Author: Ophelia Benson

Jesus.

On April 10, 2010, Raquel Nelson lost her 4-year-old son. Nelson was crossing a busy Marietta, Georgia, street with her son and his two siblings when they were struck by a hit-and-run driver. Police were able to track down the driver, Jerry Guy, who later admitted he had been drinking and had taken painkillers the night of the accident. He was also mostly blind in one eye.  Guy had already been convicted of two prior hit-and-runs. He pleaded guilty, served six months of his five-year sentence, and was released last October.

…Last week Nelson herself was convicted on three charges related to her son’s death: reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway and second-degree homicide by vehicle. Each is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 12 months in prison. Nelson could spend up to six times as many months in jail as the man who struck her son and then fled the scene. Nelson’s crime: jaywalking.

“Jaywalking” – because the bus stop is on the other side of a busy street from Nelson’s apartment building, and there is no crosswalk nearby, so people who get off the bus at that stop cross outside a crosswalk, in other words they “jaywalk.”

And then they get prosecuted for it, and convicted (by people who never take the bus). The rich hate the poor; whites hate blacks; everybody hates women.

Unstinkingbelievable.

There’s a petition you can sign if you want to. It asks the judge not to send Nelson to jail.

Seen Rebecca’s dating advice? I think it’s pretty damn funny, and apposite. More apposite than I’d like it to be.

I don’t exactly see myself on either “team,” to the extent that there are two “teams.” I don’t think absolutely every single thing said and done on either side is 100% correct and perfect and right, so I’m not really on either “team” if that’s what it takes. But I don’t suppose anybody on either “team” really thinks either “team” is 100% correct and perfect and right any more than I do, so maybe that’s not what it takes.

At any rate I’m not on any team that calls Rebecca “Twatson” or thinks that her dating advice is a reason to declare that she’s a fucking bitch. And I think her dating advice is funny.

Someone did a transcript there, so I’ll give you a couple of highlights in case you don’t have time to watch it right now.

And I just wanted to, ah, to address some of the questions you’ve all had.  Um, I don’t really have a lot of time right now, but I thought I would just address the one BIG question, (serious look) the one that I keep seeing over and over and over again.  Which is something along these lines:  “I’m a man, and I don’t see, uh, the PROBLEM, in cornering a woman in an elevator and inviting her back to my room, despite the fact that she said she’s tired and going to bed, despite the fact that she said she didn’t want to be hit on (shrug) and, despite the fact that I’ve never talked to her before;  I don’t see a problem with the situation.  So if you say I can’t do THAT, then, HOW can I possibly get laid?”

And (headshake) the answer to that, is that… you probably can’t.  (wry look)  You probably can’t get laid.  Because, I think most normal people see that situation, and they realize “Oh okay, yeah, that’s not an appropriate time to, uh, ask a woman to come back to my hotel room.”  And those of you who didn’t see that right away, y’know, there’s another subset of normal people, who said “Oh, well, it didn’t occur to me that that would be seen as creepy or weird or undesirable.  So thank you for pointing it out; I will not do that in the future.”  So y’know, most normal people get that, and they can then go forward and flirt with members of the opposite sex in a normal manner that may or may not result in sex for them.

But y’know, those of you who are asking that question obviously can’t do that.  So, I would recommend that you look at OTHER ways to maybe get your rocks off.  Like, I dunno, maybe one of those dolls?   They, they sell those… (indicates vague shape, wry-faced)  They’re kind of expensive I think, I dunno, I’ve never priced one myself, but I’ve seen a documentary on it, and they’re really… They’re LIFELIKE, but… their mouths are only used for sucking (pinchy hand gesture and chuckle)  y’know, so no worries about them… very calmly… giving you advice on how to approach a woman or how not to approach a woman.

When I was a zookeeper, I had a folksy supervisor who hailed from Oklahoma. One day he remarked apropos of I forget what, “I have the kind of luck that if somebody cut a woman in half and gave me half, I’d get the half that talks.” Rebecca’s joke is kind of like that…except that hers is funny. Her delivery is funny, too. She’s good at the wry deadpan thing.

Y’know, the point of me uploading the video previously wasn’t necessarily to GIVE sex advice, but to give advice on how we, as a community, might go about making our community a more inviting one to women.  But, a lot of you just have no interest in that (headshake)… you just wanted the sex advice.  So there it is, my advice to you is to buy one of those really expensive dolls, and… fuck that!  (smile)  So I hope that helps.  Thank you again to everybody who’s commented.  I haven’t really read any of them, in the past, uh, few weeks, but hey!  Keep it up, because you seem to… You seem to really enjoy it.  (warm smile) So, thanks.

Judith Martin herself couldn’t have done it better.

How to do gummint.

In the world according to ALEC, competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

Because, the national chairman of ALEC explained on Fresh Air yesterday, creating jobs isn’t the job of government; corporations are the ones that create jobs.

O rilly? I thought what corporations did was cut jobs as much as they possibly could without cutting production. I thought the job of corporations was not to create jobs but to make lotsa money for the shareholders. I thought one favored way of doing this was cutting labor costs. Jobs are all very well, but if they don’t pay anything, they tend to be more trouble than they’re worth. (I should know; I don’t get paid anything; but then I don’t call what I “do” a “job.”)

Well anyway. The Republican are determined to push us all off a cliff, so none of it matters. In a couple of weeks everybody except the very rich will be penniless. Whatevs.

How cozy.

ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics…ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more.

Corporations “helping” state legislators to craft legislation, in short. What a fantastic arrangement.

“Dozens of corporations are investing millions of dollars a year to write business-friendly legislation that is being made into law in statehouses coast to coast, with no regard for the public interest,” says Bob Edgar of Common Cause. “This is proof positive of the depth and scope of the corporate reach into our democratic processes.”

Check out ALEC exposed, and grind your teeth.