How many votes will be tossed?
I’m as excited as everyone else about the possibility of a big win tomorrow. But don’t forget something very, very important—the Democrats are definitely going to win, and the Republicans are already laying the ground work to steal the election. (Via.)
The RNC just sent out detailed talking points about how unreliable exit polls have been over the past several elections. The key arguments are that exits polls typically have a Democratic bias and have wrongly predicted Democratic victories in recent years.
According to a source, the RNC expects leaked exit polls to show Democratic victories and do not want the news to discourage Republican voters from going to the polls late in the day.
I’ve heard this line before, and I don’t buy it. How is your opponent leading more likely to keep you off the polls than your own party leading?
The likelier story: The Republicans are set up to steal the elections in a number of key districts, and they’re already bullying the press into not investigating. If the exit polls lean to the Democrats in recent elections and Republicans still win, that’s just evidence that the defrauding of the voters has been going on as long as the discrepancies have.
Please vote for the Democrats tomorrow. They have to post substantial enough margins that the press has to investigate if the Republicans miraculously win anyway.
I can’t believe it’s gotten to the point where I just wrote that. What percentage do the Democrats have to win by before it’s considered a wide enough margin that we can’t allow the Republicans to take the election anyway?
It’s election eve, and I know everyone’s nervous, so it was kind of Jessica to send me this link to a story by another one of those puzzling writers out there who seems to suffer from a lack of normal human shame. I’m glad for it, because they can trot out their neuroses for the rest of us to examine and hopefully learn. This one was in the Washington City Paper, and it’s by Franklin Schneider and about his woes with the women, of course. Why doesn’t he have the satisfying female presence in his life that he clearly deserves? To make his problems worse, he seems to be under the impression that the perfect woman is delivered to your door by the Sexual Fulfillment Fairy. (Different than the Porn Fairy.) This lament is heart-rending:
After a run of 11 consecutive long nights, my immune system basically collapsed. I came down with the flu and bronchitis. John and I also became depressed. We’d naively believed that a woman—or a procession of them—was going to save us. When that illusion was stripped away, the effects were devastating. As John once said, “If I hadn’t already hated everybody from the beginning, I’d have turned into a misogynist by now.�
Femalekind had not yet produced the mate/nursemaid of their dreams and therefore femalekind is a hateful entity. Reading further, his inability to obtain such a woman’s affection and attention becomes even more puzzling, because he’s utterly charming. Like this adorable story of how the end of the night after a date went, when he and the woman he picked up are fooling around:
But as I was about to ease her underwear down, she turned and said, “Lie down here and let’s just talk for a while.�
I was shocked. Talk? We’d been talking all night. The only thing I wanted to do even less than talk was to pretend that I wanted to talk. Her request was almost certainly one of token resistance—perhaps something to make her feel like she hadn’t given it all up at once—but it was one hoop too many.
I refused. There was a moment of silence, and then she asked, “What?�
“I don’t want to talk. I have no interest in talking right now.�
She seemed to consider this. “Then you can’t stay in bed with me,� she said.
I rolled off the bed and lay on the floor. It was childish and petty, but I didn’t see any alternative. What was I supposed to do, lie there and talk about the weather until she deigned to open the gates? I suppose the hard-boiled thing to do would have been to put my shoes on and walk out. But it was late, I was tired and drunk, and I’m ashamed to admit that I still clung to some shred of hope that she’d drop her bluff.
Did we get into the DeLorean and go back to the fifties?
***
This, friends, is unhinged, foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria.
Why does the Communist Party believe it is so important that Democrats win?***…Just so there could be no mistake about the party’s intentions to support a Democratic Party victory, Judith LeBlanc, national vice-chairwoman of the CPUSA, added: “The Democratic Party and its candidates are only as strong politically and economically as the mass movements behind them. The greater participation of the Party and Left, the more effective the movements are, the more likely we can deliver a blow to the Right in November.”
The terrorists told WorldNetDaily an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are “tired.” They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.
Meanwhile, we have Chuck Norris weighing in on the election. Yes, meet WingNutDaily’s newest columnist, the king of blowing sh*t up onscreen, and superpatriot, Mr. Delta Force himself — actor Chuck Norris, with “The battlefields for freedom.”
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I guess this is Karl and Co.’s 72-hour plan, since the GOP can’t win on the issues.
Actually, there’s no need to guess because the National Republican Campaign Committee admitted that it is robo-calling voters in key states identifying themselves as a supporter of the Dem candidate. The voter is called over and over if they hang up before the message terminates, harassing them with the intent of pissing them off. Talking Points Memo has been following this latest tale of GOP corruption — and lawbreaking. From an AP article on robo-calling.
FCC rules say all prerecorded messages must “at the beginning of the message, state clearly the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call.” During or after the message, they must give the telephone number of the caller.Here in North Carolina, it’s happening out in the 11th Congressional District, Dem Heath Shuler’s campaign said voters have had the calls harass them as late as 2:30 in the morning.
At last count this is also happening in New York, Connecticut, Philly, NH and Kansas. Nancy Boyda (D-KS) is so incensed that she actually has a message up at her campaign site about the ‘bot fake calls.
Someone is flooding homes with harassing robo calls. They are making it sound like many are coming from the Boyda campaign. These calls are part of the dirty tricks funded by billion dollar lobbyists from back East.Hat tip, A’blog.Our campaign made only one call last week and it was a positive message. Please download this message and pass it one to your email contacts and ask everyone to vote for Nancy Boyda. Nancy will expand the privacy no call list to stop political robo calls. Ryun voted to allow these political calls and is now using them in this campaign.
***
Also in NC, my area’s airwaves are being flooded with incredible ads for black homobigot Vernon Robinson, who is attempting to unseat Dem. Brad Miller in the 13th District. One has him bleating about security and actually uses shots of the planes crashing into the twin towers. It’s batsh*t insane and offensive.
The other is humorous, though misleading because it asserts Brad Miller has received a 0 rating from the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and a host of other wingnut organizations — clearly a badge of honor. What Vernon is counting on is by putting that out there, he’s hoping to get the attention of people who have no idea what these outfits are about — and with “family” in their names, well certainly that means Vern is pro-family and Brad is not.
***
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The Christian Defense Coalition, a group of evangelicals whose director, Rev. Pat Mahoney, complained last week that the faithful ‘feel used, taken for granted’ by GOP, went to the Capitol last night for a vigil. There was guitar strumming, songs and prayer “to seek God’s blessing, guidance and direction for the most important mid-term elections in many years.”
Mike Rogers of BlogActive and Proud of Who We Are decided to stop by and hand out flyers on hypocrites in the Republican Party to the gathering.
See side 2 here.
Check out this Faux News report. One of the vigil leaders there bleated “folks are not to take some literature, I would ask that you not take it.” That, of course, guaranteed that people took the flyer, as the video shows.
The reporter said the group told her that the “faith and values vote cannot be counted on.”
Related:
* Pull out the tiny violin for the fundies — they feel like GOP doormats
While this doesn’t reach Michael Ledeen levels of assuming that all the evils of the world can be blamed on women, it’s pretty damn close. Dan Savage posted that some fundies leaders, while casting around for an explanation for Ted Haggard’s behavior,* have settled upon looking for a woman to blame. The nearest one being Haggard’s wife, of course:
Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.
The pastor who wrote this is Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church. Which sounded familiar, and with a quick archive search I remembered—oh yeah, that douchebag! How could I ever forget his face or his dopey leather necklace?
He and his church were the feature story in Salon some time back, and the story was about how Driscoll was trying to create a “hip” version of Bible thumpery, which appeared mostly to mean that he and his guy friends get to watch gangster movies, listen to rock music, and drink beer in the backyard while their wives were constrained to the kitchen and practicing Biblical submission. Which is to say that Driscoll’s running a neat little racket there, a version of Christianity where he and his buddies get to have all the perks of being modern guys while retaining their favorite parts of the boring old patriarchy.
Well, this blog post of his is more evidence that’s indeed his racket. Dan didn’t even quote the best parts, like where Driscoll hints around that he’s tapping some fine young ass and could totally be rolling in pussy if he wanted to.
Update: As I figured, this article was written to provoke this anxiety. Ema has more below. It seems the Royal College’s statement is not as alarming as you might think. Which pisses me off even more, because that means journalists are shopping around for anti-choice outrage.
From Liberal Avenger, some troubling news—the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is calling for the legalization of euthanasia for newborns who are the “the sickest of newborns”. My reaction to this is there’s no fucking way, and it’s just wrong.
However, you “pro-life” nuts better think before you use this disturbing news as a new fund-raising hook. The College is actually promoting this idea as a way to prevent abortion, which means they might be a tad bit more anti-choice than you’d initially think.
If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.
And this is where my feminist anger kicks in. There’s something deeply fucked up about telling a pregnant woman to take the risk of giving birth and getting attached to a baby because there’s a marginal chance it could work out okay, and hell, you can euthanize the baby if it doesn’t work out? That’s not right.
To be fair to the College, this article seems to be slanted to make them seem downright crazy. There’s a lot of emphasis on comments about the hardship on families and the like, which is the sort of thing that sounds cold and calculating to most people. However, reading down, I realize they’re sincerely talking about the worst cases, since the article mentions the worst cases of spina bifida, which is when babies are born with their spine (and I think their brain stem sometimes) exposed. Sometimes this is minor, but you can guess how bad it can be. I sympathize with the medical professionals that have to put up a fight for babies they know aren’t going to make it, but unfortunately, this issue is probably too loaded to be able to err on the side of freedom that they want.
Not that this press release makes it any better. The language is sloppy and provocative in the worst way, using terms like “disabled” and talking about the burden on the family, which implies that babies born into lower income families have less right to live than babies born into better-off families. From every angle, this situation is politicized to the teeth and there’s almost no way to unwind it from these issues and create an abstract standard of when it’s better to euthanize than not.
And that goes double for anyone who wants to rely on euthanasia to reduce late-term abortions. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul. Though of course, such a plot feeds right into anti-choicers’ hands, because on one hand, they’re given an opening to pursue their real goals of punishing the fucking to the maximum (after all, giving birth and watching your baby die is far harsher a punishment for fucking than just a distressing late-term abortion) while also having a fund-raising opportunity by pretending that this euthanasia thing is some sort of feminist conspiracy.
Ideally, when it comes to pregnancies gone terribly wrong, the doctor would just be honest with the mother and let her decide whether to abort the pregnancy or to take her chances. Using euthanasia as some backdoor way to incline her to choose the latter instead of the former seems seedy and cruel to me.
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: “Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.”
Bush was the pacifist’s version of Samson, it seems, and he would have never, ever wanted to go to war if it wasn’t for the machinations of the beautiful war-mongering Delilahs he surrounds himself with. Why’d you do it, Laura? Harriet? What did you ever have against the Iraqis? Must be one of those silly little things that get women all bunched up for no reason.
Reasons Michael Ledeen Thinks The Bush Harem Was Out To Get The Nation of Iraq:
- Iraq totally showed up at the prom wearing the same dress as Laura Bush, even though Iraq knew Laura liked that dress. (Yes, it’s a “90210″ episode.)
- Iraq started a rumor that Harriet Miers wore blue eyeliner because she was “easy”, which meant everyone treated Harriet like the White House slut for an entire year.
- Iraq totally bribed its way into the role of head cheerleader, even though everyone knows that Karen Hughes deserved it because she’s worked for so long for so hard. Plus, she has the most pep, as the entire Presidential team could tell you.
- Iraq should have known that guy was hands-off after he dumped Condi Rice. Everyone knows the “no exes” rule!
- Iraq needed to be taken down a few notches for thinking it’s such hot shit. C’mon, hip hugger jeans are just so last year and Iraq’s still strutting around like they’re the best thing since L’Oreal’s Voluminous mascara.
- And what about that time Iraq had that slumber party and just “forgot” to invite Harriet?
- Anyway, Iraq’s just full of oil and that stuff’s contagious. It’s not like they wanted to invite acne into their lives.
So while it might look for the world like the Iraq War was started mostly by a male President and a predominantly male group of neocons, the fact of the matter is that it’s the fault of frivolous women. Clearly, this is just all the more evidence that women should not be in leadership roles and possibly also banned from speaking until spoken to.
No you don’t Ted; you like to do it with men. The problem isn’t sexual, it’s your inability to psychologically reconcile your desires with your relentless internal self-loathing and your hypocritical public pious, judgment against people who don’t have an issue with their orientation. From this morning’s letter from Haggard, delivered at the 9 AM and 11 AM services at New Life Church.
But I alone am responsible for the confusion caused by my inconsistent statements. The fact is, I am guilty of sexual immorality, and I take responsibility for the entire problem.You can’t pray away the gay, but feel free to keep on trying. If it vexes you so much, please get yourself to the nearest ex-gay facility, where you will learn those desires simply won’t go away.I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.
For extended periods of time, I would enjoy victory and rejoice in freedom. Then, from time to time, the dirt that I thought was gone would resurface, and I would find myself thinking thoughts and experiencing desires that were contrary to everything I believe and teach.
Through the years, I’ve sought assistance in a variety of ways, with none of them proving to be effective in me.
The bottom line — stop hurting your wife and kids. Or, more appropriately, get real counseling if you want to explore what really motivated you to throw your life away for some pole-smoking and meth. Accept that you can, in fact, be gay and there’s nothing wrong with that — until you start hurting others with your deception, lies, and unethical behavior. Where is the confession about his purchase of illegal drugs?
Anyway, Pastor Ted’s not off to a good start; look at who he’s seeking counseling from.
The accusations that have been leveled against me are not all true, but enough of them are true that I have been appropriately and lovingly removed from ministry. Our church’s overseers have required me to submit to the oversight of Dr. James Dobson, Pastor Jack Hayford, and Pastor Tommy Barnett. Those men will perform a thorough analysis of my mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical life. They will guide me through a program with the goal of healing and restoration for my life, my marriage, and my family.Here’s the full text of his letter to the New Life Congregation.
While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being gay and evangelical, or even closeted/conflicted about your sexuality, it is a problem when religious leaders, particularly ones in positions to affect legislative policies, start demonizing LGBT citizens who simply want to have their solid relationships legally recognized and the right not to be discriminated against.
For all those griping out there that another mighty homo hypocrite has fallen as a result of “outing,” don’t blame the openly gay folks like Mike Jones. No one can make a horny conflicted pastor hop in the sack with a male sex worker for three years or do meth. No one can entrap a man to chase 16-year-old pages and compulsively IM them about randy, nasty acts. These are men at war with themselves, serious head cases who don’t belong in positions of power when they are clearly conflicted in their private and professional lives regarding core issues about their sexuality and perceived morality.
This isn’t about Satan taking over anyone; this is about denial and an attempt to punish others for feelings that you wish to punish yourself for.
As we’ve discussed here in the comments of other threads, and as John points out today, looking at video of some of the leadership of Pastor Ted’s church who stepped forward for make statements, it looks like a relative closet gay parade out there. Here’s a link to pix of these guys; there’s a lot of denial and hypocrisy in these evangelical circles. Is your gaydar going off?
Again, where are the closeted/”ex” lesbians in all of this? MIA — only the gayboys seem to be in the mix. About the only one you see surface in all things anti-gay is Focus on the Anus’s Melissa Fryrear.
California-based Ward Connerly is one of the reasons black conservatives have little credibility. He’s the founder of an outfit called the American Civil Rights Institute, which has as its mission to educate the public “about the need to move beyond racial and gender preferences.”
People can engage in meaningful discussion about the pros and cons of affirmative action as a policy, however, Connerly finds no problem that his largest ally in support of a ballot initiative in Michigan to amend the state constitution to end AA policies in public government is the Klan. He has made himself a joke, and undercuts any serious arguments he could bring to the table.
This isn’t the only time Connerly has found friends in organized bigotry — last month he shook hands with the chair of the Michigan chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white separatist group. Unhinged.
In the 39-second clip posted on YouTube.com, Mark Bernstein of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission says Connerly’s group has no support from notable civil rights groups.“In fact just to illustrate how extreme and radical this group is,” Bernstein says, “the only large organization that’s endorsed the MCRI is the Ku Klux Klan.” Then the clip cuts to Connerly.
“If the Ku Klux Klan thinks that equality is right, God bless them,” Connerly says. “Thank them for finally reaching the point where logic and reason are being applied, instead of hate.”…David Waymire, a spokesman for One United Michigan, which supports affirmative action and opposes Proposal 2, doesn’t accept Connerly’s explanation of his statement.
“Do you think anybody really believes the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights?” Waymire said. “The Klan deserves to be rejected at every turn, not embraced. They have been playing the race card from Day One.”
Hat tip, Think Progress.
Another question for the hive mind: Are Democrats functionally unable to stand up for themselves in the face of asinine Republican criticisms? I might be off-base here, but this story that’s coming out of Houston about a Democratic cave-in really got under my skin. Basically, the city health department started a campaign where they provided free flu shots at polling locations. You did not have to vote to get a shot, and you certainly didn’t have to agree to vote a certain way to get the shot. You just had to be over 50. The article says the program was targeted “in predominantly Hispanic and black neighborhoods”, which is bizarro journalist code for lower income areas. Naturally, the Republicans threw an absolute shit fit at the idea that elderly poor people could both vote and get their flu shot in one outing. Well, and to be fair, they knew as we all do that such a program might increase turnout in Democratic-voting neighborhoods.
So the mayor of Houston Bill White, who is a Democrat, yanked the program. Which means, according to this story, that people who were expecting a flu shot are going without.
Harold Dickey, 81, already had participated in that process by voting several days ago but missed out on a flu shot when he arrived at the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center on Wednesday about 10 minutes after White’s order took effect.
“Well, that’s just a bunch of so-and-so,” Dickey said when told the vaccine program was closed because of accusations that it was politically motivated. “That’s a hell of a thing to do.”
“The shot wasn’t tied to my vote in any way,” he said.
I think Mayor White is probably being disingenous when he says there was no political motivation to this program, but I guarantee that wasn’t the only motivation. Here’s what bugs me about this: Political motivations aside, the twin goals of getting the flu shot out and the unspoken goal of increasing voter turnout are two things the government does all the time, and are generally considered good things. When the Republicans started doing their usual squawking, White had a good opportunity to demonize the hell out of them by asking why they oppose racial minorities voting and/or why they oppose flu prevention. Put them on the defensive. Sure, it’s all a load, but that’s politics. Granted, he might be rolling over to make them look bad, but you could accomplish the same goal by putting them on the defensive while keeping a program going that serves two important public services.
It’s clear that this program is within the bounds of the law, according to the article.
Scott Haywood, a spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, also a Republican, said in an e-mail that “there is nothing wrong with a health clinic being located at the same site that voting is taking place,” provided that people weren’t required to vote to get the service.
A big time Republican approved it, so there you go. Early voting places are often set up in places where people are running other errands, like grocery stores. It’s a good idea; Texas has some of the highest voter turnout rates in the country for a reason. It’s a shame to see the Republican party attacking our long tradition of prioritizing high voter turnout and letting our elections commissions think of creative ways to encourage voting. But they are doing the usual whine-a-thon routine.
“I think the program was completely motivated by a plan to turn out Democratic voters,” said Harris County Republican Chairman Jared Woodfill.
Woodfill said the program violated a provision in state law that prohibits any benefit or consideration in exchange for a vote. He said the local GOP is pledging $1,000 to provide free vaccinations the day after Election Day, and he called on the city and the localDemocratic Party to match the pledge.
$1000 probably doesn’t buy you a lot of flu shots, so basically, he’s just be an ass and wants a cookie for it. Which is Politics 101, so no big deal. The real level of assholery here has to do with the fact that the Republicans are clutching their pearls and acting just so damn offended that the idea that the Democrats might be a little extra supportive of a good program because it might result in a few extra votes for them, when it was practically yesterday that the Republicans spearheaded a full-scale gerrymandering nightmare on this state the resulted in congresspeople fleeing the state, lawsuits that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and eventually the indictment of Tom DeLay for illegal fund-raising for this effort. All of this has a not-subtle racist air to it, from the gerrymandering which targeted black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the sense that Texas Republicans are running around freaking out about the recent surge in the population of Houston of transplants from New Orleans. Now this. The underlying tension here is that for all that Texas is a huge red state, we’re becoming increasingly urbanized, and urban areas tend to swing to the left. Things are looking dark for Texas right now, but the Republican hold on this state might not be as strong as the common wisdom would dictate.
Jeralyn sent me this story aout a gang rape victim in Saudi Arabia who got sentenced for 90 lashes for being alone with a male friend. It appears that the court was fishing for a reason to convict her of something, because they just can’t tolerate actually signing onto the idea that rape is the fault of rapists. Anyway, that said, one thing about these convictions you hear about always bugs me—doesn’t the Koran demand four male witnesses to prove that a woman is an adulterer? If that’s so, I find it interesting how much that law is strained by so-called fundamentalists so they can read into what they want to see.
Dr. Kent “Dr. Dino” Hovind, Florida fundie who is the head of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry, faces a maximum of 288 years in prison for refusing to pay employee-related taxes at his Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, among other crimes, including falsifying bankruptcy documents, filing a false and frivolous lawsuit and complaints against the IRS, destroying records, and threatening to harm IRS investigators.
Hovind claimed that he didn’t have to pay taxes (citing paying them violated his religious beliefs), and that he was being persecuted for being a creationist (see my earlier post).
His wife Jo is also going to do hard time. (Pensacola News):
Pensacola evangelist and tax protester Kent Hovind winked at his wife and gave her a reassuring smile as he was led away to jail. Jo Hovind clutched the necktie he had been wearing. She kept her eyes on her husband until he was out of sight.A 12-person jury deliberated for 2½ hours on Thursday before finding the couple guilty of all counts in their tax-fraud case. Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.
…Kent Hovind, whose life’s mission is to debunk evolution, says he and his employees are workers of God and therefore exempt from paying taxes. He pays his employees in cash and does not withhold their taxes or pay his share as an employer.
“There’s a difference between wrong and committing a crime,” Richey said in his closing argument. “You can do all the wrong things you want and still not commit a crime.”
Ted Haggard was on leave pending an investigation by his church; it didn’t take long. After all, how could anyone reconcile the list of lies and half-truths from Pastor Ted’s own mouth as he floundered to explain his hypocritical actions? The church’s press release, hat tip, A’blog:
November 4, 2006Gee, what do you think will be in the “letter of explanation” regarding his “massage”?FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Life Church
Colorado Springs, ColoradoWe, the Overseer Board of New Life Church, have concluded our deliberations concerning the moral failings of Pastor Ted Haggard. Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct.
The language of our church bylaws state that as Overseers we must decide in cases where the Senior Pastor has “demonstrated immoral conduct” whether we must “remove the pastor from his position or to discipline him in any way they deem necessary.”
In consultation with leading evangelicals and experts familiar with the type of behavior Pastor Haggard has demonstrated, we have decided that the most positive and productive direction for our church is his dismissal and removal.
In addition, the Overseers will continue to explore the depth of Pastor Haggard’s offense so that a plan of healing and restoration can begin.
Pastor Haggard and his wife have been informed of this decision. They have agreed as well that he should be dismissed and that a new pastor for New Life Church should be selected according to the rules of replacement in the bylaws.
That process will begin immediately in hopes that a new pastor can be confirmed by the end of the year 2006. In the interim, Ross Parsley will function as the leader of the church with full support of the Overseers.
A letter of explanation and apology by Pastor Haggard as well as a word of encouragement from Gayle Haggard will be read in the 9:00 and 11:00 service of New Life Church.
Also, as John mentioned — where is Colorado’s Marilyn Musgrave in all of this? Has she made any comment?
I can’t wait for Daddy D to weigh in, since he’s Pastor Ted’s good friend and all.
As I recounted over at my pad over the last couple of days, Pastor Ted’s outlandish statements are what did him in. He just couldn’t stop talking…
Why does he like her so much? Is she a better feminist than me?
A couple of interesting posts—Lauren at Faux Real has the best thoughts to date that I’ve read on conquering the issue of making feminism “for everyone”. I would like to add that in my experience, the carping and bitching about the teeny details of femininity is amplified in the blogosphere because of the nature of posting and commenting. Outside of the internet, feminist activism is pretty much never about shaving or lipstick, or purity contests. And that’s because purity contests are based on a fallacy that Lauren describes well:
We can follow this “too bourgie� process right to the root, right down to things even the most virtuous of progressives can’t deny are oppressive. Think beyond hairless bodies and designer handbags: All of industrial culture is oppressive. Industrial culture is hateful, wasteful, violent, racist, misogynist, and murderous, and we live in it.
You are complicit when you wear that t-shirt. You are complicit when you put a new ream of paper in the xerox machine. You are complicit when you drink a coke. You are complicit when you take a hot shower. Pretending you are somehow exempt from moral culpability for the oppressive state in which we live is disingenuous at best, delusional at worst. We have got to stop erecting pedestals for ourselves to sit on.
When you’re an activist (or an artist), you have to acknowledge you live in the world and can’t escape using the pre-existing modes of communication to affect change. This is frustrating, no doubt, because we’d all like to believe in the myth of opting out completely, of simply being a pure whatever. Americans, for various reasons, are particularly fond of the myth of man as an island. But activists learn pretty quickly to use what you’ve got—Lauren will be happy to know that while people are claiming that you can’t be a feminist role model if you wear lipstick on the internets, in the real world, activists have clued into the fact that beauty parlors are a great place to get out the message to domestic violence victims that they have options and can escape. As an example.
Check out Rebecca Traister’s review of the show “Ugly Betty”. I’ve been sort of wanting to write something similiar, but hadn’t for various reasons. So, I’m glad she wrote it, so I don’t have to.
Warning: If you’re very spoiler-sensitive, this post might spoil you some. I try to give away less than the damn trailer, though.
My bad was in not really paying attention to the Ali G. thing, I’ll admit up front. I’d heard about it, seen a couple of clips, but never gave it much mind. So I only really noticed how awesome Sacha Baron Cohen was when I saw The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, where he played Ricky Bobby’s antagonist, a French F1 driver. In my mind, he was absolutely the best thing about that movie—and I really liked it all around—because he completely works over the audience’s expectations. He initially seems to be pandering to the audience’s prejudices about a character like his, who is effete, gay, highly educated, classy, and has no time for mediocrity. Also, French. The structure of the film also casts him as the bad guy, the enemy that Ricky Bobby must defeat, etc. But slowly over the course of the film, you begin to realize that Cohen’s character is the good guy, though obviously not the hero of the movie, and his role is to be a standard for Ricky Bobby to live up to. It could have been ham-fisted, but Cohen’s such a good actor, it’s just not. At no point does he drop the stereotypical behaviors, he just brings you over to realizing that if his Frenchness, gayness, and disdain for mediocrity bother you, then there’s something wrong with you, not him.
In Borat, which I saw last night, he does the opposite. He takes a character that the audience is conditioned to treat with condescending affection—the wide-eyed foreigner—and makes him such a relentless asshole that eventually, whether you like it or not, you have to admit that he’s irredeemable. Cohen’s schtick of never breaking character, pulling pranks, and making the humor about this audience’s reaction owes a lot to Andy Kaufman, and I like to think that the character of Borat is in no small part Cohen’s way of rectifying the problem’s with Kaufman’s weakest character, Latka Gravas. From what I understand, Kaufman didn’t really like Latka, which was supposed to be a one-time thing but ended up being paying work, so he had to do it. Latka was the sort of comic character that’s perfect for mediocre sitcoms, no real humor there but also makes the audience feel superior and comfortable. Cohen owes a lot to the existence of the character, though, because people are so well-trained to treat bumbling foreigners from vague Eastern European countries with condescending good will. Cohen exploits that stereotype for all it’s worth, setting people up to be generous towards him, and then going in for the kill.
Some of the pranks Cohen plays in the movie would almost be cruel, since you keep flinching and worrying about how the targets must feel coming across so badly on film. But when you think about it again, you realize that nobody in the movie embarrasses themselves unless they were assholes to begin with. What makes Borat such an awful guy is that he’s a racist, misogynist, superstitious, nationalist, oblivious pig—and he draws that out in Americans who are the same. The film is not everyone’s cup of tea—the satire is cutting and dark, and there are relentless jokes about racism and war-mongering and rape, and Cohen just trusts that his audience knows these things are horrible. His major schtick is luring people to admit to harboring outrageous beliefs, and believe me, they are outrageous. Because the character is the protagonist, people might be inclined to think that Cohen and his producers are promoting these attitudes, but my take on it was they weren’t—they are trying to drag the beliefs that people mutter behind closed doors screaming into the sunlight so that the audience, while laughing, is also getting the message that we Americans aren’t as great as we like to think we are.
That’s why I have to agree with Stephanie Zacharek that the Anti-Defamation League’s concerns about this movie are troubling. From their press release:
We are concerned, however, that one serious pitfall is that the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry.
While Mr. Cohen’s brand of humor may be tasteless and even offensive to some, we understand that the intent is to dash stereotypes, not to perpetuate them. It is our hope that everyone in the audience will come away with an understanding that some types of comedy that work well on screen do not necessarily translate well in the real world — especially when attempted on others through retelling or mimicry.
The frustrating thing about this press release is that out of all the various bigotries that Cohen mocks in the movie, anti-Semitism is easily the most over-the-top. Even the most determined, idiotic anti-Semite watching this movie would get the idea that it’s not Jews that are being mocked, it’s his own bigotry. The bigots and misogynists and nationalists that Cohen holds up for ridicule in this movie might be simple-minded, but I don’t think they’re so stupid as not to pick up on the fact that it’s shameful what he gets them to admit on camera. In fact, they are quite aware that they have to whisper their beliefs behind closed doors. The entire premise of the movie is that bigotry festers behind closed doors and in whispers because people who conceal their beliefs don’t have them challenged. At every corner of this movie, Cohen is making that point, that people sequester and seclude themselves (or even just drown each other out, as in a scene where they actually do a voiceover to show how he’s zoning out a feminist who’s trying to talk to him) in order to protect their bigotry. At worst, anti-Semites watching the movie will get the message that they look like jackasses and they need to be even more guarded if they want to continue being anti-Semites. And if that happens, I hope Cohen snags them on-camera admitting to their putrid beliefs at some point in the future.
All this makes it sound as if the movie’s not funny, but I promise you, it was non-stop laughing throughout. Cohen’s funnier than Andy Kaufman, I think. He’s much more irreverant, and to make this feminist heart beat faster, he’s particularly irreverant towards sexism and America’s non-stop sexual commodification. In fact, he is to a degree that you find yourself second-guessing if he’s targeting what you think he is, so rarely do you see male comedians take a skeptical attitude towards certain sexist bugaboos. It’s particularly awesome that he questions male entitlement to an endless stream of fantasy sex objects, an entitlement that most bad-boy comedians treat as sacrosanct. I definitely want to see it again; I was so impressed by his bravery and was laughing so hard that I’m sure there’s a ton of great stuff that I missed.
See the end of the post for out exciting conclusion!
On the last installment of me-dealing-with-Feminists for Lifes’s email series “Pro-Woman Answers to Pro-Choice Questions”, I pointed out that their basis for being “feminist” was a stated opposition to coercion, which sounds feminist until you realize that they’re only opposed to coercion if the final result—an abortion—is not what they want. They are happy to coerce women into having children against our will. They’ve spent the whole series trying to come up with reasons women have abortions, as if all women naturally want to have baby after baby and if they don’t, there must be something wrong with them. In a free society, there’s only one reason that counts as to why women have abortions: they are pregnant and don’t want to be. FFL has dealt, often through outright lies, with some of these reasons women might not want to be pregnant. If they were real feminists, though, they’d probably figure the reasons women might not want to turn their body over to pregnancy at any point in time are as diverse as women themselves.
Knowing that they have to deal with this to appear “feminist”, this week’s email is: What if she just doesn’t want it?
Sounds about right to me. Some of us just don’t want children or more children or children now. I’m one of those who doesn’t want them, period. Granted, I take the necessary precaution of using contraception, but FFL won’t address the effectiveness of contraception as an abortion-preventative. And anyway, sometimes contraception fails and you need abortion as a back-up plan. FFL might sound all soft and cozy invoking women who are poor and need financial assistance to have babies they do want, and that’s great if they’re sincere, but that doesn’t change the basic fact that they are out to get women like me who don’t want kids and don’t want the government choosing for us.
What say these “feminists” to me?
Guttmacher Institute statistics show that there are reasons, often financial or emotional, why a woman feels she must have an abortion. We must work toward the systematic elimination of the reasons that coerce women into an abortion.
Right off the bat, they refuse to answer their own question! I don’t want my desire not to have kids to be “eliminated”, because it’s not borne out of troubling circumstances but actually just a function of my personality, which is not up for discussion.
We oppose abortion in all cases because violence is a violation of basic feminist principles.
It’s true. Not all homeschoolers are wingnuts.
I would just like to point out that in this thread, not one person noted that not everyone who jerks off to internet porn has problems getting laid themselves, causing them to support government actions that will increase the STD and unwanted pregnancy rate, in order to punish the people who are getting all the sex you’re not getting.
Why won’t anyone stand up for the wankers?
Please stand up for the wankers. Do it for the kittens.
Did anyone see the documentary last night? Comments?
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has been called a conspiracy theorist by people for talking endlessly about Diebold’s hackable system. I agree with Liz at Blondesense — these critics need to to just STFU after seeing HBO’s Hacking Democracy.
I watched it and could barely control my anger at how easy the hack is. No wonder Diebold is hopping mad - there are rampant denials and stonewalling by the company, as well as by election officials who are defensive and obstructionist. When BBV attempts to legally access public voting information when they go through trash an election board dumpster — and find poll tapes with tabulations from the voting machines that are not supposed to be discarded.
The freaking removable memory cards in these machines, which should only contain voter data, has an executable program on it that can change totals to whatever someone wishes it register in advance of a vote. It’s as easy as editing a spreadsheet, people. This means the outcome is predetermined regardless of what the voter eventually selects on either an e-machine, or worse, even an optical scan machine where you actually have a marked up paper-trail ballot. Even on the latter Diebold machines, the vote is verified by officials by the poll tape that is printed out and compared to the software that tabulates the totals. If they match, then that machine’s results are considered verified. If the result is preordained on the memory card, it doesn’t matter what a voter filled in on their ballot.
Who’s going to know that they need to reconcile that printed tape to all of those ballots to find the discrepancy?
Hacker Harri Hersti was engaged by Black Box Voting to prove this hack (his report here), and an example of the fraud is all filmed.
In Florida, Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho presided over a trial “mini-election” to see if the vote could be hacked without being detected. Before votes were actually cast, computer analyst Harri Hursti “stuffed the ballot box” by entering votes on the computer’s memory card. Then, after votes were cast, the results displayed when the same memory card was entered in the central tabulating program indicated that fraud was indeed possible. In other words, by accessing a memory card before an election, someone could change the results - a claim Diebold had denied was possible.John Kerry would not be happy with the way he came off in this doco, but he deserves it. He knew about the irregularities but folded a mere 12 hours after the polls closed with all the problems going on in New Mexico and Ohio. From an interview with Bev Harris (TV Guide):
TVGuide.com: Why did John Kerry concede in 2004, when there was evidence pointing to “negative vote” tampering [in which a hacked memory card directs a tabulator to subtract votes]?Why should he get a second chance to screw over the American public? You’re left angry over the fact that this hasn’t been story #1 in the MSM since the 2004 election as the ample evidence of vote manipulation, fraud and “malfunction” of the machines all over the country surfaced. Someone should be doing time in the clink for the assassination of our democratic process.Harris: You know, that was something that I was baffled by, because he had specifically promised, and collected money, to fight for every vote and get to the bottom of any issues that arose. It was very disappointing to a lot of people.
***
Familiar page in Karl’s playbook: vote suppression through intimidation
It’s already surfacing in Maryland (WaPo):
A recently distributed guide for Republican poll watchers in Maryland spells out how to aggressively challenge the credentials of voters and urges these volunteers to tell election judges they could face jail time if a challenge is ignored.Democrats said yesterday they consider the handbook, obtained by The Washington Post, evidence of a Republican effort to block people from voting Tuesday.
“The tenor of the material is that they are asking folks, if not directing them, to challenge voters,” said Bruce L. Marcus, an attorney for the state Democratic Party. “It’s really tantamount to a suppression effort.”
[UPDATE: Haggard now claims he bought meth (he was “just curious” but threw it away) and simply received “a massage” from Jones…]
The sleazy, sad saga continues. Mike Jones, the escort who alleges megachurch pastor Ted Haggard paid him for sex over a three-year period is featured in a good long piece on Good Morning America (via Ablog).
Jones charges that Haggard not only did meth with him, but that Haggard said he did the drug before having sex with his wife. The segment includes the phone calls where Haggard asks Jones to obtain a “$100 or $200 supply” for him.
What is somewhat problematic for Jones is the breaking news that he failed the first polygraph that he initiated, though a lack of sleep could have affected the results. (Rocky Mountain News):
The polygrapher, John Kresnik, said the results “indicated deception” but he also believed the results may have been skewed because the accuser, Mike Jones, was suffering from a migraine and didn’t get much sleep.Since Pastor Ted has already admitted to “indiscretions” involving Jones, and there’s been a voice match to the phone messages to Jones, it’s clear something is true; Haggard hasn’t yet disclosed what he did.“I’m disappointed with myself,” Jones said on Peter Boyles’ morning talk show on KHOW radio after taking the 90-minute polygraph. “I feel like I’ve disappointed a lot of people. I initiated it and I’m willing to accept the consequences of it.”
However, Jones said he “would not back down” from his original accusations. He also said — at the prompting of Kresnik — to take two more lie detector tests after he got some sleep. Jones said he only got two hours of sleep.
Daddy D and Focus on the Anus have been all over the news, defending good friend, alleged rent-boy.com customer, meth user — and on-leave-pending-church-investigation evangelical leader — Ted Haggard, bleating about yanked marriage amendment commercials in Colorado, and now this — a hail mary endorsement and pimping of fundie-chasing homobigot Ken Blackwell, who’s swirling the bowl in Ohio as election day nears. (AgapePress):
A powerful Christian pro-family leader is throwing his support behind Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell. Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson has announced his personal endorsement of Blackwell, the Republican candidate who is running against Democrat Ted Strickland in the Ohio governor’s race. Dobson is featured in a new radio ad in which he calls Blackwell “the champion of Ohio’s marriage amendment and a lifelong pro-life leader.”A group working for Ken’s defeat, Blacks Against Blackwell, is doing all it can to make sure he goes down hard. This is from an interview by NewsChannel5 anchor Leon Bibb.In the ad, the Focus on the Family chairman emphasizes that he is “speaking as a private individual and not on behalf of any organization” as he urges values voters to cast their ballots for the GOP candidate as Ohio’s next governor. “Ken Blackwell has stood for our values,” Dobson observes, “and it’s our turn now to stand with him. Help elect a great leader who shares our values.” Blackwell’s campaign has accused Strickland of wanting to keep God out of public life by voting to let liberal judges prohibit prayer in school and remove Ten Commandments displays from public buildings.
Blacks Against Blackwell has intensifed its push against Blackwell with language so strong that the group said: “Ken Blackwell is our color, but not our kind.”Blackwell, who’s received support from Talibangelist Rod Parsley of Reformation Ohio and Russell Johnson, founder of the Ohio Restoration Project, was a featured guest of Johnson’s 10-city Patriot Pastors tour earlier this year. Ken hoped to sew up the freakshow Right vote in the gubernatorial race, but alas, his poll numbers (Strickland 59%, Blackwell 36%) are still tanking despite anti-gay rants like this:Lang Dunbar of Blacks Against Blackwell: “Mr. Blackwell was tied to the president George Bush hand and foot. Anytime a person is almost to the right of Clarence Thomas, we have a problem.”
Bibb: “What do you think? How do you respond to that?”
Blackwell: “Oh, look, I received about 40 percent of the vote in the African-American community in the last three elections. We’re going to do just fine in the African-American community.”Dunbar: “He’s against affirmative action although affirmative action probably helped him further back.”
Bibb: “Traditionally, blacks in Ohio have voted Democrat. But early on, Republican Blackwell predicted he would garner 40 percent of the black vote. But the group — Blacks Against Blackwell — said it does not believe that can or will happen.”
Blackwell: “Many blacks, if not most blacks, will vote for me, not because of the color of my skin, but because of my competence and my agenda.”
Larry Rush of Blacks Against Blackwell: “If I have anything, I’m trying to keep it down to 4 percent and that’d be just his personal family and friends.”
“I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed. I think it is a transgression against God’s law, God’s will. The reality is, again, … that I think we make choices all the time. And I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one’s genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist, or might make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think that they can be changed? Yes.”Related:
* Ken Blackwell’s outreach flyer
* Ken Blackwell is a vile individual
* Ken Blackwell is a vile individual, part 2
Now my YouTube-ing will become even more addictive.
Texans: Today is the last day of early voting! Get your asses out there and vote for Chris Bell for governor! You never know, Kinky Friedman might split the vote and give Bell a chance.
Videos from artists whose records I bought this past weekend. Flickr pics of conventioneering here. Mostly it’s me holding up records.
I just love the implications behind the lyrics—she doesn’t want it, so she’s just waving him off and telling him to go find some one else who’s up for drunken groping.
Ten songs at random. Strut your dirty sexy cool taste for everyone to see.
- “James”—The Bangles (I’d leave a statement disparaging this, but fuck it, as I listen to it, I see why I downloaded it.)
- “Under the Street Lamp”—Joe Bataan
- “Little Girl”—The Victors
- “Baby”—The Tasmanians
- “We’re Desperate”—X
- “No Self Control”—The Planet Smashers
- “You’re A Big Girl Now”—The Stylistics
- “El Condor Pasa”—The Dead Rocks
- “Lex”—Ratatat
- “Off the Hook”—CSS
Cat pics below the fold. This edition is shot by The Left.
So much for the wingers hoping that conservative hypocrisy on the gay issue stays out of the mainstream media, thanks to anti-gay Pastor Ted Haggard’s alleged rent-boy/meth adventures. I woke up this AM and Miles O’Brien had all the video of Haggard up there giving his very parsed denial as the top story.
The latest bombshell is that Acting Senior Pastor Ross Parsley says Haggard, former head of the 14,000-member New Life Church and the National Association of Evangelicals actually admitted to some of the allegations when meeting with his church board to step down. CNN also played the tape of Parsley’s statement. (News Channel 13):
“I’ve never had a gay relationship with anybody. … I am steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife. I don’t know if this is election-year politics or if this has to do with the marriage amendment or what it is,” Haggard said.
Pastor Ted Haggard is now admitting that some of the allegations by former gay escort, Mike Jones are true.Parsley said that Pastor Ted admitted to “indiscretions” of an unnamed nature. Maybe this is some of what he’s talking about, as Mike Jones, the 49-year-old male escort, has recordings of the evangelical moral leader soliciting meth. Ted Haggard’s middle name is Arthur, and the caller refers to himself as “Art.” (9News):In an e-mail obtained by NEWSCHANNEL 13, Acting Senior Pastor Ross Parsley says Haggard confessed to the board of overseers. Parsley told members of New Life Church; ” He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation.”
The e-mail goes on to say the leadership team is strong and untied. We remain resolute in our commitment to serving New Life Church and the people of our community. It also asks members to continue to keep Ted and Gayle and their family in your prayers.
News 9 had nationally known voice recognition expert, Richard Sanders, who worked on such the Oklahoma City bombing trial, the Columbine High School shootings, the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation, and the Kobe Bryant case, listen to the voice mails and he found that of nine of 12 single words on the recordings were perfect matches to Haggard.
Jones provided two voice messages to the local news channel, 9News, claiming they include the voice of Haggard calling him. A voice expert told 9NEWS that the messages left for the male escort matched the voice of Pastor Haggard. Jones claims Art is really Haggard and is referring to methamphetamines in the messages.August 4, 2006 2:18 pm
“Hi Mike, this is Art. Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply. And I could pick it up really anytime I could get it tomorrow or we could wait till next week sometime and so I also wanted to get your address. I could send you some money for inventory but that’s probably not working, so if you have it then go ahead and get what you can and I may buzz up there later today, but I doubt your schedule would allow that unless you have some in the house. Okay, I’ll check in with you later. Thanks a lot, bye.”August 4, 2006 5:10 pm
“Hi Mike this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I’ll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever. I will call, though, you early next week to uh, see what’s most convenient for you. Okay? Thanks a lot. Bye.” [Here’s the audio.]Mike Jones said he met Haggard after he advertised on the internet as a male escort and Haggard replied calling himsel Art. Arthur is Haggard’s middle name. Jones said he has more recordings and more will be played on a Denver radio station tomorrow.
Video from 9News:
* A voice expert tells 9NEWS messages left for a male escort match the voice of Pastor Ted Haggard — from 11/2 10PM newscast
* Reactions from members of New Life Church from 11/2 10PM newscast
***
Here is a man who has made a career pontificating the sanctity of marriage and condemning homosexuality. I haven’t heard whether he’s preached an anti-drug message as well, but it’s probably safe to say that he’s performed a hat trick on this bible-beating front. And it’s all come crashing down, in charges as depraved for a person of his public persona as Mark Foley heading up a committee to protect children on the internet.
I feel sorry for Haggard’s immediate family — he has a wife and five children. What must be going on in that marriage right now? What about the children?
Pastor Ted has been working hard to define marriage with an amendment in Colorado as between a man and a woman — not a man, a woman and a rent boy toting meth. How’s he supposed to square that in his mind? Just like the rest of the religious leaders like Haggard who get caught in hypocritical messes like this. They, along with the GOP professional closet cases running wild on the Hill and in the White House, are in the same moral boat. They therapize by hiding their kinks in the closet and work out their own demons by trying to hurt out and proud law-abiding, taxpaying gay citizens.
Have voters had enough of this crap yet?
(more…)
“The War of the Words“, a stirring documentary of the 101st Fightin’ Keyboardists, is finally complete. Enjoy!
More evidence that wingnuts could learn something from monkeys.
I’ve been meaning to make fun of Nathan Tabor’s column about what’s “really” scary this Halloween ever since I saw it at Feministe. Nathan is just a steady source of examples why being a resentful religious wingnuts is just not as good an idea as it sounds on paper. I almost hesitate to link him, since last time I did he showed up in comments and flipped out, unable to mount a defense of his ideas without resorting to lies. Maybe we’ll have more luck this time.
But this Halloween I find myself contemplating something scarier than any Halloween fright mask—even a Nancy Pelosi “Speaker of the House� mask. It’s the thought of how money is spent in the name of educating the next generation.
I’d make a joke about how scary it is when wingnuts joke about their mortal terror of women with power, except that it’s like kicking a puppy. Sure, it’s like kicking a mean puppy that bites and hates women, but nonetheless, it’s wrong to kick it. Because it’s just too damn easy. Truly, this sort of attempt at humor mostly fills me with a combination of pity and boredom, similiar to watching a bunch of drunk college kids try to sing “Summer Nights” at karaoke.
A survey cited by National Public Radio in 2004 showed that 47 percent of schools teach something dubbed “abstinence-plus.� The theory behind this sexual school of thought is that, while abstinence is best, some students will simply refuse to abstain, so schools should teach kids about condoms and contraception as well. But, at a time when technology is advancing faster than our hands can fly across a computer keyboard, should we really be spending part of the school day teaching kids how to put on condoms?
I have no idea what that means, but I have my suspicions. Indeed, the hand across the keyboard is fast, even if you’re only using one hand to navigate the net and the other is busy with some lotion in your lap. If this is the only sex you’re getting, then actually learning how to put on a condom probably does seem vaguely useless to you, even though it might make clean-up a little easier. But no matter, since hard as it may be for Nathan to believe, they teach sex ed to kids on the theory that they will one day have sex with other people. Astonishing, I know. But believe your computer screens, people. It does happen.
Thanks to Patrick for the copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I really look forward to reading it. I’ve heard nothing but good things. After I finish Bachelor Girl, it’s next on the list.
From Broadsheet, some very interesting news indeed. The Lancet has decided to be a truth-shaped thorn in the side of the Bush administration and, close on the heels of letting the world know exactly how many unnecessary deaths have resulted from the Iraq war, has tackled another bugaboo of the administration, which is the notion that the best way to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is to have people live in ignorance and stick to oppressive gender roles. They have conducted a global sex survey and found that promiscuity isn’t tied as closely to the transmission of STDs as one might have thought.
“There’s a misperception that there’s a great deal of promiscuity in Africa, which is one of the potential reasons for HIV/AIDS spreading so rapidly,” said Dr. Paul van Look, director of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization, who was unconnected to the study. “But that view is not supported by the evidence.”
Wellings says that implies that promiscuity may be less important than factors such as poverty and education - especially in the encouragement of condom use - in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. The survey found that single men and women in Africa were fairly sexually inactive: only two thirds of them reported recent sexual activity, compared with three quarters of their counterparts in developed countries.
Now, the studies they surveyed are based on self-reporting, so there’s a likelihood that cultural factors skewed the likelihood of honesty on these surveys, but the results are nonetheless super-interesting. Until now, I hadn’t really considered that there might be a stereotype that Africans are more promiscious than other people, mostly because my assumption was that they’re less promiscious than average because of the threat of AIDS. But upon thinking about it a little, it’s obvious that these sort of racist stereotypes probably do have a lot of sway.
Other findings of the study are less of interest in political terms and wholly expected—married people have more sex (turns out having a readily available partner helps, duh) and the average age of starting sexual activity is not actually getting lower. People are delaying marriage more, but that’s a predictable side effect of growing industrialization. But the issue of STDs being more closely tied to poverty, education, and access to condoms—this is important news.
And we need to beat people over the head with it. What Africans need to slow the spread of HIV is not the sanctimonious religious nonsense being preached by the celibates in the Vatican and the sex-phobes that run our government. They need condoms, lots of them. And they need to be able to rid themselves of widespread poverty. Resistance to making safe sex accessible to Africans is two parts racism and one part religious sex-phobia, but all of it is so irresponsible that it’s murderous.
What is especially frustrating about this situation is that America and other countries proved that you can corral the disease by encouraging condom use. There was a time in the 80s when I think people sincerely were afraid that all gay men were going to die of AIDS at one point or another, but it turns out that if people have serious reason to protect themselves and the means to do it, most will. In retrospect, it’s not that hard to predict. The fact that HIV is still spreading rapidly in Africa is obviously the result of lack of resources, but it’s always nice to have more evidence to back that up.
The study also affirmed something sex educators have known for a long time—female power is an important factor in preventing the transmission of HIV. If you can say no or say yes but only with a condom, you’re much less likely to get the disease. In theory, men should be as concerned about HIV as women, but I suspect in practice it’s nearly impossible to get men to care as much. (At least, straight men.) It’s sort of a function of the difference of our genitals—if you’re sporting the wet, receptive organ, odds are you’re a little more convincable that you’re in danger of catching a disease through that portal than you are if you’re sporting the dry, hard organ.
Which makes me stop and pause. I’m usually not won over by arguments that a matriarchy would somehow be superior to a patriarchy. I’m unconvinced that women are naturally more peaceful or emotional or anything like that. However, in this one case, I have to cautiously wonder if AIDS would be as bad a problem in a world where the sex that has the more disease-prone genitals was the sex that had more power to say when and how sex happened. All other things being equal, I have to admit that if men had vaginas, the rate of HIV transmission would probably be a lot lower than it is now. Food for thought.
[UPDATE: the escort says he has voicemails and a letter from Haggard to back up his story.]
Oh my. Why on earth would something like this happen to Ted Haggard, the head of a huge church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals? A male sex worker says Ted was a regular customer for three years. (Denver Post):
Haggard, the founder and senior leader of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the multimillion- member National Association of Evangelicals, denied the accusations raised by the prostitute to KUSA- Channel 9. But the pastor said he is prepared for his own church to investigate the claims.Haggard, who is married with five kids, denied the allegation and said the accusation may be connected to his support of Colorado’s marriage amendment:Male escort Mike Jones of Denver started talking to 9 Wants to Know two months ago, making claims that he has had a three-year sexual business relationship with Haggard, the station reported.
Jones went public about their alleged relationship Wednesday morning on talk radio.
“People may look at me and think what I’ve done is immoral, but I think I had to do the moral thing in my mind and that is expose someone who is preaching one thing and doing the opposite behind everybody’s back,” Jones told 9News.
“I’ve never had a gay relationship with anybody. … I am steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife. I don’t know if this is election-year politics or if this has to do with the marriage amendment or what it is,” Haggard said.BTW, The escort also says Haggard used meth in his presence. WWJD?
Ted worked hard on a federal marriage amendment, and he was on the batphone with the White House on a regular basis.
Every Monday he participates in the West Wing conference call with evangelical leaders. The group continues to prod the President to campaign aggressively for a federal marriage amendment. “We wanted him to use the force of his office to actively lobby the Congress and Senate, which he did not adequately do,” says Haggard. He is also working to broaden his group’s agenda. A document issued last fall offered a theological justification for civic activism by U.S. Evangelicals, calling on them to protect the environment, promote global religious and political freedom and human rights, safeguard “wholesome family life,” care for the poor and oppose racism.Another choice update — Pastor Ted, back in the day, apparently hung around gay bars to recruit homos to come to his church (Harper’s, h/t Lindsay):
***He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings.
I step out for dinner and return to find out that another gay-bashing fundie with a closet door kicked open bites the dust.
The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday after being accused of paying a man for sex in monthly trysts over the past three years.Right. I can’t wait for all the details to unfold.Haggard also stepped down as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church, which he founded, pending an investigation by a church panel, saying he could “not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations.”
…”I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity,” Haggard said in a written statement. “I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date. In the interim, I will seek both spiritual advice and guidance.”
Jones said he had advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and that a man who called himself Art contacted him. Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard.Let’s take a look at Pastor Ted tell about the evils of homosexuality.He said he last had sex with Haggard in August. He said he did not warn him before making his allegations public this week.
Jones said he has voice mails from Haggard as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash.
I think Pastor Ted and Peter LaBarbera should team up and launch an private investigation firm specializing in undercover work exposing the Homosexual Agenda in gay bars and bathhouses. It would probably be quite a fulfilling mission for them.
I know that watching this is going to make me start throwing things and get an ulcer, but I’ve already got the DVR set to record HBO’s Hacking Democracy, which begins airing tonight, at 9 PM. Filmmakers Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels spent three years working on the film.
Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog is the place to go regarding election shenanigans, and he has seen the documentary and reviews it for ComputerWorld. A snippet:
If HBO’s new documentary gets even a fraction of the eyeballs it deserves, it’s hard to see how it could miss having a profound effect on the electoral process.And it’s the reason that everyone who has access to HBO should get the word out to folks about this documentary before the election — it will spur people to monitor what’s going on at their polling places. BTW, the NAACP plans to monitor elections in 10 states.Then again, with the overwhelming evidence already available, it’s unimaginable that next week we will actually be heading to polling places nationwide where more than 80% of America’s votes will be tabulated by hackable, inaccurate, unreliable electronic voting machines using 100% secret software to record and tabulate our votes.
..Setting a tone of partisan dread early in the film are the fruits of a Dumpster dive early in the film outside the McKinney, Texas, headquarters of Diebold Election Systems Inc., where BBV’s Harris discovers a line item and unexplained accounts receivable from the “8th District, Republican Committee.” But another segment reveals a Republican candidate from Louisiana going from touch-screen machine to touch-screen machine in the bowels of a county elections warehouse demonstrating that on each one, her attempts to vote for herself result in a vote registered at the bottom of the screen for her opponent. That e-voting is not a partisan issue is one of the film’s most powerful messages, counteracting one of the false and divisive impressions defenders of these indefensible machines have put forth.
Brad has a follow-up post at his pad about Diebold’s screeching over this documentary. The wrecking-ball-of-democracy vendor put out an unhinged, inaccurate release.
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