From Roy, I found this great study that shows that the sexual assault rate at the University of New Hampshire saw a decline from 1988 until 2000, and then it held steady after that. The reason for the decline appears to be more education and better services.
Overall, UNH has found that the number of unwanted sexual experiences on campus declined significantly from 1988 to 2000, during which time the university established a crisis center and put a number of prevention programs in place. However, there has been little change since 2000 — prompting a need for more creative, broad-based responses, said Victoria Banyard, an associate professor of psychology and a co-author.
I find this interesting, because the reduction in the rape rate that’s been national and somewhat continuous ever since feminists made rape a big issue shows that the primary criticism feminists have—that ours is a “rape culture”, i.e. that rape is a product of a culture that is tolerant or even approving of it—was right, and when you change the culture, you change the rate of rape.
Washington University students and faculty are in an uproar over the decision to award anti-gay, anti-feminist Eagle Forum fossil Phyllis Schlafly an honorary doctorate at its May 16 commencement ceremony. A Facebook group created to protest the move has over a thousand members.
Mary Ann Dzuback, the director of the women and gender studies department at Washington University agreed, said it was “grossly inappropriate” for the university to honor Schlafly with a degree.Steve Ralls of PFLAG National:“She’s spent her entire career speaking against women in the workforce and for them remaining in the home,” Dzuback said of Schlafly, who rose to prominence during the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.
…The university issued a statement Sunday defending its decision, saying it — like many other universities — chooses to honor those “who have become a part of the broad public discourse on vital issues of the times.” The statement cited other controversial figures, such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom the school has honored.
PFLAG and our St. Louis chapter are proud to join those on the ground in Missouri and call on school officials to do the right thing and, as executive director Jody Huckaby said today, “find a more suitable person to applaud.”Steve also points out some of Mother Schlafly’s winning cultural touchstones:
On California’s SB-77, to protect GLBT students: The legislation “represent[s] a repudiation of 2,000 years of Christian moral teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and the family. The result is that California’s schools are now promoting behaviors and lifestyles that are physically and spiritually dangerous for children.”
On the idea of any protections for GLBT youth: “The bottom line is, don’t count on the courts to protect public school students from being subjected to the promotion of homosexuality.”
On sexual harassment laws: “Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women.”
Yeah. I think they could locate someone who isn’t terminally frozen in the dark ages.
Whoops. We haven’t had a good one like this in, oh, a few weeks. This NY pol was not only fornicating outside the marital bond, he was procreating with a sex partner other than his wife. He receives bonus points for being charged with driving while intoxicated! (NYT):
Representative Vito J. Fossella, a Staten Island Republican who was arrested on May 1 in Alexandria, Va., and charged with drunken driving, issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that he had had an extramarital affair with Laura Fay, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and that the two of them have a 3-year-old daughter together.You have to read Howie Klein’s take on this one.The prospect that Mr. Fossella could face a mandatory jail sentence if convicted had already threatened to bring to an end his decade-long career in the House, where Mr. Fossella is the only Republican representing New York City.
…Mr. Fossella, 43, was driving with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when he was pulled over. He faces a mandatory five days in jail if convicted.
…In the Democratic stronghold of St. George, the neighborhood nearest the ferry to Manhattan, patrons at the Cargo Cafe weighed in on the scandal.
“Vito Fossella’s behavior is a disgrace to himself, his family and to Staten Island,” said an anesthesiologist, Dr. John Ferguson, 44. “Given the fact that he votes along the Bush-Cheney line 90 percent of the time, which means he sees himself as a moral values candidate, I find his behavior completely, but not surprisingly, hypocritical. He should resign immediately.”
Hat tip, Linda.
Ten songs at random, leave yours in comments.
- “Who Are You/Time To Die”—Void
- “Spit Shine Your Black Clouds”—The Blood Brothers
- “Re-Make/Re-Model”—Roxy Music
- “Shake Our Trees”—Rosebuds
- “I Love You”—The Pipettes
- “See Through”—Guana Batz
- “Mr. X”—Pauline Murray
- “I Know There’s An Answer”—Sonic Youth (Beach Boys cover)
- “Surfin’ Chihuahua”—Rat Holic
- “I’m Not Afraid”—Shimura Curves
I remember a number of years going to the Austin Museum of Art to see a show about rock and roll in art (read: lots of Mapplethorpe), and it seemed that not just a couple of the artists represented had a thing for Roxy Music. I should have guessed. They had that Art School appeal, of course, but it was still funny seeing how well that worked out for them. If you like Roxy Music, that marks you as a certain kind of pretentious geek. Of which there are many.
Like the band that named themselves after this song:
And this scene made me a sucker for this movie:
Out. Of. Control. Dateline Kamloops, British Columbia - Three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers apparently couldn’t subdue an elderly patient. The sadistic sickness continues. BTW, you can see pics of the man’s stun gun burns at the CBC site.
Frank Lasser, 82, appeared fragile Thursday when he showed the stun gun marks on his body and talked about the ordeal he went through Saturday.The article also refers to the Taser as “the conducted energy weapon.”“They [police] should have known I had bypass surgery,” Lasser told CBC News.
Lasser has had heart surgery and needs to carry an apparatus to supply oxygen at all times. He was in the Royal Inland Hospital Saturday due to pneumonia but has since been released.
RCMP said nurses called police after Lasser became delirious and pulled a knife out of his pocket.
Lasser told CBC News that he sometimes become delusional when he can’t breathe properly. He said he couldn’t explain why he refused to let go of the knife even after the Mounties arrived.
“I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it was, and said to the guys, ‘OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the street tonight,’” Lasser said.
Hat tip, Shane.
I don’t know if I can really pull through to be super-blogger tonight. I just had my mind blown by a summer blockbuster, which is not something that happens to me very much. But Iron Man? Dude, I am ashamed to say this, but I’m probably going to be one of those people who goes to see the action movie again within a week of seeing it the first time.
Oh man, Abstinence Clearinghouse has started a blog, presumably so people can write about all the sex they’re not having. It’s brilliant, like almost like it’s a parody, except it’s not. I loved this post.
Virginity is an asset that holds its value well.
Well, actually, as an asset, virginity ranks below toilet paper in terms of holding value, because after you use the toilet paper, it’s still there. But virginity is gone the second you make use of your “property”. If an asset is utterly demolished to non-existence after one use, it’s not really an asset by any real measure.
And if you hang onto your virginity, unlike other assets, it pretty much is guaranteed to lose its value over time. Though it’s a result of unfair prejudice, the reality is that the older the virgin, the more people tend to classify the virginity as a social awkwardness to outright weirdness. Most virgins over a certain age feel their virginity is an albatross. Even if you’re holding onto it for religious reasons, there’s a point where you choice drifts from “cute example of religious devotion” to “eccentricity bordering on antisocial levels of self-righteousness, perhaps masking deep insecurities”.
I suspect the Abstinence Clearinghouse folks think the way to get around this is for women (who these messages are mainly aimed at) to marry when they’re really young, so that they don’t get a whole bunch of job skills and independent ideas and therefore escape hatches before the fateful day. But that’s just a guess; I suppose we’ll have to keep reading to find out the whole story.
Marc filmed my reading at Book People and reduced it to a 5 minute taster recap. Enjoy! And yes, that’s all hi-def and totally not YouTube.
Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.
Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”Is that another variation on “misspoke”?
You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:
I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.Why not?
“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”
What about race?
“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”
I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo.
Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.
She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.
The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.
Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.
On the horrid article itself (instead of just the jaw-dropping quote), which isn’t technically about the casual cruelty that men inflicted on women in the conservative-romanticized utopia of the 50s, well, Lance Mannion has the long takedown that this article deserves. It’s by Michael Wolff and he at least does the nation a favor and shows that yep, The Village is more worried about politician’s sex lives than about what the public cares about, which is policy and leadership.
Politics is now about sex. Not just scandalous sex, not just who is having what kind of sex, but what we think about the sex each politician is having, or not having. Sex (sex, not gender) in politics is as significant a subtext as race.
Wow, lest you think the culture portrayed on “Mad Men” is exaggerated, it seems it might be smoothed over to protect our delicate nerves instead.
There is a story Gore Vidal tells about J.F.K.: having sex in the bath, he liked to suddenly push a woman’s head back underwater, causing her to fight for air, just as he was about to climax.
The one thing about feminism that amazes me is that things changed so fast that we forgot how bad things really were.
Of course, the rest of the story (not the post, but the Vanity Fair article) is unmitigated bullshit, so this might be as well. Let’s hope so.
Secular and religious schlock: Separated at birth.
As much as I’d like to puzzle over why evangelical Christianity does so well by putting out mediocre pop culture products to compete with the larger world—why do people take the imitations over the real thing?—the answer seems obvious enough to me. Could it be that Christian pop culture really isn’t significantly worse than the steady drumbeat of mediocre product put out by the secular entertainment industry? I mean, you look at the pop culture ripped off described in this article and the resounding realization is that it’s not like Christians are really going to make the products more mediocre as a rule.
At a Christian retail show Radosh attends, there are rip-off trinkets of every kind—a Christian version of My Little Pony and the mood ring and the boardwalk T-shirt (”Friends don’t let friends go to hell”). There is Christian Harlequin and Christian chick lit and Bibleman, hero of spiritual warfare. There are Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno, which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words. There are Christian comedians who put on a Christian version of Punk’d, called Prank 3:16.
And if they are more mediocre, then they’re closer to the baseline of mediocrity that defines the initial products, a mediocrity that is central to profitability. Mediocre pop culture and fundamentalist Christianity are a perfect marriage, because the dimwittery of America that finds thinking and developing tastes too hard—the people who would have liked Creed, Christian messages or not—is fundamentalist Christianity’s audience.
I have a response piece up at RH Reality Check to Matt Taibbi’s article about John Hagee’s church, and it’s clear to me that as odd as the megachurches are—especially when they have speaking in tongues and demon explusion, as Hagee’s church does—they also gain popularity from having a really good grasp of the American middlebrow mediocrity culture that maximizes audiences so easily. The Rush Hour movies, American Idol albums, dinner at Chili’s, and embracing your inner child at Hagee’s church all inhabit that area of of mindless posing as engagement that marks this culture. Christian pop culture isn’t odd, but the most natural thing in the world. It’s something that I really realized after going to karaoke a few times where someone inevitably sings the Carrie Underwood song “Jesus Take The Wheel“. Is this mainstream schlock or Christian schlock? Both, and the two are firmly intertwined and not as easily separated as this article implies they can be.
Apparently in the City of Brotherly Love the police training for cadets includes how to act like a punks in a schoolyard. I guess we have to be pleased that the Taser wasn’t whipped out as well for good measure. These men in the car may or may not have been guilty, but they certainly don’t look like they are resisting other than to stop the ass-kicking. Why do these officers have to whale on suspects in this manner when the person is already down on the ground?
Fifteen police officers were taken off the street as authorities investigate a video showing three suspects being kicked, punched and beaten after they were pulled out of a car during a traffic stop.“At a glance it does appear to be a bit beyond the pale,” Doug Oliver, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter, said Wednesday. “Officers are not allowed to operate outside of the law.”
…The video, shot by a WTXF-TV helicopter, shows three police cars stopping a car on the side of a road. About a dozen officers gather around the vehicle and pull three men out. About a half-dozen officers hold two of the men on the ground on the driver’s side. Both are kicked repeatedly, while one is seen being punched; one also appears to be struck with a baton. On the other side of the car, another group of officers can be seen kicking a third man who ends up on the ground.
You want to read a book that will make you uncomfortably reexamine the kind of rhetoric you use, right down to your choice of metaphors? Well, if you don’t, you should: Jeffrey Feldman’s new book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. It’s a convincing argument that the right wing punditry has adopted a violence stance, tone, and choice of words and media battles that undermines the concept of deliberative democracy. And while deliberative democracy can be unbelievably frustrating for liberals, a step back shows that it does work in our favor, because slowly over time, Americans have really become a more liberal (read: gentle, considerate people).
I can hear the bristling, but think about it. Liberals, for instance, have won the ideological war about equality. Conservatives have to find another way to frame issues when they’re arguing against equality, and thus have created empty concepts like “abortion is murder” or “reverse racism”. Those phrases burn, but it’s wise to remember that they’ve been forced into a dishonest territory because liberals have won the argument over equality. Conservatives can’t win in a fair debate where all sides present their views to be hashed out in the public forum, and they clearly know it, because instead of submitting themselves to the debate, the right wing pundits have instead turned to fear-mongering and reimagining our objectively peaceful country as a war zone. Think of how the gun control debate goes down, an example Feldman turns to early in the book. There’s not much of an honest debate about gun control in this country, because right wingers skip the facts and go straight for the mythologizing about how every Republican man is besieged by a bunch of gun-wielding maniacs, attacking him in airports and fast food joints, and even coming into his home to rape his wife, and if he wasn’t able to periodically litter the landscape with bullets, it would be worse. That this doesn’t reflect reality seems inconsequential to this image, probably because the image of violence has so much power over reason.
Obama bested Hillary Clinton with ease last night here in NC, and you can see plenty of analysis about that all over the blogosphere. On primary night I liveblogged from Southern Rail in Carrboro, where U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal held his after-party. Here are some thoughts from the evening — and observations about the big picture.
Folks gathering for the party at Southern Rail.
It was a festive atmosphere, even as results came in that made it pretty clear state Senator Kay Hagan would cross the finish line with a lot of distance between her and Jim, and she will face the useless, ineffective Elizabeth Dole in November.
(more…)
Image from Gretchen Schermerhorn.
So, this Ecuadorian politician named Maria Soledad Vela has tried to write women’s right to sexual pleasure into the nation’s constitution. From what I understand, the law is just about laying the groundwork for public policies that acknowledge that women are sexual agents, not just wombs on feet. And everything that would follow—good education, reproductive rights, etc. Perhaps that’s why so many male politicians are throwing first class hissy fits. One claimed that this meant mandatory orgasm provision. (Oh noes!) Another suggested that the legislation is like life in prison. I had an imagine of a man with a woman strapped spread eagle to his face like a feedbag, but that’s the only way I could really see this as a prison.
From Echidne, a jaw-dropping tale from the fundie vs. reason battleground in our public schools.
Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.
But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.
“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.
When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.
“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.
Read that next to this post by tristero, to really get that he’s not kidding when he says this.
If pressed, most of us bicycling fans will say we do it for the exercise, to save money on gas, and for the environment. But now this Hungarian PSA promoting bicycling has exposed the truth. You might not want to play this where office mates can hear it. (Via, with translation.)
But I can’t help but think that as silly as it is, there’s a grain of truth to the claims. Lack of exercise is brutal to the sex drive, and something as well-rounded as bicycling to get exercise probably does have some health benefits that carry over to the bedroom.
From the Golden State, a bizarre and ridiculous firing of a teacher for not signing a loyalty oath.
When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms.This arcane requirement offended Gonaver, who is a Quaker. She in fact offered to sign the oath if she could also submit a statement explaining her objection, something commonly offered in other states under circumstances like this. That didn’t fly either.But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
The loyalty oath was added to the state Constitution by voters in 1952 to root out communists in public jobs. Now, 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main effect is to weed out religious believers, particularly Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Cal State Fullerton rejected her statement and insisted that she sign the oath if she wanted the job. “I wanted it on record that I am a pacifist,” said Gonaver, 38. “I was really upset. I didn’t expect to be fired. I was so shocked that I had to do this.”Are we going to hear from all the religious freedom “experts” on this, you know, the fundies who are quick to declare that they are being victimized by the state for their anti-gay, allegedly bible-based beliefs?California State University officials say they were simply following the law and did not discriminate against Gonaver because all employees are required to sign the oath. Clara Potes-Fellow, a Cal State spokeswoman, said the university does not permit employees to submit personal statements with the oath.
“The position of the university is that her entire added material was against the law,” Potes-Fellow said.
Just a programming note…
Pam’s House Blend is teaming up with the great folks of the state blog BlueNC to cover primary results. We will provide real-time coverage with commentary, polls, videos and more using CoverItLive. You’ll be able to get in-depth perspectives on the presidential primary — and important downticket races — from the folks on the front lines here in the Tar Heel state. I will be stationed at the Jim Neal election hub at Southern Rail in Carrboro, NC (for non-Tar Heels, Carrboro’s a couple of blocks from Chapel Hill).
***
Voting this AM
Although we have early voting here in NC, I chose to wait until today to see how turnout would be at my precinct (#54, in southern Durham).
At 7:00 AM it was starting to get packed, with the line was out the door. There were plenty of yard signs out in front — I personally put out a Jim Neal sign. I got in just in time, because around the time I left (7:40), there was literally a traffic jam waiting to get into the complex.
Demographically the precinct is pretty diverse — there were white soccer mom/dad types, young black voters, senior black voters, people of all colors on their way to work.
UPDATE: We are already receiving reports of voting problems — in Granville County.BlueNC has the scoop.
(more…)
Pam posted yesterday about the passing of Mildred Loving, linking the struggle to legalize interracial marriage with the struggle to legalize same-sex marriage. P.Z. put up a post demonstrating the religious wingnuttery that came into play in justifying the criminalization of the Lovings’ marriage, by quoting some of Mildred Loving’s account of the whole thing.
Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.
Taking the two together, it’s doubly clear not only are same-sex marriage rights linked with interracial marriage rights because they have arguments in common for them, but also because the opponents are the same assholes they’ve always been, using the same arguments that they always have. (In sum: “God shares my bigotry!”) The fight for interracial marriage was part of the culture wars, just like reproductive rights, gay rights, and the separation of church and state.
Oh man, the more I hear about this movie Expelled, the funnier it gets.
The producers of “Expelled” spent two years interviewing scores of scientists, doctors, philosophers, and public leaders, including University of Minnesota biology professor P.Z. Myers, who does not support alternative theories of evolution. The clip of “Imagine,” which is audible for approximately 15 seconds, is used in a segment of the documentary in which the film’s narrator and author Ben Stein comments on statements made by Myers and others about the place of religion. In the documentary Stein says: “Dr. Myers would like you to think that he’s being original but he’s merely lifting a page out of John Lennon’s songbook.” This is followed by an audio clip of Lennon’s song “Imagine,” specifically, the lyrics “Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too.”
That wingnuts have held a grudge against that song for 37 years tells you how small their world really is. Did they really think the plebes could be sheltered from doubt in god if that damn former Beatle hadn’t penetrated the Berlin wall of religious censorship? Or do they really think John Lennon invented atheism?
The more I hear about this movie, the more clear it becomes that it’s patched together using email forwards.
…to put it another way, if you think people should get an extra $40 this summer (an extremely optimistic view of what a gas tax holiday might save them), then give them an extra $40.
I will personally give $40* just to shut somebody up. If I have to listen to one more person-on-the-street spin Obama’s utter good sense and lack of pandering into some sort of reverse inside-the-beltway out-of-touch move, I may just torch an Expedition.
* Offer expires May 4, 2008.
Those of us eagerly waiting for the day when same-sex marriage is finally legalized across the land owe a debt of gratitude to Mildred Loving, whose 1967 case (Loving v. Virginia) resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision that broke down a major social and legal barrier - interracial marriage.
Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.Last year was the 40th anniversary of the landmark ruling. Mrs. Loving said this:Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.
…Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident that also injured his wife.
In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn’t trying to change history — she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.
“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”
“When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.Here is her full statement, via Freedom To Marry..…Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.
…I am proud that Richard’s and my name are on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”
I’ve been hanging onto this awhile, but I knew it would come up: the Anti-Defamation League has condemned Expelled for using the tragedy of the Holocaust in service of an anti-science agenda.
Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.
Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.
It’s initially bizarre to see creationists—who are largely fundamentalist Christians—hide behind Holocaust accusations on this issue, since the major factor that led Jews to be the scapegoated group was centuries of Christians scapegoating Jews, accusing them of killing Jesus and of course reserving them the place of the especially not-saved, ideas that would pretty much die if fundies didn’t keep them alive. But it’s not actually that big a surprise to anti-choice movement watchers like myself, because the Holocaust allusions are big with the anti-choice nuts.* And in the annals of wingnuttery, abortion (and birth control for some) and evolutionary theory are like the same thing pretty much, so of course they’re going to use the same language to describe them. The two get conflated all the time, like in this trailer for Expelled.
The plan is for me to be on KVRX live in Austin tonight on “On The Fringe“. It’s right when 91.7 switches from KOOP to KVRX, so Austinites can hear me on-air on 91.7, but for those of you not in the Austin area, you can stream KVRX by pressing the “Listen Now” button on their homepage.
So does the clock at left stop? I didn’t receive a response from Sen. Dole’s pitiful Constituent Services Letter GeneratorTM. No autopen-signed missive to help me pretend that I heard from my senator.
What I did receive this afternoon was a fax from Communications Director Hogan Gidley of the Elizabeth Dole campaign regarding the petition that I delivered last Friday on behalf of 1265 readers of Firedoglake, Pam’s House Blend, and BlueNC. The petition requested that the North Carolina senator ask Linda Daves of the NC Republican party to stop running the color-aroused anti-Obama ad called “Extreme,” which tries to draw some sort of connection between Dem gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore (both endorsed Obama) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
What was Dole’s response? I have no idea, since the response is from Mr. Gidley, there’s no way for me to know whether my senator actually read the petition. The letter I received is an exercise in predictable spin; it doesn’t address the NCGOP’s ad or her party’s involvement and endorsement of playing to people’s biases. Gidley:
Thank you very much for delivering the petition. As Senator Dole’s campaign spokesman, I would like to take the opportunity to respond. The political advertisement that you reference has nothing to do with Senator Dole’s campaign, nor does she plan on refereeing third party political advertisements.So state parties can run amok. I guess it’s hands-off for Liddy.
What the Dole campaign laughably calls for, in letter to NCDP party chair Jerry Meek from Dole consultant Mark Stephens (the second page of the document), is for the NC Democratic Party not to run any advertising against Dole, to tell her Dem opponent to refrain from anti-Dole ads, and to tell the national party not to run third party ads against her! Oh, this is rich! 
Stephens to Meek:
the Dole campaign extends an offer to enter into a written agreement with the North Carolina Democratic Party, your national counterpart committees in Washington, as well as the eventual Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate to disallow political party advertising in North Carolina. This will prevent the circumstances that you have described from happening in the contest for U.S. Senate.Alrighty then. So if they cannot use traditional bottom-feeding ads, they propose no one runs any ads, even comparison of record ads, which do inform voters. Take their ball and go home. Well we know the GOP cannot run on its failed ideas, and Elizabeth Dole has a miserable Bush rubber-stamp record, so it’s no surprise that we received a non-starter response like this.
(more…)
Annejumps sent me this, and Cristina Page posted on it. Various anti-choice organizations are coming together and protesting the fact that many of you right now are not having to get abortions. You know, because you use contraception.
There’s an entire bit of pseudo-science woo to explain how the birth control pill actually causes abortion, but there’s no actual scientific reason to think it. The only reason they grasp at this is that the anti-choice movement is not, and has never really been, motivated by concern for fetuses, but more concern for women’s ability to control our fertility, and subsequently our lives, control they don’t want us to have. The pill is protested because their magical beliefs would have it “killing babies”, but that doesn’t explain their opposition to condoms, opposition that has led to abstinence-only education and abstinence-only strings attached to HIV relief funds to the rest of the world. Maybe it kills babies when sperm are deprived of the opportunity to swim free?
*
That’s right: Gordon Smith, 2-term Senator, fake maverick, is running on a platform of change.
There’s a relatively obscure (at least in the US) musical from the 1990s called The Fix, and as I recovered from the early-morning shock of hearing this bullshit, I recalled a song called I See the Future, in which empty-suit Cal gives his first speech while running for city council:
I see the future,
I see a day when we are one
I see tomorrow
I see us striving for the sun
I see us working toward the promise
and answering the call
I see the future
I see the future
and I see it in the faces of the young
Of course, just like in real life the vacuous media and bored public eat it up.
———
* Transcript of the offending passage: Jeff Merkley, Steve Novick: More of the same, when it’s time for change.
A clip from my latest obsession.
SPOILAGE.
Tired of the movies, where women barely exist onscreen at all, and when they do, they’re treated like imbeciles or cardboard cutouts? The assumption in the movie industry is that men make the vast majority of the movie-seeing decisions, and that women are therefore a niche market that only needs a couple of intelligence-insulting bones thrown for a twice-annual girl’s night out.* But TV is another story. For whatever reason, it’s beginning to be understood that shows with fully realized female characters that have more going on than being fuckable and having babies do quite well on the small screen, thank you very much. And TV meets a variety of entertainment gaps that weren’t being filled. You have your fantasies of female empowerment that still aren’t realized in the everyday world—like on “Battlestar Galactica” or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and you have shows that address women’s lives in an honest way, patriarchal warts and all, like on the comedy “Ugly Betty” and the drama “Mad Men”, which is a show that we power-chugged last week, watching most of the first season flying to and from New York.
The first season of “Mad Men” is set in 1960, which means it’s an exceedingly relevant program for modern times, because it’s this turning point in time that all culture war madness turns off of. When conservatives talk bitterly about the 60s, it’s because they romanticize the 50s as the ultimate moment of the American patriarchy, and to varying degrees, also the last gasp of blatant white supremacy, a utopia of white male dominance that was cruelly snatched away and needs to be restored through government intervention.
