AK/AH: Summer League

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.

(I personally like to think he then stood up, walked dramatically across the room, and slid his name over to the "Yea" side of the board, but I don't think they use those anymore.)

So kudos to those guys who switched sides and are taking a big political hit for this, and kudos to those whose support was never in doubt. 

AK/AH: Summer League

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: 

SPACE ARCHAEOLOGIST.

Kickass.

AK/AH: Summer League

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.

via

AK/AH: Summer League (5/30)

        

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!"

OH.  FOR.  PETE'S.  SAKE.  

Good luck with those sexism allegations, asshats!

AK/AH: Summer League

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. 

Oh for crying out loud: Sarah Palin is making a propaganda movie about herself, called "The Undefeated" (yes, brain, I know, I heard it too.  Have some music.). It's a "two-hour long, sweeping epic" and it includes

"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. 

April-May Roundup

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?

We even included the females!  We're so generous here at the blog.

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.

All caught up now. AKotW 4/1

Asshats of the Week:

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.

Still catching up: AKotW week of 3/25

Asshats of the Week: 

Oh, there's so many.  But singled out for asshattery this week is Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast.  Now, this isn't to say the whole situation is his fault-- he probably shares in it with his opponent.  But Gbagbo was defeated in a presidential election and still refuses to leave the presidency.  (As bad as the U.S. seems sometimes, this kind of thing still feels unlikely, which is nice.)  So as a result the nation has descended into civil war, between Gbagbo's supporters and the supporters of his opponent, Alassane Ouattara.  Civil war that involves shooting women protesting for International Women's Day and on another occasion firing with extreme prejudice on pregnant protesters.  Ouattara may be just as much of an asshat personally, but there's one thing that someone could do to make this situation better, and the one thing is getting the heck out of the presidency, and the someone is Gbagbo.  Of course, it's already yielded up to a million refugees, so damage done. 

With military intervention comes the muddling of intentions, so it's difficult to be too excited about anyone in Libya right now.  However, we can still agree on the asshats of the Libyan Secret Police, who are widely known to have killed civilians and now are bringing those bodies out and claiming they were killed in coalition attacks, and who are maintaining a level of paranoia and fear in the capitol of Tripoli, to the extent that children are grilled by the police about what news stations their parents watch.  And while the blog does not want to condone the use of gender as an insult, we admire gall, and the Barbara Frietchie-esque woman described at the link above-- wow.

Asskicker of the Week:

Kate Bornstein: "for personally picking up my life, rattling it a bit, and reminding me that I have a damn voice still and I would be much happier if I went back to using it."  If there's a more succinct way to state the ideal of the Asskicker, I don't know what it would be.  Kate Bornstein is a "gender outlaw," author, playwright, theorist, and performance artist whose summation of her recent work Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws is "Do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living, just don't be mean."  Yes.  


Historical Asskicker:

Maybe this will become a thing?  Who knows.  But we were reminded this week of Oscar Romero, as President Obama visited his grave on the anniversary of Romero's death during his trip to El Salvador.  Oscar Romero was a conservative bishop in the Catholic church whose appointment in El Salvador gravely disappointed the Marxist priests there, who feared their liberation theology mission to the poor was in danger, while pleasing the oppressive government.  Then, his progressive Jesuit friend Rutilio Grande, who was working creating self-reliance groups among the campesinos, was assassinated.  Romero stated later: "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, 'If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.'"
Romero became a vocal advocate of social justice, speaking out against institutional poverty, assassinations, torture, the Salvadorean government, and the U.S. government for giving military aid to El Salvador, reinforcing their power.  He did end up following Rutilio's path: in the middle of presenting mass on March 24, 1980, he was shot and killed by gunmen trained and organized by the School of the Americas and likely funded by the United States.  He is now one of the 20th century martyrs recognized in stone above the front doors of Westminster Abbey in London. 

Whoops! Let's play catch-up.

Soooo I missed a couple week's updates.  Apologies! 

So let's go back, way back, to the time of March 18. 

Asshat of the Week (March 18):

There were actually so many asshats this week that our nominees skewed to the asskickers in compensation.  But that's not to say one didn't shine through!

Boy, how did this take so long?  Sarah Palin makes her first appearance on the blog after denouncing the National Endowment for the Arts.  In the interest of not working ourselves up to a frothy rage in which all we can do is stutter half-obscenities and break whatever we're holding at the time like that one guy on Passions, that's all we're going to say about that.

Asskicker of the Week (March 18):

The Miami Hockey team, which won its first CCHA tournament championship and brought the Mason Cup to Oxford.  And the last CCHA tournament championship, maybe, since the Big Ten has broken off now and we're losing half the teams in the conference.  And OK, maybe a picture of Miele or the whole Brotherhood would be more appropriate, but c'mon.  Rico looks pretty badass there.

The SuperMoon.  The moon came its closest to the Earth in its elliptical orbit, and due to some orbit timing, this was the closest it has been in 18 years. 

(Now, here's where this gets a little tricky, and hence the delay.)  The coalition of nations working from the UN Security Council enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya, with special mention to President Obama for setting the "no boots on the ground" rule immediately with regard to U.S. troops.  Now, these sorts of military excursions in the Middle East often feel a lot better at the beginning than they do at the end.  But certainly it should go on record that the pressure building up through the past few weeks was incredible, and Gaddafi shows no signs of letting up on killing his own people even now.  So now, a few weeks later, there's more skepticism about this... but something had to be done.  And even though there are always negative repercussions to military action, this at least went through the UN.  

 The engineers who worked in high radiation levels to reconnect power cables to the overheating Fukushima reactor.  The human and economic toll from the earthquake is stunning, and the threat of nuclear disaster (while miniscule in comparison to the damage wreaked by the tsunami) certainly was doing no favors to the morale of the country or the world by awakening all sorts of nuclear ghosts.  We still don't know what the result of the increased radiation will mean for the people working at Fukushima-- probably an increased risk of cancer.  But they've been problem-solving away despite the breathtaking violence done to their country, and in the process preventing further catastrophe.  Engineers.  They're awesome.

 Jane McGonigal, who after recovering from traumatic brain injury using game mechanisms is using video games to make the world a better place.  On the premise that to reach a better world, you have to imagine a better world, Jane makes and fosters the creation of alternate reality games: some to imagine the world the day after we run out of oil, others to make helping other people in real life part of a game mechanic, some to encourage exercise, others to encourage healing, all to foster "the whole range of human emotion."  She recently delivered the keynote at PAX.  Kick on, all!

AKotW 3/11

And hello again!  It's like we were never gone at all.... this past week was another quiet one for discussion, so let's just lay out what we have.

Asshats of the Week:

The Ring of Fire.  Thanks loads, you freaking jerk.  Hundreds, maybe thousands dead, Japan devastated, and to top it off you leave us without a handy human scapegoat that lets us think that maybe suffering is somebody's fault, maybe there's a way to avoid it, maybe the world is not just a cruel and random place.  Way to go, you horrible little geological phenomenon.  This is all your fault.

Our old enemy Gaddafi, who can now officially add Now Rivaling Natural Disasters! to the end of his resume, which we hope he has cause to use very soon.  In addition to continuing the bloody back-and-forth fight with the protesters who have now been upgraded to "rebels," thus suggesting that instead of a relatively peaceful transfer of power we're going to have a black hole of civil war in that country for years to come, he also captured and tortured BBC journalists who were attempting to get any kind of story besides "Gaddafi is winning and also a great guy."  Every week, we the blog think "eh, maybe someone other than Gaddafi should be nominated," and every week, he raises the bar.  That's what makes him a champion.


Asskickers of the Week:

Hillary Clinton.  OK, confession time.  Friday was National Women's Day, or something, which We the Blog thought was a really stupid tokenist kind of way to pay tribute to half the population.  But you know what?  Let's look back at our own list and...oh.  (Seriously?  The only women we have in either category are the Thin Mints lady and that pink pop-psychiatrist?)  Apparently this is still kind of an issue that needs to be addressed in big flashy ways.

So is Hillary Clinton getting this mostly because Newsweek did an issue about women's issues and she was on the cover, thus reminding the blog she exists and is doing great work?  Absolutely.  But of course, the whole problem of the invisibility of women is Hillary Clinton's business.  She's now logged more miles of travel than any previous Secretary of State and is working to make sure that women's rights are human rights wherever those issues come up (so, everywhere).  Recently, she's been working to ensure that the revolutions in the Middle East don't just end up setting up new, different oppressions for half the population.  But she's been working tirelessly (well, actually probably she's pretty tired) to keep women part of the discussion worldwide, which is not an easy thing to do and an even harder thing to keep doing when other pressing issues threaten to push women to the back burner...again...until there's a better time to deal with them....  Keep kicking ass, ma'am, we're counting on you.

Another intangible nominee: the Japanese building codes and evacuation procedures.  One of the only bright spots in the horrendous disaster in Japan is that the 8.8 earthquake, the world's fifth most powerful since 1900, did not bring down the Tokyo skyline.  After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Japan worked to update its public knowledge about earthquakes and updated its building codes to some of the most stringent in the world, and although the death toll is still being calculated, there seems to be a consensus that the buildings built after this education blitz saved lives.  Applied science and public education: it seems like a good idea.  And certainly we're glad that it has had some effect in softening the blow for the population of Japan. 

Also nominated: Zahida Kazmi, Pakistan's first and only female cabdriver.  Cab driving is a dangerous prospect in Pakistan, as is being a woman.  Zahida's mother and children have more or less cut her off, but the other cab drivers have embraced her presence and she's now well-known and respected as a driver.  If it were not such a horrible pun, we would applaud her success in going down such a rough road.  Well done, ma'am.


Now.... back into the breach.

AKotW 3/4

Yay spring break!  Boo catching up on everything.  Of course, the AKotW blog takes precedence over actual work, so let's get these done quickly.  We were short on discussion for this and the following week... shame on us... but we've at least got some names to go on.  And since I'm the prime contributor this week, I hope everyone is ready to hear lots about psychiatry.

The nominees for Asshat of the Week are:

The political+psychological machine of Minnesota, for committing and forcing a citizen to submit to electroshock against her will, under no stated suspicion of violence against self or others.  Particularly, Nadeem Haider, the guy in charge of the electroshock facility that recommended this course of action, but really we the blog are more angry about the circles of silence in psychological and political circles surrounding this flagrant breach of human and client rights.  It's one of those situations where you just figure it can't be true because if it were, someone would be doing something about it...

Governor Kasich of Ohio and the whole blame state of Ohio, for letting Senate Bill 5 through without even much of a whimper (not to speak ill of the protesters who were working against it, but we're no Wisconsin, let's just say that).  For stoking bitterness and hatred against teachers (the only highly educated young people who even want to stay in our state), for misrepresenting the situation at hand, for suggesting that SB5 is about creating jobs, for spreading the out-and-out lie that Ohio public sector workers' pay has risen disproportionately to the private sector, for equating a union's right to negotiate with a "stranglehold" over the whole state's business, for denying the right to bargain even by emergency workers and scoffing at the idea that anyone would underfund them if safety were really an issue, thereby ignoring an ongoing war in which this is a live issue, decades of research, and millenia of evidence about human nature and power... I give you John Kasich and the Ohio Senate.  Please take them far away.

But just to keep the race tight, we've also got the Wisconsin Assembly, who rewrote their "Union Repair Bill" to take advantage of a loophole in the statehouse procedure that would allow them to force the bill through without a quorum (even taking advantage of the loophole, they still violated the policy of announcing open meetings).  And then they managed to say that they believed it was the will of the people to pass the bill, presumably with a straight face. 

And, as both a reminder that we're not the worst off in the world and as a reminder of why it is so important to fight to maintain the legal rights of a free society (as well as to fight to ensure that legal rights are translated into social action), we have our final contender, the unspellable Muammar Gaddafi.  Still at it, bombing his own people, firing on protesters, lying to journalists about the progress his frankly supervillainesque personal security force has made in retaking the cities the protesters hold, isolating the capital city from news and outside opinion, whipping the young men of Tripoli into a patriotic frenzy until they're convinced they need to die to protect him and his reign... and to top it all off, he's really got what it takes to be a long-term asshat.  Most people only end up on this list once or twice, but since this guy has been alienating his neighbors, hating everyone in the general vicinity, and trying to assassinate people, there's really nowhere for him to run to now.  We the blog just wish that there were any real satisfaction to be gained from his complete screwed-ness, but we fear he's just going to go down like a cornered rat, clawing and biting till the bitter end. 


These weeks have been heavy on the asshats and light on the asskickers, so it's important that we take time to recognize both those who are specifically standing out this week and those who are so reliably asskicking that we can take them for granted.

The Daily Show - Radical Muslim Hearings
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To wit: first nominated is Jon Stewart (and of course the , for being himself, calling out the asshats on a daily basis.  Good job, sir. 

Also, a legacy nomination I forgot about from a few weeks ago that should still be good: Radiohead, for being awesome.

Specific to this week, we've got a nomination for Craig Ferguson, for publicly, firmly, and non-sanctimoniously explaining that he wasn't going to make any more jokes about Charlie Sheen.  No soppy paternalistic tsking, no blaming, no pointing, he just said that it seemed a little too much like paying at Bedlam to be allowed to poke the inmates with a stick.  Well done, sir.  And in the interest of not harping too much on that topic ourselves, may we just point out how charming and handsome you are?  And maybe post that video of you doing the Doctor Who dance again to restore faith in humanity?



Yes, that's what this blog calls kickass.  (YMMV)

Also a nomination for Dan Abram, author of Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else.  While we the Blog are third-wave enough to advocate for gender diversity and awareness rather than boys-vs-girls stuff, the fact remains that women earn 33 cents less on the dollar than men and the ongoing discrimination here and around the world is supported with dozens of anecdotal "just facts" that prove that men are just better at everything.  It's often hard to believe-- and remember-- that fighting for women's rights is a fight against some strongly entrenched ideas but we do have ammo.  Kudos to Abram for laying out a case.

 Otherwheres, we've got lovable scamp Banksy, who bailed out the Russian art collective Voina from a severely unpleasant jail sentence that they got by graffitiing a large penis on the bridge facing the police station in St. Petersburg.  The artists remain under strict guard and are required to notify the police two hours before leaving their house, and the prosecuting attorney has asked to forcibly section (commit to a mental institution) the artists for psychiatric evaluation, signaling a return to the grim days of punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union.  But they're not in the terrible, terrible prison anymore, so that's a point for the good guys.  Look, we take what we can get.

And on to next week we go!

AKotW 2/25: Fighters of the Good Fight

Orrr maybe I'll just continue posting these very late!  Life is busy.  This is for posterity.  Posterity can wait a few days.

So, last week!  The nominees for Asshat of the Week were:

The Wisconsin Assembly, for forcing through a bill that will strip unions of their collective bargaining rights and sending troopers out after their Democratic members, who fled town to try to prevent a vote.  We the Western Blog are particularly upset about any story that involves forcing a bill through, but the Wisconsin Assembly is singled out for being particularly awful because (a) they've completely ignored legitimate attempts at negotiation on the points they are saying are the reason for the bill and (b) the cultural impact this is having on the rest of the country in terms of setting a precedent.  (The effects have certainly already been felt in Ohio.)  Point (b) put the Wisconsin Assembly over the top in our discussion.  Nice job, asshats.

Omar Gaddafi, for not only killing hundreds on hundreds of his own people but also having the tenacity to claim everyone loves him and to blame the protests against him on spiked Nescafe and Osama Bin Laden in a blatant attempt at trying to get America to come kill everybody for him that truly pushes him into Asshat territory. 

On the "micro" end of the spectrum we have Hersha Howard, who assaulted her roommate with scissors and a board because her roommate gave her Thin Mints to her (Howard's) children.  We the Blog are perfectly sympathetic to Thin Mint-inspired passions, but those are strong emotions that should be used always for good, never for asshattery.

But once again, we must remember that although there is quite a lot doom and gloom right now, there are also some reasons to keep muddling on.  Namely........the Asskickers of the Week.

The sometimes-asshats, sometimes-asskickers of Anonymous earned a nomination this week for crippling the Westboro BC's website during an interview.  Although they support free speech to the extent they don't really care about Westboro's various hatreds, they got really irritated when a Westboro representative kept interrupting an Anonymous member during a joint news interview, and just decided to kill their site for the heck of it.  Which is all for the better.

Closer to home, we have teacher of multiple Westerners Dr. Tom Peet (story unrelated but similar), who is busy protesting Senate Bill 5 (guy framed by sign guy's arm) with other state employees in Columbus.  Senate Bill 5 is a really terrible bill that's speeding through passage... but to keep on the positive side, we were inspired that Dr. Peet is still out there fighting the good fight.  Kickass.  Honorary Westerner.

Next, we have President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, who issued a memo (and sent a letter to John Boehner) stating that the Justice Department will no longer defend the constitutionality of Defense of Marriage Act if it's attacked in court.  Some of the best legal maneuvers in history seem to be done sideways... we'll see how this one works out, but at any rate, taking a stand on this one is enough to merit an Asskicker.  So they should probably just add that to the end of their titles now.

 

Another nomination goes to the Libyan jet pilots who, when ordered to fire on the crowds of protesters, straight up stole their jets and went to Malta, requesting asylum.  Two claimed to be high-ranking colonels; they left with such haste that only one had a passport with him.  Libya is such a mess of bad stuff right now, but it's not everyone! 

And with most support in discussion (and in the interest of parallelism), the coveted Asskicker of the Week award goes to the Wisconsin police, who managed the protesting crowds in the Madison courthouse but joined them when they were off-duty last week-- at one point, having been told to evacuate the building, one was quoted as saying "We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!"  Building alliances, taking responsibility for people who aren't you, keeping the future a priority... good job guys.  Keep on kickin' ass.