And drank the wingnut Kool-aid!
This article about Patricia Heaton in the NY Times is mostly sympathetic, but it’s still an interesting article in that it exposes so very well how untenable wingnut notions about womanhood are for the wingnuts themselves. It’s also noticeable because the word “wingnut” has wormed its way onto the theatre pages of the NY Times.
And then there is her un-wingnutlike desire for conciliation.
But the main point of interest is that Heaton is, unsurprisingly, not able to grasp some of the big contradictions in her way of thinking, and that a combination of not getting it and not wanting to get it makes her a grade A hypocrite from the get-go.
For those familiar only with Ms. Heaton’s light comedy or political profile, her gale-force performance and her gleeful way with the obscenity-packed dialogue may come as a surprise. This is, after all, the same woman who walked out of the 2003 American Music Awards telecast, before her scheduled appearance, in disgust over the language and behavior of some presenters.
I for one am not even remotely surprised. “X for me but not for thee,” is the mantra of your average social conservative. You think a single person squawking about how it’s not oppression to keep “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance would hesistate to flip a lid if someone changed it to “under Allah” for their classroom? True, there could be some context issues that make the Music Awards and Heaton’s new play somehow different, but considering the source, the difference is probably, “Well, I need the work now.”
Heaton comes out in favor of gay rights and contraception use in this article, which is nice, but again, since she puts her name to an organization (Feminists for Life) that won’t even consider endorsing contraception and sex education as prevention for abortion (when they claim to be all about preventing abortion), then I remain unimpressed by her. Saying you’re all for contraception in theory doesn’t do anyone much good when you join an abortion “prevention” organization that won’t even go so far as to suggest contraceptive use, which is by far the best real world prevention for abortion.
But the most interesting thing about this article isn’t really classified as hypocrisy so much as a more telling unwillingness to see what her worldview really is all about.
And she is not, in person, prudish or judgmental. Most of her friends have had abortions, she said, and they’re still her friends.
It isn’t so much her views that cause her trouble as her unwillingness to finesse them for public consumption. She is compulsively honest, though she feels that’s not so much a virtue as “an illness, like Tourette’s.â€? Even her more extreme positions are stated without hedging: If it were up to her, she said, there would be no abortion for any reason. But she offers such thoughts with a sense of helplessness, as if she were trapped by the implications of her core principles…..
That’s a big if. Most of the dialogue, Ms. Heaton said, has been brutal: “People saying they hope my kids get sick and die so I’ll know what it’s like to need medical research.�
An utter lack of self-awareness, there. On one hand, she sees no problem running around advocating for laws that, by her own admission that she has friends who’ve had abortions, would have quite likely been the ruin of her friends’ lives, at least some of them. Not that I think it’s appropriate to tell her that you want her kids to die, but anti-choicers have to face up to the fact that they are running around telling women—women they know and love, often—that they want the government to force us to have children against our will.
Then there was this small thing that bugged me.
In her 2002 book, “Motherhood and Hollywood� (Villard), less a celebrity memoir than a collection of spiky, self-deprecating essays, she described herself as a “5-foot-2 runt� whose stomach, “after four C-sections and too many years of nursing,� had become “a big old wrinkly suede bag hanging down,� and whose breasts “had to be folded up like origami� to fit into strapless gowns. Now she looks toned and lovely.
It’s worth noting that Heaton has, through plastic surgery, symbolically erased a lot of the outward physical effects of the very repeated child-bearing that she and her FFL cohorts would force by law on those of us who do not have the money to have a doctor come in and fix us up to look like we did prior to child-bearing. It’s a small thing (though worth noting also that the dramatic physical changes of childbirth are nothing to sneeze at a lot of the time, which is one more reason it should be a choice), but a critical demonstration of how classist the anti-choice viewpoint really is. Heaton’s money shielded her from some of the effects that child-bearing has on your looks, which matters to her job in any case. But she doesn’t stop to wonder how unfair it is to push mandatory child-bearing on people who don’t have the financial cushion she does to mediate some of the effects that it has on your job, your life, and even your body.
54 Responses to “NY Times discovers the workaday thoughtlessness of your average American wingnut”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Only somewhat related but I used to really like the show Scrubs. Recently however they introduced a plot wherein one of the doctors knocks up another doctor he doesn’t know well after a one night stand. They talk about it and consider abortion-they even make a pretty daring joke about it-because she’s young and starting her medical career, and has only a tenuous relationship with the father. She seems to be leaning towards aborting, but then-and you could see this ending coming a mile away-she sees another character deliver her baby and decides she really wants to be a mother RIGHT NOW!
A show that seemed so progressive fell back on a sexist cliche, so disappointing.
I absolutely hate those storylines. Just once I would like to see a woman who is debating what to do with a pregnancy experience the same thing that happened on Scrubs and say, instead, “Yes, that’s what I want. When I’m ready and able and in a better situation, so that’s why this time I’m going to have an abortion.”
Yeah, Maude had a storyline like that. Maude found herself pregnant at 47, so she decided to get an abortion rather than go through a pregnancy that she couldn’t cope with. She didn’t change her mind at the end of the show, either. Of course, that was back in the ’70s, when you could say such things without being boycotted by every loony on the right.
That’s especially disappointing on a medical show, where it should be understood by the character the biology of reproduction and that she can get pregnant again if she aborts now.
I know, right?! Way to go, NYT, for showcasing the alternately weepy and perky nervous bundle of hypocrisy that is Patricia Heaton, obviously the very portrait of “un-wingnutlike.”
As for depictions of abortion on the small screen, check out Rachel Fudge’s astute observations in AlterNet (originally appeared in the now-defunct Clamor).
Although a sizable majority of the US population supports the right to an abortion, and two out of five women will have one, it remains a topic too hot for television–and if a character does get one, she’d better regret her decision!
Actually, “Maude” came under fire for that storyline and did, in fact, get a lot of angry letters at the time it aired.
The abortion storyline on “Maude” was extremely controversial, and did, in fact come under fire, generating a lot of angry mail.
Yeah, and about 50 stations dropped it. Still, that’s a lot better than today’s climate, where female characters are seldom shown to be even considering the decision, much less going through with it and going on to live their lives without regrets, like Maude did.
How’d that picture of my stomach get up on that web page!?
kje, there is someone to look like you in that website, if you scroll enough.
I really love “the shape of a mother”. Honest stuff there, especially when you consider that the vast majority of these women are still loved and honored by their mates.
I’m sure her “outrage” had no connection to the race of said presenters.
A close friend of mine was an executive for Lifetime television and said that the third rail for the network’s shows was abortion-related storylines. Racial issues, sexual harrassment, domestic violence– all were fair game. But evidently their market research concluded that a large chunk of the network’s viewership were staunchly anti-abortion women who would switch the channel if they had their beliefs challenged. A rather sobering thought that 30 years after “Maude,” a channel that bills itself as “television for women” won’t even touch the subject. She ended up quitting to start an organic baby food company, like Diane Keaton in “Baby Boom.” Go figure.
I like that Ms. Heaton brings out the old “some of my best friends are disgusting deviants who should be thrown in jail for a long time!” argument.
Oh, I’m certain that her “friends” had good reasons for their abortions. She’ll support them in their mistaken choice, but it’s not like they just wanted abortions on demand or anything. There should be laws to protect women from these bad choices, and no excuse for abortion is good enough–Dr. O’Reilly let us know a mother’s life is never in danger, anyway.
WTF is wrong with people anyway? I’m 4 weeks from delivering a baby, and while this pregnancy hasn’t been as bad as the first, it sure as hell hasn’t been easy or just an inconvenience. NO ONE SHOULD BE FORCED TO CARRY ANY FETUS TO TERM UNLESS SHE WANTS TO.
How can people fail to see the evil of forced pregnancy? Oh yeah, women aren’t really human; we’re just walking uteri.
Yes, Christopher. “They’re still my friends, and when the laws are changed to my way of thinking, I’ll visit them in prison, and help their families with funeral preparations after they’re executed.”
It’s worth noting that Heaton has, through plastic surgery, symbolically erased a lot of the outward physical effects of the very repeated child-bearing that she and her FFL cohorts would force by law on those of us who do not have the money to have a doctor come in and fix us up to look like we did prior to child-bearing.
Hate to pick nits here, Amanda, but from my perspective, there’s nothing symbolic about the effects of plastic surgery. Heaton’s surgeries *literally* erased the effects of repeated child-bearing. In light of the prolife mantra of “consequences”, this is surely yet another example where they want the freedom to erase unpleasant consequences while denying the same freedom to others.
General Hospital recently had a 17 or 18 year old girl have an abortion. I’m not a regular viewer so I might have the details a little mixed up, but basically there was a defective condom, and she was absolutely positive the whole time that she wasn’t ready to be a mother and a child would ruin her life. Her boyfriend and his family (with whom she lives) were dead set against it and so was her brother. Right up until the very end, I was positive she’d change her mind because there are no abortions on TV, but she went through with it. Then I thought they’d have her absolutely freak out, but as far as I know she’s had a bad few days and some residual guilt, but everyone accepted her decision and so far that’s pretty much the extent of it. It’s weird, because GH is a horribly written show, but they haven’t handled this too badly. At least so far. I don’t know what the reaction’s been, but it seemed like when the American TV channel The N censored the abortion episode of the Canadian show Degrassi, the controversy was more about the censorship than the abortion issue.
Gad, the NYT writer is obviously a big fan. He mocks actors who get involved in politics for “easily…manipulating emotions and turning an embarrassing need for attention into a cause,” yet he seems equally appalled when his heroine’s appearance in an ad that she seems surprised ever became publicly available is likewise mocked in a so-called “ugly” way. He’s also impressed with her bravery and daring in avoiding “the organized wrath of the left” (shades of Emma Caulfield, Anya on Buffy, who used to begin every interview with a dissertaion on how she couldn’t allow Hollywood to find out she’d a Republican because it would destroy her career to have such a thing made public). Plus, he thinks it’s great that she was fine with appearing in an ad to try and squelch medically necessary research until she figured out there was a famous actor who could benefit from the treatment, then she realized she’d made a big mistake because what’s important is that there not be an perception of actors in-fighting and only the nonfamous who need medical treatment can go to hell. They both seem equally consistent.
I am convinced that the anti-abortion stance is less about protecting life and more about punishing sinners who dare to enjoy casual sex. Otherwise, why do many areas that support anti-abortion legislation also support the death penalty? Many of these same people also support limiting sexual education in classrooms to abstinence only programs and limiting a minor’s access to contraception.
Personally, I think that if you want to support the women who choose not to have an abortion after an unplanned pregnancy, start drumming up for support of paid maternity leave and free health care for all expectant mothers. I would be more convinced of the pro-life talking points then.
Heaton says she opposes abortion in ALL cases — even if going forward with the pregnancy would lead to great harm or death of the woman. I fall into this category.
Would Heaton hold the same views after walking a mile in my shoes? Doubt it.
That’s especially disappointing on a medical show, where it should be understood by the character the biology of reproduction and that she can get pregnant again if she aborts now.
What does the fact that she might be able to have more children have to do with her deciding to have an abortion (or not) now? Seems to me that she either wanted the baby or didn’t want the baby. This show decided she wanted it.
BTW, there are other shows that have dealt with abortion, although not directly. For example, on Dallas, Cliff Barnes’ original bid for the Dallas city councile gets derailed when it is discovered his college girlfriend had an abortion and he supported her. And Susan Howard (Donna) was basically written out of the show because she didn’t want her character to have an abortion (it didn’t fit logically with the character).
I’m sure her “outrage� had no connection to the race of said presenters.
Because she can’t just be against abortion, she must be racist, too.
Well, I read the article on Heaton, and she seems like an admirably complex person in spite of some odious views. She’s just another confused person struggling to make sense of her life – but what a life! Her parents went to Mass every day, and hung their walls with pictures of St Lucia with her eyeballs on a platter! Richard Dawkins would consider that child abuse.
Of course Amanda is correct to challenge her illogical and hypocritical politics, but the article suggests that the same convoluted psychological issues that produce such abhorrent political opinions also give her a useful intensity in certain acting roles, so this is another example of having to separate the artist from the art.
Love the art, hate the artist!
Good thought…
And she’d have no difficulty at all with getting her vesico-vaginal fistula fixed.
Oh, I forgot!, she got all the money in the world for repeat C-sections
and all the great care that goes with them.
Stupid me. Can’t imagine what Kristof is whining about.
I don’t think its hypocrisy, I think what you have is someone semi-liberated from a Catholic upbringing.
She recognizes that Catholic teachings on contraception and homosexuality are wrong but she still believes that a fetus is a baby and that abortion is killing a baby. That’s the problem with a Catholic upbringing, some things stick, others don’t.
Convince her and all the other Catholics and semi-liberated Catholics out there that fetus does not equal baby and the pro-life movement dries up.
Just don’t ask me how to do it because even though I am a pro-choice ex-catholic (or is it a semi-liberated one?) I don’t have a clue.
What does the fact that she might be able to have more children have to do with her deciding to have an abortion (or not) now? Seems to me that she either wanted the baby or didn’t want the baby.
Good question, if asked in bad faith. The reason is that seeing a person give birth making a woman sentimental means she wants a baby, nothing more. It doesn’t mean that she wants to have a baby with a man she’s not involved with. It doesn’t mean she wants one now. A lot of women who have abortions have already had children or will have children. If the show was being true to life, she would have seen the baby being born, thought, “I want children, but I want them later if life, when things are more in order,” had the abortion and then later, after having married and gotten her career in order, she would have had children.
How do I know this is how it goes in real life? That’d be due to seeing many friends of mine walk that exact path. Also, one in three American women will have an abortion sometime in her life. The vast majority of these women are mothers or will be mothers at some point in the future. Thanks for asking!
I find it temporarily shuts up some of the “no abortion under any circomstances” folks to point out that if the mother dies, the fetus/baby dies, too; so not allowing abortion to save the life of the mother is just killing both and the fetus/baby dies in a more drawn out and grotesque way.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/12/08/anyone-see-scrubs-last-night/#comments
Jill on Feministe discussed the Scrubs episode a little while back. Above link may be of interest. I don’t watch Scrubs, but another show that dealt with abortion within the past year was Battlestar Galactica. However, I wouldn’t say they dealt with it WELL. Sigh. Two abortion-related plots four episodes apart, and in the second ep, not a single character seems to even remember the first ep (although the attempt to force an abortion on Sharon is foreshadowing of a sort regarding TPTB’s attitude towards women who want to decide for themselves whether to stay pregnant or not).
Not to mention the absolute lack of follow-up regarding the effects in the Fleet of Roslin’s decree. If the show had the guts to revisit it, and say, show a woman who ended up with a septic uterus or dead as a result of trying to abort herself, I’d regain some respect for the show’s handling. I mean, that would be a logical outcome. But it was like they wanted to do a Controversial Issue of the Week and then never ever mention it again.
Re: the General Hospital plot described by Paell, I am agreeably surprised to hear that. Don’t watch the show myself, but someone I know on LiveJournal does, and she commented that she was also quite impressed. She also mentioned that apparently one of the girl’s brothers was on hte side of her ex and her ex’s family (i.e. the “don’t abort our HEIR, you dirty slut” side), but the other brother was very much on her side and more or less told everyone else to shut the fuck up and let her make her own decision. Which she apparently did, and without massive emotional and/or physical trauma. But I imagine the show was probably inundated with letters by anti-choicers indignant that the character had been allowed to escape the “consequences” of her fornication, and hadn’t even lost her fertility or attempted suicide over it.
Continuing on about soap operas, a billion years ago, I was a devotee of All My Children (shut up). I recall a storyline, probably from the early to mid nineties (because that’s when I was watching the show, at least on a regular basis), in which a character had an abortion and the matter was handled in a fairly pro-choice manner by the writers.
Admittedly, they gave themselves and the audience an ‘out’ by making the girl pregnant via rape, but most of the characters were unaware of that fact. So while the context was one of those ‘exception’ abortions even many anti-choicers are okay with, most of the dialogue and events regarding the abortion were assuming that the young woman in question was pregnant via consensual sex.
Because she didn’t want to talk about it, and she sure as hell didn’t want to reveal something even more traumatic to family members she wasn’t close to, and who were being judgmental like whoa re: her pregnancy and plans to abort. And her decision to keep the specifics of the situation to herself was presented as perfectly reasonable (and possibly as a re-assertion of control over her own life). She hadn’t wanted anybody to know she was pregnant, it got out anyway and led to all kinds of drama, and the last thing she wanted was to lose even more of her privacy and autonomy by being forced to talk about the rape to hostile people as a way of justifying her desire for an abortion. As I recall, after the pregnancy became public knowledge, a platonic male friend (who was one of the few people who did know about her having been raped) claimed to be the father, because he knew damn well she didn’t want to talk about it.
And the anti-choice characters were by and large portrayed as judgmental slut-shamers rather than people who were all about the baybeez. Maybe an anti-choice person could watch that story and maintain their notion that abortion after rape is ‘different’, and the girl’s parents and other anti-choicers would have been justified in their condemnation if she had in fact become pregnant from consensual extramarital sex, but it’d take a fair bit of fast thinking. I mean, women seeking abortions don’t tattoo their reasoning on their foreheads.
And the girl’s sister was portrayed as a principled pro-lifer who was prepared to be flexible and compassionate when dealing with an actual person she loved wanting an abortion, as opposed to some theoretical stranger. They had a conversation which went roughly along the lines of, “I disagree with your decision, but it’s obvious I can’t talk you out of it. I love you, and I want to support you through this, regardless of my personal feelings on the subject.�
And it was only AFTER Big Sister decided not to be judgmental and guilt-trippy that Little Sister confided in her regarding the circumstances. The sequence of events was very much Big Sister proving herself trustworthy by being prepared to respect her sister’s decision, and then Little Sister explaining, rather than Little Sister proving herself trustworthy and non-slutty by explaining the circumstances, and Big Sister then deciding that THIS abortion was different. And ironically enough, the parents who were yelling their heads off about the abortion would probably have felt rather better about it if they’d known, but it wasn’t their daughter’s job to make them feel better about it.
There was also a scene outside an abortion clinic in which protesters were portrayed as the howling mob of hyenas they usually are in real life (I’ve done clinic escorting in the past, and it was not fun). The scene was definitely written from the pregnant girl’s POV, with having to get past these loons being yet another ordeal.
And then another regular character just happened to be part of the group who were protesting (even though, if memory serves, there’d never been any mention before that ep or any mention after of him being someone who was into clinic protesting, but you know, soap opera). And he told off his buddies, presumably because seeing someone you know having abuse screamed at them is a lot harder to justify than some slut you’ve never met before and never will again. Now, that part was fairly fake, to my mind. His lecture about non-violence and non-hateful protest and hating the sin, not the sinner was kind of…sappy. Not to mention the implausibility of an obviously reality-based person having thought for five minutes that hanging out with clinic protesters would be a brilliant idea. But yeah, pretty unsympathetic portrayal of these people.
Far from a perfect storyline. I hated how suffering in the form of rape served as a way to ‘redeem’ a bad girl and turn her into a heroine. Ugh. But all in all, the abortion storyline was presented in a pretty damn pro-choice way. At times it was cringe-worthily Public Service Announcement about it. I recall the character having a conversation with a total stranger in the clinic waiting room in which the stranger reveals that her boyfriend is pressuring her to have an abortion and of course, the regular character gives her this big speech about how she has to make her own decisions (even though they’ve known each other all of ninety seconds and the woman then disappears into the black hole of day players). But I guess props to the writers for showing that being pro-choice doesn’t mean being pro-abortion except if that’s what the woman actually wants. I just wish they could’ve done it a little more subtly. Anvils to the head kind of hurt.
But all in all, pretty well done for network TV, and a pretty pro-choice view espoused by all the reality-based sympathetic characters, regardless of their personal feelings (i.e. Big Sister remains pro-life in principle but doesn’t insist she be allowed to dictate what happens to Little Sister’s uterus). Brutal portrayal of asshole anti-choicers in the form of the parents and the clinic protesters, but to my mind, not an inaccurate portrayal. And a great many reminders that even a woman who wants an abortion for a ‘good’ reason may not want to explain herself to all and sundry. To the point where she may decide she’d rather be condemned by judgmental anti-choicers even within her own family than lose her privacy.
But that was at least a decade ago. I would’ve thought we’d have advanced a bit further by now.
It’s no small thing, really. She knows how much her appearance impacts her career and social status and had no qualms about leveraging her considerable financial assets to return herself to a commercially suitable form. And being considered conventionally pretty can mean a difference of thousands in income for working class women. Heaton is eagerly perpetuating the unrealistic expectations of the entertainment complex she criticizes, thereby, in her own small way, making things harder for the women she claims to care about so deeply.
Normally, I don’t come down on women for having cosmetic procedures but I make an exception in her case. If Heaton wants to be an example for women then she should accept the body that Gawd has given her and be proud of the changes that the motherhood she wants to make mandatory for all of us, regardless of our financial situations, has wrought.
In other words, stop being a big fat fucking oblivious-to-your-privilege hypocrite, Pat.
What does the fact that she might be able to have more children have to do with her deciding to have an abortion (or not) now? This show decided she wanted it.
I wish that I were as eloquent as Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, on this topic. I am not. Here, then, is her brilliant quote on the difference between women who choose abortion and women who choose to continue their pregnancies:
Did “this show” (Scrubs) decide that the character wanted to continue her pregnancy? No. The show is a revenue-generator. The calculation is pretty simple: we (the show’s producers) believe in the powerful shaming stigma of abortion, and will uphold it in order not to jeopardize the revenue stream.
“I’m sure her ‘outrage’ had no connection to the race of said presenters.”
Because she can’t just be against abortion, she must be racist, too.
It’s pretty common for pro-lifers to be racist as well, hence the paired obsession with stopping white women from having abortions and how “they” are taking over, with “they” being whatever non-white group is most in the news right now.
But there is also the hint in the section that Amanda quoted:
Though I suppose it could be yet another example of Heaton’s hypocrisy — she can use all of the obscene language she likes, but God forbid should anyone else have the same freedom she does.
Thanks for the link, Zoe. That was an interesting read.
What finally helped was meaningful work, marrying Mr. Hunt and the huge responsibility of caring for children. (“And thank God I found somebody good to do it for me,� she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t hire just any Swedish nanny.�)
Ah, yes, another one who waxes rhapsodic over motherhood, The Most Important Job In The World ™, but pays someone else to do the dirty work.
On another note, who did Ray Romano blow/have blackmailable pictures of to keep that piece of crap on the air for so long?
I’ve been involved in huge online discussions over the depiction (or lack thereof) of choosing abortion on TV. The most common copout, which was done on Grey’s Anatomy, was the ol’ “ectopic pregnancy” out, so conveniently the character never has to actually decide. (I don’t at ALL mean ectopic pregnancy is convenient! I just mean it’s more convenient for the network to not have to “go there.”)
How is it so many people seem to view women as children who have random abortions (the “abortion party” analogy comes to mind!) without giving it any prior thought, or think abortions are so simple and easy to get when in reality you have to make an appointment like any other medical procedure. Why are networks soooo afraid of the anti-choice nuts–are they really making up THAT much of the Scrubs audience?!
Raincitygirl:
Funny, you don’t look a year older than a million.
It isn’t just TV that is phobic about abortion. I wrote a play about an abortion clinic– set in the clinic where John Salvi went on his murderous rampage. The script is good enough to have been developed at Sundance, and it has been produced several times outside the USA; monologues from it are included in 2 different anthologies. But it has never had an American production. Theatres won’t even look at the script. It would be ideal for college theatre departments, featuring a diverse cast of mostly college-age women: no luck so far. You can read it for yourself on www.stagepage.info
Raincitygirl:
Continuing on about soap operas, a billion years ago, I was a devotee of All My Children (shut up).
Funny, you don’t look a year older than a million.
You’re too kind. What can I say? I use expensive anti-wrinkle cream made from a mix of caviar, embryonic stem cells, and the sterile menstrual blood of contracepting sluts. It keeps me looking younger than I am.
I still maintain that it’s pathetic that the soap abortion storyline I mentioned would probably be just as or possibly more controversial if aired today as it was a decade or more ago. Sometimes to an old crone like me it feels like we’re going backwards.
In California Ms. Heaton shills for the grocery store Albertson’s. I recall that when she came out in favor of “saving” Terri Schiavo (as an extension of her “pro-life” perspective), some people told Albertson’s they wouldn’t shop there anymore.
I sympathize with Patricia Heaton, trying to reconcile her parents’ atavistic superstitions with the enlightened modernism needed to function in the big league art world. She can console herself that she doesn’t have Mel Gibson’s Sisyphean task in that regard.
The author of the NYT article, Jesse Green, seems generally sympathetic, but one can never be sure that Ms. Heaton wasn’t misrepresented. Assuming not, from the article:
Trapped by them or glibly unaware of them?
The implication being that endorsing, even practicing, what to her is the moral equivalent of murder, is no impediment to friendship with Ms. Heaton. Or rather, Ms. Heaton is signaling her readiness to disregard the implications of her core beliefs altogether, treating transgressors the same as the virtuous.
She makes this explicit:
She can’t unsay what she has said, but she can deny the implications, thereby emptying her previous words of meaning, and thus “get back in the box.” Does “get back in the box” mean get in the good graces of an audience more broadminded than she, or does it just mean get off the damn stage and back on TV (the box)?
Now she just sounds dilettantish. The sacrificial life, dying to yourself, can’t be farmed out to a nanny, Swedish or not.
But good for her that she can mortify her core beliefs to stay engaged with her corner of the art world, not to mention to stay gainfully employed. She can indulge her parents’ Catholic obsession with dying later. An obsession ratified by Pope Benedict’s failed refutation of Nietzsche’s exposure of the Catholic fear and loathing of eros, in his first encyclical.
After accusing Nietzsche of favoring the religion of whores, the Pope takes a stab at a coup de grace:
So man must love, body and soul, and Nietzsche’s a souless whoremonger. But it never occurs to the Pope that his vow of chastity makes him as deficient as he claims Nietzsche to be. The body part, the fleshy here and now part, disgusts the Catholic sensibility, and thus its love of life can’t be expressed naturally, but only in praying over fertilized eggs that get washed away with menstrual flow, or praying over the dead body of Terri Schiavo.
So there’s my New Year’s rant. A plea to love life now, and leave the painful passage to and from to the private sphere of family and loved ones. How about it Ms. Heaton?
In California Ms. Heaton shills for the grocery store Albertson’s. I recall that when she came out in favor of “saving� Terri Schiavo (as an extension of her “pro-life� perspective), some people told Albertson’s they wouldn’t shop there anymore.
Albertson’s still hasn’t recovered from the grocery workers’ strike in 2003. I can’t be the only one who still refuses to set foot in there for that reason. (Nor will I go to Vons or Pavilions, which are owned by Safeway. I do still go to Ralphs, mostly out of necessity than anything else.)
“What finally helped was meaningful work, marrying Mr. Hunt and the huge responsibility of hiring someone to take care of her kids.” Oh yeah.
A *Swedish* nanny? Wow, Heaton must be really rich. Sweden’s a First World country. Most of the nannies there are Romanian. And I would’ve thought in SoCal the average nanny would probably be from Guatemala originally.
I was furious with Heaton to read that she filmed a commercial claiming that the process of donating eggs was DANGEREROUS and so women should not be allowed to be paid for doing so - she argued that poor women would be taking horrible risks. She has no business doing commercials about things she does not understand (I’m charitably assuming it was ignorance and not dishonesty).
Now, this from a woman who had ELECTIVE surgery to look nicer/be able to make more money, which surgery was absolutely more risky than egg donation, and yet she did it while having small children. I’d like to ask her how she felt the risk of dying from complications of her cosmetic surgery was justifiable when she has these kids to raise.
ARGGGGGG.
[…] One of my favorite web sites is The Shape of a Mother. The photos women send in of themselves while pregnant remind me that I wish I had more documentation from both my pregnancies. The post-pregnancy photos are sometimes triumphant and sometimes a little alarming. Since many of them are snapshots women take of themselves they aren’t very high quality, they aren’t Inspiring and Beautiful. Often the photos are a straight forward shot or a profile, highlighting the slack skin, stretch marks, scars and distended muscles. I’ve thought of sending in a photo of myself, but the physical effects of pregnancy aren’t visible on me quite so dramatically since the primary damage pregnancy did to me was during the pregnancy itself with the hyperemesis. Even the physical changes wrought by pregnancy are generally invisible though. Women’s post-baby bodies aren’t displayed unless there’s been plastic surgery and/or significant photoediting to pretty up the image. IRL women dress to disguise and hide the after-effects. I hadn’t realized how naive I was about women’s bodies until I saw the photos on this web site. Actually, I was shocked. Moreover, although this site effectively showcases some of the cosmetic changes effected by pregnancy, it doesn’t even begin to show effects on the function of our bodies (incontinence, vaginal and rectal tearing). As Amanda points out, further evidence that pregnancy is a significant burden that women should be able to opt out of. […]
Mnemosyne,
A quick google search would have told you that the people Patricia Heaton was complaining about for their vulgarity were the Osbournes, the hosts of the show, and Ryan Seacrest. All are, as of this writing, still what ethnologists refer to as Caucasian, or “white”.
Pretty much everyone here is doing the right thing and ignoring your accusation of racism, focusing instead on the treasure trove of idiotic things Ms. Heaton has actually said, but you seem like someone who should know better.
rob2661,
Here’s a way of looking at the choice debate that might get through to people who are on the fence:
“A clump of cells is not a human being”
Lastly, while Heaton is pretty odious, that piece in the Times makes me think that a character based on her would be way more interesting than the one Sarah Paulson plays on Studio 60. Or maybe I’m just frustrated with the fact that Paulson seems to have no talent for comedy, despite what all the other characters in the show tell us, desperately, over and over again.
A few years back, Canadian TV revived their Degrassi series with new characters. The show has been running for several years now and the cable station Noggin picked it up for broadcoast in the US.
During a season a few years back, there was a storyline where one of the main characters had an abortion. The US network will not air the episode where the character makes her decision. They’ve shown the episodes leading up to it, but they won’t show the episode where she has the abortion.
If the show was being true to life,
But it’s not. It’s fiction. Believe me, it’s hard not to dissect every movie or tv show for anti-conservative messages, too, but then, I’d just spend a lot of time pissed off about it. I comment on the more blatant examples sometimes, but mainly, I just assume that it’s fiction and the writer is entitled to that view.
I find it temporarily shuts up some of the “no abortion under any circomstances� folks to point out that if the mother dies, the fetus/baby dies, too; so not allowing abortion to save the life of the mother is just killing both and the fetus/baby dies in a more drawn out and grotesque way.
Speaking of TV shows and RL situations, there’s a show called Saved about EMTs and paramedics which dealt with this exact situation. A very pregnant woman was trapped under rubble and couldn’t be removed before she would die, but she made the paramedic promise to save the baby. He did and the father (her husband) sued him and the ambulance company for it. The storyline is still playing out but it is quite interesting.
“It’s a small thing (though worth noting also that the dramatic physical changes of childbirth are nothing to sneeze at a lot of the time, which is one more reason it should be a choice), but a critical demonstration of how classist the anti-choice viewpoint really is. Heaton’s money shielded her from some of the effects that child-bearing has on your looks, which matters to her job in any case. But she doesn’t stop to wonder how unfair it is to push mandatory child-bearing on people who don’t have the financial cushion she does to mediate some of the effects that it has on your job, your life, and even your body.”
Exactly…and in a world where looking buff (or young really) often does equate with getting and/or keeping even the most mundane jobs this is important…
“Convince her and all the other Catholics and semi-liberated Catholics out there that fetus does not equal baby and the pro-life movement dries up.”
I don’t think this is that simple. First of all I think you are mistaken if you think that this is just Catholics involved with this whole baby from conception movement. It is many others as well.
I think the issue is framed that way for one reason because it encourages that great man of history concept where all we have to do is get one man, the Pope, to make a pronouncement (which will come from another great man God) and all these Catholics will turn around and go home.
War’s over, the enemy has retreated.
No.
Frankly, I don’t believe that a lot of these people supporting the movement do actually believe that a child is created from the moment a sperm meets an egg…and thus anything that interfers with that thereafter is murder.
This is just another ‘belief’ that is a means to an end and the end is for men to give themselves a larger role in the whole life-giving process then men legitimately have or should have…
Sorry to be such a one-trick pony as I’ve been referred to but many of the things going on today stem from male jealousy of women…and this is another good example.
It’s men trying to be in charge of everything all over again…and if not in charge, at least co-director or something similar…
It’s penguins and the Pursuit of Happyness and all the phoney single mother statistically lies being bandied about, custody wars, etc., all part and parcel of the same thing.
So it’s not going to be as simple as convincing people that a sperm meeting an egg doesn’t = a baby…as they know damn well it doesn’t…but they have other issues going on…
“It’s no small thing, really. She knows how much her appearance impacts her career and social status and had no qualms about leveraging her considerable financial assets to return herself to a commercially suitable form. And being considered conventionally pretty can mean a difference of thousands in income for working class women.”
Exactly…
Gosh, sharon, I’m not going to educate you on the finer points of what fiction is supposed to accomplish, but I will say that most art is meant to be a statement on the world as it is. So yes, being true-to-life is a measure of that. It’s generally accepted that writing characters that purport to be human beings but do not act like human beings is bad writing. You may differ, but then again, you differ with a lot of reality-based sense.
I just assume that it’s fiction and the writer is entitled to that view.
Enjoy your slack-jawed unwillingness to engage with art. Some of us prefer to think.
This is why I won’t watch ‘24′, no matter how many times otherwise right-thinking people say: “But it’s just a TV show!”
Watch ‘Sleeper Cell’ and tell me they’re equivalent because “they’re both just TV shows”.
In the break room here at work, a strong faction makes sure that the TV is tuned in to Days of our Lives at the time I usually eat lunch. I always have a book with me, but it’s hard not to pick up some things just by being there. It’s like getting cancer from second-hand smoke.
Anyway, so it is that I know that on Days, one character decided, rationally, that she was in no position to raise a baby at the time. So she had an abortion. Naturally the dirty slut had to be punished for killing her boyfriend’s child, and she was rendered barren from a botched procedure.
Of course, this is the same show where nobody ever dies. The writers apparently think the audience are all complete morons. I keep hoping for a Mass Extinction Event*, but alas, no such luck.
* “Rocks fall! Everybody dies!”
Gosh, sharon, I’m not going to educate you on the finer points of what fiction is supposed to accomplish, but I will say that most art is meant to be a statement on the world as it is. So yes, being true-to-life is a measure of that. It’s generally accepted that writing characters that purport to be human beings but do not act like human beings is bad writing. You may differ, but then again, you differ with a lot of reality-based sense.
Gosh, Amanda, thank God you aren’t going to try to be snippy and snarky, either. I mean, then you would be acting like a liberal, right? Scrubs is a comedy. Do you really think that when they stereotype, say, Dr. Cox’s ex-wife Jordan as a complete bitch that it’s “a statement on the world as it is”? I don’t. It’s a fucking TV show.
I dunno, Amanda, I think watching the show without my blood pressure spiking at a female doctor liking babies and deciding not to kill her own is a good thing. Your opinion, of course, is different.
“If the show was being true to life, she would have seen the baby being born, thought, “I want children, but I want them later if life, when things are more in order,â€? had the abortion and then later, after having married and gotten her career in order, she would have had children.”
It doesn’t seem that unrealistic for a pro-choice woman to continue a pregnancy at an inopportune time. I mean, it happens.
I thought the episode handled it fairly well (Although I probably had low expectations, as I was surprised they even brought up abortion in the first place, much less devoted a show to it.) JD and Dr. what’s-her-face’s problem in the show was not really caring much either way, and not the morality of abortion itself. The only “it’s a baby” stuff came from Laverne and JD’s Jesus fantasy, but those were pretty much just jokes, and they didn’t seem to effect the decision making process. Plus, Laverne came across as an annoying pest who wouldn’t mind her own business and the right-wing Jesus came across as a total asshole.
The ending seemed a little trite, but I can sort of see how seeing the kid could push them out of being indifferent. It would have pissed me off if they had decided on abortion then changed their minds at the sight of the baby.
I must say I’m not happy with the idea of this storyline, but they’re probably going somewhere with it. I like the show a lot, even though (and I’m not sure if this is just me) JD’s character seems to rapidly shift from being very likable to being a complete prick half the time.
Sharon: I think watching the show without my blood pressure spiking at a female doctor liking babies and deciding not to kill her own
Scrubs did an episode about infanticide, as well as this one we’re discussing about abortion? Or Sharon is just making shit up, as usual?
—I don’t think this is that simple. First of all I think you are mistaken if you think that this is just Catholics involved with this whole baby from conception movement. It is many others as well.
Nymom, true Catholics are not the only group involved in the pro-life movement but rob it of that big nearly monolithic block and its very seriously marginalized.
Alternately you could work on the evangelicals, but they are alot more fragmented and non-hierarchal than the Catholic church. Also I don’t really have much experience dealing with evangelicals except to hide when they come knocking on the door to save my soul,(or alternately yell at them when I’m hung over or just in a pissy mood). So I really don’t know fuck all about what motivates them.
–I think the issue is framed that way for one reason because it encourages that great man of history concept where all we have to do is get one man, the Pope, to make a pronouncement (which will come from another great man God) and all these Catholics will turn around and go home.
Well that wasn’t what I was saying, but since you brought it up, the fact is, that is the Catholic Church. If the Pope says jump, you’re supposed to say, “How high?” It is a hierarchal, patriarchal institution. That said, there’s no way in hell the pope is ever going to make that pronouncement anyway. That brings us back to dealing with individuals,
—Frankly, I don’t believe that a lot of these people supporting the movement do actually believe that a child is created from the moment a sperm meets an egg…and thus anything that interfers with that thereafter is murder.—
I don’t have any facts, statistics or studies to back this up, just 12 years of Catholic schooling, and 30 some odd years (no need for exact figures) of dealing with, arguing with and fighting with a Catholic family and many Catholic friends and acquaintances, but my two cents is, yes they really believe it. No joke,they’re not kidding.
I didn’t even really start questioning this stuff until I was nearly graduated from college and stumbled upon Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and a little later James T Farrell’s “Studs Lonigan”. You hear stuff often enough and you just take things for granted.
—This is just another ‘belief’ that is a means to an end and the end is for men to give themselves a larger role in the whole life-giving process then men legitimately have or should have…—-
Who knows what’s going on in the heads of the Pope, the bishops, priests and nuns, maybe on that end you’re right.
But just from my own perspective, your basic, run of the mill, foot soldier Catholic, really believes fetus=baby. I’m sure that there are opportunists and grifters and all kind of machiavellian shenanigans involved in alot of it, but I’d be willing to bet an entire dollar that the vast majority really believe it.
But the hooks sink deeper in some people than they do in others. Me, I just read a couple of very old novels at the right time and the walls came tumbling down.
Just in my own family, my brother is a downright militant atheist,(he makes me look a reasonable person), my father is convinced my brother and I are doomed to hellfire, my mother is hoping her prayers and candles get us both out of purgatory sometime in the next million years and my sister
well, she pretty much sounds like the summary of Patricia Heaton’s views I stumbled upon,
“the church is wrong about gays and contraception (and covering for pedophiles but thats a whole nother issue) but a fetus is a baby and that’s that.”
“Lump of cells”, tried it, no dice. She don’t like James Joyce either.