Real Nice, Tennessee

Melissa McEwan has a list of transgendered folks killed this past year.  You’ll notice we’ve made the list twice.  Oh, don’t give me that, “It’s Memphis,” crap.  Tennessee is Tennessee.

Both of the women who were killed in our state were prostitutes.  Prostitution is a dangerous profession for any woman, but it’s especially dangerous for transgendered women.  Especially because even though the men who go to transgendered prostitutes almost always go to them because they are transgendered, if they should decide to beat or rape or rob or murder the woman, they can always claim “I freaked out when I found out she was a man!” and most folks are like “Oh, well, that makes sense.”

America, the amount of men who frequent prostitutes who are surprised by a transgendered prostitute are vanishingly small.  Most of these fucker are lying.  They’re counting on your discomfort to help them get away with a crime, but they were not surprised to discover that these women were transgendered.

I’m feeling kind of hopeless about the whole thing so I’m feeling like it may be too much to ask that people just refrain from killing people just because they can.  But I would ask this of you, my dear readers–please, at the least, don’t buy this tired bullshit that these fuckers didn’t know.

They specifically targeted those women because they knew.

“Yes I Do”

I have a rule against taking men who claim to be feminist seriously, because it’s almost always the prelude to behavior of such giant douchebaggy proportions based solely on their privilege and their ability to get away with shit just because they’re men that you about can’t believe the universe doesn’t just fold in on itself and die of embarrassment.

The “I’m a feminist” man is like the embodied equivalent of the “I’m not a racist but…” statement.  Just like you know when someone says, “I’m not a racist but…” they’re about to say something racist, the man who tells you “I am a feminist,” is, mark my words, about to pull some of the most woman-hating shit you’ll ever see.

That’s not to say that there aren’t feminist men, just that the ones who announce it usually have some agenda.

All that being said, I did squeal just a little when I read Denis Leary talking about women:

And she’s appropriate to every moment. That chapter made me wonder, despite some other remarks you make in the book, if you consider yourself a feminist.

Yes, I do.

I thought so, but I wouldn’t have gathered that from the rest of your book.

Of course not, because I’m a man. But the truth is, if you’re really looking between all those lines, and I actually come close to saying it a couple of times … It’s actually serendipitous that we’re talking about Oprah, because when you come right down to it, whether it’s my wife or Oprah or my mom, women rule the world. And we’re [men are] just sort of in it. We’re in it and we’re using the towels, and we’re trying to remember the name of the color of the towels, and we’re hoping that we get the name right. We know that you might be pissed off — that’s why I say that Jon Stewart has to become the male Oprah, you guys have your Oprah. We need to have a guy who can tell us at 11 o’clock at night what the scores are, why our girlfriend or our wife might be pissed off, and how we can make her happy and keep our penises.

Yes, it’s problematic bullshit.  I don’t care.  La la la.  I’m not listening.  I love him.  Have ever since his time on MTV skulking around, cigarette in hand, ranting, ranting, ranting.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I wanted nothing more than to make out with Denis Leary, all smelling like dark earth and tobacco and leather and whiskey and, faintly, of the perfume of the girl he’d just left.

I still do.

Cadillac Pussy and Other Random, Depressing Things

–Over at Pith, we discuss how one knows if she has a “cadillac pussy.”  I have to admit, I think Kid Rock is probably one of the largest douchebags on the planet and I don’t know if it’s because he’s just such a fucking midwesterner or if it’s because he reminds me of the recalcitrant brother in ways I can’t quite explain, but damn, I kind of love him.

I hang my head in shame.

–Really, someone point me to the person who is still about “Chinese Democracy.”  I think the Beatles had their whole career in the length of time it’s taken Axl to get this out.  And it’s going to suck, I’m sure.  I give points to this dude for writing the most accurate take on it.

–On a more serious note, I have nothing to say about this, I just don’t want to be alone in reading it.

A Poster of Rasputin and a Beard Down to His Knees

I expect to hear from some of you that you spent today drunkenly philosophising and steering undergrads towards some kind of existential crisis.

A-hem.

As for me, as for Fred, I say, it depends on when you ask me, but yeah, I think I would dance.

De-Nial is Obviously a River in Tennessee

In the wake of the Democratic disaster that was our state-wide election, I keep hearing two things, from Democrats mind you, that need to be addressed.  1.  Democrats lost the election because of Obama.  2.  We need to move “to the middle” to pick up votes.

I don’t believe we lost because of Obama.  I believe we lost because the Democrats appeared to regular voters to be constantly putting their own desires ahead of the needs of the state.

But I want to clearly address the Democrats who do.

Listen.  I hear you.  I hear that you were never able to overcome the “Obama is a secret Muslim baby-killer who wasn’t even born in this country and is the intellectual love child of Malcolm X and Karl Marx” meme.  That people’s fear of what kind of person Obama is was just so great it ruined it for everyone else.

And I have just one question for you.  You know it was Tennessee Republicans who promoted and spread and beat half to death the whole “Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist” thing, right?

I just want to be clear about this, for us both to be clear about this.  You know it was Tennessee Republicans who promoted and spread the idea that Obama is a secret Muslim, right?

Okay, I’m sorry, two questions.  This will be my last one.

If you know that it was a main strategy of the Tennessee Republicans to win this election on the lie that Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist–and I repeat, on the lie–how can you suggest we move “to the center” to be more like the Republicans?

Did you pay no attention to what the Republicans were up to this year?  Oops, sorry; that’s three questions.

Listen, if voters have only to choose from Republicans and pseudo-Republicans, they’re going to vote Republican.  We have to stand for things.  Things that are different than what the Republicans stand for.

But, listen just for a second longer.  I know it’s more tempting to believe that Tennessee voted against Barack Obama than it is to believe that Tennessee voted against Tennessee Democrats.  But, if you believe that Tennessee was punishing downticket Democrats for Obama, then what you’re saying is that Tennesseans are so racist that not only won’t most of us vote for a black man, we’ll not vote for white people who share the same party as a black man.

That’s pretty damn racist.

Do you really believe that Tennessee is so damn racist that we’d not only vote against a black man just because he’s black (and I concede, we may indeed be that racist), but also that we’d vote against white people even vaguely associated with him?

I’ve got to be frank with you.  No.

Democrats, look in the mirror!  Go to the library, pull up the last five years of the Tennessean and read about yourselves–People showing up on the capitol drunk, canoodling with lobbiests, not showing up at all, getting arrested by the Feds, getting arrested by the Locals, building million-dollar additions to their taxpayer funded homes while the price of milk doubles and the economy in the state tanks, ousting the one Democrat who was willing not just to say “enough” but to vote “enough,” and so on and so on and so on.

You don’t need to move right… oh, excuse me… to the center.

You need to clean house.  If you stand before me and say, “I will put Tennessee first,” and you act on putting Tennessee first, people will support you.

You don’t have to move right to do that, but you do have to move towards putting Tennessee first.