So apparently GLAAD is now into industry blackmail.
OK, so it's not blackmail, precisely. I'm just not sure what to call it. Their basic position seems to devolve to: "We think you have grievously transgresed against gays, so you should make a large donation to a cause of our choosing as a means of apology." What amazes me is that they made this demand (pardon me: "suggestion") with absolutely no sense of how this would appear when the issue broke.
I don't say that GLAAD shouldn't protest whenever they feel that defamation occurs. I do say that they can be hypersensitive about what constitutes "defamation" -- that mess with Chris Potter and Showtime's Queer as Folk last year should never have happened -- and they have absolutely no sense of proportion.
Frankly, had I been in Kevin Smith's position and been sent a letter like this, I would have responded, "Thank you for expressing your concerns," and they'd never have heard another word. The first paragraph alone gives the strong impression that unless Kevin Smith does pretty much what they say, they aren't really interested in what he has to say about anything. Nonetheless, he did meet with Scott Seomin, GLAAD's Entertainment Media Director, and things seem to have gone relatively well (including that donation).
Then, apparently, all hell broke loose. Entertainment Weekly called up Smith to ask about a quote they'd gotten from Seomin in which he said of the film, "I've never seen something so horrific." (Link is to a 133K JPG scan of the EW article at News Askew) Kevin Smith finally responded in public, at quite great length, presenting his side of the issue.
GLAAD then compound their problems by getting defensive in public and responding point-by-point to his message. (They should neve have issued that statement, certainly not as a point by point rebuttal. They should only have said that they raised their issues of concern with Kevin Smith, and they had a frank, forthright and mostly productive discussion of all their issues -- all of which seems to be quite true. Then they should have said that independently of that discussion, Kevin Smith asked to donate some money to the Foundation. And that's ALL. Their media director seems curiously ignorant of how to present GLAAD to the media.)
I don't deny that the issues GLAAD raises might not be of concern. I do note that in an R rated film, the audience they're concerned about -- especially in this Year of Our "Save The Children From The Media" Pogram -- for the most part will not be able to see the film in the first place. And I note that GLAAD is becoming positively expert at presenting themselves in a perfectly horrible light.
They're tracking the whole mess over at News Askew.
If nothing else, the whole situation is likely to convince more people to go see the film. I don't intend to, myself -- I saw the cartoon "Clerks", along with its accompanying intro and outro bits from Jay and Silent Bob, and I have no wish to subject myself to a full length film of that dreck.
@ 02:58 PM CST [Link]
I can't imagine that any major Southern university or museum would be able to approach mounting this exhibit with anything other than hesitation, if not considerable distress.
And, to be honest, although I can see that it's necessary to know and present the history ... if it were to come here, I can't imagine going to see it. It would just be too much.
@ 01:19 PM CST [Link]
Well ... somehow, I don't think they're entirely clear on the concept. Although it'll be interesting to see how they implement it. If someone is staggeringly beautiful but has been an absolute pain in the rear, will they vote her off the island?... I mean, off the stage? Will the host forget himself and say, "Miss Texas, the tribe has spoken. You are eliminated," or some such? Perhaps for the talent section, a contestant could eat 20 or 30 cockroaches, or perhaps buffalo testicles, to demonstrate her physical courage. Will they be asked whether or not their answers to the quiz are their final answers? And who gets to make up these questions, anyway? After all, you don't want questions that are too difficult in a high pressure situation like that; they'll just completely blank, and then they'll all look stupid. When one of them blows a question, maybe Anne Robinson will come out from the wings and say, "Miss Texas [or whoever], you ARE the weakest link. Good-bye!"
My goodness, the possibilities will be just endless, won't they?
@ 12:36 PM CST [Link]
Just wondering, has anyone out there worked with Go Daddy Software as a registrar at all? after-words.org is up for renewal next month, and I was thinking of transferring that domain and everafter-x.com over to them and away from Network Solutions. They're the only registrar I've found that actually lets you transfer single domains, as opposed to minimum transfers of 5, 10 or 20 domains. And they have that Better Business Bureau reliability seal, which would seem to say good things.
(Come to think of it, I won't transfer EX; I don't see the point in paying NSI's noxious prices and then turning around six months later and paying an additional $20 for the privilege.)
On the other hand ... while their registration agreement doesn't have that troublesome Network Solutions clause that says "oh, by the way, you're just renting your domain from us and really, we own it", it is a rather odd little legal agreement. For one thing, as far as I can tell, it says nothing whatsoever about who actually owns your domain name. And although the registration agreement goes into great and wondrous detail about what your responsibilities are, it says nothing whatsoever about what theirs are. There's an unenforceable and unconstitutional waiver of trial by jury and a waiver of location, should you want to sue them for some breach of contract; federal law specifically states that in person vs corporation type battles, there are rules to determine where the trial shall be held. (Generally, the person with the fewest resources wins that one.) Granted, much of this is standard unenforceable legal boilerplate.
But you'd think, given all the brouhaha over Network Solutions saying that they owned your domain, that they'd address name ownership in the contract. They do specifically address it in their support documents ... but a support document does not a contract make.
And it may all be moot, anyway. With only 30 days left in the Network Solutions contract, it's quite possible that NSI will refuse to release the name, and my only options will be to either let after-words.org lapse and then repurchase it (presuming I can get in ahead of the porn demons) or to re-register with NSI.
Decisions, decisions ....
@ 04:42 PM CST [Link]
Ah. I hadn't realized that it was four inches of rain in an hour. All I knew was that my apartment was flooding. This morning was terribly exciting.
@ 01:41 PM CST [Link]
I dare say Northwestern will be forking over either a job or funds on this one. It sounds very much as if they didn't follow their own personnel procedures. And why on earth would a music publisher make that sort of trouble at that level?
@ 01:35 PM CST [Link]
He said he was "heading back to the heartland,'' his 1,600-acre ranch near Crawford, Texas, where he was expected to spend the entire month of August. "I love to go walking out there, seeing the cows. Occasionally they talk to me, being the good listener that I am,'' Bush said.
The cows talk to him.
Really, that explains so much, doesn't it? I wonder how many people would have voted for him if he'd said that before the election?
And how is it, I wonder, that after only six months or so on the job, he gets to take a full month of vacation? I mean, yes, very stressful job and all that, but damn! At this rate, by the end of his term, he'll have taken at least a full eight months of vacation. I don't think I've taken eight months of vacation, combined, in the past eight years.
(This entry title courtesy of the "Twin Beaks" episode of Darkwing Duck, copyright Disney TM, all rights reserved and all that fun stuff.)
@ 01:18 PM CST [Link]
You know, I don't before recall seeing a picture of that sort where my first reaction was ... "is that REAL?" I mean, it has to be real, or else there's a stunning amount of both glue and patience involved. But still ... yowza!
Oh, yes. The test. Interesting, I suppose, if you allow and compensate for the raging heterosexuality throughout. Apparently, I'm a menace to society. Who knew?
@ 12:01 PM CST [Link]
You know, you almost have to wonder what the Archbishop and the Church could possibly have been thinking. They had to know that their role in this would get out. They had to know how it would look. One can only assume (1) that they don't care about prosecuting child sex abuse if it means that their priesthood would actually be responsible for reporting it, and (2) there are probably more priests out there that they know about and don't want to have to deal with.
I must admit, I do wonder how someone with the sort of cloud that Egan had hanging over him managed to get appointed Archbishop of one of the larger and more powerful archdioceses in the country. You'd think that the Church would say, "You know ... perhaps we want someone with a reputation for cooperating with people. Perhaps we want someone with a reputation for being forthcoming. Perhaps we want someone with a reputation for caring for something besides the Church itself." Apparently not.
@ 11:26 AM CST [Link]
You wonder what sorts of information is out there to make people think that this country will be any different. That a community of their countrymen in the US will be somehow magically more tolerant than they would be at home.
It's a literal prisoner's dilemma. Where would you rather be persecuted and isolated? Here or in your native land? Chance of assault and murder being probably marginally less here, but isolation being sharply increased.
@ 07:06 PM CST [Link]
I mean ... Minneapolis? Granted, the ranking will drop once California's data are released -- although I wouldn't expect Texas to have much of an effect, really, but that could be naive -- but Minneapolis?
I guess we're all snowbunnies or something.
@ 02:16 PM CST [Link]
For those of you wondering what happened to thehungersite.com and its relatives, the story at the bottom of the July 28 Star-Tribune weblog explains.
I hope the subsidiary sites to get bought up and kept around, but I can't see how it can be done other than as a loss leader for a major corporation. It's just too expensive to keep a popular site around these days.
@ 02:14 PM CST [Link]
"It's like having to go to the bathroom," Scott says of her writing. "When you got to go, you got to go. You have to obey the urge, otherwise you miss it. When I write, it's quiet in my mind. I hear the poetry, I hear the harmonies, the melodies, the percussion…"
I have never before seen anyone describe writing that way. I mean, it kind of is like that -- with somewhat less anatomical urgency, to be sure -- but doesn't that just make writing sound like a sort of unfortunate byproduct? (Of what, I'm not sure.)
@ 02:10 PM CST [Link]
Well ... I don't imagine that anyone can be surprised by this. Frankly, although I wouldn't expect newspapers not named in the suit to do anything -- they're probably hoping to surf under the radar -- I'm astonished that the NY Times hasn't done this.
@ 02:02 PM CST [Link]
Gee. What a surprise. Bush II Fraudulency isn't enthusiastic about election reform. Said reforms suggested in a report from a bipartisan commission led by former presidents Carter and Ford. I'm so shocked. No, really. I am. I'm just shocked. Stunned, even. No, really.
The suggestions which make the most sense -- linking election day to Veterans' Day and making it a paid national holiday, and establishing certain rules for federal elections -- are the ones which have no chance to go through. If Election Day becomes a national holiday, voter turnout will increase; since there are more registered Democrats than Republicans, this favors the Dems, and the Republican-controlled House and the Shrub will never go for that. Given the staggeringly disproportionate number of minority/Democrat ballot challenges in Florida and Tennessee (just to name a couple states), the Republicans will also object to allowing people to vote first and sort out challenges later. As for rules changes, the states will object to being dictated to when they've been able to pretty much set their own rules for elections until now.
Frankly, I expect that the only part which has any chance of going through is requiring states to upgrade equipment as a condition of receiving federal election funds. And somewhere out there, at least one state will probably say, "Well, fine. We don't need your money," and maintain punch ballots on general principle.
Interestingly, from the Republican-leaning LA Times (well, it's owned by the Tribune Company, and you just don't get much more Republican than that), you get a somewhat cynical evaluation of Bush II's reaction; from the more liberal-leaning Washington Post, you get something rather surprisingly neutral. Considering the things they've said about him in analyzing his policies and reactions to date, the Post's restraint is rather ... odd.
@ 01:03 PM CST [Link]
Yet again, serious Constitutional issues are raised in a case in which all sides are scum. On the one hand, we have the defendant, who is involved with organized crime, gambling and loan sharking -- seriously, a truly lovely man. On the other hand, we have the beleaguered and increasingly incompetent FBI, which, after all these years, had to know that a search warrant does not authorize you to leave anything behind; it allows you to search and take and that's it. (Well, that's enough, surely.) Any nimrod could have told them that they needed to get a wiretap authorization. For that matter, I don't understand why, when they asked for the search warrant and explained to their lawyers what they needed to do, they didn't ask their lawyers for a wiretap authorization as a matter of course, or why their lawyers didn't say, "Look, yahoos, cover your asses and get this, just in case." Why wouldn't you cover the waterfront, as it were, for all possibilities?
The FBI's position is that things don't become subject to the requirement "merely because they happen to have been typed on a computer"; that is idiocy, pure and simple. Surely it doesn't matter if the communication was sent if you can get its content?
Actually, the other thing that puzzles me is why you would EVER have touched that computer again, once it had been in FBI custody. Why wouldn't you just have assumed that your lines were tapped, your computer was somehow tapped, and gotten a new one? You type the password once, copy off the files, and then use an electronic file shredder to wipe the computer clean, five or six times. Then you install a clean copy of the operating system and let the FBI gnash their teeth in frustration.
At the very least, maybe you get someone who understands computers to tell you what sorts of programs are running.
I can hardly wait to see the sorts of comments this case will get from the Justices when it makes it to the Court. Given the ruling on the heat-transfer technology -- which is considerably less invasive -- I'd imagine that this case will get punted, in which case the government will have no evidence.
UPDATE, 1:37pm: Turns out that Scarfo never knew the FBI had touched his computer, which makes more sense. It also seems that the warrant was broader than the Times story indicates ... but I still don't understand why you wouldn't get the wiretap authorization as a CYA measure. The breadth of the warrant may make a difference in the Supreme Court reaction ... although somehow, I don't think so. As the lawyers say, this falls pretty much squarely under the decision they made in the heat-transfer technology case.
@ 12:36 PM CST [Link]
Well, hell. Just when I've finally completely given up on the damn show and decided that it can do without me next season, they suck me back in!
Frankly, I could care less if Agent Reyes is a lesbian -- any road, the last I'd heard, they hadn't decided whether or not to renew Annabeth Gish's contract, although I suppose they must have decided to do so; otherwise, that article doesn't make the least sense. I just want to see the battles royal between Lawless' character and Doggett; I can't imagine her playing anything other than a fairly strong-willed person. (Granted, I've seen her in a grand total of, I think, two roles, but that's beside the point!)
@ 11:22 AM CST [Link]
Um. Well. Yes. I must admit, I just don't quite know what to say. I didn't even know this was possible, let alone that you could make a living at it. (Although I'm betting that they will never once tour the US, somehow. I mean, can't you just see these guys in Cincinnati, the city that put Mapplethorpe on trial? Or maybe touring the Bible Belt? That'd be terribly exciting, wouldn't it?)
@ 10:58 AM CST [Link]
The desktop device looks innocent enough. Suzanne Glacken, 57, a retired Milford educator who first underwent the drill last January during a trip to visit her 30-year-old son Derek, compares it to an electrocardiograph. And she believed she had as little to fear from the Itemiser as she did from a heart machine. [...] But just a few weeks later, Glacken returned for another visit with her son, who’s serving a life sentence for murder. She routinely swiped her clothing and skin as required, and the machine’s computer panel lit up with a flashing red light. She was told she had tested positive for not one, but two street drugs: heroin and marijuana. [...]
Glacken pleaded with SBCC guards for a retest, but they refused. She demanded to see a copy of her results, to no avail. Insulted and reduced to tears, she left that day and hasn’t returned since. Glacken is one of 237 visitors among 4442 — just over five percent — who have registered at least one positive scan by the Itemiser since January. Although she misses her son "terribly," she is convinced that she could touch off the Itemiser again — something that she does not want to risk. According to DOC policy, visitors who test positive once must submit to a pat-down search; if no contraband is found, they can enter the facility. People who receive a second positive result lose the right to "contact visits" for six months. Instead, they must be separated from prisoners by a plexiglass wall while they talk over a phone. Visitors with a third positive are barred from the prison for as long as DOC officials see fit. Glacken can’t shake her fear of being banned from visiting her son, she says. Nor can she shake the sense of shame that comes from "being flagged a heroin user by a machine."
"It’s like I’m Hester Prynne," Glacken adds. "I’ve got this big scarlet letter on my chest. Except I haven’t done anything wrong."
So in order to avoid a formal ban, the poor woman end up banning herself, effectively.
Once upon a time, we supposedly had something called "presumption of innocence" in this country, which meant that you had to go through a trial and evidence gathering and all that fun stuff before you could be pronounced guilty of a crime. Apparently, having relatives in prison is enough cause to remove all presumption of innocence. (To be sure, in this hyper-media day and age, "presumption of innocence" no longer exists, but we like to pretend it does.)
In a society in which it's estimated that 90 percent of all currency has had contact with illegal drugs in some way or another, you'd think that they'd know better than to use a device like this. At the very least, you'd think they'd install some sorts of safeguards and procedures against incorrect results.
@ 10:50 AM CST [Link]
OK, now this is just ridiculous. Why on earth should how you go bald make such a big difference in how long you live? It's just hair, dammit!
@ 10:34 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!
