Raise it Up

(Today's picture courtesy of the Associated Press: Members of the Tamil Tigers marching in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government has hemmed in 250,000 members of the ethnic separatist group and civilians to the northeastern corner of the island. The Sri Lankan government refuses to allow journalists and aid workers access to the front lines (or it just murders them), and the UN is helping solve the crisis by pointing fingers at everybody).


It can't get any more gloomy in America (we lost, what, 70,000 jobs on Monday?), but people everywhere are rallying against "The Man". "The Man" has always been around, but only Nation of Islam members and Rastafarians really complained about him. Now, "The Man" is like Dick Feld, the infamous Lehman Brothers CEO who was punched in the face in the company gym. And EVERYBODY hates him. You want to talk about uniting America? We think hedge fund bankers will do more for fostering a spirit of bipartisanship in this country than Obama ever could, especially if we lose another 2 million jobs because of this credit-default swap nonsense.
Today's Not A Blog will celebrate people everywhere sticking it to The Man. You should too.



(AP Photo by Haraz N. Ghanbari)

Lilly Ledbetter decided to fight The Man after more than 20 years working for way less money than the other male supervisors at an Alabama Goodyear plant. She took it to court, but the (totally non-partisan) Supreme Court ultimately ruled Lilly only had six months after her first paycheck was issued to sue for discrimination. Read Ruth Bader Ginsburg's minority opinion here. Obama signed a law today remedying THAT problem, even though Lilly is never going to get the money she is owed. Read Gail Collins' editorial here. Sam Dealey argues the Ledbetter Law is bad, because, like, what if every discriminated woman wants to sue for unequal pay? We can't afford that! We would like to further the equal rights debate by noting there are really no good articles on Lilly Ledbetter in today's papers. Clearly, the fight for equal press continues.

We are not exactly Big & Rich fans here at Not A Blog. But the country group's John Rich has a new song called "Shuttin' Detroit Down". We have to say, we're having a Woody Guthrie moment with this one, though we regret to report Cowboy Troy did NOT contribute a rap verse.

"Well, pardon me if I don't shed a tear
'Cause they're selling make believe, and we don't buy that here
'Cause, in the real world, they're shutting Detroit down
While the boss man takes his bonus-paid jets on out of town..."

(The Daily Telegraph: Strike in Lyon)

Paris strikes! The nation is crippled as 3/4 of the French decide to stay home and watch reruns of "Golden Girls" until Sarkozy comes to his senses and creates a stimulus plan.
Maybe now is the time for setting aside the tensions between the French and the Americans. After all, doesn't this sound familiar?

"There is a general feeling here of injustice, that the ordinary man on the street is paying for the greed of those in the financial sector."
Vive la revolution!


We don't like to quote the NY Times Opinion Page twice in one post...but Maureen Dowd says "Off with their heads!" Music to our ears!

To make you smile: An unnamed Virgin passenger completely bitches out Richard Branson on what appears to be an already digested Indian airline tray served to him on the Mumbai to Heathrow flight...It's not tuna fish, it's tuna sea kitten! Or so says PETA... The Economist chronicles PETA's aquatic obsession here....Philisophical thought from ESPN's Page 2 on the lost meaning in Super Bowl ads...Daniel Gross compares bankers to those vomiting dead girls in The Sixth Sense...

Baloney: Is Joaquin Phoenix's new rap career just a Borat-style mockumentary? Maybe. Is it inherently racist, as The Root argues? We guess so, if you also think Spinal Tap was an act of oppression aimed at silencing hair bands everywhere.

Panic of 2009!

All the Presidential waltzing in the world won't stop the economy from gettin' down with its bad self...

TIME's Sean Gregory writes an article on the business of going out of business--professional liquidators. So, if you're searching for a job, running bankruptcies would make a great "How I Survived the 21st Century Depression" story...

Over at Mother Jones, Debra J. Dickerson opens her lede with a very funny election headline from The Onion (Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job)...but it's clear that, if Dickerson is grinning, she's clenching her teeth...

"Simultaneously, millions of blacks woke up on November 5 with yet another buppie made better off on their backs while they remain jobless in dangerous neighborhoods, their immediate futures no brighter for knowing that cornbread may start appearing at the White House Thanksgiving table."

Dickerson agrees (somewhat bitterly) that blacks need to stop working for social progress that only affects blacks, i.e. we should start funding shitty urban education AND shitty rural education. I really think black identity politics are drifting farther from the Al Sharpton/Louis Farrakhan/Jesse Jackson model...which is good and bad. But more good, I think. Is it a failure of race relations to admit no one gives a damn about one ethnic group's particular misfortune (at the hands of another, some might say)?
I think Dickerson wants to quote Killer Mike:

"The comment Kanye made was damn near right/
But George Bush hate poor people, be 'em black or white".

Listen to THAT great song here on YouTube And smile! I mean, he's gone!

This is KIND of about being poor, or at least, about a loss...from The Oxford American. Grant Alden writes about how he once had the coolest job in the world: music critic. Until the advent of The Blogger (cue scary organ music!). We would like to reiterate that this is not a blog, and we spend a lot of time listening to Rihanna, anyway.

So what is Obama going to do to fix all this shiz? My old friend Matt Rivera interrogates the news & editorial staff of Wall Street Journal in this awesome video

And just so we remember how good we still have it in America: The Guardian UK examines the children of Gaza, or, as I suspect, the next generation to fight Israel.

Lina Hassan, 10, was killed by an Israeli shell which hit her as she walked to the shops next to a UN school in Jabaliya on 6 January. “She asked me for a shekel to go to the shops to buy something for her and her brothers and sisters,” said her father Abdul, 37. “I heard the shell and I ran out. I saw her body lying on the ground … Was my daughter Hamas? Do you think a 10-year-old even knows the difference between Hamas and Fatah?”

Who Are The Outlaws?

Of cowboy hackers, Robin Hoods, and street gangs:
Four academics discuss what's left of the American outlaw archetype, whether our society needs outlaws, and which up-and-coming generation of rule-breakers will change our country. It's from the NYTimes Opinion Blog, which seems to be supplying some of the magic that our beloved NYTimes columnists are missing.

My favorite passage is from Graham Seal, professor of folklore at Curtin University of Technology in Australia:

Deserving of such treatment or not, outlaw heroes are the smoke of a fire burning deep in the resentful core of an ethnic, cultural, religious, or class group that perceives itself to be the victim of injustice. Perception is the important concept here. Whether the group is actually being oppressed does not matter; it only needs to believe that it is.

The outlaw hero has troubled societies of all kinds for thousands of years. He ranges the unsettled borders of the old world and rides the frontiers of the new world. He hides out in mountains, marshes, forests, and other places where his pursuers cannot reach him.

He is the usually undeserving but chosen bearer of the ancient dream that refuses to die: there can be justice, all people can have fair access to the available resources, and wealth and power should not be the prerogative of a select few.

Who is your favorite outlaw? I must admit I am partial to anti-slavery crusader John Brown. And whatever happened to Shawn Fanning from Napster? Now that Comcast has blocked my access to Limewire with a firewall, I miss him more than ever.

Pictured: 2 bonafide Outlawz.

In Tangle of Young Lips, A Sex Rebellion in Chile

In Tangle of Young Lips, A Sex Rebellion in Chile
SANTIAGO, Chile — It is just after 5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin America’s most sexually conservative countries, and the youth of Chile are bumping and grinding to a reggaetón beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys and girls ages 14 to 18 are stripping off their shirts, revealing bras, tattoos and nipple rings.


The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands, all groping and exploring. About 800 teenagers sway and bounce to lyrics imploring them to “Poncea! Poncea!”: make out with as many people as they can.

And make out they do — with stranger after stranger, vying for the honor of being known as the “ponceo,” the one who pairs up the most....

Read it here:


Terrific photo gallery on Chilean makeout parties: