• Oh wonderful, Chris Albritton is going on hiatus from blogging because some know-nothing idiots who I'm sure have never even been to the Middle East questioned his on-the-ground reporting. "They just want to score points in what seems to be, at best, a debating club rather than real life and death situations. Congratulations, your team won. Yay. People are still dead, you know. It's happened in Iraq and it's happened here [Beirut], and I don't really feel like being part of that culture any more... I got tired of defending myself to anklebiters who frankly had no idea what they were talking about. I got tired of going out every day, risking the life of my driver, translator and myself, only to be told I can't do anything put parrot Hizbullah propaganda. It was insulting and it pissed me off. To all you people who think you could do better in a war zone, bring it on." And so we all lose one of the best blogging journalists around.
• Barbara's also pissed at bloggers, particularly those who insist that we who live in New York want to forget 9-11 instead of dealing with our still-raw-after-five-years-thank-you-very-much grief and putting it in its proper context and not using it as a propaganda product to score political points.
• And Jersey Cynic at Blondesense is pissed that the radical reactionaries are appropriating the word "fascist" and changing its meaning (since we never ask them to define the term) to equate it with "bad guys" instead of what it actually refers to, because of course that would make them the modern fascists, not the Islamic fundies with whom they have enough else in common.
• Meanwhile in a saner country, Cathie from Canada reports that this weekend the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan is throwing a massive house party for Kyle "One Red Paper Clip" MacDonald as he moves into his new abode. This worked out as a total win-win for everyone!
• Politics and humor, and the politics of humor, is one of my favorite subjects, and Terry weighs in with her thoughts on what she finds funny and unfunny. I have to agree with her on what I call "embarrassment comedy," I usually feel for the victim too much to laugh at him or her.
• Rana has some thoughts about thinking globally and acting locally. I always thought the key to making local alliances work was interweaving larger, regional alliances. Kinda like, I dunno, a bit Interweaving Net or something...
• Dean Friedman welcomes in the season.
• Ken Jennings finally finds out why Lassie is always played by male dogs.
• Teresa provides another nice long update on astroturf (people paid to troll blogs' comment sections).
• I think some bloggers too easily confuse irony with sarcasm, but there's still some good reading about snark and cynicism and the generation gap from Piny at Feministe and especially Amanda at Pandagon (here and here are the sarcasm posts, and here is the generational one). As someone who's probably on the other side of the generational divide between second-wave and third-wave feminists, I have to admit I'm probably knee-jerk about things that make me uncomfortable, although as I said in a previous post I'm trying not to take offense on behalf of others as much as I used to. But I still tend to sit squarely in the section of folks who believe it's extremely difficult to turn around or "deconstruct" certain exploitive images and make them empowering as long as we have a culture that still revels in perpetuating those images straight-up. I can't redecorate the clubhouse with "ironic" girly pinups if I don't feel welcome in that clubhouse in the first place.
Speaking of which, have I mentioned the fourth edition of the Feminist SF Carnival has been up for a week and I still haven't gotten to it? Back to reading...
• Barbara's also pissed at bloggers, particularly those who insist that we who live in New York want to forget 9-11 instead of dealing with our still-raw-after-five-years-thank-you-very-much grief and putting it in its proper context and not using it as a propaganda product to score political points.
• And Jersey Cynic at Blondesense is pissed that the radical reactionaries are appropriating the word "fascist" and changing its meaning (since we never ask them to define the term) to equate it with "bad guys" instead of what it actually refers to, because of course that would make them the modern fascists, not the Islamic fundies with whom they have enough else in common.
• Meanwhile in a saner country, Cathie from Canada reports that this weekend the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan is throwing a massive house party for Kyle "One Red Paper Clip" MacDonald as he moves into his new abode. This worked out as a total win-win for everyone!
• Politics and humor, and the politics of humor, is one of my favorite subjects, and Terry weighs in with her thoughts on what she finds funny and unfunny. I have to agree with her on what I call "embarrassment comedy," I usually feel for the victim too much to laugh at him or her.
• Rana has some thoughts about thinking globally and acting locally. I always thought the key to making local alliances work was interweaving larger, regional alliances. Kinda like, I dunno, a bit Interweaving Net or something...
• Dean Friedman welcomes in the season.
• Ken Jennings finally finds out why Lassie is always played by male dogs.
• Teresa provides another nice long update on astroturf (people paid to troll blogs' comment sections).
• I think some bloggers too easily confuse irony with sarcasm, but there's still some good reading about snark and cynicism and the generation gap from Piny at Feministe and especially Amanda at Pandagon (here and here are the sarcasm posts, and here is the generational one). As someone who's probably on the other side of the generational divide between second-wave and third-wave feminists, I have to admit I'm probably knee-jerk about things that make me uncomfortable, although as I said in a previous post I'm trying not to take offense on behalf of others as much as I used to. But I still tend to sit squarely in the section of folks who believe it's extremely difficult to turn around or "deconstruct" certain exploitive images and make them empowering as long as we have a culture that still revels in perpetuating those images straight-up. I can't redecorate the clubhouse with "ironic" girly pinups if I don't feel welcome in that clubhouse in the first place.
Speaking of which, have I mentioned the fourth edition of the Feminist SF Carnival has been up for a week and I still haven't gotten to it? Back to reading...
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