Author Archive
Komen got the e-cards, is backing down on Planned Parenthood decision
February 3rd, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Susan G. Komen for the Cure has had a roller coaster of a week. Monday, the leading fundraising foundation for the fight against breast cancer announced they would cut funding for Planned Parenthood due to an internal policy that prevented them from donating to any agency under federal investigation. Following the announcement, the group received tremendous backlash from the media and social media users who accused Komen’s leadership of political motives and charged the organization with not prioritizing women’s health. Yesterday, Komen vocally defended their decision, then this morning finally capitulated and announced that they would reinstate funding for Planned Parenthood.
“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” the Komen foundation said in a statement, reports the Wall Street Journal.
“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair,” the statement continued.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation isn’t the first to buckle under noisy Internet protest. Bank of America and other big banks backed off their fee programs last year after protests, and just two weeks ago, Washington responded to large scale protest against SOPA and PIPA, two anti-piracy bills, by calling off votes.
While the Komen Foundation’s decision to reverse Monday’s announcement is commendable, this week’s protest has cast a shadow of doubt on the foundation’s ethics and leadership, and likely did damage that won’t be undone overnight. But it’s good to know the vocal powers of the internet can help derail bad decisions and get misguided policies back on the right track.
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Tis the season for dirty candy heart local news scandals
February 3rd, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
It happens every February. Middle school teachers pass around baggies of those chalky, bland heart candies with amorous phrases, and each year some future Dwight Schrute finds a heart in her pile bearing an R-rated message.
It’s hard to say how many kids get such a treat, but inevitably at least one runs home to her parents who confirm the nervous child’s fear that the note is “shocking” and “horrible,” and immediately cope with the shock and horror by calling the local TV station. The local news then runs the story with the purpose of “warning parents everywhere.” This year, a little girl in North Highlands, California, found a pink heart with the jeer “nice tits!”
Each year, flustered parents ask how that candy, which was obviously mass-produced and stamped with a pre-designed candy-stamp-machine, wound up with a dirty message like “nice tits!” on it. To the best of my knowledge, reporters have yet to get to the bottom of this, but one may assume that someone at the candy factory is playing a prank. The real question these stories raise is, “When did kids get so jumpy?”
If my friends had been lucky enough to receive a heart with “nice tits!” in middle school, we’d have had a good laugh, saved it in a shoe box with other funny momentos, or maybe tried to sell it to some boy who would then slip it to a teacher.
Maybe a bunch of kids get dirty hearts each year, and most keep quiet, but it may be worth noting that yesterday the New York Times ran a piece called “The Kids are More Than All Right” with graphs showing that America’s children are going through a square phase. Not only are they freaked out by saucy messages, but they also smoke less, drink less, puff less weed and have less sex than they did thirty years ago. They’re also more likely to have typically conservative values.
While some may find this trend disturbing, there’s nothing to be done about the liberal-conservative-liberal-conservative cycle other than wait. It’s inevitable and probably comes from kids’ healthy desire to rebel against their parents. If kids really are going through a lame phase, all adults can do is keep slipping dirty messages onto the conveyor belts at the candy factories and continue to enjoy it when an overly serious 12 year-old freaks out.
Until next year…
Michelle Obama’s push-up form is lacking
February 2nd, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Making the daytime talkshow rounds this week, Michelle Obama stopped by “The Ellen Degeneres Show” where the host goaded our First Lady into a friendly competition of brute strength. After some light shit-talking (“I know you’ve got some back issues”), DeGeneres and Obama took off their respective blazers and dropped to the floor for a push-up contest.
As you can see in the video below, DeGeneres closed at about 19 push-ups, while the president’s wife went on to do about five more, technically winning the match.
Impressed with both performances—DeGeneres and Obama are 54 and 48 respectively—I showed it to my boss Stephen Blackwell, who has an exercise addiction and therefore serves as our resident fitness expert. After watching the segment, Blackwell curtly informed me, “Michelle Obama’s push-up form is lacking.”
I pressed him for details and he explained, “I was training with this crazy dude Justo once, and he would always say, ‘You gotta ride the elevator!’ Meaning your chest has to almost hit the floor.”
Arms crossed, he watched the tape again and said, “She’s focussing too much on her triceps to complete the motion.”
Despite that he may be correct—DeGeneres does dip a couple inches deeper with each push-up—I’m still happy to have a First Lady with a competitive streak. Maybe Obama can ride the elevator all the way to a DeGeneres rematch in a few months and pull off an upset.
Top 5 reactions to the Komen decision
February 2nd, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest fundraising organization dedicated to fighting breast cancer, lost legions of support this week after announcing a decision to cut funding from Planned Parenthood, one of the largest breast-cancer screening resources in the country, particularly for underprivileged women. The Komen foundation has spent the better part of the week defending their decision as unpolitical, claiming that an internal rule prevents them from donating to any organization under government investigation. Meanwhile, people everywhere are calling bullshit and voicing their disappointment in a myriad of creative ways.
Here are five of the top reactions we’ve seen so far:
1. The hackers:
At around 12:30am unidentified hackers broke into Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s official website, and for a few minutes users found that the words on a banner ad for fundraising race, “Help us get 26.2 or 13.1 miles closer to a world without breast cancer,” were changed to, “help us run over poor women on the way to the bank.” Gather reported “The job was so inclusive that even in search engines, you were only able to find the hacked site.” (via)
2. The top official:
The Susan Koman Foundation’s top health official Mollie Williams reportedly resigned immediately following the board’s internal decision. Williams refused to speak to The Atlantic on the issue, but the publication wrote:
John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen’s senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public relations aspects of Komen’s Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right. “Mollie is one of the most highly respected and ethical people inside the organization, and she felt she couldn’t continue under these conditions,” Hammarley said. “The Komen board of directors are very politically savvy folks, and I think over time they thought if they gave in to the very aggressive propaganda machine of the anti-abortion groups, that the issue would go away. It seemed very short-sighted to me.
3. Someecards.com
Someecards.com created some pretty biting e-cards that you can send to your local affiliate for Susan G. Koman for The Cure to voice your dissent.
4. Lizz Winstead:
Appearing on Current TV, Lizz Winestead, co-creator of “The Daily Show” and author of “Lizz Free or Die: Essays,” had some sharp words for the foundation: “Where is that money gonna go? To more pink toasters? To more awareness campaigns? Guess what? We’re aware there’s breast cancer, and now we know that Susan Komen really doesn’t care about finding a cure, they care about finding corporate sponsors to slap that stupid ribbon on.” (via)
5. The masses on Twitter:
The anti-Komen Tweets are rolling in by the thousands this week from all over the world. One only needs to search “komen” to gauge how people feel about the decision. The above tweet is from author Judy Blume.
The one silver lining in Komen’s decision is that because of the passionate response, Planned Parenthood has seen a sizable uptick in donations. The organization announced on Wednesday that it received more than $400,000 within 24 hours of Komen’s announcement, a good percentage of the $680,000 in grants Komen donated last year. If you’re able to help, go here to make a donation of any size.
What is Mitt Romney’s hair made of?
February 1st, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Earlier today at an event in Eagan, Minnesota, a young gay rights activist showered Mitt Romney with what has come to be known as a “glitter bomb” to protest Romney’s donations to the Mormon Church, which opposes gay marriage.
Though Romney was about to take the stage, he took the surprise glitter shower in stride, brushing it off in more ways than one. But later, casually commenting on the event to CNN, Romney said something curious about his hair:
“Ah, I’ve got glitter in my hair,” he said, and joked about his famously coiffed hair. “That’s not all that’s in my hair, I tell you that. I glue it on everyday whether I need to or not.”
It’s hard to tell what he means by “I glue it on every day” unless he’s eluding to a toupee, which very well may be the case and would certainly explain Romney’s nearly flawless head of thick, salt and pepper hair. But “whether I need to or not” is just confusing. Maybe it’s an inside joke for other men with hairpieces that we just don’t get. Romney does have a “gift for telling jokes” as he puts it.
Entire Spanish village wins lottery, except one poor bastard
February 1st, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
It happens fairly often that a group of friends or officemates will pool their lotto tickets together as the jackpot gets high. Not only do their odds of winning increase, albeit infinitesimally, but the players’ fantasies about winning now include their friends or colleagues. After everyone collects their checks they’ll all buy each other extravagant Christmas gifts like Cartier watches, start a wine collecting club, and take yearly group skiing vacations to Switzerland.
Most pools, like most players, never win more than $40 or $60, but occasionally they do, and in these rare instances their story inevitably includes the misfortune of one guy who dropped out of the pool the week before the win. This is always painful to hear partly because it seems like a case of Darwinism turned inside out. The one guy who wised up enough to start depositing $26 in his savings account each week instead of indulging in fantasy winds up screwed. Life just isn’t fair, and everyone can relate to that.
Now imagine how that guy would feel if instead of his seven officemates winning, it’s his entire town.
That is exactly what happened in the Spanish village of Sodeto a few weeks ago. The entire 70-home village cashed in on Spain’s yearly Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo, with the exception of one guy, “Costis Mitsotakis, a Greek filmmaker, who moved to the village for love of a woman,” reports the New York Times. “It did not work out. But he still lives here in a barn he is restoring about half a mile outside the village.”
I’m not sure how the numbers were distributed so that the entire town won, but according to the Times, the homemakers’ association sells tickets each year, and people bought them knowing that the group makes a percentage on the sales. “Somehow, the homemakers had overlooked [Mitsotakis] this year as they made the rounds.” So not only did the Greek lover miss out, but he missed out through no fault of his own.
Every other resident of the town made out quite handsomely:
Some of Sodeto’s residents, mostly farmers and unemployed construction workers, won millions. The least fortunate came away with a minimum of $130,000 — and the giddy feeling that life, in its mysterious ways, was giving them another chance.
Stories about people missing out on jackpots always sound like a cautionary tale from a parent, but it’s hard to say about what. Maybe “never give up,” or “life isn’t fair,” or in the case of Mitsotakis who was merely overlooked, “don’t follow your lover to Spain and then live in a barn.”
Luckily, Mitsotakis didn’t lose out altogether. “Mr. Mitsotakis said it would have been nice to win. But he has benefited nonetheless. He had been trying to sell some land without much success. The day after the lottery a neighbor called to say he would buy it.”
Read the full story here.
Web wrap: must-reads from the internets
January 31st, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Paul Brittain is leaving SNL. So long, Lord Wyndemere.
Those guys who steal credit card info online have a creative way of weeding out police: mandatory group sex.
Mitt Romney says he got his “gift of telling jokes” from his mom.
Madonna promises to keep her top on at the Super Bowl.
Famous paintings improved by cats.
OK Go teaches colors to the kiddies on “Sesame Street.”
Best new site: T-Rex Trying…
January 31st, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
When it comes to Tumblrs, the best ones often have the simplest concepts. “Kim Jong Il Dropping the Bass” is an example, same with “Starbucks Spelling,” which simply posts pictures of Starbucks cups featuring misspelled names scrawled on them by hurried baristas. Now we have a Tumblr called “T-Rex trying” which shows a roll of sketches by artist Hugh Murphy of T-Rex attempting activities that are almost impossible due to his disproportionately short, skinny arms. Activities include applying sunscreen, flossing his teeth and trying to serve himself food from a buffet with a sneeze guard.
Visit the site here, and if you enjoy the sketches check out Murphy’s new t-shirts.
Newt Gingrich sued for using ‘Eye of the Tiger’ during campaign appearances
January 31st, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Few songs fire up the competitive spirit like Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” The band wrote the song for Sylvester Stallone as theme music for “Rocky III,” and stadiums still play it frequently alongside Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” to rouse fans at pro sporting events. YouTube commenter Chriss1951 captured its spirit best when he posted under the video, “my dog turned into a wolf while he was seeing this.”
Surely it was in this spirit of ferocious competitiveness that Newt Gingrich and his team chose “Eye of the Tiger” to play at political functions and on the campaign trail. But, as often happens when politicians use copyrighted material to sell their message, the song’s owner is not on board. Rude Music Inc. in Chicago, owned by Frank M. Sullivan III of Survivor, has filed suit against Gingrich for using “Eye of the Tiger” to pump up the crowd on the campaign trail.
The suit claims that Gingrich has been violating copyright laws by using the song as far back as 2009 without permission, and emphasizes Gingrich’s hypocrisy when it comes to his support of SOPA. The lawsuit reads:
Mr. Gingrich’s and Newt 2012, Inc.’s infringement of “Eye of the Tiger” is willful. Mr. Gingrich is sophisticated and knowledgeable concerning the copyright laws, both as a private individual and business owner, and as a former elected official…Finally, at a recent debate in South Carolina, Mr. Gingrich criticized the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, stating, “We have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds that it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue…”
When it comes to campaign songs, 2012′s Republican hopefuls have a narrow list of artists to choose from. Ted Nugent, Meat Loaf and Kid Rock are known for their conservative views, and Romney already claimed Rock’s “Born Free” for his campaign. Johnny Ramone would likely be cool with Ron Paul using his songs, but I can’t imagine which the candidate would choose.
Because of the drought of conservative rockers, politicians frequently find themselves in trouble with artists. Tom Petty reportedly sent Michele Bachmann a cease and desist letter after she used “American Girl” at her campaign kick-off in Iowa; Jackson Browne sued John McCain for using his song “Running on Empty;” and last year David Byrne sued former Florida Governor Charlie Crist for using “Road to Nowhere” to slam his opponent. As part of the settlement, Byrne demanded Crist post a heartfelt apology on YouTube.
Like the others, Gingrich will have to go back to the aural drawing board for the remainder of the primary season. Maybe the famously whiny former House Speaker would like Garnet Mimms’ “Cry Baby,” also included here.
New study suggests that men are worse at parking cars than women
January 30th, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
I’m a terrible driver, particularly when it comes to parking. So far I’ve managed to avoid major damage, but I’ve had more embarrassing episodes than I care to recount. These include scraping walls when leaving an end spot in a parking garage, scratcing up against and backing into parked vehicles, and once driving over a giant, decorative rock in an outdoor parking lot that left the front of my car dangling in the air and destroyed my car’s underside. I’m not proud of any of this.
Part of this shame—the well-deserved part—comes from the cases in which my careless parking causes an innocent person to spend their weekend on the phone with my insurance handler and taking their car to a body shop. That’s a huge inconvenience, and one that makes me want to hit my head against a wall out of guilt.
But there’s also a secondary shame in knowing that every time I mess up parking in public, even if no one else’s car is involved, I’m giving ammunition to a stupid, unfounded stereotype that women can’t drive. This is totally unfair. I know it’s unfair partly because I know plenty of women who are great drivers, and partly because I just read in the Telegraph about a study produced by the car park firm NCP in Britain, which found that contrary to popular opinion women, on average, are actually better at parking their vehicles than men. The study employed a team of researchers to observe 2,500 drivers across its 700 car parks in Britain over a one-month period. Among their findings, according to the Telegraph, were:
-Women take longer to park, but they do a better job.
-52 per cent of women park in the middle of each parking bay, compared to 25 percent of men.
-Women are better at finding spaces because they drive more slowly around the parking lots.
-Women are more accurate in lining themselves up before starting each maneuver.
-Women are more likely to adopt instructors’ preferred method of reversing into bays.
-Fewer men reposition their cars once in the bay.
-Men are more skilled at driving forwards into spaces.
-Men are much quicker at parking, taking 16 seconds on average against the 21 seconds women needed to complete the maneuver.
So there you go—a study that punches a hole in the theory that when women park badly it’s because they’re women, rather than people, who, like myself, are shitty, stupid drivers.
According to Neil Beeson, the professional driving instructor who created the study: “In my experience men have always been the best learners and usually performed better in lessons. However, it’s possible that women have retained the information better. The results also appear to dispel the myth that men have better spatial awareness than women. It shows that us men need to give our partners more respect when it comes to parking. The facts don’t lie.”
HBO releases ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 2 trailer
January 30th, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
It’s hard to not go crazy with anticipation between seasons of the most suspenseful TV shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Breaking Bad.” I usually try to cope by avoiding them entirely. I never watch old episodes or speculate on message boards, and if I see an update online—or god forbid an interview with one of the actors— I try my hardest to refrain from clicking. That said, when it’s trailer time, it is truly impossible not to watch.
This weekend HBO released a trailer for “Game of Thrones” Season 2, and it’s just the fix you’d expect. Though HBO doesn’t reveal too much about the plot, the trailer evokes power, vengeance and bloodshed with passionate music, solemn narration, and bits of new footage including a clip of Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) all keyed up for revenge. Watch below and let your skin crawl in excitement for April 1.
Jonathan Franzen explains why he hates e-books
January 30th, 2012 by Carmel Lobello
Last week Maurice Sendak visited “The Colbert Report” for a very entertaining two-part interview. After commenting on the complexity of children, the “hopelessly vile” politician Newt Gingrich, and the abysmal current state of children’s literature, Sendak weighed in on e-books: “Fuck them, is what I say,” he griped. “I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I will be dead, I won’t give a shit.”
While the future is arguably already upon us when it comes to e-books, Sendak isn’t the only lauded author to speak out against the technology recently.
At the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts in Cartagena, Colombia, Jonathan Franzen spoke of his dislike of e-books as well. “The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it’s pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,” said Franzen. He went on:
“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.
“Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball.
“But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”
Franzen continued:
“The Great Gatsby was last updated in 1924. You don’t need it to be refreshed, do you?
“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.
“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”
There are plenty of solid pro-e-book arguments: you can buy and download them almost instantaneously; the built-in dictionary makes looking up words incredibly fast and easy; they take up almost no space, which leaves more room in tiny apartments for things like plants and comfortable chairs.
That said, some of Franzen’s points ring true, as does Sendak’s call-down. Franzen’s point about the need of permanence in such a rapidly changing world can be applied to other artifacts as well, like vinyl records and photographs shot on film that can’t be touched up by merely fiddling with the filters on an iPhone. There’s something comforting about art that can’t be easily manipulated and enhanced by technology.
Regarding people’s fascination with becoming immortal, Franzen said later in the press conference, “Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don’t see how you could stand it psychologically.”
For more of Franzen’s comments on art, technology and the state of the world, visit Telegraph.
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