Sorkin State of Affairs

Sure, I watch HBO's The Newsroom. I do this because, as someone who's spent a good portion of his life in the news business, I'm a vain and shallow creature who desperately seeks the validation of strangers, loves talking and hearing about himself and especially enjoys anything that paints the profession he chose years ago in any light other than thoroughly, hostilely negative.

While the new season of the show does seem to prove that Sorkin at least took a little of the relentless criticism he received last year to heart, The Newsroom is still The Newsroom.

And maybe that's why I enjoy this so much.

The Onion: Nation Hoping 'The Newsroom' Ends Before Trayvon Martin Storyline/7.15.13

That's Not Funny!

So, let's go ahead and spin the Wheel of Outrage and see what we land on this time. Oh, look at that -- we're back in familiar territory: The Onion.

I'm sure you all remember the Quvenzhané Wallis tweet-heard-round-the-world during the Oscars; our nation's psychic wounds are just now, finally, starting to heal in the wake of it. Well, now it looks like any chances the almost across-the-board brilliant satire site may have had of making amends and winning back fans within a certain segment of the perpetually indignant liberal intelligentsia have apparently been dashed because of a story it just posted just a little while ago. The target this time: Chris Brown.

Here's the piece in its entirety:

"LOS ANGELES—After revealing yesterday that he had recently split up with longtime girlfriend Rihanna, a heartbroken Chris Brown tearfully told reporters that he always thought the 25-year-old singer was going to be the woman he’d beat to death one day. 'Despite all the ups and downs, I was so sure Rihanna was the one I’d take by the throat one day and fatally assault, and even toward the end I continued to hold out hope that we’d be together until the day she died at my hands from blunt-force trauma,' Brown, 24, said in a radio interview this week, telling DJs he still has abusive feelings for his ex-flame and is hopeful that he might punch her again one day. 'It’s hard knowing that there’s some other guy out there who gets to beat her senseless. In fact, for all I know, there might be someone out there assaulting her right now. And let me tell you, that guy is the luckiest guy in the world.' A saddened Brown added that, should the couple not reconcile, he remains confident that the special someone he was meant to beat to death is still out there for him, and when he finds her, he’ll waste no time in slapping her."

Now you'd think that something this vicious that was obviously intended solely to demean Chris Brown -- an unapologetic woman-beating dickhead who should be in prison right now -- would be embraced by the usual names within the feminist media community. You'd think that, however only if you didn't allow for the fact that those same usual names believe that when it comes to certain predetermined subjects, satire should always be watered down at the risk of very stupid people maybe getting the wrong idea or the already victimized -- literally or figuratively -- being victimized all over again by something they read on a website that deals in smart humor.

And so, compliments of Salon, of course -- who immediately busted out its stock "Did _____ Go Too Far?" headline -- come these breaths of pure fire, designed to hopefully cleanse The Onion, and us, of our cultural sins.









As you can see, there are some thing that can't be the subject of biting satire, no matter who that very nasty bite is taken out of. There are some things that just aren't funny. There are -- eh, fuck it, how many times have I said this now?

Son of Man-on-Man

Screw the Quvenzhané Wallis controversy from a couple of months back -- it's stuff like this that makes The Onion a national treasure and should buy it a bottomless reservoir of good will.

The Onion: "I Feel Very Strongly About Gay Marriage Because I Have a Gay Son" by God/3.26.13

It makes a positive statement about same-sex marriage and promises to infuriate the Christian Right even more than a positive statement about same-sex marriage. Win-win.

Quote of the Day

"The scene is raw, it’s brave, and it’s the boldest thing we’ve seen Dunham do yet: a smart, unsanitized comedy of errors that perfectly captures the experience of being at the ob-gyn."

-- The Onion, in a story called "Next Episode Of 'Girls' To Feature Lena Dunham Shitting Herself During Gyno Exam While Eating A Burrito"

As always, the Onion's satire is pretty much indistinguishable from reality. For all the stories the site has done that have fooled a people into thinking they were for real, this may be most understandable for somebody to fall for. All you had to do was watch even five minutes of this past week's Girls episode, with Dunham's character puncturing her eardrum with a Q-tip because she's insane and Adam Driver's Ugliest Hipster on Earth coming all over his inexplicably adorable girlfriend's breasts because he's a tortured artist, or something, to realize that there's nowhere the show won't go to be unwatchable.

Yes, I once again sat through an episode On Demand because I was curious to see what all the "controversy" was about -- what was making the fingers of a million little New York City-based liberal arts grads work at warp speed banging out blog posts for Slate, Salon, Jezebel, XOJane and Feministing -- and, as usual, I was really sorry I did.

As The Onion kind of alludes to, it doesn't take much thought, talent or even courage to show ugly people doing really ugly things to get people talking.

I See Your Boobs and Raise You...

Over the past week I've been inundated with all kinds of tweets and e-mails from various unhappy parties, all in response to the series of posts and columns I published about The Onion and Seth MacFarlane. I figured I'd get some hate mail regardless, but I did my best to take as nuanced an approach as possible to the whole controversy so that might have tempered the reaction at least slightly. Still, there was the expected outrage, with some accusing me of "mansplaining" and saying that I had no right to tell people, specifically women, what they can and can't be pissed about, and others hurling the tired "white male privilege" line at me. Not a big deal either way given that I generally don't spend too much time worrying whether I'm disliked or even just misunderstood.

But given the response to my relatively measured analysis of the Oscars -- an event which inexplicably turned into a flashpoint for indignation on par with four hours of televised, forced sodomy -- I can only imagine the kind of crap a quickie rant on the ridiculousness of the whole "We Saw Your Boobs" outcry would draw.

And that's why I'm trying to make sure as many people as possible see Banter overlord Ben Cohen's posts on the subject. Because he dispensed with all the flowery rhetoric and just called Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis's outrage over MacFarlane's jokes what they kind of are: silly and self-righteous. I don't think that just because you've taken off your clothes on film or because you regularly get plastic surgery you're somehow disqualified from calling out a crude joke about boobs (even though this particular joke was purposely crude and undeniably intended to be ironic). I don't think it makes you a hypocrite, necessarily. But Ben's right that Fonda's a pompous bore and Curtis's claim about taking it off over and over again only under internal protest reeks of convenient revisionist history.

Also, I just like to stir the pot and want to see Ben get hammered. Because I'm an asshole.

So read, and if you disagree, leave a nasty comment or send him an angry e-mail -- because he'll be reading it while sitting on a big pile of money in the bedroom of the mansion he had built from the ground up by young children and naked women. Fucking white guy.

The Daily Banter: Jane Fonda Bores Everyone To Death Over Boobs/3.1.13

The Daily Banter: Jamie Lee Curtis Weighs in on "Boob-gate"/3.4.13

The Crass and the Furious

Today's column for the Daily Banter -- actually it was posted last night but after traveling I was way too tired to write any more about it -- is once again all about our long national nightmare: The Oscars. And our ongoing insane furor over Seth MacFarlane and The Onion.

Here's the opening shot:

"After the Social Media and Politics panel that we participated in last night at East Tennessee State University, Bob Cesca, Feministing’s Vanessa Valenti and I — along with our gracious host, “Comedy Fred” Poag — sat down at a comfortable table in the bar of our hotel for a couple of drinks. The panel discussion had gone well, with each of us making the points I think we wanted to make about where social media is leading us and what effect it’s having on the way we communicate, think and vote. But once we’d retired to our dimly lit spot near the fireplace just off the lobby of the Carnegie hotel and I’d gotten a pint of Gaelic Ale in me, I turned to Vanessa and dropped the question I’d been interested in asking all night but didn’t want to bring up at the panel because the road it would’ve led down would no doubt take us far away from the basic topics we were asked to discuss. That question, again posed to the founder of Feministing, was, 'Okay, so, what do you think of controversy over the Onion tweet?'"

Read the Rest Here

By the way, I also wanted to point out two columns that manage to sum up my feelings about this ridiculous outrage over a couple of jokes and a scathing piece of satire almost perfectly. They put it so damn well that I'm jealous I didn't write them myself.

First, from start to finish, Scott Mendelson over at the Huffington Post nails the necessity of the kind of stuff The Onion does, even the stuff we don't like, and points out why the Quvenzhané Wallis comment, shocking as it was, matters:

"Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point. Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine-year-old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination. It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures. This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar. Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a 'cunt.' Because we do that all the time.

Oh, we're fancier about it and we use nicer language. But we call women 'cunts' all the time. We do it when we complain that Anne Hathaway just annoys us for no good reason, or that she earns our ire because she's just too damn energetic or just wants 'it' too badly. We do it when we obsess endlessly about Michelle Obama's new bangs or her bare arms. We do it when we ignore Angelina Jolie's humanitarian work and still see only 'that bitch' who stole Jennifer Aniston's man. We do it whenever we turn any slight disagreement between two females into a 'feud' and/or 'cat fight' or when Jessica Chastain has to publicly declare that she really isn't feuding with Jennifer Lawrence based purely on fabricated gossip. We do it when we obsess more about Jennifer Lawrence's success as a red carpet fashion princess than as a twice-Oscar nominated (and now Oscar-winning) actress. We do it when we express our alleged outrage at The Onion and then immediately click on a slideshow of the various dresses that the actresses wore in order to snark or pointlessly compare.

We do it when we lionize female stupidity and then decry that women made to be vain or stupid are considered role models. We do it when we treat every accomplishment of every would-be successful woman as merely a prelude to the ultimate accomplishment that is childbearing. The message is clear: Women of accomplishment deserve our scorn rather than our admiration, and the only thing that should really be admired about a woman are her looks, her fashion sense, and/or her ability to be a mom. Those decrying the fact that Wallis is a nine-year-old African-American child only open themselves up to the fact that it would apparently be okay to call her a cunt if she were a 21-year old white lady. Those saying that Wallis's feelings may have been hurt are A) missing that she was merely a vessel for satire and not a target of criticism and B) she likely never would have found out about it had the outrage machine not charged in full force putting it to the front pages of the online news all day long...

The Onion arguably took the fall for our national misogyny. Maybe they really are the satire we need, rather than the kind we think want. So belittle and criticize The Onion because it can take it. Because it may have just done a mitzvah. The Onion, by cutting through the niceties, has created what has the potential to be a teachable moment. For the fault lies not in The Onion, but in ourselves."

Then there's Drew Magary in GQ, who cuts through all the bullshit and just spells out the absurdity of the backlash to Seth MacFarlane's stint as host of the Oscars (a job I'm now convinced no one in their right mind would take anymore):

"I'm not a Seth MacFarlane fanboy. I've always been staunchly pro-"Simpsons" and anti-"Family Guy". I never watch any of MacFarlane's other shows, either. And I'd take a bullet to the dome before watching five minutes of "Ted". So I'm not in the tank here when I say that MacFarlane, all things considered, did a perfectly adequate job hosting the Oscars on Sunday night. He took a thankless task and the worst audience in show business and managed to, at the very least, slip in a few subversive wisecracks AND keep his energy level high for four straight, interminable hours. At this point, I don't really know what else you want from an Oscar host. If people aren't bitching about Billy Crystal being too mild, they're bitching about MacFarlane being too harsh on a group of people that DESERVE harshness.

This week, MacFarlane's jokes were subjected to the kind of microscopic analysis reserved for quantum particles. From Gawker to Slate to The Atlantic, there was string of PhD-length discourses about the underlying sexism, racism, homophobia, and whatever-elsephobia of MacFarlane's humor. The scrutiny was enough to obliterate comedy as we know it. Of course MacFarlane made tasteless jokes at the Oscars. That's what he does, and I think it's pretty clear that MacFarlane has no real malice when telling these kinds of jokes. But Jesus Christ, the way people reacted to his "We Saw Your Boobs" song, you would have thought he personally assaulted every actress in Hollywood. Give me a fucking break. We're never gonna shame tasteless comedians out of work, and we shouldn't! Tasteless humor is FUN, and it shouldn't be legislated by people who think certain people have the right to tell a certain joke and certain people don't. Piss off. Seth was fine. If you thought he was unfunny, fine. I get it. But you don't have to exhaust the dictionary explaining why. Quit ruining comedy for everyone."

Spot. Fucking. On.

Hate Street

This is the joke The Onion was trying to make, the thing it was attempting to comment on.

Salon sums it up perfectly without even trying.

"(Anne) Hathaway is the subject of more vituperative, angry scrutiny than perhaps any actress working today. 'Shut up. Shut up, Anne Hathaway. I honestly don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m jealous, but I don’t feel jealousy. I watch her in outtakes, and I feel like she’s not a real person,' wrote a blogger for women’s-interest site Crushable. 'I don’t find her perfection charming. I find it annoying.'

'She always seems like she’s performing, and her favorite act is this overstated humility and graciousness,' said a blogger quoted by Brian Moylan in a piece for Hollywood.com...

'Deep down, we loathe celebrities,' says David Thomson, film critic and author, most recently, of 'The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies.'

'We envy them,' says Thomson. 'We think they don’t deserve it. We hate the influence they have over us. And there have to be sacrificial lambs.' ...

Perhaps there’s a double standard at work here. Bradley Cooper comes in for criticism, too, but it has little to do with the degree to which he is or is not a grown man. 'People are rougher on young female stars than they are on young male stars,' says veteran Hollywood reporter Howard Karren, who served as an editor at Premiere in the 1990s."

Salon: Anne Hathaway: Hollywood's Most Polarizing Star/2.26.13

Tweet(s) of the Day

I'm going to collect these kinds of tweets and use them to write a book on how not to argue. When all you've got is the tired "White Privilege!" line -- which should be considered an internet-era argumentative fallacy it's so impossible to defend against and therefore such a shameless line of attack -- you've pretty much already lost the fight.

You wanna discuss issues like reasonable people who for the most part have respect for each other's views, perfect. You wanna make the pious and asinine claim that somebody's not allowed to comment on something in a way you disagree with because he or she happens to be of a certain race, sex or ethnic background, you're not even worth listening to.

Incidentally, this whole Onion thing isn't about race and never was. I consequently didn't inject race into it, but it's fascinating the number of people who are happy to.

An Unequal and Opposite Overreaction

For those who figured that there was no way the controversy over The Onion's crude tweet involving Quvenzhané Wallis was going to simply vanish now that the website's CEO, Steve Hannah, has offered what appears to be a pretty sincere apology, give yourself a prize. Former president of Bennett College and current political commentator Julianne Malveaux, a very smart woman by any measure, is circulating through social media right now what she imagines will turn into a petition but what's inarguably a list of demands aimed at The Onion and its management.

I want you to remember something as you read this: Quvenzhané Wallis wasn't physically assaulted. Because of the Onion tweet that very unwisely used her to make an admittedly brutal comment on our popular culture, one that never should've been attempted at the potential expense of a 9-year-old girl, she won't spend years in therapy, nor will anyone else. No one else was physically or psychically harmed by one offensive bad joke (and anyone who claims otherwise is full of crap). There was no larger group that was demeaned here: not children, not African-Americans, not women, not actors or actresses, and there's no need for anyone besides possibly Wallis herself to demand any kind of satisfaction.

And yet, Julianne Malveaux has bestowed upon herself the right and privilege to decide what penance The Onion, a website that traffics in comedy, must pay to the community at large for its supposed sins. (In my opinion, the sin of making a joke that horribly misfired.) Julianne Malveaux has decided that The Onion's apology isn't good enough and that more action needs to be taken against the site. In essence, she's appointed herself and is drafting others to be enforcers of political correctness who deserve to be assured that The Onion will never cross the line -- whatever line they happen to determine is proper for all of society -- ever again. She believes that she and those who agree with her take on this miasma can and should serve as the arbiters of humor for our entire culture.

That's not only breathtakingly arrogant, it borders on flat-out crazy.

Here's the e-mail in its entirety, including not only Malveaux's letter to Steve Hannah but her entreaty to her friends to pass this along to anyone and everyone.

"Friends an dColleagues,

Please feel free to use all and any parts of thi to deal with the Onion. If there are those of you who will turn this into a petition, please do. I will be reaching out to women's organizations tomorrow. I remain incensed and the 'apology is simply note enough. I am modest in my 'demands' and at this point I am not working with others, but by tomorrow I will be. Take this to the next level if you will.

Dr. J.

Dear Steve Hannah,

While your apology for the vile statement made by your staff regarding the wonderful and talented Quvenzhane’ Wallis is duly noted, it is an insufficient response to the heinous insult lobbed at a 9 year old girl. The communities of women, African American women in particular, and indeed the community of anyone with sensitivity, were utterly repelled by the ignorant genderized racism of your staffer. Thus, your apology is received, but not accepted. You must mitigate the damage that your comments caused, not only for Quvenzhane’, but also for the women who, reveling in her success, were damaged by the sucker punch we experienced when your writer found it acceptable to describe a 9 year old girl in a crude term for genitalia, a term at which most adult women would recoil.

Your apology might be more readily received if you and your team would:


1- Reveal the discipline that was imposed by the offensive writer, and that their identity was revealed so that their future offenses can be monitored,

2- Your company made amends to both Quenzhane’ and the community that supports her by;

a. Offering the organizations that monitor gender and racial discrimination through a financial contribution. My suggestion is that you direct at least $50,000 to The Black Women’s Roundtable, The National Organization for Women, and the National Council of Negro Women. Additionally, I would suggest that you offer $50,000 to the charity of Quvenzhane’s choice. If you choose to offer at least $200,000 to other organizations, you should reveal this information to the public.

b. Meeting with representatives of African American and women’s organizations in Washington DC on a date that is mutually agreeable, but no later than March 31, 2013 to discuss the thought process behind the insulting way a young black girl was described and the ways that future occurrences will be prevented.

c. Sharing information on the number of women and people of color on your staff, and share the ways that they impact editorial decisions.

3- Your company provides scholarship opportunities to African American women students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to indicate that you do not see young women in the disparaging ways, but as scholars and contributors. There are two HBCUs that are women’s institutions, Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. At least one scholarship for each of these institutions would be an effective way to offer recompense for your comments.

4- Your company provides speakers to the colleges that will have you to, at no fee to the colleges, explain the difference between satire and offense. To notify interested colleges, it is my suggestion that your company take out a full page advertisement in Diverse Issues in Higher Education to both reprint your apology and offer the opportunity for your staff to meet on colleges.

As an emerita president of an HBCU focused on women, I was repelled by your writer’s comments. Taking them down and then apologizing is the simple way out for this offense. I call upon you to take proactive action to redress this wrong.

I have no vested interest in any of the organizations I have mentioned here (except that I am President Emerita of Bennett College for Women). However, my constant association with young women and my association with young women make The Onion’s comments exceedingly offensive.

I am asking friends and colleagues to withdraw any support to The Onion until your apology is enhanced by action. I am also asking all women’s and African American organizations to join my insistence that your apology is insufficient. I expect that you will hear from them.

I do look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Julianne Malveaux"

There's nothing wrong with being offended by The Onion's comment. There's everything wrong with taking that offense and turning it into this insanity.

Weapons Cash

If you haven't heard, the Atlantic is taking a giant amount of crap for its running of an "advertorial" -- a paid ad disguised as legitimate comment, the kind of thing that can often be the financial bread and butter of websites these days -- promoting the Church of Scientology. The ad was put up, then quickly taken down once the editorial people at the Atlantic realized what it was. (Chances are the sales department never made it clear that it had sold space to Scientology.)

Well, to its credit, as usual, the Onion has the best response to this controversy -- its own advertorial.

Reason #1,373 Why "The Onion" Rules

After Obama Victory, Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage Early GOP Front-Runner For 2016

Quote of the Day

"Vote Rite could revolutionize the way Americans callously fuck over other Americans."

-- From the Onion News Network's story "Hot New App from the GOP Modernizes Minority Voter Suppression"

Quote of the Day

“I’m so relieved to know that my child’s father, the man who muffled my screams as he forcefully penetrated me over and over and left me hemorrhaging to death on the street, is not a rapist.”

-- From The Onion story, "Pregnant Woman Relieved To Find Out Her Rape Was Illegitimate"

The Libertarium of Doctor Parnasshole

The Onion: Showing Ron Paul the respect he deserves.

Just brilliant.

(via Cesca)

Brain Humor

There may be hope for Saturday Night Live after all.

Presumably in an effort to fill in all that laugh-free blank space between the Digital Shorts, SNL has hired Onion News Network/Funny or Die writer Chris Kelly for next season.

The Huffington Post has put up some of Kelly's best work over the past couple of years -- and these two clips had me just about on the floor.

Quote of the Day

"To the people who found my personality relatable, I say this: I'm a fucking billionaire, I don't relate to you at all, and I can now say with complete impunity that I want all you pathetic losers to go fuck yourselves."

-- "Oprah" to her fans in a piece in the Onion called "I Just Want To Say That I Hated Every Moment of the Piece-of-Shit Show"

By the way, I'll be indisposed for most of the day. Talk amongst yourselves.

Vacuum Rubes

The latest entry into the competition for the Best Thing Ever on the Internet is this: a Yelp page for the Planned Parenthood "Abortionplex," which, if you haven't been paying attention, was the subject of a story in the Onion that completely fooled the hell out of -- and drew plenty of amusing outrage from -- a lot of very dumb religious conservatives.

Headline of the Week

The Onion: Trump Unable To Produce Certificate Proving He's Not A Festering Pile Of Shit/4.27.11

The Last Word

The Onion's Baratunde Thurston turns his obvious and understandable outrage down to a simmer -- as best he can -- and sums up the events of today in a way I couldn't even dream of rivaling.

Just watch and listen.

Faster, Pussycats

Considering the feckless idiocy going on right now on the Hill, I'd vote for the cats.

The Onion: Cat Congress Mired in Sunbeam/9.25.09

(via Andrew Sullivan, who always respects the classics)