You Bros.... Are Fucking.... Beautiful!

ROGER EBERT

June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013

I was not always on Ebert’s side. I may even have thrown a cross word in his direction on a few occasions. But I always admired him as a writer, an intellectual and a human being. I’ll miss reading his reviews and blog entries.  

This is exciting because this makes that planet the closest exoplanet known to us.

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This is what racism looks like.

Racism is the utter lack of compassion it takes to see a mother grieving for a boy and afraid for her own sons, and think, “Wow, that would be really easy to tweak in Photoshop to make her look stupid. Wouldn’t that be funny?” 

Racism is dehumanizing. Racism robs this woman of her individuality, her humanity, and her gender. “And ain’t I a woman?” This mother ain’t a woman to “The Patriot Nation.” She’s an object to be ridiculed for mistakes she never made; mistakes, in fact, that someone intentionally added to a photo of her for the purpose of mocking her grief and fear.

Racism is someone in front of his computer whose face twists into the same mask of disgust we see in grainy old black and white films of the KKK burning schoolhouses and churches, and instead of a racial slur spilling from his curled-back lips, he sneers, “Sheeple,” or “Socialists,” or “Obamanation,” and he clicks “like” and “share” on this photo because there’s no little switch in his brain to say: “Is this right to do to a human being?” No. The filter turns off when his hate is triggered by this image. And the really scary thing is, that missing filter means he’s also missing the ability to honestly ask himself, “Am I responding this way because of this woman’s race?” 

This is also what courage looks like, over there on the left.

Courage is a woman who knows damn good and well that there are people in the world who will use and abuse anything she does in the public eye to slander her, her community, and the sons on whose behalf she’s protesting.

Courage is a woman with her head held high holding a protest sign of her own making in front of a news camera. She is old enough to have three sons. Surely, she has experienced racism before. Surely, she was raised to “never ever forget [she] was born on parole,” and surely she knows that speaking for her sons means taking risks with her own image, her own safety, and her own reputation. 

The cost of courage in nonviolent protest has changed. Those who march peacefully may no longer risk firehoses and police dogs’ bites (though they do risk being attacked with chemical weapons), but they now risk digital slander as impossible to remove from the Internet as unflattering photos of Beyonce.

One acute injury, one arrest, or a lifetime of being “the stupid woman with the misspelled sign” online when you KNOW damn well you can spell “sons” (and so can all of your sons, for that matter)? Dog bite, or teenage niece who gets on Facebook for the first time calling to ask why auntie doesn’t know how to spell?

I think I’d take the dog bite, personally. 

  Showing my work: The racist photoshopped image was found on Facebook. Use of FotoForensics validated my assumption (based on jpeg artifacts) it had been resaved repeatedly. A Google reverse image search using the photoshopped image revealed the original. I used SnagIt to create the side by side comparison here. To his credit, the friend who first shared the fake version retracted it and declared it “despicable” after being shown the original photo.

I obviously do not own the original, but I grant any and all permission to use the above comparison image for purposes related to rescuing this anonymous woman’s reputation from racist attempts to depict her in unflattering and false ways via sharing of a “meme” anywhere, in perpetuity. As an additional sidenote, if anyone knows the woman depicted, please give her a hug from me. 

Hi Tumblr, it’s me, a slightly older person…

I see a lot of you 20 somethings saying things about how you aren’t going to choose the lesser of two evils and that their policy on important matters are identical so what’s the point they’re both stooges for Wall Street and the Industrial War Complex. 

You are right. Kind of. 

I know y’all LOVE the 90’s. Me too. And I remember after after eight years of Clinton/Gore, I thought those motherfuckers were the devil. I was soooooooooooo upset with Bill Clinton waving his deregulation wand and his fucked foreign policy that I was all FUCK THE DEMOCRATS and I strongly advocated for Ralph Nader, even though he too didn’t really care about my “gonad politics.” Even when not choosing between the “lesser of two evils,” I was STILL having to compromise major issues. 

Having been an adult person through 8 years of Clinton/Gore and 8 years through Bush/Cheney, I can tell you without a shred of hesitation that I will line up like my ass is on fire to vote for the lesser of two evils because the greater of two evils almost had us all living outside and eating dog food. 

And if you think that a Romney presidency won’t be worse than Bush/Cheney, you are out of your mind. 

I am fucking begging all of you, please, go vote. Aside from the fact that far more dangerous things are happening on your local level, (like collective bargaining being taken away in Illinois) this shit does matter. 

If you think voting for Obama is the lesser of two evils, you’re wrong, it’s the lesser of three because not voting IS voting for Romney. Not voting is voting for dickbag judges that sentence people to jail in counties that have privatized prisons for minor drug infractions. Not voting is voting to remove pensions and collective bargaining and the last shreds of union power from the people. Not voting this election is voting for Feudalism.

Go vote. 

Now pardon me, there’s some damn kids on my lawn and they want candy. 

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Lord help me

In which President Obama diagnoses Mitt Romney with Romnesia.