The new movie about Charles Darwin, starring (former neighbors!) Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, is having trouble finding a US distributor because it’s “controversial.”

I don’t even have words for how stupid this is. I mean, I guess there’s the old, “If you don’t want to see it, don’t go to the movie.” I don’t like Megan Fox or horror movies, so Jennifer’s Body will not be getting my $12.50. See how easy that was, Science Haters? But we could even dial it down a bit and say it’s just a story about a man who had a crisis of faith when his daughter died.

Or, you know, we could point out that saying “Evolution is just a theory” is the same as saying George W. Bush was just a government official.

But whatever. We’re apparently willing to accept giant fighting robots in movie theaters but not a movie based on a story about one of the most important scientific discoveries ever. Fine, Middle America. Deprive me of seeing this movie. Only makes me want to see it more.

Here’s the trailer:

My Twitter is mostly apolitical, but I’ve tweeted a little about healthcare this week because it’s such a prominent part of every conversation.

So here’s a fun fact: I’m one of those crazy people who think health care reform is not really worth doing if it doesn’t have the public option. I love when right-wing politicians get on TV and say things like, “What Obama really wants is a single-payer system,” as if Obama were advocating drowning puppies. That’s funny.

Anyway, I’m a big scary liberal. But you knew that.

Over the last two weeks, every tweet I’ve made about healthcare has been followed up by either getting followed by a conservative politician or an @ reply linking to an article full of lies about what’s in the plan. Today I got an @ reply linking to a Youtube video cobbling together things Barbara Boxer has said and trying to prove that she advocates killing your grandma. I kind of want to respond and say, “You get that I like the idea of the government ensuring that all Americans get health care, right? Was that not clear from my tweets? Do you even read?”

Followers and @ replies from people advocating the public option: 0. Unless you count some silliness that happened under the hashtag #obamacarefacts. (Under Obamacare, all Americans will have to eat all their vegetables before they can have dessert, for example.)

I wonder about that a little. The people who stand in the way of real health care reform seem to be working harder than the rest of us. It’s possible that these politicians on twitter that are spamming people that stop to listen and a few people are clearly getting convinced, if the poll numbers mean anything.

So maybe it’s time to rethink our strategy.

I wondered for a long time if Republican education policy, for example No Child Left Behind, was really an attempt to destroy public education and render Americans stupid. It’s a little conspiracy theorist, but consider the ways conservative talking points dismantle education: “evolution is just a theory,” for example. Standardized testing puts the thrust of classroom time on passing tests, not on actually learning.

What strikes me about our current national debate (both on health care and the whole birther thing, which are related) is that if some of the people participating in the town hall shenanigans had just learned a thing or two about American history, or if they’d even just been taught the critical thinking skills to sort out what’s true and what’s completely unreasonable, none of this would be happening.

Not to be a conspiracy theorist.

I’m not sure what I can add to this debate (if it can even be called a “debate”) because I believe Obama is the legit president (hell, I voted for him) and I believe that the US is in dire need of health care reform and I strongly support the public option. I’m all for single-payer healthcare, in fact. That’s the wild thing about this “debate”; so many of the people decrying the public option are on Medicare, which is… single-payer, government-run health insurance.

I went 10 months without health insurance in 2007, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what some people go through, although I did injure my foot and wind up in the ER during that time. I lucked out and had read an article about what to do in NYC if you need a doctor but don’t have insurance, so I went to a public ER with a sliding scale payment system, and the ER visit wound up costing me a mere $45. I spent 8 hours in the hospital, though, and the verdict was that I had a sprain and there wasn’t really anything the doctor could do for me anyway. That strikes me as… inefficient.

I have insurance now through my employer, and it covers most things, although I’m learning that there’s a really limited number of doctors who will take my insurance. So health care isn’t rationed? I had a doctor that I liked and trusted that I can’t afford to see anymore because she doesn’t take my insurance.

So, I’ve seen first-hand how fucked the system is. A Brit acquaintance of mine said to me just yesterday that the American healthcare system boggled his mind. (And I love this whole Stephen Hawking thing, where in an editorial argued that the British NHS would have killed poor Hawking who is a British citizen who has stated that he owes his life to care he got from the NHS. A lot of forehead slapping is going on during this debate.)

I feel like this is common sense. Is it possible that there are any Americans that don’t at least know someone struggling without proper care? There are better alternatives to the current system! The NHS and Canada’s systems have their flaws, and taxes are higher in France, but these are proof that viable systems where all citizens have access to care exist! And it’s a “public option” we’re looking at, not even a single-payer system, and the option is intended to make health insurance companies more competitive, which theoretically will motivate them to cover more people in an effort to get more business. (You don’t even have to get health care from the government! You can still get it from your profit-motivated insurance company if that’s what you want! Crazy, right?)

So what’s with all the crazy at the town halls?

A lot of the misinformation has already been widely debunked, but there are a few things happening that hit me. First, there’s this lady crying about wanting her country back. Yeah, how do you think I feel, lady? Bush spent 8 years in office after the questionable election of 2000, but Obama’s in office for 8 months and people are crying. It’s hard not to imagine that part of her sobbing here is related to thinking that Obama is an illegitimate president, or that he’s hijacked the country somehow, which I can’t help but think is an argument built at least in part on racism.

It struck me today when reading about Katy Abram, a woman who became an instant pundit by attending a town hall, that if we did a better job teaching our citizens about our history and the way our government really works, this debate would be a different beast. Abram has been all over the cable news, and it’s clear from watching the clips that she’s well-meaning but doesn’t have much grasp on what the real issues are or even American history. Her argument is that universal health care is not constitutional. I think she misunderstands the constitution.

I’ve seen it quoted by some of the astro-turfers that Jefferson advocated periodic revolutions. (If you can call some shouting at the urging of right-wing corporate groups and talk-radio jockeys a “revolution.”) Jefferson was obviously an advocate of revolution since he participated in one. I think Jefferson would be surprised that the Constitution he helped write is still the one we follow, because he also believed that the Constitution would need to be completely rewritten every so often. He was forward thinking enough to know that the needs of The People would change over time. Medical care in Jefferson’s time was a different beast entirely, so I’m not sure he could have foreseen 21st century healthcare, but it says right there in the preamble to his Constitution that We The People established that Constitution to promote, among other things, the general welfare of the people. That seems plain enough to me.

Some of the people gaining a voice on the cable news cycles are people like Orly Taitz, Queen of the Birthers, who came across as completely unhinged in this Salon interview. And people follow her I think in part because they don’t know better. Rachel Maddow showed a poll on her show last night indicating that something like 12% of the American people didn’t think or weren’t sure that Hawaii was a state. Hawaii became a state in 1959, 2 years before Obama was born there. You know, I’ve got one of those Certificate of Live Birth thingies. Mine is from the state of Ohio, which is where I was born, and I got it before a trip I made to Canada in 1996, back when a birth certificate was all you needed to cross the border. If mine was good enough to get me back into the states after the sojourn to Quebec, Obama’s is good enough to prove he’s the president.

How much is racism the motivation behind the birther movement, a way to give legitimacy to the argument that a black man is not qualified to be president? More to the point, why do people with views as out there as Taitz’s have a voice in the national media at all?

The birthers and the astro-turfer anti-healthcare-reform people are related in that both have movements that are gaining momentum based on a platform of misinformation, ignorance, and misplaced anger. I wish the news media would just stop paying attention to any of them, because it makes them think they’re winning, and then it all just gets more ridiculous. It distorts the debate. I’d bet the majority of Americans, those of us with first-hand experience with how fucked the current health care situation is in this country, those of us who react negatively to violence, those of us who took the time to find out what’s really in the bill, we want real reform. We are not represented in the media, not even in the liberal media. Rachel Maddow, even, has spent a lot of time each night on the hijinks at the town halls.

Incidentally, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is on Maddow right now saying that this nonsense detracts from the debate, and he points out that the US spends more per capita on health care than any other nation, and 45 million people are still uninsured. THANK YOU, Bernie Sanders. Why are we even arguing about this?

Bonus links!
GOP is kind of looking the other way when the town halls get violent. (Apparently Obama gets 30 death threats a day!)

Betsy McCaughey derailed health care reform during the Clinton administration and she’s doing it again. James Fallows says that he thought contemporary methods of disseminating information meant that lies wouldn’t get any traction. Whoops!

A primer on the Tea Parties. “A day after one of North Dakota’s largest-ever tea parties, at the courthouse in Grand Forks, the only thing I can say with certainty about the movement is that it’s mostly about making funny signs and producing lots of unintentional irony. And anger. Plentiful, seething, soul-rooted and only vaguely-focused anger. And maybe racism.”

Also, I’m wondering if these guys have never heard the Nazi Rule of Internet Debates, which states that “Once you invoke Hitler or the Nazis, the debate is over.” Whosoever mentions Hitler or the Nazis first effectively shuts down the debate, because you can’t argue with them after that. So… Obama is like Hitler? Is that the current meme? Because he wants a public option for non-old people so that they can enjoy the same kind of health care that most senior citizens enjoy under Medicare. Because the new bill covers the time your doctor spends helping you write a living will so that you can have control over what happens to you should you become unable to make your own medical decisions? I’ve got some bones to pick with Obama, but really? Really?

So: the Nazi rule states that you can’t argue with these people anymore. End of debate.

If you haven’t already heard this, Amazon has stopped listing sales rankings for books with LGBT themes. The excuse they offer is that LGBT books have adult themes, and they are thus inappropriate for some search engines, but a bunch of bloggers have done some digging, and apparently Playboy and a whole lot of hetero erotic lit are still getting ranked, but YA novels with gay characters but no sex are not.

There’s a Google bomb afoot: Amazon rank. I’m just doing my part. I’ve also seen a Twitter hashtag “#amazonfail”. And a few people are even boycotting Amazon until this is sorted out. I’m personally tempted to download a whole lot of gay romance just to spite Amazon, although maybe it’s better to buy ebooks from their publishers instead of through Amazon for a while, Kindle or no. Hmm.

Feel free to say vitriolic things in the comments.

Cross-posted to books to the sky.

Seen at the Red Mango on St. Mark’s Place.

more animals

+ Hollywood’s 5 saddest attempts at feminism.

+ Related: Masculinity and Disney movies.

+ Fashion at my alma mater. I’m sure glad I graduated before that words-on-the-ass-of-your-sweatpants trend started. Or, maybe what I really need are some of these. Hot, right?

+ I’m kidding.

+ McCain Shenanigans Watch: McCain pulled out of an interview on CNN because Campbell Brown actually, you know, did her job by asking some tough questions.

+ Cool skyscraper photography.

+ Some baseball card fun: The 23rd card in a set of 22.

+ Grease in Lego.

One of my coworkers pointed out today that, in the event McCain gets elected and then decides not to run for reelection in 2012, the likely Republican candidate would then be Sarah Palin, and, theoretically, she could run against Hillary Clinton, and then we’d have to elect a woman.

There’s been a lot of weird anger about the choice. I thought at first that it was purely a ploy to pull disaffected Clinton voters towards the McCain ticket. If the last few days have anything to show for it, this is probably true, as it doesn’t seem like McCain really checked her out in advance. It really was kind of a, “Well, she’s got a vagina,” choice. Because, you know, women are stupid and think all women are the same.

Here’s a brief list of blog posts about Sarah Palin that I have read. Maybe this encapsulates my thoughts.

Jezebel: Bristol’s pregnancy should be off limits. Bristol’s pregnancy is fair game.

One of the best posts on this topic was by Lauren at Feministe.

Sign of the apocalypse? Lindsay Lohan speaks about Sarah Palin articulately “I think the real problem comes from the fact that we are taking the focus off of getting to know Sarah Palin and her political views, and what she can do to make our country a less destructive place. Its distracting from the real issues, the real everyday problems that this country experiences.” Hey, that’s a really good point. Makes you wonder if it’s all part of the strategy, eh. “So, John McCain, what’s your plan for Iraq?” “Hey, what’s that?!”

The babies and the news media: what the scandal, such as it is, says about the candidates and the media.

Giuliani says Palin is more qualified than Obama. Of course he does.

Gawker has a clip of Sarah Palin talking about pregnant teens two years ago.

Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is fair game because Sarah Palin cut funding for pregnant teens. Bristol comes from a privileged place as part of Alaska’s first family and has resources available that an overwhelming number of pregnant teens do not, thanks, in part, to her mother.

If anything, this is why I think it’s relevant to talk about, beyond the fact that it’s kind of a fascinating human interest story. Sarah Palin’s family should be off limits from speculation, except when it reflects on policy. Here’s a woman who benefited from the feminist movement but is vehemently against it. A woman who slashed resources for teen mothers but is the mother of a teen mother.

+ Swing voters and what magazines they read.

+ More on crazy activists and bloggers getting a little fundamentalist over their candidate of choice. I’m starting to think that the vast majority of people with widely-published opinions are growing increasingly out of touch with what the majority of voters are actually thinking. I mean, if what the conservative talking heads said were anything like what normal people actually think, McCain would not be the most likely Republican nominee, you know?

+ Challenge! Name all the presidents in 8 minutes!. I only missed 5. I’ll help you out by naming them: Van Buren, Pierce, Cleveland, Harding, and Benjamin Harrison.

+ The Times gets giddy over semicolons. Only the Times doesn’t always get it right.

+ This article in the Times about Jessica Valenti and Marcia Pappas (the NOW-NY president who said last week that Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama was “a betrayal of women”) is interesting. As an Edwards supporter, you can guess how I come down on this debate, but I’ll add: Gee, Marcia, thanks for setting us straight because it’s not like women can make their own choices about who to vote for.

+ Speaking of voting, I’ve been having a very hard time choosing who to vote for now that Edwards is out of the race. Amanda has some pretty compelling reasons to consider Obama. But if you needed another reason, not to vote Clinton, she’s been endorse by Ann Coulter. Kind of.

+ Here’s a kind of hilarious list of complaints about TV to the FCC. Kind of makes you wonder; I haven’t seen most of the episodes of TV referenced, and I watch a far amount of TV. It’s sort of like complaining about porn on the internet; it’s not just there when you turn on your computer, for the most part, you have to go look for it. Do these people just surf channels looking for things to write to the FCC about?

+ Speaking of TV, in entirely unsurprising news, Karl Rove joins Fox News.

+ West Virginia wants to teach kids how to use guns.

+ Mississippi wants to keep fat people from eating. (Shapely Prose has a good round up of opinions on that. See also Feministe.

+ Scientists have discovered a new species of shrew.

Full disclosure: I wrote part of my thesis on the literature of Toni Morrison. So I’ve done my homework here, I guess you could say.

She’s back in the news because she endorsed Obama (and if I were swayed by endorsements, that’s a pretty eloquent one). And the right wing, predictably, flips right out. Amanda explicates. So does Jill. I don’t have a whole lot to add, beyond that this particular anti-Morrison rant is about the least-informed bit of knee-jerk tomfoolery I’ve seen in a while. I don’t make a habit of dwelling in Right Wingnuttia, but I want to defend Toni Morrison as a wise woman and a gifted writer who has had more to say on race and gender, and said it better, since The Bluest Eye was published in 1970, than this guy. (And, granted, Beloved is not even my favorite Morrison novel — that honor belongs to Paradise — but it’s still deserving of the accolades it got. This guy’s allowed to have his opinions, and I’m allowed to think he doesn’t get it, which he probably doesn’t if Tom Clancy is his idea of good literature.)

Ugh. Reading that bit of drivel leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Bonus: Feminism has apparently gone the way of neon and big shoulder pads. Did you know it’s just not cool with the kids these days? Bleargh.