the fact that this was written two years ago and it’s still relevant… what does that tell you?
I’ve been saying this for years but guys
Sandy Hook.
Sandy Hook was the Nightmare Scenario. It was the “that’s not realistic.” If I’d been arguing with someone who was anti gun control and I said “someone could take a gun and go into a school and kill thirty kindergartners in just a couple of minutes, how would you feel then,” they would have said I was exaggerating, that’s manipulative and unrealistic.
but that’s what happened.
and the thing is
if thirty dead, white, upper middle-class kindergartners in Connecticut aren’t going to motivate change on gun control
then they’re never going to change for queer people in Florida, and they’re not going to change for music fans in sin city, and they’re not going to change for college students in Washington and Oregon, and they’re not going to change and they’re not going to change.
A white man can buy 19 automatic weapons and no one is going to raise an eyebrow. And then afterwards they’ll send thoughts and prayers.
Congressman Shallick: But this White House uses the first amendment to protect flag burning, to protect pornography, to ban school prayer. Why, when the second amendment clearly says that the federal government will not infringe upon a citizen’s… Toby Ziegler: Because it doesn’t. Shallick: …right to keep and bear arms… Toby: It doesn’t say that. Shallick: Toby! Toby: In fact, it doesn’t say that at all. The only way it says that at all is if you remove some words from it. Shallick: Oh, look. Will you… Toby: It says “a well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of the free state…the government shall not infringe.” The words regulated and militia are in the first sentence. I don’t think the Framers were thinking of three guys in a Dodge Durango. Shallick: Well, you don’t really know what the Framers were thinking, do you? Toby: No. But I do know that if you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia, you’ve got a population roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year and they had 112. Do you think it’s because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or do you think it’s because those guys have gun control laws?
The West Wing | 2×13 | Bartlet’s Third State of the Union
Psst, hey, Marilyn Monroe’s image as a freewheeling sexpot was a carefully constructed lie. The real Marilyn Monroe was a roiling tragedy and her life was an indictment of our society as a whole. She was orphaned after her mother had a schizophrenic breakdown, bounced around between foster homes where she was sexually abused, and married a 21-year-old at 16 to get out of being sent to an orphanage. Hugh Hefner published nude photos of her without her consent that were taken when she was 23 and desperate. She suffered severe anxiety and depression, which she coped with by drinking and using barbiturates, and was already a full-blown addict when she became famous in the mid-50s. Her career was one of exploitation, condescension and alienation, and she killed herself at 36. That Hugh Hefner, a man who was at best an unpleasant footnote in her life, felt entitled to be buried next to her is one more humiliation in a pop cultural landscape we should all be ashamed of.
“Please don’t make me a joke… I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one… I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity..”
– Marilyn Monroe, last taped interview, days before her death
She deserved better than this
Can I just also say, in addition to all this, that I’m still pissed off about the fact that Joe DiMaggio swooped in and gave Marilyn a Christian funeral before her Rabbi could return from a trip overseas? ‘Cause that shit is fucked up.
So many men who claimed to be in love with her, and not one could fucking respect her wishes, even in death.
Caravankids 