$3.60

Of interest for November 17th from November 17th to November 17th:

• Obama To Make Urban Policy A Priority - (hat tip to Racialicious): Now if we could just get the urban office and small farm aid people in cahoots…
• Obama as role model for black youth? + Byron Hurt - "But some African Americans living in inner city Atlanta said that while Obama is a role model his life appeared so far removed from their own struggles that it was difficult to see how they could use it to spur their own success."::"Hurt's latest film, "Barack and Curtis", is a 10-minute documentary released on the internet that compares the image projected by Obama with the image of Curtis Jackson, who is better known as the rapper 50 Cent."
• `$100 laptop' group reboots Give One Get One offer - We did this last year for our 3 y.o. son. One of the best purchases we've ever made for him. So how about a U.S. version?

These are my links for July 3rd through August 31st:

• Daily Kos: Sarah Palin Is NOT The Mother [Photos+Video] - Gasp! No? What?!?
• Blogging’s Glass Ceiling - "And though women and men are creating blogs in roughly equal numbers, many women at the conference were becoming very Katie Couric about their belief that they are not taken as seriously as their male counterparts"
• Nantucket's cultural clash - "The declining homogeneity of Nantucket's population - town officials estimate there are about 20,000 full-time residents, more than double what the US Census Bureau documented in 2000 - has introduced new stresses to an island unaccustomed to culture cla
• Poor Economy Slams Brakes on Women’s Workplace Progress - "When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home … But now, a different explanation is turning up in government da
• From noses to hips, Rwandans start to redefine beauty - "A history of identity politics – and genocide – is challenged by university beauty pageants.[...] Here the shape of one's nose, hips, or eyes are overlaid with political and historical meaning."
• On Campus, the ?60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire - "But as educators have noted, the generation coming up appears less interested in ideological confrontations, summoning Barack Obama?s statement about the elections of 2000 and 2004: ?I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby
• Timothy Egan: Save the Press - "We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood."

As usual, I tuned right in to the Miss Universe pageant last night. (It’s a work obligation, you see. All that national identity and gender and shiny dresses…). I swear, every year it seems a little bit shorter, a development for which I thought I would be grateful, except that this year shortening seemed to mean speeding up the national costume portion of event. No fair!

More to say on the costumes later, though to summarize: the Americas have arrived at some kind indigenous phase, the Balkans are still kooky, and Miss Thailand, who won for best constume, wore pants. Granted, they were Crouching Tiger Hidden Girlpower Fighting Pants, but still. Pants.

But today’s news is this: Miss USA (”hometown”? Texas) fell. Just like last year. This year, however,  Miss USA Crystle Stewart didn’t make it to the finals. Remember last year, when despite falling the other Miss USA made it to the finals? Mexico (yep, the whole country!), tried to boo her off the stage.

Having a whole country boo at you sucks. Especially after you’ve already eaten the stage in front of the whole world.

Yup, it’s clearly a curse.

These are my links for July 2nd:

• Kemba Smith Gets a Biopic - “Although the government acknowledged that Smith never sold or took drugs, “she was charged with conspiracy to distribute crack and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.” In 1999 she was featured in Glamour Magazine, which described how she came to be char
• Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry - “While Nolan and his teammates do not hail from the gritty urban surroundings that are often a breeding ground for slam poetry, where poets are judged on both performance and writing, their team is drawing national attention for its decidedly American Ind
• Living Up to Her Name Despite the Hurdles in Her Path - NYTimes.com - “Her father has 23 children, 9 with her mother, Harrison said. Her sisters have names like Graceful, Empress, Princess and Muun. An older brother is named God Goldin Zig Zag Zig Allah.” –> That makes me really happy. (Really!)
• The American Scholar - The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - “The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society?s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some oppor

These are my links for December 1st through March 25th:

• University Television Ads Depict White Dominance, Study Finds - "The researchers found that the overwhelmingly majority of the students and alumni depicted in the advertisements were white, with minority members generally being depicted only as token members of larger groups. The common image of a group of students st
• What Created This Monster? - "The Federal Reserve not only taken has action unprecedented since the Great Depression ? by lending money directly to major investment banks ? but also has put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in questionable trades these same bankers ma
• Gays fear an influx of hate - "The tragedy has exacerbated tensions between Sacramento's gay community and the region's booming population of Slavic evangelical Christians, whose most vocal congregants in recent years have mobilized on the streets and statehouse steps to protest homos
• The Mind of a One-Woman Multitude - Erykah Badu - "As she floated in the tub (?I always go all the way underneath the water and try to hold my breath a long time,? she said), she had a revelation: ?Different thoughts kept coming into my head. The first thought was, ooh, I wonder if my hair gonna be
• Boy?s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town - "Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime."

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Two articles caught my eye over at the NYT today. The first is about Debbie Almontaser, who has lost the first round in her suit against the NY Dept of Education, filed after she was fired as principal of a Brooklyn Arabic language school. The second article is an Op-Ed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You might recall that Hirsi was formerly a member of the Dutch Parliament, and has been outspoken against radical Islam, particularly in relation to women’s rights. She is currently a fellow at The American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank.

Taken together, the two articles highlight the predicament of a living in a diverse world in which moderate religious and cultural views are so important, but that is also a world that values extremism for its political and commercial value.

Hirsi Ali, whom I have following for a few years, has a real talent for making political statements. She is good at getting to what is at stake in an event, at the larger implications of events that might otherwise seem random or unconnected. In recent years, however, I cannot help but feel that Ali has lost sight of her feminist/activist goals and has simply become one self-interested talking head among many.

Several respondents to Ali’s article were quick to post links to the very kinds of moderate responses Ali seems to be calling for, particularly from national organizations. Why has she not reached out to these groups? Where do they fit in her article? Or where, for instance, do the lawyer marches in Pakistan (a story she could not have missed) fit into all of this? Read the rest of this entry »

So yay! Here I am. Post #100. I think I thought I ‘d get here sooner, but since I pretty much disappeared for October and November… (something about a day job? about teaching the children?) Alas, I am and shall always be a s l o w poster

Celebrating 100 posts puts a lot of pressure on the post. I keep feeling like I should write about something VERY important. Obama and Huckabee are ahead in the polls; Iran is getting harder to invade; Chavez lost his vote; fucking Don Imus is back on the air. And so it goes.

But then, suddenly, I came across a link to this story over at Sex Like Men: “Is Hello Kitty Turning Feral?”

I’m saved!

After all, why go important when you can go VERY important? Umm, in an inverse sort of way. And though I surely bear a stronger resemblance to my beloved Chococat, this article about about the unexpectedly risque Hello Kitty “shoulder” massager combines two favorites: Hello Kitty and feral women, both of which I’m prone to writing about.

You know, between the close readings of moments critical to transforming ideas about race, class, and gender and the occasional sputtering of rage against random machines. And the occasional statement on world-making. And shilling for Obamas.

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In one of my classes this week we will be reading selections by the late Melvin Dixon, a gay and African American poet-scholar who died during the nineties. In one of his essays, “I’ll Be Listening for My Name,” he touches upon the kind of doubled death lgbt artists face in the AIDS crisis, as they face racial discrimination in the public sphere that is compounded by the denial of their emotional and sexual lives by families and communities who refuse to recognize gays and lesbians. We have also been reading Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, which is about a teenage boy who is the chosen one, smart and athletic. Also gay, he eventually dies under the burden of homophobia, of being forced to see himself as simultaneously chosen and damned, angel and demon.

Well, this morning I was greeted by a story on crimes against the LGBT community in Newark, NJ, “In a Progressive State, a City Where Gay Life Hangs by a Thread.” The story is by Andrew Jacobs, who’s on the Newark beat at the NYT. It’s not a terrible story, and it does a nice job of outlining a broad picture of options for the lgbt community in lower and working class communities of color in Newark.

The story got me thinking, though, about how difficult it is to talk about sex and race– especially when we barely have language for sussing out race and class. So what happens when, as in most cases, we need to talk about all three at once? Often, it seems, we latch onto the one that best serves our own needs, a need fed by our perceptions “what counts” and “what matters.” But, again, what does this mean for the possibility of
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Does that mean I’m an officially deprogrammed PhD? Or does it mean my PhD might be revoked? I hope not. After all, what’s the point of writing if no one can read it, right?!

(I got the link to the meter from brownfemipower, where there is also a nice discussion in comments of the readability scale and its implications.)

One nugget from wikipedia:
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Not to go all Tabitha Soren on you, but wouldn’t it be nice if national politics really became the next big urban youth trend? I know that Diddy tried it with his 2003 “Vote or Die” fashion venture youth campaign, but maybe this time around might we go for something a bit more, uh, nuanced?

This week Barack Obama ended his latest Harlem World tour with a $50 ticket fundraiser at the Apollo Theater. One of the openers for the night’s events was Chris Rock, who I guess was there to keep the crowd happy while Obama dined with Al Sharpton at Sylvia’s (cliche much?) before his big speech.

Keeping in mind the ongoing fascination with the national black leaderships alleged dislike of the latest Big O (hi Juan!), this moment couldn’t have been better timed: dinner with Sharpton, stumping by Chris Rock, and some fancy words from Cornel West.

And whatever any of the above’s motivation in falling in behind Obama might be, I can’t help but think that Rock himself best summarized the changing tide of sentiment. As Bonney Kapp reports:

Rock, never one to shy away from blunt language, told the crowd that he was glad to see the crowd “on the right side of history.” Because, he said, “You’d be real embarrassed if he won and you wasn’t down with it. ‘I can’t call him now! I had that white lady. What was I thinking? What was I thinking,” he joked, referring to Obama’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

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My favorite headline so far today, from YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia, via New America Media:

“Hot Chicks Dig Obama”

I find it strangely complementary to this month’s I-can’t-help-but-sound-a-bit-down-when-I ‘m-saying-positive-things-about-black-people cover over at The Atlantic Monthly: “Why Obama Matters.” (Though first place for this award goes to NBC’s Brian Williams for “African American Women: Where They Stand”)

But “Hot Chicks Dig Obama” gets to its point a bit faster, no?

Gee, I hope I’m hot enough to vote for Obama. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, isn’t that something?

According the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Georgia State Supreme Court has ordered Genarlow Wilson be released from prison. According to the AJC:

The court’s 4-3 decision upholds a Monroe County judge’s ruling that the sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment under both the Georgia and U.S. constitutions.

The majority opinion said the sentence appeared to be “grossly disproportionate” to the teenager’s crime and noted that it was out of step with current law.

And according to an AP report, via the NYT, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion on the 4-3 opinion that:

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I’m sure you’ve caught wind of Doris Lessing being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But to be honest, I am just posting the picture because it is awesome. Seeing Lessing, old and on her porch, reminded me of the story Toni Morrison told in her own Nobel speech.

It begins, “Once upon a time there was an old woman.”

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So, according to the AP, the mayor of Jena Louisiana is incensed over a new song John Mellencamp has released in front of his upcoming album. In multiple stories we’ve heard that Mayor Murphy R. McMillin is angry about what he has repeatedly referred to Jena’s unfair treatment at the hands of media and activists (I’m surprised we haven’t been subjected to hearing about “activist media” in the wake of this case!)

But this time, apparently, someone has gone too far, Mellencamp. Or as McMillin put it to the AP:

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Thanks to The Blog That Ate Manhattan, by way of Purple Medical Blog, for this gem,

“Someone from the gynecologist called. They said the pap smear is normal.”

Ha ha ha! I’m a midwestern girl, so Pabst will always strike a chord with me. Not a Billy Dee Williams Colt .45 chord, but, you know.

Since we’re on the subject of feminine hygiene as a subject of amusement, you might want to check out this old $3.60 post, “Lysol, “to promote bodily vigor and preserve feminine daintiness.”

And finally, just to make sure this topic overstays its welcome, check out this pretty amusing Natalie Dee illustration, Read the rest of this entry »

I caught this link over at The Atlantic Monthly. It was extra interesting to me because I’ve been doing all this language and identity and memory stuff in one of my classes as we finish up Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. This week we discussed how contemporary theories of memory and subjectivity often discount the notion that there is memory before language. What is interesting about this is that what we call “language” assumes language, or rather that our assumption might in fact be based in our inability to comprehend experiences that don’t come to us in a familiar and recognizable form: if we don’t hear it, it must not be there.

Here’s a taste, but of course you should check out the article:

The authors suggest that this work challenges interpretations of childhood and infantile amnesia pointing to failures to translate preverbal experiences into language once language is acquired. Yet the fact that three-quarters of children fail to do this, even in the presence of physical reminders of the original experience, seems to support this claim rather than undermine it. Perhaps some children can recode these preverbal memories into language when prompted, but children may still not due this under real-world circumstances and thus experience childhood “amnesia.”

According to the AP, Mychal Bell, one of the group of young African American students dubbed the Jena 6, has been released on a $45,000 bail.

More importantly, this follows hours after the court also ruled that Bell will be tried in juvenile court. Again, not the best case scenario, but at least it shows that public outcry is having an effect on the terms of his potential incarceration– in the sense that at least he is finally being recognized as a child.

How is that for bleak, when bail and juvenile court bring a sense of real improvement to racial injustice? More after the jump.

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Bottled water companies have gotten us to believe, or rather, we have allowed ourselves to believe bottled water is “better” and “tastes different,” that we have completely overlooked the fact that once water becomes a full-fledged commodity, there’s no going back.

My pal Ferentz Lafargue (Songs in the Key of My Life) has written a post on water, which moves from naming the various reasons so many of us now reject tap water to asking us to think about the emerging global water crisis. And all with shoutouts to Mos Def, Fela Kuti, Jay-Z.

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First the fashion chain Zara, now army barracks? It’s so hard not to be conspiratorial. Perhaps this is all prophesying the rise of an army of fascist fashionistas, who distract us with handbags and mesmerize us with falling hemlines as civilizations are razed in our name?

Oh wait. Never mind.

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Earlier this week, the sci-fi writer Steven Barnes had a nice piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “Why King Tut’s ethnicity is such a complex issue.”

The article offers his take on the currently-raging debate over King Tut’s complexion, which is taken as a signifier of his (and therefore Egypt’s) links to Sub-Saharan Africa and is also taken as bearing on the matter of whether Egypt should be understood as “African” or “Middle Eastern.”

(Whatever. Everyone who has ever seen a Hollywood film knows that the ancient Egyptians were white, just like Jesus! You can click the head for a pictorial history of Tut, and if you haven’t heard this story, background reports are at the end of this post.)

This week’s hoopla actually started in 2005, when a major museum exhibit was accused of whitewashing Tut’s image. The exhibit featured “new” images of Tut popularized by Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who in 2005 led a team of anthropologists and forensics experts France, Egypt, and the United States. Just this week, Hawass declared:

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According to an AP report at the NYT, it looks like the six West Virginians arrested for the kidnapping, rape, and torture of a young African American woman, Megan Williams, may soon appear in court. There is concern, however, that the trials may be delayed, as at least two of the defendents’ lawyers in the case have had to recuse themselves, because they have already worked as public defenders in past cases involving the defendents, who have been brought to court on a total of 108 charges since 1991.

I have been trying to decide if these are the most disgusting people on earth, because this really is the stuff of nightmares. We all talk about racism, and hate, and the persistence of our violent national past, but this is nonetheless an exemplary crime. Not unimaginable in its occurrence, but, still, the worse of the worse: a group of people who kidnapped a black woman, with no intention but to harm, degrade, and destroy. Leonard Codispoti, the local Magistrate in this jurisdiction,

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I’m watching Fox’s Don’t Forget the Lyrics. There is a black minister from Topeka, Kansas singing karaoke-ing The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”

Something is very wrong with this. It’s difficult to be sure. But I am reminded of sitting in my tiny study in my old Flatbush apartment. Looking out the window, I see a squirrel perched on a fence post, chowing down on a chicken wing.

A chill goes through me. Oh Wayne.

I must say, this is my favorite Michelle Obama picture, the lower body solid and powerful the upper posture bespeaking “from the heart.” And all, of course, in a really cute outfit.

The picture is from a New York Times story by Katharine Seelye, about presidential candidate wives, “They Stand By Their Men, Loudly.” The story is a little bit weird in its construction, though I guess it wants to be about the changing presence of wives in the campaign.

Indeed, the story suddenly made me wonder if I should come up with a campaign equivalent of the “weight statement,” a term I’ve used to describe these sort of non-stories that are frequently trotted out by celebrithon media, in which a female actress declares that she “loves her curves,” or so on. It becomes a way for the media to talk about women’s bodies without saying anything directly, instead reporting what women are saying about themselves.

There’s a tinge of nonstory around this NYT report, so must ask, what is it really trying to say?

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How was that for a long blogging hiatus? But summer gets short, and I had some sort of epiphany that blogging less would mean more of other kinds of writing. It didn’t turn out to be particularly true, I learned, but coming back to $3.60 was just the tiny low-pressure carrot I needed to get some really annoying work done. Book proposals out to eight presses (who each of course wanted a different package), an article out, and a conference and writers series in the works, developing fellowship programs for the cinema, and countless query letters and so on: Yay August! Phew– I’m glad you’re almost over. (Never thought I’d say that!)

And anyway, there are gazillions of old, retiring posts on $3.60, in favorite categories like world-making, feral women, and the global uncanny. Who needs me?

In other news, this week has also seen, sadly, lots of back to school shopping. Oh, who am I fooling? Back to school shopping makes school so much better! Read the rest of this entry »

“Police arrested a juvenile male Thursday in the case of three college students killed execution-style in a schoolyard Saturday night, according to a city official with knowledge of the investigation” (AP).

(I’m so totally cut out for law enforcement reform. Clearly I’ve got the right kind of ideas, and I’ve got the motivation…)

In today’s NYT, Seth Mydan’s “To Punish Thai Police, a Hello Kitty Armband“:

Says Pongpat Chayaphan, of the Thai police:

“This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” he said. “Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

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Isn’t it interesting how, on the one hand the Obama and HClinton candidacies supposedly signal a new day for America, but at the same time all this ugliness can’t help but seep out around the edges?

Admittedly, I don’t have much faith in Romney, but I did expect better from John Edwards, before the Esquire thing (see below).

First, of course you’ve seen this: Mitt Romney posing with a sign that reads “No to Obama, Osama, and Chelsea’s Moma.”

Now, I’m all for poetry. I even harbor a genuine soft spot for prosody in general. And I must say, the sign is quite genius in its use of thematic regression, using “osama” to shine some radical Islam/terrorism on Barack Obama, and “moma” to shine some black on Hillary Clinton. Lead-footed American genius!

But really, Mitt. Show some class, not your ass.

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Huh. I totally remember this proposal. At the end of some big and victorious game over Oklahoma, Boise State football player Ian Johnson, who is black, got down on his knee and proposed to Chrissy Popadics, who is white.I remember that I was sitting in the living room at my father’s house; we all had something to say:

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Okay, kinda.

Last night’s episode of So You Think You Can Dance (7.26) began with choreographer Mia Michaels apologizing for a jacket she had worn on the previous night’s episode. Apparently, it was a military jacket (USMC?), but with the insignias sewed on upside down.

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In front of tomorrow’s trial on Genarlow Wilson’s appeal, The Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC), has a story on his lawyer, BJ Bernstein. At the center of the story is a question about the many ways she has kept Wilson’s story in the media.

And it’s interesting, no? On the one hand we imagine that too much media attention perverts justice, insofar as it gives us a sense that a case is more about public opinion than it is about “the law.” But that might be more an argument regarding the Paris Hiltons, and less one for the Genarlow Wilsons.

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In The New York Times today:

“Skulls Confirm We’re All Out Of Africa”

Well, apparently UNICEF Germany, like The Guardian, might have already gotten the memo:

But maybe they also took it a little too seriously? (curtsy to Black Women in Europe, via African American Political Pundit)

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So I came to one of these calculators through grammarpiano, via koreanish. I was going to find out my “blog rating,” which is by the way:

Okay, saw that coming. That’s how I roll, whatever. But sadly, my obsession with self-assessment then led me to this calculator: Read the rest of this entry »

Nicole Kidman, dressed as a stepford wife, playing a video game? I know this is supposed to be a story about women going digital, but somehow this quick little story on targeting video games to women makes it seem quite the opposite. Read the rest of this entry »

Democracy Now just posted this interview with Genarlow Wilson’s mother, Juanessa Wilson:

“10 Years in Prison For Consensual Sex: Genarlow Wilson’s Mother Speaks Out on Why Her Son Remains Locked Up“ (click to listen).

And here is the link to my Genarlow Wilson background post, which will be updated frequently up until his new hearing later this week.

Picked up from Feministing, via The Debate Link, who sees this new Fox show as a gendered twist on the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The premise:

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Huh, Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish, one of the Atlantic Monthly’s blogs, has posted this video of Barack Obama first hearing the Libby news, while giving a speech in New Hampshire. (The video is after the jump).

On hearing the news (did he really hear it right that moment? I’m unclear), Obama immediately makes the connection between the Genarlow Wilson sentence and the Libby commutation.

This is the same connection Obama would go on to use in a speech he has given in a variety of venues, which I mentioned in an earlier post.

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I, too, tire of the cell phones.

I, too, dream of knocking shit down.

Did he do it for the bees? To save our brains? To stop the aliens?

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Following up on my previous Obama post, and also on the Genarlow Wilson updates, The Atlanta Journal Constitution has this story on the charges being sought against the prosecutor in the Genarlow Wilson case, for showing further signs of “overzealous” prosecution in distributing the sex tape that helped convict him. The connection?

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John over at Theory My Culture has a nice post on the recent brouhaha over a British group asking Borders to remove Tintin in the Congo from shelves.

(And don’t worry, I’m not jumping on the tintin hate bandwagon lorry… I’ve hated this tintin shit my whole life!)

At the center of his post, John asks an interesting question: Read the rest of this entry »