feminist blogs

The Terminator TV show (all nine episodes that exist so far) is an extremely pleasant surprise — who would have expected it to be good? Heron61 deduces some implications of time travel in the Terminator show and movies (some spoilers):

Vivian Stringer is the head coach of the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, so many of you may have heard her name in the wake of Don Imus’s racist and sexist comments.  However, her story and her influence as a pioneering woman extends well beyond the Imus controversy.  She has an amazing biography, and she is undoubtably a pioneering African American woman.  Her influence as a role model extends well beyond her coaching background, as revealed in the press surrounding the book:

 A gifted athlete, she had to fight for a place on an all-white cheerleading squad in the sixties. In 1981, just as her coaching career was taking off, her fourteen-month-old daughter, Nina, was stricken with spinal meningitis. Nina would never walk or talk again. Still grieving, Stringer brought a small, poor, historically black college to the national championships—a triumph hailed as “Hoosiers with an all-female cast.” In 1991, her husband, Bill—her staunchest supporter, the father of her children, and the love of her life—fell dead of a sudden heartattack, but that same year, she led yet another young team to the Final Four. Through these dark times and others—including her bout with cancer, shared here for the first time—Stringer has carried her burdens with grace. Given her history, it was no surprise that she led her team to respond to Don Imus’s slurs with dignity and courage.

Standing Tall is a story of quiet strength in the face of punishing odds. Above all, it is an extraordinary love story—love for the game, for the players she has coached, for her close-knit family, and for the husband she lost far too soon. It will resonate long after the last page.

Stringer releases her autobiography today and I encourage everyone to check it out.  It’s often that I put up stories about the mistreatment of black women in the US, so it is nice to have an occasion to celebrate some one who helps challenge those images of black women.

Update: Here is an interview I heard with her today.

I had to post this — it so nicely overlaps my political interests with my geekish side. Plus, I think Nichelle Nichols totally rocks.

It’s also an interesting reminder of how a character who is, looked at today, a glaring token (only woman cast member, only Black cast member, in a very subservient role) was nevertheless important and groundbreaking at the time.

Curtsy to Julian.

If you missed last night’s Super Bowl, you missed a great game. I’ve gotten out of the habit of following sports since I moved to the east coast and could no longer follow my (original) home teams, but a few weeks ago, I decided to watch the NFL Conference championship between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. What attracted me to that game was the weather. It was held outdoors in below zero degree temperatures, and I wanted to see how they were going to play in those inclement conditions. That game was great, and of course, I was rooting for the underdog New York Giants, not because I live in New York, but because I enjoy a comeback story.

Given the excitement of the Conference Championship game, I was looking forward to the Super Bowl. Again, I was routing for the underdog Giants. I used to like the Patriots, but there is something very unsettling about the win at any cost attitude that has driven the Patriots success over the past few years. The Patriots are cheaters (or at the very least, folks who are willing to bend the rules). They spied on other teams practices to steal signals, and the NFL punished them with the loss of a draft pick, a team fine of $250,000, and a fine of a half million dollars for the coach. The Patriots were also undefeated and favored to win by almost two touchdowns.

The game didn’t disappoint. It was exciting and culminated with a game winning, touchdown drive by the Giants in the remaining two and a half minutes. The Giants were known for coming from behind and winning on the road, and they appeared to revel in the underdog position. They also emphasized team play over star power, and the often ignored defense was the primary difference in the game. To me this win was a victory for sportsmanship.

Since I was hyped-up from the game and couldn’t sleep, my mind started wondering to of all thing–politics. I realized that the parallels between politics and sports are numerous. Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, which is the Conference Championship of Presidential politics. On the eve of the contest, I figured a I’d share a few of my thoughts about Presidential politics and sports, focusing on the contradictory values that influence the ways Americans views sports and politics.

Religion

One of the more hilarious and dangerous commonalities with politicians and athletes is that they seem to think God is on their side. They pray before the contest, and thank God and Jesus after it. How many times have you heard people say, “Without God, this would not be possible?” I have a really hard time believing the God has a favorite sports team or politician. Do people lose because God is against them?

Underdog’s

The underdog is big in sports, and while I think it’s a little less popular in politics, it is still there. There is the old saying “throw the bums out,” but at the same time, most of us love the bums we elect. For example, right now the favorable rating for Congress is very low, but when you ask people about their own Congressperson, they are much more favorable. We are also willing to tolerate much more inappropriate behavior from our own bums than from other folks bums. Nevertheless, there are times, when we do want the underdog to get ahead. If the underdog makes us feel good about ourselves, if the underdog symbolizes change, if the underdog beats incredible odds to make it to the top, or if the underdog reaffirms our belief in the inherent fairness of the system, then the underdog can become a fan favorite. The problem with this is that every side has a few skeletons in their closets, and we often overestimate the extent to which the individual politician or team is really going to change the system.

Cheating and Dirty Tricks

Some people want to win at any cost. They smear their opponents; they lie, cheat; and steal. I’m not cynical enough to believe that everybody does this, but I am realistic enough to know that it is common place. My concern is that when we become too cynical we are all to willing to accept lying, cheating, and stealing as an acceptable part of competition.

Experience vs. New Blood

As a culture, Americans love both experience and new blood. During the Super Bowl, the announcers informed us every time a rookie made a great play. We also got to hear about the deserving veterans, who finally got their shot at victory. In politics, we have a love hate relationship with veterans. The career politician is loathed, and re-elected over and over because of name recognition and the power of incumbency. New blood politicians are treated a little better than rookies in the sporting arena. Many people associate new blood with lack of corruption, which is probably naive given the nature of campaigning and fund raising.

The Comeback Story

Rather than giving the comeback story too much time–I’ll refer to the discussions about Experience vs. New Blood and Underdogs. It seems that comeback stories combine both of these two sets of values.

Social Inequality

I think most people want to believe that just about everyone has a fair shot to make it sports and politics, and our level of denial about the realities of social inequalities (in particular those of race, class, gender, religion, disability, and sexuality) is almost humorous. This gets particularly absurd with race. In sports and politics, we can’t even talk about racism without somebody trying to shut down the discussion. You didn’t have to follow the Super Bowl closely to notice that both the quarterbacks were the classic white guy quarterbacks, both the coaches were classic white guy coaches, the defensive backs for both teams were all black, the offensive lines were nearly all white, and the defensive lines were nearly all black. I’m sure somebody is going to be mad at me for pointing this out. The person, who I anger, is going to note the exceptions to these patterns, and tell me to lighten up. The same is true for politics. We’re supposed to believe that two people Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama prove that we are somehow above racism and sexism. Rather than clinging to the reality of politics where white, heterosexual, Christian, guys with money run the show, we are supposed to focus on the exceptions. What’s also funny is that if you really want to add nuance to the discussion by pointing out both Obama and Clinton are only disadvantaged on one of these forms of social inequality, many folks play dumb and can’t get it. Instead, we’re supposed to deny, deny, deny–”the system is fair and if we worked hard enough we all have the same chance. Don’t rain on our parade by telling us other wise.”

Bringing It All Together

The irony of these values is that they often conflict with each other, and many folks are content with this, partly because they are wearing blinders and partly because many of our social norms require us to hold contradictory beliefs. I’m sure my own glee over the Giants wins is full of contradictions. Now, that the underdogs are on top, and I’m going to have to find another team that makes me feel that sports are fair.

Like most people I want to believe in meritocracy, even though I know it takes a lot more than merit to make it to the top. Even though I know that competition can bring out the worst in people, I want to believe that the “good guys” win in the end. Even the division of people into “good guys” and “bad guys” reflects an unrealistic dichotomy, but one that most of us use as a lens to view society. Nothing should remind people more of this sports and politics.

In 2006, inspired by Racialicous, I put up a post of the top trends in race and racism for 2006. Given the popularity of that post, and the general enjoyment I get from discussing folks’ perceptions of trends, I figured I would make a list again this year. Here is the list in no particular order:

1. Return of the Noose and Lynching Metaphors–Nooses were everywhere this year. Some think the Jena 6 Case brought the noose as a hate symbol back to the forefront. In reality, it’s hard to know if there actually were more hate crimes this involving the brandishing of nooses, since there are not concrete statistics kept on this. Diversity Inc., which attempted to keep track of noose incidents across the US, notes 67 noose incidents across the US¹. Whether or not the rates of noose related hate crimes were up, discussions of the noose and it’s connection to lynching were everywhere even CNN had a special called “The Noose An American Nightmare.

2. Rise of Black Bloggers as a Political Force– While I have noticed a big increase in the number of African American blogs since I started blogging in 2005, this was the first year black bloggers seemed to coalesce as a social force. Group blogs like the Afro Spear and What About Our Daughters helped focus debate on cases such as the Jena 6 and Dunbar Village. Now to be fair these were just two groups of bloggers, several more independent bloggers² also helped shed light on stories that were generally ignored in the mainstream media. In some cases like Jena 6, blogs were created specifically for the issue at hand, and those blogs helped organize thousands of people to write, march, and speak out. Thanks to the organizing power of black bloggers thousands of protesters turned out in Jena, LA and this was just the most widely known social movement fueled by black blogs.

3. Anti-Chinese Rhetoric–You’d think there was a vast Chinese conspiracy to poison American children and pets if you watched one media outlet after another report on product recalls. The problem with most of these stories is what they didn’t tell you. For example, most toys sold in the US are from China, so it should come as no surprise that most of they toys being recalled are from China. For a good comparison, checkout recalled food products, since most foods eaten in the US are grown in the US, you will see a list with many US based growers and companies. Does this mean we should not eat food made in the US? What reporters also didn’t tell us is that most toys were recalled for design problems not manufacturing problems, and guess what? The toys weren’t designed in China. Furthermore, only a tiny portion of Chinese made toys were actually recalled. The vast majority of Chinese made toys were safe! I think the popularity of Chinese toy phobia, is related to some of our general stereotypes of Chinese people in particular and Asians in general. It reminds me a little of the 1980s when similar comments were made about Japanese products. It seems that every time an Asian country starts to become a strong economic competitor these stories emerge. I’m not disputing that there are problems in China’s labor and safety standards, and I think the plethora of stories on rampant pollution in China are accurate, but the primary people harmed by these social problems are the Chinese people. Furthermore, the American news media’s rhetoric greatly exaggerated the extent and significance of these problems. I can help thinking that the smear campaign is also related to the upcoming Olympics being help in China, but that remains to be seen.

4. Xenophobia and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment– Immigrant haters were out in full force this year. In fact, the xenophobes have single-handedly attempted to turn the word illegal in a noun. Bigots like Lou Dobbs banged the anti-immigrant drum the loudest. They encouraged Americans to believe that illegal immigrants were destroying America. They opposed laws that would allow undocumented children, who were brought to the US by their parents, to get college financial aid; they separated breastfeeding mothers from their infants; they blamed undocumented immigrants for crime even though studies have shown immigrants have a lower rate of crime than native born folks; and some even suggested the US get rid of birthright citizenship. What is incredibly fascinating about most of the debate on immigration is that most Americans don’t have a clue about immigration trends and laws. Today’s immigrants are wealthier and more educated than ever, but this doesn’t seep into the debate.

5. Asian Male TV Characters– Late in 2006, Racialicious had a series of posts on the 5 (Part 1; Part 2) most fascinating Asian Male TV characters. There was a time not long ago when there weren’t even 5 recurring Asian male characters on network television. While there is still a long way to go, I think this was a relatively good year for Asian men on TV. I even noticed more commercials with Asian men in them, and as atlasien noted in a recent comment, several reality TV shows had Asian cast members prominently featured. Some may wonder why I said Asian men and not Asian women. Although I don’t have any numbers in front of me, the representation for men seem to increase much more rapidly.

6. “Model Minority” Black Immigrants–This was one of my predictions for 2007, and I was right about this one. There were several stories about African and Caribbean immigrants, focusing on the grand achievements. While some people think comparing African American blacks with foreign born blacks provides evidence that African Americans could really do better if they just “worked harder” and stopped “using the race card,” they miss how immigration law shapes the social status of foreign born blacks, especially African born blacks. Given the current structure of immigration policy, most of the African born blacks who are able to come to the US come as professional and students. The number of refugees and poor immigrants is fairly small, but the number of diplomats, professors, and students is fairly high. My partner and his relatives are good examples of this–He and his sister were the first to arrive in the US. His sister has a PhD, speaks 5 languages, and is a translator for the United Nations, and my partner was a excellent sprinter who was able to convince three Division I American Universities to give him track scholarships based on his race times in Nigeria. For both of them, it was the demand in the US for their talents, combined with a great deal of determination, that brought them to the US, but they hardly represent the typical Nigerian.

7. College Racism–Oh how I wish I didn’t have to put this on the list again, but a quick look at Vox Ex Machina,, which maintains the definitive list, reveals numerous incidents of racism on college campuses. From nooses to racially themed parties to rogue newspapers and all kinds of other incidents, students were busy this year. Often, the racist students posted their racist handy work on facebook and other social networking sites. I’m not really sure if today’s college students are any more racist than the college students were back when I was in college (mid-1990s). Social scientists could use survey data to track racial attitudes of college students, but the colorblind ideology is so prevalent that students know how to give the “right” answers even if their behavior belies such sentiments.

8. Celebrity International (Transracial) Adoption–I’m not sure if this trend fits better into 2006 or 2007, but nonetheless, it seems like every celebrity wanted to adopt a child from outside the US. Following the lead of Madonna and Angelina Jolie, numerous celebrities were rumored to be looking to adopt. I don’t think many of these celebrities will actually follow through and adopt, but there is something unsettling about transracial, international adoption being hip and cool. We are talking about the well being of children, but when adoption seems to be a media fad, I can see many unprepared and otherwise ignorant people adopting for the wrong reason and not respecting the rule of law like this French charity in Chad.

9. Begging to Apologize to Blacks via Al Sharpton–Apparently, racist whites have anointed Al Sharpton the “King of Black America” because every two bit loser who made a racist comment this year went begging to apologize to black folks via Sharpton (and sometimes Jesse Jackson, who must be second in line to the thrown). Don Imus, Michael Richards, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and I’m sure others who I have forgotten, all either went on Sharpton’s show or begged to meet with him. Do I really need to say anything else?

10. Using Racist Comments By Whites To Talk About How Blacks Need to Change–This may be number 10 on the list, but it was by far the most annoying trend of the year. It seems like every time a well known white person made racist comments the discussion ended up being refocused on how blacks need to fix themselves. I dedicated a full post to this topic in Oct. because I just couldn’t take it anymore. In fact, many of these discussions remind me of of children’s excuses for bad behavior. For example, let’s say I find little Timmy’s hand in the cookie jar. What’s the first thing little Timmy says, “Well Sarah did it, too?” Now, any good parent is not going to be fooled into turning Timmy’s cookie theft into a reason to punish Sarah. Unfortunately, when it comes to racism, many in white America act just like little Timmy, so racist comments from Don Imus and other whites turn into discussions of the pathologies of Blacks.

So there you have it, my list of the top trends in race and ethnicity.  I realize that this list is very US biased, so I’m curious to see what some of the readers outside of the US noticed in their countries this past year.

What do you think? Did I miss anything? Do you agree that these were popular trends?

1. Unfortunately, they do not specify a time frame for the 67 incidents.
2. Sorry I don’t have the space to promote everyone’s site here, but a quick scroll through the blogroll on the left will reveal some great blogs that are often overlooked.

A sequel (Youtube trailer) to Harold & Kumar…

And a sequel to Ganges.

So I watched the new season of The Business, IFC’s oh-so cutting-edge parody of the movie business. Hey, look! Lance, the vain, shallow character very into his sexiness, comes back from the between-season break fat! And he initially tries to bluff past the problem! Hoooo-hah! Funny!

(But don’t worry, after some episodes of funny, funny fat suit jokes, he’s back to his thin self.)

Then I watched the new season of 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s critically-acclaimed mainstream sitcom that prides itself on quirky humor as it makes gentle fun of the TV business. Hey, look! Jenna, the vain, shallow character very into her sexiness, comes back from the between-season break fat! And she initially tries to bluff past the problem! Hoooo-hah! Funny!

(But don’t worry, after a few episodes of funny, funny fat suit jokes, she’s back to her thin self.)

Then yesterday I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Ugly Betty, the critically acclaimed dramedy that prides itself on not going along with the shallow appearance-obsessed bigotries of the rest of TV while it parodies the fashion business. Hey, look! Amanda, the vain, shallow character very into her sexiness, comes back from the between-season break fat! And she initially tries to bluff past the problem! Hoooo-hah! Funny!

(I haven’t watched any of the subsequent episodes yet. My guess is that after 1-3 episodes of funny, funny fat suit jokes, Amanda will be back to her thin self.)

So, remember:

1) Priding yourself on being original is no reason not to use a hackneyed fat suit gag.

2) Becoming fat is the oh-so-funny just desserts vain, sexy characters receive. It’s ironic, get it? Get it?

To be fair, 30 Rock made some feeble gestures at parodying the stupid tastelessness of anti-fat jokes on TV shows like… uh… 30 Rock. To me, this came across more as a attempt to have their cake and eat it too than as sincerely giving a damn about their support of bigotry against fat people.¹

But at least 30 Rock, loathsome as the fat suit plotline was, doesn’t pretend to be a progressive show that’s questioning norms of attractiveness. But for Ugly Betty, which is so sanctimonious about appearance issues,² to pander to anti-fat bigotry this way is extra-special, isn’t it?³

By the way, Ben Silverman, one of Ugly Betty’s executive producers, also co-created and produces The Biggest Loser.

1. Especially when they merchandise the bigotry they were supposedly making fun of. (↩)
2. I have nothing against sanctimony on appearance issues, as long as you really mean it and apply the critique to your own work. Ugly Betty doesn’t. (↩)
3. Not that this was even the most loathsome thing about that episode of Ugly Betty; the most loathsome thing was the critique of the shallow fashionistas trying to demonstrate how oh-so-very sensitive they are by using disaster victims as props, even as the episode’s script tried to demonstrate how oh-so-very sensitive Betty is by using disaster victims as props. (↩)

Well, this is interesting. (Hat tip Lawrence Schimel)

On October 20, J. K. Rowling read from book 7 at Carnegie Hall in New York.

After reading briefly from the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love”.

“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down”.

Three basic reactions:

1) Huh.

2) That fairly cool.

3) Well, damn it, why the hell couldn’t you have told us that during the series?

Recently, there was a kerfuffle (has anything other than blog wars ever popularized that term?) on the popular blog of military science fiction writer John Scalzi. Scalzi, responding to discussions of how and when race is deployed in science fiction, revealed how he wrestles with the issue.

My way of dealing with spec fic’s racial lopsidedness (on the writing side, at least) is somewhat passive-aggressive: I avoid making any sort of overt racial identifiers at all with my characters unless it’s required by the plot, which for my books it generally isn’t. This is not the same as actively specifying minority characters in my books, which is a point no doubt many will be happy to make, and they’re right. But it’s not excluding them, either, which is not trivial.

Scalzi went on to indicate that he had imagined a main character in one of his series to be non-white, although he had never left any racial markers on the page.

This is the moment when I say “I heart Scalzi” before launching into intense criticism. Kameron Hurley of Brutal Women summed it up well:

As a writer, you may write colorblind. You may pull out all the color and race and cultural tags for every single one of your characters, and thereby prove that they could be of any race!

Sure. Let’s go with that. Nobody in your book has a skin color, or any sort of physical description at all.

You really believe your reader’s not givng your characters a physical description? You think that one of the first markers they make, after size and gender, won’t be color? Pigment?
…

The problem with writing in “race-neutral” (what is that? Gray? Beige?) terms is you get the same problem you run into when you write in gender-neutral terms. As people raised in a racist, sexist, society, we’re going to norm a lot of stories, a lot of people, as white males. There are certainly ways you can code this differently, and every reader brings their own unique set of indicators to the reading experience, but I think the vast majority of people are going to sit down and code your world in whitewash unless they get some indication that it’s otherwise or they bring something non-majority to the table.

We have a default setting we’ve been programmed with, and it’s the default setting we’ve been pumped full of since birth: stories about bands of white brothers, fathers and sons, heroic male conquerors, Columbus, rich white presidents, men of Science, great white male writers; the men who run the world are white. The important people are white. We’re reading about important people, right? Unless we’re reading some kind of hippie women’s story set in some jungle where people don’t speak plain English.

As Kameron Hurley acknowledges, Scalzi has provided himself a little bit of an out here: he works in a far-future world which may no longer share our politics of race. (But really, do they have nothing to replace it? Nothing?)

Scalzi himself argues that he’s not writing colorblind (because he knows what colors his characters are), but that readers are reading colorblind. He goes on to say that this doesn’t of necessity reinforce a white default. As a first step, he says that while he envisions characters is novels as being “people like me,” whiteness is not part of that profile. Honestly, I have a big problem accepting that — but, let’s accept it anyway. Scalzi’s politically aware and not, IMO, given to lying to trump himself up. Perhaps, through deliberation or coincidence (I trend toward postulating the former, even if not on a conscious level), Scalzi has trained himself not to view race as a default.

The mistake he makes is in assuming that it’s responsible for writers to assume that readers will be able, or willing, to do this. Scalzi:

Now, you may ask why I didn’t just note all this [stuff about race] in the book; the answer is because I didn’t want to, because it never came up as part of the story, and because I’d rather have people imagine Harry Creek to be who they were comfortable with him being. If they see him as white, that’s their karma, although I will say I’m sorry that their default is white.

Kate Nepveu, who also wrote a separate post on the subject, responds in comments:

This entry is built around a big misunderstanding, to wit:

“The people like me” != “the cultural default.”

The default in our culture is whiteness — and, to get back to Rowling, heterosexuality. When sexuality and race are not mentioned, most authors mean to indicate whiteness and heterosexuality. Scalzi is not subverting this paradigm by refusing to mention race; he only plays into it. The world in which he’s writing has certain politics, which certainly he needs to write to, but in other ways he acknowledges that he’s working for his audience. As an author who belongs to the joking group the “New Comprehensible,” Scalzi puts an emphasis on writing fiction that is accessible to the mass of our population. Our population has certain tools for analyzing texts. These include a white default as much as they include certain assumptions about nanotechnology — the latter of which Scalzi overtly navigates. When he introduces the basic rules of his world in the first chapter of his novel, he exposits them. He exposits them because readers need to know. Why does he assume we don’t need to know about race?

Perhaps because he says that readers should already know enough to know to vary their default. But then again, maybe they “should” know stuff about physics which he has to explain. We don’t. He’s stuck with the reading population he’s got, and we don’t live in a futuristic utopia.

Niall Harrison said something I thought was smart on the topic of writing about marginalized or non-default characters:

If “straight white male” is the default, then anything else indicates that a choice has been made — or at least, it implies that a more conscious choice has been made than the one made by Stanley’s author. Even if the motive behind that choice is, perfectly validly, “why not?”, the choice is there.

And when it’s not textually present — that choice is, in a real way, not there.

This scenario is even clearer with Rowling, who does not have a utopic science fictional world to pose as a hypothetical. It’s neat that Rowling has a homosexual character, but could we have seen this in your series, please? Could we have seen Dumbledore with a real, living lover? Or, failing that — if he spent his life pining — why couldn’t we have learned about that? We got to learn about the long flaming heterosexual torches, including much more twee whining about Snape and Lily than I was interested in.

Yes, I know Rowling has to deal with the reality of her audience, just as I said Scalzi does. And of course, writing for children means accepting certain boundaries. I can understand that she didn’t want to ask for more textual trouble from Christian conservatives than she’s already got. As the interview relates: “Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.”

Of course, that leads me to say: they hate you anyway. So, why pander to them?

Most texts only appear as themselves. Books are a finished form. We, as writers, are often told we have to send them into the world without our excuses, without our explanations. When we go to workshops where other people critique our manuscripts, writers are entreated to stay silent. Because our justifications don’t matter — the text becomes what the reader makes of it, a combination of their experiences and the tools you give them.

Neither Rowling nor Scalzi gave their readers the tools that they needed in order to pry this information from the text. It’s an afterthought, left to discussion by only the most devoted fans, only the people who happen to read the blog. Why should it have to be the non-white characters and the homosexual characters whose marginal lives are illuminated not even in the marginalia of the text, but in the essays and justifications afterward? Once again, they get the short shrift.

For Rowling, there’s one redemptive silver lining: the fact that her books have, outside her hands, a vital textual life of their own. As the article reports her saying, “Oh, my God,” Rowling concluded with a laugh, “the fan fiction.”

Sugarshock is Joss Whedon’s free on-line comic. If you haven’t read it yet you should: part 1, part 2, and part 3.

It’s an, extremely silly, story about a band called Sugarshock. Made up of Dandelion who hates vikings and is authorised to use deadly force by the secret government agency that she works for, Wade, who likes groupies,Robot Phil, who is a robot and L’Lihdra, who seems rather robotic until her absolute awesomeness is made clearr. Their music is fantastic (well we only get the lyrics to one song, but they’re hilarious - and I really want to hear ‘God bites Man’ even if Dandelion is off key). After an emissary from another planet falls on their car they enter the international battle of the bands it just gets stranger and there are stoves, squirrels, and lathes in places you’d least expect them.

I’m a big fan of Joss Whedon; I can (and sometimes do) go on at great length about the metaphors, characters, and meaning of his work. Sugarshock isn’t one of those moments, this is more like Doppelgangland - he’s having heaps of fun, throwing in more and more silliness, and it’s joyful.

If that wasn’t enough the art doesn’t suck. There’s a woman in it whose body looks like it might actually move if you touched her. I didn’t even know that was possible in comic book form.

So go read it - it’s free and it’ll make your day better.

From Ezra:

The undisputed champion of the Arab terrorist role is Sayed Badreya. The burly, bearded Egyptian-born actor has played an array of menacing characters in a 20-year Hollywood career. He’ll appear with Robert Downey Jr. in next year’s “Iron Man” as an Arab arms dealer who kidnaps the hero. In 2003, he and Issawi made a short film called “T for Terrorist” in which an Arab actor, frustrated with endless terrorist roles, takes over a movie set at gunpoint.

Badreya recalls when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1986. “I couldn’t work. I was too handsome,” he laughs. “So I put on some weight and grew a beard, and suddenly I was working every day and playing the angry Arab.”