Say It Ain't So Already

A writer at the Yahoo site “Shine” called out Vanity Fair last week for the cover of it’s “New Hollywood” issue which featured a picture of actresses that were, “extremely thin and very, very white. Unless Vanity Fair considers one redhead to be diversity, we feel the need to cry foul.” …  “Joanna Douglas, the writer of the piece, received a number of the threatening emails after the post was picked up by white supremacist sites and sources at the site say that the police have been contacted and an arrest is pending.”

We have a long way to go.

CNN is reporting that a person has been pulled from the rubble in Haiti — four weeks after the earthquake.  Wow.

William Rivers Pitt is one of my favorite political writers.  His most recent column however, is about bullying.  My father was a bully so I’m interested in the topic.

Pitts’ article begins:

I have a livid scar in the center of the back of my right hand. It is clearly visible, so I see it every day, and every time I see it, I am reminded of how I got it. One day, several boys in my junior high school class grabbed me and pinned me to the floor. They extended my right arm and held my hand flat to the floor. One of them took out a pencil and began violently rubbing it against the skin of that hand, until the skin broke, until little balls of my flesh stuck to the eraser, until the blood poured.

I did not cry, I did not scream, and with four larger boys crushing down on me, I could not fight back. See, that was the thing. They wanted to see how long I could go before I wept or cried out. These boys, and several of their friends, had been attacking me on a daily basis for more than two years at this point, and I had stopped giving them the satisfaction of my tears. They didn’t like that, so the eraser was meant to elicit the response they desired. They never got it, so they finally stopped ripping my hand open with the eraser, and the four of them settled for beating me up again.

Thursday marks the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and there could be violence there like we saw last summer.

Let’s keep the people in our thoughts.

Here’s a nifty interactive graph showing how the money’s allocated.

31-17 New Orleans.

Woo hoo.

I have no allegiance or emotional connection to either the Colts or the Saints but I want to root for someone, so I’m going with the Saints.  I think it would be wonderful for New Orleans if their team won.

A friend told me that Ringo Starr’s son will be playing the drums with The Who today during the half-time show at the Super Bowl.

Is it skimpy?   Was that a condition of her appearance?

Just askin’.

Watching Palin at the Tea Party “convention.”  Be afraid.  Terror.  Terror. Terror.

If you watch the corporate media you know it occasionally (very, very occasionally) aires stories about human trafficking.  They’re always done from or about a foreign country with an air of superiority, as if such a thing would never, ever happen in the United States.

Human Trafficking in Central PA:

Every hour of every day there is someone who is lured into the United States, forced to work with no pay or coerced into becoming a sex slave. Human trafficking is a horrifying experience and it is happening right here in Central Pennsylvania.

Anywhere from 14,000 to 16,000 people are trafficking into this country each year. It’s modern day slavery and it’s a billion dollar industry.

A private plane collided with the tow-line of a glider being towed by another small plane this afternoon over Boulder, Colorado  — just a few miles from my house.  The glider self-released and made its way back to the airport but at least one of the motorized planes crashed.  Whether they both did isn’t clear yet.  Four people are dead.

Here’s the chilling video from MSNBC.

Very sad.  And what a nightmare of an experience for the glider pilot.

UPDATE:  Local news stations say both of the motorized planes crashed, and from what they’re saying it sounds like they collided; the tow-line wasn’t involved.  They also say three people are confirmed dead but as many as five people may have died given the total seating capacity both planes.  Debris is spread out over a mile and a half.

Again, so sad.  We see gliders being pulled up over our house and toward the Rockies all day long around here.  They ride the thermal winds that rise up off the plains.  The tow pilots are average guys/gals just trying to make a living.