'Own goals' all over the place today

Indeed, what a lovely day this is shaping up to be.

From Let Freedom Rain, news about Fox News South:

It's been a perfect day so far. Best of all, FNN is kaput. South of the border, something even more interesting is brewing. The selfish assholes who call themselves tea partiers have party-lusted themselves into major electoral troubles. They elected a non-electable scumbag in Delaware who will take away a sure Senatorial seat from the GOP.

Despite the protestations of major GOP tyrants like Rove, O'Donnell won easily and lost the Republicans a major seat. Best of all, Fox News' Rove is getting shit upon for his role in dissing O'Donnell. It can't get any better than that. Fox News South also in trouble, methinks.

Christine O'Donnell is a piece of um, work.

Across the pond, His Poopiness's tour of the UK is not going well.

One of the pope's top advisers on his visit to England and Scotland has dropped out of his entourage following the publication of an interview in which he said that arriving in Britain "you sometimes think you've landed in a third world country".

Benedict XVI's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, told the Guardian, however, that Cardinal Walter Kasper had withdrawn "for health reasons".

He said the 77-year-old prelate's absence from the papal party, which lands in Edinburgh tomorrow at the start of a four-day visit, "had absolutely nothing to do with anything else".

Kasper, the Vatican's leading expert on relations with the Church of England, made his remark after noting that Britain was a "secular, pluralistic" country.

Asked by the German news magazine, Focus, whether Christians were discriminated against in Britain, he replied: "Yes. Above all, an aggressive new atheism has spread through Britain. If, for example, you wear a cross on British Airways, you are discriminated against."

Nope, absolutely nothing to do with fatuous Catlick martyrdom. Perhaps he wants to spend more time with his family. . .

Finally, we'll give the last word to Margaret Atwood whose signature on the Avaaz petition really got this ball rolling.

Re: SUN's Kory T. resigns: I didn't do it. Honest. It was the Great Pumpkin (plus a few Own Goals.)

Natasha Richardson, 1963 - 2009

Sunday May 10th will be a deeply sad Mother's day in the Neeson /Richardson /Redgrave family this year. The next day would have been her 46th birthday.

Those who have lost a sister, a daughter, a spouse, a mother to a sudden, stupid and incomprehensible accident have an understanding of their profound grief.

My impression of Natasha Richardson was based on performances that she perfected and that I watched, reviews or short news items that I read. For example, this piece about her role in The Handmaid's Tale.

Natasha Richardson was never afraid to speak her mind.

And it was in defence of a revered Canadian writer that she first showed her capacity for bluntness. ... Natasha Richardson could have been more circumspect about The Handmaid's Tale, given the fact that it represented a huge career opportunity, but that wasn't in her nature. ... She saw both novel and film as an important cautionary tale. She strode unrepentantly into a minefield when she cited her reasons for applauding a screen version - the rise of fundamentalism in the American South, the constant threats of censorship in so-called democratic countries, the continuing abortion debate, the lesson of Nazi Germany. And she was proud of the fact that this was a project proceeding from a firm feminist perspective.

But she also made it clear that her loyalty was to Canada's Margaret Atwood, rather than the movie, and she took delight in chastising the big Hollywood studios which had refused to finance a feminist-oriented story that was clearly set in a United States taken over by right-wing fundamentalist fanatics - a country where the few remaining fertile women were required to act as surrogate mothers or ``handmaids'' to the ruling male elite.

It was her concern for the integrity of Atwood's novel which led to her bold criticism of Pinter's screenplay. ... Richardson recognized early on the difficulties in making a film out of a book which was ``so much a one-woman interior monologue'' and with the challenge of playing a woman unable to convey her feelings to the world about her, but who must make them evident to the audience watching the movie. She thought the passages of voice-over narration in the original screenplay would solve the problem, but then Pinter changed his mind and Richardson felt she had been cast adrift. ...

"Harold Pinter has something specific against voice-overs,'' she said angrily 19 years ago. "Speaking as a member of an audience, I've seen voice- over and narration work very well in films a number of times, and I think it would have been helpful had it been there for The Handmaid's Tale. After all its HER story.''

In the end director Volker Schlondorff sided with Richardson. ... "As far as I was concerned, at the risk of offending Harold, the book was my bible.''

Natasha Richardson's mother Vanessa Redgrave has supported the Palestinian people's human rights for decades now. Perhaps I shouldn't assume that religious fundamentalists and anti-feminist, right-wing neo-cons will respond to news of Richardson's death and her family's grief with the same vile and gloating petulance that they displayed towards the recent commemoration of Rachel Corrie's death. Let's hope that most of them are decent and compassionate people.

Neener, neener, man-hater

Think Barbara Kay will go into accusation mode over what was written in the Québec media, in response to the brutal murder of two children?

Un père qui en vient à tuer ses enfants agit souvent pour se «venger» d'une séparation qu'il refuse d'accepter, estiment des experts. «Pour l'homme qui pose un tel geste, c'est vu comme une solution. Il se dit qu'il va enlever à la mère ce qu'elle a de plus précieux au monde», explique le psychologue Pierre Faubert.

«C'est plus qu'une vengeance, c'est une attaque», ajoute-t-il.

Translation and summary: A father who kills his children is being vengeful, he is destroying what is most precious to the woman who is separating from him. It's payback and attack. Faubert goes on to suggest that more research be done into the phenomenon of fathers who murder their children to punish a spouse, to identify the causes of such behaviour and to determine why men feel that they are justified to behave in this manner.

Could the origins be attributed to fundamentalist religion? And patriarchal and misogynist ideology found in right-wing, social conservative, anti-feminist organizations such as the Conservative Party of Canada and R.E.A.L. women, perhaps?

Barbara Kay will not accuse male specialists of spreading misandry, of promoting hate against men. She reserves those special attacks for Margaret Atwood, whose success Kay obviously envies and tries to degrade through her petty and silly ranting.