Culture

Well, they do say we are liberal out here in the 9 Bay Area Counties.... Anyone can be anything and we all exist inside our own drag show. In our vaunted liberality, we extend that license to the canines.

FREMONT Officer on duty is bitten by Chihuahuas
- Suzanne Herel
Saturday, December 31, 2005

A police officer escorting a teenager home from a traffic stop Thursday morning was attacked by Chihuahuas at the boy's home.

The officer was treated for bite wounds to his ankles and returned to work within two hours, police Detective Bill Veteran said.

The attack occurred at 3 a.m. as the officer and his partner returned a 17-year-old boy ... after detaining him at Butano Park and Tenor Court for driving without a license, Veteran said.

I say the attack pack went for what they could reach. A stealth flanking move, one suspects they came outta nowhere...

Disclaimer: the chihuahua with a star motif should remind you of no one. Further I am a great fan of the toy and teacup divisions - in dogs.

For he doth not tip-toe:

[Ann Coulter] is a bitch. Period. I don't give a damn whether you like the word or not, but I'm a fan of the old school (non-racial, non-genitalia-based) classics.Except if you call a man a bitch, you're disparaging his masculinity. Why? Because bitch is a gender-based epithet.

It pisses me off that liberals are supposed to tiptoe around all the time. Tiptoeing around is exactly what has been wrong with lefties for too damn long. I'm not saying that saying everyone has to go around saying bitch bitch bitch, but you can't just let these people keep throwing shit at you and think they'll go away.So the answer is to resort to misogynistic verbal assault. After all, how else is a liberal man to assert is macho pride but by denigrating women for being women?

I've gotten several e-mails saying that I shouldn't give her the satisfaction. The satisfaction! That's what the geeky guy in the high school movie says when he gets his underwear pulled halfway up his back! "I won't give you the satisfaction of a comment, sir." Whether he's right or not, he comes off as (here comes another one) a pussy. That's the last thing we need, people.Because being a hothead, like our fearless leader in the Oval Office, is how to be a man and not a "pussy." (Yeah, real men have dicks.)

Look, I'm probably one of a small number of Kansas boys from the middle of the state to have called himself a feminist in print and just maybe I've hung out in a different crowd, but the men and women I hang out with don't really think twice about "bitch." Yeah, we're prone to rude jokes and the suggestion that whomever we're talking to is gay, but that guy's likely to play it off. Are we anti-gay? You may want to claim so, but dammit all to hell if I haven't donated my time to Topeka's Equal Justice Coalition.Translation: "Don't expect civilized behavior from me, I gave at the office."

You know, when I hear people conversationally say "bitch," I don't like it, unless it's with the ironic pronunciation: bee-atch! And calling things "gay"? I suppose that if homophobic attitudes are unexamined, then everyone gets a pass, right?

And he's a "feminist," right? Oh yeah. And some of his best friends are gay, too, I bet.

No, she hasn't gone and backed the Flag Desecration Amendment. No, Hillary Clinton wants to have her cake and eat it, too, so she's backing a federal law to ban flag desecration.

Because, you know, there's like a huge rash of flag burning happening in America, right? You see it every day, don't you? Your neighbor does it! Your school teacher does it! The fireman down the block does it! Kids studying French in middle school do it! John Kerry does it every day over his morning coffee before going to the office!

Her support of [Utah Senator Bob] Bennett's bill follows her position in Congress last summer, when a constitutional ban on flag-burning was debated. Clinton said then she didn't support a constitutional ban, but did support federal legislation making it a crime to desecrate the flag.

In her public statements, she has compared the act of flag-burning to burning a cross, which can be considered a violation of federal civil rights law.Oh -- but not a constitutional ban! I guess that's supposed to appease freedom-lovers. I can hear it now: "I voted for the flag desecration law before I voted against the amendment." You laugh. But I predict you'll see something like that when she runs for president.

The Bennett-sponsored measure outlaws a protester intimidating any person by burning the flag, lighting someone else's flag, or desecrating the flag on federal property.I suspect this law could backfire on the wingnuts. After all, what's more desecrating than:

• Putting a flag sticker on your car bumper. (Tailpipe exhaust and road grime are not sacred.)
• Flying a flag in the rain or snow. (That's against the rules.)
• Flying the flag at night in the dark. (Also against the rules. Come on, jerky boys! Don't you remember what you learned in scouting?)
• Sweating in an American flag t-shirt. (Pit stains could count as desecration, I think.)
• Wearing a flag on your underwear. (Skid marks are definitely desecration in my book.)

Oh, and you bikers? Better remove that flag from your jackets or The Man is gonna getcha! Football teams? Don't play any games on Federal property. Grass stains don't go with red, white and blue.

Also facing charges would be our armed forces, who properly dispose of a worn flag by burning it.

Then of course there's the United States Constitution, which will be cut at its most fundamental self-evident right -- freedom of speech -- in order to provide cheap pseudo-patriotic photo-ops for "public servants."

But political opportunists won't let practicalities or principles get in the way of a good pose and cheap rhetoric.

The Guerrilla Girls appeared to be having legal troubles in early 2005

In all honesty, I hadn't read anything about the Guerrilla Girls in ages. They were one of those groups that always brought interesting discussion to the table and although I had assumed they were still active, I never saw advertisements of any sort for Guerrilla Girls appearances, etc.

I stumbled across the previously linked New Yorker article while researching for a history presentation. I was a little shocked to see that the Guerrilla Girls are actually involved in such a legal battle...especially since it appears they are involved in a legal battle with each other.

Then my professor, Judith Roy, mentioned something that I had not even contemplated previously. The two members that are actually suing were members of the Guerrilla Girls from the inception of the group. These are women who wanted to focus on issues of sexism and racism in the art world. These are women who wanted to topple the 'isms' for the benefit of not only themselves but also for the benefit of future artists.

It's not as though the Guerrilla Girls had no impact. They certainly did have an impact, however, racism and sexim still pervade the art world. The Guerrilla Girls even discussed this fact themselves in their book, The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. This isn't for lack of trying on the behalf of groups such as the Guerrilla Girls--it's because sexism and racism are mindsets that have proven to be difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible, to erase.

The Guerrilla Girls did a lot to combat racism and sexism in the art world. Just exposing the issue is doing more than nothing--and the Guerrilla Girls took it a step further by calling out galleries, auction houses, art critics, and art collectors alike for their discriminatory policies.

It seems that as time has moved on, the art world has stopped evaluating racism and sexism within itself--and the focus of the Guerrilla Girls has changed as well. Their last book, Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes, is just one example of their departure from their original goal. Their website also has a parody of the color-coded terror alert released by the Bush administration that is visible here.

It's not that I think that such change is a bad thing. First of all, sexism and racism in all areas of life form a connected force that is harmful to everyone. Second, I love what the Guerrilla Girls bring to the table. They make feminism fun. They prove that feminists actually do have a sense of humor and that humor can be infused into all areas of life--even areas that are very serious. It just seems that this could be something that would be upsetting to original members of the Guerrilla Girls, especially since sexism and racism are still pervasive forces in the art industry.

Hopefully, the Guerrilla Girls will get all of their internal conflicts resolved. Lordisa knows they are still needed--both in and out of the art world.

Not trusting their own predilections, apparently, Texans voted in overwhelming numbers to prevent themselves from entering into gay marriages.

The contest in Texas was lopsided _ the ban was receiving support from about 76 percent of voters with nearly two-thirds of precincts reporting. Like every other state except Massachusetts, Texas didn't permit same-sex marriages previously, but the constitutional amendment was touted as an extra guard against future court rulings.

This result provides much assurance to men especially, who now have the law behind them when they make their choice to be heterosexual.

There was much relief expressed as marriages across the state were saved from divorce for the purpose of making a homosexual marriage commitment. The constitutional amendment, however, is mute about whether married individuals can legally have homosexual affairs.