The Malcontent

I'll Pretend If You Will

Oddly enough, I saw this the other night: Teen Fatally Stabbed at Oak Forest Party

Well, saw in the sense that I mosied past the scene, watched the crowd, wondered what happened as an ambulance pulled away. It's a quiet burb, and something like this doesn't happen very often. I've even been in that very house, many, many years ago at a classmate's third grade birthday party.

The story, of course, is the usual rundown you often get. Nice kid, well-liked, killed tragically. Fairly cursory media coverage.

Then there is the comments section on the newspaper's website. They've since done some scrubbing, but it was kind of amazing that the commenters were explaining what happened in far more depth and detail than the reporters. The deleted comments laid out a story of drug dealers, cocaine, and money gone wrong. What's stranger is the editorial choice to clean the comments about the victim while leaving intact the one about the suspect.

It's just interesting how we report these things. Assuming the deleted comments were truish (and they seemed plausible to me from what I know of the situation), it seems we often scrub the bad out of any seedy story, pretend as if these events are random and unexplainable. As if a drug deal gone wrong is as unavoidable as a bolt of lightning falling from the sky. With Chicago sunk deep into an epidemic of youth murders and violence, the local media seem to have elevated this sort of papering over to an art form. One story last year detailed a twelve or thirteen year-old kid murdered for cash. The coverage was the usual "My baby was a nice boy and never did anything wrong." Flowers, vigils, the victim well-liked and friendly, smiling in school photos.

And partially running an illegal gambling ring with ties to drugs and gang violence.

But they'll get to that. Eventually. After everyone has moved on to the next tragic story.

Isn't part of solving a problem admitting you have one in the first place? If the media can barely bring themselves to mention the causes for the violence, why do they keep pretending to ask what they are in those banal, soul-searching editorials about the horror and mystery of it all?

I'm all for sensitivity to victims, but at some point the constant, pitying whitewashing starts working against uncovering what is wrong with this city.

Simple Explanations, Etc.

I've long thought the criticisms of Sarah Palin were always far more about her detractors than about her. Listen closely to the people who hate her most, and it doesn't take long to find their insecurities and bigotries bubbling to the surface.

There's quite a bit of that happening in the wake of her resignation, and countless experts are certainly spending entirely too much time on this inconsequential figure explaining why their neuroses are justified entirely by the vaccuum of knowledge they seem to have accrued about the woman.

So naturally, I must give this sort of speculation a go. Here's why I think Palin resigned.

She had to pay to go to work. Seriously. $500k in attorneys fees for frivolous ethics complaints by petty, vindictive political opponents? If I had to wake up every morning, stumble into the office, and then pay them $100 an hour for the pleasure of dealing with any of my co-workers, I'd be out. Hell, out? I'd not have shown up at all. My alarm clock would be met with a middle finger and a baseball bat.

It wouldn't be strange or bizarre or erratic or <insert mystery synonym degrading to women here>.

It would be the commonest of common sense. All of us would do it.

See? There's my explanation. And it didn't even require a imaginative, hallucinatory journey up her birth canal brought on by heavy doses of steroids and other assorted, uhm, medicines from demented barebacking lunatics.

I'm pretty sure I win.

God Love Her

I still adore Sarah Palin. I can't help it. Not for her political brilliance, mind you, but for her curious ability to drive certain misogynistic, anti-semitic lunatics right off a cliff.

It's like standing in the grocery store, watching a small child fling cans of soup from shelves while dangling off the cart. The parent is fuming and would very much like to beat the child right there in the aisle. But they can't because you're staring straight at them with an expression of barely suppressed glee while the voice in your head is chanting, "Please lose your shit, please lose your shit," like a nascar fan praying for a car crash.

Sarah Palin is my supermarket superstar. She drives all the right people crazy in all the best ways. Her politics are awful, her qualifications for office non-existant, but anyone who can make so many self-puffed douchebags go that shade of scarlet cannot possibly be all bad.

Thanks, Gwyneth!

I've insomnia, I'm exhausted, and I hate her, so why not.

Gwyneth Paltrow speaks almost perfect Spanish - and she does it with an Iberian accent.

But no matter the language, Gwyneth Paltrow will still manage some fiercely self-obsessed bullshit.

The Oscar-winning actress says she traveled to Spain as a teenager, fell in love with the country, and embraces the culture to the point that she visits at least once a year and makes sure her young children, Apple and Moses, also speak the language.

Which is a good thing, because once they're free of your pointlessly eccentric grasp, Apple and Moses will realize their names look fucking ridiculous in English.

"When I was 15, I went to a small town outside Talavera de la Reina and I had the most wonderful experience. It really changed my life," Paltrow said in fluent Spanish during a recent interview.

"I'll never forget the day Santiago gave me madeira, and made a woman of me, and made me wear that ridiculous hat, and told me I was a really good actress."

"It is so different from the United States. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it's from 500 B.C., it's incredible," she said.

Eddie Izzard, call your attorney.

"Also, the way people live over there. They seem to enjoy life a little bit more. They aren't running around as much as in New York. They enjoy time with the family. They don't always have their Blackberries on."

Of course they enjoy living there more. Unlike Americans, they haven't been mercilessly subjected to your films. And I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I keep my Blackberry on just so I can be immediately texted the very instant that you finally go away.

Paltrow remains close to the family she lived with in Spain, calling them "my Spanish mother" and "my brothers" from Spain. Her success as an actress, she says, hasn't impressed them.

And you still aren't taking the hint! And who wrote this article, the national tourism board? A Spanish family from Spain who also live in Spain. Spain!

The 36-year-old actress, who is married to Coldplay's Chris Martin, says she talks to her children in Spanish.

Wait, she knows Spanish? I wish they'd mentioned this fact earlier in the article, otherwise I wouldn't be so adrift in this cold darkness where I'm somehow unaware of Gwyneth's dazzling linguistic abilities. Did I miss where she - or this reporter - were hired by the Rosetta fucking Stone?

"Moses speaks a little bit, but understands everything. Apple speaks a lot," she says.

Mostly to social services, in chilling tones of quiet desperation.

Paltrow shot "Spain ... on the Road Again" with chef Mario Batali, cooking expert Mark Bittman and actress Claudia Bassols. They traveled throughout the country, sampling traditional foods and praising the virtues of Spain, its people and cuisine.

But mostly they praised Gwyneth's amazing ability to stammer out an "hola".

She's also writing a book on U.S. cuisine with Spanish influence that is due out next year. " ... I love food, I love to eat," she says. "I can't go on diets. I have to do a lot of exercise."

Because that's who I turn to for cooking advice - bulimics.

She also enjoys Mexican, Italian and Japanese food.

Especially on its way back up.

Has she considered acting in Spanish?

You poor Spanish bastards from Spain. Run!

"I would love to. I haven't found the script yet, but the first (movie) would have to be a small role, not very important, because I imagine I would have to get used to acting in Spanish," she says.

Oh, fuck it, this is too easy.

Paltrow says she'd like to work with Spanish directors Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar and Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. And she says she would like to work again with Mexico's Alfonso Cuaron, who directed her in 1998's "Great Expectations."

To low box office returns.

She is now shooting "Iron Man 2," in which she reprises her role as Pepper Potts. "We're all back together: Robert Downey, Jon Favreau, the director. And Scarlett Johansson is with us, Mickey Rourke. ... It's a phenomenal group, we are having a great time."

Forcing a recovering addict to interact with Gwyneth Paltrow is just cruel.

Anyway, this was wildly inappropriate and pointless, but a great deal of fun. I feel much better now.

There Oughta Be A Law

See, here is where current gay outrage is about to veer wildly off the tracks and ultimately cost us support. It's as pointless as it was inevitable. Pam Spaulding started it by comparing gay leadership to House Negroes and Uncle Toms. John Aravosis, an eloquent, reasoned defender of the cause a raging hysteric, ran with it, and now there a thousand different fights across the internet about who's offended by the comparison, who suffered more in history, blacks or gays, and the usual circular firing squad spinning so wildly that it's more a vortex of cannon fire.

I propose a new internet law in the spirit of Godwin's Law. We could call it Stowe's Law.

The longer a significant group of internet gays are outraged, the more likely poorly thought out comparisons to the Black Civil Rights struggle will be made. This will invariably result in an Oppression Olympics that alienates and infuriates everyone involved while accomplishing nothing at all.

Something along those lines. It always happens.

Is It Bashing If We're Ok With It?

Polo Molina, living out every gay man's true fantasy:

Police have charged the tour manager of the Black Eye Peas with assault after he allegedly gave celebrity blogger Perez Hilton a black eye outside a Toronto nightclub.

Hilton, who is openly gay, said in interview with the Associated press that he called will.i.am a "faggot," a gay slur, inside the club after the musician told the blogger not to write about his band on his Web site.

In a side note that I'm sure will shock and chagrin everyone, GLAAD has never really much cared that our minstreling little mascot has largely bounced through the world declaring faggotry against people. If only he had called will.i.am the n-word. They would've had the press release out before the first punch was thrown.

Update: GLAAD finally cares! Though, to be fair, this one was a touch hard to ignore.

Hilton's video is a lot of fun. It took six pauses to gradually press through the entire egoistic trainwreck. I had to recharge my personal dignity roughly every thirty seconds as it was rapidly leeched away by his lack of same. Ace covers the broadstrokes here. That's about right. He truly is one of the dumbest creatures alive.

Baldwin To Gays: No, But Seriously, Pay Us

Just caught openly gay legislator Tammy Baldwin on Rachel Maddow. The full blown apologia for the administration was expected. So was her continued support of Barney Frank's imploding fundraiser. Still, you have to admire the tenacious logic of loyal Democrats.

MADDOW: . . . There is a lot of discontent, as I know you're aware of. Are you still planning on attending that fundraiser, and do you feel like you understand people's anger?

BALDWIN: Not only do I understand the sense of impatience and frustration, as a lesbian I feel it myself. And I think part of my role in attending the event next week is to convey the sense of urgency and to convey the sense of impatience and frustration that I'm hearing. You know, when you lack basic equality and basic civil rights, we ought to be impatient. That's a mandate if you're an activist. And so I think that this is a very important message to convey, and really hopefully get things moving a little more quickly in Congress as well as, uh, bringing things to the President's desk to sign.

So basically, the President has no idea how angry the community is with him. However, if you toss a thousand or so bucks in his direction, he might start gathering an inkling. Cash and conveyance are synonyms to these people.

And we all know nothing evokes impatience more than a party at a palatial spa.

Edit - Whoops. This was posted by Robbie, not Matt.

The Craigslist President

The most apt comment I've read about today's tokenism:

Obama is like all the men on gay hook up sites. They all promise 8″ or more, but when you meet them it’s barely 5″, but ya go ahead and do it anyways because, well, you drove all the way over there.

And afterwards, Joe Solmonese tells all his friends it was actually nine.

Obama Administration Gets A Savaging

This seems to be snowballing. Dan Savage reacts to tonight's presidential signing:

Which brings us back to sheer insulting incompetence of this idiot maneuver. Why announce a bold plan and an Oval Office signing ceremony for a something-or-other that will "extend federal benefits" to the partners of gay employees... when that package does not include the only workplace benefit that most people can name off the tops of their fucking heads: health insurance? This is your big gesture to mollify your gay critics? This is designed to calm the waters in the wake of your DOMA betrayal? When I wrote earlier tonight that the federal benefits Obama is extending "are by no means trivial," I was naturally operating under the assumption that these benefits would include health insurance. They do not. What benefits will federal employees enjoy the day after tomorrow anyway? Discounted entrance fees to our national parks?

. . .

This is worse than insulting. This is outrageous, another slap in the face, salt in the wound left by last week's DOMA betrayal. Fuck the Obama administration. That DNC fundraiser next week has to be shut down.

The question facing this administration and the broader community is whether or not the power structure as it has been commonly understood in D.C. will hold in the face of all this anger. The professional gay overclass that has spent the past twenty years telling politicians they had the community under control seems about to fail spectacularly.

Personal Poddity

It's a genetic compulsion and there's not much to be done for it.

When Podsednik was released by the White Sox, I mysteriously stopped following baseball. Now I always have the game on in the background.

Strange that.