Sophianotloren

What would a young escort con/swindler look and behave like? And what her target most likely be like?

One of my very early columns was on just that subject; as you can see there are a number of different types, but I must point out that a con artist who can easily be identified as such wouldn’t be a very successful con artist.  The best rule for avoiding sex work scams is the same as the best rule for avoiding any other kind of scam: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”  Beware of lowball pricing and exorbitant promises, don’t be in a hurry and look for signs like a well-designed website, good reviews and a businesslike manner.  Even if a lady doesn’t allow reviews, the fact that she invested in a good website and professional photos rather than relying solely on cheapie ads and motel-room selfies tells you she views her business as a business rather than as a con game, and that she’s in it for the long term rather than trying to get as much as possible as fast as possible before getting out.  Similarly, a professional manner of dealing with clients tells you that she’s been doing this for a while.

Though some clients would tell you that there’s no such thing as a good Backpage girl, I disagree; I have lots of friends who advertise there, and some say it makes them more money than the pricier, more “upscale” ads do.  A few years ago a regular reader told me he loved Backpage and had found plenty of good girls there; however, he kept the “too good to be true” principle in mind, looked at how she had written her ad, avoided ladies under 25 and took his time making the dates.  That last is very important; both con artists and cops will try to rush you, so it’s better to avoid anyone who does.

The last part of your question is the simplest to answer, but the one people are least likely to accept.  One of my university boyfriends used to say, “Nobody can take advantage of you unless you have larceny in your heart.”  In other words, the majority of scams are based on the mark’s desire for a free lunch, easy money, something for nothing, or some other unfair advantage.  If you’ve spent more than an hour perusing escort ads in your locale, you know what the going rate is; be willing to pay it and stay far away from “bargains”, “deals” and “specials”, and the chances of being fleeced are as almost as low as they are in any other business.

Without recommendations from friends, what’s the safest way for me to find out if an escort is real and not a cop?  I’ve found a girl based near me; she seems to tour, has all positive reviews for years, has appeared in a recent documentary, and googling her name brings up Eros and only a few other sites linking hers.  I’ve also googled escort busts in my area and come up pretty empty aside from a few streetwalker stings.  I feel like I’ve done all the due diligence that I can to ensure my safety, but wonder if there’s anything else you could recommend?

If she has a years-long history and reviews, and appeared in a documentary, I think you can be pretty sure she is what she claims to be.  Enjoy your date!

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

A “total Nathaniel P.” describes a certain kind of male literary intellectual, the opposite of the finance crowd who coined the phrase an insult. But among people who have actually read Adelle Waldman’s novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Nate Piven earns a lot of sympathy in spite of his disagreeable demeanor. Nate is the kind of character readers love to hate. Judy Berman, writing at Flavorwire, considers why we sympathize with such a loathsome character:

In fact, I’m certain that I hated him more often than I liked him. But it’s to Waldman’s credit that she isn’t just a brutal satirist and keen observer — she’s an author who truly thinks through her character’s motivations, tracking not just how her protagonist rationalizes his sometimes-reprehensible behavior, but how mood and circumstance change those justifications. She even gives him a few genuinely admirable attributes. And occasionally, in the midst of a self-righteous internal monologue, Nate makes a point that resonates.

Related Posts:

• The Rumpus Interview with Adelle Waldman
• Marveling At Roxane Gay
• Still Writing Like a Motherfucker
• The Year of Lynne Tillman
• The Midwest is the Future of American Literature

by Adia Harvey Wingfield

If you watch American popular culture and media, it is easy to come away with a rather depressing story about the lives and experiences of black men. News media tend to overrepresent black men as criminal, and movies like Paid in Full, State Property, and Get Rich or Die Trying do their part to portray black men as victims and/or survivors of an urban ghetto defined by violence, poverty, neglect, and drug use. At the other end of the spectrum, extremely visible, successful black men like Bill Cosby and Barack Obama suggest hard work, staying in school, and good behavior are surefire routes to success.

Both accounts offer a very two-dimensional picture of black men’s lives in the U.S. today. They give the impression that nearly all black men are facing the dire threats of un- or underemployment, failing schools, urban neglect, and jail time. Those who do not fit this categorization may seem to be on another end of a continuum—part of an extremely well off, highly visible minority who point to their own accomplishments as proof that properly channeled ambition leads to success. The story media and current research tell is usually that black men’s lives generally exist only on these two ends of a spectrum.

In my book No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men’s Work, I try to draw attention to black men who do not fit either of these categorizations—everyday professional, middle class black men who work in white-collar jobs.

These men are generally invisible in media and even in a great deal of sociological research, which tends to devote more attention to working class or poor black men in urban areas. But for black professional men, their lives don’t necessarily reflect those of their working class peers. Nor do they share the same workplace experiences and concerns as black professional women. Instead, race, gender, and class create unique work conditions for black professional men that are very different from those of other groups.

Theoretically, we might expect the concept of tokenism to explain black men’s work experiences. This theory suggests that being in the minority leads to differential, usually negative, treatment. Among other things, it makes people stand out from the majority and makes it harder to fit in to the larger group. I found, however, that this theory did not always explain the particulars of how black professional men encountered different aspects of their work environments. As a corrective, I introduce the theory of partial tokenization, which provides a better blueprint for understanding how race, gender, and class shaped their work in selected fields. By partial tokenization, I argue that these intersecting factors coupled with work in a culturally masculine occupation shape these men’s experiences in the minority.

The book explores this thesis through several different dynamics of these men’s work lives. I focus on their general experiences in the workplace, interactions with women, relationships with men, demonstrations of masculinity, and emotional performance. Overall, my study shows how race, gender, and class create unique conditions at work for black men in professional jobs.

Adia Harvey Wingfield is associate professor of sociology at Georgia State University. Her book, No More Invisible Man: Race and Gender in Men’s Work, is reviewed in the April 2014 issue of Gender & Society. To read the review, click here.

Filed under: Masculinities, Work & Organizations

The mainstream media, with the exception of MSNBC, maintains an abysmal record when it comes to diversity, while conservative media don’t even pretend to care. The American Prospect‘s Gabriel Arana took a look at diversity among liberal publications like The Nation,Slate, and Mother Jones, and came away with a raft of excuses from their editors, all of which are pure horseshit. Arana’s own over-complicated analysis eventually gets around to some productive points, but what’s truly revealing are the excuses he elicits from the editors of liberal outlets:

1. They don’t know how white they are...

I’ve been looking at various demographic breakdowns of income in the USA. Here’s an interesting one from the Census Bureau, based on household size (A household is everyone who lives in the same house or apartment unit, so household size is not exactly the same things as family size, since for example two unrelated people sharing a 2-bedroom apartment would count as one household, whether or not they had any relationship with each other beyond shared housing expenses. Still it’s a pretty close approximation to family size).

Median income by household size (2012):

One person households: $26.2K

2: $56,727K

3: $64,614K

4: $78,177K

5: $71,185K

6: $67,634K

7 or more people: $66,612K

Notes:

(1) The low figure for one-person households is probably a product of a high percentage of very old and very young adults in this cohort.

(2) The nearly 10% decline in income seen in five as opposed to four-person households, and the further decline among households of six or more people, suggests something about what is considered an appropriate family size among upper-middle and upper class people these days, i.e., having two kids is fine, three is considered a “big” family, and four is basically declasse.

From a historian’s perspective, the most interesting thing about the arrest of Gerry Adams on murder charges is the central role of oral histories given under an understanding of confidentiality. The interviews were stored as Boston College as part of the Belfast Project but the British government managed to undue their confidentiality in court. This is a real threat to the future of oral history projects of controversial matters. If these histories are not confidential, who is going to give them?

But what began as an oral history archive designed to promote reconciliation in Northern Ireland in the future is now tearing open old wounds.

For the last four years the agreement to keep the tapes secret unto death has been the subject of intense controversy, academic dispute and international litigation.

A federal court forced Boston College to hand over some of its sensitive archive after British authorities invoked a treaty with the U.S. requiring the exchange of information in violent criminal cases.

Now, after another tape was released implicating Sinn Fein President Adams in an IRA murder he denies, Boston College has had a change of heart and is changing the rules for the oral history project, says Dunn.

“If individuals contact us who desire to have their specific interviews returned then we will accommodate them once we verify their names, but there will never be a disclosure of people who participated in the project,” Dunn said.

But that guarantee is not iron-clad. The troubling archive could potentially be subpoenaed again. Dunn won’t speculate.

“You know that’s something that we’ll just see what happens down the road,” he said.

More than 60 nations have signed the international agreement that was used to force BC to give up some of the oral archive. The case sends a message oral historians have heard ’round the world.

“Researchers will always have to be aware of this precedent,” Dunn said. “So if they’re recording information on criminal or violent activities, you’re gonna have to be aware of this precedent.”

I’m not saying this the most important issue at play here. I am saying it is an important issue for how future people will understand their past. Former IRA members are now suing Boston College. This is all pretty chill-inducing for historians.

Michelle Goldberg makes a very smart point here:

Are the protests against commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients an example of the anti-liberal left?

I think there’s a difference between stopping someone from speaking and stopping a college from honoring them. Everybody gets to speak, but not everybody gets to be honored.

Not everyone deserves a $35,000 speaking gig. I think that Brandeis was right to revoke Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s honorary degree. It was madness to have a Jewish institution putting its imprimatur on someone who has called for the massive repression and conversion of Muslims. It was their fault for not doing their due diligence and not realizing what she said.

What about commencement speeches? Are they invitations to speak, or are they honors that colleges are conferring?

These people aren’t being invited to share their ideas or argue their ideas. They’re being invited to solemnize an important occasion for these students. I don’t know how meaningful of a distinction that is, but it’s a difference.

You invite someone to be a commencement speaker presumably because you see them as a model and a potential inspiration for your students, whereas you invite someone to speak because they have something interesting and potentially provocative to say.

While I’m kind of uncomfortable with this trend, and I think that these protests should be maybe used sparingly, I think that being a commencement speaker has a certain honor attached to it that’s different from just being involved in the regular exchange of ideas on college campuses.

I was furious when [evangelical pastor] Rick Warren was invited to give the invocation at Obama’s first inauguration, even though I feel very strongly that Rick Warren has the right to say whatever he wants to say. I believe very strongly in Rick Warren’s freedom of speech. I also feel his presence at that event was an insult to a lot of Obama’s supporters.

Right. Free speech norms should mean that people just invited to give a talk on campus for no or modest fees should generally be allowed to speak. Ornamental degrees or commencement speeches are a completely different thing for the reasons Goldberg explains, and I’ve tried to as well.

This is Paul’s department, but aren’t most five figure commencement speeches essentially a racket? Left, right, or center, and no matter how smart the speaker, given the format it’s very difficult to craft a commencement speech that doesn’t fall in between “platitudinously unmemorable” and “terrible.” Large fees to speak at these ceremonies seem like another way for elites to ivory backscratch each other with student/taxpayer money.

Updated below

In his post about free speech on campus arguments, Scott mentions the tangential issue of exactly how much celebrity speakers at commencements and other university events are getting paid for casting their pearls before students, parents, alumni, etc.

The University of Colorado holds what I can only hope is some sort of record in this regard, although this is a rare case in which absurdly reckless spending on campus can’t be laid at the doorstep of university administrators per se. CU-Boulder has an extraordinarily well-funded student government (essentially all the money comes from student fees, above and beyond tuition). I became aware of this after almost literally running into Kofi Annan a few years ago at the bar of a swank Boulder hotel (I was there for a law school event), as both of us strove to order gin and tonics and help bring about world peace.

I was curious as to how much it was costing the student government (annual budget at that time: $33 million) to bring Annan to campus, where his official duties were limited to giving one 50-minute speech. Inquiries revealed the answer was $160,000, with $100,000 of that representing his speaking fee, and the rest travel expenses for himself and his retinue. I was shocked enough by this figure to inquire further, only to discover this wasn’t a one-off event: in the previous two years the student government had paid the same $100,000 speaking fee to Rudy Giuliani and B.B. King.

Anyway, five-and six (!)-figure speaking fees for the sorts of minor celebrities who speak at commencements etc., are indeed, as Scott notes, part of a complacent racket by which the elites celebrate their wonderfulness through pecuniary gestures that grow increasingly grotesque.

Update: A commenter links to a story revealing that between leaving the White House and July 2012, Bill Clinton had received $89 million in speaking fees (a figure which by this point has almost certainly hit nine figures, as he made $13.4 million from speaking fees in 2011 alone). Over that time Clinton’s average speaking fee was $189,000, with a high of $750,000 for a speech in Hong Kong to Ericcson.

by Abigail C. Saguy

Gender scholars have long criticized the fashion media for glorifying emaciation and contributing to body-image and eating problems. However, they have been relatively quiet about how medical science and news reporting may contribute to the very same problems. This is surprising given a long tradition of feminist critiques of medical authority in other areas. What’s Wrong with Fat? fills this gap by examining how medical research, public health campaigns, and news reports contribute to a “cult of thinness.”

Indeed, the United States, we are told, is facing an obesity epidemic – a “battle of the bulge” of not just national, but global proportions – that requires drastic and immediate action. Experts in the media, medical science, and government alike are scrambling to find answers. What or who is responsible for this crisis, and what can we do to stop it?

In What’s Wrong with Fat?, I argue that these fraught and frantic debates obscure a more important question: How has fatness come to be understood as a public health crisis at all? Why has the view of bigger bodies as a problem – a symptom of immorality, a medical pathology, a public health epidemic – come to dominate more positive framings of such bodies – as consistent with health, beauty, or subject to unfair discrimination? Why are heavy individuals – who are disproportionately poor and people of color – singled out for blame? What are the consequences of understanding weight in these ways and how do they vary by gender, race, and class?

In What’s Wrong with Fat?, I present several of the various ways in which heavy bodies are understood – or framed – in America today, examining the implications of understanding fatness as a health risk, disease, and epidemic, and revealing why we’ve come to understand the issue in these terms, despite considerable scientific uncertainty and debate. I show how debates over the relationship between body size and health risk take place within a larger, though often invisible, contest over whether we should understand fatness as obesity at all. Moreover, I show how public discussions of the “obesity crisis” do more harm than good, justifying and reinforcing inequality based on race, gender, class, and leading to weight-based discrimination and bullying, as well as medical misdiagnoses.

I use the concept of framing to shed new light on contemporary debates over body size. In the introduction, I promise: “Once you put down this book, you will never hear the word obesity the same way again.” That is because I show that the term obesity implies a medical frame, in which fat bodies are seen as inherently pathological, and increasingly a public health crisis frame, in which increased body sizes at the population level are viewed as a public health crisis. These medical and public health messages reinforce a cult of thinness that is also propagated by the fashion media and which falls heaviest on women. These medical and public health frames are all the more invidious in that most people do not see them as such, nor realize that there are alternative ways of understanding fatness, as, for instance, beautiful, sexy, healthy, or a positive form of human diversity.

In an illustration that I commissioned for this book, I use the metaphor of an opera and opera glasses to convey this point. From the balcony, three figures view an opera, entitled “l’Epidemia di Obesita (the Obesity Epidemic)” through opera glasses that provide a metaphor for different ways of framing the “obesity epidemic.” These include: (1) personal responsibility, (2) societal factors, and (3) biology. Each distinct lens leads to a different interpretation of the story line. For the man with the personal responsibility opera glasses, it is a “timeless story of desire, transgression, and its inevitable consequences.” For the man with the “society” glasses, it is “a wrenching portrait of poverty and ignorance,” and the woman with the biology lenses sees “the tragic saga of a fragile soul inured in a prison of flesh.”

These distinct “blame frames” shape the remedies that seem justified and desirable. For instance, the personal responsibility frame makes plausible the idea that there should be more restrictions placed on the use of food stamps or that heavier people should be charged more for health insurance as a way of punishing unhealthy lifestyles. A sociocultural frame emphasizes how forces including the food industry, poverty, and cultural practices also contribute to higher populations weights. A biology frame stresses that body size is largely controlled by biological factors beyond personal control. Based on content analysis of hundreds of news reports, I find that the personal responsibility frame has dominated U.S. public discourse, but that socio-cultural explanations are gaining ground.

Returning back to the opera, however, while each of these figures sees the opera via different “blame frames,” all take for granted the “problem frame,” of obesity as public health crisis. Indeed, this is imposed by the opera itself. Meanwhile, on the bottom left, we see an usher (a literal gatekeeper) telling a woman from a fat acceptance group, who is trying to enter the opera, to be quiet. However, she – and the perspective she represents –literally cannot get in the door. This provides a metaphor for how difficult it can be to reframe discussions of bigger bodies as medical and public health problems into discussions of weight-based discrimination and bias and to seriously consider scientific evidence that it is possible to be heavy and healthy.

Abigail C. Saguy is associate professor in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Here book, What’s Wrong with Fat?, was reviewed in the April 2014 issue of Gender & Society. To read the review click here.

Filed under: Body & Embodiment, Health/Medical, Media & Communications

I violated my Monday “off” policy yesterday.  I’ve been sick the majority of the last two weeks, and when I woke yesterday NOT coughing madly it made me get excited to catch up on chores neglected.  So, I worked all day on the mountain of laundry.

And it kicked my ass.  All it took to wear me out was doing about 8 loads of laundry?

So, I fell into bed last night over-exhausted and slept restlessly, waking up off and on all night.  But still, amazingly, NOT coughing. Yay!

Then the sneaky light of dawn came filtering through my windows.  The windows of the Haven face east and west, so Nature’s own alarm clock lets me know cocks somewhere are a-crowing.  Gracie the Gray Drill Sergeant believes in rising with the sun.  She often jumps up on the bed and aggressively purrs in my face, patting me with her soft clawless paws as if to say, “Damn, you lazy woman, get UP!” I cover my face with the sheet and she goes away.

Unless I forgot to make sure her food and water dishes are full.  Then she persists, even bringing in nursing like behavior to tell me she is staaaaarving.  So, this morning at about five, she began this behavior.  I got up to take my antibiotics (now happily wrecking my gut flora with glee in the absence of codeine cough syrup), and I checked that she had food and water. She grabbed my ankle as I began my crawl back under the feather comforter and bit it — this is a common technique in declawed kitties: grab with paws and hold with TEETH.

I tapped her nose with one finger and said “No biting!” and got in bed.  And then the second Monday of the week began, and you better bet your ass I am taking this one OFF duty!  Gracie leapt up onto the bed and took up position alongside my knees.  I thought, “Good, she will go back to sleep now.”  Nope, just as I was about to doze off, a peculiar scritch-scratch noise alerted me: Gracie was ‘digging’ the bed covers — she had just pissed on my bed!

Now, Gracie was banished from her original home with the Manchild and his Beloved for this very thing.  But that was because the other cats bullied and terrified the little clawless refugee.  So, I took her for my own.  She peed on my bed in the first week out here, but I had thought it was for fear of leaving the bed while our dog was in the Haven.  She has long since made friends with said dog, and even gets along pretty well with the ferrets.

So, this morning’s behavior was definitely ‘second Monday of week’ worthy.  On another blog-site, I once read the blog of a young man whose seemingly psychotic cat attacked him in the wee hours of every morning, demanding food and attention by viciously biting him.  Of course, he had inadvertently reinforced this bad behavior by gratifying the cat’s demands.  So, with this in mind, I made sure I did not get up on Gracie’s demand over the last few months.  I responded by ignoring her.

I guess she decided that she wasn’t going to be ignored.  Who could stay mad at this face?  But I will not have a cat who is going to piss my bed every time I don’t jump to her demands, either.  This morning, I knocked her off the bed with a pillow, swept the comforter off the bed with one motion before the undercover, sheets, or mattress could be wetted.  I caught Gracie and deposited her and her catbox on the enclosed back porch of the Haven.  She is still there.  Her screechy voice and piteous chirps notwithstanding, she is still there.  She has in mind that the world lives on her schedule, you see, or cattitude else.  Two strikes, Gracie, two strikes —the nine lives rule does NOT apply to bed pissing.

No, that is not how it works.  My feather bed is washed and will be drying most of the rest of the day.  Gracie is in basic training now.  My move to the Big House happens in August, the thought had been that Gracie would be allowed in my bedroom.  That likely is NOT the scenario now.  Between now and August, Gracie will spend nights on the porch.  She will NOT be fed until I get up in the morning at MY chosen time.  After the woozle run, she will be allowed inside, but will not be allowed on the bed.

When I move back into my marital home?  Well, Gracie will spend nights in the office, where the woozle cage will also reside.  There is not safe enclosed porch on that house.  She will not be allowed to set our schedules by waking us, biting us, or pissing on our beds.   We like this little cat, but she obviously has not got the message that we two legged sorts ARE in charge.  Flirting ain’t gonna work on me this time!

 

Tagged: cattitude, fuckedy-fuck-fuck

Christopher Flavell, in an article about climate denialism, interviews Harvard professor Vanessa Williamson:

Williamson attributed the receptiveness of Tea Party supporters to two widespread views: First, the coastal elite looks down on people in Middle America; second, the government wants to exert ever-more control, and will use any pretext to do it.

“There’s a general perception that the government wants to expand its power,” Williamson told me. “That discussion felt sincere to me.”

That sincere fear, Williamson said, has convinced Tea Party supporters that the coastal elites (a group that includes scientists) is manufacturing evidence around climate change. The aim, in their view, is to undo the American way of life — big cars, big homes, suburban sprawl — and make the heartland look more like the coasts.

This seems accurate to me; in conversation with climate deniers, they’ve often brought up those two themes. What do y’all think?

And is there any way of persuading someone with these beliefs that the scientific consensus is in fact true?

P.S. Hi Sydney!

The blog Addiction Myth is devoted to a very out-of-the-mainstream proposition about medicine: that the entire concept of drug and alcohol addiction is a scam perpetrated by law enforcement, rehab groups, and the entertainment industry. By contrast, the United States Department of Health and Human Services is devoted to mainstream medical and scientific propositions² It is perhaps inevitable that these two worldviews would conflict one day.

But it was not inevitable that HHS's Office of General Counsel would bumptiously threaten Addiction Myth over obviously satirical posts. That, given minimal good sense, could have been avoided.

Addiction Myth attracted the ire of government attorneys with two posts. In "A Conversation with Addiction Guru Aaron White, PhD," the site offered a satirical "interview" with a prominent scientist in the field of addiction research who works with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The satire is broad and rather obvious and promotes the site's view that the concept of addiction is a scam:

AM: According to your research, blackouts occur not just in middle age alcoholics, but in young college students who may not have built up much tolerance for alcohol. Their drinking often ended up in unprotected sex, vandalism, and fights, of which they had no memory until cued by a friend. What was their response to their memory? Regret? Horror? Delight? Glee? A little of each?

AW: I wasn’t the author of the research. But I would say a little of each, at least based on my own experience. I suspect they remembered more than they wanted to admit. Though one time I got really drunk at a party and my friend told me that I was talking to his sister in French, and I had absolutely no recollection of that. It was surprising to me as a brain scientist because alcohol has been shown to suppress activation of the inferior frontal region (Broca’s area also known as the ‘language center’). I probably shouldn’t have been able to talk at all, let alone French, given my BAC. But what was really weird was that I don’t even know French!

In the second post, "Cease and Desist!", Addiction Myth offered a satirical demand letter from the Director of the NIAAA. Again, the joke is not particularly subtle:

I pray to the god of my understanding to remove your character defects. Seriously, get help.

It takes a bold attorney to write a cease-and-desist letter complaining about a clearly satirical cease-and-desist letter. Dale D. Berkley, Senior Attorney with the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Division, Office of General Counsel, is just the man for the job. Yesterday he sent a to-the-best-of-government-abilities threatening letter to Addiction Myth about the two satirical blog posts.

Berkley — who signs his letter "Dale D. Berkley, Ph.D., J.D."³ — begins by pre-refuting his own point:

Of course Dr. White did not in fact participate in the interview and Dr. Koob did not write the letter attributed to him.

When the target of satire complains that it is defamatory, the relevant question is whether the satire can reasonably be taken as a statement of fact about its subject. Dr. Berkley, by saying that "of course" the satirical articles do not reflect the actual words of the subjects, has just proclaimed that the satire he is complaining about cannot be taken as a statement of fact.

You paid taxes for that.

We are concerned that, especially with respect to the mock interview, the public could be deceived and misled into believing that Dr. White in fact contributed to the interview. Those items are defamatory, and expose you to potential liability.

This is, of course, lawless idiocy. Back in November I discussed the case Farah v. Esquire Magazine, in which the D.C. Circuit rejected a defamation suit by WorldNetDaily lunatic Joseph Farah against Esquire Magazine based on a satirical post. In the decision the Court reviewed four crucial ways the First Amendment protects satire: (1) satire can only be defamatory if it can reasonably be understood as stating or implying actual facts about its subject, (2) in making that determination, courts look at the context of the satire, meaning that they examine publication as a whole in the sense which it would be understood by its intended audience familiar with the publication, (3) the fact that the occasional dupe will take satire seriously does not deprive it of First Amendment protection, and (4) satire need not include a satire disclaimer.

Under those standards — which are neither obscure nor difficult to understand — the HHS threat is patently frivolous. First, the Addiction Myth satire posts are replete with signs of satire. Second, the satire is aimed at Addiction Myth's own audience, and occurs in the context of Addiction Myth's series of vigorous attacks on addiction science. Any reasonable person who spends even a minimal amount of time on Addiction Myth will understand the context and see that the posts must be satirical. Third, the fact that some hypothetical member of the public could be deceived is not the issue; the question is what a reasonable person familiar with the context would believe.

We therefore request that you either remove the articles from your website, or provide a prominent disclaimer indicating that Dr. White and Dr. Koob did not participate in the interview or write the letter.

This demand raises a series of questions.

1. Who is "we?" Does HHS Office of General Counsel purport to represent these doctors for purposes of defamation threats? Is that allowed? Or does HHS purport to have a right to forbid defamation of doctors associated with it? From whence does that right spring?

2. Did Dr. Berkley know the relevant law when he sent this letter? That is, did he, a government attorney, knowingly make an utterly specious legal threat in order to chill protected speech? Or did he send the threat on government letterhead from a government agency without even minimally acquainting himself with the relevant law governing First Amendment protections of satire? Which would be more appalling?

3. Dr. Dr. Berkley, or any other attorney with the HHS Office of Legal counsel, tell the hapless targets of this satire that the natural and probable consequence of this threat letter was to increase the attention given to the satire by orders of magnitude? Did the doctors know this letter was being sent out, and consent to it based on competent legal advice?

Inquiring minds who recently paid taxes would like to know.

I've sent an email, crafted with the decorum and courtesy for which I am known, to Dr. Berkley seeking comment on these issues. I'll let you know if I hear back. I've also offered the proprietor of the web site my assistance in finding counsel if necessary.

Department of Health And Human Services Threatens Blogger Over Satirical Posts © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

Yes, yes, we're all having such fun laughing at pathetic, old, self-deluded, old, racist old Donald Sterling, who proved last night on CNN that having billions of dollars does not, in fact, give you any insight into yourself or the world around you. What? You mean great-grandpa never got used to the Negros being able to talk back? It also proved that 80something rich white guys should just shut the fuck up and go live with their human playthings on an island they bought. But the circus goes on. So we get the to be entertained by the sight of rich guys acting all upset that Sterling said mean things about other rich guys, including rich black guys. Truly, honestly, and the Rude Pundit says this with all due contempt for the amount of time we've spent on this bullshit, "Whatever." Seriously, Sterling'll be dead soon, as will his entire generation, and, with them, just a little bit of evil in this world will go into the ground with them.

What you should actually give a shit about is that two coal miners died in a mine in West Virginia last night. No, it's not as glamorous as Sterling not knowing the different between having HIV and "the AIDS" when it comes to Magic Johnson. But it's more important by order of degrees.

Brody Mine Number 1 is owned by Patriot Coal, which has that name because of course it does. They are such patriots at Patriot Coal that, last year, when the U.S. Mine Safety and Health administration said that Brody No. 1 had a Pattern of Violations (an official designation for especially unsafe mines), they did their patriotic duty and made everything safe. Nah, just kidding. They issued a press release blaming the company they bought the mine from and said they're fixing the problems: "During the period of time it has operated as a Patriot subsidiary, the Brody mine has made considerable and measurable progress toward improved safety and compliance." They bought the mine in December 2012. The report was issued in October 2013. Patriot is suing to get the POV designation removed. That might be a harder case to make today.

Eric Legg and Gary Hensley died in what is called a "coal outburst." What that means is that the walls of the mine burst, ejecting coal and gas into the area where the men worked. It's a nasty way to die, hot and violent. It means that the gas wasn't drained out of the area to relieve pressure, which is a significant safety violation, which is what Brody No. 1 was already cited for: "MSHA said that its inspectors had cited more than 250 'significant and substantial' violations during the 12-month period that ended Aug. 31. An MSHA audit of the mine’s records found that injuries resulted in nearly 1,800 lost-work days at the mine, 367 of which were from eight injuries that the company did not report to MSHA. A separate audit in 2012 found 29 injuries that were not reported." To do the math, Patriot owned the mine for 8 of those 12 months.

As always with mining companies, Patriot has been on the forefront of doing vile shit to workers. The United Mine Workers of America was already pissed off at Patriot for using bankruptcy to dick over miners and retirees. Yeah, when it sought bankruptcy protection last year, a judge approved allowing the company to cut health benefits and pensions to union workers and retirees. It shitcanned a contract it had with the union and renegotiated one that cost the company far less. The workers got dicked, but it was with a smaller dildo. The deal allowed Patriot to emerge from bankruptcy in December 2013.

To celebrate, in February, Patriot spilled 108,000 gallons of slurry waste into a creek feeding the Kanawha River, the same river that was polluted by Freedom Industries. Don't worry, though. It wasn't supposed to significantly impact the drinking water, which could be another way of saying that things couldn't get worse. (You can make your own joke about how Patriot and Liberty have fucked the people of West Virginia.)

Conservatives are fond of talking about a "war on coal" by the Obama Administration. The blithering fucksacks at Freedomworks are especially into blaming any bad stuff that happens in the coal industry on this supposed war. What are the tactics of those waging war? Requiring pollution controls and increased safety oversight in the wake of the Massey mine disaster, where 29 workers died in 2010. Man, what evil motherfuckers those Obamabots are. Oddly, the war on coal miners by profit-gouging corporations doesn't seem to get as much play in the conservative media.

Maybe you're just a patriot when the government leaves you alone to do what you want.

I have attempted in this shebeen to be a complete agnostic on the question of whether or not Greenwald is a likable fella, because I think it haplessly irrelevant.

whether or not you'd invite Glenn Greenwald to tea...

Voltaire said, "To hold a pen is to be at war."  

He was right.

And now, in the category “That didn’t take long!” for the win lose, the Supreme Court Bullshit Ruling about Sectarian prayer being just ok (with Jesus?) in legislative sessions, it has already come out just as I expected, with Christians asserting that it ONLY applies to Christian prayer.  One bad example from a man who has happily crowed that America should “rid ourselves of this notion of freedom of religion in America.” 

And I SO do not want to hear from the peanut gallery (in full voice at the Wild Hunt) that the solution to feeling picked upon by such prayer is to take it to court.  Who the hell SAYS that kind of thing?  Who can afford to sue city hall/the state house/etc?  And in military settings, service members are not allowed to sue for themselves in any case. So that is NOT a viable solution to protect not only real religious freedom, but freedom FROM religion.

Fun days ahead….the kind that puts the func in dysfunction.  If there is any doubt whatsoever that the SCOTUS ruling is intended to be used for freedom of Christian religion only?  Look what happened when Satanists wanted to hold a Black Mass…as other religious groups hold events, at Harvard.  Death threats, even — wow, and imagine, the Christians think themselves persecuted if they cannot force you to wish them Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays.

Tagged: freedom-from-religion, religious folly, separation of church and state

Mad Swiss genius H.R. Giger, whose art scared the beejeebers out of millions and probably titillated a small coterie of pervs (a dream to some, a nightmare to others!) died of injuries sustained in a fall.

Like most people, I know Giger primarily from his design work for the movie Alien, though his infamous "Penis Landscape" poster insert in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist was better known to my teenaged self. The aesthetic Giger brought to his "Alien" designs was dubbed biomechanical- his most famous material seamlessly blended aspects of organisms and machinery. His creepiest work, in my estimation, was his material which fell into the uncanny valley- the "humanoid" aspects giving his aliens a more horrific aspect than that of Lovecraft's completely non-anthropomorphic aliens. It has to be said, though, that Alien, with its "humans are insignificant specks living in a completely unknowable and perilous universe" subtext, has a very "Lovecraftian" theme.

Perhaps more interesting than Giger's involvement with the wildly successful "Alien" movie franchise is his involvement in one of the great failures in science-fiction cinema, the aborted Alejandro Jodorowsky film of Frank Herbert's Dune:





Jodorowsky's Dune was not only to have employed Giger's talents, but those of Mœbius. Strange that the last movie featuring Giger's designs to be seen on the big screen concerned a major flop. Apparently, there was an earlier "making of" feature, detailing this legendary trainwreck:





For a more extensive retrospective of Giger's life and work, this Wired profile is a good start. Rest in peace, Mr Giger, even though you ensured that many of us spent some sleepless nights.

Following on from February’s ruling by Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court that law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain cellphone location information, New Hampshire is now strengthening its laws relating to cellphone searches. A short and simple bill introduced by Reps. Kurk, Sandblade and O’Flaherty, all of Hillsborough County, NH, provides that a warrant, “signed by […]

Roff was a regular commentator on Fox News. [1]. As a columnist for US News and World Report he compared the Obama Administration's use of Jonathan Gruber to promote its health care agenda to the Bush Administration's Armstrong Williams scandal.

...

Peter Roff...joined the now-defunct Free Enterprise Fund (FEF) during summer 2005 (The Free Enterprise Fund is a Section 501(c)(4) organization based in Washington, DC. The Free Enterprise Fund was founded in January 2005 by Stephen Moore and "some prominent" Club for Growth members.)

...

Roff is also the former Political Director of GOPAC, the political committee once headed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In that venue, Mr. Roff was a frequent commentator on politics and culture for MSNBC and the Fox News Channel." [1] Roff said in an August 2000 interview, that "he was responsible for training thousands of political candidates across the country."

...

On May 1st, the Prince George’s Police Department (in Maryland, bordering D.C.) announced plans to “live tweet” prostitution stings in the coming week. The social media reaction from sex worker twitter was rapid and powerful, denouncing the department’s idea and taking over their proposed hashtag #PGPDVice. The announcement and the backlash resulted in a lot of media coverage, locally and nationally–almost all of it including a critical perspective advocating for sex worker rights and against criminalization.

In a cynical move to silence critics, the police department the next day said they had all along planned to target only clients, not sex workers themselves. This came despite the initial announcement’s accompaniment by a photo of a male cop leading away a woman in handcuffs, which was subsequently removed from the police department’s website.

Sex workers and allies kept up the criticism on twitter through the weekend and into the week, when the police department released a statement that they had conducted the stings but not live tweeted. The decision to not live tweet was based in concerns about officer safety, the statement said:

Earlier today, the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Vice Intelligence Unit conducted a planned sting targeting johns. The event took place over several hours in the southern part of the county.  On average, the unit arrests five to 10 johns during similar operations.  Today, no johns were arrested.

“I’ve participated in hundreds of stings, and I’ve never seen what happened today. By advertising this days ago, we wanted to put johns on notice to not come to Prince George’s County. That message was heard loud and clear. We just put a dent in the human trafficking business without making one arrest,” said Sergeant Dave Coleman, the Officer in Charge of the Vice Intelligence Unit.

Sex workers and allies in New York advocating for human rights had a significant victory today as the Police Commissioner announced a partial elimination of the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution or related activities. Read the statement from the Access to Condoms Coalition here:

The policy announced by Commissioner Bratton today barring confiscation of condoms as arrest evidence in prostitution, prostitution in a school zone, and loitering for the purposes of prostitution cases represents a welcome and important step in the direction of protecting the public health and reproductive rights of New Yorkers. Unfortunately, it does not go far enough, and creates a loophole big enough to drive a truck through:  police can still continue to use the possession of condoms to justify an arrest, confiscate condoms from sex workers and survivors as “investigatory evidence” where promoting or trafficking is suspected, and confiscate condoms as evidence in promoting and trafficking cases.

As long as possession or presence of condoms on the premises of a business can be used as evidence of intent to engage in any prostitution-related offense, including over thirteen more serious New York Penal Law offenses and civil proceedings not covered by this policy, we are concerned that cops will continue to take them out of the hands of people who are the most vulnerable to exploitation – youth and trafficking victims. We are also concerned that the people who are exploiting them will deny access to condoms in the hopes of avoiding prosecution, and that businesses and individuals will be discouraged from carrying and distributing them. Also, we are concerned that under this policy, police can still use the fact that a sex worker has condoms in their possession as a basis for arrest for prostitution, even if they don’t physically voucher them as evidence. This continues to send a message that it is unsafe to carry condoms.

We hope that the NYPD will continue to move in the direction of a comprehensive ban on the use of condoms as evidence of all prostitution-related offenses, and protect the rights of all New Yorkers, including victims of trafficking and young people in the sex trades, to protect themselves and the health and safety of their communities.

We will be monitoring implementation of this policy closely, and are looking forward to working with the NYPD to expand the policy.

It is critical to remember that this effort has been led by sex workers in New York City, as Audacia Ray of the Red Umbrella Project reminds us:

“Sex workers have been at the front of the fight in this campaign since 2009,” said Audacia Ray, founder and executive director of the peer-led group Red Umbrella Project. “We are excited that the NYPD has finally responded to our concerns, though it is an imperfect solution. We will continue to fight for justice and to ensure that the experiences of people in the sex trades are centered in this work.”

MRC: Comedians “poison the minds of America's young people EACH AND EVERY DAY,” turning them "into “leftist zombies” pic.twitter.com/PdGZC3i7Hn

— Eric Hananoki (@ehananoki) May 13, 2014

Hey, wingnuts, I’ve got the answer to your problems…

Picture it: a roundtable talk show, like, say, “The Talk” or “The View,” only at night (because night is edgy) and featuring Greg Gutfield, Ann Coulter, Dennis Miller and Adam Carolla.  They sit around gabbing about how weird black lesbians are and how their mothers were on welfare but everybody else’s welfare-recieving mother is probably a lazy, undeserving whore. Dennis Miller can use words most of the audience doesn’t understand and act smug. Ann Coulter will call everyone fags. Jokingly. CUT-PRINT-BOOM!–no more leftist zombies.

The NCAA, so concerned about its “student athletes” that they can be prevented form transferring to the school of their choice for no reason whatsoever:

Leticia Romero came to Kansas State University from the Canary Islands to play basketball. After Romero’s freshman season—a successful one on the court, in which she averaged more than 14 points per game—the coach that recruited her was fired, and several assistant coaches chose to leave as well. As a consequence, Romero decided she wanted to transfer. The Kansas State athletic department had other ideas.

Mechelle Voepel of ESPN.com has the full story, and it’s yet another infuriating example of how college sports administrators control unpaid NCAA athletes. Kansas State has thus far refused to release Romero from her scholarship, which means she can’t receive financial aid from any other Division I institution for at least a year. The Kansas State athletic department has mostly refused to explain itself, on account of “student-privacy concerns.” That excuse would make more sense if someone had told Romero why the university is blocking her release. The player says she hasn’t gotten any explanation at all.

But giving students rights might mean that some would be corrupted by the evils of money, a phenomenon unknown within the amateurist hobbyism of the NCAA:

This is the skewed moral universe that the NCAA has created and that its member institutions continue to prop up. There’s now a debate over whether schools should pay the “full cost of attendance” for their athletes—the expenses that aren’t covered by a scholarship. Those expenses average around $3,500 per athlete per year, with the cost differing by school. Schools could make this small concession, considering it a tiny price to pay given the estimates of the fair market value of a college football player. Instead, they’re whining about how this is going to drive them out of business. Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard told the Des Moines Register it will cost $750,000 annually to pay for the students’ cost of attendance, and “we’ll have to pass those costs on to our fans,” in part by raising ticket prices. “It’s another financial hurdle that we have to deal with,” Pollard said.

Pollard didn’t talk about financial hurdles in 2012, when Iowa State opened a $20.6 million football complex. He also hasn’t groused about all the scrimping and saving the school will need to do to pay his own $900,000 salary. If, like Iowa State’s players, Pollard took home $0 per year, then the university would have more than enough to give every Cyclone athlete a free education. What say you, Mr. Athletic Director?

The NCAA in a nutshell: oligopolistic profits for me, “amateurism” for thee. Blow it up now.

With due respect to Charles Pierce… 

There is no better mainstream reporter on this stuff than Charlie Savage, my old colleague at The Boston Globe who now writes for the Times. (Hell, there’s no better reporter on any beat anywhere.) He’s read Greenwald’s book and, putting silly personality quibbles aside, has mined it for some fascinating details.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, asked the National Security Agency for help “so that she could develop a strategy,” a leaked agency document shows. The N.S.A. swiftly went to work, developing the paperwork to obtain legal approval for spying on diplomats from four Security Council members – Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Uganda – whose embassies and missions were not already under surveillance. The following month, 12 members of the 15-seat Security Council voted to approve new sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and only Brazil and Turkey voting against.

You’d have to be blind and/or foolish not to recognize that an informed citizenry might benefit one day from the knowledge that our spying may have queered the diplomatic pitch around the world — Gee, I sure hope, say, Nigeria isn’t too offended that we bugged its embassy. It seems to be in the news a lot these days. — and that the information would be central to the decision to elect, or to re-elect, a president of the United States. None of this has anything to do with whether or not you’d invite Glenn Greenwald to tea, or where Snowden ended up. These are things we needed to know. The truth is supposed to make you free, not comfortable.

Thoughts:

1. “Might benefit one day” is different than “benefit right now,” and given that the question of sanctions against Iran continues to touch upon US national interests, I think we’re still comfortably within “right now.”
2. In this case, it does not appear that spying “may have queered the pitch;” rather, it seems that public revelation of spying may someday “queer the pitch.”
3. It strikes me as exceedingly unlikely that anything more than a vanishingly small proportion of the US electorate will be moved to change its voting behavior by news that the United States spies on the diplomatic communications of various members of the United Nations Security Council.
4.  It’s not obvious to me that revealing that the United States intercepts the diplomatic communications of other countries “makes me free” in any meaningful sense.

I’m not convinced that “we needed to know” is even the right frame for comprehending the fact that the United States intercepts the diplomatic communications of other countries in an effort to improve its bargaining position in international fora. “We” already knew, and by that “we” I mean more than the small community of people who intensively studies military and intelligence affairs.  Conducting intelligence gathering operations against the diplomatic services of other countries is something that I expect my intelligence services to do.  I expect foreign intelligence agencies (even those of our allies!) to conduct similar operations against the United States.  The precise nature of these operations, including targets and methods, seems to fall very comfortably within the concept of “legitimate secrecy,” in which public knowledge of an otherwise sensible intelligence gathering effort makes that effort impossible.  Legitimate secrecy shouldn’t provide a cloak for intelligence services and executives to do anything that they want, but intelligence collection in the service of developing targeted appeals for members of the UNSC isn’t even close to the line.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you America’s most manly, heterosexual sport:

I don't know anything about football but I do know Michael Sam's boyfriend is cute.

— bspencer (@vacuumslayer) May 13, 2014

The Catholic Church is an institution really prepared to move into the future:

The new pope, exorcists say, has become their champion in the face of modern skeptics, many of them within the Catholic faith. Officially, those claiming to be possessed must first undergo psychiatric evaluations. But exorcists say that liberal Catholic bishops have often rejected their services even after such due diligence.

“The sad truth is that there are many bishops and priests in our church who do not really believe in the Devil,” said the Rev. Gabriele Amorth, the 89-year-old priest who is perhaps the closest thing the church has to a Hollywood-style exorcist. “I believe Pope Francis is speaking to them. Because when you don’t believe, the Devil wins.”

During the conference, the Rev. Cesar Truqui, an exorcist based in Switzerland, recounted one experience he had aboard a Swissair flight. “Two lesbians,” he said, had sat behind him on the plane. Soon afterward, he said, he felt Satan’s presence. As he silently sought to repel the evil spirit through prayer, one of the women, he said, began growling demonically and threw chocolates at his head.

Asked how he knew the woman was possessed, he said that “once you hear a Satanic growl, you never forget it. It’s like smelling Margherita pizza for the first time. It’s something you never forget.”

From his small room in a south Rome rectory fitted with a hospital bed, Amorth praised Francis for so fully embracing the biblical notion of the Devil as the personified overlord of hell.

If lesbians remind one of margherita pizza, what pizza can we compare gay men too? What about women who have had an abortion? Or those living with someone outside marriage? Because this is high theology here my friends.

SEEKING ZINES, COMICS & ART BY THE BAY AREAS BEST CREATORS OF TRANSGRESSIVE AND EROTIC MATERIAL!

BOOKISH BEASTS: Center for Sex and Culture is looking for  zine and comic book makers!

After the success and fun of last year’s fest, we are inspired to bring together and try to grow the audiences of local zine and comics artists who make sexy books. Center for Sex & Culture is a fantastic multi-use space that is perfect for gathering local artists whose works need to be celebrated for their blatant hotness.

Bookish Beasts is a one-day zine fest for the creators of art, books and comics featuring content on sexuality, gender and erotica. We aim to give artists the opportunity to peddle their wares, and connect with local readers who love and collect adult material.

The zine fest is one day. Sunday, July 13^th from noon to 5 pm. This event is free to the public, but you must be over 18 to attend.

CSC provides judgment-free education, cultural events, a library/media archive, and other resources to audiences across the sexual and gender spectrum; and to research and disseminate factual information, framing and informing issues of public policy and public health. Please consider donating copies of your work to the library and helping spread the word about this great resource. All of CSC’s books are searchable through Goodreads and CSC’s zine database: http://www.sexandculture.org/lbry

If you want to participate or have any questions, contact us at:sexandculturegallery@gmail.com The registration fee is $20. To register, go to: http://www.sexandculture.org/ click on the red donate button on the right side of the page.

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

 

Interesting thought:

Our conversation centered around whether or not Dr. Holmes is correct in asserting that that peace time militaries shy away from making scenario’s too difficult, and whether or not our Navy should “make the simulation harder than real life.”

My reply to the good LT was that I agree with Dr. Holmes, we should be making our training harder than real life. But, I also want to know what the logical limit to such a line of thinking is–that we need to falsify ‘harder than life’ before we can say what our training should really be.

The Kobayashi Maru is a striking example from science fiction of a no-win scenario used to train a ship’s crew. But, such training immediately runs into the limits of human endurance already strained by the daily routine of shipboard life.

Tangent: I’m not sure that the purpose of the Kobayashi Maru scenario is to create a situation more difficult than those that Starfleet officers would face in real life. Rather, it was to prepare them for eventualities that some significant percentage could expect to face in the line of duty. Numerous Constitution class starships were lost, for example, even in the absence of a major war. The idea, I think, was that an appreciation of mortality could inspire a certain sense of grace in defeat.

On the broader point, there are surely benefits to making practice harder than real life, but there are also downsides. Simulations which produce unrealistically poor chances for success can serve to demoralize, as well as to make policy unnecessarily cautious. These questions came up often during the “Red Eagle” period of US fighter training, in which USAF pilots almost certainly flew MiGs with skill and tactics that typical Soviet pilots could not match. It’s not obvious that American pilots benefited from flying against MiGs using tactics that actual MiGs might never use.