Hello and happy Friday, you gutsy dames! As always, we will move from the barftastic to the sublime.
This Week in Complete Suckage
Ugh. A Texas judge ruled that the state couldn’t block Planned Parenthood from it’s women’s health program, but within hours Judge Jerry E. Smith said they totally could. ThinkProgress pointed out several irregularities with the situation, including the fact that Smith may not have had the authority to do that.
Also, jerkbags in the House GOP are trying to strip out important parts of the Violence Against Women Act. Specifically, they want to cut out protections for Native Americans, undocumented immigrants, and members of the LGBT community. Way to be horrible, gentlemen.
I have a couple of legitimate questions here, and if you have contacts in the Republican community, I would like your help in getting them answered. First, how the hell did House Republicans not notice that all the GOP women in the Senate voted for the strong version of the Violence Against Women Act? And if they did notice, why didn’t they ask said women some freaking questions about why they did so?
Second, to the wives, girlfriends, daughters, sisters, moms, and female friends of the current crop of anti-women GOP politicians: Why on earth are you putting up with this crap? Take a political tip from the members of the LGBT community, ladies: The view from under the bus isn’t pretty. And that’s where you’re headed.
Hey, you know those Zynga game updates you get on Facebook from games like Farmville? They’re often vaguely wink-wink naughty, like “Bettina has ripe tomatoes to share!” or “Prudence needs energy! What has she been doing to get so tired?”
Well, this week, this popped up in my feed from the Zynga game Castleville.
Get it? The character is unconscious, so why not take advantage of the situation and rack up some experience? How very hilarious! Zynga, I don’t care if your games are mildly annoying. That’s your right as a Facebook app. But if you’re going to encourage players to blast their friends’ feeds, someone should maybe have a talk with the writing staff about making things a little less rapey.
This Week in Much-Needed Epic Smackdowns
Did you catch Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press this weekend? If you did, you probably just stood up and shouted “YES!!!” while spiking the nearest piece of bric-a-brac into the floor. If not, no worries — Rachel herself replayed the best bit on Monday night’s show.
I used to have one and only one issue with Dr. Maddow when she appeared on political roundtable—type shows: She was so polite that she let impolite people get away with interrupting her kind of a lot. And she would assume that politeness would eventually kick back in for the other party, which is the only situation I can think of in which Dr. Maddow has been consistently incorrect. (Oh, all right. There is our ongoing vermouth fight that only I know about. But even that is arguably just a matter of personal taste and upbringing.)
So viewers were forced to sit at home, just knowing that she had some devastating fact jotted down on her little notepad and screaming “Snap his neck, Rachel!” while Dr. Maddow patiently waited for the offending jerkbag to cede the floor back to her, which often never happened.
Not anymore.
Maddow is still polite, of course, but she is done being interrupted, and she is certainly done being interrupted with bullpuckey made-up facts. The goon in question is Alex Castellanos, who interrupted Rachel’s legitimate, researched fact that women make 77 cents for every dollar that a man gets paid for the same work to tell her that, heh-heh, maybe those little ladies are just working less and working at silly girl jobs, like flower picker and princess thinker abouter. But he admires how passionate (which means “irrational and hysterical,” because ladies!) Dr. Maddow is.
The part where Rachel stops Castellanos to call him out on his condescension will make you want to douse her in Gatorade. As does pretty much this entire 20-minute segment during which she reduces Castellanos to condescending blowhard cinders. I wonder if he can get people to use his real name now, or if people just address him as Wrongface.
Tasty Little Tidbits
Hilarious mouthy feminist Lizz Winstead chatted with Vulture about the early days of The Daily Show and her new book, Lizz Free or Die.
Speaking of hilarious ladies, you tell ’em, Caissie St. Onge.
Browser history? No. Browser herstory!
— Caissie St.Onge (@Caissie) April 30, 2012
Ooh, Murphy Brown may be coming back to TV! Creator Diane English wants to bring Candice Bergen back for a series of political commentary specials timed to the upcoming Presidential elections. Yes, please!
18-year-old Laxmi Sargara was married before she was two years old. This week, instead of going to live with her husband and his family as she was ordered to do, she made history by having her child marriage annulled. Sargara faced down incredible risks — child marriage opponents in rural India are often physically attacked — and has taken a step towards guiding her own future and helping other Indian girls do the same.
Some more good news? The Oklahoma Supreme Court confirmed that an egg is not a person and struck down a proposed personhood ballot.
Susan Sarandon supported last weekend’s Unite Women march with an infomercial for a truly useful product.
Festival of Awesome
Oh, check out this terrific young woman. Julia Bluhm was featured in The Jane Dough this week for organizing a protest photo shoot with Change.org. All she wants is for Seventeen to give young women a fighting chance to develop realistic body image standards by featuring one photo spread per month that isn’t Photoshopped. Julia’s age? 14. Nice to see new opinionated women coming up through the ranks.
And oh, my goodness, I can’t wait to see this. The Mary Sue pointed the way to this trailer for Beasts of the Southern Wild, featuring bad-ass 6-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis in a true hero role. Word is the movie is terrific.
And finally, Lucy Lawless solved one of the great mysteries of Xena: Warrior Princess.
Elephant snot. “@Dean_Adisen: @RealLucyLawless I hav a Question that has always bugged me, how did you keep the sword on your back on XENA?”
— Lucy Lawless (@RealLucyLawless) May 2, 2012
(If you are not following Ms. Lawless on Twitter, you are missing out. She is funny and delightfully unhinged.)
OK, you magnificent broads, get out there and have a great weekend.
May moxie and good fortune stick to you like elephant snot.
