- John at Ludicrosity, unhappy with the pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy, divides the abortion dispute into nine overlapping perspectives. There are little things I disagree with (particularly a slam on Margaret Sanger which he doesn’t justify with links or evidence). On the whole, however, I think he does a good job.
- Mark Kleiman compares Rush Limbaugh to another drug user, sentenced to thirteen years in prison after her child was stillborn:
Of course, it’s obvious that homeless people with borderline mental retardation ought to be held strictly accountable for their actions, unlike multimillionaires with logorrhea and strong political connections.
- “MINNEAPOLIS, MN – In a turn of events the 30-year-old characterized as ‘horrifying,’ Kevin Widmar announced Tuesday that his mother Lillian has discovered his weblog.” From The Onion, of course, and via Hot Buttered Death.
- Burgen King apologizes to a mom harassed for breast-feeding.
- Over on Open Source Politics, Earl Dunovant – who at night puts on a cape and mask and fights crime as Prometheus 6 – gives the idea that what Democrats dislike about Justice Brown is her race a beating.
- Someone in the Democratic party has a pretty good sense of humor – to see a child’s-book version of the judicial filibusters controversy, check out Republican Senators and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night (it’s a pdf file). Via Prometheus 6.
- You should read this impressive Tacitus post about depression in the army. Definitely the best post I’ve read on any blog in a while.
- Rotten.com presents a copiously-illustrated essay of banned Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons, many of them quite racist. Even if you don’t want to read the whole thing, it’s entertaining just skimming through the pictures. Via scrubbles.net.
- Marine with spotless 8-year record forced to leave intelligence. Why? Because he’s a liberal. No, seriously. Is it just me, or do many Conservatives have an outright contempt for freedom of speech – not to mention for any soldier who actually served in the military? Via Orcinus, who feels this is a harbinger of worse to come.
- Drawing (to some degree) from her comments on this blog, Ms. Lauren at Feministe has written an excellent post discussing censorship and rape pornography. I don’t agree with Ms. Lauren entirely, but she makes a good case. She also links to an excellent Sex Roles article, providing an excellent “meta-analytic review of research that relates masculine ideology to sexual aggression.” (The link is down right now, but I’m posting it in the hope that it will recover.)
- Worster Album Covers Ever II. In case round one wasn’t enough for you. My favorite is “The Reverend in Rhythm.”
- Nathan Newman rightly demolishes the stupid whining of conservatives who claim to be oppressed by “PC” liberals on campus. Too many conservatives I met at PSU and UMASS were like this: whenever anyone criticized their views, they’d whine “I’ve been censored!” But conservatives who don’t speak because they fear criticism aren’t victims of PC thought police; they’re just cowards.
- There’s something charming about this obituary for Richard Pearson, the Washington Post’s obituary editor, who once said “Everyone dies in the first graph of my stories, but I console myself with the thought that there are relatively few complaints from people I write about.” (Via Boing Boing.)
- If that’s not enough death for you, then you should go explore GoodBye! The Journal of Contemporary Obituaries. Or, if you prefer your obituary writing in blog form (complete with hyperlinks), check out GoogObits. There’s hours of good browsing in them there death notices…
- Thankfully, Merriam-Webster has announced that they have no intention of removing “McJob” ( “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement”) from the print version of their dictionary – even though they already removed it from the online version. Via Boing Boing.
- “Eros and Thanatos in L’affair Hilton.” A brilliant review of Paris Hilton’s sex tape, which is more of a cinematic masterpiece than you probably had imagined.
- Do you know the name of the first American servicewoman to die in Iraq? Probably not, because she didn’t happen to be white, blonde, and middle class. Trish Wilson has the details.
- Urban Legends for the 21st Century:
…the babysitter was watching “Alias” when her cell phone played the first two verses of “Crazy In Love” by Beyonce Knowles. The babysitter dug the phone out of her bag to discover that she had received a text message reading:
seria1_ki11a: im upstairs w/the chldrn youd betta come up MLOL*!!!!
You should go read the whole thing. (Well, it gave me a giggle.).
- I’m one of over three hundred bloggers currently compiled on the “Bloggers’ Political Compass” (I’m near the bottom left, unsurprisingly). Oddly, us lefties have arranged ourselves in a fairly tight line, while on the right they’re spread out quite a bit more – perhaps because of the split between conservatives and libertarians.
Still, we do all arrange ourselves more-or-less on a straight line, which suggests that the single-dimensional liberal/conservative scale has more descriptive power than I want it to.
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
Re the comments about Sanger — this is what I wrote over on Ludicrosity:
Actually, the statement about Sanger is false.
Anti-choice folks most often take actual quotes from Sanger, but take them out of context and manipulate them to make them sound as though she was a horrible racist and eugenicist. To name but one example, a common Sanger quote cited by anti-choice folks is:
“we don’t want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population”
But, when seen in context, the meaning is quite different:
“The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. (MS to Clarence Gamble, MSM S17:574).
The article about the Marine being forced out sent chills down my spine, and brought back some recent and unpleasant memories — I am a way left liberal married to a moderate non-republican army officer. And I was not at all surprised by what happened to this marine. During the ramp-up to the war in Iraq, I completely lost any and all patriotic feelings I had, because I felt so pummelled by the conservative attacks on those who do not support the war. I am, or rather was, a very patriotic person. It was devastating for me to be told I can’t support the troops because I don’t support the war — I spend around 40 hours a month volunteering for these soldiers and their families…but that doesn’t count because I’m on the wrong side politically…
But beyond that, it is perfectly okay for a person in uniform to insult the commander-in-chief (aka the President) as long as he is a democrat. Jokes about Clinton were perfectly fine because the majority of guys in uniform hated him. But if I express anything negative about Bush, and believe me, I tone it way waaaaaay down, I am reminded that he is my husband’s CINC (Commander-in-Chief). So I remind them that Clinton was the CINC, and people bitched about him all the time.
The other really rotten part of this is how liberal soldiers are insulted — the standard cry is that the liberals will turn and run when confronted by the enemy. In the letter written by Mr. Simpson about SGT. Ferriol, he claims “I would not want a person with his views in a foxhole next to me nor could I rely on intelligence analysis he performed that might get me killed.” That is so incredibly hateful it takes my breath away. This is such a slap in the face to the democrats currently serving (I have seen estimates of 20% of the military being Dems, although I have no idea if that is accurate or not), and also to the veterans of previous wars — again, not sure of accuracy, but my husband was told that the split was more like 50-50 Repub/Dem during WWII. (But apparently it was only the Republicans who fought in WWII who killed the Germans and liberated Europe.) Now being a liberal means not only are you unpartiotic, cowardly, whining, mean-spirited, and untrustworthy, but also incompetent at your job. This is so depressing I just want to cry. Or go kick some conservative right in the balls…
Now for something completely different — re: the banned cartoon : Why are there so few female cartoon characters? Can’t male cartoonists draw a female without making her look like Jessica Rabbit?
Lori Piestewa, no? There’s a fund for her kids.
That’s a lot of reading, Amp.
Tacitus, not Tacticus – after the great Roman historian. I thought it was an outstanding post too. One of the most honest bloggers on the right IMO.
Hotbuttereddeath is one of the dozen or so blogs I follow. He’s taking a break though, he’s blogged out. An idiosyncratic Ozblogger. Expect rude words.
Talkleft had an address if you want to cheer up the woman doing time in SC. SCOTUS just denied the appeal.
Julie, my aunt, staunch GOP and a 20-year vet, never said a rude word in front of me about any president (including Clinton) until GWB. Twice now she’s made acid remarks. The first might give you a handle: I noted how the Bush campaign smeared McCain in SC as possibly unstable after five years in Hanoi, and she said, after a pause: “Well, I guess Bush didn’t have that problem.” Anyway, it’s worth a shot. My aunt’s in Texas and she puts that flag out every morning.
Burgen King?
There’s a joke there, but I can’t find it yet. More coffee, less bad back…
“We now live in a climate of political correctness and false patriotism where anyone who goes against our president is immediately labeled as disloyal; unpatriotic; a traitor; a liberal.”
Amen.
And the crack about liberals being unreliable in time of war? What horseshit. George McGovern was a WW II bomber pilot, for Lisa’s sake. Yep, McGovern.
Not to mention a certain 2000 presidential candidate who went in-country while the conservative stayed in Texas.
–k: Candice Burgen King?
Re compass: better quiz at http://www.lp.org/quiz
I remember mentioning the Political Compass here as a point of comparison with the Political Stereotype quiz (where you were Eugene Debs).
Although I can’t seriously consider myself a real blogger, I Just added my results. Unsurprisingly, I’m on the left “line”, too, but what strikes me is that I’m nearer to the bottom (i. e. closer to the “Libertarian” leaning) than you. I cannot really explain that, because I wan’t specifically “aiming” this position. On the other hand, the Dalai-Lama, who opposes abortion and homosexuality, is in the same quadrant (more to the Right and Authoritarian, of course).
Please read: “because I wasn’t…”.
I’d find that Onion story hilarious if only it didn’t sadly remind me of what recently happened to Neil Babra, one of the finest representants of the Journal Comic “movement” who recently had to shut his site down because some “creepy cyber stalker” revealed it to his parents. You can read his own account (under the name “Triggercut”) in this Failure Comics forum thread.
As a South Asian-American, Neil had many original and subtle things to depict about the way he deals with identity issues.
(Those interested in comics diaries can go to Kean Soo’s Journal Comic Jam, the most comprehensive “portal” for this genre.)
John —
Actually, I have heard some rather very discouraging words about GWB coming from the mouths of soldiers. I never thought that would happen…
Lurked around your blog for a while. Just wanted to say thanks for linking to Richard Pearson’s obituary. I grew up a few houses away and was playmates with his daughter. He really was an amazing guy and had a fantastic sense of humor.
Hey — just thought I’d share that I took your (and Bean’s) comments into account and modified my entry. Thanks for the shout-out!