Ashley vs. The Patriarchy®©™

Ashley Judd made waves a few days ago, complaining that the gossip blogs had noticed her face looked "puffy," and assumed she had had work done. Ignore, for a moment, that she probably did in fact have work done on her face. This was picked up by the feminist blogs and spun into critical analysis of The Patriarchy®©™*. By "critical analysis" I mean criticism, not actual thoughtful commentary.

While I'm actually pretty sympathetic to actors and actresses (it effects both) complaining about the superficiality of Hollywood, with it's laser-like focus on the young and the beautiful at the expense of actual talent and hard work, Ashley Judd is one of the last people in the industry that has any right to complain that she is being judged by those standards.

Let's face it, Ashley Judd built a successful career based on her exquisite face.

Without that face she's just another mildly talented, 3rd tier actress doing bit parts in second rate movies. Think Kirstie Alley without the reality TV show, the weight-loss program or the soft-core porn flicks. Or Megan Fox.

Don't get me wrong, Ashley's not a horrible actress, she's had a few good roles over her (relatively sparse) 36 performance career. She's just not as good as she thinks she is.

Ashley Judd is being judged by the exact same standards she has been judged throughout her entire professional acting career. She was totally ok with it when she was a hot 20-something actress causing erections in every 14 year old boy that watched her movies. For the first time, though, she's being judged by those same standards and has been found lacking. And now she's pissed at The Patriarchy®©™*.

What's really ironic is that she's really not being judged by The Patriarchy®©™* at all. The Patriarchy®©™* couldn't care less about her. The Patriarchy®©™* probably doesn't even remember who she is. As far as The Patriarchy®©™* is concerned, her career ended in the early 2000's, around the same time she stopped making studios money, and consequently, stopped landing major roles. This story was first "reported" on the gossip blogs, and her response was picked up by the feminist blogs. I have bad news for all of The Patriarchy®©™* hating women out there. There are two groups of people that read those types of blogs, women and gay men. Neither of those groups are part of The Patriarchy®©™*. She's being superficially judged (and found lacking) by the same people that habitually complain about the superficial judgements of The Patriarchy®©™*. Pot, Kettle, Black, some assembly required.

Like I said above, there are some actresses that could make this complaint and I would nod in agreement. Meryl Streep, Glenn Close or Judi Dench come to mind. These are actresses that while they may not be gorgeous (except Meryl Streep, the older she get's the better she looks), are amazing actresses, with serious roles to their credits. They deserve to be judged by the body of their work, by the obvious talent they possess and hard work they have clearly put into their careers.

Ashley Judd, on the other hand, has built a career not on the body of her work, but on her body itself. And that is how she's being judged.

*Every time you see The Patriarchy®©™ you can insert "group of executives responsible for ensuring that the movies their studios fund actually make money" if you want accuracy.

Why conservatives think the media lies

Short answer, because they do.

Two examples from the Zimmerman-Martin shooting.

CBS
911 tape as played by CBS:

(Skip forward to 0:24 for the good stuff)



Zimmerman: This guy looks like he's up to no good…

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Please note the audio is presented as one clip by CBS. Yes, I saw that they tossed the ellipsis in there, but the way the audio is edited, it really sounds like one continuous clip.

The ACTUAL 911 tape:

(disclaimer, I have no idea who Craig Boyce is. He just had the best audio on YouTube)

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

The dispatcher goes on to ask about clothing, eliciting the now-famous hoodie response.

Even though there's technically no lie there (he did actually say everything attributed to him), the editing is extremely deceptive and completely changes the tone of the exchange (race focused, versus relaying information after the dispatcher specifically asks for it).

ABC News 3/28/12

Headline: "Treyvon Martin video shows no blood or bruises on Zimmerman"

ABC News 4/2/12

Correction: "Enhanced Zimmerman video shows head wound"

I actually think Heinlein's razor may apply here, never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.

I'm willing to give ABC reporter Matt Gutman the benefit of the doubt here for simply rushing a story to press without bothering to do his due diligence, as opposed to maliciously reporting something that would inflame the racial fires (and give him and his networks those ever-precious ratings).

My gripe here is that ABC rushed this story to press based on a tape that has such poor definition that you can't really see anything. From the original tape anything less than a gaping hole in the back of Zimmerman's head would be hard to see. From the cleaned up tape, it's pretty obvious that Zimmerman took a hard blow or three to the back of his head.

What's less defensible was Matt Gutman's twitter feed, where he aggressively defended his story from people who questioned it. Until, of course, they were proven right. As an editor in a perfect world I would want to hold this story until the enhanced version of the tape was available. Of course, that would mean holding the story for 3 days, and would risk losing ratings to another network. And besides, we all know what really happened anyway, right?

The things that really bother me about both of these stories, is that I don't actually think any conscious decisions were made to lie, deceive or incite a race riot (that is the end result to the racial flame-fanning that has been going on). This is just a natural progression of two newsrooms that "knew" what happened, and so the stories were presented in the context of that "truth." But because everyone "knew" what happened, the checks and balances that should have prevented any of these incidents from ever happening didn't happen. No editor looked at the editing of that tape and said "hold on," because everyone in the production cycle actually thought that was the truth. In their minds, Zimmerman obviously was racially motivated, how could he not be? Therefore of course his racial bias would come out in the tape. He was racist. Racists are racist. That was the truth (as they perceived it).

The same thing happened with the ABC tape. Because they all thought they knew what happened, all of the evidence neatly fit into a case against Zimmerman. Any alternate theories were simply discarded (or didn't even occur to them), because they conflicted with the truth, as the writers and editors perceived it.

In case your wondering, yes, this same thing has happened with Zimmerman's defenders. Anyone remember this photo?

In case you never saw it, this image spread like wildfire through conservative blogs and social media sites as an example of media bias in ignoring Martin's dark side. There's only one problem. As Dr. Jones once said to Indiana, "it's a fake."

Well, the Martin side is fake, the Zimmerman side is a real photo. The Martin side was pulled off of a Facebook page that was clearly not the correct Treyvon Martin's page, and then posted on a white power message board. I'm not going to link to the Facebook page or message board for obvious reasons. From there it spread through the internet, and even though it has been debunked, it's still cropping up on some conservative websites, because it fits the narrative of honest, hard working citizen beset upon by thuggish gangster, who had the good luck to have the means for defending himself upon him. Again, it fits the narrative, therefore it must be true, therefore evidence to the contrary is discarded or ignored.

There is one other point that needs to be made, though. Social media and blogs like mine don't claim to be the arbiters of what is true and correct. Well, most don't. Some do, they're delusional. The mainstream media, of which ABC and CBS are founding members, do make that claim. They have volunteered to be held to a higher standard, by openly and explicitly saying they are journalists, while denigrating bloggers and social media as, well, amateurs. When you hold yourself to a higher standard, when you hide behind the banner of objectivity, you don't get to complain when people call you out for being dishonest and pushing an agenda.