The pope has been freaking out American conservatives. He keeps saying things that annoy right-wingers.
In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.
“The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.
“The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said.
Look at that: acknowledging the reality of climate change, and promoting socialism. Rick Santorum, a Catholic, has now caused my brain to explode in response.
The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists.
You think?
OK, Rick, you’ve got it. Listen to the scientists.
97% of climate scientists agree that global climate warming is going on, and that it is caused by human activities.
At least 99% of biologists accept evolution.
We done now?
Wait, so all this time Santorum has been thinking that the scientific position is that global warming is a hoax?
This has got to be a new level of cluelessness.
Where is the quote about smart people not being in their side from?
NYC atheist, #2
Washington Post article
Yes, well, when he talks about “scientists” and “science”, he means the ones that say what Rick Santorum* wants to hear.
Another wonderful bit of almost doublespeak from the Santorum response:
Yes, je completely supports the Pope talking about helping poor people. After all, talking about helping poor people is what popes are for and he really sympathises with Mr. Francis for having to say those things. Now actually doing something to help the poor on the other hand…
*(btw one of the nastiest names in existence – you did what with your tongue?)
Santorum: One of the perfect examples of creationist stupidity.
@=8)-DX
Can we please be grown-ups here and not sustain and promulgate that stupid, juvenile type of harassment? It’s a rather slymepit standard of behaviour.
@3 Saad
Thank you
@Ibis3, These verbal jackboots were made for walking #6
Well I thought “poopyhead” was fine, what’s wrong with santorum? It’s not as if it was specifically gendered or bigotted. Also: “Can we please be grown-ups here” on pharyngula comments? You find it stupid and juvenile, others find it cleverly appropriate. I was a bit off with “nasty” though. Not really nasty, rather kinky.
Does having a Master’s degree in chemistry qualify one as a “scientist”? If so, someone might want to have a word with Rick.
#8 Well, it insults the other folks who are named Santorum. I mean, they already have to share a name with Rick Santorum, give them a break.
Turns out that Pope Francis has a Master’s degree in Chemistry. Thus he is a scientist.
Deniers will often claim that thousands of scientists have signed a petition insisting that climate change is not man made. But anyone with a Bachelors degree can sign that petition thus math graduates and accountants can claim to be scientists according to them. Thus making the Pope MORE than qualified on this issue.
@ =8)-DX
Well I thought “poopyhead” was fine, what’s wrong with santorum?
You know very well that “poopyhead” is used here as an inside joke. It’s not a universal campaign of harassment. Equating the two is disingenuous.
There are other types of harassment other than those rooted in bigotry.
Making fun of someone’s name is juvenile bullying and trying to make someone’s name into a scatological term that’s supposed to come up whenever it’s googled is harassment. Not to mention the splash damage for all those nice people–including kids–out there who happen to share the surname. That’s neither clever nor appropriate.
Yes and yes, respectively.
Tongue???
Good point.
Ibis, I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree. Santorum himself has done far more to tarnish the name than anything Dan Savage has done. The redefining of his name was done specifically in response to the horrible, ignorant and hateful bullshit he spews on a daily basis. If I were a Santorum, I’d want to change my name because of the shit Rick does, not because of what Savage has done.
How many of the 3% of climate scientists who do not accept AGW are directly funded by the fossil fuel industries?
I’m not sure if that’s just another exercise in hypocrisy by the GOP. His statement could be expanded into “leave science to the scienticians, and leave politics to the politicians”. That way at least his position is ideologically consistent, they’re the last ones to see policy guided by science and reason.
Artor, #14
Saying Santorum is a gross name (and trying to popularize it) isn’t just mocking Rick Santorum, it’s offensive to other people named Santorum. Rick Santorum isn’t bad because his last name is Santorum. That’s what this whole thing is mocking: his last name. Is it okay to say Cain, Palin, Paul, Carson, etc are nasty names too?
Ibis3, is this the link you were alluding to?
http://spreadingsantorum.com/
If this is too OT let me know.
@Saad
This is a good point and not one I had thought of. I like the general idea of creating a personal political insult for a nauseating candidate, but not at the expense of other people.
Out of curiosity would you see the “Streisand effect” the same way? Or is there a balance somewhere?
Maybe Rick buys this argument:
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/claim-that-97-of-scientists-support-climate-alarm-cannot-be-supported
And the rebuttal?
re @17:
I think it has become an insult to say someone has ‘Palin’ized an answer to a question. And Reagan, and W, and yadayadayada… Names of awful people do get turn into insults by association. and manufactured awfuls get attempted to be turned into insults: i.e. Clinton.
maybe that’s just me, turning those names into insults…
slithey tove (#21) and Brony (#19)
I think those are completely different.
The concept “to Palin an answer” does not reflect on the name Palin. It reflects on the actions of a famous person named Palin. We’re not saying the name Palin is an awful name. Likewise, the notion of the Streisand effect says nothing about the name Streisand. It’s simply the way people coined a term to describe a phenomenon based on something that a famous person did. It says nothing negative about the name Streisand.
Savage’s thing about Santorum, on the other hand, is nothing more than saying the name Santorum means something disgusting. There’s no other point to it than that.
I am, however, perfectly fine if someone were to coin the term “Santorum defense”: when you say something racist loud and clear on camera and then later say that you actually just made a noise that sounded like “black people” and didn’t really say “black people.”
This thread gave me mixed feelings about santorum. I was resistant to the points Saad and Ibis have made, but considering the origin of the Santorum Campaign, I am open to the possibility that it is problematic.
What I don’t accept:
That making fun of someone’s name, or associating it with an insult of some kind, is inherently out of bounds.
That splash damage with others with the same name is a serious issue here. (This does make the problematic elements more problematic though).
That the Santorum Campaign counts as harassment of Rick Santorum. (I would consider it harassment if Santorum were just an average person instead of a person with political power).
But, that said:
The Santorum Campaign is not a direct critique of Santorum. It is not associating Santorum to something terrible or stupid he has said or done. It is an attempt to punish him for homophobia by deliberately associating his name with a “frothy mix” that references anal sex. It is meant to troll or offend him, as Saad says at 22. And Saad’s example of a “Santorum Defense” would be far less problematic.
I think the key issue with santorum has nothing to do with Santorum and his feelings on the subject. It has to do with the fact that, in response to Santorum’s homophobia, Dan Savage and Crew decide to fire back with a vulgar term that continues to feed into the narrative of how gross and sex-obsessed Teh Gays are. The response is entirely to try to gross out and disgust Santorum and those like him, but all it does affirm the right-wing perception that gay people are just entirely about the icky butt sex. Continue to ignore the existence of lesbians, ignore the fact that straight people have anal sex, ignore the fact that homosexuality isn’t just about sex, ignore the fact that anal sex isn’t the only kind of sex that gay men have, and ignore the fact that gay people are PEOPLE. No, just hone right on in the Frothy Mix, so the right-wingers can throw a fit about how gross and disgusting the gays and libruls are, and the enlightened trolls can have a good chuckle and not bother thinking about the fact that they essentially just contributed to the continued erasure and dehumanization of the gay community.
The santorum term can either be one of two things. It can be content-less gross out humor meant to simply be disgusting and gross-out Santorum and have no message or no connection to Santorum’s actual policies. Or it is all of that with a message and a connection to Santorum’s beliefs and policies, meaning that it is specifically about homophobia, and thus part of the defiant message in question is an acceptance of the premise that homosexuality is a synonym for anal sex. It does not make sense any other way. And either way, the term’s existence just can’t be well justified.
@Artor #14
I’m sure that sentiment would prove great comfort to some kid on a playground being teased because their last name has been made a scatological term as “punishment” for something someone else has done.
@Brony #19
Mostly no. “Streisand” was not turned into an insult per se. There’s no splash damage to other Steisands. And there’s no linking of “Streisand” with something inherently disgusting. There are other problems with the Streisand effect in that the original incident was about trying to silence a woman attempting to protect her privacy, but that’s not really relevant to this discussion.
@slithey tove
That was a mess. Let me try that again.
@Artor #14
I’m sure that sentiment would prove great comfort to some kid on a playground being teased because their last name has been made a scatological term as “punishment” for something someone else has done.
@Brony #19
Mostly no. “Streisand” was not turned into an insult per se. There’s no splash damage to other Steisands. And there’s no linking of “Streisand” with something inherently disgusting. There are other problems with the Streisand effect in that the original incident was about trying to silence a woman attempting to protect her privacy, but that’s not really relevant to this discussion.
@slithey tove
Not really in the ballpark as someone deliberately calling for contributions to find the most appropriately disgusting thing to link a person’s name to and then spending a decade google bombing so it comes up in internet searches of that person’s name.
@anteprepro
I submit that making fun of someone’s name is bullying behaviour and ought to be out of bounds. It’s like making fun of someone’s appearance etc. Associating a name with something someone’s done, and characterising that as bad, I don’t have a problem with.
The whole point of this campaign was to make people feel disgust when they heard the word. I’m sure that would be an everyday experience for everyone with this name. How pleasant to know that in the bank, at the doctor’s office, when making restaurant reservations that the first thing everyone thinks is “eww. gross.”
He’s asked Google to do something about the search results and they’ve said they can’t do anything to help him. In this specific instance, he’s as helpless as an average person.
Ibis3:
Associating a name with something they have done to turn the name into an insult is essentially the same thing as making fun of their name as far as I can see. Perhaps it is better because you are not making fun of their name for the sake of making fun of their name? I could still see it being bullying though.
I see your point.
I talk about power not because I imagine some people have the ability to prevent search results or anything. It is because, I may be mistaken, but I am imagining that harassment is comparable in some ways to racism or bigotry in general. It isn’t enough to just say that you are prejudiced against that group, the difference in power between your group and the group you are prejudiced against matters. It takes more angry letters to harass a politician than it does to harass a random 16 year old high school student. It takes more crude online commentary to harass a celebrity than it does to harass a random single mother of two who uploaded six or seven youtube videos. It takes more serious trolling to harass a straight white heterosexual economically well-off Christian male than it does to harass someone without those privileges.
Am I off base in thinking this? Or is it irrelevant, because you think the Santorum Campaign is large enough scale to be considered harassment of Santorum, even considering the fact that he is privileged and powerful? Because I am entirely sympathetic to that argument, I think you would have a solid point if you thought so.
David Marjanović @ 13:
There was a second campaign (I don’t remember if it was run by Savage or not) to make “Rick” mean something as well. I don’t remember exactly what it was (and don’t care enough to go find out), but given the similarity to “Lick”, it was made to mean something like running your tongue over your teeth or licking the roof of your mouth or something along those lines. Then “Rick Santorum” would mean doing that with the frothy mixture.
Yeah, not exactly mature.
@anteprepro #26
Because it’s not about picking out something about someone that they are usually born with, that is a pain in the ass to change, and that often forms a major element of their identity (it’s often tied up with gender identity, familial identity, ethnicity, nationality, and close personal relationships) and ridiculing them using it. It’s about saying that so-and-so did something awful, let’s make sure that people don’t forget that this person, who happens to be named such-and-such, did this awful thing. I don’t know if I can explain the distinction better than that. I’ve been trying to come up with an analogy, but I can’t think of one right now.
Yeah, that’s my position on this one. He’s privileged and powerful, but he’s no match for the Internet. And every person who perpetuates that definition as though it’s clever instead of just trolling and assholish is a party to it.
Santorum said:
[emphasis added]
He’s saying, “Don’t listen to the Pope about anything but religion (even when he’s correct about science, he know’s nuthin but theology)”
Rick, climate change is NOT a “theory”, in either use of the word, i.e it’s not a WAG, nor is it a way to explain other scientific discoveries. CC is a RESULT of our actions affecting the environment. Rather than scolding the Pope for pontificating outside his job, and expressing support for his activities therein; express, and actively support, the scientists who are trying to counteract the pollutants, and polluters, that cause climate change. Your talk radio words aren’t helping.
Meh, why did you make me go read that? McKitrick’s argument mostly boils down to complaining that the wording of the question was too vague to allow room for those weasely people who try to deny anthropogenic global warming without actually denying it. This is largely bullshit. The wording of the question was sufficiently clear to me, and your typical climate “skeptic” would almost certainly answer ‘no’. And even if we modified the wording to make it more to his liking, how much do you think it would lower the ‘yes’ response? Down to 90%? Maybe 85%? At what point will McKitrick finally admit that he’s on the wrong side of expert opinion? It’s not like we even need a survey to tell us this.
The argument that the quantity of papers published reflects the opinions of a select, self-reinforcing elite rather than the rank-and-file is more interesting, but also tendentious. Aside from the claim being completely untestable, you have to ask yourself whether it’s more reasonable to think that scientists are suffering from a massive, decades-long case of groupthink, or that they’re actually convinced by the evidence. The evidence after all isn’t hidden away somewhere, and if it really weren’t any good then it would be easy to make the case against it. The arguments that denialists rely on however consist almost entirely of dishonest nonsense that’s trivially debunked. I’m not holding my breath waiting for the slam-dunk case that’s been unfairly kept under wraps all these years.
By the way, Ross McKitrick has been on the denialist circuit since way back when it was still cool. He’s the incompetent who didn’t know the difference between radians and degrees. Fun times.
By the way, there are lots of surveys of what scientists with the relevant credentials think about climate change, and they all have similar results. The attempt to dismiss this data with complaints about the target population or methodology for any one survey simply shows that someone can’t deal with evidence.
Thank you Saad and Ibis3. Those were useful replies. The background on the Streisand effect and how the context looks with respect to her being a women is also useful.
Area Man
That “someone” can’t deal with the evidence because that someone is a Canadian economist deep in the pockets of right-wing “think”-tanks, in other words, he is getting paid to sow confusion about AGW for the benefit of his paymasters.
I’m still trying to work out what the hell “inadequate agro-toxics” means. I love these papal comedies though.
You know.. it occurred to me that, if these people keep managing to push all of the nonsense they do, the next “famous” quote on government size will be along the lines of, “A government so small it gives you nothing is still a government that can take everything.”
You’d think the pope would be the guy to bring out 1 Timothy 6:10 – “For the love of money is the root of all evil ….” It and other places in the Bible make it clear that capitalism is not Christly. But then, the owner of the Catholic Church doesn’t want people to be asking why he doesn’t sell all that he has.
Papa Frank imagines that we don’t know that he’s one of the 1% (actually one of the .01%). Ricky imagines that we don’t know that he’s an idiot. Imagination is a wonderful tool for creating your own happy world.
scienceavenger wrote:
Hmm. “Ross McKitrick, Special to Financial Post”. That’s a curious byline, and that can’t be an accident. Let’s see. Ross McKitrick is a member of the Frasier Institute, which is a noted right-wing organization that is famous for being an organization that can always be counted on to support the tobacco institute when it wants to avoid regulation. He’s also a member of an anti-climate change organization. So, the man has an axe to grind, and the Financial Post went out of their way to not identify who he was representing as they basically republished an unedited press release.
As for the article itself, it was a lot of weaseling that does things like trying to imply that there is some kind of conspiracy caused by them selecting only the responses from the top-100 publishing scientists rather than using responses from everyone they surveyed.
I suppose I should’ve refreshed since Area Man answered it better than I.
Area Man wrote:
Or just someone who wishes to cloud things to make it seem like considerable doubt exists even when it does not. Ross’s colleagues in the Fraiser Institute loved doing this kind of thing with second-hand tobacco smoke, too, when smoking ban laws were being proposed and passed into law in Canada.
“Look at that: acknowledging the reality of climate change, and promoting socialism.”
I recall reading about a Latin American priest who said, “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why there are hungry, they call me a communist.”
Oh sweet fucking Christ; I think the hypocrisy has actually split my brain in two.
Tim Lambert actually believed that radians is plural? I find that disturbing.
…The imagination that goes into such things. Ew.
David Marjanović @42: What do you think the plural is? I’ve only ever seen “radians” in 40+ years of using them.
…or “rads”.
@#24,Ibis3, These verbal jackboots were made for walking
I agree with your general point, but a couple of things you said really bother me:
Just out of curiosity, you know this how, precisely? Is there a poll of other Streisands out there you can point to where “99% of Streisands felt they had not been damaged by this, the remaining 1% is within the margin of error on the poll” or something?
And this is a problem how? Are you arguing that the politically powerful should have extra resources to escape popular ironic punishment?
Let’s be clear: the only reason this whole thing is problematic is because it potentially causes problems for other people who are innocent. Rick Santorum deserves, if anything, far worse than this. I refuse to get upset because his life has been made more difficult in a rather childish, silly way.
I happily leave science to the scientists, but I’m a little anxious to leave politics to the politicians…
@38:
But even in this he’s being dishonest. The study in question did of course publish the responses from everyone they surveyed, and even though the 97% number gets the most attention, 82% of all Earth scientists they surveyed answered ‘yes’ to the relevant question. It goes up from there when you narrow the population to specialists. McKitrick could have just said this rather than imply a conspiracy. It’s not as the full results are hidden away somewhere.
Ironically, that study was conducted to address alleged short-comings in previous surveys that denialists dismissed as being unrepresentative or overly broad. When you keep getting the same answer in multiple independent studies, that’s a good sign that the answer is correct. But denialists gotta deny.
Sounds like Santorum is a schismatic and should be excommunicated.
In the original Latin, that’s the singular; the plural would be radiantes… I’m mostly surprised the word isn’t simply radiant, plural radiants, in English.
What, why?