I spotted these on the shelves at a local library branch recently and just had to take this shot. Do publishers just think women who purchase chick lit are idiots, or is indicative of supremely lazy art direction? What say you?

There are a number of incoherent thoughts about this fake scandal swimming around in my head, but I don’t think I could articulate it any better than this screen shot of the front page of The Daily Beast does:

America has lost their mind over this story.

Tiger Woods was the perfect Black American Hero. Self-effacing, non-threatening, sufficiently asexual, even after he married a blonde model and fathered a child. He’s the kind of Black male America loves to hold up as a standard, because he’s safe, and he’s capable of navigating the rarified air of private golf clubs, celebrity, and stratospheric wealth.

All that came crashing down when Woods’ wife, to use his words, “went ghetto” on him.

I’m trying to make sense of why this story matters so much to so many people (read: “White Americans”). I think the shattering of Woods’ safe public image plays a part, but I think something more sinister is at work. When Michael Jordan, another Great Black American Hero, got caught out there, I don’t think the media maelstrom came anywhere close to that which surrounds the Woods story. And I suspect that has a lot to do with the race of the women involved.

Juanita Jordan is a Black woman.

Elin Nordegren is a White woman.

What this says to me is that society cared less about Michael Jordan’s indiscretions because Black women are not held up as the standard, the pinnacle of womanhood. Juanita Jordan, beautiful though she may be, would not meet the dominant culture’s idea of a trophy wife.

The collective, yet unspoken thought that our society shares about the Woods affair is: “He cheated? On her? But look at her!”

White womanhood is so prized that society and our media are struggling to believe that Woods could ever step out on the Ultimate Trophy Wife.

Macon D. at Stuff White People Do wrote a long and well-thought out piece about this scandal. In it, he asked a white female friend why she followed the Woods scandal so closely:

“If Tiger Woods, probably the most famous black athlete in the world, maybe the most famous athlete period these days — if Tiger Woods were having problems like this with a black wife instead of a white one, would you care as much?”

My friend kind of . . . froze. And then she started nodding her head again, and said, “You know something? That’s a pretty good point. I don’t think I would care as much. I don’t think, actually, to be honest, that I’d care nearly as much.”

Looking at the screen shot from the Daily Beast, I’d say that Macon D. and his friend are on to something.

I don’t want to suggest that this is only a White fixation. After all, lots of Black media outlets are covering this story as well. A lot of us can’t believe Tiger cheated on Elin Nordegren either.

I was leaving the building on my way to lunch when I came across these brochures:

It reminded me of one of the things I like about living here in Vancouver. Even though I might not be able to understand things that are written in other languages, I think that by making materials in other languages so plainly visible and available, that it lends an air of openness to a city.

How does your city speak to you?

The results of BC’s Provincial Election were no great surprise. The BC Liberals won the right to form majority government, and not only that, my riding of Vancouver-Fairview sent a Liberal to Victoria to represent us. I am disappointed, but a Liberal-controlled provincial government in BC seems as inevitable as death and taxes.

Although I’ve lived here for almost nine years, I admit that there’s still a lot I don’t know about the Canadian political system. I’ve read platforms, position papers, talked to party representatives, but the fog never quite lifted until tonight, when I received this reply on Twitter:

Witness the power of a 140-character limit.

I’m shaking as I write this. I was recently on a panel at SXSW about online misogyny and how to combat attacks against feminists online, but I… I suppose I never thought things would ever reach this tragic conclusion. The stories I heard at SXSW were all poignant and troubling, but this story in particular makes my blood boil.

From What About Our Daughters:

That video below is of Asia McGowan. I don’t know how long the video is going to be up because Asia is dead. She was shot at point blank range with a shotgun by another YouTube user. I don’t know that the police will find a connection, but her final message on YouTube was addressed to people leaving nasty comments on her page. She references people calling her a b*tch and saying she was “stuck up.”

As someone recently said on Twitter, I don’t want this to turn into a story about how the internet is a scary and dangerous place. Rather, I want the focus of this post to be on the absolutely asinine response of the police. When a fellow YouTube user tried to alert the police to the murderer’s videos and threats, he received a message from the police that said, “I was unable to view the video. According to the site, I have to have a sign in.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

If there’s a bright spot in this story, and trust me, I’ve tried really hard to find one, it is that there was at least one member of Asia’s online community who tried to intervene. Instead of sitting idly by, this YouTube user actually stepped up and tried to hip the authorities to this potential powder keg. He deserves much respect for that.

But I’m sitting here feeling like the lives of black women are quite cheap indeed, so cheap that the cost of registering for a YouTube account was too great to potentially prevent a murder from happening.

(h/t to Tiffany)

Image via Wikipedia

My hometown paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has released a list of the 74 newsroom staffers who will be released as a result of the paper’s cost-cutting efforts. I haven’t been living under a rock, and I receive almost daily reports of just how bad things were getting in the industry, but it wasn’t until I saw the list that the reality really hit home.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Atlanta actually published two daily papers – the more liberal Constitution, and the conservative Journal. I grew up in a household where news was more than just the ambient soundtrack played under dinnertime conversation. No matter how broke we were — and we were always broke — we always had a subscription to the Atlanta Constitution. One of my fondest childhood memories involves my dad taking me to the department store where my mother worked, propping me up at the lunch counter with a copy of the daily paper, and having me read it out loud to the people gathered there.

It was no surprise, then, that after cycling through several different majors (chosen because of their money-making potential), I finally settled in the journalism program at my alma mater. A crisis of confidence kept me from specializing in print journalism but I’ve always had a soft spot for newspapers.

Thanks to the internet and my inability to de-clutter my life, I no longer subscribe to a daily newspaper (I use PressDisplay instead). I know I’m as much a part of the problem as anyone who has switched to online sources for news. Even so, I understand that a local paper is an integral part to the health and vitality of a city. More and more papers are turning to national and international wire services for their stories, and in response many former journalists have turned to the web as a means of focusing on hyperlocal reporting.

There’s a danger in this entry reading like a eulogy. I know there are many news agencies who are being creative, adapting to the web and introducing the concept of multimedia and online reporting as a way of bringing new life into an old medium. That’s a worthwhile effort to be sure, but there’s just something incredibly sad about losing a cadre of reporters who have become such an integral part of a community that it becomes painful to think about how the community’s collective memory will change once it is filtered through the voices of people who have no real ties to that community, never mind those who may not be located within the community at all.

Henry Grady must be rolling in his grave.

Apparently what happens on spring break doesn’t stay at spring break, thanks to TampaBay.com’s Mug Shots database.

I’m trying to rouse a sense of moral outrage about taking information that, while part of the public record, increases the amount of exposure given to these crimes and the people who commit them.

But what little moral outrage and discomfort I felt was wiped out by the gales of laughter her t-shirt inspired.

What’s best about this clip is he zeroes in on the main reason I avoided reading science fiction/fantasy novels for most of my life. Language absolutely, positively NSFW. (via Tiffany)

Whenever I get the results from surveys like this I usually end up feeling like I have absolutely no life and have spent entirely too much time on line.

In case you can’t read the screenshot, the results read:

You are an Digital Collaborator
If you are a Digital Collaborator, you use information technology to work with and share your creations with others. You are enthusiastic about how ICTs help you connect with others and confident in how to manage digital devices and information. For you, the digital commons can be a camp, a lab, or a theater group – places to gather with others to develop something new.

In case you hadn’t heard, I’ll be moderating a panel at SXSW Interactive this year. “That’s Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny” features Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Ann Friedman of Feministing, and Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, and will discuss the complex and sometimes violent ways women are treated online, especially feminist women who speak about politics. I’ve been around online for a minute (since ’93, blogging since ’98), but I’ve never encountered the kind of heated and gendered criticism and attacks that so many other women have experienced online. That fact makes me a bit of a curious choice as a moderator, but Samhita assures me that my status as someone from outside feminist blogging communities will make me more objective. I just hope I can do her, the panelists, and the discussion the justice it so rightly deserves.
The panel is scheduled for 10:00 am on Sunday, March 15 — yeah, the time isn’t ideal — so if you’re going to be in Austin for the conference, get up early, have some breakfast, some strong coffee, and walk over to the Convention Center. We’ll be in Room 8.