Color of Change: Please take action

Dear Friends,

Right now, Fox News is trying to paint Barack Obama as foreign, un-American, suspicious, and scary. They're trying to send Americans the message that our country's first viable Black candidate for President is not "one of us."

I've joined on to ColorOfChange.org's campaign to push back on Fox, publicly demanding they stop their race-baiting and fear mongering. If that doesn't work, then we'll go to their advertisers and the FCC. I wanted to invite you to sign on as well. It takes only a moment:

http://www.colorofchange.org/foxobama/?id=2352-187680

Here's what happened recently:

After Senator Obama won the nomination, he and his wife gave each other a "pound" in front of the cameras. Fox anchor E.D. Hill called the act of celebration a "terrorist fist jab." Then last week, a Fox News on-screen graphic referred to Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama"--slang used to describe the unmarried mother of a man's child. It was a clear attempt to associate the Obamas with negative cultural stereotypes about Black people, an insult not only to Michelle Obama but to women and Black people everywhere.

After each of the incidents mentioned, Fox issued some form of weak apology. But what does it mean when you slap someone in the face, apologize the next day, then slap them again on the third? It means the apology is meaningless.

These aren't one-time incidents--they're part of a pattern that continues no matter how often Fox is forced to apologize. Fox has a clear record of attacking and undermining Black institutions, Black leaders, and Black people in general.

If we don't push back now, we will see more of the same from now until November. Please join me in helping to bring an end to Fox's behavior.

http://www.colorofchange.org/foxobama/?id=2352-187680

Thanks.

Have you seen this?

From the Women's Media Center (warning: contains a whole lot of cable news channel political "opinion" on HRC. Yuck. This made me glad I don't have cable.)



I'm an Obama supporter, obviously. I even recently purchased my "another mama for Obama" t-shirt, but I keep wondering if Hillary's failure is somehow the feminist movement's failure. Or maybe just the rape culture's success. again.

What do you think? Those quotes in the video are pretty powerful.

Why can't I find this story?

Last night, I heard a news story. The 11pm news, you know...

A man in Gresham was stabbed to death and the police were saying it was a case of "domestic violence".

I don't know about you, but I am hard-pressed to believe that the woman doing the stabbing was the abuser.

Did anyone else hear about this? I can't find it on local news network web-sites.


And just a self-indulgent p.s. Thanks for posting about Dreamworlds, Kelsey! Kelsey, you may know and love her as one of our awesome Crisis Line Specialists and PWCL's Administrative Assistant, is my new Development Assistant!! We send many thanks to Meyer Memorial Trust. And to Kelsey for taking on this challenge.

Disgusting 'Journalism', Part Two

Curvature (which I only recently recently discovered and highly recommend) has an excellent analysis of a horrifying op-ed piece published in yesterday's LA Times (for the whole disgusting article, go here). As Cara at Curvature writes, the article merits a trigger warning, "not because there are graphic descriptions of sexual assault, but because the comments about women who are raped and the women who want to end rape really are just that unbelievably offensive".

It is an incredibly infuriating piece and the only reason I'm spreading the word about such negativity is to ask you all to join me in writing a letter to the LA Times to let everyone know just how WRONG it is for such an established paper to print something so deluded, misogynistic and insulting to survivors and their allies. You can send your angry letters describing in detail everything that is wrong with this article to letters@latimes.com and I encourage you to pass this information on to everyone who is sick of seeing myths about rape perpetuated in print.