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.
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!
