Internet Readalong

[effex]

* I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but the TEDTalks website is featuring Edwidge Danticat: Stories of Haiti: In the midst of an earlier crisis, Haitian author Edwidge Danticat reminds us of the contributions of Haiti's vibrant culture and people. This reading offers a timely message for today -- as the nation struggles in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake (filmed Oct. 2004).

* On Newsweek - The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage: Why same-sex marriage is an American value by Theodore B. Olson (link via rm)

* Adam Lambert's Whataya Want From Me music video is up (via the entire internet)! *________________________* ETA: And bexless has a loving and hilarious review here.

* Train - Hey, Soul Sister

* Utada Hikaru - Devil Inside

* Beyonce - Sweet Dreams (I hear this one every time we go out to the gayborhood and I can. not. get it out of my head.)

* And some fine folks for Follow Friday: help_haiti, the fannish charity auction that you've seen a thousand times already. Go! Look! Donate! Also kaigou, for really excellent writing meta.

* Jay Smooth has a video up on Haiti: ...that we need to act not because Haiti is some nation of perennial victims that we need to have pity on; we need to act because Haiti is a nation of heroes and we need to repay them for what they've given us. That is what our responsibility is.

* Apparently there's a guest post up on FiveThrityEight that's a tentative defense of Pat Robertson's comments on Haiti (wtf?). Ta-Nehisi Coates takes it apart.

* And the NYTimes has a piece on why the Haitians had it coming, really (seriously, wtf?). jonquil responds here and here (same post, different comments).

Comments

[elspethdixon]

Is Dave Brooks seriously, no shit saying that the Haitians had it coming because they practice voudoun? Seriously? That's the kind of statement I expect only from crazy religious fundamentalists like the late Jerry Falwell, no from the New York Times. It ought to be angy conservative New York Post collumnist rhetoric, at best.

The part where he explains that social programs work best when they're run by people who don't understand the factors behind poverty (or understand the local culture, presumably) and don't care about them is extra special.

[effex]

No, no, it's because they practice voudoun and mistrust their government and are totally bad parents! Plus they're poor! Obviously if these things were not true they wouldn't have been hit/devastated by the earthquake.

[pause for incoherent disbelief]

Yeah, the fact that this got published in the New York Times (and that piece on FiveThirtyEight) says a lot about our 'post racial' culture.