earlier video was replaced due to well-argued objection) Read the rest of this entry »

Some leading Democrats have been proposing that the Afghanistan war, like Health Care, should be deficit-neutral.

The tax applies to all Americans earning $30,000 or more (although there are exemptions for “anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan since the 2001 terrorist attacks as well as families who have lost an immediate relative in the fighting”). It’s called the “share the sacrifice act.”

I’m basically in favor of this. There’s a weird double-standard in politics in which Republican priorities — war, tax cuts, Bush’s prescription drug subsidy, and so on — are never paid for (in eight years, I don’t think a single major Bush policy was ever paid for), while Democratic priorities are expected to be deficit neutral.

Will Republicans and blue dogs — the so-called “Deficit Hawks,” nearly all of whom have voted again and again to increase the deficit to pay for wars and tax cuts — support this measure? Or if they’re not willing to pay for the war, will they call for complete US withdrawal as soon as possible? I suspect the answers will be “no” and “no,” alas.

Of the many genuinely brainless and irresponsible things Republicans and blue dogs believe, the childish belief that we can endlessly cut taxes while increasing our spending may be the most harmful. (Well, that and their belief that it’s okay to do nothing to address climate change).

I’m once again buried under deadlines, and expect to be pretty much a non-blogger until sometime in March. The good news is, all this translates (if nothing goes awry) to having a nice, 140-page Hereville volume in bookstores a year from now.

Meanwhile, you can leave links, comments, or whatever else you’d like on this thread! Self-linking is welcome.

What are people doing for Thanksgiving? I’ll be having some friends over for dinner (including our own Jake Squid).

Okay, so this may be a cheap shot … wait, no. Strike that. It is a cheap shot, but it’s also awesome.

Okay, seriously, Palin is a joke, and her supporters are laughably ignorant. It hardly needs saying, and isn’t some huge revelation.

That being said, it does point to a larger problem though, that there is great appeal in the modern political climate for oversimplification of issues, and for the idea that there are simple solutions to complicated problems. The appeal of this worldview is twofold.

First, of course, if there are easy solutions, then hey, we’re not that bad off! Drill, baby drill! Ignore the complications and context! Just do it! It’s easy!

Second, if there are easy solutions and your political opponents are not taking them, but are instead insisting on complicated trade-offs between competing values … well, it becomes much easier to believe that they’re not just mistaken but actually malevolent.

I think this POV is poison to democracy. It exists across the political spectrum, and (of course) there have been times historically when it concentrated on the left, but I think modern day it’s fair to say that it’s far more concentrated on the right.

It’s what lay behind tarring Al Gore and John Kerry as ‘eggheads.’ It’s what lead ‘policy wonk’ to become something of a slur, rather than the compliment it ought to be. It’s what lead pundits to wonder if Barack Obama might just be too smart for his own good¹. It’s the reason Glen ‘oligarhy’ Beck has a job. This surging anti-intellectualism, as I said, isn’t exactly new, but that doesn’t stop it from being worrisome.

EDIT: Steve Benen makes some great points on this very topic here, while riffing off of Ross Douthat’s recent column.

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. Well, that and racism, I mean. (back)

Via Whatever, I found this piece by Matt Yglesias asking why — if vampires are thousands of years old — they don’t act old:

Across various fictions, why don’t vampires exhibit more cranky old man characteristics? I’m only 28 and already I feel myself periodically overtaken by a desire to tell the young people all about How It Was Back in the Day. I’ll bore people with tedious stories about the old Monroe Street Giant in Columbia Heights before the fancy new stores opened, or about how there used to not be all this stuff on U Street but The Kingpin was the best bar in DC. Just yesterday, I think, a colleague and I were explaining to the rest of the ThinkProgress team that if the new progressive infrastructure and its blogosphere last for a thousand years, men will stay say the Social Security privatization fight of 2005 was their finest hour. If I ever attain immortality, I fully intend to harangue the young people of the future with nonsense about Voltron and how people think of Harvey Danger as a one-hit wonder but really that whole album’s underrated and had other good songs.

That and, you know, murder people in order to feast on their blood.

I totally agree with Yglesias. This is what vampires would be like.

It’s also the only thing I like about vampires. Vampires have the potential to be soooo antithetical to their usual representation. They have the potential to be antiheroes who spoil any epic by wandering off to complain for three hours about this annoying modern lack of chariot races.

This is also the reason I enjoyed Angel on his own TV show. Every once in a while — alas, not all the time — they would show Angel as an extremely handsome, immortal, super-strong, crime-fighting crank. “What kind of bill is this?” I remember him demanding at a restaurant, though his dialogue is paraphrased here. “I remember when you could get a loaf of bread for a guinea!* Damn kids, get off my lawn!”

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*My utter lack of knowledge about pre-Euro English money is here revealed.

Edited to add the updates on ABW. Internets? I am so fucking angry right now. Why? I saw this two days ago: Thanks to GM, People Are Being Displaced So Their Forests Can Become Offsets for SUVs. and I'm thinking what the everloving fuck????? Then I am meandering about on Daily Kos and I see a book review for Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples (AMazon has it cheaper and then there are used books and the library, of course.

Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story. This is a "good guy vs. good guy" story, Dowie writes; the indigenous peoples’ movement and conservation organizations have a vital common goal—to protect biological diversity—and could work effectively and powerfully together to protect the planet and preserve species and ecosystem diversity. Yet for more than a hundred years, these two forces have been at odds. The result: thousands of unmanageable protected areas and native peoples reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral lands or "assimilated" but permanently indentured on the lowest rungs of the economy. Dowie begins with the story of Yosemite National Park, which by the turn of the twentieth century established a template for bitter encounters between native peoples and conservation. He then describes the experiences of other groups, ranging from the Ogiek and Maasai of eastern Africa and the Pygmies of Central Africa to the Karen of Thailand and the Adevasis of India. He also discusses such issues as differing definitions of "nature" and "wilderness," the influence of the "BINGOs" (Big International NGOs, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy), the need for Western scientists to respect and honor traditional lifeways, and the need for native peoples to blend their traditional knowledge with the knowledge of modern ecology. When conservationists and native peoples acknowledge the interdependence of biodiversity conservation and cultural survival, Dowie writes, they can together create a new and much more effective paradigm for conservation.

Indeed. It appears that the book recced in my earlier post did not but scratch the surface of what appears to be widespread fuckery on behalf of white western environmental organizations, who seem to have this quaint notion that the best way to fix their society's poisoning of the earth and sea, by practicing environmental neo-colonialism. Radio Interview (with Partial Transcript) with Mark Dowie, author of Conservation Refugees

CLARK: I don’t want to ignore what’s happened here in the United States where when it comes to land conservation, we’ve had our stories of not treating native people so well either and I’m just thinking we’re talking on the heels of the Ken Burns’ TV documentary on the National Parks where Burns hit on the tension between preservation and use, but didn’t actually come down on one side of the issue or the other. Talk a little bit about what happened in this country. DOWIE: He does acknowledge that native people have been evicted from American national parks. This whole model of conservation began here in Yosemite in the middle of the 19th Century, which was at the time occupied by Lewach [PH] Indians. And John Muir and the other people who were inspired to create a national park where Yosemite is, were not impressed with the Indians. In fact, Muir was revolted by them, and asked that they be removed from the Park and they were. That happened again in Yellowstone and several other American parks around the country. That became known as the Yosemite model of conservation, and was exported by the organizations that now dominate global conservation, all of which are American organizations.CLARK: You describe your book as a “good guy versus good guy story.” So is there anybody in particular to blame for how this seemingly good idea has gone wrong? DOWIE: It is a good guy versus good guy story. MORE

(I thoroughly disagree with this description of good guy vs good guy, by the way. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it Bullshit. "Good guy", is not how I would describe the enviro orgs who push this shit. You are by no means good when your actions fuck up people on this scale, and they have a fucking HISTORY of this bullshit, arrogant, paternalistic, onetrack minded, and racist approach to citizens of the world whose skin ain't white) Naturally, the people being kicked off their lands are PISSED. Article based on the book:Conservation Refugees: When protecting nature means kicking people out

It’s no secret that millions of native peoples around the world have been pushed off their land to make room for big oil, big metal, big timber, and big agriculture. But few people realize that the same thing has happened for a much nobler cause: land and wildlife conservation. Today the list of culture-wrecking institutions put forth by tribal leaders on almost every continent includes not only Shell, Texaco, Freeport, and Bechtel, but also more surprising names like Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Even the more culturally sensitive World Conservation Union (IUCN) might get a mention. ... In early 2004 a United Nations meeting was convened in New York for the ninth year in a row to push for passage of a resolution protecting the territorial and human rights of indigenous peoples. The UN draft declaration states: "Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option to return." During the meeting an indigenous delegate who did not identify herself rose to state that while extractive industries were still a serious threat to their welfare and cultural integrity, their new and biggest enemy was "conservation." Later that spring, at a Vancouver, British Columbia, meeting of the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping, all two hundred delegates signed a declaration stating that the "activities of conservation organizations now represent the single biggest threat to the integrity of indigenous lands." These rhetorical jabs have shaken the international conservation community, as have a subsequent spate of critical articles and studies, two of them conducted by the Ford Foundation, calling big conservation to task for its historical mistreatment of indigenous peoples. "We are enemies of conservation," declared Maasai leader Martin Saning'o, standing before a session of the November 2004 World Conservation Congress sponsored by IUCN in Bangkok, Thailand. The nomadic Maasai, who have over the past thirty years lost most of their grazing range to conservation projects throughout eastern Africa, hadn't always felt that way. In fact, Saning'o reminded his audience, "...we were the original conservationists." The room was hushed as he quietly explained how pastoral and nomadic cattlemen have traditionally protected their range: "Our ways of farming pollinated diverse seed species and maintained corridors between ecosystems." Then he tried to fathom the strange version of land conservation that has impoverished his people, more than one hundred thousand of whom have been displaced from southern Kenya and the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania. Like the Batwa, the Maasai have not been fairly compensated. Their culture is dissolving and they live in poverty. "We don't want to be like you," Saning'o told a room of shocked white faces. "We want you to be like us. We are here to change your minds. You cannot accomplish conservation without us." Although he might not have realized it, Saning'o was speaking for a growing worldwide movement of indigenous peoples who think of themselves as conservation refugees. MORE

Fucking MARVELOUS. Western corporations fuck up the planet, western environmentalists march in an persuade, sometimes by economic might, governments that in order to fix it, the citizens of the fucked up places must give up their land. WHAT KIND OF FUCKED UP BULLSHIT REASONING IS THIS SHIT GODDAMMIT?!?!?!?!?!?!? I am so SICK of this everlasting insistence that Westerners know better and to hell with studying the local set up to see WHAT it is and WHY it has worked the way it has, no. We must import Western ideas wholesale and impose them on every damn place, completely ignoring the fuckery they bring into other people's lives until said other people have suffered/hurt/died, in the case of Africa; according to PDF From Refuge to Refugee: The African Case MILLIONS of people; and god knows how many in Asia; and have had to raise holy hell before we back off! (As an aside, what makes the reporter think that Saning'o might not have realized that other people were suffering the same BS as he is?) Read the rest of this entry »

North Star Liberal, which decided to launch by calling Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, fat and mannish. Of course, it’s okay because they also mocked the appearances of male politicians, which, er, only makes things worse. Also, it’s “snarky,” which is evidently now code for “place where people who claim to be liberals can ignore liberal values.”

For the record:

1. Fat jokes aren’t funny.

2. Jokes that portray women are mannish aren’t funny.

3. A site that claims to be “liberal” would understand that.

Yeah, you can steer clear of them. They aren’t liberal in any meaningful sense of the word.

UPDATE: I guess we can at least be glad they pulled the part making fun of Paul Wellstone’s death — which they used to attack Minnesota State Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, Minn. Incidentally, where were Paul and Sheila going again when their plane crashed?

On October 25, 2002, Wellstone died, along with seven others, in a plane crash in northern Minnesota, at approximately 10:22 a.m. He was 58 years old. The other victims were his wife, Sheila; one of his three children, Marcia; the two pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess, his driver, Will McLaughlin, and campaign staffers Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy. The plane was en route to Eveleth, where Wellstone was to attend the funeral of Martin Rukavina, a steelworker whose son Tom Rukavina serves in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Wellstone decided to go to the funeral instead of a rally and fundraiser in Minneapolis attended by Mondale and fellow Senator Ted Kennedy

Oh yeah.

You guys stay classy, now.

So as you may recall, a couple weeks ago Hannity “accidentally” used video from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally to show how well-attended Rep. Michele Bachmann’s rally was. An easy mistake, of course — anybody could accidentally mistake raw footage of a recent rally with archival footage from a completely different rally two months ago.

So hey, I was totally willing to buy Sean Hannity’s claim that it was a totally innocent mistake, because Fox News wouldn’t lie to further the Republican agenda. I mean, the very idea!

So you can imagine just how shocked I was to discover that Fox making exactly the same sort of mistake again, this time to support Sarah Palin:

Now, it’s an easy mistake to make, confusing footage from a McCain/Palin rally from last year with a video of a book tour that’s going on now. I mean, it’s not like there were McCain/Palin signs in the video itself. Oh wait, there were? Damn.

Maybe Fox really is more shameless than Pravda.

(Via Think Progress)

I am trying very hard to see where Newsweek’s choice to use Sarah Palin’s Runner’s World photo as their cover is a horribly sexist decision that belittles women everywhere. No, seriously, I am — I’m aware I’m not going to see a flaw the first time I look at something, and I find it not just possible, but likely that a major newsmagazine would use sexist imagery to depict the most popular woman in the GOP.

But I’m sorry, no matter how many times I’m told the sexism is obvious, I just don’t see it.

It’s not that the image doesn’t play on sexist tropes. Dear Ceiling Cat, does it ever. If it was a Photoshop job, I’d absolutely decry it for portraying Palin as a bizarre faux-patriotic fembot. I mean, look at it:

That’s out of control. And it reminds me of another image that mixed faked überpatriotism with extreme conformity to gender roles. You may remember this one. It was all the rage in April 2003:

The images are almost a perfect yin-yang of the conservative vision of female and male. Sarah Palin: athletic, but not so athletic that she can’t strike a cheescake pose. A mom, first and foremost, keeping the home fires burning (note the careful positioning of the Blue Star banner over her right shoulder). So in love with her country that she’ll desecrate the flag in order to show it. And George Bush: a total warrior with a big cock. Not concerned about family, but about blowin’ stuff up. A guy fighting in war (or, you know, avoiding it; same difference, right?). So in love with his country that he’ll use soldiers and an aircraft carrier in a premature photo-op to prove it.

Both of these images were calculated — Palin’s, to show she’s not one of “those” women, who choose sensible clothes when they run, but who is sexy all the damn time, because she can be. To show that she loves her country, war, apple pie, and the beautiful scenery you can see from her front porch, the one that was built with kickbacks she received as mayor. And Bush? Bush, of course, to show he isn’t a wimp like Clinton, but a true Warrior-King, one who literally conquered Mesopotamia himself.

Both photos also show something else, something hiding behind the artifice: that both Bush and Palin are Potemkin representations of these ideals. By trying to oversell the idea that they are perfect representations of their genders, Bush and Palin remind us of how hollow those representations can be. Bush is not a warrior, and he looks silly playing dress-up. Palin is not a pin-up girl, and she looks silly playing dress-up. Both took what could be powerful symbols and went so over-the-top with them that they look like fools.

That’s why Newsweek chose this cover. Not because it shows Palin as sexy, but because it shows her as a caricature of herself. As a sitting governor, Palin chose to engage in a photo shoot that would do a better job of validating the “Caribou Barbie” epithet than anything the most misogynist liberal could come up with. As Lindsay Beyerstein accurately says:

Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek’s use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this?

The bottom line is that Palin’s a clown. She doesn’t get a pass because her chosen clown persona is stereotypically feminine.

She caricatures herself. Day in and day out. Good for Newsweek for pointing and laughing.

And that, my friends, is the point. One cannot point out the absurdity of Sarah Palin’s wallowing in sexist tropes without using the very sexist imagery that she herself approved of. Yes, the image is appallingly sexist. But that is not Newsweek’s fault. It’s Palin’s.

Using a photo shoot that Palin posed for and endorsed after the fact to make the point that Palin is a caricature of herself is not sexist. It’s good journalism. Believe me, I will defend Palin from true sexism wherever it rears its ugly head (like, say, this bit of “humor” from HuffPo, which is crappy, and simply an excuse to attack Palin for being a woman). But this is not a case of sexism being used to attack Palin. This is a case of Palin’s own sexism being used to attack Palin. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Is there ever a time when Hollywood is not FAILing? First up, What these people need is a honky syndrome goes off planet in: James Cameron’s Avatar Lawd ha’ mercy internets. Lord ha mercy. Because Hollywood sure as hell won’t. You know, a lot of those bullshit tropes that show up in movies like this are based on some real inaccurate history. If you haven’t read it yet, may I rec 1491? You’ll find that it goes a good way in clearing some of the…um…cobwebs. Meantime: Universal’s UK ‘Couples Retreat’ Poster Brings Cries of Racism by Removing Black Actors The excuse was rather amusing, I must say. While all this is going on, however, Heroes writers decided to show their asses in a very public manner. White men, you see, are totes oppressed in Hollywood. Oh yeah!

It all started when Jim Martin (assistant to show creator Tim Kring and himself a writer on the show) engaged in conversation with (former, now disgruntled) fans about the show, and in the process uttered such gems as “Anyone who thinks they can do better… I dare you. Go ahead. :) I’d love to see it.” and “If you think that Racism and Sexism are thematically integrated in HEROES then you may want to check your intelligence before worrying about it being insulted.” That post has since been deleted, but a kind mouse saved it and shared it with us in wank_report. In his follow-up post about the whole mess, he whined about how he liked the internet better when it wasn’t so self-righteous, and left us with even more gems as “Look up the diversity programs for writers in tv. Ask anyone in the tv world. There is a distinct disadvantage to be a white male when trying to be a staff writer.” and “I’m fully aware of what you are referencing, but I don’t think its a problem on Heroes and I don’t think white privilege is an issue in Hollywood at this point.” Sounds bad enough, right? But no! Turns out that was just the start of a downwards spiral of fail, and it turns out that the fail reached new startling depths when Foz McDermott, a coordinating producer and writer of the show and perpetual bringer of anti-PC and misogyny fail, decided to use his own blog to reply to a particular comment that was left on Jim Martin’s blog. He starts charmingly:

“The idea that white privilege isn’t a problem in Hollywood at this point is an idea coming from a privileged standpoint.” Holy crap lady… if you are indeed a lady… that is hilarious. In a business that is scared of and run by pussy organizations that are so scared of being sued about everything, being OVERLY PC is the actual problem. Being a white male in the business of Hollywood is NOT easy. There are programs and incentives to help everyone except white males.MORE

Well. If you were wondering why Heroes sucks… There’s your answer. And then there’s the prospect of 2013, a television show spin off from the headache inducing 2012. Let me get this straight. Africa and other points of interest were colonized and exploited. This thieving allowed the exploiting countries to get rich. These riches allowed them to save a portion of their own population, mostly middle class to upper class and (white). Poor people, especially POC, were left to drown. Now, they have come to recolonize Africa. Which didn’t drown after all but simply went up in the air 1000 feet? Does this strike anyone else as chock full to bursting with the potential for FAIL to the nth degree? Finally Britain’s film industry does its share of FAILing too. *sigh* Maybe if I go to bed I’ll wake up and find that this was all a bad dream? Linkspam Hollywood FAIL edition

I’m going to imagine “2012″ happens in the same universe as “The Ugly Truth,” so all those characters die horribly.

Dave Weigel

Consider this an open thread for you to share thoughts, self-promotion, and random bits of arcana.

First off, let me note that I hate Carrie Prejean as much as the next sentient human.

That out of the way, it’s time for me to defend Carrie Prejean.

As you may have heard, former Miss California USA-slash-anti-gay activist Carrie Prejean has a sex tape that’s gotten loose, and perhaps “several more” in the hopper. (No, I’m not linking to stories; keep reading, you’ll see why.) This is, of course, totes hilarious, as Prejean was trying to build a career around moralizing while still being a normal human with feet of clay. This tape, as I read from various liberal blogs and see discussed on liberal talk shows, is a tape of Prejean masturbating that she sent to an ex-boyfriend at some point. The ex-boyfriend is now distributing the tape, and telling stories of how Prejean allegedly wanted him to say she was underage when she made it — leading Michael Musto to opine waggishly that she’s just a typical girl, wanting to look younger than she is.

Hee hee, ho ho, sigh.

You know why Carrie Prejean wants us to think that tape may be illegal? Because she doesn’t want everyone and their twin sister to have video of her masturbating. Why? Because she didn’t release a video of her masturbating for worldwide distribution. She sent it to her then-boyfriend.

Now, yes, Prejean has been involved in moralizing. And here’s where I’m supposed to say that she has this coming, having the temerity to be a sexual being while criticizing others for their sexuality. But you know what? I’m having trouble believing that. Because while Prejean’s opinions on same-sex marriage may be wrong, it doesn’t therefore follow that it’s okay for someone she trusted to break that trust by sharing private videos with the public. Indeed, on the moral spectrum, I’m having trouble seeing why Prejean should be embarrassed by the sex tape, and a whole lot of reason to think that her ex-boyfriend is a major league asshole who women should avoid like the plague. Men too, for that matter.

Guys? It’s me, Jeff. Let’s say your wife, girlfriend, lover, friend with benefits, or friend without benefits is nice enough to send you a tape of herself in flagrante delicto. Guess what? She didn’t sent that to you and anyone you feel like forwarding that to. Unless your best friend, your preacher, your mom, Harvey Levin, Joe Lieberman, or J.K. Rowling was copied in on the email,¹ you shouldn’t send it to any of them without first seeking permission from the young² lady in question.

The reason, of course, is that this woman is choosing to risk a bit of her privacy to give you a momentary sexual thrill — perhaps many, depending on how lonely you are and whether or not your girlfriend goes to college out of state. You owe it to her not to run to your roommate and say, “Hey, look what this girl sent me!” Why this is so should be blindingly obvious — what said woman sent for your consumption may not be something she’d want her mom, her high school math teacher, Kevin Sorbo, or the crowd at an L.A. Lakers game to see. She sent it to you, personally, because she likes you and trusts you enough that you won’t go sending it to someone else. If you go sending it to someone else, that proves that you’re a scumbag who can’t be trusted, and while the woman may be guilty of not seeing that quickly enough, the only real jerk in this picture is you.

You see, it’s like sex. If you and your girlfriend are having consensual sex, that’s fine. If you invite your buddy in unannounced to start having sex with your girlfriend too, without clearing it with her? That’s rape. No, selling smutty pictures of your ex-girlfriend to TMZ isn’t rape. But it’s rape’s evil, less-reviled cousin, and it’s in the same moral ballpark. And just because we like to put the fault back on the Carrie Prejeans of the world for sending these tapes in the first place, the fact is that their privacy is being violated, while the ex-boyfriend in question is lauded for said violation. A moment’s foolishness in the name of lust or love is understandable; a willful betrayal of trust in the name of lulz or cash is reprehensible.

It’s sick and wrong. And it’s nothing to laugh about, even if the victim in this case has been moralizing about other things. For all her wrongness, I don’t recall Prejean arguing that LGBTQQ individuals should have their nude, intimate photos and videos released to the world. She’s wrong on marriage. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to laugh when she’s violated.

1. They may have been. Hey, I don’t judge. (back)
2. At heart. As long as you’re legal, I say feel free to send sexy videos to your heart’s content, no matter how old you are. (back)

Is there a “My mother was pro-choice” / “My mother is pro-choice” bumpersticker? And if not, why not?

I vaguely wish there were a “Sorry your mother was pro-life. My mother chose me” bumpersticker, but it’s too long, and there’s no way to make sure the snark would just reach those who deserve it with their asinine assumptions that the only way a woman would have a baby is if she didn’t believe she had any other option.

ETA: Oo, or for mothers, “Pro-choice: my children are wanted.”

But you wouldn’t want to put that out there because it would be cruel to the still-children kids of pro-life mothers who are old enough to process the implication they aren’t wanted, but not old enough to understand that the political point is about challenging preconceptions about pro-choice mothers. “Pro-choice and a mom” is probably better, if less amusingly snark-ridden. That’s got to already exist somewhere, right?

Posted with the kind permission of Kevin Moore. Click on the cartoon to see it bigger, and to see Kevin’s commentary and links.

In addition to Kevin’s comments, I’d point out this post by Ezra, pointing out that (by the weird definition of “subsidize” conservatives are suddenly using), Stupak “did not block the federal government from subsidizing abortion. All it did was block it from subsidizing abortion for poorer women.”

And read as well this piece, pointing out that by the Bishop’s definition of federal funding, the enormous support the Federal government pays to Catholic hospitals and charities must be a subsidization of religion, and is presumably unconstitutional.

So, as I have said elsewhere, I have been feeling guilty about not posting about the goings on Iran of late, and I am beginning to formulate some posts I’d like to write, but this news article caught my eye. No matter how much I might disagree with and oppose the government in Iran, there is no way that the Iranian embassy is wrong about establishing a scholarship in the name of Neda Agha-Soltan. It is, by definition, political:

Iran has criticised Oxford University after one of its colleges established a scholarship in honour of a woman killed during post-election unrest in June.

The Iranian embassy in London denounced the £4,000 ($6,600) Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship offered by Queen’s College as “politically motivated”.

Queen’s said the award would help impoverished Iranians study at Oxford.

Ms Soltan became a symbol of the opposition after she was shot dead at an anti-government protest in Tehran.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran denounces Oxford scholarship

For me, even though I agree with the politics, or at least what the politics behind the scholarship are perceived to be–since we don’t know who endowed the scholarship or why–the question is whether or not that is a good thing. I am still made uneasy by the way Neda’s image, and the idea of Neda, is exploited as a symbol of opposition to the government of the Islamic Republic, and, as an academic, I wonder about the degree to which a scholarship like this cannot help but be part of that exploitation, no matter how academically sound, impartial, etc. Queen’s College is in administering and awarding the money.

I wonder what others think.

As has been noted previously, I love dates like this. (Thanks to Jake Squid for pointing this one out to me!)

Consider this an open thread. Post what you like, with whom you like, for as long as you like. Self-linkage is welcome.