Via Lou Doench and Craig Stiles, a piece about Andrew Sullivan that the excellent Eric Alterman wrote for The Nation in January 2013. I think I once knew some of this and buried it, but a lot of it I didn’t know.

The fact that few individuals can be shown to have demonstrated worse judgment over the course of the past two decades, and risen higher as a result, is yet another example of the changes that Sullivan-style “journalism” has helped to bring about.

He first made a splash as the young conservative editor of The New Republic, where he championed a lot of terrible people.

It’s no easy matter to determine which of these charlatans did the

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Discussion of Matt Taylor continues, for instance via Alice Bell in the Guardian:

It’s not just what he wore either, his language stunk of a casual sexism too. Watch the video in the Mail’s version of this “British scientist taking Twitter by storm” story, and you can hear Taylor refer to the Rosetta mission as “the sexiest mission there’s ever been. She’s sexy, but I never said she was easy.”

I captioned a Facebook post about this yesterday “with dialogue by Chuck Lorre” but I didn’t realize quite how accurate that was. “Easy” – good god, he sounds like Julien Blanc.

ESA can land their robot on a comet. A comet! It’s amazing. But they still can’t see misogyny

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Our own friend MrFancyPants wrote Andrew Sullivan’s Dissent of the Day for today. There’s glory for you!

I’m also disappointed in the continuing scorn that you heap upon feminism. You don’t seem to understand even the most basic facts about it and the sneering tone that you take is unbecoming and not like you. You seem to lose all ability to understand nuance when you write about it. I’m a “straight white male” and even I realized that, in that video, my demographic “as a group” was not being disparaged. You’re like a walking poster child for the #notallmen hashtag and the enraged, entitled, petulant man-boys who complain on it.

And the strawmen – could you just stop with

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Have a very cool video that Alom Shaha pointed out to me, without even mentioning that he’s the one wot wrote it. It’s narrated by Jim Al-Khalili. It’s about the difference between “just a theory” (as in a “theory” that Elvis is still alive or a “theory” that the reason your friend believes that is because she has low self-esteem) and a scientific theory.

It’s got brilliant animations.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uzsuCFUQ68… Read the rest

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Business Insider comments on Matt Taylor aka Mr Lookit teh Haff-Nekkid Laydeez On My Shirt guy.

All of humanity made history today by landing a spacecraft on a comet.

Unfortunately, many of the women following that development — and a few men, too — were made to feel pretty unwelcome in the space exploration sphere when one of the people leading the mission decided to show up to talk about it wearing a shirt covered in dozens of half-naked women.

Really, what kind of clueless jackass does that? I’ve seen it suggested that Taylor wanted to emulate the coolness of Bobek Firdowski’s mohawk.

If so – dear god how clueless. Spot the difference – one is an amusing … Read the rest

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Sexism? What sexism? I don’t see any sexism.

(I wonder how many posts I’ve begun that way. I have a feeling it’s several. Also some with misogyny replacing sexism.)

Behold Matt Taylor, the lead project scientist of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta project:

Gee, I wonder why there aren’t more women in STEM fields.… Read the rest

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Time magazine has an annual “what word would you most like to see disappear?” feature. This is its fourth annual one. It gives a list of Horrible Words for people to vote on. Guess what’s in there. Go on, guess.

Feminism.

If you hear that word one more time, you will definitely cringe. You may exhale pointedly. And you might even seek out the nearest the pair of chopsticks and thrust them through your own eardrums like straws through plastic lids. What word is this? You tell us.

For TIME’s fourth annual word banishment poll, we’re asking readers to vote another word off the island, following previous castoffs OMG, YOLO and twerk. Cast your vote, encourage your

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No biggy – just setting down a probe on a comet.

The Philae probe has landed on the surface of a comet, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Wednesday.
It is the first time a soft landing has been achieved on a comet.

It will be sad if we succeed in putting things on Mars and comets but fail at keeping the planet from becoming inhospitable to mammalian life.… Read the rest

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Huh. So celebrity rapists don’t always get to silence all their victims or accusers. Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon tells us how Bill Cosby hasn’t been able to lately.

there was beloved icon Bill Cosby – who’s come under fire recently thanks to a new 500-page biography that conveniently omits a 2006 lawsuit and settlement from a woman who claimed he drugged and raped her — and the more than a dozen women who have also come forward with very similar stories. The response to Cosby today is vastly different than it was eight years ago, when the entire case went largely unremarked.

Comedian Hannibal Buress made it part of his routine last month in Cosby’s old stomping ground

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Ah there’s more today. Daniel O’Reilly aka “Dapper Laughs” is getting cancellations left and right. Could people have finally figured out that rape and misogyny aren’t funny?

A UK tour by the controversial comedian Dapper Laughs has been cancelled following the axing of a second series of his ITV2 show.

A string of dates due to be played at top venues such as the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London and the O2 Academy in Leeds have been pulled following outrage over content that derides women.

And treats rape as a funny haha joke.

During the performance at London Scala, Dapper Laughs – real name Daniel O’Reilly – said of a female audience member: “She’s gagging for a rape.”

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Huh. “Dapper Laughs” is in the shitcan.

ITV has decided not to commission a second series of the controversial comedy series Dapper Laughs: On the Pull, following criticism of the show.

The decision was made after around 60,000 people signed a petition calling on Adam Crozier, the network’s chief executive, to pull the ITV2 show, and after footage emerged of a gig hosted by Daniel O’Reilly – who plays Dapper Laughs – which made a reference to the rape of women and which mentioned ITV2’s show.

Notice the story (reported by Tara Conlan) carefully says “after” not “because.” Post not propter. Following, not on account of. But anyway it’s good news. (Spare us the cries of free speech and … Read the rest

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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown provides us with another discussion of bogus accusations of “political correctness.”

In truth, it is racism that is the forbidden subject. If you object to that evil, you are “politically correct”, an oppressor and a threat to free speech. Missiles are fired at those of us who speak up. Some internet abuse is worse than being spat at. I am told by some leading lights that preference for one’s own sort is “natural” and that minorities have been spoilt by having protective laws and “special privileges”.

Same old same old same old, eh? You should just deal with it; you don’t get special favors; you don’t want equality you want to be dominanat; yadda yadda.

I blame

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Julien Blanc is scheduled to visit the UK for a “lecture” series on how to assault women, but there’s a petition drive urging the government to deny him a visa.

Thousands of people have called on the Home Office to deny a visa to a controversial US “pick-up artist” who holds seminars that critics say teach men sexually abusive and racist tricks to attract women.

Well, you know, it’s not really “critics say” – it’s just an obvious fact. It’s no good pretending that grabbing strangers by the back of the head and pushing them onto your crotch is not sexually abusive. It’s no good pretending that’s just “banter” or “flirtation” or “seduction.”

The City worker who started the

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Ed Milliband reads a newspaper satirical story accusing his father of killing a kitten.

Yes really.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQWYnU9wqQQ… Read the rest

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Oh, fabulous – a Florida court has ruled that a mother has to have her 4-year-old son circumcised because his father wants it. A court has ordered a mother to get her son mutilated because that’s what his father wants.

As we reported in the spring, Boynton Beach mom Heather Hironimus was ordered by the court to have her then-3-year-old child circumcised, in accord with a parenting agreement she’d signed in 2011. However, in the intervening years, Hironimus had read up on the practice and come to learn it was not medically necessary and even risky.

She went to court to fight the father’s wish to have the procedure completed and was granted an emergency injunction.

Now, however, she

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I suppose Andrew Sullivan would think it was “leftist feminists policing speech” if Twitter managed to stop things like harassment of the daughters of a football coach who failed to win a game yesterday?

The Packers manhandled the Bears last night, and Chicago fans have had it with head coach Marc Trestman. Some of these angry, impotent people have access to Twitter, and have decided to direct their rage onto Trestman’s two daughters, Chloe and Sarahanne, two people who have no coaching or playing duties with the Bears.

Ah ah ah – watch it – saying the coach’s daughters have no coaching or playing duties with the Bears sounds perilously close to Policing Speech. In a very dim light it … Read the rest

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Uh huh.

A guy called Karim Metwaly, who clearly gets to wear a T shirt and baseball cap without expecting harassment, did a video of a woman walking in Manhattan first in leggings and a T shirt and then in full hijab and a long black robe. Guess what.

Uh huh.

I strongly believe women have the right to dress in which ever way they want and also believe that guys play a major role, they should not talk in disgusting ways and should lower their gaze. This video was in no way a survey or an accurate representation and should not be considered as such. This video was done as an experiment and these were the results with

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So Andrew Sullivan uses “SJW” as a sneer too. I know he’s very conservative, but I’m a little surprised he’s conservative in that particular style. Or maybe I’m not; he’s said plenty of absurd things before.

The SJWs Now Get To Police Speech On Twitter

Uh huh, and we get to steal your testicles, too!

Well, you could see this coming. Twitter announced last Thursday that it was teaming up with a left-feminist activist group to investigate gender-based harassment on the social networking site:

A group called Women, Action, and the Media, which advocates for better representation of women, is testing a new reporting process for gender-based harassment. The group developed a tool for reporting harassment and will

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Another slaughter of school children in Nigeria.

At least 46 students have been killed by a suicide bomber at a school assembly in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Potiskum, police have said.

A suicide bomber dressed as a student is believed to have caused the blast at the boys’ school in Yobe state .

Police suggested the militant group Boko Haram carried out the attack.

Yobe state’s governor has shut all public schools around Potiskum and criticised the government for not tackling the group.

Way to break racism and smash borders and do away with the need for passports!

Boko Haram has targeted schools during a deadly five-year insurgency aimed at establishing an Islamic state.

It is waging a

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Harper’s interviewed an ISIS fighter, Kabir Ahmed aka Abu Sumayyah, who killed eight people and himself in a suicide bombing in Iraq over the weekend.

Sumayyah tells Harkin he looks forward to the coming era of passport-free travel as the Islamic State widens its frontiers through Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He reveals that he had been imprisoned in Britain, “for the propagation of my religion.” (His criminal convictions were for stirring up hatred against homosexuals and shouting homophobic abuse at a gay-pride parade.) Sumayyah calls Britain “Dar al-Kufr,” or “the land of infidels.” He tells Harkin that among his new friends, are jihadi veterans from all over the world, including the United States. “It’s like a dream:

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