Wallpaper Wednesday – April 2011 Edition

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Fox Nation Strikes Yet Again

Not surprisingly, Fox Nation strikes yet again with their combination of misleading headlines and idiotic commentors. On this occasion, Fox Nation was linking a blurb from Real Clear Politics, whose comments section also joined in the brainless rants and which also uses the comment platform system/community that Fox Nation uses: DISQUS.

The blurb was nothing more than less than a minute of video and a quote from a speech President Obama gave at a recent political fundraiser.

“No matter who you are. No matter where you can came from. No matter what you look like. No matter whether your ancestors landed here on Ellis Island or came here on slave ships or came across the Rio Grande, we are all connected. We will rise and fall together. That’s the vision of America I’ve got, that’s the idea of the heart of America,” President Obama said at a fundraiser in San Francisco.

“That’s the idea of the heart of our campaign,” Obama added.

The quote is simple, mildly inspiring but also, at least to me, cliche. It seems to be a given that with the United States, a nation of so many different groups forming one people, we are all connected. It seems so obvious to me that I assume everyone must think this way except for maybe crazy people who regret the South losing the Civil War or the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Fox Nation and Real Clear Politics commenting community seem to be out to destroy the last of my optimism. Read more »

Spotlight: Tropes vs. Women [Update]

I’ve been a fan of Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency videos since her Toy Ads and Learning Gender video.  Now she has an  interesting and enlightening pair of videos that I hope will be part of a continued series. In “Tropes vs. Women” Sarkeesian covers tropes, which she defines as “a common pattern in a story or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience,” that are specifically applied to women.

I personally find her videos interesting because I am trying to write a story that I sometimes fear relies on too many tropes. Also, I think tropes have the ability to effect the real world in that they change how we look and label ourselves and other people. In a way, they change the narrative of life.

Check out both videos after the jump.

[Update: the series is set to contain six episodes, and they will all be posted here as they are released.]

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Fox News “Expert” Critiques Controversial J. Crew Ad

Sometimes I wonder how human beings can be smart enough to, let’s say, graduate from Brown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine but be so stupid as to write the following paragraph:

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

This frightening and absurd statement came from Dr. Keith Ablow’s Fox News article “J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity.” The J. Crew ad in question pictures company president Jenna Lyons painting her son’s toenails pink because (gasp) it is his favorite color. Read more »