House GOP plots new hostage taking crisis to stop Obamacare.
Over at TPM Cafe today, Seth D. Michaels talks about how Paul Ryan is totally out out to lunch on poverty.
I’ve covered sexual assault in its various forms for years, and it’s always astonishing to me when myths about this phenomenon come up over and over again. One of the most persistent myths about rape in the public consciousness is “but what was she wearing?”
The question, while posing as an innocent inquiry, is about investigating if perhaps somehow the victim should shoulder part of the blame. Last night, Twitter user @Steenfox, whose real name is Christina Fox, busted this myth in a very real way. After getting into an argument with another Twitter user about this, she threw out this question to her followers:
Colin Powell wins the internet with epic 60 year old selfie. Look.
GOP lawmaker in Ohio is pretty sure that “public education in America is socialism.” By the way, he’s the vice-chair of the Ohio House Education Committee.
We’re holding a live chat about the latest developments on net neutrality policy (or the lack thereof) in The Hive at 5:00 PM eastern. Answering your questions will be Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild of America. Get your questions in now and join us at 5 PM.
Rep. Paul Ryan says he was misunderstood, mischaracterized. Now he says he was “inarticulate” in his discussion of a cultural aversion to work afflicting men in American “inner cities.” It is true that even for those operating in good faith the topic of entrenched poverty in socially and economically isolated urban areas can be treacherous to navigate. Persistent joblessness creates social ills that build upon themselves – isolation from capital, educational opportunities, being around persistent violence all reinforce each other. And none lead to anything good. But Ryan can’t get any pass because he simply doesn’t fit into this group of people operating in anything like good faith.
From TPM Reader LF …
I know that your headline that it’s easy to be “misunderstood” is supposed to be facetious. But it really is easy not to be misunderstood as a racist. To start with–don’t be a racist.
At Slate Dave Weigel picks up and gently critiques my post below on Paul Ryan, being misunderstood on race and relying on the work of Charles Murray. The gist of my argument was that it is easy to be ‘misunderstood’ when you use racially loaded language to describe the ingrained, intergenerational laziness of men from the “inner city”, especially when you cite the work of Charles Murray, a man best known for his 1994 book The Bell Curve, which argued that a key reason for persistent disparities between blacks and whites in America (test scores, incomes, et al.) is the genetically-based mental inferiority of black people.