Citizen Mom

TODD AKIN: It's not the gaffe, it's the stupidity

With all due respect to Cindy McCain, "rape is rape" is not enough.

Todd Akin didn't mis-speak, he mis-believes. He didn't mis-state, he mis-thinks, and he uses untruths as a basis for his politics. His claim that womens' bodies have a magical ability to prevent pregnancy after a "legitimate" rape wasnt a gaffe, it was an honest characterization of the willfully erroneous thinking behind personhood laws and attempts to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Think about it: "If You Get Pregnant, It Wasn't Really Rape" is just the natural next single on a Republican Hit Parade that also includes "Put A Bayer Aspirin Between Your Knees," "Just Close Your Eyes," and "That Cluster of Cells Has the Same Rights As You." It's the sexual politics of either a 14-year-old boy or my octogenarian Dad.

But what else can we really expect from a party whose members of Congress traveled to the Holy Land and went around drunk and naked like it was Senior Week in North Wildwood?

But WAIT, one "rational Republican" said to me -- it's not really about the misogyny, its about the direction this country is going in! And with that I couldn't agree more, because Akin is a walking illustration of exactly where our country is going. And that's what scares the hell out of me.

So I don't want to hear the "rational Republicans" in my life (and there are some) disavow Akin's words. I want them to disavow the lies, and the laws that are the end result of Akin's way of thinking. I want them to turn away from political stances that come from fanciful mischaracterization of female biology and a distrust of women to make reproductive decisions without government intervention.

Tom Morello called Paul Ryan the embodiment of the machine his band's been raging against all these years. I say Ryan is the avatar of the Republican war on women. He and Mitt Romney are now the figureheads of a party which has at its core an utter ignorance of 7th grade science coupled with a fear of women and a deep desire to control us.

The frightening thing about Akin isn't what he said. It's that if he said it, it means there are other people who must believe it. This is the same mentality that says if you give a girl a cancer vaccination it'll turn her into the town tramp.

The national GOP is pulling the $5 million it was going to spend on the Akin race, though he'll likely raise more than that in "grassroots" money from people whose knowledge of basic biology is as good as his. Sounds like that $5 million would be better spent sending Congressional Republicans to an 11th grade sex-Ed class.

IMAGE CREDIT: The Thoughts of AnyK

So, what *does* Naked Philly have to hide?

Y'know, besides the names of who owns, writes and edits their site?

Actually, it's no mystery: Naked Philly (ironic slogan: We've Got Nothing To Hide!) is owned and operated by Ori Feibush of OCF Realty (Ironic bio note: "Transparency is a word you hear a lot these days. And at OCF, it really means something.")

From my understanding of the conversation Feibush and I had today, the site serves two purposes. First, the Naked Philly blog is supposed to build buzz for the neighborhoods in which OCF Realty does business, which sounds a bit like the Philebrity/Blatstein model of early-days covert advertorial blogging. Second, Feibush told me, the Naked Philly site was launched in advance of some crazyass mapping tool he's almost ready to launch and which actually sounds pretty cool. 

The idea, he told me, was for the mapping tool to be ready to go around the same time as the Naked Philly site. It hasn't happened that way.

What has happened instead?  Since the demise of the much-beloved but short-lived Brownstoner Philly site in December, there's been a bit of a rush to fill the void in covering the city's land use/building/development/real estate scene -- an area of activity so ripe with news it practically falls from the trees. The site I work for, Plan Philly, is part of that world, though the mission there is a legitimately journalistic one. 

The way Feibush explained it, the Naked Philly site has sort of taken on a life of its own in the meantime, as people are genuinely interested in what's happening in the city's built environment. "The idea is to showcase properties in areas that otherwise wouldn't get noticed," he said. Fair enough.

Problem is, the folks "writing" the site (more on that in a second) have spent so much time reprinting press releases, running unsourced information and borrowing from others, they're building much more suspicion than credibility. Some of their posts are really good, but lacking essential information like where the information comes from or why anyone should believe it.

Earlier this week I called them out on lifting ideas and specific words from two of my stories. To his credit, Feibush responded promptly, appropriately and professionally to my concerns, telling me today it was "blatantly apparent" that his writer had used my work. It was a difficult conversation and I give him credit for it.

As for the writer, I agreed not to out her (though I do know who she is) because her name hadn't been on the original posts. That's called professional courtesy -- much like the practice of linking and crediting others' work when you reference it in your blog posts. See what I did there?

Anyway, I'm over it and willing to take Feibush at his word when he says the site never intended to come off as some sketchy cloak-and-dagger thing. And because I have seen some genuinely useful posts on Naked Philly, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and will keep reading. Perhaps you will, too.

CHOP gets a Sugar Daddy

Sweet, sweet money: The Inquirer's Heard in the Hall blog reports this morning that a Big Beverage interest group is giving Children's Hospital of Philadelphia $10 million to fund (wait for it) "research into and prevention of childhood obesity."

The three-year grant is funded by a new organization, the Foundation for a Healthy America , created by the American Beverage Association, the national trade group representing manufacturers and bottlers. The ABA was instrumental in lobbying Philadelphia City Council to reject Nutter's proposal to tax sugary drinks at 2-cents per ounce as a way to cut consumption and raise money for the general fund.

In a press release Wednesday, CHOP insisted that it will "retain absolute clinical and research independence," as the source of its funding for the research is likely to come under attack from those wary of the beverage industry's influence.  That includes funding for clinical studiesto be submitted to peer-reviewed publications.

Let's see now, research into and prevention of childhood obesity . . . OK, lemme take a crack at this one:

My intensive field research over nine years of parenting is that many overweight children consume too much sugar. To prevent this, don't put Mountain Dew in your toddler's sippy cup. This message brought to you by Mountain Dew. WHERE'S MY TEN MILLION?

MAYOR LEVI? Sounds About Right

If he wins, Johnston promises to fulfill his duty as the town's mayor.

And should his candidacy prove successful in Wasilla, Jones said he's got Johnston's sights set next on the Alaska governor's race -- and it's not entirely clear whether he's kidding or not. (And if it again sounds too far-fetched, remember that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura were elected governor in much more populous states.)

Johnston -- who describes himself as "half red-neck, half Hollywood" -- said he hoped the show would correct what he believes are misconceptions about him in the media.

"It's hard to figure me out," he said.

via www.variety.com

Actually, Levi, you're pretty easy to figure out: You're a famewhore baby-daddy-to-two with a messed up, drug-addled family.
In other words, the perfect candidate!
The Variety piece doesn't say whether Johnston will run as a Republican or not. One can only hope.
In all seriousness, while American politics was the original reality television, I'm bugged by a stunt candidacy as much as I was by the Salahis' White House dinner party incursion.
Stay the fuck away from my government, you tacky fools.

JERSEY SNORE: Snooki's Not Even A Ham Worth Fighting For

Sub-plot of last week's Mad Men episode: Peggy and Pete cook up a scheme to build publicity for Sugarberry hams by hiring two broads to get in a fight over one in a store. The subsequent buzz results in a new slogan: "Our hams are worth fighting for."

My biggest criticism of Snooki and her ham-glazed friends isn't about what they've (allegedly) done to our media culture, or their insult-by-example adherence to some notion of what it means to be "Italian," or the astounding vapidity of GTL as a lifestyle ethos. 

What kills me is how shockingly unoriginal the whole thing is.

It's as if bimbettes with a day drunk on don't annoy beach patrons every day somewhere along the Shore. Or as if some of those dumb skanks don't then sassmouth the cops to the point that they get tossed into the back of the car. It's called Senior Week, people, and it's been wasting police resources at the Shore for decades, only those girls usually come away with it with a "walking ticket" court summons and a hangover. For the Snookis of this world, it's a career highlight.

Our response to it all -- round after round of phony shock and indignation, followed by hilariously unironic examinations of our collective cultural conscience -- are re-runs of a re-run at this point, "scandals" that once may have really revealed something about ourselves but are now just on endless repeat in syndication. Even the "Free Snooki" T-shirt that magically appeared on the other cast member who went to fetch Snooki from the police station seemed like a cheap Boardwalk knockoff of a joke that was sort-of funny a decade ago.

RELATED: Seaside Cashes In, or, Bankruptcy and Porn!

YUNKER ALERT: It's Shamrock Local Time

Bring out your drunks and get on the bus, friends and neighbors: The 19th Manayunk Shamrock Local is on tap for this Saturday, March 13. Think of it as State Patty's Day for grownups.

Grab your flashing LCD belt buckles, put on your drinking socks and get ready to ride. I'm actually ambivalent about going on the Local this year, coming as it does a few months after the death of our beloved "Aunt Flo," aka Florence Cook.

Flo never was one to ride from place to place -- hauling your drunk shit on and off a bus all day was for kids -- but she was always waiting there for you at Spanky's to start off the Local, and later at Scanlon's to check up on you when you disembarked. I'm not sure I can do an afternoon of beer-soaked tears, but some of my favorite Shamrock Local memories have Flo at the center of them. So we'll see.

 

OF COURSE The Local's On Facebook.

There Are No New Stories, Only Old Ones With Different Words

Here's the latest version of the old "hidden camera busts supposedly disabled people working" story:

Geek.com has a post about a Quebec woman who'd been on a year-plus long leave suffering from depression, yet now finds her benefits cut off after her employer sees photos from her Facebook page showing her partying it up.

The woman claims the photos show isolated happy moments that don't cancel out the ongoing depression. Her employer claims the photos aren't the only factor in their decision-making. Obviously, depression is a little bit more complicated than, say, a guy faking brain damage that supposedly left him with the intellect of a 5-year-old (seriously, watch this one. It's ridiculous.)

But another question here is how the employer got the photos -- the woman's page is private. Though of course "private" and "protected" are words that fall along a continuum when you're talking about social media. How far should/can an employer go into its workers' social lives, either as a matter of course or to investigate something specific?

To paraphrase a line I heard at @ONA09, most people see their profiles, and the information within, as semi-private, and everyone else's as semi-public.

(h/t Cathy Heard)

I Knew The Bride When She Used To Wield A Knife

A few weeks back, Natalie Pompilio was looking for sites to include in a story she did about mocking websites, ala Albert Yee's SeptaFail, Lamebook.com and the instant-classic PeopleOfWalmart.com.

I only wish I'd known about Wedinator.com -- where "Trashing your special day is our prime directive" -- in time to pass along for the story. Enjoy.

A.M. Paper, 'Afternoon Delight'

"Afternoon Delight with John Thornton," in which a dude with seriously hairy back doffs his bathrobe and gets cozy with the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer. Perhaps too cozy. I'll never hear the words "Trudy Rubin" in quite the same way again.
What, no Santorum?

Hat tip to @ckrewson

YOUTUBE: "Afternoon Delight with John Thornton."

Down And Out On Sesame Street

Big Bird might need to start making his own birdseed milkshakes -- Sesame Workshop is cutting back. From the AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — The crisis on Wall Street is plaguing Sesame Street.

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of Sesame Street and other kids' programs, is cutting about one-fifth of its workforce because of the economic downturn.

The company said Wednesday that it's eliminating 67 of 355 staff positions.

Declaring it is "not immune to the unprecedented challenges of today's economic environment," the company pronounced a need "to operate with fewer resources in order to achieve our strategic priorities."

I'd love to tell myself that list of "strategic priorities" has "helping kids learn to read" as its first item, but alas, Sesame Workshop long ago morphed into a "non-profit" media machine. With the economy in the dumper, Elmo's World is now being brought to you by the letters B,R,O,K and E and the Number 0:

Sesame Workshop gets revenue from product licensing and the sale of its programs to PBS and syndication. The company is also funded by government agencies, foundations and corporations.

Total revenue was $145 million in 2008, with operating expenses totaling $141 million, according to the company's website.