We’ve come a long way, baby
A columnist reminds us that even if women pretend they can do manly jobs like astronautin’, deep down they’re still just silly bimbos.
So I guess we should just quit with the pretense and surrender to our bimbo natures, right?
The Republicans who put together this poster seem to think so; what matters about a woman isn’t her wit or her wisdom but her prongability:
Funny thing is, when a woman does spend her life concentrating on her looks and behaving like a bimbo, people laugh at her and ridicule her and even make jokes about her death. She dies tragically at a young age and people laugh. Stupid dead stripper, they say. Ho-ho. ‘Cause really, who gives a shit about some bimbo?
47 Responses to “We’ve come a long way, baby”
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Flash says:
What unsubtly sexist politics you have in the US. Trying not to sound smug, but don’t think we’ve got that bad here (in the UK) yet, though “Blair’s Babes” were a bit of a let-down.
February 9th, 2007 at 6:07 am EST -
therealUK says:
Oh, it’s bad here, just not quite so slick yet.
It’s one of the reasons that I take an interest in American politics/culture – a lot of the crap ends up over here. The shift to the right, money buying goverment favours, increasing tolerance of fundamental religious influence, increasingly blatent misogyny, normalisation of pornstitution, endless dumbed-down cack on TV for the masses, performance indicators, two-tier health, privatisation, ever falling respect for education or intellect, spin, lies, soundbites, smear campaigns, lack of principles, vested interest controlled media, and so on.
And it could well get a lot worse.
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simply wondered says:
hmmm flash – i don’t think we can pat ourselves on the back just yet; we are not the land of milk honey and the unquestioned right for women to make decisions on their own bodies. therealuk paints a picture i recognise of errr the real uk and let’s add downgrading the importance of murder of women because they are ‘just prostitutes’, factory farming and its inevitable consequences, justice available in direct proportion to being of ‘the right’ sex/race/income blah blah blah.
of course we can see through the crude technique presented by dr socks above but i wouldn’t vote for a party with female ahderents who don’t kinda look right – there is a limit, you know and some of them appear to be old, god help us.
and michelle malkin :- yowsa – satan wrapped a tasty package around that addled brain and dark, dark soul. my recurring dream (as there seems to be a tendency to blog about them right now) is being a cathar having my toes held to the fire by michelle and dawn eden dressed in just the skimpy robes of an obscure offshoot of the dominicans. rack me you saucy fundiehounds! i burn… owoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! -
simply wondered says:
and i think andrea dworkin might nave been a bit fucked off about being used posthumously as a poster girl for the democraps.
i’m no expert, but i seem to remember she was about a little more than that. -
ehj2 says:
This ad actually works better for liberals, the fact that right-wingers developed it is perfect irony.
As you pointed out … The Republicans who put together this poster seem to think … what matters about a woman isn’t her wit or her wisdom but her prongability.
Exactly. Anyone who believes in substance over appearance will wonder, even if only at the edge of consciousness, why the shallow and attractive and wacky are vociferous Republicans, and the thoughtful, substantive, and human are Democrats.
There’s a part of us that is drawn to being with the attractive people. But at the end of the day we learn we need to be with the substantive people.
So this is an ad for teenagers. An attempt to draw them into the criminal, incompetent, and corporatist GOP Party early. And we need to keep repeating that about them, in the same way they keep repeating (in every possible venue) we are ugly America-hating traitors.
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Paul Tergeist says:
More BS. If you track down the poster, you never get back to a Repugnican source. Try it. Andrea Dworkin was never a Demoncrat (British, wasn’t she?), so the whole thing is a hoax.
Anna Nicole…her life was very sad as far as I can tell, but her death was tragic.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Paul,
Something like this isn’t going to have fingerprints on it. It will only work if it appears to have arisen spontaneously from the collective and is merely disseminated widely and rapidly as a kind of right-wing joke.
The lack of obvious fingerprints is your clue to its source, retired law enforcement person.
Recall the efforts of the original Swift-Boat attacks (and massive funding for same) to appear invisible and untraceable to the criminal, incompetent, and corporatist GOP Party.
You might be familiar with the aphorism — if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be … a hoax.
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Sam says:
Anna Nicole Smith is another sex worker (stripper, porn model, and don’t get me started on the prostituted marriage) dead long before her rightful time, and she was at the tippy top of the wealth and fame game.
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ehj2 says:
I’m going to go off topic for a moment and stir additional thinking about the larger problem addressed by this post — information warfare.
The military, the largest part of our government, is extremely right wing, and directly managed by the Commander in Chief, our President. The President has authority and the capability to spawn secret (unreported) activities in any country in the world, on virtually a whim.
We are currently running an aggressive information warfare activity in various parts of the Middle East, with the goal of populating other information media with pro-American and pro-war rhetoric from apparently unbiased and non-American sources.
The blowback (a term that means unintended consequences), is that our own media (also GOP- and corporatist-owned) picks up on these manufactured news streams and repeats them here in the U.S. as if they were indeed from unbiased and non-American sources and — who would have guessed — uses them to bolster argument for right-wing foreign policy objectives and strategies; objectives and strategies that are, coincidentally, aligned with the desires of the industrial/corporatist-military collusion.
While this hasn’t worked out too well to date, chiefly because there simply isn’t any good news to be fabricated in the Middle East that would seem credible, the capability is new and will be refined (unless checked) until it does in fact work as designed. Since the intelligence agencies also belong to the Commander in Chief, they will not only not provide a check on this power, they will provide cover and endorsement for manufactured information.
It’s getting harder and harder to ensure separation of powers and authenticity in the American political process.
And it’s getting harder and harder to ensure credibility and reliability in any information stream.
I suspect it is impossible to have information warfare that can’t be used to influence the political process. And if it can be used that way, history teaches us that it will be used that way.
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Infidel says:
ehj2 is dead on. Thanks Violet and others for an enlightening alternative and possible method for being sensitive to globally generated propoganda. There are still vestiges of power declaring for instance that the Pentagon fabricated intel to suite prior plans made and bolster decided policy- that’s in retrospect, we need leaders that won’t do that in the first place- that can get over the delay and impotance real Democracy demands.
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Infidel says:
It is impotent(important) to spell correctly so impotance becomes impotence, no?? There is a tense of import- the import tense, or the frame of mind, or in the case of say.. a computer, where its given state is one ready to import- that is the import tense, not to be confused with the elf or “imp” that comes from a tent in Ireland the imp o’tents. And real democracy demands that a guy like me be heard.
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will says:
One of my favorite things about the internet is that you judge people based on what they write, not how they look.
Of course, I would not come to this website if I wasnt convinced that VS was a size 2 with huge breasts and small hips and a beautiful face.
I am still sickened by the practice of temporary marriages in Iraq. A woman’s value is defined by her girl parts. So sad.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Infidel,
I won’t deny I sometimes have to read you several times to sort through your layers of meaning. But I do the work. You’re very interesting, sometimes the way a dream is subtle and complex but profoundly important. Like a dream, you sometimes use a symbol or a word that is meaningful both ways, or you leave out a word which invites us to consider what has been left out of the larger frame and conversation. I accept the mystery as integral to your message, and see that it attempts to overcome the weakness of language itself, to say only what is said, and to leave out everything (however valuable) that is not.
You are heard.
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simply wondered says:
fidel is….
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Violet says:
I was astounded by Anna Nicole Smith’s death. I still am.
It was just five months ago that her 20-year-old son died in her hospital room after she’d just given birth to a daughter — an incredibly bizarre and tragic incident itself. And now, only five months later, the woman drops dead herself?
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Victoria says:
WHOA. I just now noticed that the pic of Streisand has her in deliberately nose-accentuating (and probably quite Photoshopped) profile.
And she’s the ONLY woman shown that way. I don’t know if she’s also “coincidentally” the only Jewish woman in the poster besides Dworkin (clarifications, anyone?), but it wouldn’t surprise me if this were so.
Re: Dworkin – she damn sure wasn’t a Democrat. But neither was she British; she was, rather, an expatriate in various senses of the word. While she lived most of the time in New York, she had more luck with the less-censorship-inclined UK press, so there you go.
Sam & Violet: I appreciate your words re: Anna Nicole Smith. My bit on the subject is here.
Finally (and WAY off topic): Everybody should watch my favorite metal band on Conan tonight. (Yes, I am a nut; thank you Violet for putting up with me.)
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Violet says:
of course we can see through the crude technique presented by dr socks above
Speaking of which: the most interesting thing to me about the poster is that Republicans seem to like it and feel proud of it. Yet it should be obvious to any sentient person that the comparison is completely rigged — whoever made the poster obviously chose posed, flattering portraits of the prettiest and youngest Republican women, including actresses who aren’t stateswomen or politicians at all but just happen to vote Republican. And for Democrats, they chose unposed, unflattering, candid photos of only older women, several of whom don’t happen to be particularly pretty anyway.
One could easily make a reverse of this poster, choosing posed, flattering shots of lovely Democratic women and unposed, unflattering shots of Republican women.
In other words, the poster is so obviously rigged that it doesn’t even prove the idiotic point that it’s supposed to prove.
Yet Republicans appear to be completely taken in.
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simply wondered says:
well surely the very fact of voting for the bastards means you can’t be that bright…
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Apostate says:
In other words, the poster is so obviously rigged that it doesn’t even prove the idiotic point that it’s supposed to prove.
Yet Republicans appear to be completely taken in.
Simple — even simplistic – logic always seems to appeal to tribal instincts. The Republicans are ‘taken in’ because they want to be taken in – it’s simple and it flatters them and it gives the appearance of obviousness, even if it’s rigged.
Women’s appearance is attacked because it is still very important in this society for women to be physically attractive. Women are still, to some extent “property” – so “owning” beautiful women proves you are superior. “Our” women are better than yours.
So Amanda (of Pandagon) is attacked for her looks. Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton are disparaged. And women in an anti-abortion rally are compared with those in the pro-choice camp, of course predictably reaching the conclusion that those against women’s rights are prettier so being pro-choice must make you ugly.
Or the other way around. I don’t know how the right wing thinks cause and effect are supposed to operate here.
Notice though that this trick is only pulled by right wingers who hate women. And the highest ranking Republican woman in government — who is famous for the many unflattering shots of her — is excluded from the Republican roundup — Condi Rice.
But whatever – nobody really pays attention to this juvenile crap.
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Violet says:
But whatever – nobody really pays attention to this juvenile crap.
I think you’re right that people don’t pay attention, but on a subliminal level Republicans take this stuff in and it reinforces their worldview.
This poster isn’t an isolated incident; remember Ann Coulter’s commentary on the Democratic National Convention? And the mailings my wingnut father gets from various conservative organizations seem to invariably feature the ugliest possible images of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, etc., etc.
And beyond wingnuttery this stuff also feeds into the national consciousness in terms of feminism. I’ve been hearing that feminists were ugly all my life, which is bizarre since I’m of the generation in which we all proudly called ourselves feminists right through our hot sex-goddess dating years. But the stereotype doesn’t die, because the right-wing keeps flogging it relentlessly.
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Apostate says:
True, true. You’re absolutely right, Violet. And I’ve noticed this time and again myself – for instance, pictures from that anti-abortion rally that I mentioned.
But caricaturing the enemy isn’t such an unusual tactic in the propaganda wars; and certainly, how right wingers often choose to do it through women is a reflection of the strong anti-feminist meme in our society. I recognize these forces are strong, but I also have a degree of faith in the positive forces whose seeds have already been sown: Simply put, those who have freedom and respect right now are not going to let it slip away *that* easily, even if they seem to discount their own rights sometimes.
Women will overcome – we’ve come too far. I have faith in the strength of our truth. Whatever these propaganda tactics reveal, they obscure the huge reality of women in important jobs at all levels, regardless of their looks. What surprises me is not how much people focus on women’s looks, but how often they DON’T focus; think about it: in twenty years, it matters more in the workplace what’s in a woman’s head than anything else. That’s huge.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Ehj2 IS dead on. Since the measure of a person’s intelligence is how closely they agree with you, he’s a genius. I love bathing in the golden glow of Violet’s brilliance too, but I daren’t compliment her. You know how she gets.
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Paul Tergeist says:
“Dear Paul,
Something like this isn’t going to have fingerprints on it. It will only work if it appears to have arisen spontaneously from the collective and is merely disseminated widely and rapidly as a kind of right-wing joke.”
-ehj2Why do you insist on being contrary, you French git? I know something of swift-boating and I know how not to get caught at it. But this picture is pretty obviously a joke, innit? Ask Fidel.
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Violet says:
And the highest ranking Republican woman in government — who is famous for the many unflattering shots of her — is excluded from the Republican roundup — Condi Rice.
I really wonder if that’s because she’s black. Or at least partially because of that.
It seems to me that the kind of people who love this poster are the same kind of people who would respond positively to a white-supremacist site I saw once that featured a picture of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model as an illustration of the superior “beauty of white women” — as opposed, of course, to the alleged ugliness of African and Asian and Middle Eastern women.
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Amanda Marcotte says:
There are many, many issues involved in these kind of attacks. But the thing that amuses me the most is how the person making them isn’t even trying to make sense. He knows he’s contrasting pictures chosen for how good they are versus pictures chosen for how bad they are. If he got a picture of Bo Derek with bed head straining on the toilet, is she magically a Democrat in that moment?
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Jeff says:
Based on the fact that the Republicans seem to have gone out of their way to appear appealing, and the Democrats are all depicted in various states of emotional ezxpressions, I say, sure, let’s f**k the Republicans (they all look like they want it anyway), but elect the Democrats who seem to be involved in at least some form of dialogue.
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love2all says:
I KNOW I’ve posted this guy’s site before and I read it all the time (it’s like a car wreck, you know) But I have to post his most recent. OMG.. I just want to SMACK the shit out of him. It’s scary that he’s real. Get this, he puts a GPS in his wife’s purse:
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Infidel says:
as per #23:
It is juxtaposition. -
simply wondered says:
love2all – i have no idea why your link is relevant but he’s truly an amazing chap; this was the guy that paster e. pistle kicked out of landover baptist for religious extremism, right?
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Violet says:
Actually that guy is hilarious. If you posted the link here before, love2all, I missed it. I added him to the blogroll. Thanks!
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ehj2 says:
Regarding the GPS tracker in your “loved-one’s” purse.
You know, my dog is always lying to me about where she’s going. She (a border collie with an IQ uncomfortably higher than my own) will say she’s just going out to roll for awhile in this hill of lavender, but when she comes back I don’t think it was the lavender she rolled around in.
p.s. don’t worry. she doesn’t really run around unattended. she pretty much hangs out with me to provide adult supervision and make sure i get enough exercise.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Allrighty then….I suppose there are more compact real-time GPS trackers than this, but they probably aren’t any less expensive. http://www.brickhousesecurity......cator.html
In addition to this you need a cell phone account with unlimited minutes so the thing can report it’s position up to six times a minute and you also need to keep the batteries fresh. It won’t work anywhere a cell phone won’t but it will store 120 locations and report them when it finds a cell signal. So this guy trusts his wife but spends that kind of dosh tracking her every move? I doubt it. And I don’t know what kind of woman would put up with that shit.
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Paul Tergeist says:
what matters about a woman isn’t her wit or her wisdom but her prongability:
-VSYes, if it weren’t for that there would be a bounty on every one of you. But I digress. If you think Babs Bush is ‘prongable, or Michelle Malkin or Ann Adam’s apple) Coulter or any of those women pictured, you are deluded. BRRRRRRRR!
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Paul Tergeist says:
“I’ll use myself as an example. I don’t keep a penny and I’m always on the lookout for new credit cards and personal loans. I don’t have any money set aside for the girls college education or my own retirement. I declare bankruptcy every 8 years like clockwork. Many people might look at my financial situation as a mess, and by traditional measurements I suppose that it is. However, if you look at what I’m spending my money on I think you’ll see that there’s a method to the madness, and that method is quite ingenious.
You see, every payday I invest more money in my research efforts. New equipment, travel, books, plastic bags to store stuff in, etc. It all adds up. But I know that when I finally am able to produce a sasquatch or sasquatch body, investors will be lining up to finance my museum. At that point I’ll be able to leverage my personal finance by requiring any investor interested in my museum to also ensure my personal financial stability. At that point my dreams will be realized and my financial future, as well as my place in history, will be secured.”
-http://fixd.comYup, he IS funny! :-)
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anna says:
Can we please stop with the “Ann is a man, haw haw haw.” Seriously, it’s insulting to transsexuals.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Seriously, it’s insulting to transsexuals.
-annaYes, I see your point. Sorry to sw and all of our other all of our trans-gendered members. :-)
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ehj2 says:
To Paul [#35],
How can you poke fun at SW?
My mom is certain SW is actually John Cleese, and that somewhere in one of his numerous castles, he’s ravishing Jamie Lee Curtis in a scandalous bodice with spectacular decolletage.
I’m sorry I can’t parse that any better; that’s simply the way my mom says it. So I really don’t know if it’s John Cleese wearing the scandalous bodice with spectacular decolletage, or the charming and seductive and irresistable Jamie Lee Curtis.
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Paul Tergeist says:
How can you poke fun at SW?
-FrenchieUmmm….because he’s prongable? (I never heard that context for ‘prong’ before, so I will be over-using it until a new word catches my fancy.)
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simply wondered says:
tergeist – back to work, you flattering dog, you; blogs don’t dust themselves you know.
and while transgendered is interesting, i think you’ll find your hearing is going and i transcend gender. -
Paul Tergeist says:
i think you’ll find your hearing is going.
-swSPEAK, I SAY, SPEAK UP, BOY! I CAIN’T HEAR YOU WHEN YOU WHISPER LIKE THAT! WHISPER, THAT IS!
-Foghorn Tergeist -
love2all says:
The fixd.com guy… yeah.. he’s one to read for amusement. At first I thought he was the real neo-con deal, then I though.. no, he’s fake. Real. No, fake. I don’t know anymore. Could be a Colbert-type but he’s far too… ridiculous!
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anita says:
Now that is disturbing.
Why is it that bad photographs of powerful democratic women are used to make the republican party look good?
It is as though female republicans are trying to say that it is about the beauty of a party member than their intellegence.
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Mandos says:
It is as though female republicans are trying to say that it is about the beauty of a party member than their intellegence.
I think the implicit idea is actually somewhat fundamental to the psyche of American conservatives: that exterior beauty in women reflects interior virtue, and that internal ugliness in women is physically externalized.
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Mandos says:
Come to think of it, it’s a very disney idea.
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Mandos says:
Oh, and I think that Teresa Kerry’s expression, at the very least, is definitely not a minus. It looks like she was in the middle of having fun.
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Pooty Poot says:
I’ve come in a bit late on this – my dad sent this particular nasty republican crap to me by mistake – he probably gets a lot of sexist porn stuff but manages to be selective in what he chooses to forward to me – I think his inner-perv has been brought out via the internet – how unusual – I don’t really speak to him not – he stupidly always just “forwards” a lot of the crap he sends me, which means that there are strings and reams of previous recipients emails included – I noted one of the names that had sent it to him, replied in no uncertain terms as to the gender-politics that underpin this sort of woman-hating crap, and it sparked off an abusive torrent of pornographic emails from one guy in particular, saying “hey guys, I’ve scored – I’ve found a feminist etc” … I have no doubt that if he could have physically beat me up, he would have done, probably with a bit of rape thrown in for good measure just to make sure I knew who was boss…… which just goes to prove my point anyway – cant’ beat a woman up in real life?? do it with porn via the internet – rape her in cyberspace – what a man!- what fun and shows her who’s really in control. That’s the basis of what porn and all this image-fascism which reinforces porn (or is it the other way round?) is really about.
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ehj2 says:
Mandos [#43],
I think the implicit idea is actually somewhat fundamental to the psyche of American conservatives: that exterior beauty in women reflects interior virtue, and that internal ugliness in women is physically externalized.
Absolutely. I should have written this myself. The motif is concretized in the myth of Job (Old Testament) and includes the following elements of Republican (pseudo-fundamentalist) psychology:
External wealth represents the rewards that God bestows for living a righteous life, even if that wealth is pretty much stolen (God allowed the theft and must have intended for you to have it). Once that wealth is used to say, run a pseudo-ministry, that wealth is pretty much immune: efforts to show it was stolen are characterized as efforts of Satin to tear down the leaders of God’s chosen work.
And external power represents God’s choice as to whom shall exercise the rights of Ceasar (“Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s, and unto God that which is God’s”). The Republicans justify their absolutist support of a monarchical President by the notion that God wants them to follow their (God’s chosen) leaders.
Democracy is actually antithetical to this worldview, because in the Christian myth, the other party is led by Christ’s fallen brother, Satan. Democrats, the less religious party, are thus (in this dualism) linked to Manichean darkness and evil.
