Here is your Real World: Boston housemember Sean Duffy’s “Duffy for Congress” homepage. That’s right, Real World cast-members are running for Congress now.
By all means, “Roll with Sean.” He’s endorsed by Sarah Palin!
Good luck, America.
RELATED: Here’s the awesome story of Wiscosnin legislator Jeff Wood who has been arrested three times in the last year for driving under the influence. The charges?
“…drunken driving, marijuana possession and drug paraphernalia possession in Columbia County; driving under the influence of drugs in Marathon County; and driving under the influence of drugs and bail jumping in Monroe County.”
The best part? Wood is challenging the legislature’s powers to boot him. On Wisconsin!
“On a pride-themed float called ‘Experiment of His Own Power,’ Obama is compared to ‘The Proud One’ of Dante’s Inferno, posing with his Nobel Peace Prize medal, next to several other representations of him—along with Oscar and Heisman Trophy awards, he appears as a five-star general, president of General Motors, and as the ‘healthcare-expert’ Surgeon General—all engulfed by the flames of hell.”
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Here is a Wisconsin Public Radio “Here on Earth” show program about Avatar being pulled from Chinese theaters in favor of the Chinese film Confucius. It is elucidating in terms of just how much even smart people misunderstand China. Some of the callers’ assumptions are built on painfully cartoonish perceptions of China. And these are public radio listeners! The best one is the woman caller near the end who is all geared up about the environment; she lumps China and Japan together as citizens with similar lives and concerns. Priceless. And then there is the guest at the end who, after an hour of meta-enabling Avatar’s socio-political meaning to China, says “Or maybe it’s popular because it’s just a wild 3D movies.” Really?
Oh, did my headline grab your attention? I bet it did. Just as BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow’s recent post headline “Cheap Chinese appliance imports drive British burglars to switch to iPod muggings” was a reprehensible (maybe unconsciously racist) grab for attention.
The post links to a Science Daily story titled “Burglars Have Changed Their ‘Shopping List’, New Research Reveals” which claims that “the incredible rise of the new superpower has made burglars ‘redundant’ due to the decline in cost of household goods traditionally targeted by thieves.” Basically, since tech junk made overseas is so cheap at Wal-Mart it’s not worth break-and-entering to steal; so instead criminals are jacking people on the street for their iPods. Great premise.
But Doctorow only quotes the bit on China being responsible which, in fact, additionally reveals the misconceptions of the researcher himself. Are many cheap electronics made in China? Yes. Are many other cheap electronics made elsewhere? Yes.
I emailed Doctorow to ask him to explain his reasoning for wording of the post. Big surprise, he did not respond.
Of course, the irony is that iPods are largely made in China with “cheap labor,” a fact that has been widely covered and something one would expect Doctorow to know.
Lazy all around. And it only spotlights a growing problem with focusing on China as the root of manufacturing problems.
ALSO: It’s a quibble, indeed, but when journalists, and bloggers who fancy themselves journalists, use the terms “cheap labor” or “cheap Chinese…,” do they even realize the derogatory manner in which this negatively brands a citizenry that their so-called liberal hearts so bleed for? Even if Chinese find the freedom so many want for them, they will spend a generation dumping the global perception that they themselves are “cheap” and incapable of quality instead of it just being a product of their current economic conditions.
From the AP:
JERUSALEM — Palestinian protesters have added a colorful twist to demonstrations against Israel’s separation barrier, painting themselves blue and posing as characters from the hit film “Avatar.” The demonstrators also donned long hair and loincloths Friday for the weekly protest against the barrier near the village of Bilin.
They equated their struggle to the intergalactic one portrayed in the film.
Now that is how you meta-enable, you amateurs.
To many it was a shock last weekend when the film Dear John blew by ticket sales predictions by almost double to become the number one film at the box office. This week, experts like Entertainment Weekly are predicting Valentine’s Day is going open huge and that Dear John “is going to be crushed this frame by the Valentine’s Day juggernaut. If it drops 50% it should consider itself lucky.”
That’s not going to happen and not just because Valentine’s Day is more horrible than anyone expects.
The photo at the top of this post is from around my neighborhood. Those are just a few of the very humble homes displaying service stars that represent active duty personnel overseas. And that doesn’t mean in Germany.
Dear John is a sappy love story. But it also revolves entirely around a soldier serving in Afghanistan (and Iraq). But the story itself isn’t about the wars themselves (Hurt Locker). And it’s not about soldiers dealing with the toll of being soldiers (Stop Loss, Taking Chance). It’s simply a love story very specifically focused on the romance between a young soldier and a young girl… in South Carolina. Besides being a not-all-that-bad (if heavy handed) weepy romance tale, that specific situation very much appeals to a whole segment of the nation that writers of Entertainment Weekly do not come into contact with often (which is ironic as they are probably EW’s audience). It’s the same kind of thing that happens when a Tyler Perry film or a small Christian film like Fireproof open huge and all of the mainstream entertainment scrambles to ask “how the hell did that happen?”
Dear John will not be number one this weekend. But I predict the film is going to do way better than expected, again. And it’s going to remain wildly popular with soldiers, soldiers’ friends, soldiers’ wives, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends, a group that doesn’t see itself represented very often on the conventional popular entertainment landscape.
Left: You are not damned!
Right: You are not damned!
Well, it was less of a question of “if” than one of “where.” The question now is how many Apple placements will the slick little number Valentine’s Day, due out tomorrow, boast?
