Jezebel: genocide olympics

Is Fox News Looking For Drama With Obama's "Baby Mama"?

Moe — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Oh, this will warm your heart: Fox News has dubbed Michelle Obama Barack's "Baby Mama." See, because "baby mama" is a term originating in the African American community used to delineate a status of romantic partner, somewhere between common-law spouse and "boo," that one attains by fathering or giving birth to a child. Over the years, as the term — which rhymes not only with "Obama" but more common terms like "drama" and "Cappadonna" — grew more common, it was embraced and co-opted by the Caucasian community to the point that it un-controversially became the name of a Tina Fey movie with two white leads and even, I believe, once used by my father as a term of endearment for my mother, who incidentally, popped out her firstborn (me) three years after exchanging vows with him. All of which is to say: isn't this great? It still isn't fully acceptable for even the most "down" white dudes to refer to their black friends as "My N——" — and, let's be honest, "my nizzle" sounds really stupid — but thanks to Fox News it's now okay for white folks to refer to such a fearsomely accomplished, disciplined black woman as Michelle Obama as Barack's "baby mama." Doesn't she seem more approachable already? Anyway, that and China finally says something to Darfur about their genocide problem, another "consummate Washington insider" finds himself on the outs, Nigerian pirates and why I called Geraldine Ferraro "sweetie" with Megan after the jump.

MOE: Okay sooooo … you know how I always say I genetically don't have the capacity to get "offended"? Uh, well. Ummmmm…holy shit. And here I thought we could maybe get in some real news today, like about how Mugabe is sort of doing on a mass scale with Zimbabweans what that weird New Jersey couple did with their foster kids and getting a few fat while leaving the less-special ones to starve…
MOE: Or how pirates control the seas off Nigeria or how this Genocide Olympics stuff has finally put pressure on China to ask the Sudanese government to uh “push forward the peacekeeping mission and political process in a balanced manner" or the great Korean Beef Beef.

MEGAN: I was just about to send you the Michelle Obama thing, too. Query: what other potential first lady has been referred to not as "the wife and the mother of his children" but as a candidate's "baby mama?" Because I'm going to say none. I guess it's apparently ok, though, because she's, like, black and that's, like, what "they" call each other, right? No subtext there, let's just make sure to remind everyone that the Obamas aren't white.
MOE: Unrelated: The Boy Scout leader they are interviewing on Fox re some natural disaster is kind of, you know, foxy. But why the open shirt, kid?
MOE: Okay, back to my belle though. Whoever approved that needs to be fired STAT.
MEGAN: Yeah, I'm gonna guess: not. Though E.D. Hill did get the ax for the terrorist fist bump thingie, even though she was, apparently, quoting an overblown story from the crazy right-wing site Human Events which I'm not going to link to.
MOE: One thing that actually really surprises me about all this too is that yesterday I was watching Fox, and O'Reilly had on that guy who made "Hillary: The Movie" — he's made a new movie about the Obamas! — and O'Reilly was all, "Oh just shut up about Michelle's antiamericanism already, she's explained it, that was back in February, she seems like a nice person, why beat up on the guy's wife," etc. etc.
MOE: And dude, that was O'Reilly.
MEGAN: Yeah, for real. But the HTM guy is, like, a total wack job, did I tell you I met him?
MOE: Incidentally he also told the guy to stop kvetching about how the campaign hadn't released Obama's college thesis on nuclear disarmament. "We all write boneheaded stuff in college, get a life."
MEGAN: Oh, and you know why they had to rush "production" of the movie? So they can advertise it without FEC intervention.
MOE: I still haven't watched it but I found it the other day whilst looking for important documents.
MEGAN: I'm just sad no one is trying to read my college thesis. It was like a solid 6 months of my life and in the whole universe, only 4 people read it.
MEGAN: Oh, well, totally get drunk and watch the movie, it's only worth watching altered.
MOE: Seriously dude, though, WHAT THE FUCK MEGAN.
MOE: Oh by the way, readers who were offended by my addressing Geraldine Ferraro "sweetie" in my Hirshman rebuttal; the original line was: "Sweetie, John McCain left his first wife in the wake of a debilitating car accident and called his second a "cunt" in front of reporters."That was a sort of rhetorical device, meant to contrast "sweetie" (representing the Obama's most noted offense against womanity) with "cunt" (representing McCain's.) It didn't work out so well in the edit, because apparently you aren't allowed to use the word "cunt" in the Washington Post, though "sweetie" is apparently passable.
MEGAN: Also, Jesus Christ, people, a little satire?
MEGAN: Oh, wait, I forgot, we're all supposed to be humorless and opinion-free. This is a news outlet!
MOE: This is getting me off-topic, but there is a (very very bronze) Hillary supporter making the rounds on Fox saying Hillary supporters are choosing McCain because they can't tolerate a "less experienced" candidate than Hillary, which I think is a crock of shit, but it was probably smart that they reverse their "sexism" argument in time for Fox to employ the term "Baby Mama." Unless Tina Fey told them it was okay?

MEGAN: Yeah, I saw her yesterday! She said she'd really like to see Clinton on McCain's ticket, so, frankly, I don't really think she's concerned with "feminist" issues per se.
MOE: Hot new phrase alert! "Consummate political insider"…spotted in today's Times and Jim Hoagland's column…three makes a trend! As I am the consummate idiot savante regarding the Beltway corporate interest groupies, I am wondering if you'll explain to me whether this Jim Johnson thing is a big deal or like if the McCain thing is that big a deal and whether there is anyone in Washington who is going to survive a campaign that banishes anyone who takes money from the corporations who actually make it or whether we are going to be left with Kucinich as a running mate.
MOE: And speaking of Kucinich, who was on O'Reilly last night as well, WHERE DID HIS WIFE GO. I miss Elizabeth.
MEGAN: I think she's probably somewhere working for peace.
9:30 AM
MEGAN: I mean, I don't think the rich stuff about Jim Johnson is a huge deal. I think the stuff about him getting a special loan from Countryside isn't really good.
MEGAN: But I think the bigger problem is how to integrate what has essentially been an "outsider" campaign with the Democratic party machine.
MEGAN: And the people that go with it, some of whom are sketchy. It's not like all lobbyists are Republican, it's not even like all corporate lobbyists are Republican or all shady lobbyists are Republican. There's plenty of shadiness in both parties.
MOE: Okay, we gotta return to Michelle. I'm cynical, sure, but I find this shit actually chilling. But also: it is sort of fascinating. There is so little range when it comes to public stereotypes of black women. Like, part of them are trying to cast her as a cold imperious vengeful anti-American bitch, and the rest are just like "no man, just call her BABY MAMA." Think of all the illicit sex they must have had that summer with all the Spike Lee movies. I hear they had chocolate ice cream on their first date. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT'S CODE FOR????
MEGAN: mmmm, chocolate ice cream
MEGAN: Oh, wait, right, we were talking about race.
MEGAN: I actually sort of beat MoDo to the punch yesterday, after I'd read a bunch of really good bloggy stuff about it.

MEGAN: Like, where are all the women who were crying sexism two weeks ago? Because all the stuff I've seen about baby mama and Michelle Obama — until fucking Maureen Dowd — in the MSM has been written by men.
MEGAN: It seems like most of them are still crying over Clinton even as the right wingers are re-writing their 1992 attacks about Clinton's fitness to be First Lady because of her baking skills and (gasp) having a career to suit Michelle, with a lovely little side of racial overtones.

"Plump But Not Fat" For China Looks Kinda Ana To Us

Moe — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:40:22 EST

In preparation for the Olympics, the Chinese government is hiring female college students to serve as "ambassadors" from each of its major cities. Would you believe appearance is apparently factoring into the hiring decisions? And it's gotten competitive: in an effort to make sure its city is remembered for the most attractive girls, Shanghai officials established a list of VERY WEIRD STRICT appearance guidelines as to who ought to be hired for the job. Recruiters were instructed to seek out girls with "elastic skin" and a "ruddy and shiny complexion." (Re the "ruddy" part =I guess they're still supposed to pretend they like, revere peasants or something in China? Jezebel Sinophiles, do you know?) Much much weirder, the rules included strict ratios governing almost all the proportions of the face, and the posession of a "plump but not fat body."

Ummmmm, so the hostesses pictured above are plump? Anyway, the best part of the story is that officials totally denied there were any physical guidelines, and a local newspaper turned around and printed the little red rulebook in detailing all the specifications, according to the blog Shanghai Scrap (The URL looks like "Shanghai is crap", which would have been a better name but still.)

really wish that I had picked up on what might be some of the weirdest Olympics news of the year, hidden - in clear view - in this sentence from Xinhua's reiteration of the Xinmin Evening News story:
It also set strict standards on facial features, including the ratio between the "width of the nose and the length of the face", "width of the mouth and width between the pupils", Shanghai's Xinmin Evening News reported.

Fans of Leonardo DaVinci and/or Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, should/could/will recognize what's going on here: the renowned Golden Ratio - 1.618 - has been enlisted to choose Shanghai's contingent of Olympic hostesses. There's a whole lot of internet literature on the Golden Ratio and its tenuous connection to Western aesthetics, so google around if you want a deeper explanation.

Oh, please Google it. And if you happen to read Chinese...click below for the rulebook itself. We are DYING for a translation.

Golden Ratios And Other Forbidden Fetishes Of Shanghai Bureaucrats [Shanghai Scrap]

Thank You, Mia Farrow, For Ruining Steven Spielberg's Olympics

Moe — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:00:58 EST

It hasn't gotten quite the press of, say, Scarlett Johnasson's phone banking for Obama, but Mia Farrow has exploited every waning ounce of her celebrity reminding the press freedom-enjoying community that China imports billions of dollars worth of oil from the Sudan, sometimes trading that oil for weapons and anyway propping up a genocidal Arab dictatorship that might stop butchering its citzens if it exercised its economic muscle. But yesterday's announcement that Steven Spielberg would step down from his post as a creative director for the upcoming Olympic Games is a huge — if somewhat Pyhrric — victory for her cause. See, China could very easily sway the murderous Sudanese government to let up on its human rights abuses. But to do so would be to acknowledge that such a thing as "human rights" exists. And by extension that the current power structure in China can only claim to have been good for the country's humans because it inflicted so much senseless inhumanity and brutal oppression in the forty years preceding the present era that the country actually appears, relative to the days in which kids were brainwashed into beating up their parents and shit, to be not so bad.

China will certainly appear, to the millions who attend its utterly whitewashed, coalfire/street people/industrial belch-free/parallel universe-inhabiting Olympic Games, to be not so bad. And shit, on a historical scale or compared alongside conditions in much of the Third World, that's true. But for the same 1.5 billion reasons guys like Spielberg are so transfixed by the place, women like Mia Farrow — and Angelina Jolie and George Clooney, who is not a woman but maybe we could make him an honorary one for this purpose — are doing their public duty as famous people who know lots of other famous people, to look out for less famous ones. I love you, Mia Farrow, and I'm glad you didn't need to have anyone's legs broken over this; the power of your message seemed to be enough.

Spielberg Quits [Washington Post]
MiaFarrow.org
Script Issues Block Cusack Film From Shooting In China [USA Today]

The Only Race Tighter Than Cindy McCain's Bun...

Moe — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:30:59 EST

Staying in to catch the "Potomac Primary" because you continue to be transfixed by this campaign's endless cliffhangeration/and also, fucking cold? Prepare with this primer! [Wash Post]
The (ever-reliable) exit polls have Obama winning over Virginia's women AND old. [Wonkette]
But he's not feeling too cocky yet: "We haven't even gotten through this yet, come on, man," Obama to a Virginia voter wondering about his prospects in the March 4 Texas Primary. [WSJ]
Cindy McCain's hair, meanwhile... "Her platinum locks weren't merely wound into a neat French twist. They were elaborately coiled, looped, balanced and bolted down like a piece of Frank Gehry architecture...She appeared to be dressed for the coronation itself." [Wash Post]
Steven Spielberg on resigning from the Genocide Olympics: "My time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur." [WSJ]
SNL to return in ten days; Gossip Girl by April. [NY Mag]

Teenagers "risk addiction after trying a cigarette just once." [Bullshit! I have been smoking since fifteen on and haven't smoked one since Saturday. And come to think of it, let's break that spell right now...-Me] [NYT]
2 Live Crew's Luther "Uncle Luke" Campbell 2 B filmed 4 VH1 reality show. [Allhiphop]
Sundry Satan type pundit Glenn Beck on his favorite drink: "As a conservative, I guess it's what you'd expect: I drink the blood of small people who are different than me." [NY Mag]
Someone asked for a post on John Fitzgerald Page's CNN appearance but, like, seriously, it's on Gawker if you want it. Somewhere I have a freelance piece by a guy who worked odd Craigslist marketing jobs with him one summer that I keep meaning to run...should I? Are you still curious about this balding, baffling specimen of badly-socialized momhate? Okayyy [Gawker]