O rly?

It is with much dis-gusto that I present to you the Make Me Skinny Jacket by Rebecca Taylor.

Listen. Blazers and fitted jackets can indeed produce the illusion of a small waist, hourglass figure, and other features that translate to "flattering" by today's dominant beauty standards. This is one of the many, many things I love about them. (In the "black blazer" category alone I have three. This should tell you something.)

However. I must point out that they do not actually change one's body composition, and that while it is not this or any one company's fault that we have a national obsession with thinness, marketing products on the basis of future or illusory thinness (usually both) is really unhelpful to everyone (except the ones counting the cash, I suppose). This is just such a pathetically transparent and tasteless example of it that I actually couldn't quite believe it when I saw it.

That's all, really. Carry on.

Capitalizing on the closing

To invoke a blogly cliché: what Digby said.

How Tiller's Death and Office Closing can Help Propel Pro-Life Movement, Derail Sotomayor and Overturn Roe. Four Key Senators will be Targeted to Vote Against Sotomayor; Catholic Bishops will Play a Role to Defeat Sotomayor

Press conference 1 PM, Thursday, to announce details how Pro-life groups can derail Sotomayor, and root out hypocrisy in pro-life ranks.

Also: Emergency Pro-life leadership training to be held in DC, June 12-14, with Randall Terry, Dr. Alan Keyes, Norma McCorvey, and Fr. Norman Weslin. Pro-abortion activists threaten to disrupt meeting.

I have a new crush

Guess which of them it is. No, I have no shame.

Obama's speech

The reactions I've seen so far:

Jihadi reactions

Israeli public opinion

Noah Millman: East-West vs. North-South dynamics in Obama's characterization of America's role

Larison: Obama failed to reach the one audience that really matters

Arab students: many versions of "Deeds, not words"

Some signs of undercutting extremists

Daniel Levy: Still Accumulating, Not Expending, Capital

Michael Keating: Obama's speech an end, not a beginning

Abu Muqawama: Speech a bigger deal in the Western world than in the Middle East

This is a fairly diverse range of opinion, the main point of consensus being that none of this will matter down the road if it's not followed up with credible action. Disagreement centers on whether the speech itself was successful or not as rhetoric and as a tactic to buy time and the benefit of the doubt.

I have read many many more reax than this; these are linked because I consider them valuable and thought-provoking. If you only read one, I would say read Marc Lynch:

This was a challenging, thoughtful speech which will be picked at and discussed for a long time. It wasn't as revolutionary as some might have hoped, but that's not surprising -- the ground is so well-trodden that it would have been astonishing to see something genuinely new. Instead, it struck me as a thoughtful reflection and invitation to conversation, with some important nuance which might easily be missed. It was neither "just like Bush" nor a total departure from past American rhetoric.

After that, too many to make sorting worthwhile, really. Daniel Levy, Michael Keating, Larison, and the Arab students. All linked above.

Free speech

I'm sure yesterday was a wonderful day filled with the scent of victory and napalm in the morning for Bill O'Reilly:



I don't believe for a second that O'Reilly cares about abortion as much as he pretends to; he's in it for the ratings and the attention. But he must currently be feeling some bizarre combination of disavowal ("I'm just a journalist, man") a la Limbaugh and total power trip.


I'm not saying that Tiller was killed because of O'Reilly. I do think this kind of intense, emotionally provocative, and hateful rhetoric does encourage crazy people to do crazy things, but it's certainly not just Billo who produces it and it's not just abortion that attracts it. By many standards, Billo here is a model of restraint. But that doesn't change the fact that words do have power and guys like Limbaugh, Beck, and Billo will never accept that when it might require them to back down and learn a little humility.

That's one way to put it

Bangladesh: Exploring New Markets for Manpower

Bangladesh Corporate Blog is in favor of the Bangladesh government's decision to explore new markets for the Bangladeshi manpower, “why should we remain squeezed back to back against each other in (…) one of the smallest countries of the world?”

"Explore new markets for the Bangladeshi manpower," eh? I thought that was called labor migration.

I mean, there's a lot I could say about what tends to face migrant or expatriate workers in their lives abroad, but I suppose conditions in Bangladesh aren't that great either. I just find the phrasing hilarious. I think George Carlin might approve.

Revolutionary language

Oh man, this is actually kind of wonderful.

I'm not actually talking about the economic plan--I'm talking about this:

Aside from the commitment to what sounds like a great progressive stimulus plan, one sentence struck me: Will your job or your husband’s job or your daughter’s job be the next one cut? Read that closely. In a speech about universal fears and hardship, he is addressing his primary listeners as women. Never have I heard sentence construction like that from a president -- women addressed directly in a non-"women's issues" setting as legitimate, fully fledged and very concerned and invested breadwinners. The effect is stunning.

Defender of what?

Whoa!

Prince Charles wants to change British law so that when he accedes the throne he'll be entitled "Defender of Faith," rather than "Defender of the Faith," to reflect Britain's multidenominational society. (Apparently he originally wanted "Defender of the Faiths," but that caused too much controversy.

It would be really interesting to look over the documents and statements surrounding this discussion and see exactly why and how "Defender of the Faiths" was more controversial than "Defender of Faith". My first thought is that simple, indefinite "Faith" can mean whatever the hearer or reader thinks it means, and so Anglicans can go on thinking it means Anglicanism, while "the Faiths" irrevocably and unavoidably acknowledges and validates other faiths. You can keep ignoring religious minorities with the former version, and indeed depending on how you define "faith" you can even argue that the title still doesn't describe them. It's harder (though still not impossible) to do that with the latter version.