Assistant Quote of the Day

"John and I are hell-bent on making sure the American people understand this debacle called Benghazi."

-- Lindsey Graham on Face the Nation yesterday, threatening to hold up the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA chief until, of course, something-something-Benghazi

I know. John McCain and Lindsey Graham on the Sunday news shows again, talking about Benghazi again. What are the chances, right? These two are like a Vaudeville act at this point -- or maybe a once-popular band from a couple of decades ago now forced to play the hits nobody gives a shit about on the state fair circuit. Except, of course, that they're actually getting prime arena gigs by still, for reasons not even God knows, snagging invitations every damn week to appear on Face the Nation, Meet the Press and This Week.

The American people understand Benghazi perfectly. It's precisely why we don't care, no matter how "hell-bent" Graham and McCain are on making us.

Quote of the Day

"For us to sort of slap them on the face and say, we no longer want your services or we're embarrassed by you and ashamed of you and we'd like to put you in the back of the tent just felt really dismissive and disrespectful."

-- S.E. Cupp on her decision not to attend CPAC this year because of its exclusion of gay conservative groups

Cupp says that she has a "long and wonderful" relationship with CPAC, which really makes me wonder if anything she says is worth a damn. But there is something to be said for her willingness to acknowledge how painfully backward the conservative power structure is these days. The unspoken reality of a statement like this is that it will almost surely get Cupp labeled a RINO -- or worse, an all-out liberal -- simply because she doesn't want to see members of the LGBT community driven into the sea.

Keep in mind that while CPAC made the wise decision to exclude anti-Muslim lunatic Pamela Gellar from its roster this year, there are a hell of a lot of Tea Party types who are furious about it.

Gut Check

A good summation of the conservative way of seeing the world from Cesca today over at the Banter, in a piece called "Romney, Like Many Republicans, Trusted His Heart Over Reality."

"Instead of embracing the broad scientific consensus on the climate crisis, Republicans trust their gut that it’s not real (or not man-made, or both) and they confirm their whimsy with a relatively small handful of crackpot scientists — the Dean Chamberses of climate study. On austerity and deficit reduction, Republicans trust their gut that steep spending reductions following a deep recession will stimulate economic growth when, in fact, there’s not one single example of this occurring in the history of the American economy. Not one. Libertarian Republicans are even worse, believing that confederations combined with severely limited central governments will actually work when nearly all historical examples of such systems have failed. They believe the deficit has skyrocketed when, in fact, it’s dropped by $555 billion since Obama has been president. Too many conservatives believe the president wasn’t born Hawaii in spite of all the evidence proving he was. They also believe that Islamic evildoers are lurking around every corner waiting to crash airplanes into rural town squares. Hell, way too many conservatives believe that Jesus was a capitalist warhawk. Because they really, really want him to be."

I'm posting this here because Cesca makes a roundabout point that I've actually made a couple of times before. While not every single conservative is a die-hard religious fundamentalist, there's no denying that religion -- particularly Christianity -- and American conservatism are inextricably linked in the eyes of most people. If you're really into Jesus and believe that he's coming back soon to whisk his children up to heaven in a magic chariot while tossing the rest of us into the lake of fire for all eternity, there's a pretty good chance your politics land you squarely in the Republican registry.

What Cesca's getting at, and what I've always believed, is that the kind of faith that allows someone to abandon logic, reason and empirical reality in favor of an unwavering devotion to a 2,000-year-old book of wild stories -- millions of animals on an ark, walking on water, resurrection from the dead, people living to be nearly a thousand -- is the kind of faith that will allow you to believe in literally anything. It's not much of a stretch to go from thinking the world was created in six days, 6,000 years ago, to being utterly convinced that climate change is a lie, the economy is shrinking and the government is coming for your guns. Oh, and that Barack Obama is going to lose the presidential election because everyone hates him.

Conspiracy theories and insane fantasies aren't that hard to swallow when you've decided that proof doesn't really matter to you. And religious faith requires no proof at all, that's why it's called faith. But as I've said before, when you choose to replace a fundamental reliance on evidence -- the yardstick that measures our reality and which should be the same across the board for almost everyone -- with flights of fancy, what you get is chaos. That and the ability to fall for absolutely any bunch of nonsense.

Listening Post

Happy Monday, gang.

From their upcoming full-length album, Welcome Oblivion, here's the new single from the Trent Reznor project How To Destroy Angels.

This is How Long?

Quote of the Day

"(I) cannot morally be on a television program where the cast members of 'Duck Dynasty' will also be guests. As far as my reputation is concerned, I can't take the risk of being on a show alongside people who, in effect, amount to animal serial killers."

-- Morrissey on why he canceled an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week

Morrissey's show last night at Hollywood High School capped off one hell of a week for music's most miserable, insufferable prick. He dropped off Kimmel because of the Duck Dynasty people, not because it's a ridiculous show and he thought it was insulting to the world's intelligence but because they shoot a bunch of ducks; he demanded that the Staples Center in L.A. serve only vegetarian food during his performance there (they agreed to honor his wishes then wisely just said the hell with it and served meat in the upper levels anyway); he took on Paul McCartney for supporting the Royal Family, again not because the Royals are silly and antiquated but because the Queen wears fur; and finally he publicly trashed Beyoncé for supposedly carrying animal skin handbags.

When asked for a response, Beyoncé no doubt said, "Who?"

As for his show at Hollywood High, real nice of him to force his fans to have to return to the place that caused them so much trauma and misery. I wonder if everyone in that audience instinctively stuffed themselves in gym lockers and handed over their lunch money to the bouncers. Reality check, kids: If you're still listening to Morrissey, it didn't get better.

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.

Listening Post

Love the hell out of this really simple clip.

Billy Joel. On vinyl.

Here's Rosalinda's Eyes.