At the Stop Sign Café...

... you could be starting something.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: A man wheeled a large pile of...

...shit that had a "Hello My Name Is Scott Walker" sign stuck in it.

They were posing for democracy and crying for liberty.

The NYT contained some "[r]idiculous downplaying of the chaotic scenes that have been unfolding for the last 18 hours."

Jesse Jackson returned.

"100 protesters were removed from the antechamber to the Wisconsin Assembly chamber which will, imminently, vote on the bill passed last night by the Senate."

"Retire to the dirt, usurper of American freedom."

Sign at a protest before a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia at Wesleyan University.

"Who's going to save you when you get attacked?"

Here's what today's rally at the Wisconsin Capitol was like for me:



If you don't know the "last time" that's referred to at 1:08, it's when I was attacked on August 12, 2011.

Note that I am taunted for not having a husband at my side, and how, later, Meade is mocked for failing to save me from the earlier attack. That's some weird sexism. I appear alone in a crowd and people I don't know address me by name, ask repeatedly "Where's Laurence?" and add "Who's going to save you when you get attacked?" Yes, they are smiling and the vocal intonations are sassy. Well, the video is there for your assessment. Please discuss.

Bonus giant papier maché Scott Walker at the end.

ADDED: At 0:33, the woman says: "Your new husband — it's so sad." I think she means to rub it in that I am alone. I get the sense that these people are trying to make me and then Meade and me angry, which isn't going to happen. I really mostly just couldn't understand why they were so dumb. They seem to feel empowered by their numbers and my aloneness, but they can see I'm filming, and they're only interested in harassing me because I've put things on the internet in the past. Are they so into the moment that they don't have a clue that I'm going to put up this blog post?

Wisconsin Senate Democrats are losing some union members.

"Lyle Balistreri... represents more than 15-thousand construction trades workers in southeast Wisconsin, men and women who would have benefited from the mining reform bill."

"For the Senate Democrats to vote against this bill is a sign that they're not with us. They're certainly not job creators, and in fact they're job killers. And I'm sick and tired of the partisan politics in the State of Wisconsin. The working people in the state of are taking a beating. Democrats and Republicans are at each other's throats, and this sort of thing has to stop."

ADDED: David Blaska writes:

Real people in economically depressed Northern Wisconsin are paying the price for the Democratic Party’s fealty to government employee unions. Who has declared war on the middle class? Democrats have....

Legislative Democrats defeated the mining bill in order to sabotage the governor’s job-creation efforts. Those Democrats intend to play working men and women off each other: they’ll happily trade the industrial unions, whose numbers have been declining for decades, in exchange for the more numerous and more prosperous teachers unions and AFSCME affiliates.

At the Wisconsin protests today — one year after protesters stormed the Capitol.

As the Wisconsin State Journal puts it: "Union members rallied outside the Wisconsin Capitol on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the Republican-led Legislature's passage of a hotly-disputed measure that stripped most public union workers of collective bargaining rights."



How do they know who's a union member? There was a huge crowd, including lots of children (and dogs!) on this sunny warm Saturday:



They couldn't have all been union members. But I saw lots of generic printed signs and flags, and there were massive trucks painted with "Teamsters" and "Boilermakers" imagery.

Speaking of imagery, here's a woman holding a sign depicting Governor Scott Walker's head emerging from a hairy asshole. The sign reads "Buttholes for Billionaire$:



Another sign depicts Scott Walker peeing on the words "Public Employees." Walker has a Hitler mustache and the words read "Gov. Dick Tater":



(Is this sexist, an insult to all men, to call one man a "dick"?)

The socialists were there:



They want to tax the rich.

There were puppeteers... who had trouble wrangling the papier maché Scott Walker in the March wind:



There was this young woman aligning Governor Walker with murderers Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer:



"Wisconsin regrets Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Scott Walker." Oh, there's always so much to regret. Grisly mass murders... balancing the state budget...

... spending a beautiful Saturday photographing the deeply aggrieved.

At the Aconite Café...

... it's still winter, and yet...

Ah, but I see winter aconite is poison:

In Greek and Roman mythology, Medea tried to kill Theseus by poisoning him by putting aconite in his wine, in that culture thought to be the saliva of Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the Underworld. Hercules dragged Cerberus up from the Underworld, while the dog turned his face away from the light, barking and depositing saliva along the path. The saliva hardened in the soil and produced its lethal poison in the plants that grew from the soil. Because it was formed and grew on hard stones, farmers called it 'aconite' (from the Greek akone, meaning 'whetstone').

Medea is an anagram for Meade. Meade, who knows all about plants and who, upon seeing this photograph, said "winter aconite." Checking anagrams... Ann, I erect it, ow!... Well, well. The subject Meadhouse fan fiction has already come up on the blog today.

What is the carbon footprint of the 340-ton rock transported on a 196-wheel vehicle on an 11-day journey to an art museum in L.A.?

And why doesn't The New York Times, celebrating the project on its website front page, question the environmentalism of this project?

It's art precisely because it has no practical use. Meanwhile, driving a mid-sized car or turning on an incandescent lightbulb is an environmental sin, characteristic of our ordinary lives, for which the NYT never tires of shaming us.

***

We talked about this art work last month: here.

Here's the rock's Twitter feed: "I'm going to sleep like a rock tonight..." etc. etc.

"And yet the perception is that last week was bad for Republicans and good for the Dems. What gives?"

Says Instapundit, noting today's Rasmussen tracking poll that has Romney at 48, Obama 43 and even Santorum at 46, with Obama at 45.

As an example of that perception he's referring to, check out Jonathan Chait:

Today's report that the economy added 227,000 jobs last month, and far more than expected the previous two months,  seems as good an occasion as any to take stock of President Obama’s electoral standing.

Obama has clearly improved his position.... Pretty much everything has moved his way all at once. The recovery, which stalled last year, is picking up speed, and perceptions of the economy are improving along with it. The Republican candidates have all hurtled rightward and lost popularity in the center. Obama has managed to establish a contrast against the wildly unpopular Republican House rather than allow himself to be sucked down into its dysfunction.

And here's Rush Limbaugh — the infamous Rush Limbaugh — on his show yesterday, talking about the media as "now just willing accomplices of the Democrat Party." Excerpt:

Just remember, folks, in 2005, 2006, unemployment in this country was at 5% under the hated, despised, and dreaded George W. Bush.  "Job Growth Remains Brisk in February."  "Healthcare Continues to Lead Employment Growth," TheHill.com.  "Employment Grows Solidly for Third Straight Month."  So the new normal is more than twice as high as unacceptable unemployment under Bush.  The new normal, what the media says is a roaring economy; what the media says is a steady economic upbeat; what the media says is job market improving; what the media says is brisk job growth.  Eight-point-three percent unemployment is more than twice as high as what was unacceptable unemployment during George W. Bush. 

Bill Maher to Rush Limbaugh: "You know what, Rush, when you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people all the time like I do..."

I've already blogged about what Bill Maher said on his show last night about Rush Limbaugh, so forgive me if you've already had enough of the Maher-Limbaugh topic, but this really is something else and I have something different to say. Maher said:

The word that they're upset about. I never said on this show.

What is he referring to? He did call Sarah Palin a "dumb twat" on the show. (See?)

It was in my standup act, which I consider the last bastion of free speech. 

The word, apparently, is "cunt," and he used it in his standup show. He tones it down a notch for HBO.

There's a reason people compare me to George Carlin — 'cause we're standup comedians. 

By the way, "twat" wasn't even on  Carlin's original list of "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." "Cunt" was. Later, Carlin expanded the list, and "twat" got on along with "fart" and "turd." It's like a late year in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones got in long ago, like 2002 and they're getting around to Gene Pitney and Brenda Lee. It's an analogy! I don't owe Brenda an apology. If people are too dumb to handle analogies, why do we even have democracy? Let's just make Obama king, stop talking about politics, and spend our lives dancing and singing.

Did you watch that Carlin clip? Astounding! Maher cites "people" who compare him to George Carlin. He doesn't dare claim the comparison sprang out of his own semi-bald dome. But I'll compare him to Carlin: Bill Maher is not at all as funny or perceptive as George Carlin. Now that's a comparison. What did those other people who compared Maher to Carlin say? I'd like to know, because I'd like to do a comparison comparison. I think mine is better.

Back to this quote from last night that I'm trying to analyze:

Rush Limbaugh likes to say he's a comedian. 

No, he doesn't! Rush's critics like to call him a comedian. When it suits their purposes. Other times they like to say he's the spokesman for the Republican Party. And that's what Rush likes to say. I listen to the show all the time, so I know what he likes to say. Unlike a lot of people who love to hate Rush and simply react to out-of-context quotes they've been fed.

But Rush uses humor. He likes to "use absurdity to illustrate the absurd."

Mayer continues:

You know what, Rush, when you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people all the time like I do and make them spill their fuckin' guts out and laugh their asses off for 90 minutes, you're a comedian. 

Rush doesn't do theater shows — which tend to be scripted with crafted jokes told one after the other — and let's grant Maher that Rush would be bad at that. But Rush does sit down at a microphone 3 hours a day, 5 days a week and hold the attention of not 3,000 people but many millions. For 20 years. Maher could not do that. These are different activities. Both deploy humor as they talk about politics, but they do it in a different way. Maher's bragging that he's doing much more than Rush... it's as off as the implication that he's as good as Carlin.

But you're not a comedian. And when you do that, I say, my rule: You get a little extra leeway. 

Each humorist can decide for himself how much leeway he's going to take. And people will decide whether to give it to him. He can't dictate a rule, except as a joke. You don't get the leeway because you do standup comedy (or a radio show using absurdity to illustrate absurdity). You get what people feel like giving you. And what we feel is a response to what you do. It's a mystery why we feel the way we do. We're not following any rules. It's a personal relationship, like love.

But if I offended women, I'm sorry. I don't have a problem saying I'm sorry. 

Oh, but you do, Bill. Because that is not an apology. It's easy to say "I'm sorry" in the sorry-if-you-are-offended form, i.e., a nonapology.

I don't know why women would want to align themselves with Sarah Palin. I don't know why an insult to her is an insult to all women, but if it is, I'm sorry.

If... and obviously, you don't think it is. The joke — not a terribly good one, not anything that's going to make us spill our "fuckin' guts" out over— is that women shouldn't see Sarah Palin as one of the women who count. If we can isolate her over there with the bad people, we can call her a name that is specific to women: a "cunt." Is the use of a woman-specific insult something that switches the subject to all women? That is, is "cunt" like a racist epithet? If one black person is called the n-word, the topic ceases to be whether that one black person is a bad guy. Or is "cunt" like "dick"? If one guy is called a "dick," we stay on topic: the way that one guy is a "dick." I wrote "cunt," "dick," and "n-word," so you can see what my answer is. I'm for sexual equality... and abandoning the famously hurtful racial epithet.

So let humorists of all kinds select the language they want to use. Let them be gentle or cutting. There are all sorts of things you can do with words. There are no rules. There are no 7 dirty words for TV or extra leeway for extracting puke from 3,000 theater-ticket buyers. There is a mystery to using words to reach other human beings, and you're all on your own.

A soft-porn, pulpy romance novel hits #1 on the NYT ebook list...

... and the NYT writes a lifestyle-trends-type article about it.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” and the two other titles in the series were written by a British author named E L James, a former television executive who began the trilogy by posting fan fiction online. The books, which were released in the last year, center on the lives (and affection for whips, chains and handcuffs) of Christian Grey, a rich, handsome tycoon, and Anastasia Steele, an innocent college student, who enter into a dominant-submissive relationship....

Steele. Always Steele. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Steele."

Recognize that quote? It's on page 123 of "The Catcher in the Rye." Holden Caulfield is introducing himself to a prostitute. He also claims to be 22, which he's not, causing her to say "Like fun you are" and him to observe "It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid. You'd think a prostitute and all would say 'Like hell you are' or 'Cut the crap' instead of 'Like fun you are.'" So the prostitute is too young and so is he and he felt peculiar. "Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling. I felt much more depressed than sexy."

But lots of women today are feeling really sexy and not depressed when they read about the handsome tycoon whipping the innocent girl who has the manly name of Steele. She's Steele, he's Grey. Who really has the power in this S&M relationship? (← Thoroughly conventional intriguing/boring question.)

“It’s relighting a fire under a lot of marriages,” said Lyss Stern, the founder of DivaMoms.com and one of the early fans of the series. “I think it makes you feel sexy again, reading the books.”...

“Women just feel like it’s O.K. to read it,” [said a Long Island woman who didn't want her name printed]. “It’s taboo for women to admit that they watch pornography, but for some reason it’s O.K. to admit that they’re reading this book.”...

“What I found fascinating is that there are all these supermotivated, smart, educated women saying this was like the greatest thing they’ve ever read,” said Meg Lazarus, a 38-year-old former lawyer in Scarsdale, whose friends and acquaintances have been buzzing about the book. “I don’t get it. There’s a lot of violence, and this guy is abhorrent sometimes.”

Buzzing. The vibrator reference also appears in the headline: "Discreetly Digital, Erotic Novel Sets American Women Abuzz."

Anyone remember when the Anais Nin book "Delta of Venus" was a best seller, back in the 1970s? It was the erotic book that all the ladies who thought they were above reading pornography were suddenly able to read. But "Delta of Venus" was considered high-quality literature, and that was a big part of why women — the NYT-reading-type woman — felt okay about reading it. Look at it — very classy literary vibe.

No one is saying "Shades of Grey" is quality literature. They're just saying it's effective as pornography. It's sexually arousing. But isn't that true of endless romance novels with handsome tycoons in them? What made it okay to read? There's a quote in the article: "in the 21st century, women have the ability to read this kind of material without anybody knowing what they’re reading, because they can read them on their iPads and Kindles." But that still doesn't say what made everyone converge on the same porn novel at the same time, making it #1? According to the NYT, it seems to be extremely strong internet word-of-mouth. A Barnes & Noble VP says: "I think this shows very clearly what the blog network can do."

Blogs! They can do everything. They can make ladies in Scarsdale plow through a plodding, stupid novel about a rich man with a riding crop and the innocent little lamb who loves him.

"Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality..."

"... and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation."

Robert Louis Stevenson,  An Apology for Idlers (Kindle Locations 122-125).

On his show tonight, Bill Maher says he's not defending Rush Limbaugh.

"I'm defending living in a country where people don't have to be afraid that they might go out of the bounds for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesmen?... I would rather put up with Rush Limbaugh and live in a country where people do have freedom of speech. And the people who I've heard who say 'You know what, when they put pressure on his sponsors the system is working' — no, it's not. That's the system being manipulated. I lived through that 10 years ago."

***

Here's Maher's tweet that people interpreted as defending Limbaugh.

Here's the information about what happened to Maher 10 years ago. His late-night ABC show "Politically Incorrect" was canceled after a controversy over an edgy remark he made one week after the September 11th. ("We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.")

***

Maher went on to criticize that "fat fuck" Limbaugh: Right-wingers have made a "false equivalence" between Limbaugh and him. "I am a potty mouth. That's different from a misogynist."

At the Target Café...

... I'm afraid of all the metaphors.

If Obama could say "Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking painkillers" to an elderly woman with a bad heart...

... then, in parallel fashion, why shouldn't the government tell young women who want birth control that they are better off using condoms rather than more expensive methods? Condoms, after all, give protection against STDs as well as pregnancy. It would control costs: no doctor visits needed, no calamitous side-effects to treat. Make free condoms plentifully available everywhere.

Remember, Obama took some heat for standing up to the woman who talked about the "spirit" of her 100-year-old mother. If old people are going to get pills instead of surgery, why shouldn't young people have to accept condoms? And shouldn't the government be promoting condoms for disease control anyway?

What will happen to all the left-wing comedians after all the attention to Limbaugh's "slut" controversy?

Here's Greta Van Susteren kicking up a storm about Louis C.K. being the headliner at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner. Apparently, Louis C.K. has said some rather nasty things about a woman named Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, Gloria Allred thinks Rush Limbaugh should be prosecuted for his ill-received prostitution metaphor.

UPDATE: Louis C.K. pulls out. Now they have a big opportunity to get someone totally inoffensive and bore the pants off everyone. Can I say "pants"? Is that okay in nambypamby America?