I never realised Doug Ford didn’t think women drove. No, seriously. I laboured under the delusion Doug and his brother Mayor Rob were mayors of all citizens of the sprawling mess we lovingly call the GTA, not just the men in their little enclave in the suburbs. It’s difficult to separate the muddled meanderings of the two, and it’s painfully obvious Doug is Mayor part two. I knew from the start neither of them didn’t believe the vast majority of Torontonians were worth a lick of salt, we being dangerous, lefty, elite pinkos and all, but never in my wildest ponderings did I think the Fords were so sexist as to think only men drove cars in this city.

Why else would Doug Ford suggest Hooter’s Tow Truck service? Yes, I know (or hope) he was attempting to be funny, but suggesting a Hooters sponsored tow truck to help with a flat tire, smacks of a juvenile wet dream. Let’s have a woman dressed in short shorts and tank tops pop around with the tow truck driver to serve up an order of wings – nothing like a stereo type to boost the male ego! Or is Mayor Doug expecting the Hooters woman to change the man’s flat tire too? Don’t hand me any crap about “It’ll just be the wings, not the girl” either. If he meant fast food, then why did he specify Hooters – the symbol of corporate objectification of women, rather than an order of wings and fries.

Better yet Doug, will we get Hooters Boys? Can we specify which type of sexism we would like to patronize? Bad enough he and his brother are acting as shills for the corporate world and attempting to gut any program they personally don’t use, now we have to endure inane musings like Hooters service for a flat tire. Nothing like city hall sanctioned sexism to enhance Toronto’s reputation.

Here’s a news flash Mayor Tweedledee, women drive. We also vote.

Charlie Sheen has been offered $3 million to be the face of a dating website.

The former Two and a Half Men star — who infamously set up house with two “goddesses,” Natalie Kenly and Bree Olson, earlier this year — has reportedly been approached by Establishedmen.com to front a forthcoming marketing campaign for their service, which matches rich men with “needy” women.

http://www.toronto.com/article/686291

This little bit of information typifies everything that is wrong with the Hollywood mystique. It celebrates a drug addled idiot who revels in misogynistic blatherings. Before anyone writes a defense of Sheen, saying he loves women – they are “goddesses” to him – get your head out of your ass. Women are there to prop up his bloated ego. They are tools to be used, abused and discarded when they don’t suite the role any longer. He has nothing but contempt for women. How about respect? Or is that not part of the Sheen vocabulary?

Any company that wants him as their spokesperson has told me everything I need to know about them. Women are purely decorative chattel. Basic arm candy to pad an ego. And yes, I’m both dismissive of women who go for this and deeply torn over them. They flush decades of work for equality down the toilet by falling for the Hollywood myth that you don’t need anything but youth and good looks to be a success.

But there is a much darker side to this. The site preys on the vulnerable and the desperate – it will match “needy” women with “sugar daddies”. I grew up with girls who thought if they aged, their lives were over. One friend was obsessed with non-existent wrinkles and kept proclaiming “we’re so old” before we were 25. Ripe for the picking – and an abusive relationship. This is a dating site for losers who want compliant women. They can hold their money and power over the heads of any woman that gets involved with them to force acquiescence – Don’t do what I want? Fine, I’ll find another “sugar baby”. Using terms like sugar baby (that is what the site calls women) infantilizes women – “don’t you worry your pretty little head over anything, let the man take care of everything”. This is a dangerous trap to fall into. Having Charlie Sheen as the spokesperson for establishedmen.com should be warning enough. The idea oozes contempt and cynicism. Caveat Emptor is the word of the day.

Okay.. so I wasn’t speechless.

Well, someone just sent me a link for “After the Rapture Pet Care” services. Yup, after you get called to heaven, these fine folks will take care of your pets for you. This could be someone’s idea of a joke, but given the hysteria about the rapture, I doubt it. Even if it was, there are plenty of folks who will want the service.

This brings a number of thoughts to mind:

1. The arrogance of these people is interesting. They all assume they are going to be “chosen”. Just because their warped little preacher told them, doesn’t make it so. Maybe their warped little preacher is just a warped little preacher with no conscience at all.

2. Maybe God will call all the Zorastrians instead. Or better yet Atheists – we know how to have fun! Why the hell would he want to surround himself with Fundamentalist idiots. And yes I see the irony of saying Atheists will go to heaven. It makes as much sense as saying the Fundamentalists will go.

3. Why would pets be left behind? Another instance of arrogance to assume only humans go to heaven. Love to see the “proof” behind this rational.

4. This should be a lesson for everyone. Using the Bible to prove theories about the world ending, should emphasis the need to teach science NOT creationism and faith (or any variation there off) in schools. Creationism is not intelligent design – bullshit cloaked in religion is still bullshit.

and finally …

5. Isn’t there some law we can institute to stop these moonbats from taking out billboards etc to promote this nonsense?

How do these people manage to get dressed in the morning? Quite frankly I’m shocked they manage to crawl out from under their beds, let alone make it out the door to confront the evil, twisted world they inhabit. I just saw an online petition to stop the “[teaching of] appalling homosexual acts” in public schools. Funny, my dictionary defines tolerance as: “the ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behaviour that one dislikes or disagrees with” (Oxford). Not a whisper about sex acts. These people are ridiculous beyond belief. They are incapable of independent thought or rational thinking. They froth at the mouth about homosexuality being against the Bible and Jesus will condemn them, blah blah blah… I guess compassion isn’t in their odd little Dictionary of Intolerant Behaviour. Must have been eradicated during the last edit

Want to know how paranoid and silly these people are? Here’s the petition they are pushing:

Hyperbole is one of their strengths. Out and out lieing is another. These are the same people who scream discrimination the moment any laws enforcing separation of church and state are used. With rampant stupidity like this, is it any wonder so many of us demand a total separation? They go on and on about some mythical “radical homosexual agenda”. Does this agenda come with a day-timer?

I figure, these folks are much more dangerous than my gay neighbours. Not once have any of my neighbours banged on my door demanding to know what I do in private, or that I support them in any way. However, I have had dealings with fundamentalists who have called me incredibly rude things because I wouldn’t sign their petitions. You get called even worse things if you challenge one of the ones proselytizing. When you ask a fundie a question they react like a vampire exposed to daylight – they cringe and scream. Anyone else think fundies are a bit Lady McBethish? The Fundies doth protest too much?

I think they should just crawl back into their caves and leave the general public alone. Their fundamentalist rabies is detrimental to a sane and well functioning society.

If you have a strong stomach, you can check out their vile petition. It’s brought to you by the same folks that have completely destroyed the word Patriot. Be warned, stupidity stains.

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Thanks to Eeeegads for tweeting about this petition.

Let me make this short and sweet – the Government of Canada does not belong to Harper or any other politician, regardless of the political party. It is not his personal property. To rewrite official correspondence to include “Harper Government” points to an ego out of control. What’s next? Carving his face in the side of the Rockies? Seriously, no ELECTED official has the right to usurp the democratic process and shrug it off with an “oops my bad” attitude. The rank and file Conservatives need to stop being so afraid of challenging this man and reign him in. He considers the Parliamentary rebukes handed down last week (on a different issue) as inconvenient “distractions”. Had this been a Liberal government caught out in such a pathetic abuse of power, Harper would have been baying for blood – and rightfully too. No government should behave as his does. Democracy is not a “distraction”. Unlike most people Harper surrounds himself with, the average Canadian can entertain 2 ideas at the same time. We are not so simple minded as to think the only thing important is the economy and freedoms be damned.

Further reading:
A thoughtful paper on Harper and the erosion of Parliamentary freedoms can be found on York University’s website. It’s titled The Harper Government’s communication strategy: The message, the message, the message By Fred Fletcher, University Professor Emeritus, Communication Studies and Political Science,
York University. The link opens up a 7 page pdf and well worth the read.

Fox hasn’t been happy with the relative calm among the protesters. In the spirit of yellow journalists everywhere, they’ve been trying to create a scandal, while ignoring the bigger issues. The protests aren’t about large numbers of people objecting to the stripping away of hard won rights, nor about the obvious take over of government by corporate interests – it’s all about union thugs intimidating innocent people. I’m thinking of creating a “Union Thug” Bingo Card – first person to get a full sheet wins a prize. Won’t take long. Maybe we can purchase a thesaurus and ship it off to Fox. They seem to need a vocabulary boost.

Fox doesn’t get it – people who are not normally pro-union are supporting the protests which have now spread throughout the US because there has been a blatant power grab by corporations and extremely wealthy: tax breaks for the rich, tax breaks for corporations, oil subsidies for the industry, a Governor in Wisc who spends 20 min on the phone talking to an out of state funder about how he’s contemplating doing illegal things to discredit the protesters but refusing to talk to democratically elected opposition about a compromise, elected officials throughout the states promoting criminalization of abortion, trying to get a law passed so women who have miscarriages be investigated by the police, proposed legislation to repeal child labour laws, defunding programs for women’s health issues and the poor and an insidious push to do away with public schooling (not decrease funding, do away with it completely). Fox is too interested in creating fear than in reporting what is really going on.

Not only is Fox responsible for transplanting palm trees to Wisconsin in the dead of winter, they’ve also claimed “union goons” have assaulted one of their reporters. They made a lot of noise about this. Funny thing about the incident. Someone else was recording the reporter when this occurred and what do you know – the assault didn’t happen. He was tapped on the shoulder, not punched. Even the reporter tried to play it down in a later interview. People in the US are experiencing utter frustration with major news networks. Bad enough the protests have been largely down played or ignored by US main stream media, the coverage it does get paints them as violent thugs. US corporate news doesn’t want to cover anything in their own back yard. It’s easier to cover foreign conflicts and tell their viewers “see how bad it is in the rest of the world”?

Media Matters has a list of Fox errors and lies. You can see them here, here, here, here, here and finally here.

This should serve as a wake up call to Canadians who thought changing the CRTC rules to accommodate a version of Fox News North was a good idea. When you have to ask for a change in a country’s journalism ethics laws and want them watered down because you can’t operate on a level playing field, you have no business claiming to be a news broadcaster. One standard for all news sources – not one for us and one for the far right/left whatever. One law for all of us. The attempt at changing our laws about fairness in broadcasting was an attempt by Prime Minister Harper to set up his own publicity behemoth like the Republicans have to the south of us. No sane Canadian should tolerate this ridiculous attempt at propagandizing our news. And indeed, Canadians didn’t. Canadians responded with a rather uncharacteristic fury and the message was clear “don’t even think about it”. Fox is welcome to broadcast, but under the same set of rules everyone else abides by. Can’t play by our laws? Don’t come. Now that the CRTC has upheld the existing laws, it will be interesting if the station will go ahead. It’s tough being a responsible news broadcaster – let’s see if they have what it takes.