Bravo to the "government shutdown pickup lines" Twitter trend, making fun of everyone and everything, from the president and Congress to Obamacare and parliamentary procedure. Our favorite pickup line: "Hey boy, the only non-essential thing about you are those pants."
Boo to Fox News for its continuing terrible coverage of Hispanic Heritage Month. The network kicked off the month with a segment about how undocumented immigrants receive welfare benefits for their U.S.-born children, accompanying it with a graphic referring to "children of the corn." The network didn't stop there, going on to ask a reporter of Nicaraguan descent if she'd grown up on tacos. The month doesn't end until Oct. 15, so we should have plenty more embarrassing and culturally insensitive gaffes.
Bravo to President Barack Obama for his on-the-record comments to The Associated Press in support of changing the name of the Washington Redskins: "If I were the owner of the team and I knew that the name of my team, even if they've had a storied history, that was offending a sizable group of people, I'd think about changing it," he said. The president joins a number of sports reporters who refuse to use the name of the organization, along with civil rights and Native American groups who oppose the use of the epithet as a team name.
Boo to the persistent attention paid to Miley Cyrus and her spat with Sinéad O'Connor. It began when O'Connor wrote Cyrus an open letter telling her to put clothes on and decrying the music industry. Cyrus retaliated with tweets pointing out O'Connor's past mental health issues, comparing her to Amanda Bynes. The back and forth between the two has yet to end, and O'Connor has since written a third open letter and threatened legal action.
Bravo to "Breaking Bad" fans who paid $166 dollars to run an obituary for Walter White in the Albuquerque Journal. Fans of the show probably consider Walt their favorite chemistry teacher, so honoring him with an obit is only fitting.
Boo to online science journals for publishing bad or unverified research in exchange for fee. A sting carried out by the journal Science showed that many online journals were willing to publish unverified research in exchange for a credit card number. Reading scientific research is difficult enough without having to decide if what we are reading is actually legitimate.
Bravo to the residents of the West Bank village of Bil’in who decided to plant flowers in hundreds of Israeli gas canisters as a symbol of peaceful protest against the separation barrier. The villagers, who protest every Friday, spent years collecting the canisters.
Boo to Arizona for being the only state thus far to withhold checks from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program after the federal government shutdown. Arizona receives federal funding to finance the program. According the The Arizona Republic, "More than $75 million of the state’s TANF funds supports foster care and other CPS-related services" — meaning that foster children and low-income families are among those being directly affected.
Bravo to an anonymous Saudi woman for not only breaking Saudi law and driving a car herself on Oct. 6, but allowing the event to be videotaped and live-tweeted for the betterment of women's rights in the country. This event comes before a planned day of protest on Oct. 26 to fight the country's ban on female drivers.
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