Thanksgiving Brilliance, only a few days late.

I'd love to share this poignance with the idiots complaining about the "foreigners" coming into our country and "taking our jobs." Dear, most of your jobs are going to China and India. Didn't you watch that episode of 30 Days?

Addendum (12/7/2006): Because I can't keep track of every comment on social injustice, people. Here is Robert Jensen's article, "No Thanks to Thanksgiving" found at AlterNet. I'll still be celebrating the holiday every year, but my progressive smugness will be almost unbearable next Turkey Day. With passages like,

"Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers."

how can I resist ranting at my mother and other assorted relatives about the slaughter of the native peoples of our country, as I ask them to pass the cranberry sauce? (In the can shape, of course. Yum!)

Pumping Boobs.

Okay, you can all calm down. The search is over. I found the post I was looking for on the underwear drawer earlier. The paragraph below had me in silent stitches:

From his bottlefeeds, Cal takes about 3-4 ounces every 2-3 hours while awake. However, he's supposed to be getting somewhere between 2 to 2.5 ounces per pound per day (or about 5 ounces per kilo per day) so it seems from my record keeping (we have this little binder of all his ins and outs so that we can round on the baby every day--only partially kidding) he's getting closer to 3 ounces per pound per day. Of course, some of this is only extrapolation since I'm still nursing him part of the time and my boob has no calibration on it (at least not that I can locate), but it has me thinking: are we feeding him too much? See, this is EXACTLY the type of question that, when I was a Peds resident, would have me ROLLING MY EYES at the CRAZY FIRST TIME PARENT because dude, your kid is FINE, he's not getting super-fat or puking up his feeds or looking distended and uncomfortable, so just CHILL already, Nervous Nellie, GOD. But now, see, here now is my punishment for being so "there there now, silly parent" about those concerns--now I know EXACTLY where those parents were coming from. Are we feeding our kid too much? How much is he really eating, anyway?

Crazy first time parent. Hee hee! Even though I'm not going to be a breastfeeding enthusiast when I have kids, I will certainly have some other aspect of childrearing that I too will be obsessed about. One of them will be gender neutrality, taken directly from X: A Fabulous Child's Story. Read it and learn, people. And remember, I'd like my baby's clothes in yellow, please.

My Monkey Baby.

New addition to The Sites I Like: the underwear drawer. It's a blog by a woman named Michelle, who works as a resident at some big hospital in New York City, and lives with her husband Joe and their 1-and-a-1/2-year-old son Cal.

In Michelle's Thanksgiving entry, she shares somes photos of Cal from Halloween this year. Yes, he is adorable. But he is dressed up as a monkey. I bring this up because I was watching the season finale of Def Comedy Jam this morning. One of the comics, Chris Spencer, of Significant Others fame, brought up how he had to stop his "Latin," (and I'm guessing) non-black wife from dressing up his black son as a monkey for Halloween. His joke wasn't that funny, but the concept amused me. He then asked her pointedly, what if they dressed up his son as a gardener, with a leaf blower to clean out people's yards? That part was funny, and got his meaning across, too.

Now, I personally could never dress up my (nonexistent) child as a monkey, or any type of simian creature, no matter how cute they looked. Hello, that would be so inappropriate! A little brown baby walking the streets of LA begging for candy in a monkey outfit? I don't think so. I would shame black people everywhere.

It's so unfair. What if my baby loved Curious George? Or Planet of the Apes? Or BJ and the Bear? That last one would be pretty sad, actually. I'd have bigger things to worry than a Halloween costume if my kid liked a live-action television show about a trucker and his chimpanzee.

Anyhoo, check out the underwear drawer. I can't find the post that truly inspired me, about how Michelle was doing her residency with 24-hour on call days, and stuck to her own anal-retentive breastfeeding/pumping schedule, out of fear of...well, I don't remember what she was afraid of. But reading about her self-inflicted insanity confirmed my ongoing proclamation that I will not be breastfeeding my biological kids after my maternity leave is over. After two months (or less), my monkey babies will be drinking formula, and they will like it.

Addendum: Why I Hate Studio 60 (subtitled: Kristin is never coming back, Aaron!)

So yeah, I'm still going to watch the presumably last four episodes of this tres horrible show. But tonight I have found another explanation of why I hate Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. In the Television without Pity recap of last week's episode, "The Option Period," Miss Alli breaks down how Aaron Sorkin's misogyny and his inability to get over his ex-girlfriend Kristin Chenoweth are bleeding all over the show. The setup is, Harriet wants to pose in her underwear for some magazine, but Simon and Tom don't want her to do it, because right now she's "classy," and if she does the photo shoot, she will be "bargain bin...K-Mart." Yeah. Oh deary deary dear.

Miss Alli sums up the situation nicely:

Tom insists that "[the magazine is] getting the better end of the deal." [Harriet] wants to know why. "Because they're enhancing themselves, and you're diminishing yourself." Yes, by posing in your underwear, you are less. Literally, Tom just said that women who pose in their underwear are diminished. They are less. You can ogle their boobs, you can make comments about how much you want to see them naked...but if they give you what you are asking for and drooling over, then they become less than they were. It's pretty shocking, in that it's presented as logical rather than blisteringly misogynist, which it is.

And I love the slam on Aaron that immediately follows:

And if you want to get really creepy, just remember the subtext is that Aaron Sorkin is addressing his relatively recent ex -- who is frankly at least as talented as he is -- telling her that she is now diminished. She is now less. Sorry, Kristin Chenoweth. Forget Wicked. You're diminished, and your asshole boyfriend has decided to announce this not only to you, but to the general public as well. That guy's a class act all the way.

Preach the word, Miss Alli.

I knew there was something about The West Wing that always skeeved me out, even though I own Season 1-4, and adore so many of the episodes. That Sorkin way of being perplexed by strong, intelligent women often appears in his writing as simultaneous admiration of and disgust for those women owning their sexuality. I'm not saying that Harriet should or should not pose for Maxim (yeah, I said it). I am saying that it's none of Aaron's business what a woman chooses do with her own body. He definitely has no right to judge her about it, essentially lusting after her half naked body, then calling her a dirty whore if she dares show it to anyone else. And, he has no logical reason to make this non-situation the life-or-death plotline that Studio 60 hinges on for an entire episode. Who cares?! God, get over it, Aaron.

How I Learned to Love Studio 60

After watching last night's god-awful episode, "The Option Period," I was tempted to never again watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Even though most likely there will only be four more left to watch ever. Anyway, the writing sucked, the characters' motivations were terrible, and if Harriet wants to pose in her lingerie, she should just do it. Who cares what Matt, Simon and Tom think? Furthermore, don't Simon and Tom have anything else going on in their lives besides obsessing over their coworker doing a photo spread?

So. Today I happened upon this post on the MOM & Pop Culture blog, entitled "studio 60 -- the show i love to hate." I particularly enjoyed this excerpt: "Part of me hopes that Studio 60 goes on forever. Because right now I am so damn amused by its awfulness -- in the same way that I used to be amused by Baywatch. Believe it or not, Studio 60 has way BIGGER BOOBS than Baywatch."

Hee hee hee! With this new perspective, I am now reinvigorated to watch Aaron Sorkin's latest masterpiece. And by masterpiece, I mean trainwreck.

I Heart Stephen Colbert: The Thomas Jefferson Edition

On Wednesday's episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen interviewed three Thomas Jeffersons to find America's Top Jefferson. I was concerned that he would only ask them about being the third President of the United States and appearing on the nickel. But then Stephen won me over, as he always does, by repeatedly asking the three Jeffersons about his legendary "affair," i.e. forced sexual relationship, with Sally Hemmings, who was not only one of Jefferson's slaves, but also his wife's half-sister. Nice.

The Jeffersons tried to dodge the subject, but Stephen kept nailing them, asking them if Thomas Jefferson wanted to be remembered as the "guy who banged his slaves." Check out these clips on the Comedy Central website, labeled Thomas Jefferson Pt. 1, and Thomas Jefferson Pt. 2. Stephen also presses them about Jefferson's penchant for weed.

Kudos to you, Stephen Colbert, for asking our "Founding Fathers," i.e. slave-owning hypocritical genocidal tax cheats, the tough questions.

"Happy Feet"? Well, I'm not happy about it.

I was reading the latest Leadership issue of The Hollywood Reporter when I happened upon this review of Happy Feet, the latest animated movie involving anthropomorphic, not-so-funny animals, thrust upon us by Disney and Pixar.

In the review, Kirk Honeycutt writes that Mumble, the adolescent penguin voiced by post-adolescent Elijah Wood (I love you, Elijah! I don't care if you're going to be the next celebrity to get "lanced."), "runs into a group of Latino penguins, the Adelie Amigos, who convince him that his dancing is actually cool."

What? A group of Latino penguins? Where do I begin?

Penguins come in species like Emperor, and King, and yes, Adelie. They don't come in Latino. They aren't descendants of Spanish conquistadors and the people they enslaved and/or slaughtered. They are penguins. They don't have the oppressor-imposed ethnic categories, like "Latino," that we humans have in America, Furthermore, Adelie penguins are from Antarctica. Unless I'm mistaken, there isn't a big influx of Latino culture from Chile and Argentina permeating that ice shelf.

As if that wasn't bad enough...who is voicing the leaders of these Adelie Amigos? Robin Williams.

Apparently I didn't get the memo that Robin Williams is now Latino. Last I heard, he still thought he was a sassy black man from the 70s. Or an African.

Tom is my friend.

I finally broke down and made myself a MySpace page, as you can see on the Sites I Like list. You can visit me at myspace.com/biancareagan. It's rather sparse, but it does have a song. So, come be my friend. I'm a fun girl!

Democrats take control of the Senate.

And the House, too.

So what do I get out of this deal? I voted yesterday; I deserve something.

I'm hoping for universal health care, a raise in the minimum wage, and an end to the illegal occupation of Iraq, for starters. And a pony.

It certainly took you long enough, "news" media.

Check out The Miraculous Appearance Of An Agenda by georgia10 at Daily Kos. Those Daily Kos people are mad bloggers. How do they have the time?

What took so long?!

Here are two separate stories that occured in the past 36 hours, two stories that shockingly elicited the same response from me: What took so long?! (I love the interrobang. You should, too.)

Rumsfeld to resign

Britney files for divorce after 2-year marriage

It couldn't last forever. Thank goodness.

Midterm Midtacular: Election 2006

Democrats win House; Senate now tied. What I want to know is, who are the people who voted for Senator Macaca Goldstein (tm Jon Stewart)? Those Virginians should be ashamed of themselves.

Mr. Allen should be proud of his North African/Jewish/Californian heritage, not hide it under a white hood. Furthermore, he should get some professional help to deal with his history of hurling racial slurs at innocent Americans. That's not cool, Mr. Allen. That's not cool.

Musings from a Black Woman: Full Frontal Feminism

The picture above is the cover of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, available in April 2007. It was written by Jessica Valenti, Executive Editor of Feministing.com.

I, as a black female human being with well-developed and defined pop-culture sensibilities, have multiple concerns about the cover art, including the messages it presents to potential buyers. As the book doesn't come out until the Spring of next year, I cannot comment either favorably or negatively on its content. But I could rant extensively about why the naked body of a skinny white hairless, headless woman (it's a woman; Ms. Valenti confirmed that) is being used to market a book about feminism to young women.

I'm a fairly young woman, even though I will be exiting the 18-24 demographic by the end of this year. I get the idea of using of the sexualized image to simultaneously subvert the patriarchy by claiming your body as your own, and attracting an audience that may not otherwise be interested in "feminism," but already believe in feminist issues. Even though I don't agree with the effectiveness of this method, I do get it. But by using this image, the book alienates potential readers who are neither skinny, nor white, nor hairless. Nor naked.

My first problem is, why does the woman on the cover have to be white? My second problem is, why does she have to be skinny? My third problem is, why does she have to be naked, and hairless, blemishless, unfreckled, whatever?

My biggest problem with this entire situation is, why must the discussion turn hateful when individuals bring up these obvious (obvious to me and others, anyway) questions about this controversial cover art on a book which clearly has something important to say inside? To understand what I'm writing about, take a gander at the posts And the winner is.... on Feministing.com, and i'm not a hater, but.... on blac (k) ademic.com, along with the litany of comments that follow each of them.

I understand the deep emotions and insecurities that come from writing and publishing a book. I also personally understand the anger that stems from being dismissed first as a woman, then additionally as a person of color, size, and intelligence, and then from being yelled at by people who do not understand your complaints, and therefore refuse to acknowledge the justification for and existence of your frustration. If you are not a woman, or if you are not a colorful person, and especially if you are neither, then you probably have never thought of the multifaceted issues that women of color (and basically anyone who is neither white nor male nor straight in America) have to deal with on a daily basis. Just because you don't have or know about our problems does not mean our problems don't exist.

Above all else, I wish people on all sides of the arguments could calm down and realize that although their complaints may be valid, they are also not personal. I also wish I had a pony that lived on rainbows and dreams.

Mixed people are cool, too.

Please note the addition of Racialicious to the list of Sites I Like. From "About this Blog":

"Racialicious (formerly known as Mixed Media Watch) is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations, and of course, the inevitable Keanu Reeves newsflashes. It is written by Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove and is a production of New Demographic, an anti-racism training company."

I've been sampling new blogs all day, and so far, this has been my favorite one. Thank you, Feministing, for introducing me to Jen and Carmen.

Enjoy, peeps!

“Those shoes are definitely bi-curious.”

I loved last night's episode of 30 Rock. For a queer analysis on "Blind Date," please check out Sarah Warn's article Tina Fey, Stephanie March Get Lesbians right on 30 Rock on AfterEllen.com.

My straight girl analysis? I am so going to be Liz Lemon when I am 36 years old, working in tv, worrying about dying in my apartment alone, having coworkers set me up with their lesbian friends for whatever bizarre reason, as if my shoes scream "Gay!" Thank you, Tina Fey, for explaining to the NBC audience that just because you're a smart, funny woman who hasn't found a decent guy yet, that doesn't mean you're a lesbian. It means you're unlucky. :(

Or it means you're a woman with exquisitely refined tastes. :)

Pajiba Love: Man of the Year

I saw Man of the Year this weekend with one of my friends. It was...not good. My friend was great. The movie was not. To understand its badness, please visit Pajiba, and read the Man of the Year review by Dustin Rowles.

Also, save your money, and do not see this movie in the theater. If you want to see a better film in the same satirical Presidential campaign genre, rent Primary Colors, Wag the Dog or The Contender (starring Joan Allen) instead. You can thank me later.

Battlestar Galactica: Worthy of my time?

I've been hearing good things about this Battlestar Galactica. Most recently, Scott at Hollywood Momentum wrote, "What’s most impressive to me about Battlestar Galactica, though, and most likely to keep me coming back, is the way it uses sci-fi tropes to deal with the problems and concerns inherent in both the war in Iraq and the larger War on Terror: occupation, collaboration, asymmetrical warfare, etc. The parallels are unmistakable..."

I'm not usually into sci fi. Although my VHS tapes of The Twilight Zone (1960s and 2002 versions, and the John Lithgow movie), Planet of the Apes (the first series of films, not the atrocity with Marky Mark), and Vh1's short-lived Strange Frequency, along with the Ray Bradbury stories and Orson Scott Card Ender books choking my shelves, would beg to differ. So maybe I dabble in the science fiction realm. ("Dabble," says the one person who actually liked Galaxy Quest, and enjoyed SeaQuest DSV for more than just Jonathan Brandis. And did I mention that watched every episode of the show that followed, Mann & Machine?) I usually avoid Sci Fi (the network) like the plague. Why? Because of their Sci Fi Original Movie titles, including Chupacabra: Dark Seas, Man with the Screaming Brain, and Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys. I did not make up any of those names.

I almost watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica during Emmy screener season. On the covers of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, there were free DVDs cloaked in blackness, with only quotes of critical acclaim as clues for the readers to guess which show was promoting itself on the trades that day. As in, the Battlestar Galactica people wanted to trick you into watching their product by not showing you a picture of what it was. They didn't want your prejudices to stop you from checking out their work. They wanted you to love the series for what it was inside, not for your preconceived notions of what a series on Sci Fi (shudder) was all about.

I tried the same tactic on Match.com. Meaning, I put up my profile without a picture, hoping people would be attracted to my inside first, and eventually fall in love with my outside after I showed it to them, thereby giving people something they might not have known they wanted.

Yeah, well, it didn't work in either case. Boys are shallow. They got to know me, really liked me, then disappeared after I showed them my picture. And regarding Battlestar Galactica, I opened up the plain back DVD case, discovered what was inside, and promptly threw it away. Once I found out it wasn't one of my favorite shows, or even a show I had ever watched, I didn't want it cluttering up my apartment.

I guess Battlestar Galactica = Me. I'm special inside, but people might not want to get to know me because I look like...a dorky series on a low-rated cable network? Sure, I'll go with that.

Musings from a Black Woman: In the "Ghetto"

Christian Finnegan nailed it on the head with this one. While describing on his blog one of the less than posh establishments on his comedy tour, he wrote the following: "...this time out I wanted a scuzzier experience, and what can I say--the Casino Queen more than delivers! This place is what you might call "extremely ghetto", if you were the kind of douche-y white person who misappropriates terms like "ghetto". The buildings are decrepit, mysterious stains decorate the hideously patterened carpet, and the buffet features a big discount bottle of supermarket-brand salad dressing you just pick up and squeeze yourself..."

I HATE when people, especially those with a light pigmentation, use the term "ghetto" as an adjective to talk about how unsophisticated or slovenly they found a person, place or thing. "Ghetto" is a noun, as defined by dictionary.com:

1. a section of a city, esp. a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships.
2. (formerly, in most European countries) a section of a city in which all Jews were required to live.
3. a section predominantly inhabited by Jews.
4. any mode of living, working, etc., that results from stereotyping or biased treatment: job ghettos for women; ghettos for the elderly.

I knew it wasn't just me who had a problem with it. Thank you, Christian, my white brother, for pointing that out to the world.

Maybe another of my favorite comedians will take on the inherent racism of the phrase "white trash."

Musings from a Black Woman: Angry Little Feminist

Friends, Romans, Countrypeople.

You may have noticed the two latest additions to the Sites I Like: Angry Little Girls, and Feministing. Please visit them in remembrance of me.

If you need some encouragement, here is my favorite recent posting on Feministing:

Cause calling girls sluts is always funny.

"Keith Olbermann stays classy by reporting that Paris Hilton has "had worse
things happen to her face" than being punched. And you know exactly what he
means."

Mr. Olbermann. How dare you gain my respect for you with the inspired This hole in the ground and Bush owes us an apology, then shatter my trust with this misogynist nonsense. Darn you, Keith Olbermann. Darn you to heck.

30 Rock-ing My World.

I watched the pilot of 30 Rock on the NBC website last night as was eating my dinner and supposedly doing other productive things. I had read the script a long time ago, and I thought it was good then. Now I'm watching the show...and I am loving it. Everyone is so funny. I'm sad about the demotion of Rachel Dratch, but I guess that Jane lady's okay. As long as Rachel gets to guest star in episodes, I'm cool with that. I'm taping tonight's episode, too, even though I watched the whole thing last night. The online one was all jumpy and grainy. Work on that, NBC Universal IT people. I likes my quality.

Onto the obvious comparisons between this thoroughly entertaining sitcom and the tired, misogynist, too smug for its own britches pile of gar-bage that is Studio 60. When Matt went to the Bombshell Babies performance at the Roxy to get a black boot signed in black Sharpie (good call there, continuity people) to make Harriet jealous, I was disturbed by the inherent sexism in the scene. And in the following scenes, as well. This isn't Las Vegas. This is Studio 60. I don't need practically underage (compared to Matthew Perry), barely dressed, overly made up burlesque dancers, i.e. high class strippers, spreading their legs for male tv writers and waving their tassles in my face. What was that about?

Now when Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan were drinking it down in the Bronx strip club, I didn't have a problem with any of those scenes. Even when Tracy was literally tossing bills at two girls dancing around a pole, and then Tina went up and joined them, shaking her money maker while wearing a club t-shirt and Laura Bush's wool skirt, I thought it was funny.

I'm still trying to figure out why I approved of the 30 Rock scenario, while I loathed the Studio 60 one. Maybe because the 30 Rock one starred and was written by Tina Fey, who can write funny material, and the Studio 60 one was written by Aaron Sorkin, whose female characters always happen to be leered at, demeaned, mocked or sexually harassed by the men they are conversing with, and then stupidly tell those men, "Please, sir, I want some more?"