FOX News Pretending to Report News

Always be wary of FOX News.

Okay, right. But, still, you know … sometimes people need reminding. That is, sure, the crazy uncle who wrecks every holiday dinner with his newsletter nitwitting is a lost cause, but the younger relatives might need the occasional reminder.

So, Maggie Thurber aptly demonstrates what FOX News is all about with a spectacular lede:

Using a cell phone in a school or construction zone may soon be illegal in Ohio.

Oh, dear Christ, what are those sneaky liberals doing in Ohio?

A bill introduced by Rep. Rex Damschroder, R-Fremont, would prohibit the use of any electronic wireless device when in a construction zone during actual work hours.

Right. First point: A Republican bill.

But neither is this the problem. Go back and read those two sentences, which also constitute two paragraphs from the article.

The third paragraph is no better.

It would also make it illegal to use such devices in a school zone during hours when children are present — and that includes when they are at recess, not just during opening and closing times.

No, seriously, does nothing seem amiss, here?

It is, however, the fourth paragraph that finally starts leaning back toward reality:

House Bill 637 also makes the illegal use of cell phones for texting – writing, sending and reading – a primary offense for adults. Currently, drivers 18 years and older can only be cited for such infractions if it’s in conjunction with another traffic violation.

A-ha! Did you catch that? Actually, we hope so, since it isn’t especially clever. Thurber goes on to point out that the apparent problem with the law as it is in Ohio has something to do with the police not writing enough tickets. And while that is its own question, to be certain, it is worth noting that only two sentences make any mention of driving at all, and at no point does Thurber actually come right out and say, “Using a cell phone while driving in a school or construction zone may soon be illegal in Ohio.”

And, you know, for many of us, that sort of thing might seem obvious. But we all have that person in our lives who seems to adore tinfoil, who might listen to Michele Bachmann, cornered, explaining that if only someone had provided this birth certificate before, then Obama could have saved us the trouble of the racist Birther conspiracy, and all the while not seeming to recognize that it was the actual document we had the whole time. And we all know the potsherds ran around reciting that one, too.

And it should also be noted that the FOX News article is nothing more than an advocacy tease; you can find out the real details if only you click through to the fanatical right-wing political website.

So, you know, print and save that article for Uncle Bumbles, next time he comes around, and see how quickly he bites.

Meanwhile, as a point of fair disclosure, we at This Is are currently scratching our heads after a friend inquired about some bizarre question of the federal government trying to force elementary school children in a rural Washington state county to use transgender bathrooms. And we’re always dubious of such stories when we hear them, because nobody can actually tell us what’s going on. So apparently this is happening, because someone said that someone else told someone, and then somebody asked us to find the federal regulation involved. Because, you know, reading a widely-published judicial opinion currently circulating in the news is no different from digging through the various regulations within any given cabinet department like Education or Labor.

Still, though, that is what people like Thurber, a disgraced former county commissioner whose reputation crumbled in a campaign financing scandal, are banking on, that potential allies won’t read the detail, and potential opponents just can’t be bothered with such tripe.

And while we know FOX News is excrement, it sometimes behooves us to tread the plopped pastures and take a look at just how such crap is spread.

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Thurber, Maggie. “Proposed Ohio cell phone law raises many questions”. FOX News. 20 October 2014.

Ebola Humor, or, the American Discourse

There are those who would readily suggest that laughter is the best medicine, but we’re told that doesn’t apply to appendectomy recuperation. Nonetheless, perhaps there would be some benefit in considering the potential of laughter as a public health issue.

That is to say, it really is not appropriate to wish ill onto others. That is to suggest one ought not hope their inverse-favorite hypocritical Congressman or U.S. Senator who wailed and cried about how the president had too many policy czars and even went so far as to introduce legislation to sunset every appointed czar on a timetable and regardless of conditions on the ground and then went on to demand an Ebola czar because it was easier than explaining why Republicans refuse to confirm the nominated Surgeon General should actually have to come face to face with an ebolite suicide bomber wearing Daa’ish colors, while also acknowledging that yes, there are actually people in the world who would laugh if that happened and it’s not exactly hard to understand why.

I don’t know, is that sentence going to collapse on itself like the World Trade Center?

What’s that? Too soon? Okay, okay, okay. But it’s true that some sort of unfortunate, ghoulish, cruel joke really does seem needed here. So … er … ah … right.

Or maybe chuckling over the idea that, say, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA1) wants a promotion to the U.S. Senate.

Actually, that’s a pretty fun joke right now; he took out Rep. Paul “Pit of Hell” Broun (R-GA10), who is vacationing away the waning months of his Congressional tenure while fearmongering ebola in order to pitch for a conservative super PAC. And polling averages show Kingston trailing his Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn, by two points.

Still, though, wait ’til November to laugh. The polling data is thin, and this is Georgia, after all.

Oh, right. Jokes. Humor. Laughter. Public health.

You know what would be great for public health during this ebola crisis? If everyone just laughed at people like Jack Kingston. You know, break the tension, blow some steam, so we can get back to serious considerations.

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Huber, Adam. “You Can’t Spell ‘Pandemic’ Without ‘Panic'”. Bug Martini. 16 October 2014.

Maddow, Rachel. “GOP forgets anti-czar nonsense, calls for Ebola czar”. The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc. 17 October 2014.

Haberkorn, Jennifer. “Rep. Paul Broun: Send money, stop Ebola”. Politico. 17 October 2014.

Terrible

Alright … a grim proposition: Should domestic violence victims be allowed to defend themselves?

Please don’t ask why I ask that. Because if you do, then you need only keep reading. Nicole Flatow of ThinkProgress tries to explain:

South Carolina is one of more than 20 states that has passed an expansive Stand Your Ground law authorizing individuals to use deadly force in self-defense. The law has been used to protect a man who killed an innocent bystander while pointing his gun at several teens he called “women thugs.” But prosecutors in Charleston are drawing the line at domestic violence.

In the cases of women who claim they feared for their lives when confronted with violent intimate abusers, prosecutors say the Stand Your Ground law shouldn’t apply.

“(The Legislature’s) intent … was to provide law-abiding citizens greater protections from external threats in the form of intruders and attackers,” prosecutor Culver Kidd told the Post and Courier. “We believe that applying the statute so that its reach into our homes and personal relationships is inconsistent with (its) wording and intent.”

† † †

South Carolina is one of several states that has two self-defense provisions. One known as the Castle Doctrine authorizes occupants to use deadly force against intruders. Recently, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that this provision could not apply to fellow occupants of the home, in a case involving roommates, although that ruling was since withdrawn and the case is being re-heard this week. The Stand Your Ground law contains a separate provision that authorizes deadly force in self-defense against grave bodily harm or death in another place “where he has a right to be.” Prosecutors are arguing that neither of these laws permit one occupant of a home to use deadly force against another. But as Nicholson points out, this interpretation would yield the perverse result that both self-defense provisions explicitly exempt domestic abusers when they perpetrate violence within their own home.

Okay, really. What? What the hell are we supposed to say? Sometimes it feels like being that guy in the “dead bleepin’ alien” episode of the X-Files, wandering naked along the roadside muttering, “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”

So let us offer a statistic then, that will do exactly nothing to cheer you up: Twelve days. As in, “women are dying at a rate of one every twelve days from domestic abuse in South Carolina”.

Hello?

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Flatow, Nicole. “South Carolina Prosecutors Say Stand Your Ground Doesn’t Apply To Victims Of Domestic Violence”. ThinkProgress. 14 October 2014.

Unfortunate Thematic Consistency

Well, we would have gone with the gay joke, or the one about Daa’ish … or ebola or climate change or whatever … but, you know, this panel is, shall we say, a bit more on topic given the way things are going around here today. Via Tom Tomorrow and Daily Kos comes this look into the nightmare season, a misfortune of cyclical proportions that Hallowe’en and Election Day are so narrowly separated. To the one, Christmas starts in June, these days. To the other, it’s a Year Six election.

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Tomorrow, Tom. “The House of Feeeaaaarrrr”. This Modern World. Daily Kos Comics. 20 October 2014.

That Certain Sinking Feeling

As long as we’re wrecking your day, let us tack on the latest regarding the National Football League. Simone Sebastian and Ines Bebea bring the bad news:

It’s counterintuitive to the outside world: Women should leave their abusers, and their abusers should be punished. But the NFL is a unique universe with an overwhelmingly male workforce whose members are lionized in the press and in their communities; a we’re-all-in-this-together ethos; and incentives for the managers, coaches, and union reps to keep negative stories under wraps. Going to authorities, whether police or hospitals, means social exclusion and, more importantly, negative media attention that could end your husband’s career. Justice imperils their belonging and their livelihood.

The wives, whose husbands ended their playing careers in the 2000s, say they knew of no safe alternative — no liaison to players’ families, no counselor, and no procedure for reporting abuse. In fact, the league rarely communicates with wives at all, on issues serious or benign, even though a great number of them don’t work and are dependent on their husbands, they say. The NFL did not answer several requests for comment about league culture or how officials interact with players’ wives. Teri Patterson, deputy managing director and special counsel to the NFL Players Association, says her organization beefed up its communication with wives after she arrived in 2009. The NFLPA now holds meetings for players and their wives in 10 cities each year, plus up to five others at special events like the Super Bowl. (There are 32 teams in the league, meaning only one-third of them have access to the sessions each year.)

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, just one-quarter of the 1.3 million American women assaulted by an intimate partner each year report the attacks to the police. But the two wives interviewed for this article claimed the rate of reporting among NFL wives and girlfriends is much lower. They say the league has built a tight-knit culture, similar to a fraternity, with entrenched hierarchies and a fierce sense of loyalty among members. “You get brainwashed. It’s so ingrained that you protect the player, you just stay quiet. You learn your role is to be the supportive NFL wife,” says one of them, the onetime wife of a Saints player who asked to speak anonymously because her now ex-husband is still associated with the league. Otherwise, she says, “You’d cost him his job.”

Once upon a time, a childhood spent awash in football culture offered treasured memories. But we are living in a time when people are looking past the glories and wondering at the cost. And, yes, this chauvinistic, insane victimization looms over the sport today. True, that stings, but we’re also really, really late to this particular contest. One wonders how many wife-beaters have the stones to to take a swing at their best male friend for similar annoyance. And most of us know from observation the answer is not many. What we might observe from casual cultural references to domestic and intimate violence is pretty straightforward: You don’t treat people that way. Just women.

Or is this just the wrong time for sarcasm?

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Seastian, Simone and Ines Bebea. “For battered NFL wives, a message from the cops and the league: Keep quiet”. The Washington Post. 17 October 2014.

The Curse of “Good” News

On a depressing note, Nick Anderson of The Washington Post pauses to consider sexual violence at American colleges and universities:

The number of federal investigations into how colleges handle sexual violence reports has jumped 50 percent in the past six months, reflecting a surge of recent discrimination claims and the difficulty of resolving high-profile cases that often drag on for years.

On May 1, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released the first public list of colleges and universities under scrutiny for possible violations of federal law in their responses to sexual violence allegations.

This is overdue. Not a matter of perhaps or slightly or whatever. It’s flat overdue. To the other, just how good is good news, really, if its context is established by atrocity? Because, really, all it means is that maybe some substantial aspect of sexual violence in our society will change for the better.

It’s a big maybe.

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Anderson, Nick. “Tally of federal probes of colleges on sexual violence grows 50 percent since May”. The Washington Post. 19 October 2014.

What it Comes To: Icky Girls and Terrorism Edition

It is not necessarily the normal course for a stereotype. You know the one, about gamers and tech-heads being zit-faced, overweight, lonely guys in their mothers’ basements, and all that.

That is to say, normally such people work to overcome those stereotypes. And often it is difficult. Even Bill Cosby will tell black people to whiten up.

And then there is GamerGate, a situation we referred to last month as (ahem!) “a pretty minor scandal”.

About that … er … um … yeah.

Now just work with me here, for a moment. Please.

This is a purely behavioral phenomenon. That is to say, we might recall those who would combat racism or sexism by undertaking racist and sexist rhetoric. You know, the old argument about how there are women, and then there are bitches; or there are black people, and then there are niggers. And it is tempting to tell people to not live down to bad stereotypes, but that’s the point. Bad behavior is bad behavior, and it really shouldn’t matter what color one’s skin is or what they have between their legs.

But this? Gaming is not quite the same as being black or female.

All of which is our own little preface; the real point here is that Brianna Wu has responded to threats against her life and the lives of her family:

They’ve taken down women I care about one by one. Now, the vicious mob of the Gamergate movement is coming after me. They’ve threatened to rape me. They’ve threatened to make me choke to death on my husband’s severed genitals. They’ve threatened to murder any children I might have.

This angry horde has been allowed to wage its misogynistic war without penalty for too long. It’s time for the video game industry to stop them.

Gamergate is ostensibly about journalistic ethics. Supporters say they want to address conflicts of interest between the people that make games and the people that support them. In reality, Gamergate is a group of gamers that are willing to destroy the women who have invaded their clubhouse.

The movement is not new. Two years ago, when Anita Sarkeesian tried to crowdfund a series of videos critiquing the hypersexualized female characters of video games, they threatened to kill and rape her. The movement reached fever pitch – and got its name — when a jilted former lover of indie game developer Zoe Quinn published transcripts of her life online. Gamers who were outraged over charges that Quinn’s game Depression Quest had received favorable reviews due to an alleged romantic relationship with a journalist, seized the opportunity to shame and terrify her into hiding. Now, Gamergate is a wildfire that threatens to consume the entire games industry.

Yes. Really.

Cowardice, Hypocrisy, and Lies, or, Your Republican Party

Congress knows more than doctors can about the healthful ways of man?

It’s the old joke, again: How do you know when a Congressman is lying? His lips are moving.

Follow the bouncing Benen:

Last week, as public anxiety over Ebola grew, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) issued a statement demanding that the White House withdraw Dr. Vivek Murthy’s nomination to be Surgeon General. “Now more than ever, our nation needs to have an experienced and effective Surgeon General to help coordinate the government’s Ebola strategy,” the GOP senator argued. “It has been clear for almost a year that the president’s nominee Dr. Vivek Murthy is not the right person for this consequential job.

Except, it’s not “clear” at all.” Congressional Republicans seem to agree that it’s in the nation’s interests to have a Surgeon General, but they don’t want to take responsibility for derailing a qualified nominee. On the contrary, they now seem eager to blame President Obama for their knee-jerk obstructionism.

It really is this simple: The NRA does not like Dr. Vivek Murthy because he is among an overwhelming majority of doctors over 90%—who believe firearm violence presents a public health issue. Therefore, because the NRA disdains Dr. Murthy, he must not be properly qualified.

The Republican response has been about as predicted: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has a hold against Murthy’s nomination.

This weekend, Chuck Todd even went so far as to inquire of Sen. Roy Blunt about the holds. Benen notes the Missouri Republican’s attempt to blame President Obama:

On “Meet the Press” yesterday, for example, Chuck Todd asked Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) about the vacancy in the Surgeon General’s office. “This seems to be politics,” the host noted. “The NRA said they were going to score the vote, and suddenly everybody’s frozen. That seems a little petty in hindsight, does it not?”

Blunt replied, “Well, you know, if the president really ought to nominate people that can be confirmed to these jobs, and frankly, then we should confirm them.”

See what he did, there? If only President Obama would nominate a qualified nominee ....

Except, of course, for the obvious. He already has.