A Torquemada for our times

The Republican-led legislature in Arizona is nearing passage of a bill in which “Women in Arizona trying to get reimbursed for birth control drugs through their employer-provided health plan could be required to prove that they are taking it for a medical reason such as acne, rather than to prevent pregnancy”, because we all know that there is nothing that any woman likes more than discussing the most intimate details of her life with her employer. [Read more…]

Whatever happens, we are always the good guys

The Daily Show had a terrific two-part series on the US cutting off all funds to UNESCO because they admitted Palestine to that organization, thus hurting many programs whose goals are to try and meet the needs of desperately poor children around the world.

Note how former congressman Robert Wexler, supposedly a progressive Democrat, supports this inhumane action. When it comes to kowtowing to the Israel lobby, so-called progressive Democrats toe the line as dutifully as anyone else.

Part 1

Part 2

(These clips appeared on March 15, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

Shaming women who decide to have an abortion

I am pro-choice and like practically everyone who gives themselves that label, I fervently hope that no woman I know will ever have to confront that agonizing decision of whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Most of the time, I can understand the position of those who call themselves pro-life even if I disagree with them. But I will never understand, or forgive, those who think that it is right to put women through the kind of extra agony that this woman in Texas had to undergo as a result of new laws that seek to add misery upon misery upon them.

These are just awful people.

These are the rules that the comic strip Doonesbury has been satirizing all this week and here’s a MoveOn.org ad that drives the point home.

Joseph Kony and the Invisible Children video

I have not been able to make much sense out of the Invisible Children video about Joseph Kony, except that it seems to have become a huge sensation. I had known before about Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army and their appalling treatment of whoever happens to cross their paths but was not quite sure what to make of this viral video, which I have not seen.

So I pass along without comment this commentary on the phenomenon by Charlie Brooker.

Boing Boing has more.

Taken out of context

I have noticed something that is becoming increasingly common. After a politician says something pandering to appeal to some constituency, and is then quoted those words back and asked to explain it to a different constituency that may not share the same sympathies, the politician simply says that the quoted words had been “taken out of context”. [Read more…]

Double standard on anti-religion ads?

Jonathan Turley points to an interesting case. The New York Times ran an ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that called upon liberal Catholics to leave their church, but refused to run another ad that made the same appeal to Muslims, apparently because “The fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”

I agree with Turley (who has not yet seen the anti-Islam ad) when he says:

I am not sure that we should start to restrict speech on the basis of content in fear of a response of extremists in other countries. That would appear to reward the violence and anti-speech conduct of such extremists. It is precisely what occurred after 2005 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. The result were worldwide protests in which Muslims reportedly killed more than 100 people — a curious way to demonstrate religious tolerance. However, while newspapers swore allegiance to free press values, there was an obvious level of self-censorship to avoid pictures and cartoons of Muhammad and Islam in general. Even academic institutions like Yale University Press exhibited the same response.

The editors in this case promised that they would consider publishing the ad in a few months because “we publish this type of advertising, even those we disagree with, because we believe in the First Amendment.” However, that does not explain why they will yield to extremists in the interim.

For too long, some Muslims have been allowed to use the threat of violence to impose censorship on others. This has to end and major media institutions should be taking the lead on this and not leaving it to small and vulnerable media institutions.

Should Christians have the right to wear crucifixes to work?

There is an interesting case working its way through the European Court of Human Rights. It concerns whether Christians have the right to wear crucifixes to work. Two British women, one who worked for British Airways and the other a nurse, were told by their employers that their crosses did not conform to the uniforms that their professions required. The British government supports their employers, saying that wearing crosses is not a ‘requirement’ of the Christian faith, unlike the Sikh turban or the Muslim hijab, which have apparently been granted exemptions on those grounds. [Read more…]