In Libya: Gaddafi’s forces have rejected a cease-fire.
In Japan: Radioactive water is leaking into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, say safety officials.
In Ivory Coast: BBC reports that 800 people have been killed this week in conflicts between supporters of Alassane Ouattara, the president recognized by the UN, and the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo.
In Afghanistan: At least seven people were killed in an attack on a UN compound yesterday in response to a Florida preacher who burned the Koran last month, and insurgents wearing burkas attacked a coalition base today.
Jetpack distribution to follow: Today, Obama says it’s time to stop relying on foreign oil, because clean energy technologies aren’t science fiction anymore.
The ramshackle skies: The Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing in Yuma, Arizona yesterday had a three-foot hole in its fuselage, reports CNN.
Keepin’ it classy: Minnesota state senator comes out against the dangers of integration, claims to have a lot of black friends.
To be fair, they did find MRSA on BART: The most neurotic discerning New Yorkers can now rest assured when riding public transit with the proles thanks to the Metro Mitt, a protective glove for those trying times when you have to stand up and steady yourself by way of a handrail while riding the subway.
Because that’s what college is for, amirite? Rutgers is paying noted oompa loompa Snooki a higher speaking fee than Toni Morrison, who will give this year’s commencement address.
Finally, yesterday was Rachel Maddow’s birthday. Here she is, arguing with Jon Stewart about the nature of political satire. Good morning!
Jon Stewart = Scab
Does anyone know anything about the Minnesota bill that Dan Hall was speaking of?
Forget for a second the Republicans views on race, class, desegregation etc. I think mandated desegregation should be questioned. Are there sinister forces guiding segregation anymore? Is it good for our children to spend long periods of time on busses just to provide the mirage of integration in our schools? Is it a good use of our funds to buy polluting fossil fuels to shuttle young people accross town?
Further, integrating schools based on race is another indication of our national state of denial about the real issue here: class!
I mistrust the motivations of the Rupublicans in doing this (just listen to how they talk about it), but I also mistrust the liberal white guilt complex that has kept these policies in place longer than they have been useful. I mistrust the Republicans more. I’m not even sure mistrust is the right word for what I feel about liberal white guilt.
Also congratulations to Savage for hitting the New York Times Bestseller list, and getting for having MTV pick up his show for the fall.
Why didn’t we read that on Slog in the last couple days? Is Lindy editing the blog?
@4 Links??? (please…)
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-book…
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtrac…
@4
Yep. Americans love a freak-show, and it doesn’t get any more bizarre than the low talent, low intelligence, low class Savage spewing his own unique insanity. No wonder people like to observe all that concentrated weirdness free of charge, really.
Still, shame he’s profiting from the national obsession with the outre. In a more proud moment in our national history he’d be in a tent with the fire-eater and the man with two heads just making enough to eat on at some circus.
Actually, the proudly immoral and unethical like Savage are indicative of where we are as a country. As I recall things like him were all the rage in Rome once. Just before they fell.
Thanks, @6. That’s great for Dan, really pleased. And so wonderful to see the book doing so well. Dropped one of our copies off at my son’s high school, and the librarian was happy to have it.
I find I need a palate cleanser after reading a comment by Seattleblues (and no, that’s not an invitation to further conversation, not in the mood today) and can think of nothing better than this comment from the Savage Love “Thank You” column, which I already posted, but is worth an encore if anyone missed it.
Proof, despite what the invertebrates say, that Dan and Terry’s project is truly making a difference, and helping kids:
“On the It Gets Better….I have to say, Dan, you may have left the church some time ago but the church did not completely leave you. I think Jesus would approve- remember, your neighbor is the one who showed mercy.
I had a student approach me after class last week following my lecture on the history of same sex relationships. The conversation in the class had got a bit heated but I managed to calm it all down and defend the gay rights issue against what was really a room full of haters.
Anyhow, the student had not said a word during the class and was visibly upset when he approached me after. He started crying when he told me he thought he was gay and he didn’t know what he was going to do.
I pointed him to It Gets Better and this week he was happy and confident. He participated in the class discussion and made some good points, forcing a couple of the louder students to back down. After class he thanked me which was one of the most rewarding things that have happened in all my years teaching undergraduates.
Keep spreading the Gospel, Dan! It gets better.”
–Professor @99
Shorter version of Canuck post-
‘Thank you for giving an unfortunate young man with a predilection to perverse sexuality an excuse for ruining his life. Christ would approve of ruining the lives of young people, and doing so was the high point of my academic career.’
So, Savage isn’t the only mentally ill person, but at least he isn’t a teacher of the young.
@8 Oh ye of little history…
Rome converted to Christianity, they were upright and religious, then they fell hard. In fact, it was the Christian leaders who insisted that women no longer kill themselves if they found themselves pregnant after the various rapes during the sacks of Rome.
Rome fell as a Christian state, while the far more decadent and corrupt Byzantine State lasted for centuries. good try though.
Good ol’ Jon Stewart Leibowitz. How’s your brother doing?
@Seattleblues
“As I recall things like him were all the rage in Rome once.”
We sane people like to call this hate speech. Gay people are not ‘Things’.
@12
Careful now!!! You might contradict that perfect world that Seattleblues has in his head.
He thinks Dan sleeps around on Terry, BWAHAHAHAHAH, show you how much of Dan’s column he actually reads.
Oh, Canuck, that’s just beautiful. Thanks.
“Minnesota state senator comes out against the dangers of integration, claims to have a lot of black friends.”
But he wouldn’t want his sister to marry one.
Way too much Busch,
The emperor Constantine was the first Roman head of state to convert to Christianity and mandate tolerance of it within the Empire in the latter part of the 4th century AD. He moved his capital from a place called Nicomedia to a Greek colony called Byzantius, later renamed Constantinople. During this time he defeated the factions which supported his co-ruler of the empire who ruled from Rome, becoming the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. For a bit over a thousand years Constantinople remained the Christian capital of the Roman Empire. Rome fell to barbarians and remained a backwater for centuries, its’ monuments, baths and squares decaying. The baths of Caracalla for instance became a squatters camp and goat pasturage. The Roman Forum became an architects supply source for cut stone and carved details. The Colliseum was saved because it had been consecrated as a church, as were two other important sites in the Roman Forum. The wonderful marble statuary was looted or even burned to make lime for the plastering that is the canvas on which fresci are painted. It wasn’t until the Renaissance when the cultural importance of Roman buildings and art was recognized and preservation began to seem important.
Good try though.
@14
I call him a thing because he has given up what makes him human in exchange for immediate gratification of whatever urge he feels. My dog does that. A chimp does that. A mature human being does not. That he is gay is unfortunate for him, but not relevant.
For that reason I don’t read his collumn. The voluntary surrender of a persons own humanity to depravity and perversity is too depressing.
And I could care less what you call hate speech. There isn’t any such animal. It’s a construct of the left for excusing their own intolerance and hate of anything which challenges their adolescent world-view.
Wasn’t it you the other day who defended all speech as free speech? Or does that only apply to speech with which you agree?
If there were any justification needed for the IGB project, gus, I can’t think of a better one than that story. And as Terry writes in the book, where the aids ribbons are now sitting in people’s junk drawers, the videos will be there indefinitely, available to any kid who needs them. For all our joshing on here, and teasing Dan about his sartorial challenges, it’s a comment like that one that reminds me about what an incredible legacy this project will be.
I defended a woman who was swearing when you stated that she should be locked up like a prostitute.
“Ya know, when I was a kid you could be arrested for lacking the bare intelligence needed for knowing what was and wasn’t appropriate public speech.
Too bad this woman wasn’t born 2 decades sooner. She could share her foul mouth with the hookers in a holding cell. She and they have much in common as far as class goes.”
So now your calling Dan and Gay men animals? That sounds like I pulled it out of my history textbook, you should call the blacks Porch Monkeys and Tar Babies. You can’t take back your original statement Seattleblues, you quantified Dan’s entire being with what you call “proudly immoral and unethical”
@20
No. Try reading the actual words, rather than what you want them to say.
Any human being who puts the immediate desires of the moment before the responsibilities owed themself and others around them is falling into bestial behavior. And this is what the evangelist of sexual irresponsbilitiy, Savage, preaches so fervently. Instead of submitting his own desires to rational inhibition, he wants the excuse of others behaving as he does to support that behavior.
It’s despicable, bestial, anti-social, unethical and immoral. And that would be true if Savage were gay or straight.
Canuck, and I believe with that legacy secure (and his fortunes as well, what with the five-figure speeches and the impending basic-cable television program), Dan’s fairer game than ever for all the ribbing we Sloggers can dish out!
Oooo, goodie, gus! My bitchy soul demands pointing out inappropriate footwear choices, which I will continue to do, as long as I have a partner in crime…(points finger, “it was him, he said it was okay!”)
PS gus…completely off topic, but that’s what we do best, right? Check out this column from the Globe & Mail, it has the most perfect snarky slant to it–it’s exactly what I would aspire to if I were to write these:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts…
@ Seattleblues,
It’s understandable that you feel confused and upset with a world that’s left you behind, with you left living in the past.
However, complaining about the rain isn’t going to make it stop.
It took people a long time to get here, and they’re not going back. Intolerance of gays is no longer acceptable. You’re not part of the vocal opposition… you’re part of the obsolete past. You should try to just get accept reality for what it is, you’ll feel much better.
Damn, Canuck – that Elizabeth Renzetti can bring it, can’t she? What a treat.
And I love reading about Ignatieff – his texts on nationalism were literally “required reading” in college – really good stuff, and even then, intellectually combative as all get out, plus lots and lots of “so then I said to Sir Isaiah Berlin, I said….” kind of stuff.
Oh, so glad you liked it, gus! I thought it was hilarious. I’ll be voting for Ignatieff, of course, in our nearing election, but it’s not looking good. I’m sure we’ll be in for another indefinite stretch of Harper as the King of Canada. However, in pandering for votes, the appalling Jason Kenney has sponsored a funding program for LGBT refugees, so there’s that…
http://www.thestar.com/news/investigatio…
If we indeed do “fall”, i hope we fall on top of seattleblah.
And may his children grow up to be interesting, intelligent and happy people who do things that appall daddy-dear. Performance art pornography maybe, or perhaps chairpeople of their local Freedom Socialist branch.
It’s the times. They’re a’changing. Something’s blowing in the wind – and it’s not just radiation from Japan.
Damn, that sounds like a great program, though as you note, under Kenney that’s just the “one step forward” part of the “two steps back, one step forward” strategy your Minister of Censorship and Deportation seems to favor…
Yeah, he’s the one, as you probably know, who left our new Citizenship and Immigration guide with the least information possible about how new immigrants were to treat members of the LGBT community, he managed to cut a whole section on the history of gays in Canada, oy. He sucks.
(Hey, hey, go get persecuted, so you can move to Canada, and we can be coffee buddies…deal???)
I’ll do my best to get persecuted, but strangely I tend to attract only the opposite of trouble. I’ve only ever been in one physical fight in my life, and even then I started it, and she thrashed me. Ah, grade four…
Funny, I think I got kicked in the shin in that grade, too, by a girl named Diane (pronounced with a Boston accent, die-YEAN…) and not much action, since. Oh well. Such problems we have…
(I don’t actually want you to be persecuted [sob!], you need to stay nice and sassy for our debate club, here 🙂
“I find I need a palate cleanser after reading a comment by Seattleblues (and no, that’s not an invitation to further conversation, not in the mood today)”
I don’t get it, I’m fine with legitimately argumentative conservatives posting their drivel, but why don’t these obvious noisy trolls get banned? It’s forums tidying, not a violation of free speech. Some people simply have nothing to offer this world.
Boy, somebody is really wound about teh buttsecks. Spend a lot of time thinking about it, Seattleblues?
@34
So very predictable this rejoinder, and so telling.
First, it tells how poor liberals are at reading comprehension. Through this thread I’ve mentioned homosexuality only in response to someone else doing so. Savage, for instance, is perverse and deviant for a lot of reasons. Having a boyfriend and calling him a husband is only one of them, and not the worst. Were Savage or anyone else to keep their sex lives private, as any decent person does, I couldn’t care less with whom they sleep or how many at a time.
No, what’s worst about things like Savage, regardless of their orientation, is their eagerness to lead others down the path of self destruction they’ve chosen. ‘Fidelity? Oh, that’s for losers! Honor, self sacrifice, ethical treatment of your wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend? Hell with THAT! I want what I want right now, no matter what it costs anyone else!’ This sums up the view of life deviants like Savage want all of us to hold. And yes, decent people ought to fight this degradation of our social structure tooth and nail.
More importantly, the use of implied homosexuality as an insult in this tired old cliche tells exactly how you think of it below your conscious liberal PC language.
@28
Almost certainly my children will do things to appall their slightly conservative father. I did to my folks. My father and mother startled or worried my grandparents. That’s life. So long as they grow up to be responsible adults who choose to do the right thing even when it isn’t easy or profitable, they will also be happy. No parent could wish better for their children.
From their mothers genetic contributions our children are in fact intelligent. They are happy, and we find them interesting at any rate. However, since we are raising them with self respect, any porn acting will likely have to find other candidates. Since we are raising them to be self reliant with a sense of responsibility they likely won’t be socialists.
Thanks for your good wishes anyway, though.
SB : My God you are a pompous prick.
Fortunately, you are part of a dying breed. Your joyless Puritan attitude will soon be regarded with the distasteful puzzlement that today is addressed primarily to aging Klansmen.
Enjoy your increasing irrelevance, you pathetic reactionary turd.
We must not stand idly by,
is such a lie.
Seattleblues questions liberals’ ability to read,
while his historical illiteracy and misquotes of Shakespeare make my brain bleed.
@35 The Conservative crypto-homosexual thing is definitely a cliché, but that doesn’t make it a stereotype.
@35: “‘Fidelity? Oh, that’s for losers! Honor, self sacrifice, ethical treatment of your wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend? Hell with THAT! I want what I want right now, no matter what it costs anyone else!'”
If you actually READ Mr. Savage’s advice, you’d not be spouting such nonsense. I presume that your aforementioned misguided statement stems from the various instances in which Dan has advised a writer (occasionally) to cheat on or (far more commonly) separate from a lover who, for whatever reason, he or she is not sexually compatible with. Think about why encouraging two people to stay in a clearly doomed romantic relationship might not be a good idea.
Also, you’re a big fat doo-doo head.
Oh how I wish Seattleblah wouldn’t insist on going on and on about his sex problems on slog.
Discretion is the better part of valor, dear. Doesn’t your insurance provide coverage for therapy? If not, I’m sure there are some government programs that could help you.
@41
Ohhhh, that’s so nice. More good wishes from the left.
Oddly though, I don’t recall mentioning my sex life at all. I think that it’s my business, and more importantly I actually respect my wife enough not to air intimate details on some blog.
In the general terms that are as far as I’ll go though, we’re fine. Even if we weren’t some over-educated moron of a therapist or worse, some overpaid and underqualified government social worker are about the last people I’d discuss it with. Well, Dan Savage is the LAST person on earth I’d ask, (‘DTMFA, and abandon your kids so that you can have an affair with a GGG barrista and a goat!’ By the way, when did barristas replace cocktail waitresses, and why didn’t anyone consult the poor kids serving coffee on this replacement?) But short of the deviant Savage, anyone in government employ comes a close second.
Thanks you for your concern anyway!
@40
When my Grandfather died he and Grandma had been married 65 years. For a few years, before I was born, they had a rough patch in their marriage. It happens in all relationships. You wake up some morning, look at your spouse and wonder why in the world you married this person. Usually they wake up, and the expression in their eyes, or the remembrance of sitting in a hospital room while your child is born, or the way they tilt their head when they’re amused by your idiocy reminds you.
But sometimes a day or a week or a month goes by and you can’t remember. Sometimes a year or two, as happened with my grandparents, goes by and you still can’t recall what in the world you were thinking when you said ‘I do.’
This is the point at which Dan Savage and those like him would say to end the relationship. You’re not ‘sexually compatible’ he’d say. Life is too short not to be happy, he’d write. Or in his own vulgar style, DTMFA. And of course he misses the point. Sexuality can be the animal response to another person and be very pleasant. But, filter that primal response through love and honor and respect for another person and it can become something sublime. Savage knows nothing of this, since he’s chosen the animal over the human in sexuality.
See, love isn’t just the warm feeling you get when you look at a person without whom you can’t imagine your life. It isn’t the way they fill out a pair of jeans, or the color of their hair. It isn’t a paperback romance, or Penthouse letter. It isn’t the quantity or quality of sex.
Love is what my grandparents did. They went through the motions to fulfill oaths they had made, even when that duty was all that they felt for each other at that time. In the end, all the reasons they had married came back to them. All the time I knew them they were the most devoted and loving couple it’s ever been my pleasure to model my relationship with my wife upon. They made mistakes and hurt each other. They remedied the mistakes and forgave each other. If I can provide that kind of example for my kids and eventual grandchildren, I’ll consider myself to have something of which to be proud.
@42 The proof of the boundlessness of your moronism never evades demonstration.
Well, it’s a new day, so I suppose I can respond:
@43 Owing to your aversion and distaste, you’ve obviously read the odd headline or acronym, and made assumptions. If you had actually read the things Dan has written–books and columns–or listened to the podcasts, you’d know that he mostly counsels married people to stay married. While he may discourage mis-matched people from marrying in the first place, once they’ve taken that vow, and especially after they’ve had kids, he advises them to do everything possible to stay together.
While you are free to air your outdated, narrow-minded views here, you truly make an ass of yourself when you espouse on a subject (Dan’s views on marriage) about which you clearly know nothing.
So, by all means your straight, conservative self should keep spending so. much. time. hanging out on this gay ol blog, but save the reading comprehension fail for your Bible study, kay?
Any person who goes out of their way to slander someone who they openly state that they don’t know personally, and proclaim to be an authority on that person’s body of work without reading it, is suffering from more than an inflated sense of pride over the value and accuracy of their own opinion. They come across as unwell, in my opinion. And, if they are indeed well, then they betray the poverty of their own morals and need to be ignored.
Dante places those who use fair words to induce others to their own destruction in the 8th bolgia of hell. In some of the most beautiful language in the Divine Comedy, Ulysses speech to his sailors, he portrays the damage a talented person of ill intent can do.
Where do you suppose he’d place a thing like Savage with no talent who uses foul words to counsel foul actions? I’m guessing in the band of storm tossed souls too meaningless even to enter Hells gates, those who having sown the wind reaped the whirlwind in Canto 3.
Actually, he’d likely conclude that Savage is the popular whim of the moment, and correctly dismiss him as entirely insignificant and unworthy of mention.
Who better to follow than the divinely inspired Dante? I’ve got better things to do than worry about Savage or those who think his words more than empty air. Best of luck to all of you when eventually reality must be faced. It’ll be tough on you, but unlike liberals, I have faith in my fellows to pull through if it must be done.
@17
If I remember my history correctly, religion or sex had nothing to do with the fall of the Roman Empire. It was unstable and fell to barbarian invasions. Why was it unstable? There are a number of theories.
If I were to pick one to counter your argument, I’d choose Edward Gibbon’s theory. He said it fell due in part to Christianity: “As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire.”
I’m not saying he’s right. But it’s a legitimate theory by a legitimate historian which is more than I can say for your argument.
Seattleblah, while I agree that you show restraint by not bringing your undoubtedly long-suffering wife into your tirades, you really do seem to have some sort of issue, which is manifested in all things you perceive as Savage. If you are in satisfying sexual/emotional relationship, why do you care what advice Dan gives?
You can go on about society and “the children” and the fall of Rome all you want to, but I think your moralizing masks a sex problem. A good old-fashioned toe-curling orgasm might clear out those cobwebs and get you off your obsession with Dan (unless of course you were to have that orgasm with Dan. That would open a whole new can of worms)
So my suggestion is to go find Mrs Seattleblah, and have some afternoon delight. And try not to think about Dan Savage or nubile baristas or the temptations of cocktail waitresses.
Catalina, perhaps the weekly affirmation emails he gets from his Exodus support group just aren’t enough…
@47
so are you essentially conceding that Dan Savage will not be going to Hell in your second paragraph? if so, I guess that’s decent advise to all homos and deviants out there who still live in fear of eternal damnation: “live as Savage does, write pages and pages of filth to inspire mankind to a comparable foul lifestyle as yours and Hell will not even consider you worthy of entry!”. I assume your entire web persona is just performance art then, because that’s a pretty effective recruiting tool.