Joé McKen is a progressive civil libertarian and third-wave atheist stuck in suburban Québec, Canada, where he spends his time composing, writing, drawing, nursing a layman’s passion for science and technology, speaking out for social justice, and poking idjits with a sharp pointy stick. Owner of a Nize Hat!, a persistent SIWOTI syndrome and an itchy snark finger.
Can’t talk, busy with music stuff. Have a badass ode to science instead.
Wizards and witches do exist, and they cast spells called “research”, usually abusing a magic potion called “coffee”.
A nice little dose of optimism to start off your week. (Because the week starts on Sunday, not Monday, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a heretic.)
(via Friendly Atheist)
Last night was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or as I prefer to think of it, the “saturnalia of incestuous ingratiation that does little to instill confidence in the public that the press isn’t ensorcelled by the powerful”. (Thank you, The Newsroom.) The only thing that ever came to mind when I heard the name was Stephen Colbert’s legendary shellacking of George W. Bush’s presidency and the mainstream media’s complicity, and how pricked that same media felt afterwards – comedians speaking truth to power is all fine and dandy, but how dare he do it to them?
Yesterday saw history repeat itself: Michelle Wolf, whom I know as an occasional correspondent on The Daily Show, took the stage and gave the Trump administration and its apologists, as well as the media that chose to elevate him rather than push back when it mattered in 2015–16, the talking-to they deserved. So naturally, the DC media is rounding on her, because the only comedy they apparently approve of is the kind that favors polite servility.
Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything is neither polite nor servile, and he takes to The New York Times to lay out some truth.
[I]n her performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night in Washington, Michelle Wolf did exactly what a great comic is supposed to do. She made the crowd of assembled journalists, politicians and guests laugh; she made them squirm; and she made them gasp in astonishment (and yes, a little delight) when a sharp sliver of the truth cut a little closer to the bone than they were expecting.
In other words, she killed.
Yet in return for her excellence, Ms. Wolf was criticized not just by partisan defenders of the president, but by members of the press, too. Journalists called Ms. Wolf’s set “offensive,” “deplorable” and “a debacle.” Margaret Talev, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who booked the comedian to perform, released a statement on Sunday night that said “unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit” of the group’s mission.
There is no president of the Comedians’ Association, and though Ms. Wolf and I know each other professionally, I’m not her spokesman. But at risk of speaking out of turn, I’d like to offer this official response from America’s comics: If you don’t want comedy, don’t hire us.
[…]
Contrary to what several prominent journalists said, the transcript shows that Michelle Wolf did not make a single joke at the expense of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s physical appearance. Rather, she did something much worse in the eyes of those assembled: She ridiculed the White House press secretary’s mendacity, hypocrisy and complicity. And in a searing, brutally funny segment, she criticized the willingness of the press to play along:
“You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re gonna profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.”
No wonder the crowd seemed so uncomfortable.
It amuses me how another frequent criticism of Wolf and Colbert’s style of tell-it-to-their-faces humor is that it generates few laughs from those present. Wolf knew full well that the people worth impressing weren’t the stooges in the room, but the colossally larger audience watching at home. I didn’t even find her routine all that funny, but it was made all the more hilarious by the reactions she got from the stilted crowd, especially when she tore into Sarah Huckabee Sanders, noted professional liar for the (alleged) sexual-assaulter-in-chief.
Hi. Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies to the press on Donald Trump's behalf for a living. It's not theoretically possible to say something to or about her that is too mean. If Michelle Wolf never told a joke and just spent 20 minutes trying to make her cry, it would have been fine.
— Steve Shives (@steve_shives) April 30, 2018
When did it become okay to be more offended by what someone with no power says than by what someone with power does?
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) April 29, 2018
Watch Wolf’s full remarks below:
Step 1: Click play. Step 2: Turn your volume down, at least a little. Step 3: Turn on subtitles.
I know it’s designed and built by some incredibly smart people, but it still amazes me that a machine can spit out that much hellfire for that long without disintegrating. Human engineering is a beautiful thing.
(via @BadAstronomer)
Few things stick in my craw as much as the predatory charlatanism of anti-choice zealots who set up fake abortion clinics to deceive and bully women into keeping a pregnancy they want to terminate. We’ve seen some good smackdowns of these “crisis pregnancy centers”, such as from Sam Bee and Patton Oswalt, and now John Oliver lays down the truth in his latest episode, with a characteristically theatrical finish:
Only in America can religious vultures set up fake medical clinics, staff them with actors pretending to be qualified physicians, and blatantly lie to desperate people who come to them in need of medical assistance or guidance, and not only be allowed to do so under the law but even receive taxpayer funding for it. It’s a crowning achievement of mendacious bullshit. It’s also a clear indicator of Christianity’s privileged position in the US that so few people know or care about these centers – imagine the reaction if some other group (say, Muslims) tried to pull the same stunt.
If you aren’t watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver every Sunday night, you should be – or at least catch the full segments his team puts on YouTube shortly after the show airs. Last night’s episode centered around Mike Pence, that creepy religious-regressive former governor of Indiana who’s now the one official in the White House Trump cannot fire. Oliver covers Pence’s views on everything from his contempt for women in the military to his support of “conversion therapy” (a fancier way of saying “pray the gay away”), along with his affiliation with the Christian-patriarchal group Focus on the Family.
Pence is the reason efforts to get rid of Trump before the next election are shortsighted – Trump is terrible in large part because he’s clueless and incompetent at everything, but that’s also been a saving grace as he keeps sabotaging his own worse moves. Mike Pence, on the other hand, is smart and politically experienced. Impeaching or otherwise removing Trump would mean replacing him with his next-in-command, and if Trump is the frying pan of stupid, Pence is the fire of pure religious zealotry.
The best thing voters can do is castrate them both in the November midterms, and then toss them out for good in 2020.
*
Apropos of nothing, I got this in the mail earlier:
T’was a nice little bit of reading.
US House of Representatives passes an anti-sex-trafficking bill that would restrict online speech, endanger sex workers, and do absolutely nothing to fight sex trafficking.
As Trump [pictured] makes noises about violent video games causing mass shootings, remember that endless studies have proven him completely and utterly wrong.
(via @mccanner; retweet by @Popehat)
New York man wins $1 million lawsuit after an NYPD officer tried to frame him for drunk driving to cover up how the cop blew through a stop sign and crashed into his car.
(via @natemcdermott; retweet by @KFILE)
Pamela Gellar’s daughters did not fall far from the bigoted tree.
Finally, your headline of the day (and an uncomfortably informative article):
(via @radleybalko)
![‘The Hill’ headline: “Donations of deer semen make up majority of contributions in Texas candidate's race: report” [by Avery Anapol @ 03/02/18 3:11 PM EST]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqtydVbqwEImgJ_U7r2ABkPptUJv40zkRWeTHuZTV8MSmrh50irXPYOfPT7fA-BE91JFxEGrhd4MIOeY8Yf4zysO67ewzaxDu_VLT7q-hMbmPxLhW9L188gHiqYTspLIr4k9Ps7shUXf6/w500/the_hill_headline_deer_semen_contributions.jpg "‘The Hill’ headline: “Donations of deer semen make up majority of contributions in Texas candidate's race: report” [by Avery Anapol @ 03/02/18 3:11 PM EST]")
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Federal appeals court rules Kansas can’t block Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services.
(via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)
Georgia anti-LGBTQ adoption bill follow-up: State Senate passes the bill, sends it to the House for consideration.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Maryland prosecutors charge a man with attempting suicide. I’m sure a criminal record and years of probation will give him newfound reason to live.
(via The Watch)
As Lawrence Krauss’s reputation dwindles in the wake of BuzzFeed’s sexual misconduct exposé, his wife has bravely taken to quasi-anonymously attacking his accusers on Twitter.
Finally, your headline of the day.
(via @wordmancopy; retweet by @radleybalko)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Reporter [pictured] helps expose how incompetence and negligence led to 60 deaths in San Diego County jails. So naturally, county attorneys are now harassing her.
(via @radleybalko)
Popehat presents: Don’t talk to the feds, Donald Trump edition.
Fox News frequently touts its willingness to publish things no other outlet will. That’s probably because no other outlet would accuse the US Winter Olympics team of going “darker, gayer, different” by choosing athletes based on race rather than ability.
US college student flunks an assignment because her professor says Australia is a continent, not a country. (It’s both.)
(via @davidmackau; retweet by @Popehat)
Finally, I’d joke that The Onion is no longer doing satire, but to be fair, it’s impossible to tell reality and satire apart anymore.
(via retweet by @Popehat)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
The jaw-dropping fall of an elite Baltimore police unit validates the need for federal oversight. (I wrote about this case a little bit here.)
San Francisco district attorney’s office to dismiss thousands of current marijuana cases, as well as vacate pot convictions dating back to 1975. Kudos.
(via @BadAstronomer)
Days after Florida voters put the issue on the November ballot, a federal judge strikes down the state’s current system that forces felons to undergo an arduous process to recover their voting rights.
(via Joe.My.God.)
Canadian federal prisons will now accommodate trans inmates based on how they self-identify.
(via @cancivlib)
How to guarantee a massive privacy breach: 1) Pass a terrible law forcing porn sites to verify their visitors’ age. 2) Internet company now requires users to disclose their real names, addresses and birth dates across porn sites. 3) Sit back and wait.
(via @fark)
Finally, this video is possibly the best thing humanity will ever produce (and the best advertisement Seattle’s KIRO Radio will ever have):
(via retweet by @KFILE)
Last night we captured surveillance footage of a vandal trying to break in to one of our employee's vehicles in our parking lot. While the suspect is still at large, we took the liberty to have John Curley give his play-by-play of the incident.
— KIRO Radio 97.3 FM🎙 (@KIRORadio) February 1, 2018
Take a listen 🔊 pic.twitter.com/FYQTiJsTDt
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
If I publish one more links post, do I get one free?
In states where marijuana is legal, arrests have gone down dramatically – but Black users are still arrested up to ten times more often than Whites.
(via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)
Prison labor is slave labor, part the nth.
(via Pharyngula)
Virginia Republicans present a bill to charge Internet users $20 to watch porn and other “obscene” material. Why these puritanical numbskulls never learn from the fate of similar bills peddled around the country, I’ll never know.
(via Joe.My.God.)
James Bond was a rapist: Eventually all our heroes become villains, and so will we.
(via The Daily Grail)
Finally, your headline of the day:
(via @radleybalko)
If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.
Edit (02/01/18 @ 5:03 AM ET): Typo fix.
I think this is meant to be satire, but I don’t know – it seems entirely realistic to me. (Well, except for the time-looping.)
That’s a nice moment at the end, but I can’t help but feel Black cops share something in common with gay evangelicals or Hispanic Republicans.
(via Pharyngula)
