Board of Accountability, Week 17

This is what you get...

....for being a woman with opinions on important topics such as video games -- rape threats, death threats, and some of the Internet's most despicable characters doing their best to ruin you, up to and including terrorism. Even pointing out the fact you receive abuse is apparently reason enough for these Brave Heroes to continue the abuse.

Is any of this worth it? Is there a kernel of truth among the steady stream of hatred vomited toward Anita Sarkeesian? Don't take their -- or my -- word for it. Watch the videos and form your own opinion.

Of course, if you come to the conclusion any of this behavior toward Ms. Sarkeesian is justified, do us both a favor and don't come around here no more. You won't be missed.

Board of Accountability, Week 16

Spot the difference

Sigh.

So this happened. In a dance as old as time, sportsball fans got liquored up, set fires and broke shit because their sportsball team out-sportsballed the other sportsball team in The Big Game. It's not the outcome of the game that makes me sigh, though -- as I've stated before, I have fallen out of love with college football (if not football in general) and the damage to the relationship appears irreparable.

No, this is altogether more sociological. Look at the headline in that first link:

Fans get a little rowdy over Ohio State national championship win

"Get a little rowdy"? Setting 89 fires, vandalizing property and causing police to use tear gas and pepper spray to disperse crowds is "rowdy"? It seems more than a bit curious that when white people riot -- for whatever the reason, great or small -- they're described as "rowdy", "overexuberant" or "disruptive" and that things just got out of hand. Yet when African Americans protest in the name of social justice, they're derided as "savages", dismissed as "hoodlums" and written off as lawless "thugs" who are destroying their own community.

Board of Accountability, Week 15

Respect is earned, not given

Once again, people purporting to defend The Religion of Peace (TM) have decided the best way to express their disagreement over editorial cartoons is to kill those who draw them.

Two gunmen in balaclavas and bullet-proof vests, armed with a pump-action shotgun and an automatic rifle, stormed into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo at about 11.30am as about 15 journalists had gathered for the weekly editorial conference. They called for the editor by name and then murdered him before spraying the room with gunfire, killing nine more and wounding others. Laurent Léger, a Charlie Hebdo writer, managed to sound the alarm, calling a friend and telling him: “Call the police. It’s carnage, a bloodbath. Everyone is dead.”

As they made their getaway, the gunmen shot dead two policemen, including one who they shot in the head at close range as he lay injured on the pavement. ...

The attack was the bloody culmination of a long-simmering struggle between France’s libertarian traditions of free speech and an increasingly extreme strand of Islamism. Witnesses described hearing the attackers shout “Allahu Akbar” as well as “We have avenged the Prophet.” Two eyewitnesses said they claimed to be from al-Qaida. One of them specified al-Qaida in Yemen, a group also known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Charlie Hebdo, a feisty and irreverent publication with a 44-year history, had been at the very frontline of that battle since 2006, when it first reprinted cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad originally published by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published another cartoon of the Muslim prophet.

Let's make a couple things clear up front. Anyone asking "where are the moderate Muslims denouncing this savagery?" clearly can't be bothered to search for themselves, so here. Also, I ask of anyone claiming these murderers aren't "true" Muslims -- just what is a "true" Muslim? I don't know, and I highly doubt you do, either.

Board of Accountability, Week 14

That latter blog post was part of the paper's Asian Cup preview. Give it a look if you care about that sort of thing.

Breaking with family

I love my dad. He's been a great influence on my life, we get along well, and I make sure to consult him before making big life decisions -- relocating, taking a new job, etc. If, whenever I get around to growing up, I end up like him, I'll have done pretty well for myself.

On some issues, though, I find myself growing farther and farther apart from him. Now I find myself dealing with an issue that could drive a wedge between me and both my parents, and it's one I never would have anticipated.