Last Updated: 3/6/04; 3:58:34 PM
Last Updated: 3/6/04; 3:58:34 PM
Here
the focus is on me: who I am, what I do,
what's really important to me,
my hobbies, my friends and family, my life...
Eightheadz and his Eight Ball Magazine I think perhaps I need some cultural diversity (*) in my blogging habits, so here's a start. This guy is a RIOT (no pun intended (click on the links and you'll see why I say that))! ROTFLMAO! I'm still trying to figure out if he's offensively heterosexist, but he seem to be fairly open-minded, so I'm giving him a chance. At any rate, his rantings on Dubya are hysterical (although he might resent (or at least claim to) the application of such a woman-oriented adjective, but tough shit for him)! I got to his site because I was trying to figure out what the hell is the deal with Matt Drudge and the "Drudge Report", since I'm always seeing references to it. I just went to the site for the first time, and it doesn't give a lot of information about what it is or what its point is (I hate that in a site). The impression I've gotten from when I've seen it referenced is that it's a conservative site, but I wanted to just see it for myself, and it doesn't actually seem to say anywhere, so I was doing a Google search, and I came across this Eightheadz guy's rant about Matt Drudge patronizing gay bars... Note: Examples of the particularly suspect rants with regard to heterosexism: ads target gay domestic abuse and transsexual sergeant gets demoted for lacking a commanding presence. I mean, really there's no question that the viewpoints he espouses are heterosexist, and yet, he's funny, and witty; he does use critical thinking, and he's really not a blatant bigot. (I actually think he's personally not really a bigot at all—he's just not willing to totally disassociate from the heterosexist assumptions of his formative culture, at least not publicly.) He seems to represent a sort of fairly common semi-ignorant, semi-stereotypical, mostly-self-unexamined normative view of sexuality ("I don't really care what gays do...yeah, they should have rights and all...but man, just don't make me think about what they actually do...ewwww!—now two chicks going at it while I watch, that's another story!) ;) One way to think of it, at least he's giving press to these issues, and presenting a non-hateful-if-not-totally-enlightened viewpoint for many of his readers who might otherwise just wallow in a totally unexamined "man, fags are sick!!!" mentality. Anyway, that's my two cents. More on (*) I'm figuring that for a young-liberal-white-middle-class-intellectual type such as myself, reading a couple of Iraqi blogs and another couple en français doesn't really count for much (although for an American it's a hell of a lot better than average!)... I mean, come on now, let's try for a bit further outside of our box... Public Radio's Marketplace Airs Flawed Commentary To: letters@marketplace.org Dear Marketplace, I am writing to let you know that as a MoveOn.org supporter, a member of the US public, and a would-be Public Radio supporter, I am very unhappy about the recent Marketplace segment featuring former Reagan speechwriter Clark Judge. Judge accused MoveOn and its members of hypocrisy for supporting campaign finance reform while accepting matching funds from George Soros. He also called MoveOn Voter Fund ads "negative campaigning". In fact, rather than attacking Bush personally, as Republicans are already doing to presidential challengers, MoveOn ads simply tell the truth about the negative consequences of Bush administration policies. I am not unhappy because Marketplace allowed a conservative individual to give a highly biased commentary with which I strongly disagree, but rather because Marketplace failed in its journalistic duty to provide appropriate context for this commentary. First, Judge himself was inadequately contextualized: Marketplace did not introduce him as a former speechwriter and special assistant to the Reagan administration, nor did it explain that the "White House Writers Group" is in fact a consulting firm run by Judge and another former Reagan speechwriter. Second, no mention was made of the fact that the money from Soros was in fact a matching grant intended to encourage small donors to participate in the political process: so far ordinary people have given $7.8 million to the Voter Fund in average donations of $35. Judge's simplisitc commentary utterly failed to address the complexities of reforming campaign financing and bringing people back into the political process. The basic argument for campaign finance reform is that money should not give wealthy people access to decision-makers. Neither the Soros matching grant nor the MoveOn.org Voter Fund are buying anyone access to elected leadership. On the contrary: MoveOn.org is empowering ordinary Americans to affect the direction of our country. This is democracy in action. Sincerely, Madeline Althoff Proud to be an American? Hardly. Child offenders are people convicted of crimes committed when they were below the age of 18. In a report issued today, Amnesty International documents executions of such offenders in eight countries since 1990: China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States of America, and Yemen. Most of these countries have now changed their laws to ban the use of death penalty against children, leaving the USA as the only country which openly acknowledges executing child offenders and which claims for itself the right to do so. "The USA promotes itself as global human rights champion, yet it accounts for 13 of the 19 known executions of child offenders reported since 1998," Amnesty International continued, "As other violators drop away, the United States could be said to be the least progressive country in the world on this issue." ... P.S.
George W. Bush
is "a miserable failure on foreign
policy and on the economy and he's got to be replaced."
George Bush Has Got to Go! *** Flush Bush! *** Anyone But Bush in 2004! *** Have you taken a good look at George W. Bush lately? |
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—> All of this rambling is © 2004 Madeline Althoff <—
to come...
