Michael Moore is a beautiful beautiful man. He calls CNN on their shit, straight to Wolf Blitzer, and he has no shame about it. He connects health care, problems with corporate media, and the war in Iraq. Blitzer keeps trying to gets soundbites out of him and he’s just not copping to those silly rules.
Via BFP.
Today I’m heading up to Boston/Cambridge for the WAM conference (Women, Action, and the Media) at MIT. I’m looking forward to honing my blogging skills, learning about using media as a tool for social change, and meeting other feminist media folks. Hopefully I’ll manage to blog a bit at the conference.
Bloggers and others: are you going to be there? If you’re not going, you should be jealous, the lineup looks pretty excellent. More soon.
I’d like to start by saying that I’m not exactly meant for journalism –the stories below all came out between roughly 3-7 days ago. But I’m assuming none of you read saltyfemme to catch breaking news. So I’m sure you don’t mind.
-Some words about former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek (who died last week) from Ha’aretz’s Gidon Levy that you won’t read in the New York Times:
[Kollek] brought approximately 200,000 Jews to the occupied territories - perhaps more than any other person. The settlement enterprise owes a great historic debt to Kollek.
…
The act of [the] unification [of Jerusalem in 1967] was an act of occupation and the fact that a charming and charismatic figure like Kollek presided over it does not change a thing. Kollek demolished a neighborhood in the Old City and built the new neighborhoods on Palestinian land for Jews only - apartheid at its worst - and this should also be remembered in the balance of his considerable achievements.
Full text.
-On NPR listeners: On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone goes meta and sorts through some of the stereotypes of the classic ‘liberal’ NPR listener. (from last weekend’s show)
-Also from On the Media from the same show: a parody of public radio that could only have been written by the intimately involved. “W-ACLU, 87.1-ALL THE WAY TO THE LEFT ON YOUR RADIO DIAL.” Not worth reading the transcript (it won’t be funny) but give it a listen. Janine Garofalo and Tony Shalhoub provide voices and perfect irony.
-Out of the closet in Hollywood: good for the gays? (I always love that question, good for the gays, good for the Jews. Does anyone even know what that means?). Perhaps it perpetuates the American stereotype of gays: rich, white, and male!
-Not that I have anything to prove to any of you, but I’ve been told that I lack a sense of humor and that I live in a bubble, and I guess those two things go together sometimes. And I want to set the record straight. I love Justin Timberlake. And I also think the clip below could’ve been an advertisement for Babeland or Good Vibes. (I’m a few weeks late, but I don’t watch SNL – thanks to Snuggles for bringing it to my attention).
-finally, check out new comments on the femme post. And then post yours!
Oh, what’s New Year’s without a little humor?
I don’t know where to laugh or cry. Alternet has compiled a list of the most outrageous right wing comments of 2006. I figure it’s a fantastic way to start 2007. Topics include white reproduction, gay mafias, Wolf Blitzer’s penchant for killing Jewish babies, and Cindy Sheehan as a prostitute. Some excerpts:
Fox News host John Gibson: “Do your duty. Make more babies…half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities.”
…
Ann Coulter: “How do you know that [former President] Bill Clinton’s gay?”: “I don’t know if he’s gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore — total fag.”
…
Right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian … is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?”
More here.
Also, Alternet has lots of other top 10 of 2006 lists, including The 10 Most Important AlterNet Articles That You Missed in 2006, Alternet’s Ten Most Important Iraq Articles from 2006, and The Top Ten Most Discussed Articles of the Year. Check it out. And happy new year.
(P.S. The subject of my subject line is the Middle East. The brilliant man who uttered that phrase was none other than Rush Limbaugh. Here’s to 2007 bringing us more guys like this!)
After I brief hiatus, I have returned to the blog world. I needed a vacation. I know you missed me.
A salty list of unrelated bullets to bring us back. Nothing intense too soon.
-It’s been awhile since I read the Onion, which is unfortunate, because it’s pretty fantastic. My perverted rabbi friend passed on an article called Israel Bombs Anti-Semitism out of Lebanon. Brilliant, totally brilliant. Quote: ‘”After destroying much of our infrastructure and displacing nearly 1 million civilians, we’ve come to respect Israel as a legitimate power and a beacon of democracy, and not a pack of lying, usurping, hook-nosed dogs.”‘
-Next, on to Alternet, where Cristina Page explains that contrary to right-wing fundamentalist discourse on reproductive freedom, contraception and birth control have allowed pre-marital sex, which leads to fewer extramarital affairs, thereby strengthening marriages/families. Page explains:
the uptick in fidelity today is the result of a society that accepts our sexual urges as natural and couples that can look within marriage for fulfillment of desires once branded indecent.
OK, so I’m not sure what her sources are, but it’s a worthy argument and one that the pro-choice movement should take into account. It’s the fault of the anti-choice movement that the pro-choice movement has been branded “pro-abortion,” when in actuality, it’s really a pro-family movement. At least how Page sees it, anyway. I’m not sure how I feel about co-opting anti-choice language about saving marriage and families, but it might just be the only ticket to winning over the American public. (P.S. 95% of Americans have had pre-marital sex. Thank you, Feministing.)
-New to the blogroll: Gender 3.0., a refreshing, well-written, thought-out blog from a trans dyke in San Francisco. An excerpt from a post titled He’s a Dyke:
But I’m not a woman who refuses to accept her place; I’m not a woman — for me, personally, the word is irredeemably steeped in its connotations of motherhood and nurturing. (For this, I blame the Second Wave feminists.) The constitutive thrill of being a male-identified dyke is feeling like those prescriptions simply don’t apply. Problem is, femmes and other gender-savvy dykes tend to be the only ones who recognize this basic fact of masculine gender identity…
Thank you, thank you. I guess I can take identity politics when they’re not all “woe is me, my life sucks.” I look forward to lots of interesting posts.
-And finally, a Hannukah/birthday present for tragika in San Francisco. Seizure me elmo, coming to stores near you.
Happy Hannukah!
Dear readers,
Please excuse me for being MIA for the last few weeks. You know the drill - life gets hectic, work gets full, new apartments need to be made into homes, time flies. I’ll be back soon.
XO
saltyfemme
DMF finally put the really excellent poem on the web. Props. Clicky here.
Some recent webby discoveries I’ve made that I thought I might share:
So as most of my friends know, I tend to get frustrated with all non-intellectual forms of expression. I have a really hard time with poetry. But I guess the amazing thing about that kind of expression is that it can bring out emotions without requiring dissection. This video was sent to me by disfunkchanel. And thank you. No more words.
I don’t want to lose readers, and I know I haven’t posted in a week (I haven’t posted anything substantive in longer than that!). Life happens sometimes. So here’s a list, for those who likes lists:
1) I have added Our Bodies Our Blog, “our daily dose of women’s health news and analysis” to my rss reader. It’s only one or two entries per day so it’s definitely manageable. Especially with your new rss reader.
2) Speaking of rss readers, get one now if you still don’t have one. No, it’s not just another annoying thing to worry about. It puts all your news and your blogs into one place so you don’t have to go running around checking websites all the time. It does all the checking for you. There are web-based ones and there are ones that you can download. Google has one, Yahoo has one, and I have Sharpreader (which is downloadable software and looks just like Outlook, a plus for those who need to look like they are working all the time).
3) I’m working on a post about improving cafeteria food in public schools. More to come tonight or tomorrow.
4) Get thee to your local Greenmarket, ASAP. Apples are in town! The early varieties are, at least. Yesterday I bought some lovely Ginger Golds and Macouns at the Tompkins Square Park Greenmarket. A fabulous PDF of the NYC Greenmarket schedules (and a map) is available here. An informative site about NY state apple varieties is available here. Next weekend is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, famous for long synagogue hours and apple-centered desserts. Baking will commence Thursday night. Keep your eyes (and palates) peeled.
5) Finally, some exciting news. Saltyfemme is apparently famous enough to have a guest blogger. Look out for disfunkchanel, my favorite sassy and queer artist/poet extraordinaire. She doesn’t like lists but she likes me. She’s definitely a salty one.
P.S. photo credit to this guy on flickr. Thanks for the lovely apple photos from Union Square.
