Dolezal resigns, tells Today Show “I identify as black,” embarrasses sons

By Dan Brooks in Intersectionality 0 Comment
Rachel Dolezal as a teenager, at Bellhaven University, and during her suit against Howard

Rachel Dolezal as a teenager, at Bellhaven University, and during her suit against Howard

I think my favorite new internet micro-genre is pictures of Rachel Dolezal looking white. There are a lot of them, and I’m sorry we could not include knee-length dreadlocks by a tree in the composite above. Someday this story will end, but yesterday it continued on its natural course: Dolezal resigned from her position at the NAACP. That predictable turn came with the less predictable news that in 2002, she sued Howard University for discriminating against her because she was white. That must have been the old Rachel Dolezal, because the contemporary one told the Today Show she identifies as black. Video after the jump.

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Friday links! Serve the humans edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
What's that? Do I hear pussy talk?

What’s that? Do I hear pussy talk?

Well, it happened: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius resigned before I could record the rap lyric I serve humans like Kathleen Sebelius, / reading Jack Handy and Marcus Aurelius. She also resigned before I could design and construct the machine that would allow me to join the Beastie Boys in a time when that rhyme scheme was appropriate, but that’s the thing about building a time machine. You can finish it whenever.  Today is Friday, and we’ll bestow our gifts on the people when we damn well please. Won’t you do a basically adequate job of serving humanity with me?

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Internet hoax has Joel Osteen renouncing Christianity

By Dan Brooks in Hoaxes 0 Comment
"And give up all this? Come on."

“And give up all this? Come on.”

This morning, the daemon Facebook brought me the news that Texas megachurch pastor Joel Osteen had resigned his position and renounced Christianity. The article also warned that people would try to tell me it was all a hoax. My suspicions were piqued by an interview in which Osteen uses pretty much the same diction and syntax as the interviewer, and they were confirmed by this ABC News report. ABC News is fairly reliable, even if they did say the hoax had him “telling his many followers he was denouncing [sic] the Christian faith.” Also, the problem of an unknown source that offers fantastic information while warning that people will try to tell you it’s a hoax should be familiar to anyone who has read the Bible.

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