Asskicker of the Week: The State of New York, which passed a law allowing same-sex marriage, becoming the largest state to do so. Impressively, they managed it in a Republican-controlled Assembly, 33-29, with 4 Republican votes, including Roy McDonald, who summed up his feelings politely here and much more awesomely as quoted in the New York Daily News, which I really hope is the version committed to future history textbooks:
You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this.
Oh and before I forget again, here's another asskicker (it's easier to get an unqualified title in science or something than in politics, I guess, but them's the breaks), with the absolute coolest caption title in the history of journalism:
DR. SARAH PARCHAK
SPACE ARCHAEOLOGIST
It's not like you need any more than that but here's basically what Parchak does: working out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she's pioneered a method of searching out archaeological digs via satellites. By doing this, she can alert local governments of areas that might need protection from looters based on what looks like undisturbed tombs, and also they've discovered 17 news pyramids in this way. But let's get back to basics, here:
Photo by Abdalla Hassan for the International Herald Tribute, via New York Times.
As ever, it's difficult to tell what's going on in the Middle East and difficult to tell who's going to come out looking good (if anyone). But a strong asskicking candidate is Bothaina Kamel, the first woman to run for the presidency of Egypt. Profiled in the New York Times (linked), Kamel is a Muslim woman who was formerly a news reader under the old administration until she began to suspect she was being used as a mouthpiece for propaganda. So she took leaves of absences rather than read any story she suspected of being false, then took to the streets before and during the Egypt protests this spring. Since the protests, Kamel has continued to take the fight to the security forces currently running Egypt, withholding judgment until she could investigate, then laying the responsibility at the feet of the military government. Even providing the military government holds to its current oath that it wants to get out of power as soon as possible, it's not going to be easy to run for president when the security council is running an open file on her. Since the original protests, Kamel has advocated lowering the age of public service to 20 in recognition of the young people that led the protests, and is pictured above walking with and listening to the concerns of the Coptic Christians protesting the sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians that has cropped up since the end of the major protests in Egypt. Honestly? It's impossible to know what's going to come out of this, but just based on this running record, I'm pretty comfortable saying Kamel is kicking some ass. Peace with justice style.
Oh for the love of... I bet you thought the Badminton World Federation would be a dark horse for being villains on the world stage, but you were wrong! Because the Badminton World Federation recently added an official rule at the recommendation of Octagon, an international marketing firm, that requires all female badminton players to wear skirts. In addition to being, wow, such a terrible move, it also effectively bans Muslim women from competition (or at least puts them at a disadvantage, since they have to wear a skirt over pants). And yes, that's enough, but good lord, having gone to see the BWF's take on the story I found this article, containing these choice quotes, by which I mean I basically removed three sentences about badminton from this piece:
"Japan’s Miyuki Maeda has legions of admirers from around the world as not only is she handy with a racquet, but her good looks attracts those who may not normally watch badminton."
"“For my career, I always try my very best. If possible, I would like to win medals in the World Championships and Olympics. Any medal would do, as long as it is pretty … gold is a pretty colour, yes,” she said with a big laugh, flashing that big smile which has captured many a heart."
"The 5’7’’ (169cm) tall right-hander admitted some of the attention from her fans can be unerring at times as she doesn’t consider herself pretty at all.
“I’m honoured that some fans may say I’m good looking or that Japan have many pretty badminton players, but honestly, I don’t think I’m special,” she said modestly.
“I don’t do anything out of the ordinary to pretty myself up. I just go out there to play and to have fun. Maybe the fans see us smiling all the time and think ‘that’s pretty’.”
Maeda, however, admitted she does like to dress up away from the court and loves to go shopping, especially for clothes, but has no personal favourite brand.
So, does she have a boyfriend? Maeda turned a little red, started to laugh before replying: “That’s a secret!” When asked if it is a secret because she has too many boyfriends, she put a finger to her lips before laughing out loud and saying: “That’s an even bigger secret!”
Maeda, who loves cooking Japanese food, is also into Korean and Japanese BBQ and said she has no problem eating spicy food.
“I normally cook Japanese dishes but I want to learn to cook other types of food as well,” said Maeda, who followed up her India Open victory by bagging the YONEX SUNRISE Malaysia Open Grand Prix Gold a week later. “Cooking is good.”
Maeda should know, as she is certainly quite a dish!"
So, over the summer, I may just post occasionally whenever anything just jumps out at me as particularly asskicking or asshattish in the news. These are, as always, open to any submissions.
"Images of lions killing a zebra and a dead medieval soldier with an arrow sticking in his back dramatize the ethics complaints filed by obscure Alaskan citizens, which Palin has cited as the primary reason for her sudden resignation in July of 2009."
And I'm not just calling it propaganda to be a jerk, it's actually being developed as a campaign tool, which means it's probably going to be reported as news, which means she is NEVER GOING AWAY. At this point, we should probably start trying things from comic books. Can we get her to say her name backwards?
But, on the side of hope for human decency, we have Zochrot (remembrance), an Israeli organization working to promote the teaching and remembrance of the Palestinian exile in the face of a recent law that prohibits public events mourning, commemorating or protesting the "Nakba" (catastrophe). Now, this is not something that easily splits into the AH/AK dichotomy. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is, of course, a wildly controversial problem that's just chewed up and spit out its what, umpteenth diplomat? And certainly there are majority Israeli views with weight to them that the Nakba events are aimed at the catastrophe not at the exile of the Palestinians but at the creation of the state of Israel itself, and that any demonstration attacking the existence of the state is fair game for the state to ban at public events.
But while these issues are complicated, there are a few canaries in the coal mine that apply across human conflict, and when any group sets about to intentionally remove a minority narrative from public consciousness-- whenever a climate becomes so closed that teachers receive threatening letters for what they're teaching and students ask if it's still allowed to learn about something-- your canary is quite sickly. So kudos to Zochrot for adding something to this mess that's not a heaping pile of disdain for the other side.
Well, just missed a few weeks there, not like anything huge has happened, this shouldn't take too long...
Crap. Ok, off to the races here. This is going to be just a general catch-up, and full disclosure-- we didn't really discuss most of these so much as I remember seeing them.
Well, he's dead-- Osama Bin Laden was found and immediately killed in his frankly gaudy and huge compound in Abbottobad, Pakistan, home of a Pakistan military garrison, with no help from the Pakistan military. So now there's a number of competitors for the title of minor asshat: the Pakistan military, because, what, the conspiracy theorists claiming he's not really dead and this is all just one of Dark Wizard Obama's many tricks (sorry, illusions), Our Friend Sarah Palin who's claiming that the pictures of Bin Laden's destroyed body should be released into the wild because that's such an awesome idea on so many levels, and a whole bunch of douchenozzles claiming that we finally won because we made the great decision to torture a whole bunch of people. And it's a little gross to see the disregard for human life all over the media and in the general public, with endless jokes that aren't even really funny, pointing out "we shot him! we shot him in the head! with blood and stuff!" over and over again.
But there's nothing that's really going to stand up to the guy himself, here. Even though it's troubling to see the disrespect being thrown around, being old enough to have been in on the conversation in 2001 means remembering when the whole country was too damn scared and angry to be troubled about anything. And when I think of the changes in my country since that day, the ratcheting up of fear, racism, hatred, blind trust of the government, complete loss of any moral center-- sure, America was far from perfect before Sept. 11, 2001. But a whole lot of what's made everyone miserable lately was born or nurtured in the maelstrom of panic and grief brought on by this asshat.
That's right, even in the absence of people backing me up, I'm going to go ahead and call Osama Bin Laden a bad name. I'm that sure about this one.
I'm going to be so happy when I don't have to look at this jerk's face anymore.
The Arab Spring is moving ominously towards Arab Summer, which doesn't sound nearly as nice. Gaddafi is still in power, and still being just as bad as he can possibly be. NATO is still engaged in attempting to maintain a ceasefire, but the situation is complicated on the ground, the rebels have an uphill fight, and bad things have happened in the past because we lent military aid to freedom fighters, so what can we even cheer for here? Things are at a stalemate, which is somehow even less fun and satisfying in real life than it is in chess. However, Gaddafi remains an asshat.
In short, we live in a world crying out for some asskickers.
Syria's protesters are remaining largely nonviolent, as protests against the Assad dynasty stretch on. As the protesters' demands have grown, the military has become more and more engaged, working live ammunition into the crowds as they march out of morning prayers. And as they've grown more violent, the Assad family has been working harder and harder to silence their country, which has for a long time had a "fear barrier" preventing any negative talk about the ruling family. So an asskicker award for those human rights organizations and expatriates who are working to maintain the flow of information across Syrian borders, trying to prevent truth from becoming a casualty of war.
John McCain has shown flashes of his old self lately, which is welcome. His editorial in the Washington Post laid out his argument against torture, regardless of whether it works, but especially because it doesn't, at a time when lots of people were and still are spouting crap about Guantanamo being the reason we got Bin Laden. He also lays out that for the record, waterboarded prisoners gave false and misleading information, while the actual tip on Bin Laden's courier came from a prisoner who was not tortured. His opponents on this include actual politicians like Michael Mukasey and Rick Santorum, continuing a career of great press moves by telling John McCain he doesn't understand torture, so it's not a non-issue. And it's certainly one where he'd be more popular with his own party if he'd just shut up. Good to see you again, John McCain, gosh, how long has it been?
So, not to glorify violence or anything, but yeah, Obama And Company. Navy SEAL Team Six did the deed, but Bin Laden's death came after some tough decision making, a long-term intelligence-based campaign that focused on, you know, actually going after Al-Qaeda rather than a handy nearby country that is way easier to attack and happens to also have a lot of natural resources and maybe they have bombs, you never know. But also, some credit goes to Obama for weathering the inane and ridiculous attacks of freaking Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, releasing his Hawaiian birth certificate -- yes I know, you're thinking, "didn't he do that during the election?" and the answer is yes, but Trump wanted the long-form version, which is actually less valid, and holy crap THIS GUY. But we don't have to spend any time making fun of Donald Trump, because Obama also kind of ripped him to shreds during the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner. I mean, not Tina Fey-level satire, but one guy is the President and the other guy was in the audience, so this is pretty hefty taunting. And this was after he'd given the order to start the raid on Bin Laden's compound, having been given 55/45 odds of success. (Fun fact: way better odds than finding a person polled who believes Obama was definitely born in the U.S., even after the long-form thing came out!)
And then afterwards, he interrupted Trump's Celebrity Apprentice to tell everyone Bin Laden was dead. Look, posterity, I know this isn't an unsullied presidency and there are serious issues with the status quo. But holy crap, posterity, you have to admit that was kind of kickass.
Oh, and Prince William of the United Kingdom married Kate Middleton, who everyone in the world now knows an unhealthy amount of crap about. And while it'd probably go against the populist leanings of the sacred Asskicker title to start handing it out to royalty, I'm going to just close out by sending honors in the direction of Paul Mealor, who wrote this absolutely kickass arrangement of Ubi Caritas for the wedding, and the choir that performed it.
Yes, you can certainly tell I was the one putting the list together this time (if I had my way, everything would end with a choral piece!). Think of this as a reminder of just how diverse the views are at the Table at its best, and take it with the grain of salt that I haven't really been able to pay that much attention to the news, so I'm probably missing lots of important stories and perspectives here. Critical thinking! Do it. Probably updates will be scattershot over the summer, and I hope we can pick up group updates again as time goes on.
Musa Ibrahim, spokesman of the Gaddafi administration. Now of course, just that much makes him eligible for some standard-level asshat nominations every other day or so. But really, he pulls in front of the pack by the specific ways in which he manages to represent what is looking more every day like one of the worst governments in history. Case in point: when Iman al-Obeidi burst into a foreign press room to tell journalists that she had been gang-raped by Gaddafi's soldiers, Ibrahim told the press (after she was dragged away by secret police and hotel staff) that al-Obeidi was drunk and mentally ill. Now just to let the rage subside so I can continue typing................................. ok, it's not subsiding. We the Blog have some personal and professional issues tied up with this question, so let's just keep it simple: discrediting a politically oppressed person's story of abuse by saying they are mentally ill is insidious and evil. It is also the second-oldest trick in the book (right after "she's a woman, you know how they are"). As evil as it is, being intimidated is just what he wants, so let's just call Musa Ibrahim what he is: just some loathesome asshat who can't even keep his own story straight for two weeks.
Oh and since then? He's announced that's she's being charged with defamation.
Deep breath.
Next up:
The Florida GOP, for chastising Rep. Scott Randolph (D) for using the word "uterus" on the statehouse floor (pictured is spokeswoman Katie Betta). Now here's a case that really demonstrates the versatility of this category by going from the evil end of the spectrum to the stupid end. This is easily the most idiotic thing I've heard all year. Would only it were an April Fools' Day joke. GOP officials expressed concerns that young statehouse pages were hearing the absolute smut that is the word "uterus." Hey Florida GOP: your page program is for kids 12-14. If those kids haven't heard the word "uterus" yet, and they're your example of Florida's best and brightest, you are doing Florida wrong. Although to be fair, I'm not sure anyone has ever done Florida right. In conclusion, uterus uterus uterus uterus uterus. Vagina.
And finally, mounting a comeback long after we kind of forgot about them (man, it's nice sometimes to not be the Gulf Coast, isn't it?), we've got the executives of Transocean, who gave their highest-paid executives bonuses for having a banner safety year after Transocean's cooperation with BP on the Deepwater Horizon drill resulted in a months-long oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico that many consider the worst ecological disaster in North American history as well as the loss of eleven lives, nine of which were Transocean employees. Either every other site Transoceans works on is so safe and pure the employees ride unicorns, or those internal safety goals were mighty damn low.
Asskickers of the Week:
Iman al-Obeidi. Hey, guess how hard it is to publicly announce you were raped. A few days ago. In Libya. To a bunch of foreigners. Being chased by the secret police who are part of the same organization responsible for your rape. And continuing to fight them and the complicit hotel staff for nearly an hour as they break cameras, threaten you with knives and try to physically muffle you. And knowing that eventually they will succeed in dragging you away. Let's give al-Obeidi the credit she deserves here: holy crap did she work hard to make sure people knew that Gaddafi wasn't who he said he was and that not all of Tripoli is happy with him. There's been reports that she's been freed from the official authorities, but if she has, her family still doesn't know about it. Honorable mention to the journalists who tried to protect her, but she had to have known they wouldn't be able to-- that's why she started telling her story as soon as she got in the door.She knew this was coming when she did what she did. And she's astounding for it.
Olga Kotelko, of Canada, is 91 years old and holds most of the track and field records for her age group for the fairly simple reason that 91-year-old women do not tend to compete in track and field. However, although it's impressive to begin with that she's out there, she's beating the people closest to her in age by significant margins. She doesn't skimp on events either, competing in running, jumping and throwing events. This is just plain awesome, in both the modern and more accurate uses of the term.
Seana McKenna and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. McKenna is going to be the first cross-gendered lead in Richard III at the festival this summer. Women have done Hamlet before, and of course there's lots of gender-bending all through Shakespeare, but Richard III is "the character actor's Hamlet" and hasn't been done before. That being said, this isn't breaking any particular social barrier or anything: it's just a wicked awesome idea, it's got some good thoughtful reasoning behind it, it's a team of excellent artists... and let's face it, she looks pretty kickass as Richard. Art! It's pretty cool!
And finally we've got Hideaki Akaiwa, whose story of Asskickery is good enough to make it worth going to work on Monday even in the face of all those asshats. When Akaiwa, of Ishinomaki, Japan, realized the tsunami was imminent, he put on scuba gear and dove into the tidal wave.
Let's just pause and let that sink in for a minute.
Somehow Akaiwa swam all the way to his home, where his wife was trapped inside the house and quickly running out of air. They shared his scuba respirator until he got her to safety, then he went back into the water to find his mother in her house and rescue her. Both women survived. Akaiwa has continued to hit the water daily in hopes of finding more survivors.
Humankind: Some of us are jerks, most of us are mediocre, but a few of us are gorram superheroes.
