Odds and Sods - APRIL 2015 EDITION

APRIL is here already! I haven't done an Odds and Sods post in almost a year, so here we go.


My last Odds and Sods post featured giant plastic ducks and Miss South Carolina... and so, not to be outdone, I am opening this post with some razzle-dazzle photos of SC COMIC CON, which was March 21st here in Greenville, at the TD Convention center.

I do apologize for being asleep at the switch when it came time to post these. (MORE HERE!) My camera battery died, and I just kept forgetting to replace it. (Also, there were several that didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped and I was somewhat disappointed.) As always, you can click to enlarge.



PS: I also posted a few photos of our local St Patricks Day block party on Tumblr. (green cake!)

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I have recently been watching 19 Kids and Counting, featuring the pseudo-Quiverfull Duggars (who remind me so much of some Bob Jones University-affiliated families) and the weddings of their daughters Jill and Jessa. In case you didn't know, all of the 19 kids have names starting with J, which is either after dad Jim-Bob (they are part of the Christian Patriarchy movement, so this seems likely) or after Jesus, or both. Some seasons ago, they had a funeral for a miscarried "baby", after taking a famous photo first... they named that one Jubilee Shalom.

I figure if the TLC network is having whole-day marathons, I can't be the only one watching these people who seem to be the living embodiment of old-timey Little House on the Prairie values, sewing their own clothes, playing (appropriately Christian music) together in a family band, making jars and jars of their own pickles, expecting the kids to bunk 5 to a room or something, etc. Even though the kids are ON TV, they do not WATCH TV. Really. That's the claim. There are 19 of them, some in their 20s (people in this subculture only "leave home" when it is time to marry, one reason I figure they are SO ecstatic over marriage)... and we actually believe they can't organize their own movie/TV-watching sessions away from mom and dad? In this day of iphones? Pardon me, but I hardly think so.

But that is the show-biz aspect: we suspend disbelief and adhere to this fantasy of an innocent Andy Griffith-ish, old-school, southern family--who are nonetheless savvy enough to deal with Hollywood executives for 10 seasons and become millionaires. Their large house was built for them by the TV network; they reportedly pay no taxes on their land because they declare their home a "church" (a good illustration of how the religious tax exemption is habitually bent/abused). Eldest son Josh works for the right-wing (and very anti-gay) Family Research Council, although Michelle Duggar's sister is a lesbian in a long-term relationship with a woman. Jim-Bob Duggar (R) was in the Arkansas House of Representatives, which would suggest he knows a few things, like how to milk rich people for contributions, make various right-wing promises and get himself elected. Seen in this light, the 200 volunteers who instantaneously showed up to help out during the weddings, suddenly look like political volunteers, don't they? In a sense, they are. These Duggar wedding shows were one long commercial for the pseudo-Quiverfull lifestyle. (NOTE: the Duggars steadfastly refuse to use the term Quiverfull when put directly on the spot, so I have chosen "pseudo-Quiverfull" for this post... but its rather strange that they are easily the most famous of "Quiverfull" families and now they back away from the term? Why?) They even posted a bunch of viewer-tweets on one of the shows, wherein (mostly women) tweeted about how they wish they were Duggars, could have lots of close sisters as they do, as well as a "traditional" courtship. Etc. I saw a lot of this as naked propaganda for a lifestyle.

Both bridegrooms had to ask Jim-Bob for permission to court their legal-aged daughters, and still require chaperons and chaste, safe "sidehugs" (#sidehug became a popular hashtag during the TV marathons). The teary sister-bridesmaids (Jana, Joy Anna, Jinger, Johannah, Jennifer, etc) all kept saying they would "miss" Jessa, as if she was going to Antarctica, not just down the road to a house her father already owns.

Circumstances suggest the Duggars could not possibly be as sweet, naive and innocent as they appear, and yet, people resoundingly choose to think so. They are "cute" ... people don't like to be reminded of their politics. When I confronted tumblr trans women about sleeping through Michelle Duggar's work on an anti-trans campaign, nobody really answered me about that. The Duggars can be as political as they wanna be, since they position themselves as the Arkansas equivalent of the Von Trapps.

Would all those tweeting young women really prefer that their father screen all of their boyfriends, immediately eliminating anyone who did not regard courtship as inevitably leading to marriage? (First there is formal courtship, then engagement, then marriage. Each phase must be officially "announced" and slightly-more touching is allowed at each level; no kissing until the wedding day.) I don't believe that. What are women nostalgic for? That old "Cinderella Complex" syndrome, the feminine desire to be taken care of?

In the above link about Jessa Duggar, we learn that she actually budgeted her own wedding. As we learned during the show about her, she is very efficient and even organized homeschooling lessons for her whole family. But see: that is not old-school Christian patriarchy, allowing women to manage money. The Duggars get the mystique of "tradition" while availing themselves of Skype, iphones, microwaves and smart daughters who can manage money. It is impossible to truly GO BACK, so they get the best of both worlds. (Back in the day, these highly-managed marriages could not be arranged by looking at a guy's photo on Instagram, or checking out your future Christian spouse on her family's television show.)

I don't think women truly, in real life, want this lifestyle, but they do want to indulge the fantasy. Because I don't think it exists. Not even for the people practicing it. People want "reality TV" about it, but not reality.

~*~

Quick notes:


* SOME GOOD NEWS: There is a little orca baby boom, reported by the Guardian.


* We are still plugging away on the radio. Check us out live tonight at 8pm on WOLI!


* We are planning a demonstration against the Republican presidential "debate" (Fox News doesn't allow genuine debate, of course, but you know what I mean) next month here in Greenville, Saturday May 9th, in front of the Peace Center. I will make an official announcement here later, but we are already regularly announcing this on the radio show. YALL COME ON OUT AND RAISE HELL WITH US! (My account of our demonstration at the last Fox News debate is HERE.)

So far, they've got Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz... the usual suspects. But NOT the erstwhile star of the show, Jeb Bush. Uh oh. Is he dissing SC?

Hm. They won't like that.

The event will bring at least six potential Republican White House hopefuls to downtown Greenville for a day of stump speeches.

Confirmed to attend, according to Citizens United, are Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

Citizens United said it would announce additional speakers later, but Duncan said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush won't be among them.

"Jeb Bush and I have communicated," [SC Republican congressman Jeff] Duncan said. "He has a commencement address in Florida that day that is precluding his having the ability to come."

Duncan said at least three other South Carolina congressmen – Trey Gowdy of Spartanburg, Mick Mulvaney of Indian Land and Mark Sanford of Charleston – are expected to attend.

Trey Gowdy and Lindsey Graham, all by themselves, are reason enough to show up and howl.

Yall come! If you are coming from a long distance, please contact me and we can probably find a place for you to sleep, too. Remember, it is likely one of these (awful) deluded individuals will be the Republican nominee, or will serve as Veep or in the cabinet, if they should win the presidency.

Show up and make your voice heard!


* Medicines from the Earth will be May 29th - June 1st at the Blue Ridge Assembly in beautiful Black Mountain, NC. (my previous account of the herbal conference is HERE) Its pricey, but you will come out smart as the dickens.


* Waving to all the folks who have dropped by in the past couple of months, starting with Black History Month, which brought copious hits on the lynching of Willie Earle in 1947, as well as the release of Edward Lee Elmore from South Carolina's Death Row (after 30 years). We also had a bunch of hits on George Stinney, the 14-year-old child executed by the state of South Carolina in 1944. I was probably the first person to cover Stinney nationally (on the radio), although of course many African-Americans locally have written about George Stinney for decades. At long last, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen found that "fundamental, Constitutional violations of due process exist in the 1944 prosecution of George Stinney, Jr." and vacated the judgment.

It's about time.

The Execution of George Stinney, 1944

We did a radio show about George Stinney's execution back in November, and it seems the story is at last going viral.

George Stinney was executed by the state of South Carolina at the age of... 14. He is the youngest person ever executed by the USA.

And they found him guilty in 10 minutes. His family was not permitted to attend his trial. (yes, you read that right)

From Huffington Post:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Supporters of a 14-year-old black boy executed in 1944 for killing two white girls are asking a South Carolina judge to take the unheard-of move of granting him a new trial in hopes he will be cleared of the charges.

George Stinney was convicted on a shaky confession in a segregated society that wanted revenge for the beating deaths of two girls, ages 11 and 7, according to the lawsuit filed last month on Stinney's behalf in Clarendon County.

The request for a new trial has an uphill climb. The judge may refuse to hear it at all, since the punishment was already carried out. Also, South Carolina has strict rules for introducing new evidence after a trial is complete, requiring the information to have been impossible to discover before the trial and likely to change the results, said Kenneth Gaines, a professor at the University of South Carolina's law school.

Arguments for a retrial were finally heard on Feb. 21st. Several radio shows besides ours spotlighted the case, as did CNN. Various local news reports have said today that these hearings have so far been "inconclusive"--so still more hearings seem to be on the schedule. (About what? Is there any question that this verdict should be overturned?)

Many have wondered: what good will this do? George is gone and won't be brought back. But clearing his name is very important to his family, especially his sister Aimee Ruffner.

And a 14-year-old? Should never be executed. Never.

Unaccountably, there are still those diehards who believe the execution was just.

I will be reporting on this as it unfolds. Let's hope South Carolina does the right thing, for once.

Enjoy the silence... and other updates

From Pendleton Street Arts District here in Greenville. Not sure what the wheel is about, or the sun nuts, but its art, so its okay.


More on my Flickr page.


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As I sit here worrying over whether the entire upstate is being slowly poisoned with radioactivity, I've decided to post some links I've been mulling over.






The adoptive parents of Baby Veronica, not satisfied that they WON their big case, are now suing the Cherokee Nation for court fees. (Do you BELIEVE these people?) They are seeking a cool one million dollars:

NOWATA, Okla. — Attorneys for the adoptive parents of a 4-year-old girl caught up in a custody dispute are seeking $1 million in legal fees from the Cherokee Nation and the girl’s biological father, who is a member of the tribe.

Attorneys representing Matt and Melanie Capobianco have filed paperwork seeking the legal fees incurred while fighting the lengthy custody battle over 4-year-old Veronica.

In September, Dusten Brown handed Veronica over to the Capobiancos after the Oklahoma Supreme Court lifted an emergency stay keeping the girl in Oklahoma.

The Tulsa World reports attorneys for the Capobiancos are seeking $1 million to be split among four law firms. The newspaper reports none of the money would go to the Capobiancos.

Attorneys for Brown and the Cherokee Nation declined to comment on the filing.

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Google has been ordered to block images in a privacy case. This may set a precedent, since as you know, ordinary people do not have the right to make Google do squat... but rich people (specifically Max Mosley) sure do! (Biographical note: Max is the son of Oswald Mosley, whom non-British rock fans mostly recognize as the subject of "Less Than Zero" by Elvis Costello.) According to the New York Times:

LONDON — A French court ruled Wednesday that Google must remove from its Internet search results all images of a former Formula One car racing chief at an orgy. The ruling in the privacy case could have ramifications for the tech giant’s operations across Europe.

Max Mosley, the former president of the International Automobile Federation, had filed the lawsuit in September to force Google to automatically filter from its search engine links to images from a British newspaper report in 2008 that included photos and a video of Mr. Mosley participating in a sadomasochistic sex party.

The former Formula One head successfully sued the News of the World in a London court for breach of privacy and was awarded £60,000, or about $96,000, in damages.

On Wednesday, the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris backed Mr. Mosley’s attempts to force Google to block references to the images from appearing in Google’s search results worldwide. The company said it would appeal the decision.

Mr. Mosley argued that French law makes it illegal to take and distribute images of an individual in a private space without that person’s permission. But Google said that would limit freedom of speech, forcing the company to block search results without any person or court overseeing the context in which the images appeared.

Analysts said the ruling against Google could lead to greater restrictions on what was accessible through search results and could prompt more people to demand that the United States technology company remove references to their private activities.

“At this point in time, the pendulum is swinging toward individuals’ privacy and away from freedom of speech,” said Carsten Casper, a privacy and security analyst at the consulting firm Gartner in Berlin.

...

As part of the settlement ordered by the French court on Wednesday, Google will have to filter out nine images of Mr. Mosley from its worldwide search results. The company must pay him 1 euro in compensation and it will be fined 1,000 euros every time that an image is found through its search engine, starting at the beginning of next year.

“It’s a fair decision,” said Clara Zerbib, a lawyer at the law firm Reed Smith in Paris who represented Mr. Mosley in the lawsuit. “This case isn’t about censoring information, but about complying with French law.”

...

The lawsuits relate to a 2008 report in The News of the World, a British newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which was later closed because of its ties to a phone hacking scandal. The article described Mr. Mosley’s activities as a “sick Nazi orgy.” The allegations were particularly damaging, as Mr. Mosley is the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, a pre-World War II-era British fascist, and Mr. Mosley had sought to distance himself from his father’s activities.

By pursuing legal action in France and Germany, Mr. Mosley was taking advantage of more stringent data privacy legislation in those countries compared with either the United States or Britain, according to privacy analysts. In France, for example, it is a criminal offense to record someone else without his or her consent in a private space.

Google is facing a number of privacy lawsuits in Europe.

~*~

How would the world's coastlines look if all the ice melted?

Well, for starters, Florida would be history. Here is the interactive map.

Charleston, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach would also be gone, meaning that the South Carolina coast would start somewhere around Columbia, by my reckoning.

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I am opposed to assisted suicide. I thought I might have said this before on this blog... but then again, when I do a search, find that I have hedged and have not stated my opposition outright, so here it is: No.

And I recently remembered the reasons for my opposition, whilst reading Bad Cripple's eloquent blog. He is far more poetic and personal on the topic than I could ever be:

I think we people with a disability are feared. We are the one and only minority that can be joined via illness or accident. Our atypical bodies also symbolically represent the limits of medical science. Please do not talk to me about joint decision making strategies between physician and patients. Do not talk to me about informed consent. Do not talk to me about patient centered care. These buzz words are cultural ideals we aspire to reach. I am not suggesting we do away with these concepts. They should be valued. But my reality, my experiences when I try to access health care is radically different. [UK-Guardian writer Stella] Young quotes Marilyn Golden, a long time opponent of assisted suicide who perceptively observed: "we are asking the wrong questions when it comes to assisted death: We have to ask, do people with disabilities have true choice and self determination, in terms of living outside of nursing homes? In terms of housing that is truly affordable and accessible? In terms of the kind of services that really allow them to lead meaningful lives? In many cases, no."

These are the sort of questions we should be discussing. Why do people, all people, want to die? What drives a person to think death is preferable to living? Pain is not the primary variable. People choose to die because they fear losing their independence and autonomy. And here the link between end of life issues and disability is glaringly obvious to me. When I see a person with a disability I think of all the things a person can do. The same can be said for any person approaching the end of life. I think what can this person do? How can their life even with death impending be enhanced? This is not typically how others with no exposure to disability or end of life issues think. Instead we isolate the disabled and elderly--a historic pattern we have yet to break.

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Nico Lang writes at Salon: America still can't accept Lady Gaga's bisexuality, or anybody else's. The title says it all.

The comments are also very interesting and instructive.

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Camille Lewis shared with me this article about icky local Tea Party busybody Harry Kibler:

Kibler’s approach to political activism doesn’t rely on subtlety and consensus-building. He prefers open and direct confrontation, and his energy is inexhaustible. I recently spoke with him about his latest project, an effort to stop the Greenville County Council from imposing a one percent sale tax for the purpose of road maintenance.

“I’ve had so dad gum much fun doing this,” he tells me, “it ought to be against the law.”

Would that it were so.

Read it and weep.

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MORE:

:: Today on our radio show, the redoubtable Occupy the Microphone, we discussed the case of George Stinney, a 14-year-old who was executed by the state of South Carolina in 1944. Currently, there is a renewed effort to clear his name and get his conviction overturned.

:: What happened to the Middle Class? Ask Alice. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

:: I love this! ----> The Myth of Re-enchantment (thinkBuddha.org)

:: The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer (GoodMenProject)

:: Hope your Veterans Day has been good; don't forget my post last year on this holiday. It is even more accurate now than it was then. Take heed and beware.

:: And finally, here is your CUTE QUOTIENT CONTENT for this month... and possibly for the whole year. I have bookmarked this, and I go to it when I need to feel calm, centered and happy. TOO CUTE FOR WORDS: Baby Goats and Friends. SQUEEEEEEEE! Gonna die. Gonna. Just. Die. (And they upload more all the time, from everywhere.)

~*~

Due to Daylight Savings Time, its dark when we leave the radio station now.

There is nothing quite as magical as driving through the crisp, autumnal dark, peering at all the headlights... and then Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode pops up on your radio dial. Otherworldly, perfect.

All I ever wanted, all I ever needed... is for special moments like this to go on forever. :)

Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode