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No, this is not one of those goofy “an open letter to President Obama” posts. I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t read my blog. (If you do, though, hi! I loved your work in The American President! Wait, that was Michael Douglas.) I’m just reposting a short email that I sent to Obama. I’m not under the impression that the letter will be read by the president himself, but I do think that if the Administration receives enough indications of support over its recent reproductive healthcare coverage decision, it’ll hopefully (hopefully) be emboldened to continue doing the right thing in the future. With that in mind I encourage you to send your own letter. Mine:

I’m writing this message because I hope that if President Obama sees the outpouring of support and appreciation for his recent decision regarding women’s reproductive health coverage, he’ll be confident that he’s made the right choice and will continue to do so in the future.

The president gained a lot of my respect with his decision, and turned a reluctant supporter into an enthusiastic one. I look forward to his second term. Thanks again for doing the right thing and not caving to hypocrites who use the Bible as a cover for their own misogyny.

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I get that it’s totally cliche and well-understood to point out that teen slasher movies, of the Friday the 13th and Halloween variety, seem to have a disturbing fascination with punishing young women for having sex. But there’s a side to this trend that I don’t think has been discussed quite as much, and is frankly even more disturbing to me.

While it’s annoying on a certain level that you can watch Nancy’s friend having sex in A Nightmare on Elm Street and literally just know that she’s about to die, there’s also a certain endearing quality to the way your old-school teen slasher movies tried to preach Sunday School morality even as they gleefully ripped people to pieces. It’s not forgivable or, needless to say, persuasive, but it’s amusing in much the same way that your cranky old grandfather is amusing.

But the dull predictability of sexy female deaths in B-movies up to the present day has long since worn out its welcome. And the side to this trend that I was referring to, the one that bothers me far more than it amuses me (because as to the latter, it doesn’t), is that modern B-movies seem determined to convince us that not only will psychopathic serial killers target young women who are ostensibly sluts, but that the very forces of nature themselves conspire to punish women for such crimes as necking, bathing, and not being entirely dressed. Observe:

So basically, even piranhas, crocodiles, and, uh, ghosts target women who commit the crime of not keeping their breasts under wraps at all times. I wouldn’t be inferring any kind of social commentary from this trend if it weren’t so depressingly predictable. And the fact that the women so often die while naked sure seems to suggest that the death and gore are an integral part of the porn. I think our culture gets off not only on seeing boobs, but on punishing women for letting them.

As an antidote, I recommend Teeth, a movie that punishes men for being rapists and douchebags rather than women for having bodies.

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I apologize. This picture is legally required anytime a blogger quotes or even paraphrases Inigo Montoya.

Via Fred Clark, we see another example of wingnuts valiantly standing up against encroachments against their individual freedoms:

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.

So let’s lay out a couple opposing scenarios here:

a) You can drive to work, take a bus/train, or ride a bicycle.
b) You pretty much have to drive to work.

a) With information available to you about your energy use, you can choose to use a shitton of energy ’cause you’re just a rich mofo like that and you enjoy cooling your house down to 55 degrees, or you can choose to budget your energy use because money or the environment or some hippie bullshit like that.
b) You can try to manage your energy use but you’re pretty much not going to find out how much you’ll be paying each month until after the fact.

What’s strange is that our wingnut friends are convinced that, in each of the pairs of options above, option B constitutes a greater level of individual freedom. This suggests that either they are very confused about what the word “freedom” means, or that they’re mendacious twits. Possibly a combination of the two.

It fits the pattern, of course – conservatives seem to feel very threatened by people who make different life choices or live different lifestyles. Just as every gay couple that gets married feels like an assault on their Jesus-approved heterosexual marriage, every cyclist they see riding down the street is an encroachment on their freedom to drive their car. For some reason. “Freedom to conform” appears to be the conservative canard*.

*This is the kind of thing conservatives frequently accuse liberals of, but contrary to the lurid wingnut fantasies, liberals aren’t actually trying to force anyone to ride bicycles or use CFLs. But wingnuts have always been masters of projection, after all.

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Via Slacktivist, some valiant soul is performing a public service and continually tweeting quotes from Ron Paul’s infamous newsletters, like a pulsing beacon of ignorance and bigotry radiating into space. Or something.

They swing wildly between racism:

December 30, 2011 12:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite