<![CDATA[Jezebel: will bower]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: will bower]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/willbower http://jezebel.com/tag/willbower <![CDATA[With All This Voting Going On, Who Will Protect Our Right To Swear With Impunity?]]>

  • If you weren't already aware, voter turnout is really high. That's led to some scattered problems, which will be chronicled after the jump. [Washington Post]
  • In the mean time, the fucking Supreme Court heard the fucking case about fucking swearing on fucking TV. They didn't say "fuck" once, so I felt like someone had to. [Washington Post]
  • A lot of people in California who really love each other rushed to get married today in case a bunch of small-minded, easily-led voters decide to make it illegal today for them to do so tomorrow. [NY Times]
  • Joe Lieberman "fears" for the future of this country if the Democrats gain a filibuster-proof majority today, and has vowed to join with Republicans to filibuster anything they want to show his contempt for his constituents and the Americans who decided they were okay with a Democratic Senate. [Think Progress]
  • Actor Tim Robbins was the most prominent victim of the ironically-named Help America Vote Act's mandated purges of voter rolls today. Being rather well-informed, he took his ass to court to force the city of New York to allow him to vote in the regular fashion, rather than provisionally since it would have gotten discarded. Can we just agree HAVA needs to be revisited next year? [NY Times]
  • Rudy and Judith Nathan Giuliani apparent had no such difficulties and even got to cut in line. [Village Voice]
  • Some people in Detroit waited 4-5 hours to vote. [CNN]
  • Ditto in St. Louis. [CNN]
  • A bunch of people in New Mexico that requested absentee ballots never got them and were told to show up and cast provisional ballots, as though if one needed to vote absentee that was a possibility. [CNN]
  • At one Florida voting site, they had one machine to accommodate all the voters. Yeah, it was in a predominately African-American neighborhood. [Huffington Post]
  • There were big problems with broken machines and a lack of paper ballots in Richmond, Virginia today, too. [Huffington Post]
  • In Indiana, the GOP violated a judges orders and tried to challenge the voting status of foreclosed-upon voters. [Huffington Post]
  • Some voters in Ohio were forced to cast provisional ballots (which might or might not be counted) because poll workers screwed up and thought that the address on the license had to match the address on the registration. It doesn't. [CNN]
  • A 92-year-old woman in Texas cast her ballot from an ambulance outside the polling place when her absentee ballot didn't arrive. [CBS]
  • Joe the Motherfucking Plumber went to the wrong polling place and tried to good ol' "Do you know who I am?" when he got stopped for speeding this week. Fuck. Off. Dude. [Wonkette]
  • Joining JTMP in fucking off should be P.U.M.A. co-founder Will Bower. [CNN]
  • Not that she swears, but 114-year-old Gertrude Baines, the daughter of former slaves who voted for Obama today, probably shares that sentiment. [LA Times]
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<![CDATA[We Love Shelly-Ann & Shawn Like McAdams Loves Gosling]]>

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<![CDATA[Unflagging Hillary Supporters Perpetuating "Bitter Madwoman" Stereotype]]> The members of P.U.M.A., that utterly inane group of outraged Hillary Clinton supporters who insist on "being heard and heeded" in their continued support of Clinton for President, also seek, according to their mission statement , "to critique and oppose the misogyny, discrimination, and disinformation in the mainstream media, including mainstream blogs and other outlets of new media." However, as Slate's Dahlia Lithwick points out, the P.U.M.As are perpetuating female stereotypes just as aggressively as they allegedly hope to debunk them.

"You know her. She's got wild eyes and rumpled hair. At some point she stopped caring about the stains on her blouse. She's hurt, angry, rejected, and she's willing to take the whole damn place down with her. She is Lady Macbeth," Lithwick writes. "She is the oldest literary type around—the bitter madwoman, hellbent on revenge and willing to act against her own interest to win some respect. "

Look, we all agree that Clinton was treated with outrageous misogyny by some detractors. But even Hillary herself asked supporters to get behind Barack Obama, so to me, the P.U.M.A's aren't just perpetuating the stereotype of the "bitter madwoman," they're perpetuating another, more modern meme: one of self-absorption. There's been a lot of decrying of Generation Y narcissism, but the women of Hillary's generation were trailblazers in that sort of age-of-Aquarius "me" culture just as they were glass ceiling breakers.

P.U.M.A. found support in a very 2.0 way — through a Facebook group — so younger, social-networking happy narcissists are likely buying into their mission statement as well. Each one of its members is more concerned with "being heard" than with their own welfare or the welfare of this country. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had very similar platforms, and they are pro-female. As Lithwick notes, "These disgruntled women—whether they plan to vote for John McCain, sit out the election, or simply gobble up airtime—are tacitly working toward electing McCain; a candidate who claimed last week at a presidential forum at Saddleback Church that life begins 'at the moment of conception' and who voted against legislation ensuring equal pay for women."

Reading what P.U.M.A. spokesperson Will Bower said in an interview on HuffPo really reinforced the utter selfishness of the group's pursuit. "It's amazing," Bower said. "It's been wild. My phone is just attached to me. I'm up always. It's been the most invigorating time of my life." How nice for you. It's the increasing inability to think about anyone but ourselves that is a far scarier trope than the perpetuation of the "bitter madwoman."

The Madwoman In The Blogosphere [Slate]

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