delays in blogging....

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Good Grief, it's been nearly a week since I posted. Somehow, between work, tutoring, rehearsal, babysitting and pathetic attempts at sleep, I just haven't been able to sit and concentrate long enough to rant about anything.

I've found a couple of rant-worthy topics, though. The first is television. When I'm home, which is not often, I've been watching a fair amount of TV. I've needed to give my brain a rest, and the zombie box is great for that. Except when it pisses me off, which happens more often than not. Monday, I watched The View. Please don't make fun of me for this! Whoopi Goldberg is one of their hosts now, and she's funny and insiteful....Anyway, they referred to the whole TV reporter saying that Chelsea Clinton was "pimped out" thing. The women all said that the comment was in poor taste, but they never ventured into why it was bad. No one mentioned that it was wrong because it was totally sexist. No one thought to bring up that comparing political work done by a woman to prostitution is deeply, incredibly offensive. Seriously, that 4 women could completely overlook that glaring fact was pretty disturbing to me.

Later that day, I watched a show that is even more embarrassing than the View. "Today on Tyra, teen pregnancy!" O.M.G........Tyra Banks has decided that she's the next Oprah. Only at least Oprah is better at hiding her judgment. Tyra pretends to ask probing questions while really just being not only judgmental but rather stupid as well.....What was most annoying about the show was how they pretended to show all the different choices made by pregnant teens, but succeeded in villainizing every one of those choices. They featured one 30 second story by a girl who had an abortion. Of course, who did they find but a girl whose mother forced her to abort, leaving her very upset. Of course abortion is going to be a negative experience if you didn't choose it yourself! That's not what's going to be remembered, though. People are going to take "abortion is bad" from that story, not "letting someone else make your decisions for you is bad."

Even worse, the girl has found herself pregnant again, by the same guy, because in her words: "It's his decision whether or not to wear a condom." Even when pressed by Tyra, this child refused to take any responsibility for her own body. It was so depressing to see a kid who was that controlled by everyone else in her life. I wondered whether she was really that passive or whether this is the effect of all that purity-ball-your-parents-control-your-thoughts-and-decisions-till-you-find-a-man-to-take-over-all-your-responsibility shit.....

ARGH!!!!

On a totally separate topic, Ellen Hargis, a wonderful soprano who lead the workshops I attended at the Vancouver Early Music Festival 2 years ago, was nominated for a Grammy. She and the other Boston Baroque performers were nominated for Best Opera for their recording of Lully's Thesée. It was really cool to see an early music ensemble up there. Usually, regular opera people look down upon early music folks (even though they're generally much better musicians than standard-rep opera singers), so to have a Grammy nom. is really cool. They didn't win, sadly, but a nomination is cool nonetheless!


okay, forgive the spelling errors, please, since my spell-check button isn't working.....