Can America get any more racist?

My flight home yesterday wasn’t great. I was generally feeling exhausted, and then in the airport, I made the mistake of watching the giant televisions they mount all over the waiting areas. You know, the giant televisions that apparently represent American political thought to every person on the planet who happens to travel through one of our airports. And the news was all about Trayvon Martin. Not about the injustice of a young black man being killed in the prime of his life; not about ghastly gun laws that justify murder; not about the bigotry of the police, who saw a dead black man and a vigilante standing over him, and shrugged their shoulders and let the vigilante walk away; no, different concerns engaged our brilliant news media.

Trayvon Martin had been discovered with an empty baggie that once contained marijuana. Uh, what? Does that matter? Are we now going to declare that past trivial legal offenses justify the death penalty now? If I gunned down that odious racist Dan Riehl, I think I could trust that a little digging would discover that perhaps he had a parking ticket somewhere in his sordid past, or perhaps he shaved the truth on his tax returns. I don’t know of any such crimes, but I’m confident that we could find something ex post facto to slime his reputation and rationalize anything I might do to him. That is, if I thought I was commissioned to act as an executioner for crimes that have not been tried, with the right to deliver the Maximum Penalty for even the pettiest of crimes.

It’s all very Judge Dredd.

And that’s not all! Maybe you’ve seen the usual photo of Trayvon Martin as a smiling young kid in a t-shirt; that’s a sneaky effort used by “hysterical race baiters” to portray him as a normal human being, which he isn’t, because he’s black. So they’ve ginned up photos of random black teenagers (they all look the same, you know) in sagging pants and posturing rudely, all to show how the real Martin conforms to their stereotypes. Or they show other photos of Martin when he’s wearing a hoodie and not smiling…because the sullen black man is dangerous. He better be smiling, and even prancing and singing, or apparently he deserves to be shot.

This seems to be the new strategy of the racist right: if they can show that Trayvon Martin wasn’t like Beaver Cleaver, then they can justify the murder. Trayvon Martin’s crime was not being white enough. They’re going to use this incident to put the whole of black culture — every bit of that diverse group that doesn’t conform to the mandatory Dick and Jane universe — on trial. Black Americans, you better practice smiling real big; you better put away that Wu-Tang Clan stuff and learn to love 1001 Strings and Pat Boone.

That was my ten minutes of outrage in the airport. It made me wonder whether black people might feel a little bit estranged when they step into a giant building like that with huge screens everywhere blaring racist apologetics.

I tuned it out before I ripped the armrest off my chair and started smashing expensive electronics everywhere, and turned to my iPad and the soothing rationality of the internet.

Then I read Jezebel.

Oh, fuck.

OK, people, did you really think pointing me to Crommunist’s post would make me feel better?

Doctor with a conscience

It’s good to see someone standing up against Republican idiocy. What we’ve been seeing lately is right-wing theocrats using doctors as a cudgel to batter women (oh, excuse me: sluts and whores) without stopping to think that maybe doctors could refuse to be their tools.

Come to think of it, doctors get far more training in ethics than politicians do, and it shows.

The obvious first step

Rick Santorum has promised a “war on porn if elected.

“Current federal ‘obscenity’ laws prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier,” Santorum wrote in the statement, adding that these laws should be “vigorously enforced.”

We’re going to have to define porn and obscenity for this to work. As a first step, I propose using use of the filthy word “Santorum” as an unambiguous indicator of pure smut.

What they call “salt of the earth” in Georgia is something we wipe off our shoes in Minnesota

State Representative Terry England of Georgia was defending a bill that would completely outlaw all abortions after 20 weeks — even those in which the fetus was already dead, or was so congenitally deformed that it had no hope of living after birth. I can’t quite imagine the logic behind forcing someone you love to go through labor to deliver a corpse, but England tries — and mainly convinces me that dumbass uneducated farmers ought to be barred from positions of responsibility in government.

His argument is this: he’s worked on a farm, and cows and pigs don’t get the benefit of a medical procedure to remove dead calves and piglets — the mares and sows just have to buck up and deliver it. It’s a life experience, don’t you know. And what is a human woman but a breeder sow, hey?

Rep. Terry England compares women to cows, pigs and chickens. from Bryan Long on Vimeo.

To top it off, he tells a charming little story about a man who indulges in cock-fighting — “salt of the earth”, he says — who offers to give up his flock of fighting birds if only those women could be compelled to have babies.

Think of the sacrifice that man is making, ladies! Think of the chickens! Surely you’ll let such a noble gentleman fill up your bellies with babies, living and dead, and you’ll gladly bear them for him, won’t you?

Bring them home, end the villainy

Now some of our troops are committing murder. Unsanctioned murder, that is, unlike the usual stuff.

A U.S. servicemember left his base in southern Afghanistan on Sunday and allegedly went on a shooting spree that killed 16 civilians, plunging U.S-Afghan relations into a fresh crisis.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the act an "assassination" and demanded an explanation from the United States. U.S. officials, who have not confirmed details of the incident, issued immediate apologies.

Can we just shut the whole mess down now?

Next week’s Doonesbury

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!

We’ve got the plot points for all of next week’s Doonesbury. I’ve got the summaries below the fold; don’t read them if you don’t want to ruin the surprise. Although…you may find you’re going to have to read them to see them at all, since many newspapers aren’t running them. Including our own St Paul Pioneer press, which says:

Re: Doonesbury strips. We are subbing in print at the Pioneer Press and directing readers to online if they want to read them. Not appropriate for Comics pages with its mix of Garfield and The Duplex and not a great solution to move them to the Opinion pages for a week.

Oh, yeah. We mustn’t taint Garfield!

The reason for this terror revealed below.

[Read more…]

Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only moron out there, unfortunately

I’ll say one thing for Rush Limbaugh: he just cracked the sewer valve wide open, but he’s not the only one contributing to the gusher of sewage. Take Bryan Fischer: he’s even worse than that slick pig Limbaugh. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with what Limbaugh said, and acknowledges, like Limbaugh, that the only thing he did wrong was use the “slut” word, which is naughty…but that his sentiment was entirely correct.

Here’s his interpretation of Sandra Fluke’s testimony. He is shocked that:

…this woman could, without any trace of shame, any trace of embarrassment, give open testimony before the entire United States of America, about how much promiscuous sex she and her classmates are having.

Of course, that’s not what she testified. She testified that women’s reproductive health could be expensive, citing the use of contraceptives for prevention of ovarian cysts. But she could have talked about the importance of contraception for a healthy, happy sex life even within a monogamous relationship: it does not make a woman a slut for enjoying sex with her partner. But even if she did have multiple partners, so what? There’s no shame in enjoying sex: every human does, unless they’re wracked with religious guilt.

It really exposes these people for what they are: anti-sex, anti-human prudes. Fuck the Puritans. Please.

And here’s another idiotic perspective on Fluke from Scott Adams, Dilbonian dimbulb. He sees two possible interpretations.

Which of these two events do you find more distasteful?

1. Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut for her position on contraceptives.

Or

2. Activists are treating Fluke as a helpless victim who needs society’s protection against the harsh words of an entertainer.

My interpretation of events is that Limbaugh saw Fluke as a capable adult, and a public figure, tough enough to handle some harsh language. The boycotters apparently see Fluke as more of an endangered child, or a helpless damsel in distress, threatened by a monster. Light the torches and launch the boycott!

Adams has always been this clueless. I don’t know of a single person who has responded to this by thinking that Fluke needs our protective embrace: she seems confident and mature. The reaction has been anti-Limbaugh. He has been exposed as a blue-nosed asshole who despises women in general — not specifically Sandra Fluke — who have a healthy attitude towards sex, who treat it as a reasonable and expected and even joyful aspect of normal behavior, rather than something to hide in shame.

That’s the battle. Not some peculiar chauvinistic idea that one poor woman needs our chivalrous shelter. I suspect Adams is just projecting.

Another person who is projecting is Bill Maher.

Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout

He did not apologize for despising women who enjoy sex or need medical assistance in maintaining their reproductive health; clearly, he still feels that’s a valid stance. He only apologized for using words like “slut” instead of being more formal and calling her a harlot or something similarly antiquated. Jon Stewart got this right: what’s wrong with Maher that he can’t see this?

As someone who also says things on behalf of a minority that a majority finds offensive, I sympathize with the detestation of “intimidation by sponsor pullout” — but the problem lies in the reliance on money to fund free speech, and coupling that to selling soap. What Limbaugh said is still wrong and stupid.

Anti-creationism legislation—imagine that!

I’ve got to pay attention to the good news more often. My in-box is full of comments about anti-evolution, creationist legislation, but I missed this one: Louisiana SB70 is an anti-creationist bill that “Repeals the Louisiana Science Education Act.” Zack Kopplin has a website combating creationism that focuses on the rational Louisianians and what they’re doing to bring reason to the state.

I’ll call your attention to one notable fact: they’ve got 75 Nobel laureate scientists to endorse this law. If you know a science laureate who hasn’t signed the petition — I noticed a few names missing myself — you might mention it to them.

All you have to know about the Limbaugh affair

Just go read The Rude Pundit. He’s got Limbaugh pegged. He also has a somewhat realistic prediction for the aftermath.

And thus Limbaugh will go on, damaged, but unbowed. He’s now tainted, but you can bet that all of his listeners see him as the victim here and that, six months, a year from now, nearly all of those sponsors will be back. But maybe, just maybe, he will be poisonous enough to be nothing more than a deranged cult leader, a deaf and dumb and dying dinosaur in the tar pit of his fading career.

The Rude Pundit being optimistic? Wow. I don’t think the poison will daunt his fans — they wallow in that stuff.