Things to Read

1. Of copyright, the Net, apologies, and trust.  (bfp at flip flopping joy.)
   

   sing my songs because you smile fondly when you remember how out of tune I was when I sang. Sing my songs because you know me, and can’t wait to see me again. sing my songs because we both learned them working to flip the same burgers. Because my kid busted your car window. because i helped you coax your dog off the street and back home. Because you were there. And i wrote a song for you to say thanks.

2. Why Judith Butler turned down an award.  (Posted at flip flopping joy; original here.  Statement by SUSPECT.)
   

   This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols.

3. On the bully culture and the media's complicity.  (A. McCarthy at Echidne of the Snakes.)
   

   Media that promotes the opposite of equality and treating people and the world decently should be opposed, it’s not the equal of media that promotes good, it appeals to the worst in us, the most selfish in us. It’s selfishness is seductive and gives it power that media promoting unselfishness will not have. It should be opposed.