The tale of Dominique Strauss-Kahn gets worse and worse. In mid-October the story broke that a dozen people, including hotel management, police officials, business executives and underworld figures, were placed under investigation for running a prostitution ring out of the Carlton Hotel in Lille. According to the testimony of at least one woman, France’s leading sex addict was a customer, both in Paris and Washington, right up to his final stay at the Sofitel. One police official has been taken into custody and questioned about a trip to Washington in which prostituted women were trafficked to the US for DSK.

The distinctive feature of this episode–besides the wide scope and the involvement of police–is that it has come to light afterthe Socialist primary. The chilling realization has crept over his erstwhile supporters that had he not been knocked out of the race by his arrest in New York there is an excellent chance he would have won the nomination and then brought this shit storm down upon himself and the entire party. They plead ignorance and are livid with him for endangering their careers and the election. Even his staunchest allies have dropped him like a ton of bricks and are saying on the record that they never want to hear of the guy again.

Nafissatou Diallo single-handedly saved the French Socialist party. That same party would not be saved by its own officials, who willfully overlooked what it knew of its leading prospect’s increasingly vile behaviour out of fear and misogyny. Le Monde report that Socialists are saying, “We should raise a statue to Nafissatou Diallo.”

So I am hanging up this way rad poster the T.O.E. sent me in the bathroom, while Kid is washing out a trash can that got rank in the bathtub. The poster is a French Feminist poster of a line drawing on the monds pubis and in French it reads (I think) “The Place of Pleasure”.

Me: Is it going to totally mortify you if I hang up this poster in the bathroom?

Kid: No

Me: It’s a drawing of naughty bits- that’s not going to embarrass you?

Kid: (makes familiar teenage groan of annoyance) You raised me. Do you really think that I would be mortified by that?

Me: True. I raised you. But you are at that age where the mere existence of parents is embarrassing and you live in the house too. You get to have a say in what goes in it.

Kid: That’s a good philosophy. I like that everyone who lives in a place gets a say in it.

Me: You know, there are people who think kids should not be allowed to have opinions at all. That whole “Children should be seen and not heard” shit.

And that is how it rolls in Casa de Elizabitchez. Also T.O.E should explain the significance of the poster because it’s rad.

Yeah, I am out of pithy titles. Wevs. Enjoy the fruits of my reading.

It’s different for brown kids.

It’s still different for brown kids

It’s different for WOC too

Well it’s different for anyone of color, really

But ain’t it always a woman’s fault?

But at least we can all agree, Goldman Sachs is the unwashed taint of the financial sector.

And everyone’s favorite new blog crush explains how Establishment Fauxgressives are trying to frame the Occupy movement as capitalism’s savior.

What else should I be reading?

Once upon a time people hit shuffle on their MP3 players on Fridays and posted the first 10 songs to pop up.

I lost all, well most, of my digital music in the last few years. So instead I am starting a new tradition. Post the last 3 songs to play on Pandora or whatever music thing you got. On Saturday. Cause we’re rebels like that.

when you need to sneeze, but you can’t. Or you’re this close to orgasm but you just can’t.

I’ve got a big swirly post making its way through my head and it’s not ready yet. And I can’t seem to write anything else while this takes over my brain cells.

So in the meantime, enjoy the fabulous writing of T.O.E. and/or head over to the Elizabitchez tumblr where I reblog funny pictures and critique the bad or outdated geography of the 90’s Animaniacs’ Nations of the World song.

Michel Petrucciani:

• He: “Great jazz!”
• She: “Fucking sociopath.”

Ides of March:

• He:  “I learned you can lose an election and make a million dollars year consulting on K street.”
• She: ” I learned you can rape a woman and drive her to suicide and you can just get another one and no man will ever be held to account.”

Michel Petrucciani, afflicted with a rare bone disease, was one of jazz’ leading pianists until his death at 36. The documentary film of his life portrays clearly how he used and tossed a series of women. Avoid.

The Ides of March is political junky George Clooney’s self-indulgent TV-caliber fllm about dirty deeds in a presidential campaign. Virulently misogynistic. Avoid.

Happily, “Chicken with Plums” (Poulet au prunes), the new Marjan Satrapi movie, is coming out. And if “Where do we go now?” (Et maintenant, on va où? ) is playing anywhere near you then move heaven and earth to see it. It’s moving, hilarious and has the most satisfying scene of a woman straightening men’s shit out ever consigned to film.

then you’re gonna have to acknowledge some super shitty truths.

Capitalism is a system built on unpaid labor, the unpaid labor done by women in caring for children and home and family, the unpaid (or might as well be unpaid) labor of non-whites both in building our country in the past and making the products we use in the present. Capitalism is a system that cannot exist without ever broadening definitions for what kind of work is of little monetary value, because the wages must go down for profits to go up. The only difference between now and before is that people who expected to be valued (middle class, white, male, educated, etc) are finding that they aren’t.

There was a French writer, who I can’t remember and who I actually haven’t read, being that his work hasn’t been translated, but who I had summed up by the amazing Ruthzilla that wrote that the reason the nuclear family was so important to capitalism is that you needed the back up workforce of women who could take over the tasks left by men who went to feed the war machine. That’s probably less true now that (white, middle-class and better) women are in the work force (non-white, non-middle class women have always worked). But no one could go out to their box-of-labor-pain* if there was no one to have the babies, raise the babies, educate the babies, cook the dinners, shop for groceries, clean the house, do the laundry, care for the old and the sick relatives, etc. Etc. And it is no fucking mistake that when we have to outsource these jobs for pay, that pay is never a living wage. Capitalism can barely be assed to value something that it thinks should be “personal responsibility” and cost nothing.

But these are the core things that a person, a family, and most importantly, a society needs in order to continue. There isn’t actually a society at all if there aren’t children being born. Ask the Spartans, who killed themselves off in wars faster than they could make new soldiers. These are the things that must be done before a profit is even made. These are the things that would still be done if every business on the planet was wiped out tomorrow. These are the things that are usually done by women, and if for pay they are usually done by women of color at the expense of their own families.

So if your revolution doesn’t take that into account, if you want to change the system but you don’t seriously take sexism, racism, ableism, etc into consideration and do the long hard work from the bottom up, then you’re revolution isn’t really going to fix anything for long.

Occupy Sacramento in chaos because dudely types decide NOT to announce a fucking sexual assault at the damn protest.

Look, I keep thinking I am done writing about the new, stupid, sexist shit that could possibly be going on at the Occupy protests. But no.

It’s not fucking revolutionary to dismiss sexual assault, practice sexism, ignore women etc. It’s the same old same old same old. (It required an extra same old, it’s that fucking old).

H/t to Jack Crow. And the reason why we ladies keep y’all around is because we are your mothers and daughters and girlfriends and wives. There is no escaping a world with men in it. How can I hate all men when I am raising one? Or in love with one? But there’s a whole fucking mess of them that I wouldn’t cry if they fell off a cliff (cough-Julian-Assange-cough-President-Strong-Supporter-of-Women-cough-Harry-Reid-cough-etc-cough).

Kasabian- Underdog