Getting Started Early

I was going to write about the presidential debate last night. But then I got to work this morning, checked Google Reader, and ran across a few things that I just can't stay quiet about. I'll write about the debate later. (Read this in the meantime.)

First, there was a single news story from the Politics section of Slashdot: apparently, some researchers think that how messy your bedroom and office are reflect your political leanings. Sound like bullshit? I think so, because I can think of some neat liberals, and I can think of some messy conservatives, and I bet you could too. On top of that, the scale between messy and neat is one-dimensional; political leanings are at least two dimensional (generally economics/state control and social issues are the two major dimensions). A few examples of the next questions that should come to mind: What about a libertarian? What about a social liberal/fiscal conservative? What about moderates? What about people that don't have any strong political leanings? What about people that start out conservative (say because their family is conservative, so they were raised that way), then "convert," so to speak, to liberalism (or vice versa) later in life? What about the political leanings of the rest of the world? Why, for god's sake, do we need to impress divisive binary upon perhaps the most perplexing, complex, and incredible natural machine yet discovered in the universe? So I was already grumbling to myself about this story when I reached the very end:

I, for one, support a woman's right to clean.

I really could have done without that, thanks. So clever; so edgy. I read through the comments a little, and I haven't found anyone point out the misogyny of this remark yet; all I've found so far are little fights between commenters about "You're using the OLD definition of Republican" or "I wish you people would know how to use liberalism correctly," or what have you. Only a couple of the questions I asked above were asked (like "I'm a moderate - where do I fit in?" and "I'm conservative, but I'm very messy - what gives?"). But there is this:

I, for one, support a man's right to tell women to leave his belongings alone.

Excellent! If it wasn't old before, it definitely is now. And that comment has a score of 5, with a label of "Funny." Funny, I didn't find it very funny.

So if that wasn't enough to frost my cookies, then there's this: Southampton, NY, on Long Island, apparently strip searches all women that are arrested for whatever reason. Literally, for whatever reason. It's policy. Strip search all arrested women. Men? No, you don't have to strip search all men, that'd be grody. So, if this weren't bad enough, here's this:

But then, it also has a policy of turning on a video camera whenever they strip search females, and broadcast the strip search throughout the police station.

Angry yet? I sure am. It's not even that they do it and would get in trouble if they were caught - it's policy. The institution that is there to protect you when you need it most will strip search you and broadcast the process to the rest of the officers in the station, making you not only feel safe, secure, and protected, but ashamed, embarrassed, violated, and abused - but don't worry, it's for your own safety and protection. I don't think I need to describe why this is wrong or bad. I think it's pretty clear. And that's why I can't figure out why the fuck it's policy.