TeresaCentric

Dan Savage's most recent column finishes with a letter from a reader drawing a comparison between his column of a few weeks ago addressing male loneliness and the case of George Sodini, who killed three women and injured 9 more in a hate crime at an LA Fitness in Collier Township, PA. Savage has largely covered the Sodini case from the right angle, but he really misses the ball in his column this week:

Sodini felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance guru who encouraged him to cling to that belief. Not normally a problem, I suppose. But Sodini wasn’t just another socially maladapted schlub furious with the world—and with women—for denying him the twentysomething ass he felt he had coming. Sodini was a nut. And he couldn’t understand why, if he was doing everything right, he wasn’t finding the success that Steele guaranteed him. [Emphasis mine.]

Someone needs to remind Dan that it's actually a big problem when your normal, average "socially maladapted schlubs furious with the world" get it into their heads that women owe them something. Sodini was unhinged, to be sure. But it's hard to tell how much of the eventual outcome of his life was attributable to the fact that he was crazy and how much could just as easily be accounted for by the fact that he felt entitled to sex - if only those pesky women would forget their own wills and just agree to give it up. Where is the fine line between the jackasses who won't leave me alone at a coffee shop or feel entitled to grab, grope and grind on me uninvited at a nightclub and rapists who slip roofies into women's drinks and sexually assault them? Where's the fine line between those rapists and George Sodini? Fact is, these guys are committing three different degrees of assault, but they all cling to the same sense of entitlement. It doesn't matter who they feel entitled to have sex with, or whether or not they're crazy enough to shoot up a fitness club. The underlying cause of their behavior is the same - and that's never "not normally a problem." Jezebel has a great response to this as well.

Daily Kos General Manager Will Rockafellow joins Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry and I for a discussion of how the Obama administration is using its election infrastructure to govern. Also, the return of Current.TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee and the continuing health care debate.

What a guitarist!

At one point during Monday night's Green Day show at Madison Square Garden, Billie Joe Armstrong announced that he needed someone on stage who could play the guitar. And not just for a "three-chord song," he added, "for one with four, five, maybe six chords" -- "Jesus of Suburbia." After rejecting a few wannabes he stopped and asked a girl in the mosh pit if she knew how to play, then looked unconvinced when she said she did. ...The girl -- her name later was revealed to be Stephanie -- was wearing jeans shorts, a torn Misfits t-shirt, and a head scarf over her pigtails. Mr. Armstrong handed her the guitar, conferred with her briefly, then let her sit on an amp to get started. And then she...ripped! A few bars in she was wandering the stage like a pro and when Mr. Armstrong introduced her at the end, the crowd was shouting "Ste-pha-nie! Ste-pha-nie!" in appreciation.

[Via Feministing.]

Join Ted Johnson Maegan Carberry and I as we discuss the Skip Gates controversy and what President Obama's involvement means as we discuss the wider question of race in the United States.

Just thought I'd give you a quick update on my nose. For those of you who don't know, Andy and I were playing catch in the park on Sunday afternoon when I misjudged a particularly hard-thrown ball and wound up catching it with my face instead of my glove. The extended story can be found here. I saw the doctor this afternoon and she referred me to a good ear nose & throat guy, who was able to squeeze me in just hours later. The diagnosis is a traumatic septal deviation (broken nose) requiring septoplasty (surgery). Basically, the ball snapped the soft tissue in the middle of my nose and bent it all the way to the wall of my left nostril. I can't breathe out of that nostril currently. Surgery is the only way to repair the damage. I'm going to consult with my doctors to make sure that they agree with the diagnosis and course of treatment, but it seems like a pretty straightforward procedure. I'd go under in on a Thursday, and be back to work on a Monday. All in all, I feel like this is a blessing. I got injured doing something I really love, going balls to the wall for something I really wanted. Everyone suffers setbacks, but if you don't take any risks, you don't have any fun and if you don't get injured sometimes, you're not playing hard enough. I'm grateful that I have good health insurance, loving friends and family and a good prognosis for recovery. Thank you all for your concern and well-wishes!

There are very few things I like better on a scorching day in July than a game of catch. This afternoon, Andy and I headed down to Luther Burbank Park to do just that. After warming up with a few mid-range tosses, we decided to put his arm - and my fielding prowess - to the test. I thought that just maybe I could pull a DeWayne Wise and make a really great catch. The next thing I knew, I was catching a baseball with my face. As I fell to the ground, blood streaming from my nose, the only thing I can remember thinking is, "this is SO awesome!" Weird reaction? Maybe. But I was always the nerdy kid sitting in the library at recess. I'd had sports injuries before, but nothing so obvious as this. I'm kind of hoping that I have a black eye in time for work tomorrow. It would be so badass! (And my fashion-forward coworker Jessi would be SO scandalized...) Unfortunately, my odd though process were the likely result of shock. When I stood up, I immediately started getting woozy. I wandered over to a shady spot where a family was picnicking and collapsed. They kindly gave me some ice and called 911 while Andy looked for some Ibuprofen for me. When he came back, the family recognized him. Turns out that the dad is one of the partners at Andy's company. Small, small world. Long story short, I wound up in the back of an ambulance on my way to the ER at Overlake. A CAT scan and some painkillers later, I'm home looking like I swapped noses with a troll doll and a better understanding of why Major League Ballplayers get paid so much.

This is just disgusting. Regina Benjamin lazy? Seriously? She's such an accomplished doctor who has just been nominated as the next surgeon general! Disgusting... And the guy doing all the talking is an absolute douche. This is an excerpt of the definition of a "bearded lady" (a type of "chubby" he despises) on his website (nofollow):

Are you a Bearded Lady? Refer to this handy checklist for warning signs that you might be an abysmal self-hater who could not make it a single day at Anti-Gym. Post on your freezer door for easy visibility the next time you go in for another fudge-pop. Top 10 Characteristics of Bearded Ladies: 1. Fat, really fat, but refuse to change their behavior because of a “thyroid problem”. 2. Usually emit a foul and unpleasant odor because they don’t wear antiperspirant. 3. Don’t wear make-up, because lipstick gets in their mustache and eye-shadow clashes with their red face. 4. Hate men. Actually hate women too, but won’t admit it. 5. Feel like they are victims of everything. Conveniently ignore their own laziness. 6. Watch Oprah while eating cupcakes alone in the dark. 7. Have not had sex with the lights on in their entire life. 8. Pretend in chat rooms to be 20-year-old cheerleaders with huge breasts. 9. Think all Anti-Gym ads are offensive. Are also offended by PG13-rated movies because they have the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old. 10. Have enough time on their chubby hands to send hysterical emails or phone calls to Anti-Gym sponsors.

Why are major news networks even entertaining this guy's argument? He's clearly an unhinged misogynist...

I recently got into pole fitness as an extension of my yoga practice and my love of dance. It's an unbelievably gymnastic workout - and I find that my style is well suited to twirling and flying around. I truly do believe that it should be an Olympic sport. Pole fitness has obvious ties to the exotic dance industry, an association that many instructors and studios seem to find torturous. They go to great pains to distinguish themselves by saying that the aim of pole fitness is to empower women. But like so many businesses that make that claim - they often get it a little wrong in the details. Take this blog posting, "5 reasons why you shouldn’t dance for him!", in which instructor Angi Cardwell writes:

Well, here we are on the subject that comes up a lot and sort of circulates around the topic of pole dancing: Dancing/stripping for your boyfriend... I have given it a lot of thought over the years and am convinced that it does more harm than good to give your man a dance. (Husbands not included. Married ladies dance your hearts out). Here are my reasons why: ...It reduces your worth in his eyes...You have just established yourself as a public playground in his mind. (ouch! that hurts)...By sleeping with and dancing for your man you are depriving him of his essential manly drive to earn it! (That’s not nice). Men value what they earn. ...You are disabling the best bad seed eliminator that you have. You don’t dance for him, you don’t sleep with him and he walks. High five!!! You just avoided a whole lotta heartache. ...He will value you and the relationship more if you don’t. You will increase the worth of yourself and all women by doing your part.... Do we really need to give it up like that ladies?

This is the part of pole dance culture that I find really frustrating. The business is still caught up in the double bind of women as sex objects, women's worth as related to sexuality, and the virgin-whore complex. Angi's whole argument is predicated on the longstanding notion that a woman's worth as a potential life partner rests mostly or solely in her sexuality, and that all the good men are all so one-dimensional as to believe it. A woman's worth is not based on the number of sexual partners she's had or the number of men she's danced for. It's based on her wholeness as a person, her initiative, her accountability, her compassion, her open-heartedness, her authenticity, her honesty, and her willingness to go beyond what is easy to do what is right. Sex is a part of that, yes, but even the sexual component has more to do with the qualities I just mentioned than it does with any particular standard of chastity. There is something really wrong with this idea that a woman is automatically damaged goods if she's promiscuous or sexually voracious, and I would not want to be with any man who held such a worldview. I don't think that good men are so simple-minded as to make a judgment about the woman they are dating based solely on what she does or does not do in the bedroom. Men worth being with will look at the whole person they are with and find that person worth of love whether she had sex with them on the first date, the third, the 100th or for the first time on their wedding night. Pole fitness as a sport claims to return women's lost sense of self-worth, but arguments like these are not advancing that cause. Self-worth is about wholeness as a person, body, mind, and soul - a combination that is unique for each woman, indeed, for each human creature. That could mean chastity until marriage, a life of joyful debauchery, complete celibacy, or some combination of those practices and others throughout a lifetime. I think we should give ourselves permission to dance - or not dance - for our romantic partners as we see fit. If they walk out on us or treat us with less respect because we have acted on our own adult desires, well...that's the best "bad seed eliminator" you could ever have.

Like many, I was saddened by the news of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett's passing on. I was also, of course, intrigued by the implosion of Republican stars Sarah Palin, Mark Sanford, and John Ensign. But I was also deeply bothered by these developments. You see, during the last few weeks, actual things have gone on in the world. For example, there is an uprising going on in Iran, with significant developments playing out this weekend when former President Rafsanjani led Friday prayers. There was a bloodless coup in Honduras after the President trying to unconstitutionally abolish term limits. There was a crushed uprising of Uighers in China, and of course, we still need to figure out what to do with the 13 Uighers we have detained in Guantanamo Bay. Now, none of this mattered over the past few weeks. Joe Biden could have gone on a killing spree and it would have shown up on the CNN ticker below B-roll of Michael Jackson dancing. I get that he was good. Really, really good. Probably the best singer/dancer/performer ever. But now that the funerals for Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and the careers of John Ensign, Mark Sanford, and Sarah Palin are over, can what get back to actual news. Before the Jackson story hit, I remember watching the Palin-Letterman feud on every news network, including Air America, while people died in Iran. So please, now that this tidal wave of celebrity deaths and political scandals has passed, can the major news outlet try covering actual news? I'm looking at you Wolf Blitzer! P.S. If you're like me and feel like CNN, MSNBC, FOXNews, ABCNews, CBSNews, AM 770 "The Truth", and "Air America" are now indistinguishable from TMZ and perezhilton.com, than I suggest checking out "current_tv". It's a weird concept: a new network that covers actual news. UPDATE: Three hours after this post, the top story on CNN is STILL that some people think the moon landing is fake.

Join Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry and I as we interview Jon Henke, a political consultant and blogger at QandO.net and TheNextRight.com, and weigh in on the Sotomayor hearings, Bruno and bipartisanship.