Glee does deafness like it does wheelchairs...

Successfully baited by Glee (Hairography, #1.11, soon on Hulu.com).

Yeah, yeah, Glee is cute and lovable, but it's no paragon of diversity -- and god, do I wish they'd stop pretending to be. It only sets back the rights efforts. Give me moar Sue! And singing! And Sue! And absolutely nothing else -- please!

Every episode they get me hot and bothered about something -- this episode it was message #1, "look, deaf people are funny and when they don't realize they are deaf and aren't just as good as hearing people at interacting with hearing people, isn't it funny?", and then worse, message #2, "Deaf people can sing but only if they don't get to dance like the hearing kids do, and of course one of them needs to voice for their art to be legitimate, and look, when hearing kids join in, it all gets so much better! Oh, and look at how wonderful the Glee kids are for walking uninvited into the other school's song!" I can't analyze it from a Deaf perspective, but it struck me as perfectly following Glee's pattern of taking the stereotype wholeheartedly, and then just moving it down a level. Real Deaf singing is better.

At least Tina got a sop.

...okay, done lecturing the Glee-puppy.



Very close runners-up for baiting me today...

.... hearing 3 unedited minutes of an interview with someone I assumed to be running for (and losing) a state senatorship, talking about how it is legitimate for Israel to continue to take over new areas for settlements because their population is growing -- and finding out later that it was actually Sarah Palin. Not that it's really that surprising, I suppose, but woe. People would actually vote for someone who doesn't even (have the political acumen to?) mention that she realizes how unlikely it will be for Palestine and Israel to stop fighting if the settlement issue isn't even on the table?

.... and spending 20 minutes looking through the two 100% erotica shelves of lesbian fiction at my local Borders for Rubyfruit Jungle (on Wikipedia). The book I wanted was a tiny mass market paperback hidden (deliberately??) at the very back of the shelf, between two brightly-colored tomes. Gotta get through being sexualized before you can be actualized. Even in a bookstore. (Not that I don't appreciate that the erotica is out there and accessible -- just that it shouldn't be the only damn thing on those shelves.)