Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry asks White House Press secretary Jay Carney why not submit the Obama plan to CBO for scoring like Boehner and Reid. Carney doesn't answer the question, then accuses Henry of "creating a thing" for Fox News.
Ed Henry's first exchange as Fox News WH correspondent was certainly a memorable one, ending with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney derisively advising him "You should go on the air and tell your viewers there's nothing to worry about (the US defaulting), that's one approach."
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism just surveyed reportage of the story in two time frames: July 6-8 and 11-15. In that period, according to Pew, CNN devoted almost 170 minutes to the story, MSNBC about 145. Fox? About 30. That bears repeating: One of the biggest stories of the summer gets, over the course of six days, a half-hour of attention from Fox "News."
So Fox has to report it as much as Democratic Party propaganda channels CNN and MSNBC? Or they're biased? And the newspaper scandal in the UK is "one of the biggest stories of the summer"? Is he joking? Most on this side of the pond could care less. Except of course for those suffering happily from FDS. No wonder this is the current state: The Hill Poll: Most voters see media as biased and unethical
A full 68 percent of voters consider the news media biased, the poll found. Most, 46 percent, believe the media generally favor Democrats, while 22 percent said they believe Republicans are favored, with 28 percent saying the media is reasonably balanced.
The share of voters who believe the media are too friendly with politicians is almost twice as large as those who find their coverage of politicians appropriate. Forty-four percent of voters assert the former; only 24 percent believe the latter.
How about this. Conservatives take control of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, AP, Reuters, and so on, and liberals get the Murdoch empire? I’d take that trade in a heartbeat.
"Impact" segment tonight: mass murder in Norway. A vicious killer, Anders Breivik, has murdered at least 76 people in the Scandinavian nation of Norway. Breivik is a brutal fanatic who apparently objects to the presence of Muslims in Europe.
Last Friday he bombed buildings in Oslo and then took an automatic weapon to an island a few miles away gunning down 68 people. Norwegian authorities couldn't get to the island because they didn't have a helicopter, if you can believe it.
Now, on Sunday, the "New York Times" headlined "As Horrors Emerged, Norway Charges Christian extremist". A number of other news organizations like the "LA Times" and Reuters also played up the Christian angle. But Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith.
Also Breivik is not attached to any church, and in fact has criticized the Protestant belief system in general. The Christian angle came from a Norwegian policeman not from any fact finding. Once again, we can find no evidence, none, that this killer practiced Christianity in any way.
So why is the angle being played up? Two reasons: First, the liberal media wants to make an equivalency between the actions of Breivik and the Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh and al Qaeda. The left wants you to believe that fundamentalists Christians are a threat just like crazy jihadists are.
In fact, in the "New York Times" today an analysis piece says that some believe we have overreacted to the Muslim threat in the world. Of course, that's absurd. Jihadists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world. The Taliban, Iran and elements in Pakistan use governmental power to support terrorism by Muslims. But the left-wing press wants to compare nuts like Breivik and McVeigh to state-sponsored terrorism and worldwide jihad.
Again, dishonest and insane.
The second reason the liberal media is pushing the Christian angle is they don't like Christians very much because we are too judgmental. Many Christians oppose abortion. Gay marriage and legalized narcotics, secular left causes. The media understands the opposition is often based on religion. So they want to diminish Christianity and highlighting so-called Christian-based terror is a way to do that.
Darned right! And well said. I don't agree with O'Reilly on most topics, but he's spot on on this one.
The tabloid, long known for its dubious undercover reporting techniques, had gravely offended the British public by hacking into the cell phone voicemail of a missing teenage girl, possibly even interfering with the police investigation into her murder.
What was an acceptable, if illegal, tactic used to gather scoops on drug-using celebrities, philandering politicians or cheating film stars suddenly became completely unacceptable when missing children, the relatives of soldiers slain in Afghanistan or the families of victims of London's 2005 terror attacks were targeted.
Sir Rupert Murdoch just shut down the News of the World, a London-based weekly newspaper that sells 2.8 million papers each Sunday and is said to have the largest readership of any English newspaper in the world.
The reason: Its editors broke the law by hacking the telephones of up to 4,000 people — including murder victims.
This is craziness. This is go-to-jail stuff. I cannot imagine any newspaper in the United States — not even the National Enquirer — doing such a thing.
Sunday will be its last edition after 168 years, Murdoch’s son, James, announced.
The company is eating what looks to be a billion-dollar asset.
They grow up so fast. But not that fast, Mr. President.
In a news conference Wednesday, President Barack Obama twice referred to his oldest daughter, Malia, as being 13 years old.
Not quite. She's 12.
Perhaps the president was already thinking ahead to Malia's approaching birthday: She turns 13 on July 4.
If Sarah Palin had indeed made the exact same mistake, she would have been ridiculed as a dimwitted bimbo unfit for any office. Same with Michelle Bachmann. Speaking of: Ann Coulter: Media Assumes Palin and Bachmann are Idiots Together Palin and Bachmann have a small fraction of the amount of gaffes that Obama himself has made, none of which were big news stories and many of which the media simply spiked altogether. As Michelle Obama said the other week: "Fortunately, We Have Help From The Media". Indeed.
When it comes to double standards, Caddell said that if Barack Obama were to say there were 57 states, not many would pay heed. But the same can't be said for Bachmann.
"If you're her, or Sarah Palin, or someone [the media] doesn't like, any mistake you make is blown up."
Caddell also commented on the need for presidential candidates to push back against the mainstream media when it comes to being the pawn in a game of "gotchya!"
Did any of the national media ask Barack Obama in the summer of 2008 if he was a “flake”?
Not then, nor now. Instead they are painting Bachmann to be an idiot that she is not but our community organizer-in-chief does indeed appear to be. And for the record, Bachmann is not accepting the latest apology for blatant sexism: UPDATE: Mark Levin - Chris Wallace Meant To Belittle Michele Bachmann
I don't know how I missed this commercial and the ensuing brouhaha in 2007, but I'm on it now! Watch this Centrum Silver commericial before you read on:
So how did you respond to this? I admit I laughed, I enjoyed it. But as a self-professed advocate for ageless sexuality, was I supposed to find it offensive? Hmmmm.
Does it make fun of old people who have sexual thoughts/actions, or does it shout the message that we're never too old to be sexually adventuresome (even if only in our own mind)? Are the old people the brunt of the joke, or is it the shocked staffer in the doorway? Clearly part of the message is that we see ourselves as younger than others see us, and we do! Not to this extreme, of course -- that's what makes the video funny.
[Aside: This past week I tried on clothes in front of a well-lighted, 3-way mirror in an upscale store and faced my body in underwear with dismay. I preferred the view ten pounds ago -- and before my cataract surgery! And lest you draw my attention to my "Older women wear lingerie" post, thank you, but let's just say that parts have been shifting, plumping, and loosening since then. Since I hate the stereotype that wrinkles can't be sexy and we're supposed to be a certain size and shape, I'm owning my body as it is now. Just had to tell you that, though.]
Although I agree with Nyren that the ad would have appealed more to Boomers that way, isn't that propagating the stereotype that the age for feeling sexy stops at 61? What do you think?
I understand that you need to sell newspapers, but I read your article on Monica Lewinsky twice and, after coming away with no new information about her each time, am puzzled over why you would print this. Is her single status really news?
While you thoroughly rehashed the fact that Bill Clinton basically had an affair with her then threw her under the bus, we already knew that. You quote her extensively from 2004... seven years ago. The only new quotes come from a "friend" of hers in the National Enquirer.
Gay teens are killing themselves -- two 13-year-olds due to bullying (see this terrific blog post by Sue Katz), and a college student whose tryst was videoed and put online. It sickens me that young people just discovering their sexuality feel so vulnerable that it's easier to die than to live. Those of us who have lived long enough to know ourselves, accept ourselves (including our sexuality -- whatever its stripes or colors), and find or create a community that lets us live fully and honestly have a responsibility to pass this along to young people.
That's how Leroy Aarons felt at age 61, and that's why I'm repeating the following post from January 2009. I don't know if you can find the Lifetime movie now, but the book is as valuable now as the day it was written. Please read it, then pass it along to someone who needs it. A life may depend on it.
Here's what I wrote in January 2009:
At age 61, prizewinning journalist Leroy Aarons discovered the true story of Bobby Griffith, a story so gripping that he devoted himself to retelling this story in novel form.
His book, Prayers for Bobby, has inspired a movie premiering on Lifetime TV, Saturday, January 24, 2009. It is the riveting true story of teenager Bobby Griffith, who back-flipped off a freeway overpass into the path of a tractor trailer at age 20 because he could not accept his homosexuality. Prayers for Bobby chronicles Bobby’s angst at growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian family and an anti-homosexual social and school environment. Aarons gently and lovingly pieces together Bobby’s life, fears, hopes and, finally, hopelessness, with the help of the five year diary he left, his legacy.
Prayers for Bobby (subtitle: A Mother’s Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son) is also the story of Mary Griffith, Bobby’s mother, played by Sigourney Weaver in the Lifetime movie. A staunch, one-tracked fundamentalist, Mary was convinced that if she and Bobby just prayed enough, and if Bobby tried hard enough, God would cure him of his homosexuality. She prayed, she nagged Bobby relentlessly, she shamed him, she put Bible quotes on the mirror for him to see when he wakened. Too late, Mary finally realized with a thunderbolt of insight that the reason God had refused to cure Bobby was that there was nothing wrong with him.
What does this have to do with our age group? Plenty. Think about how we had to discover our own sexual and sensual natures despite the mores of our restrictive society in an era that condemned what seemed our most natural feelings and desires. Imagine being trapped in a world that didn't understand you at a time you couldn't even understand yourself. And reach out.
If you think you don't know any closeted gay teenagers, it's only because they are closeted. Maybe your "Bobby" is your grandson, or your granddaughter's best friend, or the neighbor kid, or the quiet boy at church. We've learned a lot about life and about sexuality in the decades we've been living on this earth, and part of it is to accept ourselves and open ourselves to younger folks who might need a role model, a listening ear, and a warm "so good to see you today."
Please see the movie, and read the book, which goes into much more detail and will haunt you in a beautiful way.
I am proud that I knew Leroy Aarons until his death four years ago, called him my friend Roy, and still enjoy a close friendship with Joshua Boneh, his surviving spouse. Please check out the website that Joshua and Roy's friends have constructed in Roy's memory and to celebrate the movie that he always hoped would be made about his book.
Guest blogger Sue Katz is a wordsmith and rebel, offering frank talk about aging, sex, the Middle East, class rage and ballroom dancing. She used to be most proud of her martial arts career, her world travel, and her voters’ guide to Sarah Palin, Thanks But No Thanks, but now it’s all about her blog, Consenting Adult.
Sue recently reviewed Gen Silent, a documentary about LGBT elders who go back in the closet when they need long-term nursing facilities. It's a topic that even LGBT activists rarely look at. Thank you, Sue, for permission to republish excerpts from this review. Visit the original for the full-length review.
Film Review: Gen Silent
by Sue Katz
This emotive documentary helped me clarify what should really be among the priorities of the LGBT community. When one considers all the resources that have been lavished on lobbying for equality in the sorry military/marriage institutions, the issues surrounding LGBT aging seem to be a more pressing and much more widely relevant front on which to focus our struggle. In the best of circumstances, we’re all going to get old.
“Gen Silent,” directed by Stu Maddux, is a documentary based in Boston about local ageing queers. What are their options? Who will look after them when they need help? How do elder and nursing facilities treat LGBT elders? Will they have to go back into the closet if they need care?
By following individuals and couples and allowing them to tell their stories, Maddux draws us in with a sense of both identification and admiration. Sniffles and quiet sobs marked the showing, for no one among us could avoid a sense of vulnerability as we approach old age.
With senior facilities too often lacking in consciousness of queer and trans needs, even some of the earliest gay militants are now facing the possibility of having to return to the closet in order to safely get the care they need.
When Lawrence Johnson can no longer care for his older partner of many decades, he must place him in a nursing home. But his partner feels too paranoid to be out, limiting the ways in which Lawrence can comfort him. Eventually, Lawrence finds a more open and supportive facility, so that he and his partner can hold hands without looking over their shoulder.
Sheri Barden and Lois Johnson are hoping to stay in their own home, for they live in a neighborhood with many long-time, close queer neighbors. But they are also aware of the kind of dangers any institution might hold for out lesbians – from physical and sexual abuse to isolation and ostracism.
KrysAnne Hembrough’s severe breathing problems are preventing her from taking care of herself. But her late-life transition has left this transgender woman with nothing but hostility from her entire biological family. Medical people, too, have expressed revulsion and have refused to touch her body.
“Gen Silent” is more than a top-notch documentary. It is a conscious-raising tool that needs to be shown widely in mainstream elder institutions and among professionals working with older people. It needs to be shown to LGBT people of all ages so that this important discussion becomes a key issue for our movements.
Unfortunately, “Gen Silent” is an underfunded project that could use support – both financial and in terms of distribution. The visionary director Stu Maddux asked for human and material resources to get the film out to the nooks and crannies of our aging lives. Visit his website to learn more.
And check out the trailer below, presented under the righteous banner: The generation that fought hardest to come out is going back in – to survive.
I just saw the film Orgasm Inc. You must see it. It's a powerful expose of the medicalization of female sexuality, specifically the development and marketing of female sexual enhancement drugs based on a made-up "disease": Female Sexual Dysfuncton (FSD). The "disease" was created by drug companies so that they could sell drugs and procedures that have not been proven to work and have not been proven safe!
Filmmaker Liz Canner was hired by one of these drug companies, and what she learned was so apalling that she went on to make this expose. I was stunned by it. Some of the reviews call it funny. Though there were some hilarious moments, the aftertaste isn't funny.
How did the drug companies invent a disease? They asked women questions designed to unearth if they ever had trouble becoming aroused or reaching orgasm (duh, who hasn't?) and labeled those dysfunctional who said yes to any of the questions. Although women's sexual responses are complex and based on relationship, health, energy, worries, other medications, and emotional issues as well as physical function, these issues were neither addressed nor ruled out.
The result: a new dysfunction and a drug to address it, both of which were then promoted by highly paid health "experts" on TV news and talk shows. I'm itching to name a visible, well-known "expert" who -- although she denied any financial interest in the drug -- was paid $75,000 a day for her media appearances on Oprah and other shows. You'll see her identified in the film.
Below is one video clip -- see the official trailer here (I couldn't embed that one).
6/7/10 update: When I wrote this post a few days ago, Orgasm Inc. was available on Amazon, and today when I checked it, it has disappeared from the listings. This is odd indeed. I'll keep checking for its return. It is listed on Netflix, but the available date is unknown, as a reader commented. How frustrating -- I really want you to be able to see it. I'll update the info when this changes -- keep checking back.
Cloud 9 (Wolke Neun) is a 2008 German film about a woman in her sixties, in a routine but loving (and sexually dynamic) marriage of 30 years. Inge, a seamstress, falls first in lust and then in love with a 76-year-old man. This film, winner of several prestigious awards, is slow-paced, full of raw emotion, and -- are you sitting down? -- filled with one charged sex scene after another.
Inge (brilliantly acted by Ursula Werner) has sex with her husband (Horst Rehberg), with herself, and several times with her lover (Horst Westphal). The film is graphic by US standards -- you see all three characters' naked bodies, both during lovemaking and just standing or sitting. The film seems to say, "These are the bodies we wear all day, so what's the big deal? Why hide them?" The sex scenes are tender and erotic, and I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed them.
I have to applaud this film, not only for its refreshing and realistic treatment of senior sex and love, but because they didn't make Inge an aging sex bomb. Rather, she's a plain, frumpy woman with a chunky body and pendulous breasts, who sings in a choir and never seems to comb her hair. She's not beautiful by any means, but she is radiant when she's sexually turned on -- which happens throughout the film -- or laughing.
I'm skirting around the plot details because I don't want to spoil it. Please see it. I welcome your comments (but please don't give away the ending.) You won't find this film in your local movie listings, but Netflix has it, and so does Amazon. Hurray.
I was interviewed by Columbia University's News21 reporter Aaron James about sex and aging. I was impressed by Aaron's refreshingly open attitude towards senior sex. He is seeking seniors in New York City who are willing to be interviewed on camera,and I told him I'd help him pass the word. Here's his request:
My name is Aaron James and I am a reporter for News21, a journalism project based out of Columbia University in New York City. This summer, we are reporting on the "Aging of America." As part of this project we are talking about seniors and sexuality.
We are looking for individuals or couples in the New York area to sit down and talk about their experiences as seniors with sex, love and intimacy. The ideal candidates will be willing to discuss in an open and frank manner their experiences and insights. We aren't so much interested in the graphic details, but more the importance (or not) of sexuality on the health and well being of seniors, spiritually, emotionally and physically. These interviews may be recorded on video and audio.
News21's end product will be a website dedicated to aging and aging issues. You can see last year's website, which dealt with charter schools, at: http://columbia.news21.com/.
The Internet is abuzz with a story from The Press-Enterprise about the Menifee school district in Riverside County CA, which has banned the dictionary because it has an entry about "oral sex."
I'm not kidding! Here's an excerpt from the newspaper's Menifee local news:
After a parent complained about an elementary school student stumbling across "oral sex" in a classroom dictionary, Menifee Union School District officials decided to pull Merriam Webster's 10th edition from all school shelves earlier this week.
School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the "sexually graphic" entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. The dictionaries were initially purchased a few years ago for fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms districtwide, according to a memo to the superintendent.
"It's just not age appropriate," said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district.
There are so many things we could discuss here that my mind is reeling. But let's look at this from the perspective of those of us who had a heck of time getting accurate, meaningful information about sex when we were growing up.
Did we look in the dictionary? Of course! Did we find anything? Nada. "Clitoris" wasn't even in the dictionary or in any part of my sex education. I didn't know I had one -- or, for that matter, how to have an orgasm -- until a fellow college student named Alan showed me what he had learned with a previous girlfriend.
Do children look up sex words? You bet they do -- didn't we? Should children be able to look up "clitoris" or "oral sex" or whatever other permutation of sex or street name for a sexual act that interests them?
Of course they should! How are we even needing to discuss this in 2010? Of course the dictionary can't be the complete resource, especially as children become teenagers. Thank goodness books like The Guide to Getting It On by Paul Joannides exist.
Here's a job for you -- grab your printed dictionary, old or new, and look up a few sex terms. Comment here to tell me what dictionary you used, its edition or publication date, what words you looked up, and what you found.
(Thank you, Carnal Nation, where I read this story first.)
Many bloggers and YouTubers have commented on Oprah's use of the cutesy "va-jay-jay" during her otherwise open discussions about women's sexuality. She didn't invent the term -- the then-pregnant character Dr. Miranda Bailey introduced the term on Grey's Anatomy on Feb. 12, 2006, when she chastised a male intern by saying, “Stop looking at my vajayjay.”
The term caught on rapidly, especially after Oprah adopted it, and even the New York Times discussed the vajajay trend. According to the NYT, Grey's Anatomy's creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes fought to use vagina in the script instead:
"I had written an episode during the second season of ‘Grey’s’ in which we used the word vagina a great many times (perhaps 11),” Ms. Rhimes wrote in an e-mail message. “Now, we’d once used the word penis 17 times in a single episode and no one blinked. But with vagina, the good folks at broadcast standards and practices blinked over and over and over. I think no one is comfortable experiencing the female anatomy out loud — which is a shame considering our anatomy is half the population.”
Now you hear "vajayjay"on television shows, read it in blogs, see spoofs on YouTube (don't miss The Soup: Oprah's Va-Jay-Jay, and accept it as the cute, friendly, non-graphic, inoffensive way to say vagina or vulva. (The vagina is the canal; the vulva includes the whole area: labia, clitoris, pubic mound, and vagina.) As the linguist John H. McWhorter said, as quoted in the NYT, “It sounds warm and familiar and it almost makes the vagina feel like a little cartoon character with eyes that walks around.”
It occurred to me that if Oprah adopted "pe-pee-pee" as her pet word for "penis," it wouldn't sound as endearing.
Tell me, do you find "vajayjay" a useful addition to our lexicon? Do you like it? Do you use it? Personally, I prefer vajayjay to other, more demeaning slang words for female genitals, but I'd rather hear the anatomical terms normalized and accepted.
"Aging is not optional, so forgive me if I'm a little annoyed by the 'anti-age' marketing bandwagon," writes Ms. Bass. "...In response to the ridiculousness, I've adopted a pro-aging policy."
So have I! I relish aging, because -- let's face it -- the alternative is dying. Let's see, aging... dying... aging... dying -- is it even a fair fight to select the winner?
When Robert died -- far too young, just 71, and in the prime of his emotional life, his creativity, and his ability to love fully -- I wished he had been able to get old. Why do we fight it?
I knew a young (by my standards) man who was devastated by his oncoming 40th birthday. Loving his youth, good looks, and physical prowess, he kept saying, "I can't turn 40!" He died in a motorcycle crash right before turning 40.
Be careful what you say and believe, and instead of fearing and hating aging, embrace it.
I grew up always looking years younger than I was, a real problem in my childhood and adolescence, but not so bad as the decades swiftly passed. Now, at 65, I do believe I look my age (remind me to post a current photo), and I'm happily settled into this aging process and the emotional growth that goes with it.
Don't think I'm sitting back and letting my body fall apart: I dance nine or more hours a week, do an hour of Pilates twice a week, and aim for 10,000+ steps every day. (I wear an Omron pedometer everywhere, to the amusement of my friends.) I'm trying to redefine what aging looks like and feels like by staying physically and mentally fit and focused.
This blog is about sex and aging, and I firmly believe that how we feel about our own aging process affects everything else, including sex, relationships, the love we have to give, and our enjoyment of life. Robert and I gloried in our aging bodies. We saw wrinkles as badges of experience, and every tingly sensation we experienced together or apart was reason to exalt the joy (and face the challenges) of living in aging bodies.
"Each of us is living a lonely life. Why not get married?" Ebenezer Rose, 93, asked as he proposed to Monica Hayden, 89, reports Michael Laforgia in the Miami Herald. So they did.
Rose had been widowed for four years after 58 years of marriage; Hayden had survived two husbands. They had known each other through their church for 20 years, but only recently started keeping company.
As I start to heal after losing Robert ten months ago, I am struck by this story as a testament to the remarkable ability of the heart to heal after tremendous loss and open itself again to love. The story of Ebenezer Rose and Monica Hayden illustrates the power of love, whatever the age of the lovers, and the basic, human need for affection and intimacy.
[She] just turned 96 and had a giant birthday party. She had 96 cupcakes and next year she wants to have 97 men.
I'll bet she wanted 96 men this year instead of cupcakes!
I couldn't find a photo of Joan Baez's mother -- or even her name -- but Baez herself sure looks good after 50 years in the music business:
Her latest album, recorded at age 67, is Day After Tomorrow, filled with the kind of mellow songs of spiritual awakening and social activism that we expect from Baez.
, but now it’s all about her blog, 
. Hurray.
by Paul Joannides exist. 
