Archive for the 'Schadenfreudelicious' Category

Face it, guys. He’s just not that into you.

Published at April 28, 2008 in Political theater and Schadenfreudelicious. 15 Comments

Is that the sound of scales falling from eyes I hear?

Seems that a few of the Big Boi Bloggers who have wholeheartedly and uncritically embraced Barack Obama* are a wee bit upset that he appeared on Faux this Sunday and didn’t “take them on” as one of his advisers had told Greg Sargent he would, in order to silence the critics (on the blogs) who were taking him to task for appearing on the network and thus legitimizing it.

Sargent (all emphasis mine):

To be clear, Obama wasn’t obliged to go after Fox. But a senior adviser said Obama would, as a way of quieting criticism of him. And he didn’t.

This will likely further dismay liberal bloggers who had worked very hard to get Dems to boycott Fox as a way of deligitimizing the network and who already criticized Obama for agreeing to appear in the first place.

Obama turned in a perfectly solid performance. He probably succeeded in making a positive impression on many voters he might otherwise not have reached. But the broadcast was clearly a big victory for Fox and Chris Wallace, too.

Matt Stoller:

Greg Sargent’s blog post ‘Obama Doesn’t “Take Fox On,” After All’ kind of says it all. Obama is sucking up to Fox News, and beyond that, the campaign operative who said he would just out and out gave false information.

You can’t trust the Obama campaign, they will lie to you to promote right-wing institutions.

And later, in another diary:

It is very difficult to acknowledge that your candidate deals with you in bad faith, and so I understand the emotional inability of Obama’s most ardent supporters to realize that is what happened. I am an Obama supporter, but I don’t think he’s particularly trustworthy. The issue at hand is that Obama’s campaign simply gave out false information to Greg Sargent to placate bloggers. . . .

I think lost in all this nonsense is just how weakened we [Liberal blogs] have become in all this. When we accept lies from our leaders and openly dismissive knocks from them, it destroys our core argument that Democrats need to have integrity and to stand up for themselves. No they don’t. We don’t stand up for ourselves and we let them lie to us without consequence

Why should they listen to us when we ask them to do something we won’t do for ourselves? There’s probably no point in making this argument, but if I reach one person hopefully it will be useful. When you say that your voice doesn’t matter, it doesn’t. When you enable bad behavior, unethical behavior, it continues. I’m sorry, but the Iraq war happened for this reason. Silence.

If you don’t like that Obama steps on you, speak out. Clinton at least has a reason to step on us since many of us have openly called her a Republican. It’s a fight, and we didn’t back her. Instead we back someone that openly lies to us and thinks nothing of it. Worse still, there are no consequences, only criticism of people who are Obama backers but are frustrated at being lied to. I remember this situation during the Clark campaign, when I was attacked for speaking out about the campaign’s mistakes, until he lost a campaign run with ghoulish incompetence.

It was a mistake for us to endorse Obama, just as it was a mistake for us to do nothing against Clinton after she accused Moveon of intimating her supporters at caucuses. We should be stuffing ads discussing her Bosnia sniper fire in Indiana. But we don’t believe in standing up for ourselves.

So go ahead, accept the lies. It seems to be what we want from our leaders, and so I suppose it’s what we are going to continue to get.

Aw. He sounds so dejected to find out that Obama is, in fact, a politician. I could almost feel sorry for him. Except that he’s been one of the main contributors to the toxic environment on liberal blogs in the past few months, in which anyone who raises criticism of Obama gets shouted down, astroturfed, threatened, mocked, driven out. And you’ll note that even in his depressed and disillusioned state, he manages to get a few digs in at Clinton.

In an update, Stoller links to this post by Lambert at Correntewire which points out that during the interview, Obama specifically threw Daily Kos under the bus. Which shouldn’t be such a shock to these guys, since he’s done it before.

I admit, I’m having a schadenfreudelicious moment here. After having been pointedly and personally savaged for perceived support of Clinton just because I asked a few people to look at the rules they were insisting she was disregarding, let alone for pointing out that his rhetoric about choice and women’s autonomy makes me veryveryvery nervous, I have little sympathy for anyone who bought into the mass delusion that Obama was some kind of new politician (Everything you’d hoped for and more!  Going to bring Unity and Change and Hope to the electorate in some undefined way!) and who, in defense of their delusion bullied and intimidated anyone who criticized Obama (or asked to see his progressive bona fides or who simply didn’t vote for him (damn those racist Archie Bunkers who want to hear about issues! There’s Hope and Change to be had!)).

Still, I’m glad to see that some of these guys are beginning to come to their senses. Hear-no-evil, See-no-evil and Speak-no-evil is not the way to handle legitimate criticism of your candidate, nor is attacking anyone who dares to criticize as out of touch, old, a bitch, a racist, what have you. Candidates *must* be evaluated on their merits, and you can’t evaluate someone on their merits if any and all criticism is greeted with, “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU, YOU OLD BITTER RACIST BITCH!!!!

The next few weeks should be interesting. I’ve been suspecting that the longer the primary dragged on, the less able some of the Big Boiz would be to maintain their unqualified and uncritical support of Obama, particularly if he wasn’t winning all the time. No wonder they’ve been in such a rush to put an end to the primary.

Edited for atrocious grammar and run-on sentences.  _______

* Just to be clear: I’ve got no problem at all with people who support Obama. However, if they do so uncritically, and when asked for a reason why they support him, stammer something about hope and change and what a great progressive he is — and he promised a pony! — before launching into a diatribe about how awful Hillary Clinton is, then I reserve the right to mock their gullibility. As here.

Hmm, interesting twist

Published at September 4, 2007 in Political theater, Pantysniffing, Schadenfreudelicious and Anxious masculinity. 0 Comments

Larry Craig now says he just may not resign after all:

“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital, told The Associated Press.

“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate,” Smith said.

Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.

He probably should have hired a lawyer to begin with, rather than mailing in his plea deal and expecting everything to go away.

I’m actually pretty happy that he’s deciding to fight being pushed out of the Senate over this. Oh, don’t get me wrong — the schadenfreude of all these moralizing Republicans, particularly those who, like Craig, had plenty to say about Bill Clinton, getting caught up in one sex scandal after another is like Christmas in August. But hell, why should Craig be forced out for a sex scandal that hadn’t even yet involved any sex when David Vitter, whose name appeared on the DC Madam’s phone list, is encouraged to stay?

Well, except for the fact that Vitter’s replacement would be appointed by a Democratic governor, and he went to a female prostitute, we have an answer. Of sorts:

[Mitch] McConnell, R-Ky., disputed there was a double standard in how GOP leaders reacted to Craig’s case and to the admission in July by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that his telephone number showed up in 1999, 2000 and 2001 phone bills of an escort service that federal authorities say was a prostitution ring.

In Vitter’s case, “there have been no charges made,” McConnell said, adding that the alleged wrongdoing occurred before Vitter was a senator.

Craig, by contrast, pleaded guilty to a crime, McConnell said. “The legal case was, in effect, over. At that point, the question was for the Republican leadership, what would be our reaction to it,” he said.

Ah, yes. Because it’s the filing of charges that makes all the difference!

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Okay, maybe not. Delay actually didn’t step down until it was obvious that he wasn’t going to win re-election. It wasn’t the corruption charges.

I don’t really know what the Senate rules are regarding service after being convicted of a crime, but I would imagine they’re loose enough that low-level misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct — which is what Craig pleaded to, and what five members of Congress were arrested for outside the Sudanese embassy — are gimmes. Vitter, if the story is to be believed, participated in a crime of a more serious sort, with all sorts of potential for coercion and economic disparity. Mark Foley preyed on Congressional pages, who are not only underage, but entrusted to the care of the Congress.

The more I’m reading about the Craig case, the more I’m convinced that the cop jumped the gun — while the signaling was well-known in certain circles, how can you possibly argue that the intent to have sex then and there in the stall was crystal clear? My understanding of the foot-tapping and hand-waving code is that it’s incredibly elaborate for a couple of reasons — one, because it resembles certain things one might innocently do in a stall (tap one’s toes, wave a hand underneath a stall to get paper, checking for occupancy), it doesn’t necessarily draw attention to itself. And two, if the overture is made and either no signals or the wrong signals come through, then it’s clear that the other guy isn’t into it, and you move on. This will save you a beating. The whole point, then, is to prevent unwilling straight guys from even realizing they’re being cruised:

That said, what results! In minute, choreographic detail, Mr. Humphreys (who died in 1988) illustrated that various signals — the foot tapping, the hand waving and the body positioning — are all parts of a delicate ritual of call and answer, an elaborate series of codes that require the proper response for the initiator to continue. Put simply, a straight man would be left alone after that first tap or cough or look went unanswered.

Why? The initiator does not want to be beaten up or arrested or chased by teenagers, so he engages in safeguards to ensure that any physical advance will be reciprocated. As Mr. Humphreys put it, “because of cautions built into the strategies of these encounters, no man need fear being molested in such facilities.”

Mr. Humphreys’s aim was not just academic: he was trying to illustrate to the public and the police that straight men would not be harassed in these bathrooms. His findings would seem to suggest the implausibility not only of Senator Craig’s denial — that it was all a misunderstanding — but also of the policeman’s assertion that he was a passive participant. If the code was being followed, it is likely that both men would have to have been acting consciously for the signals to continue.

But a lot of guys seem to think that the toe-tapping is lewd in and of itself, and an actionable sexual assault and far worse than any kind of harassment a woman has to put up with on the street and deal with despite the absence of undercover cops waiting to bust catcallers and frotteurs. Certainly a few self-described liberal guys on the threads here, here and here thought so (and many more disbelieved the stories the women on the threads were telling about being harassed, demanding proof).

I would imagine this kind of butt-clenching terror that a gay guy might hit on you is one of the forces driving the GOP parade of outrage over this.

Mind you, what would be really refreshing would be if Craig started taking a look at the kind of discrimination, legislation and morals policing that drives a lot of men, men like Larry Craig, to seek anonymous sex in public restrooms, instead of living out and proud in their communities and loving whom they wish.

But I won’t hold my breath.

Can it really be true?

Published at August 27, 2007 in Lousy hypocrites, Political theater, Crime and Schadenfreudelicious. 5 Comments

Is Alberto Gonzalez really going to resign today?

I’ll believe it when I see it.

And in the meantime, I’ll start fretting about which GOP hack they’re going to pick to replace him, and how much of a tongue bath the Dems in the Senate will give the guy.

Sometimes dipshittery has consequences

Published at July 16, 2007 in The coverup is worse than the crime, Crime, Schadenfreudelicious and Dipshittery. 8 Comments

Remember how a student was raped and murdered in her dorm room at Eastern Michigan University last fall, and how the university administration didn’t bother to tell her parents or the other students for several months?

Heads have begun to roll.

YPSILANTI, Michigan (AP) — Three Eastern Michigan University administrators, including the president, have been forced out, months after top school officials were accused of covering up the rape and slaying of a student by publicly ruling out foul play.

President John Fallon was fired, and Vice President of Student Affairs Jim Vick and Public Safety Director Cindy Hall lost their jobs at the 23,500-student public university, the chairman of the school’s governing board said Monday.

Board of Regents Chairman Thomas Sidlik also said the board would put a letter of discipline in the file of university attorney Kenneth McKanders.

The body of the slain student, Laura Dickinson, 22, was discovered December 15 in her dorm room. At the time, university officials told her parents and the media that she died of asphyxiation but that there was no sign of foul play, despite evidence to the contrary.

It was not until another Eastern student, Orange Taylor III, was arrested in late February and charged with murder that her family and students learned she had been raped and killed. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to murder and criminal sexual conduct charges in Dickinson’s death, and is scheduled for trial Oct. 15.

So not only did they cover up the fact that she was raped and murdered in her dorm room (and I don’t recall if she had a roommate, but just imagine finding your roommate dead, and then finding out more than two months later that she’d been raped and murdered by another student — likely someone you knew and continued to interact with during that time). According to an earlier report, Dickinson was found partially clothed, with a pillow over her head, on the floor of her room.

University officials told her parents and other students that Dickinson had died of asphyxiation — I guess that pillow just up and attacked her one day.

The coverup was pretty damn bad, and in violation of federal law, according to an independent report commissioned by the university’s Board of Regents:

The report is especially critical of Jim Vick, vice president for student affairs, and Cindy Hall, public safety director. It says both knew within hours of the discovery of Dickinson’s body that it may be a homicide. But both chose to continue to call the case a “death investigation” rather than a “homicide investigation” throughout the course of the two-month investigation, the report states.

The report also says that Vick at one point directed the shredding of an initial police report that typically makes its way to campus attorneys for review. The report says attorneys likely would have been alerted to the seriousness of the criminal probe and would have advised that the campus community be warned according to the federal Clery Act, which requires institutions to give timely warnings of incidents that represent a threat to campus.

I know I was critical of the several-hours delay in warning students during the Virginia Tech shooting (a stance that many disagreed with me about), but this really takes the cake. And the reason for the coverup?

Tension between faculty and administrators.  Contract negotiations.  Cost overruns on a new house for the University president.  Reduced recruiting.

Well, congratulations, folks — your coverup just hurt EMU’s reputation far more than a frank acknowledgement would have done.  Heckuva job!

H/T:  Thomas and Julia.