modest proposal, pt 2: bill bennet, please shut up

White House Criticizes Bennett for Remarks - New York Times

bill says:
"I was pointing out that abortion should not be opposed for economic reasons, any more than racism or for that matter slavery or segregation should be supported or opposed for economic reasons," he said. "Immoral policies are wrong because they are wrong, not because of an economic calculation. One could just as easily have said you could abort all children and prevent all crime, to show the absurdity of the proposition."

[snip]

In an interview with Fox News, Mr. Bennett said critics had distorted his comments by omitting his statement that aborting all black babies would be "morally reprehensible."

"When that is included in the quote, it makes it perfectly clear what my position is," Mr. Bennett said, "They make it seem as if I am supporting such a monstrous idea, which I don't."

but, funny, though he 'easily' could have said so, he didn't say that one could abort all children and prevent all crime. he says black babies. (equating blackness and crime and being generally offensive and dumb all at the same time); and saying that it's reprehensible (which had been included in all the transcripts) doesn't take away from the fact that he SAID IT.

no give backs. no do-overs. you SAID it, Bill.

(hey, let's play the bill bennet game! i'll go first: we could prevent all rape by aborting all male babies. of course to do so would be wrong, but it's a thought, right? or, we could stop all terrorism by aborting all muslims. or, we could stop homophobia by isolating the gay gene and aborting all gay babies. wow. this is a fun game once you get started. thanks, bill!)

no judgment. just sayin'...

after waxing all introspective below it seems a shame to bump it down with common snark but THIS is TOO good: Hostage Gave Meth to Atlanta Fugitive.

remember that awful bad man down in atlanta who took that sweet church going woman hostage and she won her liberty by witnessing to him about the Lord?

well, it seems it was less the Lord and more the sweet sweet tweak of tina.

(kiddies, this is irony.)

katrina & race: post mortem

Body and Soul: Criminals and victims revisited

as is my wont i'm posting this right before bed so my thoughts aren't going to be smooth or plainly laid out. i'm thinking about the story my father told me, of black people eating dead bodies; i'm thinking of stories of black people shooting at helicopters trying to rescue them; i'm thinking about stories of marauding hordes while a city descends into chaos and anarchy. i'm thinking about stories of gang rapes in stadiums.

did we believe these stories?

how many blogs did we read where commenters distanced ourselves from what we heard and saw on tv; we were horrified at those stories and angry at them. posters saying they couldn't understand why people would behave like that. we spoke in private conversations at the office about not getting how people could be so lawless. where was the personal responsibility, we asked? where's the accountability, we mused?

i did it. i remember writing on my other blog how ashamed i felt at all those stories and images. i internalized the easy racist (prejudice + power = racism) narratives of the Black Rapist, the Black Looter, the Black Savage.

and now, on further examination, it turns out those narratives were mostly empty. yes, there was looting; yes, there was crime. but not on the level our fevered imaginations created. the shots fired at helicopters were fired on the ground; the hordes are two men; the rapes...

so, now that we're calmer, where did our acquiescence come from? why were we so pliant to listen to those stories?

don't you think that's interesting?
i think that's interesting.

more, sir? no, enough!

Have you noticed that those of us in the blog-hood seem to be tottering on our last legs lately? Over the past month I keep running across writers who, one by one, have gasped, "It's too much. The world is too much. I can't take it and now I must go."

It has happened. The absurdity and wrongness of this world have finally taken its toll on the best and brightest of us and now we've retreated to our netflix subscriptions, gin and home-brewed beer.

Katrina was probably the breaking point but let's spread the blame around: George Bush, new Republicans, college kids who don't like homework, opt out moms/daughters, reality tv mavens, social conservatives, men's rights activists, maxim readers, status quo humpers, religious fanatics (of all stripes) and plain old stupid people have succeeded in finally sucking the last drop of resistance from us and now, limp with despair, we just want to take our toys back and live in the tree house where we can remember the good old days of 1999. (remember how much fun it was then? shit, even 2001 was more fun than this. at least i was having sex in 2001.)

I don't know about you, but I can't take 3 more years of Bush Co. I can't take a whole lifetime of Roberts and his anti-privacy/women/pro-corporate crap. (yeah, it's not even his first day on the job but let me go on the record: he's going to startle us with his suckage! look at history! it repeats!) I won't be able to withstand middle age railing against some freaky ID advocate who wants us to redefine science to resemble prayer. I won't be able to muster the energy to keep birth control a matter of health and privacy, not religion. I won't be able to stay sane as we morph into a bunch of nationalistic pseudo-christian hopheads.

Maybe this was their plan all along - exhaust us with an unceasing barrage of stupidity, misogyny, various -phobias and -isms until we are so shocked with their audacity we just fold in defeat.

Because I especially won't be able to withstand the continued transformation of the democratic party into oliver twist much longer, either.

a modest proposal: bill bennett on crime and black babies

think bill's trying to be satirical?

i don't.

(i need to start keeping a list of old men i want to kick in the ass.)

chicken little was right

SPACE.com -- Huge Quake Cracks Star

according to my roomie something is waking up, has woken up or will wake up something else that will wake up and kick our galactic asses.

and i don't feel bad about that at all. the state of the world is so crappy right now, i kinda hope a meteorite breaks off and careens right into us, putting us out of our misery so we can start all over again.

does that make me a dominionist?

crafty. grr!

will be here this weekend as i hide from my birthday chin hairs.
maybe i'll pick up something cute and funky.

and maybe he'll go to church.

(heh heh. see that? i made a joke.)

grip, pt 2

March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder - New York Times

someone please tell me that the world has totally flipped on its axis and this article is a joke.

please. please?

(my two cents: MOTP was cute. it was a straight up injection of sugar right into the heart. it was bloodless, deathless and curiously benign. don't know about you, but i grew up with mutual of omaha's nature programming on sunday afternoons. marlon perkins would stroll out in his khakis and hat, say a few words and then we'd see a lioness running down a young wildebeast. now THAT was nature.

and if morgan freeman hints that predators stalk the dedicated penguin then i want to see that weirdo ice vulture bird totally snatch a fuzzy penguin baby and then fly away with its head. predation, people. predation. THAT's nature.)

a grip and why some people need to get one

now we're verbally attacking docents in natural history museums?
is it really all that big of a deal? is the idea of natural selection so incredibly challenging to faith that one must verbally harangue a volunteer in a museum while kids are on field trips?

and now museum folks have to go to trainings to learn how to deal with rabid fundamentalists?

is it just me or has the world become completely absurd?

waah, waah, waah: i'm turning 36

oh, blah.

nothing right now is grabbing my attention, either on the news or off. last week worked me so hard i was brain dead for the entire weekend. i have overdue library books, com'tee meetings and a huge fundraiser coming up next month at work that's just about ready to drive all of us insane at the office.

and - next weekend is my birthday. 36. it's depressing. my friends are treating me to a pink martini concert and that's great. i love pink martini; i love my friends. it'll be wonderful. but then, that's it. i don't want to think any more than i have to about turning 36 (though it's clear i've been giving it a lot of thought already). i don't want to really celebrate it. i want it to disappear.

more and more i'm thinking about how invisible women become the older we get. or, maybe this is just about me. i'm feeling invisible the closer i get to true middle age. it's like, ok if there's no rocking passion in my life at least let there be decadent fun. (yes i'm passionate about my work and about my writing but that doesn't keep a girl exactly excited, you know?) but no. no decadent fun. just age. more hairs in unmentionable places. more evidence of sagging and stretching.

and, shallow as this is, my bras have changed. from lacy cute things to utilitarian soviet-style underwear that really do the job. ugh. so unsexy. it's depressing, this 36. i may even be closer to early menopause than i thought previously. now that i think about it, my mom went nuts right before her 40th birthday. pre-menopause. insanity. dwindling desire. increased hair growth. more stretch marks. aching knees.

shit.

(i know i'm totally internalizing our culture's shallow view of women and age and beauty and sexual desire, but i can't help it. it's been a whole year since i've had a boy friend. dammit. i'm not a patient woman!!)

Negrophile: i wonder how he does it

excellent group of links here about Katrina, race, pedagogy, media and culture.

Church of the Masses

found via the revealer, a blog site about christian filmmaking.

(incidentally, i saw 'exorcism of emily rose' sunday after church. i agreed wholeheartedly with the couple behind me who whispered, 'it's like a possessed law & order.' it took me about half the movie to realize that this was not a horror film; it's a straight up movie about religious belief, suffering and martyrdom. once you see it like that, and not like a vomiting gross-out, then the movie becomes less unsatisfactory.)

things to do today:

1. get out of the house. (have early offsite meeting. can't be late!)
2. finish writing article for magazine, due TOMORROW!
3. finish reading yesterday's comic books.
4. say eulogy for libido.

good night

first-hand account from a volunteer in houston helping out the evacuees.

good reading and a tonic to the news.

[via heretik]

new orleans: gay- and abortion-free

News from Agape Press

key 'graph:

Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God's mercy in the aftermath of Katrina -- but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as "Southern Decadence" -- an annual six-day "gay pride" event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week -- God's judgment would be felt.

“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there -- and now we're going to start over again."

sigh.

katrina and race

I just got off the phone with my father who’s been very distressed by all the images and news coming out of New Orleans at this time. A man who’s been expecting some kind of race war since 1984, my father is looking at this moment in time as a perfect opportunity for The Man to finally throw up his hands about The Violent Looting Hordes of Black People and put us all in Gitmo-like camps.

I had to calm him down; he said that things are tense where he is. Since he’s in Los Angeles, I’m not surprised. The images and news of the stranded shooting at rescue helicopters, of the city degenerating into chaos over the past week – it resonates strongly in a city that’s simmering in its own racial tensions. For him, our people have turned into animals. (He’s having a very Bill Cosby moment.)

He woke me up very early this morning (before church!!) to ask if I’d heard the rumors about cannibalism in New Orleans. I hadn’t. So I googled it. Almost all the sites that mentioned cannibalism were wacked out extreme right-wing, white supremacists.

My father was so distraught he came awfully close to saying things like this guy is saying (found via steve gilliard). I'm not going to go into an impassioned plea for racial tolerance or some pedagogical song-and-dance about how racism takes an individual act, substitutes it for the whole and then leaps off into insanity from there. It's too exhausting to teach white folks (and black folks like my dad) about the power structures of Racism. Let's keep the conversation on the micro level.

Is that what the majority of us think? Deep down, below our manners and our politics? Beyond stats on FEMA, levees, poor planning, poor execution, is this what we really think?

If it is, the problem isn’t just in New Orleans.

crappity crap: rehnquist dead

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