Blogging Round-Up
By Thoreau
1) Erstwhile UO blogger Jennifer defends the right of Icelandic women, or any other women, to strip. She’s in the big leagues now, working for the Guardian.
2) This just makes me mad, and it makes me madder still that they tried to stop us from seeing it.
3) This also makes me mad, which means you’ll get mad, because the only dime’s worth of difference I’m seeing is that Obama is smart enough to put his gulag on the other side of the globe in a place where climate, terrain, and insurgency make it more difficult for lawyers and journalists to visit. Face it, putting a gulag a short plane ride from Miami in a place with pleasant climate and no hot war means that lawyers and journalists will visit. Putting it in Afghanistan means that they’ll find it harder to visit.
4) This is just cool: A failed star, wandering in interstellar space, with warmth and water and organic compounds. Possible punchlines:
a) Since it might, just might, be hospitable to some sort of life, maybe they could put their legal black hole there! (Bah-dum-dum!)
b) Insert reality TV joke here in response to “failed star” line.
5) That was without a doubt the most shocking thing that 24 has done. Even more shocking than the nuke in Valenica. There was no build-up to the Valencia nuke. There were no major characters caught in the blast. It just happened, with remarkably few consequences later in the story. But the death of Omar Hassan destroyed all hope for peace. Even more tragic, the rescue operation was doomed before it even started, making all of the violence in that operation, all of the horrible things they did in that apartment, the anguish that the little girl suffered, so ultimately pointless.
Comment by Jordan Cartilla —
April 6, 2010 @ 12:54 pm
#2 – I imagine that over time more and more video will be released that will send the outrage-meter off the charts.
Comment by Jennifer —
April 6, 2010 @ 1:21 pm
Thank you, Thoreau! Though I still am amazed my article was even necessary — why is the concept “There’s nothing feminist about legally restricting women’s choices?” so friggin’ controversial?
Comment by mb —
April 6, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
I imagine that over time more and more video will be released that will send the outrage-meter off the charts.
Outrage? You’re kidding yourself. As a well-known liberal blogger put it, “Our troops are the good guys.“
Comment by Jordan Cartilla —
April 6, 2010 @ 1:52 pm
#3 Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m still surprised by the “You Can’t Make An Omelet Without Cracking Some Eggs” attitude after stuff like this is published though.
Comment by stras —
April 6, 2010 @ 2:52 pm
Oliver Willis also loves him some torture.
Comment by Nicholas Weininger —
April 6, 2010 @ 6:03 pm
Again I have to say: read Nixonland; it will tell you all about how this is actually going to play. These guys will be feted the way Lt. Calley was, and Sarah Palin will get great big cheers fulminating against the liberal journalists trying to run down our boys for doing their job. Read the comments thread to that video, too, to see how it starts. The excuses never change.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 6, 2010 @ 9:48 pm
Did 24 kill off Jack Bauer with 10 hours to go?
Comment by Thoreau —
April 7, 2010 @ 12:03 am
No. They killed a Middle Eastern president who was going to sign a peace deal.
Comment by Barry —
April 7, 2010 @ 9:24 am
Comment by stras —
“Oliver Willis also loves him some torture.”
That wh*reson is dead to me; he’s playing the standard right-wing liberal-bashing lie game. I don’t know why he’s doing it, I don’t care, and I don’t forgive.
Comment by mds —
April 8, 2010 @ 8:21 am
Now imagine Edward Woodward delivering this line.
Um, because not all feminists are right-libertarians, and consider some individual decisions to have collective negative repercussions on those not freely making them? Note that I’m a “legalize, regulate, and tax everything” pwoggie, who thinks that demand for strip clubs are a symptom much more than a cause, but I can see where the kneejerk overreaction is coming from. Instead of a ban, though, why not focus on workplace safety, or increasing the availability of non-stripping opportunities, or even applying anti-discrimination laws to better balance the genders involved? Heh heh, that last one would at least be an amusing imposition by Big Government.
Comment by Kolohe —
April 8, 2010 @ 10:22 am
“even applying anti-discrimination laws to better balance the genders involved”
You could call it ‘Title XXX’
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 8, 2010 @ 11:57 am
Because at least a ban’s honest?
Comment by mpowell —
April 8, 2010 @ 12:12 pm
Iceland is a pretty small place. Towns also outlaw strip clubs through zoning practice. It’s not that big of a deal. And a lot of the workers are imported for the job so “other work opportunities” isn’t really at issue. Iceland being a ridiculously small independent island country just makes it a really bad case for these types of issues debates.
Comment by mds —
April 8, 2010 @ 12:29 pm
Well, shoot, then. I guess if the only honest choices are a complete absence of any oversight whatsoever, and a total ban, then even more places are going to choose the ban. And then the governments of the world will finally collapse into anarchies, because otherwise there will be no way to see boobies.
Yes, such things as “workplace safety,” vaguely enough defined, can be used as a bludgeon against “undesirable” establishments. Just ask Jamie Zawinski. But spending less time cracking down on strip clubs, and more on a larger choice of jobs? That’s not “less honest” than a ban, it’s having the moralizers put their money where their mouths are (ahem). If they assert that the ban is necessary because most of these women lack other options, then offer them other options and see what happens. That’s more honest than a ban that “protects” all these women by throwing them out of work or subjecting them to more effective coercion because they’re engaged in criminal activity.
You’re also right that Title XXX would be a backdoor (ahem) ban, certainly, because despite the economic advantages you’d never actually achieve gender parity in stripping for some mysterious reason that can’t have anything to do with society at large. Which would again lead to a greatly diminished workforce, or an underground one. However, the people who are cracking down on this are never going to say, “The solution is to encourage more men to take up stripping!” Which is why that suggestion was basically tongue-in-cheek (ahem).
Comment by dhex —
April 8, 2010 @ 1:50 pm
Um, because not all feminists are right-libertarians, and consider some individual decisions to have collective negative repercussions on those not freely making them?
so, the standard argument against homosexuality, then?
Comment by mds —
April 8, 2010 @ 2:39 pm
Pretty much. For what it’s worth, I also disagree with generally pro-sex folks seeking to ban homosexuality because they assert that most people are economically coerced into it, or because homosexuality reinforces the ongoing objectification of all people who have a sexual orientation.
Look, I only meant that I could see how feminists might be uncomfortable with the fact that stripping is so predominantly a female trade, and what that says about the attitudes of the underlying culture. I was also noting that the “solution” some of them have hit upon is wrong way round and counterproductive. No, they’re not thinking it through rationally, but this is a common failing. Nor is this a universal feminist reaction, even on the “left.” Unlike libertarianism, feminism isn’t a single monolithic belief system.
Comment by dhex —
April 8, 2010 @ 6:36 pm
of course, of course.
i can understand a discomfort with stripping. but only to a degree, much like i can understand someone being all rick santorum-y about gay marriage (an ick factor, or even vague, emotional counterfactuals about “tradition”) but i gotta draw the line when he starts making magico-religious references to gay dudes in nyc undermining the marriages of straight people miles away before the final dogfucking nuptial apocalypse. the last person to put that much stock in the magical power of sodomy was aleister crowley!
this same kind of literal collectivism is icky, even if i find some – if not most – of their goals far more palatable than mr. brownfoam’s. maybe women really are all in it together in a way that men never will be, but i don’t really think so.
Comment by dhex —
April 8, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
one of the other unfortunate connections is that both tend to attribute the behavior they don’t like to childhood sexual abuse.
false consciousness++.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 8, 2010 @ 6:39 pm
mds:
Interesting – I wasn’t aware that Iceland was a Team Blue nightmare scenario of a country devoid of workplace safety laws. Here I thought you were merely suggesting backdoor ways to achieve the same result as a ban…
*reads further down*
Oh, it isn’t. And you were. OK.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 8, 2010 @ 8:40 pm
And now that I’m home…
See, that’s the thing – that doesn’t much happen.
Talking about how strip clubs are a symptom of a problem and how things Need to Be Fixed so that women like Jennifer don’t hurt other people or themselves through their false consciousness only obscures the goal that’s in the foreground: getting rid of strip clubs, either openly or subtly.
That’s what gets done. You get a ban or you get laws that make it impossible to legally operate such business.
All the other background stuff about opening up other jobs and whatnot? Well, that might get done. Later. Possibly.
But usually not.
Comment by teaparty —
April 11, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
howdy, I like all your posts, keep them coming.
Comment by Ned Beuerle —
April 14, 2010 @ 2:53 am
Try to remember you might not always win. A few days, the most ingenious individual will taste defeat. There is however, usually, always another day – soon after you have done your best to achieve success today.