Things that are pissing me off today

1. I continue to ruminate about the POTUS Jan 14 speech. (Preëmptive defense: Yes, I've donated money and time. No, I don't think it's petty to nitpick over the rhetoric about the disaster, and unless you've spent every waking moment recently working for earthquake relief and doing nothing frivolous, then neither do you.) I mean, honestly, when I heard it while coming home from work, I nearly fell off my seat on the bus. I know the guy's caught some flak for using the word "forsaken," the usage of which I'm actually copacetic with, but it's the context, people.

Here's the fuller snippet:

“To face this new horror must cause some to look up and ask, have we been forsaken? You will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten. In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you. The world stands with you.”

Can we put on our Intro to English Lit hats for a sec? To whom is the first rhetorical question addressed? How does the authorial voice deftly transition in the second sentence?

Gave. Me. The. Heebie-jeebies.

We're getting tarred and feathered by Al Jazeera right now on the Haiti efforts, and we're getting so indignant wondering how our selfless aid could be so, so, so misconstrued? Really? It's that difficult to understand?

2. Coakley. Obviously. And, more to the point, the enormous lack of analysis of the role that gender played. Yes, she ran a crappy campaign, and no, that doesn't mean sexism wasn't also in play. But you've all heard me on this score before. Sing it, Politico.

3. Avatar. Well, not Avatar per se. I actually liked the movie, and even wouldn't mind seeing it again, as we had sorta lousy seats the first time. No, I'm pissed off that with freakin' cottage industries growing up over the analysis of race, nature, spirituality, imperialism, and bestiality in the film, still no one's really talking about the completely prosaic grafting of 21st-century Earth sex roles on to the Na'vi. And when they do throw out a mention, they get it completely wrong. Here's the NYT:

"Over the last month, it has been criticized by social and political conservatives who bristle at its depictions of religion and the use of military force; feminists who feel that the male avatar bodies are stronger and more muscular than their female counterparts; antismoking advocates who object to a character who lights up cigarettes; not to mention fans of Soviet-era Russian science fiction; the Chinese; and the Vatican."

See? There we are, right up with people objecting about instances of fictional smoking that I can't even remember happening; that's not at all belittling, is it? And, of course, the important complaint is that the female avatar bodies (did they mean "Na'vi bodies"? did female avatar bodies get much screen time or differ much from female Na'vi bodies?) lack muscular bulk, right? It couldn't possibly be that the feisty and bright female Na'vi lead, who even comes from a chiefly lineage, has the sole apparent vocational option of consort to the male leader?

4. My office. What do you do when you have male and female interns who come from exactly the same academic program and who are more or less interchangeable (that is, both appear to be moderately but not extremely talented) and both start out with clerical duties, but: the boy is given a project and lots of coaching and does okay on the task and Thorn reassigns him and gives him increasingly more substantive tasks and increasing amounts of coaching, and: the girl is given a project and almost no coaching but still does okay on the task, and Thorn declares her to be a bright and valuable clerical worker? It's a clear case of "no penis, no portfolio" from where I'm sitting, but how does one even document this for an EEO grievance? Thorn would surely try to justify her actions on the boy's putative talent, completely blind to the fact that the boy spends about 20 hours a week receiving her counsel in her office, and the girl is rarely in there at all.

5. My escape plans. Oh, sure, don't worry; Berlin's still on. It's just that, especially in light of crap like the above and the fact that I'm more of a transcriptionist than a singer these days, I hatched a cunning escape plan that would've commuted my sentence by about 10 months. Today, I made the mistake of doing an optional interview for the interim assignment. I saw the "mismatch" face flit across the interviewer's features. Y'know, the "I like the CV, but whoa - what do we have here?" face. Many of you will have no idea what I'm talking about, and bully for you. I'm guessing that Robert Reich does. He learned to deal with it. I still haven't.