Via Andrew Sullivan, a college student in Oklahoma is suing the state after tax officials denied his request to have a personalized car license plate that said, simply, “IM GAY.”
According to a local news article on the suit, the state 86’d the request because of a rule prohibiting personalized plates that “may be offensive to the general public.”
Kimmel points out officials allowed tags such as STR8FAN and STR8SXI. "They defended using ‘straight sexy.’ … They didn’t think that one was inappropriate but yet ‘I’m gay’ is. I think it’s kind of a double standard,” said Kimmel, a political science/pre-law student at Oklahoma City Community College.
For those who may have been wondering, a license plate with the words “In God We Trust” is an option. But I guess such a slogan wouldn’t be offensive to the “general public,” only to those who aren’t Christian or to those who believe that tax dollars shouldn’t go towards boosting one religion over another.
Finding new ways to brand the minds of young people isn’t a cake walk during the recession, so advertisers are apparently creating a new tool for market research in the form of an Astroturf community blog.
Meet the “Next Great Generation Blog” a publication that wants “an opportunity for Millennial Generation writers to develop a voice and gather a following, along with a real chance for older generations to listen in,” according to an e-mail message sent from Generation blog editor Gillian Maffeo today and obtained by CampusProgress.
They fail to mention that the blog will also be a great opportunity for advertisers, too, as a little investigation shows the website is really a creation of the Boston-based Mullen public relations agency, and Maffeo is an account executive at the company.
Mullen (which for some reason insists on italicizing the L's in its name to appear edgy, or something) boasts work for clients like Krispy Kreme and, interestingly enough, the American Diabetes Association as well.
“We’re trying to share personal stories about everything from our passion for pizza to our struggles with eating disorders,” the e-mail reads. “Comments, dialog, challenges and criticism are as welcome as praise.”
Didn’t people used to get paid for market research?
In what has got to be one of the most backwards and regressive editorials ever written by a bunch of gray-haired, Caucasian journos, The Digital Journalist, a monthly web-magazine, provides a stunning example of hubris and elitism, boo-hooing what it clearly sees as the unwashed riffraff of journalism—namely, citizens who dare participate in the news making process.
There are citizens and there are journalists. Everybody can be one of the former, but to be called a journalist means that you are a professional. Either you have been schooled in journalism, or you have "paid your dues," rising slowly through the ranks.
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Those who write or photograph for the sheer joy of doing so are amateurs. It comes from the Latin, "those who love to do." However, they are not professionals.
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The Digital Journalist, even though it is purely a Web magazine, has been adhering to the core principles of professional journalism since its start. All 30,000 words in each issue undergo grammar, spelling and fact-checking by our copy editor, Cecilia White, who has worked for The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Economist.
Because of declining revenues, newspapers, magazines and TV stations actually think they can get these "volunteers" to replace the professionals. If that is the case, we hope the next step is not to have citizen "editors" start running traditional media, or any media for that matter.
Seems like the authors of this editorial forgot that, in the process of being “professionals,” you are first accountable to the public that consumes your work.
And with these journalists essentially calling everyone but themselves uneducated idiots unworthy of participating in the media narrative, is it really such a surprise that growing numbers of citizens don’t trust the “professionals?”
In New York, Beck sold 17 tickets. In Boston, another 17. And in Washington, D.C., the hotbed of political activism, his tearful film drew only 30.
While Glenn Beck's new movie The Christmas Sweater – A Return To Redemption -- which released for a viewing Thursday night in hundreds of theaters across the country -- performed better in rural areas, his ability to draw viewers in major US markets was a bust.
The 2-hour flick, which features Fox News' Beck discussing his childhood memories of Christmas and expounding upon the sanctity of the holiday, tanked in cities across the country.
Unsurprisingly, the movie is doing better in rural areas, where populations can be smaller and more conservative. But will that be enough for ticket sales?
Paying soaring amounts to attend a public university is tantamount to a government handout according to the wonks at the conservo-libertarian Cato Institute.
Take a look at Neal McCluskey, who scowls at college students who dare complain about monstrous tuition and fee hikes, most recently at the University of California, which increased student tuition by 32 percent last month.
The fact that college will be unaffordable for many young students in California matters little to McCluskey, who posts the following screed on the Institute’s blog today:
Inside Higher Ed reports today on growing college student activism. And what are the young scholars suddenly so active about? Not unjust wars, racism, or anything else so high-minded. No, today the “no justice, no peace!” chants are all about the injustice of students being asked to pay for more of their hugely taxpayer-subsidized educations.
There’s a word for this kind of activism, and it’s not “idealism” or anything else so complimentary. It’s “rent seeking.” Or, if you want to put it more bluntly, “freeloading.”
Yeah, how dare those kids go to a public school paid for by taxes, and then feel as if they have some kind of a democratic say!
After all, it’s not like McCluskey would ever sully himself by graduating from a “freeloading,” government-run institution.
George Washington University is considering a policy that would defile the moral underpinnings of higher education.
Or at least that’s according to the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative group claiming that the possibility of gender-neutral housing on campus will prevent students from being “model citizens,” by turning them into lazy, hedonistic, sexual deviants…or something like that.
Morally, such housing situations will devoid students of the opportunity to learn how to be model citizens and will adversely affect academic performance, by destroying the safe learning climate that is the University. Such housing situations blur the lines of acceptable gender roles and encourage a culture of promiscuity and instant gratification.
The YAF chapter at the university has pledged to fight the proposal, refusing to drink what it calls “liberal kool-aid.”
Meanwhile, since CampusProgress broke the story about Princeton approving co-ed housing in October, there have so far been no reports of the school and its dormitories rapidly deteriorating.
Or at least he tried to. But for some reason, the flabbergasted security guards the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Bloomington, Minnesota turned Erickson and his cohorts away when they went there this morning to initiate deportation proceedings against themselves.
Robert Erickson claimed that as a European Immigrant he is part of the group of people who are responsible for the largest genocide in history committed against the Native peoples of the "Americas" and that he and his immigrant ancestors never obtained any legal status from the people who were inhabiting this land before they colonized it for their own self-serving purposes.
Thirty supporters including members of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition were present to document the reaction of ICE and to provide encouragement for the self deporters who took part in what a representative of self-described "Federal Protective Service" officers called a "major demonstration" as they communicated with each other on walkie-talkies and phones.
A self-indulgent form of activism? Most definitely.
Did it actually change anything? No.
Comedic relief amid a national debate pertaining to our horrifyingly unjust and broken immigration system? You betcha.
That’s according to a Twitter page that was supposedly created by Erickson.
If true, the move will only build upon the tongue-in-cheek speech that Erickson gave as an orator at the Tea Party rally, that “European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world!”
Here’s the original video:
The press conference may also be taking place at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, or, so reads a tweet by the individual claiming to be Erickson. Stay tuned.
Right-leaning activists held an anti-immigration rally in Minnesota over the weekend, but thanks to some creative Jiu-Jitsu by one speaker, the event took an about-face, without supporters realizing it.
By the end of his speech, a young man going by the moniker “Robert Erickson" gets the tea-partiers to yell a rallying cry of “Columbus Go Home!” over and over again.
Speech nuggets, with the loud crowd cheering throughout the entire event:
All across America they’re contributing to the flood of our job market, making it harder for Americans to find jobs. We’ll I’m fed up and its time to let our politicians know that enough is enough, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
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We need tougher immigration laws to make sure we send these people back where they came from.
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It’s no secret that with the invasion of immigrants comes waves of crime. A secret involving massive theft, and murder, and bringing diseases like small pox, which is responsible for the death of millions of Americans. These aren’t new problems though. They’ve been going on for hundreds of years. They continue to this day. It’s time for us to say enough is enough. Are you with me?
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All right. Let’s send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don’t care if they’re Irish, English, or Norwegian. European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world!
Do you ever get the feeling that your art-loving bona fides are slowly but surely eroding? Well I do. And I don't like it. It's been exacerbated by the long days at the offices and the evenings at happy hours. Well this week, I'm making room for culture in a big way: The Capital Fringe Festival. Read More »
We knew it was coming. Throughout last year, there were various reports that Fox News had an interest in promoting a conservative version of the Daily Show. Last June, MediaBistro.com blogged that conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham was rumored to be hosting the pilot. The tipster revealing the secret pilot described it as a "terrible rip off the Daily Show" and that the "writers and producers should be embarrassed to show this one to Roger [Ailes]."
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