After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a “retard” in a tweet during Monday night’s presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:
Dear Ann Coulter, Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night. I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have. Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next. Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more. After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV. I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
Okay we can all have a good laugh and cheer at what went down tonight but in all seriousness what she was doing was calling out a white woman on her horribly patronizing, racist behavior. A white woman tried to silence and belittle a Black woman’s pain because she didn’t like how it was presented and proceeded to dismiss it because she was too angry. Miley condescended to her, telling a black woman how best to deal with something that she as a white woman will never have to deal with. And Nicki clapped back. On national television. In front of a live audience, in front of the world, on air.
If you think the media and its industries aren’t going to punish her for it then I need you to pay real close attention to her the next coming months, because you can bet she won’t have as many appearances or invitations, you can bet she will get even less recognition and even more criticism, you can bet most mentions of her will associate her with the Angry Black Woman stereotype without ever addressing why she was angry or recognizing that her anger was justified. They are going to make Nicki out to be the ultimate bad guy when the reality is she was defending herself-and by proxy, Black women in entertainer everywhere-against some serious displays of ignorance and racism. But you watch. Watch what’s going to happen to Nicki after this.
The clap back was hilarious, yes, but there is a reason Black people are celebrating it; because Nicki showed some serious courage. Black people, Black women especially, are expected to shoulder any and all abuse silently. She refused. At the end of the day, to these people, she is just a Black woman who is supposed to shut up and take whatever bullshit gets thrown at her. She isn’t supposed to defend herself, especially not if it means hurting white women’s feelings. Protect Nicki Minaj at all fucking costs. Support her at all costs, because she’s going to come under serious fire.
“She didn’t even think to ask me.” said Damian, later, a puzzled look of hurt on his face. “I mean, I was sitting right there. Staring at her. Deciding how attractive she looked. She could have just asked. Why didn’t she? I was right there.”
“It’s a shame.” he added, staring at someone across the room who had a bit of mascara on. “Such a shame.”
“Local Man Saddened that No One Gives a Shit about Conforming to His Personal Beauty Standards”
You cannot buy electronics with food stamps. You cannot buy cigarettes with food stamps. You cannot buy pet food with food stamps. You cannot withdraw money with an EBT card (food stamps).
Do you know what else you can’t buy with food stamps? Shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, tinfoil, plastic sandwich bags, toothpaste, cleaning products, tampons, pads, over the counter medications (such as Tylenol, Ibuprofen, etc.), and anything else you can think of that you cannot physically ingest for nutritional purposes.
Do you know what you can buy with food stamps?Food.
Do you know what it’s like to scrounge for change to buy non-edible necessities, use a credit card and EBT card (food stamps) during the same transaction, and then have the person in line behind you judge you for buying the ingredients to make a birthday cake?
People who disseminate false information about food stamps have never had to use food stamps.
Okay, but let’s talk for a second about how that one lady called turkey “big chicken”
You can’t even buy all food with food stamps. You just… you flat-out can’t buy “food that will be eaten in the store/any food sold for on-premises consumption” or any “hot foods” with food stamps—meaning you can’t buy anything hot, you can’t buy anything that gets blended together, you can’t buy anything “pre-prepared,” in most cases you can’t use your EBT card at restaurants. You literally CANNOT purchase a milkshake with food stamps, because it’s considered “sold for on-premises consumption” (which was ridiculous at the place I worked, because the customer had to mix their own milkshake themself with a little machine we provided them, and several people got upset—rightfully so, I think—that it wasn’t covered under food stamps, because they often only found out at the register after already mixing it, often as a treat for their kids). You literally can’t walk into a gas station, grab one of those hot dogs off their grills/out of the little heated food area, and buy it with food stamps, because it’s hot.
And when I say “can’t,” I don’t mean “if the cashier notices you trying and cares enough to stop you, they’ll refuse to do it for you.” I mean “it is actually impossible to do this.” I’m not even sure these people who disseminate false information about food stamps have paid any attention at all when buying things at the store, because what happens is: We scan in the customer’s items, into our computer. The computer has specific codes for the items and rules for what it will let you pay for things with. We scan the customer’s EBT card, and it tells us exactly how much of that price total can be paid for via EBT, and it will not include anything that isn’t food, and it will not include anything considered “pre-prepared” food. It does this automatically AND THERE IS NO OVERRIDE FOR IT. If our machines say that you can’t use the EBT card to pay for something, there is literally nothing we can do to change that, even if we WANTED to.
So no. You can’t buy iPads or cigarettes with food stamps. You can’t withdraw money from casinos or anywhere else with food stamps. You can’t buy dog food with food stamps; sometimes you can’t even buy people food with food stamps. I’m not even sure if you can buy “the big chicken legs” at Disney with food stamps; remember, you can’t buy “any food sold for on-premises consumption” OR any hot foods, and that’s both.
Literally the only thing these fearmongers listed that you can actually purchase with food stamps even if you are in goddamn cahoots with the evil liberal cashier or store manager is soda, and the judgement against people buying that with food stamps is classist fuckwittery at its finest.
So, as always, Fox News is actually flat-out lying, and hateful conservatives both don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t give a fuck about people going through shit that they will never have to go through themselves, and that they in fact don’t have even the tiniest clue about (not even via five seconds’ research; a list of things that can’t be purchased with food stamps is on the Food and Nutrition Services website) but still think they should spout off about to their TV audience anyway.
Reblogged for flawless commentary and explanation.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the part in Fury Road where Max goes off into the night with a can of guzzoline to blow up the Bullet Farmer’s car, and I think it’s the only point in the movie where Max does a cool, heroic thing on his own… and we never see it! We see him walk away from the War Rig, there’s a big explosion in the distance, and then trudges back carrying bags of guns and ammunition (and a boot for Nux).
In any other movie, the camera would have followed him, and him blowing up the car and taking out the baddies all by himself would have been a big set piece. But in Fury Road, it’s an almost comical BOOM in the distance. And it works so well within the context of the rest of the movie.
Throughout Fury Road, we basically never see Max do badass, heroic things on his own. It’s always within a group (Furiosa, the Wives, the Vuvalini), and always to help or assist others – never for himself, never to make himself look cool. Furiosa gets to do cool stuff on her own, the Wives get to do cool stuff on their own, the Vuvalini, but not Max.
I read Fury Road as partly a wonderful deconstruction of the “loner badass (male) action hero” narrative – which was an incredibly popular narrative in 80s action movies, of which Mad Max is one of the granddaddies. In the old Mad Max movies, Max gets to do cool badass stuff on his own all the time. The movies center around him Getting Shit Done which driving a cool car and shooting baddies.
But in Fury Road, he is always working with others. In Fury Road, he is a hero because he learns cooperation and empathy and works for the safety of others – and unlike the other Mad Max movies, where he exchanges his help for guzzoline or other supplies, he does it for no goods in return, other than regaining his own humanity.
Yessss, I love that moment. It’s a minor cliche – badass guy going off to do some unseen badass thing that is comically only shown in a MASSIVE DISTANT EXPLOSION – but in the context of the movie it deemphasizes Max’s lone heroism to reinforce the importance of his working with the group and in a supporting role. Max helps, especially with his hope/revelation, but you never doubt Furiosa and the others would have sucessfully escaped without him.
I’m always struck by the difference in Max when he leaves and when he returns.
When Max leaves, he has his longest and most complex conversation in the movie at that point with Furiosa (three sentences! with different words in them! yeah, we’re grading on a curve here). He makes a request, speaks clearly, stands upright, makes eye contact for most of the conversation, and otherwise acts more engaged and human than we’ve seen him yet.
When Max comes back, he’s hunched over and only meets people’s eyes in darting looks for brief moments. He seems confused when they ask him questions, and when he speaks, he’s monosyllabic and slurring his words. His main acts of communication – giving the wheel and boot to Nux – are entirely silent.
Basically, after going off to enact an epic feat of violence, Max returns distinctly worse than he left. He’s not physically injured, but the violence he committed did him visible psychological damage.(Knowing George Miller’s abiding interest in telling stories about what violence does to humans, on both sides of the equation, this was no accident.)
And Furiosa recognizes it – the way she watches Max, the hushed tone when she says “That’s not his blood,” her very careful body language. She’s been there: she knows what he did and what it cost him. (and she’s probably a little grateful he didn’t walk up to the War Rig with a machete that first time)
It’s just such a great, subtle moment that completely subverts the normal way an action movie handles this sort of scene – not only by withholding the actual action and undercutting ‘lone heroism’, as discussed so well above, but by telling us that it’s not a triumph. It’s not a moment of glory. It’s not shiny or chrome.
It’s a necessary killing. And it hurts Max to do it.
This is Furiosa’s face when she recognizes that it’s Max walking toward them out of the fog:
When she says “It’s not his blood”:
Watching him carefully as he washes the blood off:
She’s glad he’s alive, sure, but there’s nothing triumphant or high-five-y about this scene. She knows what it cost him.
And actually, the film is constantly undercutting the idea of heroic, triumphant violence, all the way through.
The sandstorm chase, which Nux thinks is going to be his heroic triumph, ends with a flare sputtering out impotently in the dust.
The fight against the Rock Riders, which feels the most classically heroic–in which we see Team War Rig working together as a group for the first time–is undercut by Angharad falling off the Rig, breaking the team as soon as it’s assembled. The moment where everyone should be high-fiving over their surprisingly seamless teamwork, they’re grieving instead.
Even the climactic moment of the film–yay, we killed the Big Bad!–is undercut by the fact that Nux dies and Furiosa is gravely wounded.
While this movie produces an incredible adrenaline rush (at least it did for me), we never get to just revel in that rush and vicariously enjoy these characters’ competence at violence (which is what we go to action movies for) without awareness of the consequences. They’re always reminding us of the cost.
