Pandagon

Bill O'Reilly Is Aggrieved At Your Grievances

Bill O'Reilly is aggrieved. (What's new?) He's aggrieved that other people---people who are not older white men---are aggrieved.  Older white men are the only one allowed grievances, because the only grievance really allowed is to be aggrieved that younger, more female, and more racially diverse people do not accept your natural authority as an older white man. No, I am not exaggerating his point of view.

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Captain America: Winter Soldier Is A Political Parable About The Security State

Well, since Scott handled Game of Thrones, I guess that gives me the go to write about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which I  saw on Friday. Go see this movie! It's very nearly perfect as an entertaining action movie, except for the part where we're supposed to believe that Scarlett Johansson is  a former KGB agent, when the actress was, you know, 7 years old when the KGB collapsed. (The Americans, at least, has warmed me up to the idea of KGB agents that have no detectable Russian accent.) And even that I forgive, because she's really good in this movie and I'm happy that there's an Avengers movie where women play a major role, instead of being relegated to love interests and background characters.

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Don't Call it Normcore. Call It Brokecore.

Oh boy, the New York Times has discovered the "normcore" trend. Next Time will do something on it, and it will be considered passé in record time, like rising and falling in the space of two months. Not that people will stop dressing this way, of course. But calling it "normcore" and having a bunch of think pieces about it will be thankfully over before most people have ever heard of this trend. Which means I will thankfully never read another paragraph like this:

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Fox News Wages War On The Young

Oh no, fun! Make it stop!

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Sorry, But Marrying Some Random Dude As Quickly As Possible Won't Solve Anything

Not married, ladies? Well, let's go to the Husband Store and get you fitted with a to-go husband by sun fall!

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Twitter Denizens Mock A Very Silly (And Violent) Right Wing Urban Legend

Just got back from a short vacation, and so am still in the process of catching up and getting back into the game. But I was pleased to see this report from Adam Weinstein of Gawker about a hilarious Twitter smackdown of one of those nauseating and half-literate right wing memes that go around on the email and social media of wingnuts. Forwarding urban legends crafted to assure reactionaries that liberals are crazy and God is on their side sometimes seems like 75% of intra-conservative online communications.  This one was particularly bad because it endorsed using violence to shut down those scary atheists that might make you do something uncomfortable like think for a moment.

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Conservatives Have Figured Out A Disturbingly Effective Strategy: Tell Lots And Lots of Lies

Conservatives have figured out that the way to win any debate is to drown your opponent in lies.

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Reeva Steenkamp's Text To Oscar Pistorius Before Her Death Is Heart-Breaking

Erin Gloria Ryan writes about the latest bit of information to come out of the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius. Pistorius is accused of deliberately murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, during a late night argument on Valentine's Day. He claims that he would never hurt her and that it was an accident and that he thought she was an intruder. She was locked inside a bathroom when he unloaded a gun into it. I am skeptical of Pistorius's excuse for a number of reasons, the first being that I find it wholly implausible that someone who shares a bed with someone else would get up in the middle of the night and just assume that the person in the bathroom is an intruder and not their partner. You know, the one who isn't in the shared bed? You could just ask, if nothing else. Or double check the bed.

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The Hobby Lobby Case Is About Spreading Lies About Contraception

Conservatives hope that if they call birth control pills "abortion" enough, we'll all be stupid enough to believe them.

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Republicans, In Full Anti-Obama Frenzy, Take A Swipe At National Parks

Good a time as any to indulge a little nostalgia for home.

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Why Are Medical Conspiracy Theories So Popular?

With the latest measles outbreak in New York City, more attention is being paid, finally, to the problem of anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists, who often have a prominent platform to spread their paranoid nonsense. But anti-vaccination paranoia is not the only medical conspiracy theory out there that might lead to people making bad decisions about their health. As NPR reports, a nearly half of American subscribe to some kind of medical conspiracy theory, of various sorts:

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Anti-Choicers Really Upset, For Some Reason, That Random Feminist Lady Doesn't Want Babies

This 80s-style stock photography speaks to me, people. It speaks to me.

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