Settling The Confusion Of Stereotypes

From science to day to day life, people prejudge situations and others based on past experience. This is a natural and essential part of being alive, for if you didn’t prejudge, you would die very quickly. If I didn’t prejudge that my food was poison free, I would starve, and if I didn’t prejudge that the big mean scary guy with cauliflower ear was potential dangerous, I probably would have told him to go to the back of the line. In both of these cases I used my experience to make generalizations about people or situations that I had no evidence for in that specific instance. Is this stereotyping or is it something else? Read more »

Gendered Legos? Can I Vomit Now?

Somehow I thought things would be looking up for reducing the number of gendered toys after the video of a little girl ranting in a Target went viral around Christmas. Then just today I found out, to my horror but not shock, that Lego is making a new collection for girls called “Lego Friends.” GAH! It appears to be some kind of Bratz-Lego hybrid complete with a site that has horrible animation reminiscent of a Barbie movie.

Of course, these new female Legos have curves and busts and love to hang out at the hair salon and cafe in their horrible little town of Heart Lake City.

HEART LAKE CITY?!?!?!?!?!?! It’s like Salt Lake City except with more ponies. Read more »

Pat Buchanan: Inane and Insane

Pat Buchanan has often been a lighting rod of criticism, but many people hold him in high esteem as an intellect worth having in the conversation. Sadly, with his recent book “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”,  it seems possible that he had gone off the deep end or just more clearly showed his true colors. The controversial book and the particularly controversial chapter “The End of White America” has already sparked petitions for the former Presidential adviser and candidate to be fired from his analysis job at MSNBC.

Since his book tour started Buchanan says that “The End of White America” chapter has been brought up more than any other topic covered in his book and he decided to use the conservative website Townhall to answer the meta-question

“Why should we care if white Americans become a minority? America, interviewers remind me, assimilated the immigrants of a century ago — Italians, Poles, Jews, Slavs — and we can do the same with peoples from the Third World.”

What follows is a vexing and horrible attempt to make a rational argument out of revisionist history and prejudice.
Read more »

Voter IDs? Time To Fight Some Undead/Infected Arguments

Break out these points when you need to shoot down misconceptions and conservative voter ID talking points. Remember at best, the person you are talking to doesn’t realize there are larger issues involved with voter IDs or, at worst, is close-minded and vindictive about stopping Democratic voters from voting. So use these resources depending on your situation. Read more »

Media Gets It All Wrong Covering Kids’ Grappling Match

Now, if you write a story about Mixed Martial Arts but you only call it “cage fighting” and/or “ultimate fighting,” you are showing yourself to be uninformed. If you show a video of kids that are clearly just grappling at a MMA event, somehow assume that they are in a full on MMA fight with no gloves (whereas all the professionals use gloves, etc.), mistake an arm bar for being “repeatedly kicked in the head while [one's] arm is twisted,” and write about how “disturbing” it is, well, you are an idiot. Read more »

Fox Nation Is A Jerk: Michelle Obama Under Attack

Can the people on Fox Nation try any harder to be declared jerks? Our initial post on Fox Nation was prompted by a picture of Kate Middleton in a bikini that was the site’s “Pic of the Day.” The comments that followed instantly and oddly concentrated on comparing and degrading First Lady Michelle Obama. It was a total non sequitur for normal people, but for Fox Nation, it seemed like they were on the same wavelength.

We again look at the Fox Nation “Pic of the Day,” and this time, I actually have to thank them for reminding me how funny the British satirical show Brass Eye was.

I couldn’t help but think of Brass Eye’s ‘Paedogeddon’ episode where they joked about people’s obsession with pedophilia, and specifically, I was reminded of this quote:

Gary Lineker – “Take a look at this [shows photo]. What is it? Just a hillside? Look again. There’s a child there, no more than a blue speck. The fact is, if you showed this picture to a paedophile, they’ll actually try and attack it in an attempt to reach the child. That’s the sort of warped mindset we’re dealing with.”

To get people on Fox Nation worked up and crazy all you have to do is find a picture of Michelle Obama playing tennis to, heaven forbid, support her campaign against childhood obesity. Read more »