Michelle Malkin now takes on the cause, and the rhetoric, of the misogynist anti-autonomy movement and its efforts to eliminate accessible reproductive healthcare.
Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of prenatal, contraceptive, and abortion care in the US. In a country in which over 85% of all counties have no abortion services provider at all, in which health insurance plans are not required to provide contraception, and in which government-provided health programs for the poor are prohibited from providing abortion or, at times, even information about abortion, Planned Parenthood is often the only reproductive health provider available in many communities, and usually the only one available at reduced cost.
This drives the anti-woman brigade screaming crazy. There has been an organized campaign against Planned Parenthood by the sex-negative right wing for years, using a combination of smear tactics, lies, distortions, and political lobbying. Attacks range across everything from Margaret Sanger’s racism (don’t believe what you hear from hypocritical liars), Planned Parenthood’s practices of murder, malpractice, and coverup (don’t believe what you hear from anti-woman liars), and the - in Malkin’s terms - “obscene profits” Planned Parenthood makes from the lucrative business of providing subsidized healthcare to uninsured patients in poor communities (don’t believe what you hear from financially illiterate liars). The reason, of course, is that Planned Parenthood is doing what they are dead set on wiping out: making reproductive autonomy real for the most vulnerable women in America.
June 4th, 2008
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Religion, Culture, Health, Privacy, Media, News & Current Events |
23 comments
California might not vote to enshrine discrimination into the state Constitution:
The Field Poll survey found 51 percent against approving a possible November ballot measure to prohibit gay marriage, with 43 percent in favor. A slightly differently worded question on the same issue found 54 percent opposed and 40 percent in favor.
In the long term, this appears to be a done deal, at least in California:
The poll found a strong generational gap on the issue, with those aged 18-29 approving of gay marriage by 68 percent and those 65 or older disapproving by 55 percent.
I have said this before, but my kids are going to look back on the anti-equality forces with the same mix of contempt, disgust, and confusion that I look back on people like Nixon and Bull Connor. There is no good reason to deny homosexuals equality in civil marriages. None. There are only vague notions that expanding the number of married people somehow weakens the institution of marriage (and if the illogic of the notion doesn’t turn you off the notion, the big fat lack of decline in marriage in Mass and Denmark and Canada should), tradition (as if an old bad idea is somehow made good my the passage of time) and religious based condemnations. A religious objection is a perfectly acceptable reason for a church to refuse to marry homosexuals but it is not and cannot be a reason for denying equality in civil rights to homosexuals. That way lies the politics of division, of religious bigotry, and of “my God can beat up your God”. Unless there is a very good reason to do otherwise, different classes of people shold be treated as equally as is humanly possible.
Fear of the future, hatred of people not like you, and your own personal religious preferences do not qualify as very good reasons. it is heartening to see that simple truth becoming more and more accepted.
May 28th, 2008
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Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy |
9 comments
Mike Huckabee is catching more-than-deserved flak for his history of Medieval remarks about gays, women, AIDS, and the usual range of winger obsessions. Today, his oppo research director - Lean Left protege Joe Carter, of Evangelical Outpost - tried to “clarify” Huckabee’s position on . . . (wait for it) . . . homosexuality and necrophilia. Because, when you’re Mike Huckabee, you need a position on homosexuality and necrophilia. And when you’re Joe Carter, you’re ready to provide one.
Wingery aside, Joe is a great blogger. But running a campaign for the Presidency is a whole different ballgame - and, as usual, Huckabee’s simply not warmed up. Joe and Huckabee are both discovering that the world outside their evangelical echo chamber is populated by people who expect you to have reasons for the things you say, and who tend to notice when you’re crazy. The results weren’t pretty.
December 18th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Media, News & Current Events |
5 comments
J.K. Rowling has a wonderful gift for pushing the religious wingnuts’ “insane gibber” button, seemingly without trying. Her Harry Potter series consistently ranks among the books most frequently targeted for banning by the winger legions, and now she’s got them in a sex panic over what must be the most sex-free coming-of-age stories on record. I like her more and more.
October 21st, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Media, Books, Evidence of Harm, News & Current Events |
21 comments
Verizon thinks it should control what political opinions you should be allowed to express:
Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.
The other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code.
If there are no Net Neutrality rules, then this is what will eventually happen to the internet. Opinions unpopular with the handful of people who set policy at the handful of companies that control access to the Internet will decide that you aren’t allowed to go places they do not approve of. And don;t blather on about the market, because as the world of cell phone contracts that tie you to one carrier and “end user agreements” that say you can only use your brand new phone on certain networks, the market cannot come close to solving this problem. Unless we want businesses to decide for us what the shape and range of our culture and our politics can be, we need common carrier, open access, and net neutrality provisions on every communications network.
UPDATE: Verizon has backed down.
September 27th, 2007
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Politics, Economics, Privacy |
12 comments
It looks as if Reid and Pelosi are going to allow telecom companies to protected for their illegal activities with regards to potential spying on Americans:
I just got off the phone with Caroline Fredrickson from the ACLU, and the news is about what you’d expect if you have witnessed Democratic House behavior over the past six months. The bottom line is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are disorganized and giving no signals to members on the FISA wiretapping expansion and retroactive immunity to telecom companies, which is going to result in horrific legislation. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller is once again inviting Mike McConnell into closed hearings on how to fix the FISA law, and the markup is next week. There are no drafts of legislation around, which is a bad sign. The Senate Judiciary Committee is hamstrung by Dianne Feinstein, who prevents a majority, and by the instincts of Democrat leaders who, in a conflicts between Judiciary and Intelligence, will go with Intelligence because of a perceived fear of national security weakness.
Rockefeller, in order to get something ‘bipartisan’ that can pass the Senate, is working with Kit Bond to draft something that can get to 60 votes. Bond of course is close to McConnell, and so it’s likely that the bill coming out of the Senate Judiciary is going to contain retroactive immunity for telecom companies (thank you lobbyist Jamie Gorelick) and a permanent fix to FISA that expands executive power. Reid and Pelosi, ironically, by ordering Democrats to move quickly so as to fix the problem they caused in July, are just accelerating the process of crafting this horrendous bill. This is complicated of course by the millions that telecom companies give to members on the Hill to prevent things like net neutrality from passing, though of course here too there’s no logic since much of that money goes to Republicans.
In the House, the Intelligence Committee is slightly better, but we have no drafts of legislation and it’s going to be marked up next week. Conyers on Judiciary, though opposed to FISA expansion, isn’t doing anything about this through his committee. The alternative to ‘fixing’ this legislation is to simply let the six month FISA extension of authority expire in February, and go back to the regime we had prior to August. There is literally no reason to do what the Democrats are about to do in the House and Senate.
Our national security elite is completely off the track. They have evolved, through a combination of McCarthyism, economic pressure from arms manufacturers, shallow press coverage, a romanticism of the effectiveness of violence in international affairs, and allergy to accountability into a group that has no respect for the law, for the notion that the people of the country have a right to decide the country’s direction, or any recognition that programs that take place in the dark inevitably lead to abuses. Their only answer to questions of national security is to increase the power of the security forces while decreasing the level of accountability. Anyone who suggests otherwise is branded as weak or un-serious. This has to change if the country has any hope of not devolving into a surveillance state.
And the only way to make those change is to elect better Democrats (I would say elect better democrats and Republicans, but all signs point to the authoritarian followers in this country being the base of the GOP) and to make sure that the current Democrats pay a high price for their failures here. Helping the ACLU become an NRA level political colossus would also help. Right now, the ACLU is practically the only organization that actually defends the Constitution and our personal liberty. If we are going to counter this mad rush to Biog Brother land, we are going to need a stronger Democratic party and a stronger ACLU.
September 26th, 2007
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Politics, Legal Issues, Privacy |
4 comments
Tgirsch alerts me:
This one’s all yours. Via Nashville Is [S]Talking.
The URL is for “Help My Baby Live”, whatever that is. I can’t get the page to load. After Googling around, I found a reference to a couple of low-lifes who are demanding $50,000 in contributions or they’ll have an abortion - I assume this is the reference in question.
What to say? First, it’s very likely a scam: either there isn’t a pregnancy or they have no intention of aborting anyway. If that were true, they could be liable for false solicitation.
If they really mean it . . . well . . . why does it matter? It’s only marginally more tasteless than Pat Robertson’s Oral Roberts’s prophecy that God would kill him if his sheep didn’t cough up $8 million in record time. The people who are going to object to this baby thing are the ones who didn’t object to Robertson’s bullshit, and as usual, there’s no reason to take them seriously.
As to whether it’s a good idea to do this kind of thing, it certainly seems . . . questionable. It seems at first glance incredibly crass to essentially sell your own decision whether to carry a pregnancy to term. And when your kid eventually finds out that you had made up your mind to have an abortion unless someone paid you not to, they may voice some objections. It also just seems greedy: pregnancy and raising a child are expensive, and that’s an issue for every prospective parent, but most people can get through it without needing $50K in cash up front. However, although this (Web begging) seems a strangely cold-blooded way to approach the problem, it’s really not very different from the decisions many people make all the time.
For many people, the decision whether to carry through an unplanned pregnancy may very well hinge on financial issues - and appropriately so. What this couple are really saying (if they’re on the level) is that they can’t afford to have a child now without some financial assistance, and that their decision whether to do so or not will depend on whether their financial situation improves quickly. That’s not only not objectionable, it’s perfectly reasonable. Putting it in the form of a de facto threat to have an abortion unless someone ponies up is rather crude, but it’s equivalent to simply saying “This is how much we need, and we can’t realistically take on this burden otherwise.” - which, again, is reasonable. (In fact, you could say that it would be a better world if a lot more couples had that conversation with themselves at the appropriate time.) As to why they need $50K, that’s their business. It may just be a scam, but if it’s not they may have serious financial problems others aren’t aware of - maybe they’re in debt, maybe they know the infant will have special care needs, or whatever. Nobody has to contribute if they don’t want to, but it doesn’t seem to me unreasonable for them to ask, or impossible that they could be sincere.
As for those who simply can’t keep from judging others, especially regarding pregnancy, consider that what they’re asking help in doing is exactly what the objectors would like to force them to do unilaterally - so giving the money is a way of moving them toward the result you want, and away from the other.
The best part about this, of course, is that the people who will feel an urgency about donating are the anti-choicers, who normally prefer to simply take away people’s right to make such decisions for themselves but in this case can only pay to support the decision they hope will be made. So much of that $50K will come from people who would otherwise use it to make choices like this impossible - which is all to the good. (In fact, I’m tempted to suggest that every pro-choice woman who is ambivalent about pregnancy for financial reasons should threaten to abort unless they receive $50K in donations exclusively from people who can prove they have previously donated to an anti-choice organization. Draining the Ameritaliban and putting their money to good use for once would truly turn your bun in the oven into a little bundle of joy.) So-called “crisis pregnancy centers” run by anti-choice outfits are notorious for the meager or non-existent aid they actually provide to pregnant women, and the complete lack of support they offer after birth. Forcing them to provide aid that will really make a difference both during and after pregnancy, and refusing to allow them to dictate how it will be used, or to impose some sort of religious requirement, is a very effective way of seeing just how much money they’re willing to put where their mouths are (in fact, if this demand turns out to be a strategy expressly motivated by that consideration, I’d call it brilliant!).
So, in the end, although this situation seems somewhat cold-blooded, it’s not much different from the kinds of very practical decisions people are forced to make about pregnancy and child-rearing every day. It seems as if these potential parents could be more tactful (though again I’ve only seen others’ vituperative responses to them, so I may be judging unfairly), but I don’t know that they’re doing anything wrong. I hope this doesn’t presage a heartlessly monetary view of their relationship with their eventual child, but even there they would be well within the mainstream of lousy parenting. And finally, if this ends up taking $50K out of the whack-job anti-choice community, that would be some very sweet icing on an otherwise ordinary cake.
June 28th, 2007
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General, Politics, I do too have a life, Religion, Culture, Health, Privacy |
4 comments
[NB: This began as a comment on Kevin’s post, below. But my point is somewhat different, and the comment got too long, so I moved it up here. - KTK]
Attacks on Romney for being Mormon are out of line and should be condemned.
Why, exactly, is this, anyway?
If attacking someone for “being an X” (where “X” is “member of some certain religion”) is understood simply to mean saying that they hold certain beliefs (characteristic of X) and those beliefs should be condemned, why would it possibly not be legitimate to attack them in that way? What else could we judge a person on - especially in the political arena - but their beliefs and how they act on them? We certainly have no hesitation in making such attacks for all beliefs other than religious ones - but are somehow pulled up short as soon as those beliefs are called “religious”.
The strangest thing is that we have allowed the least-defensible beliefs to be elevated to the level of the most-off-limits to criticism - while simultaneously allowing holders of those beliefs to cite them, without being called on to defend them, as reasons for their adopting policies that are themselves indefensible.
Homophobia is a character flaw. Religious homophobia is not only a point of pride for many, but instantly becomes acceptable and off-limits to criticism as soon as the adjective is added to the insanity. That the embryo or early fetus has precisely the same moral interests as a full-grown, mentally competent adult is an absurd proposition on its face. Assert it as religious belief, and it sudenly becomes not merely worthy of respect, but irrefutable!
In any other context, we would demand reasons and explanations for what people do, and would subject the beliefs that guide their actions to the test of rationality and conformity to civilized values. Yet we have allowed ourselves to be prohibited from doing so any time the subject merely asserts that those beliefs are religious (or, “matters of faith”, as if that were somehow more exalted than sectarian dogma).
For no conceivable reason, we have condemned huge swaths of public policy, political discourse, and private life to the exclusive hegemony of (aggressive, politically-motivated) non-rational sectarian activism, grounded on nothing more than self-justifying fervency - and we reinforce this suicide pact by the constant reminder to those who might be inclined to display any degree of logical rigor in that direction, that “we must not criticize people’s religion”. I suggest, instead, we should grant religion the respect of being taken seriously enough that we expect it to make sense, demand that it not offend against the rights and values of other members of the community, and reject it when it fails these tests.
There are reasons to be cautious about attacks on religious beliefs, of course. The history of religious persecution, and the religious wars still ongoing, point up the dangers of religious prejudice or religious animosity, as opposed to criticism of religion. But those dangers are precisely those of prejudice, persecution, and war of conquest - things we know are unacceptable for reasons having nothing to do with religion. We have rightly repudiated our history of religious prejudice, but in embracing tolerance have given religious believers carte blanche for their own prejudice and irrationality - to the point that, today, the religious right declares that it is victimized by not being allowed to persecute gays (among many, many other ordinary facts of civilized life)!
One might reasonably argue that religion, properly understood, belongs on the “private” side of the public/private distinction and is thus immune to criticism. This argument is an important one, and I would like to see it better appreciated. I would be glad to accept such a consensus. But that would also mean that religion could not be cited as justification for public policy, or even for support of policies congenial to one’s religion that were not supportable on other grounds. (The fact that you like Mozart does not justify you in demanding special privileges for Mozartians. The fact that you like Jesus does not justify you in demanding special privileges for Jesusians, still less reduced privileges for others.) If religious believers were willing to see their own religion as JFK did, as a personal matter which he would not allow to interfere with his political duties, they would have a claim to be entitled to practice their beliefs without criticism - but there would also be no reason for that criticism. It is because religious believers refuse to treat their own beliefs about religion - or anyone else’s - as private that they are subject to criticism for the content of those beliefs which they bring into the public sphere.
There is, finally, the “don’t rouse the bastids” argument - that holding people accountable for the content of their religious beliefs simply provokes them, often into violence, and that it’s better just to let things ride. I think recent history has taught us the emptiness of that forlorn hope.
So, I think I’m tired of constantly being told we can’t say anything about the reasons other people cite for distorting public policy and blunting the lives and freedoms of others. I want to hear rational reasons, grounded in fact, for laws and policies, and I want to see a firm consensus that any laws or policies not so grounded are invalid on their face. I want it said, and universally acknowledged, that most of the policies promoted by the religious right - from “abstinence only” to lack of birth control to mandated false information about abortion to phonics-only language instruction (how did that become a religious issue, anyway?) to embryo fetishism to creationism - are grounded on no rational analysis and no provable facts, and have been abject failures in practice; I want the obvious implication of that fact acted on and these idiotic policies vacated unless and until they can be defended on rational grounds in comparison with what we already know is true and does work. I want every Republican candidate to be required to cite explicit reasons, grounded in fact and logic, for their support (if it is such) of creationism, lack of choice on abortion, anti-environmentalism, airwaves censorship, and whatever other absurdities they’ve been pushing, and I want every one of them blackballed from the primaries if they can’t do so, plausibly, without notes, on the first try. I want Romney to explain exactly how his Mormonism influenced his (various) votes on abortion, stem cell research, and access to birth control, and, if his answer is anything other than “it’s totally irrelevant”, why exactly we should take seriously as a presidential candidate someone whose policy decisions are grounded in such absolute, sidesplittingly ludicrous inanity as the Book of Mormon. I want all the other Republican candidates (and Hillary, and maybe Obama and Edwards) to answer the same question about their policy decisions, on the same grounds. Then I want them all to answer the question “How will your religion influence your policy decisions in the future?”, and, if their answers are anything but “it’s totally irrelevant”, I want a big trapdoor to open under them and dump them in a pit for the duration of the campaign. Mostly, I want the things religious people say and expect others to believe to be subject to test, in the same way any other statement by any rational person is so.
Until now, that has clearly been too much to ask, because we have allowed ourselves to be bamboozled into accepting absurdity as wisdom, falsehood as truth, and faith as reason. But is it too much to expect from now on?
June 25th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Education, News & Current Events |
one comment
The He-Man Woman Haters’ Club members were falling over themselves to display their anti-gay credentials Sunday night. Now, entering the third US presidential term of the 21st Century, only 70% of the GOP presidential candidates are creationists, but a solid 100% of them are homophobes, and fiercely proud of it. Which leads me to speculate on the bizarre fact that conservatism is not yet dead, despite being continuously moribund from birth.
Liberalism has actually been a tremendous boon to conservatives. While liberals do the heavy lifting, conservatives carp and obstruct and play their childish towel-snapping games, then unapologetically move into the new house that liberals have built and claim it as their own. Within the same generation, the conservatives who had been murdering people to block the 1964 Civil Rights Act were loudly proclaiming the “colorblind society” (mostly as a barrier to efforts to roll back entrenched racial privilege, but still). The ones who sneered at and mocked “women’s lib” now trumpet the (almost entirely illusory) “liberation” of women in Afghanistan and Iraq. They get to treat themselves to an orgy of open racism on immigration policy, every 10 years or so, knowing full well that the Democrats will give the GOP’s business backers what they want while the GOP claims credit for it. On issue after issue, they get to have it both ways: aggressively protecting the worst elements of society until the tide turns so far they can’t keep up the charade any longer, then simply declaring that the liberal policies they themselves opposed are really conservative policies that they support; on issues they can’t or don’t dare block, they put up a show of opposition to entertain their base, in the knowledge that reasonable people will work out a solution without them and then they can go along.
The gays-in-military issue is more of the same: it’s obvious that policy has to stop - not even the military wants it any more, and the direct, material impact it has had on Bush’s Endless War is obvious and measurable. But the people whose war is threatened by the lack of skilled staff caused by their own policy cannot bring themselves to change their own minds. (John Maynard Keynes once responded to the criticism that he had changed his position on some issue by saying “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” We know what conservatives do: keep repeating the same old nonsense while the water rises around them.) The GOP is letting the Democrats force them to change the anti-gay policy, and when it happens, they’ll be glad to have gotten off the hook and within a couple-three years they’ll be saying they were for it all along.
The reason they get away with this is that they are never held accountable for their positions. In that respect, gay marriage and the segregated military could be policies that, for once, eventually come back to haunt them: they fought so hard for those forms of discrimination, and went so far out on the highest limb of the crazy tree (”Man on dog action!”), that maybe, in a few years when those absurdities are done away with and the world fails to explode, somebody will remember. But maybe not. Gays are certainly less socially accepted than blacks were, even at the height of Jim Crow, and conservatives haven’t paid a price for their opposition to racial integration and civil rights. Unless we finally insist that we know they mean what they say about gays, women, immigrants, and all the rest, and refuse to allow them to sweep it under the rug when history leaves them behind again, on those issues as on so many others, and refuse to allow them to claim credit for progress that others made and they opposed while it was happening, they’ll continue to float on the current of history, never doing any work and always given a free ride into a future they fear but are happy to profit from.
June 6th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events, Immigration, Race |
13 comments
Lucianne Goldberg’s idiot kid secures his place as dumbest denizen of The Corner with today’s defense of Jerry Falwell humiliating himself by attacking Teletubby Tinky Winky as gay. His defense is to argue that Tinky Winky really is gay.
Can I just make one small point that has always bothered me? Last night during NBC’s coverage of Falwell’s life they recycled the whole Falwell-thinks-Tinky-Winky-is-gay thing. . . .
Nonetheless, the coverage at the time made it seem like Falwell watched the Teletubbies a few times, laid eyes on Tinky Winky and said “Holy Brokeback Candy Mountain! That one is a friend of Dorothy!” . . .
The problem with all of this was that Falwell didn’t get the idea from watching the show, he got the idea from gay people. Tinky-Winky was a campy icon of gay clubbers in London and New York long before Falwell even knew who Mr.(?) Winky was. At least according to sources such as the Washington Post.
I didn’t know that the WaPo’s been reporting on this issue, and if so then they’re fruitier than Falwell. I’m also not aware that Tinky Winky was hot on the club circuit (but shit, if Kenny Kenny’s still partying, why not the Teletubbys?). I could be wrong on both counts, though; I seem to have tanked my gay cred. But by any standard, this is a spectacular failure of an attempt to make Falwell look sane (not that it could be anything else).
First, the official Falwell defense is that the Gaytubby Crisis story actually appeared in one of his newsletters, not from Falwell himself, and he had nothing to do with it. Goldberg helpfully steps up and hangs the adorable, tiny purple albatross right back around his neck. But worse than this, Goldberg can’t seem to keep a single thought in his head for two successive paragraphs. He confuses “is liked by gays” with “is gay” immediately after citing the definitive counterexample.
The wingnut knock on Tinky Winky is that the non-existent, sexless, fictional cartoon character was, in fact, gay. (Goldberg, ironically, even gets the pop-cult phrase right: a “friend of Dorothy” is a homosexual. He must have found it in the Washington Post.) It’s obvious: Tinky Winky is purple and has a stalk with a three-sided loop on his head as an antenna. Because pink triangles were used by Nazis to demarcate gays in death camps (the symbol has been reclaimed by the modern gay-rights movement), and Tinky Winky is purple, er, has a linearish triangular, well, holds a bag that’s like a purse carried by women but is gender-inappropriate for Tinky Winky who has no visible gender . . . well, that thing is just gay, or would be if it existed which it doesn’t and had sex which it can’t or expressed a sexual preference which it didn’t, OK? But even in his attempt to defend this incomprehensible nonsense, Goldberg can’t keep his story . . . um, straight (sorry). His “evidence” is not that gays recognize Tinky Winky as gay, but that Tinky Winky was an “icon” in gay nightclubs.
By direct inspection, saying something is an “icon” for gays isn’t the same as saying that thing is itself gay. Leaving aside the basic-English-skills thing, though, even Jonah Goldberg should be able to puzzle this out because he had explicitly cited the quintessential non-gay gay icon just three sentences previously. “Friend of Dorothy” is a reference to Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, played to a Fal-thee-well by Judy Garland. Garland was a goddess to generations of gay men and still is, but was not herself gay (just ask her five husbands). Similar such icons include Liza Minelli (for obvious reasons), Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Steve Reeves (for the Rocky Horror crowd) . . . oh, hell, here’s a list of them (some gay, some not).
Goldberg, like Falwell, assumes that anything displaying the trappings of gay culture, even inadvertently, is a portent of hot gay action. (This, by the way, is the sort of thing that underlies the common assumption that many or most homophobes are really self-hating gays.) He pointedly avoids saying whether he agrees that that is a bad thing, but you also get the impression that the issue is more than just “one small point that has bothered [him] a little bit”. But Goldberg is too blind and too dumb to see even what he sees, let alone understand the words that come out of his own mouth. He references a straight woman as a telltale of homosexuality, then claims a genderless cartoon figure is also gay on the same evidence. It’s hard to tell the stupidity from the sheer looniness of it all, but, as is so common, our little Jonah has proven himself a world-class wanker.
And for your continuing Jonah-Goldberg-admiring pleasure . . .
The liberal media loves — loves! — casting evangelicals as sexually hung up prudes. It should not detract from the basic unfairness of this bias to also concede that some evangelical leaders have supplied their enemies with ample ammo in this regard.
Um . . . actually, Jonah, the existence of “ample ammo” does prove that the stereotype is not unfair. It’s that little “sufficiency of evidence” thing that you’re having so much trouble with, again. Please, for the love of God, find a job that doesn’t require cognitive skills.
UPDATE: Big U, in comments (below), notes that oh-so-gay gossip columnist Michael Musto had made the same claim (that Tinky Winky is gay, not merely a joke among gays) before Falwell did, which makes Falwell’s (or whoever’s) claim at least not unprecedented, even if still ridiculous. I don’t give that much credence as evidence of sentiment in any part of the gay community not actually named Michael Musto, but it’s a data point. That doesn’t touch the gist of my remarks above; Goldberg’s argument is still incompetent even if his basic point can (sort of) be defended.
May 16th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events |
17 comments
The Roberts Court has held that Congress can prevent a neccesary medical procedure from taking place — that the right to privacy does not mean you have a right to have a doctor decided to use a necessary medical practice:
The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The opponents of the act ‘’have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,'’ Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
This is how the anti-Choicers want to kill Roe. They will simply outlaw procedure after procedure until the right to an abortion is meaningless because it is illegal to perform almost any kind of abortion. And, to just to add icing to the cake, you no longer have the right to have your medical decisions decided by a doctor. Congress can now outlaw a procedure not because it is a fraud or because it has been proven to be harmful or because it hasn’t been properly tested but simply because they don’t like it. Congress now has control of one of the most intimate aspects of your life.
Welcome to the world of small government “freedom” that Conservatives want to bring to you. A lawyer in every bedroom; a Congressman in every doctor’s office.
April 18th, 2007
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Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Health, Privacy |
43 comments
As some here may know, I teach part-time in one of the great public university systems in the US. Lately I’ve been teaching in their adult night-school program - a BA-granting program aimed at the needs of full-time working adults who didn’t have a chance to go to college when they were younger. The enrollment is majority female and, this being a working-class New York City population, non-white by a huge majority. Being older, the students bring a lot more life experience and practical wisdom to the class with them, so I expect more savvy from them than from clueless 18-year-olds. But that’s not to say they can’t surprise you.
March 23rd, 2007
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, School, Culture, Libertarian Problem Solving, Privacy, Education, Race |
33 comments
Oh, man! If this isn’t a smash hit in the BDSM community, I’m sure it soon will be.
Micro remote dog trainer with pocket-sized handheld transmitter
300-yard range; 9 stimulation levels; tone-only training option
Backlit LCD digital display; collar fits neck sizes 8 to 24 inches
Electro-shock “dog” (yeah, right) collar with remote-control transmitter - you push a button to deliver a warning tone or 9 levels of voltage, adjustable for intensity or duration. When you say “Heel!”, they’ll heel!
March 20th, 2007
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General, Religion, Culture, Privacy, Doggie Bloggin', Humor, Torture |
2 comments
I’m really starting to enjoy the GOP campaign infighting. I’ve been hoping it would turn out this way, and so far they’re not disappointing.
They’re in a bind, see: all their main candidates run afoul of one of the GOP’s designated hate targets (Giuliani’s pro-choice and fails to hate gays; McCain’s not crazy enough; Romney’s crazy enough but it’s the wrong kind of crazy). They’re constitutionally required to hate all of them, but the second tier - Brownback and Huckabee - are superwhacko to the point even the Republicans know they’re unelectable. But, in true GOP fashion, nobody will bend enough to get behind any one candidate, and every time one of them gets a little ahead, somebody works overtime to claw them back down. It’s delicious.
My big fear is that either one of them will blow up (McCain, if anyone) and the race will tip decisively (for Giuliani, if that happens), or some unexpected eruption of rationality will take hold and make one of them acceptable again (Romney, in this scenario). So far, though, no need to worry - they’re all nicely staying the course and the infighting is getting worse and worse.
March 8th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events |
20 comments
Big Brother slams his iron fist down on yet another innocent victim:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An Iraqi national wearing wires and concealing a magnet inside his rectum triggered a security scare at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday but officials said he posed no apparent threat.
The man, identified by law enforcement officials as Fadhel al-Maliki, 35, set off an alarm during passenger screening at the airport early on Tuesday morning.
A police bomb squad was called to examine what was deemed a suspicious item found during a body cavity search of the man. Local media reports said a magnet was found in his rectum.
“He was secreting these items in a body cavity and that was a great concern because there were also some electric wires associated with that body cavity,” Larry Fetters, security director for the Transportation Security Administration at the airport, told reporters.
Oh, come on! Who hasn’t had “wires associated with that body cavity”?
And what’s so suspicous about having a magnet up your ass?
I’ll bet Rick Santorum was behind this.
(Actually, more seriously, this is kind of worrying:
The flight left without Maliki but with his luggage aboard. It made an unscheduled landing in Las Vegas, where the plane was thoroughly searched but nothing was found, officials said.
If they thought he was a risk, why did they leave his luggage on the plane? Seems like that could be a dodge to get himself taken off the plane but leave a bomb aboard. Not a very clever dodge - he’d obviously be caught and convicted - but it could be a possible scheme by somebody who flunked out of suicide bomber school. I don’t know - it just seems like nothing the TSA does ever makes sense.)
UPDATE: Well, this clears it up. Boing Boing has more details:
Al-Maliki told investigators the objects have therapeutic properties, and that he had forgotten to remove them before reaching the security checkpoint. They were described as a magnet wrapped with a piece of gum in a napkin and then coiled with wire; and some kind of round, polished stone.
See?! He just forgot to remove them. That could happen to anyone!
March 7th, 2007
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General, Privacy, Terrorism, Humor, News & Current Events |
10 comments
Richard Cohen has a gracious, and long-overdue, response to the recent and continual sexist slanders of Monica Lewinsky:
In the various books I’ve read about the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal — a scandal because of what was done and a scandal because the president was impeached for it — the same story is told over and over again. When the prosecutors or lawyers or whoever finally got to meet the storied Monica Lewinsky, they were floored by her. She was smart, personable and — as the record makes clear — dignified. This is more than can be said about some of the people who write about her.
I will not name names. But in recent days, Lewinsky has been back in the news. In December she graduated with a master’s degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics. Her thesis was titled “In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity.” Her thesis might well have been called “In Search of the Impartial Journalist,” because she was immediately the subject of more poke-in-the-ribs stories about you know what. The Post, a better paper than it was that day, called her “dumb-but-smart.” . . .
[Lewinsky] is a victim of publicity, and her life has been a trial — enough to floor almost anyone. But in Lewinsky’s case, she took a bad situation and made something good of it. That hardly makes her “dumb-but-smart,” but rather once young — and now older and incomparably wiser. . . .
Fortunately for me — and probably this applies to you as well — my outrageous deeds are known to only a few . . . . In Lewinsky’s case, her youthful indiscretion has been forgotten by no one. On the contrary, it’s recorded for the ages, in House and Senate proceedings, in the files of the creepy special prosecutor, in the databases of newspapers, in presidential histories and the musty joke files of second-rate comics. . . .
It would be nice, too, and fair, also, if Lewinsky were treated by the media as it would treat a man. What’s astounding is the level of sexism applied to her, as if the wave of the women’s movement broke over a new generation of journalists and not a drop fell on any of them. Where, pray tell, is the man who is remembered just for sex? Where is the guy who is the constant joke for something he did in his sexually wanton youth? . . .
This is the year 2007, brand new and full of promise. It would be nice if my colleagues in the media would resolve to treat Monica Lewinsky as a lady, to think of her as they would themselves, to remember their own youth and the things they did and to understand that from this day forward anyone who takes a cheap shot at Lewinsky has a moral and professional obligation to look in the mirror.
A few other things could be said about the way the press obediently echoed the GOP’s leering slanders at the time: that she was “taken advantage of” (she was an adult woman who, reasonably enough, was attracted to an attractive, intelligent person who happened to be the most powerful man on earth); that she was a “bimbo” (she was a woman who liked sex); that she was his “sex toy” (she was naive about their future together, but he also encouraged her to be; at any rate, she knew what the situation was from the beginning and chose to enter it). They couldn’t even get her age right (constantly describing her as a “21-year-old intern” - she was 22 and a full-time employee when they began their affair, and older than that by the time Ken Starr finally accumulated enough stroke material to satisfy himself). As Cohen points out, nobody could simply see her for what she was - partly because of their blind eagerness to find something to brand Clinton with other than their real anxiety (he had sex), and partly because of their reflexive sexism that automatically sees any woman who has sex as both a slut and a victim. And the press simply lapped it up and passed it on.
To be sure, she was a bit immature and more than a bit naive - which is what being young is for. But she was never stupid and never a victim - or at least, not until the FBI, Ken Starr, and the press got hold of her. The scandal of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and the press’s coverage of the events leading to it, arose from the mindlessly destructive politics of the Republican party, but it was made possible by the sexism of the superfical bluenose morality that colors our public life, and that of the press that refused to countenance a sexually active woman with equanimity or honesty. As we slowly begin to roll back the methods and abuses of the GOP, we are long overdue to address the latter issues as well. Kudos to Cohen for a welcome beginning.
January 3rd, 2007
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General, Politics, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events |
2 comments
Mitt Romney:
I don’t think there’s any conflict between feeling that all people deserve respect and tolerance and that discrimination is wrong and a belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Kathryn Jean Lopez of The Corner:
Romney would do us all a service if he could get us to a point where a statement like that . . . does not make news because it is a given. To take us to a place where those who support protecting traditional marriage are not easily and routinely dismissed in polite society as homophobic would be a great milestone for civil society.
I dunno. I don’t really think there is a place where being a homophobe doesn’t make you homophobic. Instead, maybe Mitt Romney can take us to a place where he doesn’t discriminate against homosexuals. Maybe he could send Kathryn Jean Lopez a postcard from that place.
It would do us all a service.
December 19th, 2006
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events |
33 comments
Martin Luther King, Jr., on laws discriminating against his daughter:
[W]hen you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; . . . when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
- MLK, Jr., while in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, for trying to gain equal protection of the laws for his children and all others
The Vice President of the United States on laws discriminating against his daughter:
With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. … People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.
The question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that’s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage.
At this point, say, my own preference is as I’ve stated, but the president makes policy for the administration. He’s made it clear that he does, in fact, support a constitutional amendment on this issue.
- Vice President Dick Cheney, selling out his principles, his own daughter, and everyone like her to win an election
In a few years, Cheney’s newest granddaughter will start to become aware that there is a difference between her family and the families whom her grandfather thinks should have the protection of the laws. She will become aware that one of her mothers has legal rights and privileges - to sign her school permission slips, to take her to the doctor, and so on - that the other does not, and that the other kids in her school don’t have such problems. She may begin to wonder what would happen to her if she had a problem and that mother was not available. She may begin to wonder what it means for her to grow up in a world that tells her - often to her face - that one of her parents isn’t “real”. What clouds will form in her little mental sky? Will Dick notice or care? Will Mary regret what she did to keep him and his like in power?
Dick Cheney, George Bush, and the rest of the spineless perverts who daily sell out their nation’s citizens to pander to the worst of their own followers are simply not man enough to lead this country. They have an example before them of what real leadership is, and what civil rights mean - they just aren’t decent enough to follow it.
December 8th, 2006
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events |
9 comments
I haven’t gotten all agitated about the Mary Cheney pregnancy bit, but I do think it exemplifies the utter soullessness of Republicanism - that both Dick and Mary Cheney held high positions in a party explicitly devoted to destroying Mary’s life and did nothing to stand against such policies; that Republicans were willing to grant an absolution to Dick’s daughter that they would never have countenanced for anyone like her who wasn’t part of their in-crowd; that they now are tearing themselves apart both to condemn her and to overlook, for the sake of party unity, what drives them insane in anyone else.
December 8th, 2006
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Religion, Culture, Privacy, News & Current Events |
4 comments
This weekend, I’ll be going down to New Orleans to visit a friend who lives there. It will be my first trip down there post-Katrina. One of the things my friend suggested we do is take a quick drive through some of the hardest-hit areas, so I can see it first-hand, understand it on a better level, get a better feel for the scale of the tragedy, and see just what has and has not been done in the fifteen months since.
My question for the peanut gallery is, at what point does this cross the line from education and understanding into exploitation and voyeurism? What’s appropriate and what’s not? Feel free to comment with your thoughts.
November 15th, 2006
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Privacy, Education, Travel, Katrina |
5 comments
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