So here’s something I don’t get: why is it that whenever people start talking about same-sex relations, members of the right instantly leap to bestiality? We all remember former Sen. Rick “Man On Dog” Santorum, R-Penn. Then there was Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and his box turtle lovin’. Now we have former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., talking about horses.

“You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage — now get this — it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy,’” Hayworth said. “Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point — I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse. It’s just the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal marriage amendment that I support.”

Now, look, J.D. — I get that you’re sexually attracted to horses. I’m sure you make regular visits to Tijuana, where you angrily complain that you came here for some hot man-on-horse action, and you don’t care that it’s just an urban legend. I’m sure that scene in Clerks II was oh-so-close to your dreams. And okay, I respect that — we all have our weird hang-ups.

But J.D., what are you and the horse going to talk about when you’re done? Hay? Galloping? The Kentucky Derby? And it’s going to be a pretty one-sided conversation, given that horses aren’t sapient, and can’t talk.

That’s sort of the difference between your sexual hang-up and homosexuality, J.D. You see, when a man loves a man, sure they can get their sweet lovin’ on. But afterward, they can talk about a whole panoply of topics, from the utter fabulousness of Johnny Weir to the upcoming baseball season to excitement about the new Iron Man II trailer to the idiocy of former Republican politicians. You know, just like men and women do.

You see, J.D., people who love other people — regardless of gender — love other people. It’s the “people” thing that’s important, J.D. You can love your horse all you want, but when you take it down to the local justice of the peace, and she asks your horse if it will love and cherish you ’til death do you part, the horse won’t answer. It will just stand there, bemused, as always. Indeed, there’s no way for you to find out if that horse is even interested in you or not.

Two men? Two women? A man and a woman? They can talk to each other. Laugh. Love. Yes, have sex. Find out if they’re right for each other, if they’re someone they want to be with for the rest of their lives. And then, if they both agree, they can mutually decide to pledge themselves to each other, come what may. That can never happen between you and your horse, J.D. And that’s why those of us who support your right to marry a man don’t support your right to marry a horse — and why the slippery slope you propose is all in your oversize muppet head.

I love this. Click to go to the original.

The mouseover text is full of win, too.

Six: We’re the children of humanity. That makes them our parents in a sense.

Five: True, but parents have to die. It’s the only way children can come into their own.

–Battlestar Galactica, “Bastille Day”

When first I wrote about Caprica, I said it was “the story of two grieving fathers.”

I was wrong.

Oh, it’s an easy mistake to make. Daniel Greystone and Joseph Adama are two grieving fathers, both trying to find a way to hang on to their daughters — or perhaps, in Adama’s case, to free his daughter. Their initial contact, sealed by their mutual grief at the loss of their daughters and Adama’s wife in a terrorist attack, sets the stage for what is to come.

But Caprica is not about Daniel Greystone and Joseph Adama. Not really. No, Daniel and Joseph are merely players in a story being written by Zoe Greystone, with tremendous help from Lacey Rand, and with assistance from Clarice Willow, Amanda Greystone, and Tamara Adama. Two of those people — Zoe and Tamara — are dead. Three of them — Zoe, Lacey, and Tamara — are not yet adults.

And all of them are women.

It took some time for this to develop. Daniel did indeed try to save his daughter’s life by uploading her own creation — an avatar of herself, based on everything from brain scans to school records to internet logs — into a robot, a prototype Cylon, the only one he’s gotten to work. Daniel did indeed seek help from Joseph Adama, and his friends in the Ha’la’tha, the Tauron mafia, to steal technology from the Vergis Corporation, in order to try to get his daughter’s robot self working.

But Daniel wasn’t the prime mover in this drama. That was Zoe. She created her avatar, one that survived her death. Moreover, she created the program that allowed her to create the avatar. When the program was destroyed during Daniel’s attempt to upload her into a robot body, he was unable to duplicate her work. She was smarter than he was. She was the one who started the process that saved a part of her.

And when she realized that the transfer did work? That she was uploaded into a Cylon body? Well, she didn’t bother to mention it to the father of her creator — her sister, herself. Daniel had no claim on Zoe. Zoe was her own person. And throughout the series, she has hidden in plain sight, not so much as hinting that she exists, manipulating things behind the scenes — even luring a young technician working on her robot body into some cyber dates, not just because she thinks he’s cute — though she does — but in order to try to manipulate him into setting her robot self free, so she can escape Caprica and make it to Gemenon, where her human twin was heading before her human twin’s boyfriend blew up a train. The line she ultimately uses to snare the technician? It’s all about how trees should be coded in the virtual world.

Both Zoes’ friend, Lacey, is the only other person who knows Zoe’s avatar survives. And Lacey herself is not above manipulating the world to her whim. She is just a teenager, just a girl in a school, one with a headmaster who she mistrusts. But she knows the terrorist organization that Zoe orbited, and she’s slowly seducing a fellow teen, one deeper into the S.T.O. that she, into helping her to ship the Zoe robot to Gemenon. Is she attracted to him? Perhaps — but like Avatar Zoe, she’s using him, first and foremost.

Zoe and Lacey are the prime movers, but they are not the only ones. Amanda Greystone — Zoe’s mom, Daniel’s wife — is dancing on the razor’s edge between reality and unreality. Just like the rest of the Twelve Colonies, I suppose, only Amanda’s scars run deeper than just a love of virtual reality. It is Amanda’s sudden declaration at a memorial service that her daughter, Zoe, was a terrorist sympathizer — and perhaps, a terrorist — that causes a public uproar against her husband’s organization, and pushes him down a path where manufacturing more Cylons seems the only way to save his company.

Sister Clarice Willow, the headmaster of Zoe and Lacey’s school, is marvelously broken, possibly drug addicted, married into a group family that mistrusts her (save for two husbands) — and fanatically, hopelessly faithful that The One True God has a Plan. She is willing to manipulate Amanda to get the program Zoe was working on, because she believes that program is the key to eternal life for all people — the key to the very gates of heaven.

And Tamara Adama — she is lost in the virtual world, an imperfect copy of Joseph Adama’s daughter, created using the same program that created Zoe’s duplicate. She has ended up living her life in a videogame that resembles a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Worlds of Warcraft– only she’s the only character in the game who can’t die. And though she first entered the virtual world blindly, unsure of what she was or where she was, now she has become something more — something able to bend the rules of the game.

These are the leading characters of Caprica — these five women. Oh, the show does not condescend to men. Daniel is allowed his battle for his company and his search to figure out what makes the one working Cylon prototype work, when none of the others will. Joseph is allowed to try to salvage his relationship with his son, William, and to search for his daughter in the virtual world, where she is said to be. Sam Adama — Joseph’s brother — is allowed to be a Ha’la’tha enforcer who’s quietly showing his nephew the business, and coming home to a husband who worries about him. And these stories are real and deep and important.

But Daniel and Joseph are reacting to the world around them. Zoe, Lacey, Amanda, Clarice, Tamara? They’re acting. They’re the one calling the tune. Daniel and Joseph are dancing.

It’s rather bracing to see. Battlestar Galactica had its share of strong female characters — President Roslin, Kara Thrace, Athena, Three, Six — but this is something more. It’s sad, but it’s rather startling to see in the far-too-male world of science fiction television. And it’s incredibly welcome. Because these characters’ actions are believable, are entertaining, are contradictory and stupid and brilliant and right and wrong in just the way real humans behave. Caprica is not a show about fathers. And it is not merely a show about mothers and daughters and friends. It is a great show about mothers and daughters and friends — and fathers too.

Pro wrestling features athletes who are performers, and we all know that there are a lot of athletes and performers who are jerks. But Mick Foley isn’t one of them. The veteran wrestler is now donating half the proceeds from his latest book to survivors of rape in Sierra Leone (through Child Fund International). The other half is being donated to RAINN.

But Foley’s support of victims of rape and abuse isn’t stopping with money. He’s also donating his time as an online counselor for RAINN:

They have my first name when they sign in. There are times when the [screen] goes dead. Some women understandably may not want to talk to a man. But for the young lady I talked to, I think she appreciated my perspective. I told her I have four children, including a daughter about her age. She was very worried about what her parents might think. In those cases you have to continually reassure victims that they are victims. We let them know how brave it is for them to reach out for help.

It would be easy for Foley to live in comfort, to take the proceeds from his books and invest them in himself, to use his fame as a wrestler to make his life easy. Instead, he drives a 2002 minivan because it works (and because, he says, it helps teach his kids that nice things aren’t everything), and he donates his time and money to helping make the world a better place for victims of sexual abuse.

I don’t know about you, but I think Mick Foley has figured out what this whole life thing is supposed to be about.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see anything beating this movie:

Glenn Greenwald is right. This pro-Iraq War column by Marty Peretz is not only wrong, but it contains an unbelievably racist statement:

There were moments–long moments–during the Iraq war when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

There are racist bigots who have argued that Jews cannot be trusted, because they’re inherently deceitful people. These racist bigots are rightly called anti-Semites, and they are despised by anyone with a functioning brain.

Marty Peretz just argued that Arabs can’t be trusted, because they’re inherently deceitful people. He’s a racist bigot, and he should be despised by anyone with a functioning brain.

This is not new. And it should not be ignored. Marty Peretz is a flaming racist douchebag. He views Arabs as less human than the rest of humanity. He is not merely prejudiced. He is proudly so.

His opinions are of no more merit than those of David Duke. And no decent human should think otherwise.

I still have no idea who this guy is, but the made Steven Colbert happy, and he’s Russian.

Via Chris Bodenner

Errol Louis of the New York Daily News has a very good point about the scandal surrounding New York Gov. David Paterson. Namely, that the focus of this case should not be on Paterson. Rather, says Louis, it should be about the person at the center of the controversy — no, not aide David Johnson, though Johnson’s actions should be neither forgiven nor forgotten. But rather on Johnson’s victim, the woman who he abused, a woman who was failed every step of the way:

Johnson’s ex-girlfriend told the NYPD and a Family Court referee that she was injured, afraid and subject to intimidation.

“He’s like a government official, and I have problems with even calling the police because the state troopers kept calling and harassing me to drop the charges, and I wouldn’t,” she told the referee in November.

After which, it appears, nobody lifted a finger to help the accuser. City cops, tasked with serving an order of protection on Johnson, proved unable to do so, even though the towering 6-foot-7 aide was by the governor’s side at every public appearance.

The governor’s schedule is public information. Anybody could have served the papers.

The judge does not appear to have passed along the report that men with guns from a state agency were supposedly harassing a victim who appeared in her court.

The state police appear to have acted more like a private intimidation force than a professional law enforcement agency. And members of Paterson’s immediate political staff - and, perhaps, the governor - may have known all of what was going on, but tried to spin or dissolve the complaint rather than face it head-on.

Bad business all around.

In a city where attacks between family members or intimate partners are an epidemic - the NYPD responds to some 650 domestic violence calls every day - it chills the blood to read about how one high-profile encounter was botched.

It does, and not just because this one woman was failed. It chills the blood because it begs the question, how many more victims of domestic violence are being failed?

Obviously, most victims of domestic abuse are not going to be harassed by the Governor of their state. But the other failures — the lack of follow-through, the judge who was silent, the general nonchalance about serving papers — these are failures that are systemic, and general. If city police can’t be bothered to serve papers on a man traveling with the Governor, whose schedule is public, how many other abusers is the NYPD failing to serve?

Moreover, this case is precisely why so many victims of domestic violence choose not to come forward. No, most women who are abused are not going to be visited by state troopers. But many will be pressured by family and friends who are eager to minimize the deeds of the abuser, and eager to get all the unpleasantness behind them. While this is a case of that writ large, Paterson’s actions in this are simply the actions of someone with power trying to get all the unpleasantness swept away, so that his friend can move on with his life — because hey, the guy just made a mistake. Why wreck his life, right?

MRA types are fond of saying that orders of protection are given freely and capriciously. And no doubt, cases can be found where that is true. But this case shows the reality of orders of protection — the fact that victims all too often struggle just to get that piece of paper that maybe, maybe, will help them avoid further abuse. Questionable orders of protection can be quashed. Abuse cannot be so easily undone. And so I’d much rather a system that makes a mistake that can be remedied than one that refuses to take domestic violence seriously. Unfortunately, the latter appears to be the system in place in New York.

Those of you who’ve been meandering around the interweb for a while will be familiar with the blogger Jon Swift, the mock-conservative who declared that he received his news through unbiased sources like Rush Limbaugh, and who said of the economic downturn, “At a time when Wall Street executives are being forced to give up their private planes, limousines, bathroom renovations and multimillion dollar bonuses, the idea that a homeless man has been allowed to hold on to his cellphone while others are making sacrifices is more than we can take.”

The writer behind Swift was Al Weisel. And sadly, Al Weisel has died:

Al was on his way to his father’s funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke.

I didn’t know Al personally, only through his writing. But his writing was superlative, the sort of satire his cognomen’s namesake would have heartily approved. My heart and thoughts are with the Weisel family, which is having to face far too much loss in too short a time.

If I lived in New York, I’d be giving serious consideration to voting for the Republican candidate in the next gubernatorial race. Not so much because the Republican’s bound to be a great candidate, but because there’s pretty strong evidence that New York’s Democratic governors don’t so much give a damn about women.

First, we had former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a rising star in the Democratic Party nationally who ended up having to resign when it turned out he was soliciting prostitutes the way some people order pizza. That might have been forgivable, had 1) Prostitution been legal, 2) Spitzer not made his mark as a prosecutor by going after prostitution, or 3) Spitzer not been caught moving enough money around to spend on prostitutes that it drew the attention of bank regulators.

Spitzer ultimately wasn’t prosecuted, but he was forced from office ignominiously, and in his place New Yorkers got Gov. David Paterson, who immediately announced that he had had affairs in his lifetime. Okay, well, that’s not good. But points for honesty. And surely, surely, Paterson would keep himself on the straight-and-narrow after seeing what happened to his predecessor.

Or, you know, he might decide instead to obstruct justice in a domestic violence case:

Gov. David A. Paterson personally directed two state employees to contact the woman who had accused his close aide of assaulting her, according to two people with direct knowledge of the governor’s actions.

Mr. Paterson instructed his press secretary, Marissa Shorenstein, to ask the woman to publicly describe the episode as nonviolent, according to a third person, who was briefed on the matter. That description would contradict the woman’s accounts to the police and in court.

Mr. Paterson also enlisted another state employee, Deneane Brown, a friend of both the governor and the accuser, to make contact with the woman before she was due in court to finalize an order of protection against the aide, David W. Johnson, the two people with direct knowledge said. Ms. Brown, an employee of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, reached out to the woman on more than one occasion over a period of several days and arranged a phone call between the governor and the woman, Mr. Johnson’s companion.

After the calls from Ms. Brown and the conversation with the governor, the woman failed to appear for the court hearing on Feb. 8, and the case was dropped.

It was probably a minor issue, though. MRAs are always telling me that you can get an order of protection for any reason at all. I’m sure she was just mad that the stunning floral bouquet that her charming boyfriend gave her had only seventeen roses in it. I mean, surely, she didn’t have a good reason to get this order, right?

Mr. Johnson’s girlfriend had accused him of choking her, smashing her into a mirrored dresser and preventing her from calling for help during a Halloween altercation in the Bronx apartment they shared.

Oh. Um…well. That’s…a pretty damn good reason, actually.

So to recap: a woman is assaulted, goes to the police, and begins the work of getting an order of protection. The Governor of New York — the Governor of New York — uses his aides to put pressure on her to drop the case, because the assailant is on his staff.

Frankly, as someone who cares about women’s rights, I’d rather have the guy who just liked sex with prostitutes.

But of course, Paterson is blameless in this. I mean, he didn’t know that the attack was as severe as it was.

Mr. Paterson has stated that he was unaware of the details of the case until The Times reported them, and has said he did nothing improper.

See? He had no way of knowing that the case involved someone slamming someone’s face into a dresser. And no way of finding out. Which is why he immediately got mixed up in the case, because…uh…the woman was probably lying.

Okay, actually, that’s not a very good excuse.

Paterson has already announced he won’t stand for election in the fall. If today’s allegations are true, then that doesn’t go far enough. Like his predecessor, Paterson should resign, before the day is out. Paterson injected himself into a criminal case on the side of an assailant. At best, he did so recklessly, assuming that the — again — criminal case was not so serious as it really was. At worst, he did so with malice, seeking to get the exact result he did — a woman who, faced with pressure from the office of the governor, gave up on her criminal case because she saw more pain going forward with it than any relief justice could give her.

Either way, Paterson has demonstrated that he is unfit to serve as Governor of New York. Maybe Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch can do better than the two moral lightweights to precede him this term. He certainly can’t do much worse.

So those of us who find lulz in inept campaigns all shed a tear with the news today that former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., Joe-Tenn., would not run for Senate in New York, where he was gonna totally wow the kids with his younger, hipper Joe Lieberman-style campaign.

Alas, what could fill the void of Ford’s helicopter rides over Staten Island? What could — wait….

Do — do you hear that?

Th-that’s Mickey Kaus’s music!

Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer for her seat.

Oh. My. GOD. This is going to be AWESOME. I wonder how the voters will respond to a candidate who I am told has been caught in flagrante delicto with several members of the species Capra aegagrus hircus. But I’m sure the voting public will show Mickey understanding. At the very least, as much understanding as he’s shown to homosexuals.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is very good at playing the sensible conservative. He’s got that aw-shucks, Minnesota nice attitude that makes him sound like the type of conservative who isn’t actually bent on destroying anyone below the upper middle class.

This is what makes him very dangerous.

Because in his heart, Pawlenty is no moderate. He’s a conservative — a radical one — who has never met a tax cut he didn’t like, or a spending cut he wasn’t willing to make, so long as they attach to the right people. (Oh, he was more than happy to cut the renter’s tax rebate program, so people who rent — disproportionately poor people — get less back in taxes. But that’s different. Those people are poor.)

Pawlenty is now running for President, and he is, one assumes, getting ready to move enough rightward to try to make teabaggers into T-Paw baggers. His first step? Kill the poor:

Emergency rooms should be able to turn patients away to cut costs, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) said last night

Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.

“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”

So let’s say a guy with the condition I’m recovering from comes into the ER. He doesn’t have insurance. He’s presenting with some pain and swelling of a sensitive area, but that isn’t necessarily cancer; could be torsion. Could be a hydrocele. Could be all sorts of minor, non-life-threatening conditions. Does he stay, or does he go?

If he stays, he gets the ultrasound that proves it’s cancer, thus starting treatment that saves his life. If he goes, he does so knowing that he can’t afford the doctor. So he lets things get worse. And worse. And worse.

If he goes back — when his guts ache and his brain is foggy — the treatment regimen is now more expensive. And less likely to succeed. A surgery and treatment plan that would have had 99 percent success now gives odds closer to 50/50. If our patient survives, he’ll face crushing medical debt that can only be alleviated via bankruptcy. If he dies, he dies.

This is Tim Pawlenty’s bold medical proposal — let the uninsured suffer, and die, so that ERs don’t have to take in the poor. This is something, incidentally, not even hospitals are clamoring for — they’d just like Pawlenty to sign on to an extension of medical assistance, a bill Pawlenty vetoed because…well, it helps the poor, I guess.

Nobody should risk death because of a lack of health care. The system we have — in which the poor at least can go to an ER to get treated — is absolutely awful. Pawlenty wants to take that last snippet of a safety net, and whisk it away — leaving the uninsured to die in the process. That is not conservative. That is evil.

If you’re ever feeling down about your life, feeling like you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, just ready to give up, take a gander at how Roger Ebert is holding up.

The longtime writer and movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, best known for his work on the shows Siskel & Ebert and Ebert & Roeper, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. In 2006, he began undergoing radiation therapy for the cancer, therapy that ultimately killed the cells in his jaw and weakened his carotid artery to the point that he nearly bled to death. Today, Ebert is unable to speak, eat, or drink; he has no lower jaw (surgeries to repair it have repeatedly failed, and Ebert has given up on the process).

A lesser person might be embittered, frustrated, and despondent. And yet, as anyone who’s followed Ebert’s writing or tweeting of late knows, Ebert is far from those. He has written about his affliction with grace and humor, and a strong acceptance of his new normal. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t recognize or mourn what he’s lost, but he does it gracefully, as with his post from January in which he discussed his inability to consume food or drink:

Isn’t it sad to be unable eat or drink? Not as sad as you might imagine. I save an enormous amount of time. I have control of my weight. Everything agrees with me. And so on.

What I miss is the society. Lunch and dinner are the two occasions when we most easily meet with friends and family. They’re the first way we experience places far from home. Where we sit to regard the passing parade. How we learn indirectly of other cultures. When we feel good together. Meals are when we get a lot of our talking done — probably most of our recreational talking. That’s what I miss. Because I can’t speak that’s’s another turn of the blade. I can sit at a table and vicariously enjoy the conversation, which is why I enjoy pals like my friend McHugh so much, because he rarely notices if anyone else isn’t speaking. But to attend a “business dinner” is a species of torture. I’m no good at business anyway, but at least if I’m being bad at it at Joe’s Stone Crab there are consolations.

The entire column, as with much of Ebert’s writing, is worth the click-through; snippets really can’t do it justice.

Ebert has faced his illness and the recovery from it without wallowing in fear, or clutching for answers. He has held fast to his humanist beliefs, even at a time when the idea of an infinite, perfect afterlife might bring some comfort. He has accepted his own mortality with a wisdom that I, struggling with the prospect of a non-life-threatening disease that can be cured relatively easily, envy deeply.

That essay deserves quoting too, for Ebert gets close to how I feel about the meaning of life, even as I hope for something beyond the life I have:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

That’s a beautiful sentiment, and spot on; this life is blessing enough. If we are lucky enough that there is an afterlife, it is a bonus; we do not need it. We are gifted enough already.

Ebert is in the news because of a new profile of him in Esquire, one that portrays him as he is — not as a saint or a martyr, but as a person who has experienced a severe illness and who is still dealing with the scars left by it. A man who is not so lost in his suffering to forget to care for those around him, including his wife, Chaz, who he is clearly still in love with after 18 years of marriage, or his late partner on Siskel & Ebert, and his good friend, Gene Siskel, whose death at the hands of brain cancer still affects Ebert. In what is perhaps the most poignant part of the piece, Ebert shows his interviewer a piece he wrote about Siskel (showing previously written work is easier than using his text pad, which speaks for him these days):

Ebert keeps scrolling down. Below his journal he had embedded video of his first show alone, the balcony seat empty across the aisle. It was a tribute, in three parts. He wants to watch them now, because he wants to remember, but at the bottom of the page there are only three big black squares. In the middle of the squares, white type reads: “Content deleted. This video is no longer available because it has been deleted.” Ebert leans into the screen, trying to figure out what’s happened. He looks across at Chaz. The top half of his face turns red, and his eyes well up again, but this time, it’s not sadness surfacing. He’s shaking. It’s anger.

Chaz looks over his shoulder at the screen. “Those fu — ” she says, catching herself.

They think it’s Disney again — that they’ve taken down the videos. Terms-of-use violation.

This time, the anger lasts long enough for Ebert to write it down. He opens a new page in his text-to-speech program, a blank white sheet. He types in capital letters, stabbing at the keys with his delicate, trembling hands: MY TRIBUTE, appears behind the cursor in the top left corner. ON THE FIRST SHOW AFTER HIS DEATH. But Ebert doesn’t press the button that fires up the speakers. He presses a different button, a button that makes the words bigger. He presses the button again and again and again, the words growing bigger and bigger and bigger until they become too big to fit the screen, now they’re just letters, but he keeps hitting the button, bigger and bigger still, now just shapes and angles, just geometry filling the white screen with black like the three squares. Roger Ebert is shaking, his entire body is shaking, and he’s still hitting the button, bang, bang, bang, and he’s shouting now. He’s standing outside on the street corner and he’s arching his back and he’s shouting at the top of his lungs.

It’s not anger at his plight. Ebert’s anger is focused on more righteous, more evil things, like the corporate wizards at Disney who think blocking his tribute to a fallen friend is somehow protecting the market for the release of a Siskel & Ebert box set some day.

Ebert can’t shout, of course, and yet he can; his writing remains cogent and his mind remains sharp. He is standing against the coming darkness — the darkness that comes for all of us — with his head held high, without apology. Seeing the photo in Esquire, the one that accompanies this post, Ebert wrote, “Not a lovely sight. But then I am not a lovely sight, and in a moment I thought, well, what the hell. It’s just as well it’s out there. That’s how I look, after all.”

Ebert is wrong about one thing: he is still a lovely sight. He’s a brilliant writer and by all appearances a good and decent man. Not perfect. But good. Here’s hoping that he continues to be for many years to come.

So your kid’s school district has given your kid a laptop to study on. Great idea! They can use them to work on homework, do research, and make multimedia presentations. And they come with webcams — which lets students talk to each other about their assignments, chat with teachers, and — oh yeah — lets the school spy on students without their or your knowledge:

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

This is, of course, horrifying on so many levels that it’s hard to imagine someone green-lighting this policy. I mean, this is literally what Big Brother did in 1984 — spy on people using their telescreens, at random times, without their knowledge, hoping to catch them in a thoughtcrime. That the target was a student, rather than a grown-up, does not make this better. Indeed, it makes it worse — if the school is randomly spying on students who happen to have their computers on, how many images of students getting dressed did they pull up? How many intimate conversations between partners did they save video from? Not to mention that even if they just got a picture of my kid sitting at their computer, doing her homework like a perfect human being, who the hell is a school district to take pictures of my child without my or her knowledge or her permission?

Add to it the fact that the student in question was punished for “improper behavior in his home” — which, last I checked, is not school — and you have a district where every administratior in the school, plus the Superintendent, should be summarily dismissed.

I’m going to say it now: if my daughter is doing something “improper” in her home, it’s none of her school’s business. It’s my business, and her mom’s, and believe me, we’ll be happy to punish her if we need to. But that punishment does not need to come from the school. Indeed, I’d prefer it didn’t.

No, I want my daughter’s school to educate her — something most schools do a very good job of, including, might I add, my daughter’s school. They — and other schools — should continue to educate. Parenting, however, needs to be left to the parents. And if a kid has bad parents — well, there are things that the school can do to help the kid. But spying on them randomly is not one of them.

(Via Amanda)

So Southwest Airlines may have just a minor miscalculation in their ongoing war against fat people.

They booted Kevin Smith off a flight.

Yes, the writer and director who regularly has his on-screen alter ego Silent Bob described as tubby, was already seated, with armrests down and seatbelt buckled, when Southwest decided that he was the wrong size to fly.

Smith announced his defenestration via his (warning, at times incredibly NSFW — which goes without saying; this is Kevin Smith we’re taking about) Twitter feed. Kate Harding was kind enough to stitch a few of Smith’s tweets together:

@SouthwestAir, go fuck yourself. I broke no regulation, offered no “safety risk” (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?). I was wrongly ejected from the flight (even [attendant] Suzanne eventually agreed). And fuck your apologetic $100 voucher, @SouthwestAir. Thank God I don’t embarrass easily (bless you, JERSEY GIRL training). But I don’t sulk off either: so everyday, some new fuck-you Tweets for @SouthwestAir.

Right on. Smith has no reason to be embarrassed — Southwest does. They’ve been actively trying to dehumanize fat people for some time now, and you just knew eventually they’d dehumanize the wrong one; here’s hoping that Smith’s very vocal and justified outrage over this will lead the airline to remember that fat people are, in fact, people. We shall see.

No matter what, it’s got Smith angry — and not just for his own situation. His last two tweets, condensed:

Hey @SouthwestAir? Fuck making it right for me just ’cause I have a platform. I sat next to a big girl who was chastised for not buying an extra ticket because “all passengers deserve their space.” Fucking flight wasn’t even full! Fuck your size-ist policy. Rude…

Word.

Incidentally, the title of this post is a play on a line from one of the great films in cinematic history.

So when last we chatted about my balls, I had just had surgery, which had gone pretty well, and my pre-op CT scan had come back normal. All indications were that the cancer hadn’t spread, and I was awaiting the pathology report and the post-op blood work to determine what my treatment regimen would be. I was hoping to end up on surveillance, which basically is just what it sounds like — they watch you carefully, you do tests every month, get a CT scan every couple months, and if the cancer doesn’t show back up, you win.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Instead, starting in about a week, I’m going to get two rounds of chemotherapy.

That’s mainly due to what they found in the pathology report. The good news is that my blood work went back to normal after the surgery, so if anything’s metastasized, it hasn’t gone very far. But the tumor itself was pretty far advanced, and it had at least one, and possibly two kinds of tissue that spread easily.

The first kind — the kind I certainly had — was enbryonal carcinoma. If that sounds like “embryo” to you, you win 80 Fecke Points. Yes, my cancer was mostly made up of placental tissue with some yolk sac and random tissue thrown in. Indeed, according to my blood markers, I had the level of alpha-fetoprotein of a woman in her second month of pregnancy.

The jokes pretty much write themselves; I choose to believe that I’ve had the mythical Gay Abortion. Okay, I’m straight, but the cells that made my wacky, potentially-life-threatening fetusoid were all male.

Anyhow, EC is pretty nasty and tends to hang around and cause trouble for some time, so that alone would be call for chemotherapy. I also might have had some choriocarcinoma, which spreads differently than testicular cancer usually does (by blood rather than lymph nodes); while the pathologist couldn’t say for sure that I did, he evidently couldn’t say for sure that I didn’t. And again, that argues for chemo.

So chemo it is. I’m not looking forward to getting poisoned for a week, and then doing it again three weeks later, but if that’s what I have to do to live cancer-free, I’m willing to put up with it. The good news — there’s always good news with testicular cancer — is that the regimen of bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (BEP) is really, really effective in killing this stuff off. I have a better than 95% chance of needing no further treatment after this — and a nearly 100% chance of long-term survival which, I keep telling myself, is all any of us has.

So it’s not the best possible news, but it’s not the worst possible news, either. And hopefully, in about eight weeks, I can close the book on the treatment phase of this, and start celebrating milestones. Believe me, I’m really looking forward to it.

The Winter Olympics have their opening ceremonies tonight, and that means we’re just days away from the most important competitive event in the history of the world. I refer, of course, to Olympic curling. This year, the U.S. women’s team will be trying to improve on their disappointing finish in Torino, when they failed to qualify for the semis. Meanwhile, the U.S. men’s team will be trying to improve on their fantastic third-place showing in 2006. As in ‘06, the men’s team is made up entirely of Minnesotans, and the Land of 10,000 Lakes is hoping for gold this year, which, in true Minnesota fashion, we will share with the other 49 states because, hey, you might like to see the gold medals too, and we don’t like to be greedy.

Curling is one of those sports that the Olympics was made for. Nobody is going pro at curling. Nobody’s going to get a huge endorsement deal out of it. At best, the men and women competing in Vancouver will get a brief moment of national recognition before they go back to their day jobs.

Well, I for one will be backing Team USA all the way, and in honor of Team McCormick and Team Shuster, here’s Jonathan Coulton’s ode to chess on ice.

Discussing a hypothetical stipend increase for Americorps volunteers — so that they don’t have to receive food stamps as many now do — John Cole pretty much nails exactly how things would go down:

Wanting to negotiate in good faith, having never learned a lesson ever, the Democrats like Baucus and Conrad would slow down the debate to give the Republicans time to participate. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe would work for a couple weeks with Senate leadership, get a couple things they want in the bill, then sigh and utter their public regrets that they just can not support the bill. Chuck Todd, the Politico, and other dullards in the beltway media would run a few pieces wondering why Obama hasn’t reached out more to moderates. While this is happening, the wurlitzer’s media blitz starts.

First off, we all know who loves Americorp- the Clenis. From there, it is all downhill. Breitbart would seize upon the bill, and claim that the anonymous stipend is just President Obama seeking to pay off his campaign volunteers- just like the KHMER ROUGE, POL POT, STALIN, AND DUVALIER! They would find some innocuous aspect of Americorps and turn it into something that is no doubt worse than Hitler.

[...]

Somewhere around this time, Randy Scheuneman and Meg Stapleton would post a bunch of nonsense on Palin’s facebook page, maybe declaring that Americorps is just like Hitler Youth Corps. This would get picked up by the Weekly Standard’s resident Palin fluffer, Matt Continetti, repeated by the increasingly loathesome Michael Goldfarb, and mainstreamed into CNN by Stephen Hayes in one of his typical fact-free appearances. Bill Kristol would pick up the ball and run with it, and before you know it, Fred Hiatt’s fishwrap would have 20 editorials railing against Americorps.

At this time, we would have tea partiers packing guns to town hall events, terrified of a socialist takeover of, well, something, carrying racist signs and chanting “Keep Government out of Americorps!,” and the rest of the MSM can start their coverage. Sensing an opportunity, shitheels like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu sense the bill is in trouble, and would start to pack the goodies into it for their home state. Lieberman and Marshall Wittman would sense that liberals really want this, and then start voicing grave concerns about the bill, and Marty Peretz and company would call anyone who noted Lieberman is just being an asshole an anti-Semitic Jew hater. Evan Bayh and other “fiscal conservatives” would then start mugging for every camera they could find, and would make appearances on all the Sunday shows with mean old man John McCain talking about the need to cut government and why war should always be off budget.

The read-the-whole-thing level of this post is off the charts. And deeply depressing. And accurate as all get out.

I have been disappointed by politicians far more often than I care to admit. From Bill Clinton to Jesse Ventura to even George W. Bush — who managed to do far worse than my meager expectations to him — candidates have been elected to office only to become feckless, spineless, worthless representatives, far more concerned about their own political well-being than the people they represent. See also most of Congress.

What redeems my faith in the system is the fact that every so often, a politician comes along who actually exceeds my expectations, who comports themself the way we expect a politician to — without fear of losing, with more of a focus on the people they represent than the next election. The late, great Sen. Paul Wellstone, DFL-Minn., was one of those politicians. He ran a spirited campaign and talked a good show, but once elected he backed up his words with actions. He walked the talk.

And now, the man who holds his seat in the Senate is doing the same thing.

On Tuesday, Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn., served as the keynote speaker for the NARAL Pro-Choice America Roe v. Wade anniversary luncheon. And his remarks to the group were outstanding. Franken gave a full-throated, unapologetic defense of the right of women to choose their own reproductive destinies — and did so with both humor and grace. I haven’t found a video of the event yet — if I do, I’ll post it — but the transcript is exactly what pro-choice Democrats want to hear from our public officials. Here’s a selection:

Shortly after I (finally) became a Senator, I was appointed to the Judiciary Committee.

At first I thought: Well, this is weird. I’m not a lawyer. How am I going to ask the right questions?

But I did some research and discovered most Americans aren’t lawyers. It’s true.

And so to me, the right questions aren’t the ones a lawyer would necessarily ask. They’re questions the American people would ask.

And that’s what I did in my first hearing. It just happened that my first hearing was a high profile one: the Judiciary Committee was considering the nomination for Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
[...]

Let me set it up a bit. The day before, one of my Republican colleagues had been - I guess the right word is “hectoring” - Judge Sotomayor, repeatedly asking her whether the word “abortion” appeared anywhere in the Constitution.

Of course, it doesn’t. But whether it does or not is beside the point. So she answered by speaking to the question behind the question. But finally after being asked for the third time, Judge Sotomayor replied, “No. The word ‘abortion’ is not in the Constitution.”

Which my colleague treated as an “Aha!” moment.

So the next day, I felt compelled to follow up.

I brought up her exchange with my colleague from the previous day, and then asked, “Do the words ‘birth control’ appear anywhere in the Constitution?”

“No, they don’t,” Judge Sotomayor replied quite correctly.

“How about the word ‘privacy?’ Does that appear anywhere in the Constitution?”

She said. “No, the word ‘privacy’ isn’t in the Constitution either.”

I think you can see where I was going. And so could everyone in the hearing room.

You know, there are a lot of words that express bedrock constitutional principles – words like federalism, checks and balances, and separation of powers – that never appear in the Constitution. That doesn’t mean that the Constitution didn’t set up a federalist system, enumerating certain express powers to the federal government and reserving certain powers for the states. And it doesn’t mean that the Constitution didn’t set up a system of “checks and balances” by creating the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, granting each certain powers, creating what is well known as a “separation of powers.”

And even though the word “privacy” does not appear in the Constitution, the Court has long recognized a protection for privacy.

And that is why I followed my questions about the words “birth control” and “privacy” to ask whether Judge Sotomayor agreed that the Court had held that the Constitution created not just a right to privacy, but that it was also established precedent that women had a right to choose to have an abortion.

She said, yes, that was established precedent. That it was settled law. And she agreed that the job of a Supreme Court justice was not to make new law from the bench.

You know, it’s funny. Whenever a Republican runs for the Senate or for president and is asked, “What do you look for in a prospective Justice for the Supreme Court?” Republicans always answer, “I want a judge that doesn’t make law from the bench.”

[...]

In the last year alone….

We saw Representative Bart Stupak use the health care bill as a bludgeon, restricting women’s health choices in a bill that was meant to expand them.

We watched with frustration as the Supreme Court overturned a century’s worth of precedents to further their conservative activist agenda.

We are watching as the Senate continues to block Dawn Johnsen’s confirmation to a critical role at the Department of Justice because of her pro-choice views.

And we saw Dr. Tiller murdered at church… AT HIS CHURCH…. murdered for the choice he provided for women.

I want to thank Dr. Sella for being here today, and I want to join you in honoring his memory.

And that’s why the work you do at NARAL is indispensible. Because the forces on the other side are persistent, single-minded, and even violent.

A woman’s right to choose is never fully won. It must be won anew every day, every year, every Congress, and every generation.

Even though most Americans support abortion rights, even though most Americans understand that no woman ever plans an unwanted pregnancy, that no woman ever thinks she’ll have to make such a painful and personal choice, those who would deny that choice press on, undeterred.

In a lot of ways that fight is going to be incremental. In 2007 – after Justice O’Connor’s departure, we saw the Roberts Court reject the longstanding precedent that an exception for a woman’s health must be a component of any law that restricts abortion rights.

Even when the woman’s health includes her reproductive health. That’s what Dr. Tiller did so often in his work. Perform abortions on fetuses that would not be viable outside the womb in order to protect a woman’s ability to bear children in the future. Ironically, what could be more pro-life?

[...]

Now, let me say that there are millions of people in this country who have a sincere objection to abortion, and much of that is based on strongly held religious conviction. And I respect that. In America, we respect each other’s religious beliefs. But we are not governed by them.

It’s called the “separation of church and state,” a phrase which, like “separation of powers,” does not appear in the Constitution, but which is created just as clearly in the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

So to those people whose religious conviction leads them to a moral opposition to abortion, I say that’s your right, that’s your choice. Don’t have an abortion. But also, do everything you can to work together with us to diminish the reasons we have abortions.

Support comprehensive sex education and access to affordable family planning services. Support funding for maternal child health programs, WIC, and affordable child care so new mothers have security and the resources they need to raise a healthy child.

Oh yeah, and support comprehensive affordable health care for all.

[...]

I want to leave you today with a story. It’s one that should sound familiar to the millions of women across this country who understand in a very personal way the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights.

The story is about a Minnesotan named Kim. Kim was a 19-year-old single mother. She was struggling to make ends meet, working full time as a receptionist. Her daughter had health insurance through the state, but she did not. Her boyfriend, her daughter’s father, was extremely abusive.

She was getting the pill through Planned Parenthood at a reduced rate, but after her car broke down, she couldn’t afford that either.

One day her boyfriend demanded that they have sex, but refused to use a condom. He threatened her. She was too afraid to say no. And she ended up pregnant.

She said, “Abortion was absolutely the right choice for me at that time… Had I stayed in that relationship and brought another child into the mix, I would have continued the cycle of abuse and poverty.”

“Making the decision to stop the cycle [allowed me] to concentrate on my daughter and ensure that she will have the financial and emotional stability to go to college and live a successful, happy life. Women need options, women need choices.”

I am here to ask you to keep up the fight, for Kim, and for every woman who has learned – and will learn – that women need options and choices.

Thank you for the work you’ve done – and are continuing to do — to stand up for women’s rights.

I’m proud to stand with you.

I know that’s a long excerpt, but it is as eloquent a defense of the right to choice as any I’ve seen. And it comes during a three-decade run in which Democrats have been almost embarrassed to support a woman’s right to choose, in which we’ve run away from support for abortion rights, even as we paid lip service to them.

Franken’s speech is something we need to hear out of more Democrats. Abortion rights are fundamental rights, because women — as humans — have a fundamental right to control their bodies. It’s nice to hear my junior senator say so.

Is this Carly Fiorina ad the worst political ad of all time of this year? Yes, but of course, the year is young.

So much fail, so little time. Is it the way Fiorina suggests that good fiscal conservatives are mindless sheep? The way she attacks Campbell for deficits while simultaneously attacking him for supporting tax hikes that might have ameliorated them? No, truly the best part of the ad is the Demon Sheep Itself:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes courtesy of Cake: