Archive for February, 2008
What went wrong, America?
I’m posting the most adorable photo I could find. I’m posting this because if and when you click the link below, you’ll need this photo.
From Wired.com:
As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard who was court-martialed, psychologist Philip Zimbardo had access to many of the images of abuse that were taken by the guards themselves.
I got to the second photo and I started weeping and couldn’t stop.
This website started as a place to talk about music and films and pop culture. But all of that seems so trivial in the face of what I’ve just seen.
When Hurricane Katrina happened, I wasn’t in my native New Orleans, but in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, having moved away five months earlier. I was working a contract job as an Executive Assistant. Not my ideal job and not my ideal workplace, but I needed the money.
Seeing the video footage of Hurricane Katrina victims trapped at the Superdome and corpses in the street filled me with the most overwhelming sense of sorrow, anger, and shame. I went into the bathroom and cried. I didn’t really know anyone in the multi-story building, the one which housed a major financial institution. There was no way I could stop the grief and I sure didn’t want to share it with any of those strangers.
But I’m sharing this grief today because I’m once again filled with sorrow, anger, and shame. I’m ashamed to be a human being and I’m ashamed of my countrymen and women who would do these things.
In the early 1990s, my film class watched Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour, documentaries by French filmmaker Alain Resnais about the Nazi atrocities and the bombing of Japan, respectively. I’d never seen anything so revolting in my life. In the first film, there were photos of piles of skulls and hair and of lampshades made from human skin. In the second, there was footage of the shadows of people evaporated by the bomb blast and those who survived, only to have their flesh rot from radiation.
The sensation of sickness and shock was more than I could bear and I’ve never been able to watch any more footage of this type since. But I’ll never forget those images.
And I’ll never forget these.
When I was younger, I was silent when faced with racism, sexism, and homophobia. Now I think that being silent is the same thing as condoning such behavior.
I can’t be quiet about this kind of thing anymore. Life is too short. . . and in the case of the above atrocities, nasty, brutish, and short. Put me on a list; I don’t care. I’ll be proud to be on the same list with those who would speak out against such things, because those things are WRONG.
I ask again: what went wrong, America?
1 commentIs this Jack McCain the son of John McCain?
Last week one of my online friends pointed out some disturbing comments on a blog that may or may not have been made by Jack McCain, son of Republican senator John McCain. I did several Google searches but couldn’t find anything online.
So I sent the link to one of the political blogs which I read every day in the hopes that they could investigate it, but they never replied.
Today, I did some more of my own research into this. I sent the information to another political blog, but have yet to hear back from them or see the item posted on their website.
I’m rather unsettled by the idea that Jack McCain may have made these posts and no one in the mainstream media or the political blogosphere has mentioned it, and frankly, I’m tired of waiting to find out the bottom line on this issue.
Perhaps someone out there can confirm whether or not the “Jack McCain” who made these horrific, racist comments is in fact, John McCain’s son.
Here’s the story. Please note that there are offensive and graphic racial slurs below, which I am quoting directly from the postings.
One of my online friends found this blog by a guy named Jimmy O’Connor after doing a Google search on John McCain’s family.
The May 14 2004 entry has a quote from someone named “Jack McCain” at the beginning of the entry which says, “allah akbar my f***in c**k.” )
Additionally, a comment on that post by “Anonymous” but also signed “Jack McCain” says, among other things, “kill all towel heads, camel jockeys, sand n***ers, and dune coons.”
My friend also pointed out the link to the January 19 2005 post called “My last post” with several photos of Jimmy O’Connor and his friends.
The one that mentions Jack McCain (and he appears to be in several of these photos) says, “Jack McCain- F***ing Drinking in Sedona, smoking cigars, strip bars, chasing a**, and making fun of your small asians cars. good luck at Annapolis.”
A Google search of “John McCain + Sedona” yielded a link which states that John and Cindy McCain have a cabin in Sedona, Arizona:.
I’ve been comparing the photos of Jack on O’Connor’s blog, the Navy Scout site, and another site and they appear to be the same person, though again, I cannot be 100% sure because they were taken several years apart.
If these racist comments did indeed come from John McCain’s son, I think someone needs to ask Senator McCain about them.
IF these comments were made by the senator’s son, it can be argued that they don’t prove the senator himself is a racist because John McCain did not say these things. However, other candidates (like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee) have had troubling questions raised about their own sons during the last few months.
Yes, these comments were from four years ago, but that does not excuse them. In my experience, someone who makes such grotesquely racist comments rarely “grows out of it.”
What really bothers me is the fact that this sort of vile behavior is not congenital; it is learned.
I don’t want to think that the senator or his son have these beliefs. I would like someone to settle this issue once and for all.
1 commentSo you think you can dance?
I’m getting a little teary-eyed thinking of next year, when we’ll no longer have videos like this to entertain us.
We’ll have to look elsewhere to see such amazing dancing.
George W. Bush dancing in Tanzania, February 2008
And for old times’ sake. . .
George W. Bush dances and plays drums
Bonus: George W. Bush dances AND Condi dances, too!
