Women's Rights: Domestic Violence Is Really OK

As long as it's your wife, girlfriend, or some other female you're beating up. That's the message corporate America wants you to remember. Do drugs? They'll bust your ass. Have sex with people of your own gender? They'll bust your ass. Be cruel to animals? They'll bust your ass (and rightly so, for once).

But choking or beating your wife, mistress, girlfriend, lover (as long as they're female), even a casual acquaintance - that's just fine. You might have to say you're sorry in public, and do a little rehabracadabra. Blame the booze or drugs or stress of your high-flyin' job. Wait a few months, and then corporate America will sneak you in through the side door, and it's back to a life of ten-thousand-dollar martinis and private jets and the penthouse suite office.

Just look at Chris Albrecht. Back in May, I predicted that his arrest for beating up his girlfriend would not have any serious consequences for him.

Sure enough, he called rehabracadabra, blamed the booze, "dried out" in style, and now he's back* in a cushy job:

Chris Albrecht, the former chief executive of HBO who helped develop hits like “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” is planning to join IMG, the talent agency that has been quietly building an international broadcasting business, as the head of its global media unit.

Sarah Jessica Parker, who starred in “Sex and the City,” said she would not hesitate to work with Chris Albrecht again.

Mr. Albrecht is also planning to start an investment fund with IMG’s owner, Theodore J. Forstmann, the colorful financier who has owned everything from the aircraft maker Gulfstream to Dr Pepper, to back media and entertainment projects.

Sarah Jessica Parker is an airhead, but probably smart enough to know where the money is. Just don't date the guy, SJ.

As for my contention that domestic violence is an issue that breaks down along class lines, consider this: men beat up their wives and girfriends every day all over the world. If they're poor or working class, their ass goes to JAIL, not to a posh rehab clinic. And they sure as hell don't get to start investment funds with rich financiers when they get out. Chances are, they might not even get hired, with a criminal record. Different rules for the rich, though.

Congratulations, Mr. Albrecht, you sleazebag. Try not to choke any other women any time soon, OK?

Cobag.

*The link takes you to the NYT, which requires registration.

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Women's Rights - Rehabracadabra

The Perp

Several commenters at HuffPo have written to defend Chris Albrecht, CEO and chairman of - I mean, EX-CEO and chairman of HBO. Apparently ol' Chris got carried away and smacked his girlfriend up some. Naturally, just like Mark Foley and many other worthless louts whohave done something bad and are looking at some nasty consequences, Mr. Albrecht blames alcohol:

In an e-mail message today to all HBO employees, Mr. Albrecht said he was “deeply sorry for what occurred in Las Vegas this weekend” and that it represented “a wake-up call to me of a weakness I thought I had overcome long ago.”

“I had been a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous for 13 years,” he wrote. “Two years ago, I decided that I could handle drinking again. Clearly, I was wrong.”

He said he would use his leave “to go back to working with” Alcoholics Anonymous.

Chris, Chris, Chris. It's called "rehabracadabra." It's only available to the rich and powerful. If you're some poor or working class asshole who whales on *any*body, the cops drag your ass to jail and the judge kicks it into the hoosegow. You, on the other hand, "step down" for a while and either they keep your cushy job for you till you come back, or they give you a nice little golden handshake so you can live out your sunset years in comfort. Meanwhile, you check yourself in and dry out, or don't, whatever. As for girlfriend back there, she winds up disguised as a series of brooms, primitive ironing boards - oh, wait, this isn't Billy the Mountain and Ethel.

Not THE Victim, But A Victim Nonetheless (copyright Adventist Review's online edition)

Some people seem to think you're a nice guy who made a mistake, Mr. Albrecht. Well, I just want to state a couple of things. One, lots of people get drunk, but very few of them beat people up because they got drunk. Two, if you're gonna beat someone up, pick someone your own size or larger. That makes it a fair fight, or even better, puts the odds in the other person's favour. Then if you knock them arse over tit, you can be proud of yourself. Beating up a woman who loves you and is probably smaller, weaker, and less physically fit or strong than you is hardly something to be proud of. In closing, I'd like to point out that this makes the second time - at least - that this man has had domestic violence allegations lobbed at him. Beating women, no matter what your other virtues might be, does NOT make you "a nice guy," Mr. Albrecht. It makes you a fucking arsehole. A worthless piece of shit. A cobag. You ought to suffer the consequences of your actions. But you probably won't.

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2008 Elections: The Bad

Connie Schultz, who writes for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recently put up this article.

Men shouldn’t be telling Hilary Clinton to quit the race
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Connie Schultz
Plain Dealer Columnist

Someone tell me, please, how grown men in 2008 can believe it’s their right - their duty, even - to tell a woman when she should rein in her ambition and go home.

Male columnists, male politicians, male talking heads, male “surrogates” - all of them harrumphing that it’s time for Hillary Clinton to stop it, just stop it, with all this talk of being president.

Who cares if the race is close? So what if millions of Americans believe their yet-to-be-cast votes matter? Voters, schmoters. When was this ever about them?

Hillary Clinton, they insist, must quit.

Well, boys, you’d better sit down for this one: This is no longer the playground of your youth. The girls aren’t sitting in the stands keeping score and cheering whenever you’re at bat. In fact, the girls aren’t girls at all anymore. We’re all grown up, and we are so done with this notion that the trajectory of our lives must end at the border of your comfort zone.

Hillary Clinton marched across that border miles ago, and she is not about to surrender. Not now, anyway, and not ever because you said so. And if you’ve got anything besides hubris knocking around in those heads of yours, you will take note of the potential backfire in your volley.

“OK, now I’m mad,” a friend, Karen, told me last week. “Who do they think they are?”

She supports Barack Obama, but the thought of finger-wagging men telling a woman what to do really set her off. She might change her vote, and anyone reading some of the comments on newspapers’ Web sites and blogs knows she’s not alone.

I’m thinkin’ that’s not where you fellas were going with this one. But I also think I can help.

The problem here is that you don’t understand the tenacity of American women.
It’s not all your fault. Your history books were full of tales of manly men beating each other up and then taking the livestock and womenfolk as prizes. Frankly, you were misled.

You didn’t learn about how women risked their lives birthing babies in open fields and harboring escaped slaves on their flight to freedom. You probably didn’t spend much time on how Alice Paul and her fellow suffragettes were tortured in prison because they dared to picket for the right to vote.

And chances are you’ve never cracked the spine of the book “Women’s Letters: America From the Revolutionary War to the Present” by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. If you had, you would have seen the letter Abigail Grant wrote to her husband, Aszariah, in 1776 after she found out he had been less than heroic in the battle at Bunker Hill.

“Loving Husband,” her note began. “I hear by Capt Wm Riley news that makes me very Sorry for he Says you proved a Grand Coward when the fight was at Bunkers hill & in your Surprise he reports that you threw away your Cartridges So as to escape going into the Battle. . . . [I]f you are afraid pray own the truth & come home & take care of our Children & I will be Glad to Come & take your place, & never will be Called a Coward, neither will I throw away one Cartridge but exert myself bravely in so good a Cause.”

See, that’s the thing. You’ve got to remember that there’s a bit of Abigail Grant in a whole lot of us women. Granted, we hide it well. Most women are all fervor and no fanfare, running everything from companies and campaigns to families and food drives without so much as a plaque with their names on it at the end of it all.

We’re full of fight, too, which is the only way we got the vote, the pill and the right to own property, as opposed to being property. We don’t beat our breasts and brag about this, though, which appears to be part of the problem. Some men apparently still confuse humility with acquiescence, and then they think we need their permission to make a difference.

One mile at a time, Hillary Clinton is clearing a new road, taking hits for the rest of us along the way.

“It feels so personal,” another friend, Mary, told me. “Whenever I hear men bash Hillary, it feels like they’re attacking me.”

See, guys, that’s not good.

Remember: Abigail Grant lives.

We here at La Casa de Los Gatos have never felt this nomination battle was about men telling Hillary Clinton to quit the race. There are plenty of women doing the same.

A lot of nasty misogyny has been directed at Clinton, and there's no excuse for that. It made us support her for longer than most of our friends. We felt it was not OK to reward the anti-feminist and misogynist contingent of the electorate.

But, as we keep saying, we didn't "fall in love" with Obama. In fact, we steadfastly resisted finding out about him or gravitating towards him because he was an unknown, young, new on the scene, and didn't have anything like the vaunted Clinton machine at his command. We were certain he would be crushed outright. Clinton, herself, drove us away. Again and again, she made comments that showed us she outright despised and disparaged us. She permitted her surrogates and allies to disparage, mock, and publicly abuse us. Even as she sent us daily emails requesting our money.

We understand that a lot of women continue to support her, and we empathize with them. We, too, had hoped to see the first female President take office in our lifetime. But given her campaign, we have been forced to conclude that she is not the right candidate. History has seen many powerful female leaders. The Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi comes to mind, as does Eva Peron, Jiang Qing, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Cory Aquino. None of those women would be our first choice for President, although all of them were capable (capable of what, we'd prefer not to say). We'd rather have an Aung San Suu Kyi, or a Galyani Vadhana or a Shirin Fozdar for a leader &mdash a woman of peace, committed to feminist issues and improving the lives of the poor.

Clinton is not a woman in that mold. The race is over, Obama won, and for Clinton to continue campaigning is just damaging her own legacy, what's left of it. Or so we wrote and told Ms. Schultz.

Regarding your article on men telling Hillary Clinton to quit

You seem to be overlooking the fact that a great many women are ALSO telling her to quit.

Birthing babies is something any animal can do. It doesn't confer any judgment, discretion, wisdom, or intelligence on the birther. The fact of the matter is, Clinton is not a feminist. She is using feminist women to garner votes for herself, but had no compunctions about viciously attacking the women her husband slept with. Is it their fault that her husband couldn't keep his pants zipped?

She's taken money from domestic abuser Chris Albrecht of HBO. A few minutes' research would have told you that Chris Albrecht was arrested for beating his girlfriend in public. I would have thought a feminist would have returned his money immediately.

She touts her husband's experience as her own. "35 years," she says. A good 16 of those years were spent as First Lady of the elected president, or on the corporate board of Directors of WalMart, an organization that has done a great deal of woman-oppressing, not to mention worker-oppressing and union-busting.

But the real issue is that Clinton, for all that she is tough and tenacious, is a deeply flawed candidate. Instead of working with fellow Democrats to pass promised health care legislation while she was First Lady, she set up a war room to crush alternative views of health care, thereby ensuring that we sit here over a decade later with worse health care than before she made her efforts. Her casual remark about "obliterating" a nation of 70 million innocent people deeply disgusts those of us who are not bloodthirsty warmongers. Her comment about having the support of "working, hardworking, white Americans" could not possibly have endeared her to Black Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. She has a tin ear.

As a loyal supporter of hers for two decades, I fully expected her to take the nomination. She proved, through her dreadful campaign, that she lacks the organizational skills and temperament to be President. Starting with the largest war chest of all the delegates, the best name recognition, and 200 superdelegates in her pocket, she limps to the finish line over $20 million in debt, with her donors tapped out financially, with fewer states, fewer popular votes, fewer pledged delegates, and fewer superdelegates. How am I to trust her with the keys to the treasury? She was beaten by a nobody!

It is very disingenuous of you to make this nomination battle out to be one between men and women, or feminists and nonfeminists. This is a battle for the future of a rapidly sinking nation. You owe it to your readers to frame the issues honestly.

Thank you.

Should you care to write Ms. Schultz, you can reach her at cschultz@plaind.com.

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Follow-up to Chris Albrecht

The fortunately ex-CEO of HBO who beat on his girlfriend in a parking lot. From Kung-fu Monkey, this gem:

There was a moment as he described his previous heinous behavior where I realized: "Oh, hey. You're not an alcoholic. You're just an asshole who happens to drink."

Disclaimer: The quote was not in reference to Albrecht, but to Glenn Beck, an asshole if there ever was one.

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Women's Rights: Don't Kill Me, Bro

Abuser Chris Albrecht

Jeebus. Further missives from the trenches in the War Against Women. What the fuck is wrong with these guys who think the way that you deal with disapproval of your daughter's boyfriend is, you KILL HER????

Sorry. It's just starting to get on my nerves, all this woman-killing. Nailah Franklin. Laci Petersen. Stacy Peterson. Banaz Mahmod. Even little girls are not spared.

Raw Story's article states, in part:

A suburban Chicago man is accused of setting an apartment fire — killing his pregnant daughter, her husband and their young child — because the son-in-law didn't ask permission for the marriage, prosecutors said.

Subhash Chander, 57, of Oak Forest was ordered held without bond Tuesday on three counts of first-degree murder, one count of intentional homicide of an unborn child and one count of aggravated arson.

Prosecutors allege Chander used gasoline to start the fire late Saturday. The India native told police he disliked his son-in-law because he belonged to a lower caste and had married his daughter without his consent, said Cook County First Assistant State's Attorney Robert Milan.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Throw the book at the son-of-a-putrefying-camel. May he rot in prison for the rest of his natural life.

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2008 Elections: Paranoia Sets In

Yaknow, the Republicans, for the past couple of decades, have shown that they march in lockstep to promote the interests of a small core of wealthy, greedy elite.

Note to "low-information" people: The real elite are the CEOs pulling down salaries of $10m and up per year, with personal fortunes in the hundred millions and billions. Yaknow, people like, oh, Cindy McCain, Dick Cheney, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ken Lay, the Bush family.

We've seen them pander to the Religious Right to pull poor and working-class voters to the polls to vote against their own interest and for the wealthy. We've seen them toss the Religious Right under the bus once they achieved their aim.

Let's face it, the Capital Gains tax benefits only those who have large amounts of capital. If all you have to leave to your kids is the house or the family farm or a couple of million in investments, you don't benefit from repealing the Capital Gains tax. But Cindy McCain benefits a hella lot. And your schools, parks, libraries, roads, bridges, military, hospitals, colleges, dams, levees, and other civil institutions suffer from lack of funding. Which, if your federal, state, and city governments want to keep providing services for you, must be funded somehow. So if Cindy McCain doesn't pay Capital Gains tax, the government cuts the budget for maintenance of, say, the federal highways. Or gives your city or state less money for your 'flu shots. Or your kid, who serves in the military, gets inferior equipment.

It's gotta come from somewhere, right?

So we all know the Republicans have always had this formidable machine, because the Treasury is full of taxpayer dollars and these wealthy, greedy scumballs want to keep siphoning it off. The Dubya years have been the worst illustration of that, as war profiteers and ruthless contractors won no-bid contracts by bribing their friends in the Republican Congress (think Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, people like that). Well, the election's got everyone in a fever, and we're taking our eye off the ball again, people. We're looking at pathetic old John McCain and thinking, "No way in hell is that guy gonna win this thing. Shoot, some days he needs GPS just to find his ass with both hands, a flashlight, and ass-labelled arrows everywhere."

Could be, could be. But what will the immensely powerful and greedy wealthy people do to ensure that our tax dollars keep flowing towards their pockets? Well, one of the remaining candidates has been funded by corporate bigwigs from the charming girlfriend-beater Chris Albrecht (how feminist is that?) to Vinod Gupta, CEO of Info U.S.A. A look at the size of donations handed to Senator Clinton by these hard-headed businessmen tells us a lot right off the bat. People like them are not known for giving money to anybody without expecting something in return. If they done paid for the lady's ticket, she's gonna have to dance with 'em.


Then there's the Other Candidate. Brian told us yesterday that he found Barack Obama before we did. It's true. If not for Bri we'd probably be sitting around going Bar-who? Thanks, Bri.

So there's Barack Obama. He's in the home stretch now, heading for the victory. He has more popular votes than Senator Clinton, more pledged delegates, and more superdelegates. Today a crowd of 75,000 or more turned out to hear him speak in Oregon. He's not beholden to the powerful wealthy and greedy cabal. His fundraising has come from average yobs like us, who send a couple of hundred as they can afford it. 1.5 million small donors funded Obama's campaign.

He's the only candidate of the three in the running who is not owned by the cabal. And he needs every voter, and every vote. Obama and his campaign people have always been pretty respectful of the Clintons, despite Hillary's "kneecapping," "kitchen sink" strategy, and "nuclear strategy." And Obama has told his campaign folks and the world that he is reaching out to Clinton's supporters.

Clinton has displayed no such comity. She is still attempting to delegitimize Obama's success. But what really gets our paranoia chemicals going is, the cabal, with its dirty tricks, its Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves and droves of followers who don't recognize that they are being used and played and tossed aside when the party's over, is undoubtedly planning to use more dirty tricks to hold on to power.

Why not? It's served them well since Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.

So while bumbling around on the InnerTubes today, we found this:

IMPORTANT
This information is not to be posted to any of our usual forums and should be emailed only to people you know personally andcompletely trust.

Here is the updated game plan.

Step one: Register a bunch of user accounts on lefty blogs.

*Create false identities equally divided between Obama and Clinton supporters. Initially play it cool. Don't make more than two accounts per blog one for each candidate. Too many accounts from the same ip and you will be outed as a sock puppet. Dont do anything drastic that would get you banned. Lurk for a while
at first so you can learn how they talk. Liberals are like a different species. Dont start an all out flame war right away begin with small insults.

The idea is to poison the tone of discussion but do it so slowly that they dont realize where its coming from. You want the liberal sheep to get caught up in it and start doing our work for us.

Step three: As the Democ-rat nomination narrows in on a candidate crank up the heat. The loser ident should start calling for a voter boycott on the winner. You may not be able to peal off voters to our side but demotivating them so they stay home is almost as good.

SPREAD THE WARNING

Now, there are several sites (to which we won't link, but you probably know they exist) that claim to be peopled by supporters of Clinton. Most of them don't have many individual posters or commenters. We've been looking at them periodically, just because we're paranoid.

We've noticed a trend: One or two strong posters, more articulate than the rest, start by praising Clinton and downplaying Obama. That's to be expected. Everyone has a candidate they support and it's a bitter disappointment when one's chosen candidate doesn't win.

But these people then go on to suggest various ways in which the disaffected supporters can protest the nomination of the other candidate. And to no one's great surprise, all these different ways redound to the benefit of the Republicans.

Suggestions are made to shower superdelegates with email. Vicious attacks on Democrats and Democratic politicians, and even the small-d democratic process. The disaffected are urged to vote for McCain, harrass Obama supporters, flood their legislators with mail and calls, turn to Faux News for information and shun all other sources.

What do you think? Sounds pretty fishy to me.

So once again, we urge all our friends, Democrat and Republican alike, not to fall for this type of dirty politicking. Fight fair. Examine each candidate's policies. Don't be swayed by Faux Noise or dubious sources like WingNut Daily. Consider carefully what your own interests are and who best represents them. Don't consider not voting. Vote for Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich or Nader or Barr or Clinton or Obama or McCain, but don't give up your hard-earned right to vote. Don't sit out this election. Your country stands at a crossroads. She needs every single individual to turn out and do something.

Don't consider violence or harrassment. Consider your favoured candidate and your alternative candidate, and vote. And consider this: the economy is in the pits. The dollar is in the pits. The climb out of those pits is going to be long and hard. Set aside your feelings, whatever they may be, and consider the fate of the nation, and your children, and your children's children. We cannot afford another war. We cannot even afford the two we're currently fighting.

Which candidate will give us peace, and help us rebuild the economy, and leave our nation a better place for all of us? We're not urging you to support any particular candidate. We are, however, speaking against John McCain because we do not think he has a grasp of the enormous issues facing us. We do not think, if he is elected, he has the temperament and the capacity to pull the entire nation out of the quagmire. Any of the other candidates would be preferable.

So choose carefully, and wisely, and well. Because your choice will affect not just you, your family, your friends. It will affect your entire nation, and the citizens of many other nations.

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