The White House Scribblers Association issued a pompous “statement” saying don’t do it to us, do it to her.

#WHCA Statement to Members on Annual Dinner pic.twitter.com/8DKoHNxpNi

— WHCA (@whca) April 30, 2018

Everybody, including news outlets, is passing around a screenshot instead of just quoting the statement in full, which is a pain for people who can’t read screenshots. The bit where Wolf is thrown overboard is:

Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and sponsorship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.

Do it to her, do it to her, … Read the rest

If “sex work” is just another job, then the state should be promoting it as such, right? Julie Bindel says Nah.

Now it would appear that the New Zealand immigration service has added “sex work” (as prostitution is increasingly described) to the list of “employment skills” for those wishing to migrate. According to information on Immigration NZ’s (INZ) website, prostitution appears on the “skilled employment” list, but not the “skill shortage” list. My research on the sex trade has taken me to a number of countries around the world, including New Zealand. Its sex trade was decriminalised in 2003, and has since been hailed by pro-prostitution campaigners as the gold standard model in regulating prostitution.

The promises

Honestly, what a spectacle.

Prominent Washington journalists, meanwhile, took pains to defend Ms. Sanders — earning their own opprobrium from some liberals who asked why reporters were sticking up for an administration that routinely impugns their work.

Not just “liberals.” It’s not a purely left-right issue – as we’ve all pointed out a million times. Trump is a terrible human being, who does bad things to people right out in the open where we can see, all day every day. I don’t think so ill of Republicans as a whole that I think they all insult and belittle anyone who disagrees with them, but Trump does do that. Michelle Wolf is a fluffy bunny compared to Trump.

Andrea

Apology is owed to @PressSec and others grossly insulted ny Michelle Wolf at White House Correspondents Assoc dinner which started with uplifting heartfelt speech by @margarettalev – comedian was worst since Imus insulted Clinton’s

— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) April 29, 2018

Apology is owed to @PressSec and others grossly insulted by Michelle Wolf at White House Correspondents Assoc dinner which started with uplifting heartfelt speech by @margarettalev – comedian was worst since Imus insulted Clintons

[typos fixed]

Has Andrea Mitchell ever tweeted that Trump owes apologies?

Has she ever said @PressSec owes apologies for lying to reporters day in and day out?

Asking for a few millions friends.… Read the rest

Catherine Bennett at the Guardian notes that fantasies of violence against women are not confined to “incels.” Reddit didn’t bother having a policy “to prohibit content that ‘encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people'” until last year.

Prior to that, content glorifying Rodger, alongside more stereotypical exhortations to violence, was presumably regarded as just the routine, woman-hating banter some men go in for, in private, and quite unlike the terrorist hate speech designed, in less respectable online communities, to conclude in murder.

At any rate, the relevant participants shortly reconvened in less censorious forums. “I want to murder a femoid,” a contributor shares on a notionally moderated site, whose signatories

In other words, this thread:

https://twitter.com/originalspin/status/990615883012689920

https://twitter.com/originalspin/status/990619787783946240

https://twitter.com/originalspin/status/990621240858525697

https://twitter.com/originalspin/status/990621859858169857… Read the rest

Good grief. The comedian at the White House reporters’ dinner last night said some words about Sarah Huckabee Sanders – who lies to those reporters every day for her dishonest bullying fraud of a boss – and people are shocked.

It is an American press tradition that goes back decades: the US president endures a friendly ribbing in front of an audience of journalists, all in the name of charity.

It’s a “tradition” I wasn’t even aware of until a day back in the 90s when I went to a bookstore reading by Christopher Hitchens of No One Left to Lie To. It was the day after that year’s dinner, which he had attended before taking the red eye … Read the rest

And then there’s this guy, via David Futrelle at We Hunted the Mammoth:

People make is sound as if the “Incel Rebellion” is a laughing matter and that people don’t understand problem.

The incels are not the problem, but rather they are a symptom that something is very wrong in our society — and unless their legitimate grievances are addressed this could very soon spiral out of control just like what happened in Iraq, Libya and Syria when their respective governments refused to address and deal with the legitimate grievances a portion of their popolation had.

Calling the Incels a bunch of virgins and “frustrated losers with communication skills equal to that of an autistic potato” is oversimplifying the

Many people are disputing Robin Hanson. He repeats the same weird nonsense.

https://twitter.com/lemon_lymann/status/990205725422088193

The same way poor people have less access to yachts and private jets.

— Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) April 28, 2018

Questioner: Barring disability, how do incels have less access to sex than anyone else?

Hanson: The same way poor people have less access to yachts and private jets.

Er, no. Sex with others is not the same kind of thing as yachts and private jets. Sex with others is with others; it requires a willing (or willing-if-paid) human being. “Access” to it isn’t like access to the local gym or access to banking services or access to the third floor. Talking of “access” to sex … Read the rest

This again. Reward the rich and punish the poor.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson proposed far-reaching changes to federal housing subsidies Wednesday, tripling rent for the poorest households and making it easier for housing authorities to impose work requirements.

Carson’s proposals, and other initiatives aimed at low-income Americans receiving federal assistance, amount to a comprehensive effort by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to restrict access to the safety net and reduce the levels of assistance for those who do qualify.

In other words, to punish the poor.

The initiative unveiled by Carson Wednesday would raise the rent for tenants in subsidized housing to 35 percent of gross income (or 35 percent of their earnings working

#kidsMW A heart-breaking moment from an SS picture of Hungarian Jews at #Auschwitz II-Birkenau in May 1944. A little child found a flower in the grass and is giving or showing it to an older boy. All the people in this picture were gassed moments later #MuseumWeek pic.twitter.com/FkKFORleS9

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) April 27, 2018

… Read the rest

Oh good, an “interesting” thought experiment. Robin Hanson, an economist, looks at envy and redistribution:

Incels obsess over their own unattractiveness – dividing the world into alphas and betas, with betas just your average, frustrated idiot dude, and omegas, as the incels often call themselves, the lowest of the low, scorned by everyone – they then use that self-acceptance as an insulation.

Basically, their virginity is a discrimination or apartheid issue, and only a state-distributed girlfriend programme, outlawing multiple partners, can rectify this grand injustice. … Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista killer, uploaded a video to YouTube about his “retribution” against attractive women who wouldn’t sleep with him (and the attractive men they would sleep with) before killing six

Back at the beginning of the week…

https://twitter.com/kjwinston11/status/988569276750618624

Kimberly covered the non-religious beat at RNS and we talked several times. There was a lot of shock-horror at this (including from me); now it is explained: Columbia Journalism Review reports:

EARLY IN THE MORNING on Monday, April 23, members and followers of the “God beat” awoke to upsetting news. “I am no longer at @RNS, and that’s about all I can say,” tweeted Jerome Socolovsky, until then the editor in chief of Religion News Service. “It was an honor to lead such a dazzling news team.”

His departure—later revealed to be a firing—seemed to come out of nowhere. But current and former staff members say it has, in fact, been

Zoe Williams has some thoughts on “incels”:

Some of the fault, in their eyes, is with attractive men who have sex with too many women – “We need to do something about the polygamy problem,” said the Incelcast, an astonishing three-hour podcast about the Toronto attack – but, of course, the main problem is women themselves, who become foes as people, but also as a political entity. There is a lot of discussion about how best to punish them, with mass rape fantasies and threads on how to follow women without getting arrested, just for the thrill of having them notice you. Feminism is held responsible for a dude who can’t get laid, and birth control is said to

The US health care “system” is chaotic but there’s one thing we can say: it’s the worst of its kind.

The U.S. health care system has been subject to heated debate over the past decade, but one thing that has remained consistent is the level of performance, which has been ranked as the worst among industrialized nations for the fifth time, according to the 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey 2014. The U.K. ranked best with Switzerland following a close second.

Isn’t that impressive? Go us.

The Commonwealth Fund report compares the U.S. with 10 other nations: France, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K. were all judged to be superior based on various factors.

It turns out Bill Cosby isn’t nice Cliff Huxtable after all.

The 80-year-old actor, a fixture in American family entertainment for decades, erupted in response to a suggestion by the Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, that his bail should be revoked because he was a potential flight risk and owned a plane.

“He doesn’t have a plane, you asshole!” Mr. Cosby shouted. It was all the more startling coming from a man once beloved as the mild Dr. Cliff Huxtable on his hit NBC sitcom, the Jell-O pudding pitchman and the whimsical creator of the character Fat Albert.

In other news, sitcoms are not reality.… Read the rest

Who?

Bill Cosby. Finally.

A jury found Bill Cosby guilty Thursday of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home near here 14 years ago, capping the downfall of one of the world’s best-known entertainers, and offering a measure of satisfaction to the dozens of women who for years have accused him of similar assaults against them.

Finally.

On the second day of its deliberations at the Montgomery County Courthouse in this town northwest of Philadelphia, the jury returned to convict Mr. Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, at the time a Temple University employee he had mentored.

The three counts — penetration with lack of consent, penetration while unconscious, and penetration after

A couple more exhibits at the San Francisco public library’s Degenderettes installation:

Note the barbed wire wrapped around the bottom one. Those bats are not for hitting baseballs, they’re for hitting women.

An axe and a “femme sledgehammer.”

As far as I know these are still there, still on display. In a public library.… Read the rest