I got this ad in my email today.
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Thursday, October 06, 2005
Love Won Out (of homosexuality) Love One/Won Out. Get it?
I got this ad in my email today.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Another Funny moment in Religious Right History
"Tylenol ad promotes gay sex
It wasn’t exactly the kind of advertisement one would expect from a supposedly family-friendly company like Johnson & Johnson.In July, the company placed an ad for its Tylenol PM product in The Advocate, the nation’s leading homosexual magazine. The ad shows two shirtless men in bed side by side. The text over one reads: "His backache is keeping him up." Over the other: "His boyfriend’s backache is keeping him up."
AFA Director of Special Projects Randy Sharp said the Tylenol PM advertisement is a blatant promotion of homosexual activity. "Two half-naked men shown in bed together, described as being a homosexual couple, absolutely places the company’s stamp of approval on sex that is unnatural and immoral," he said. "If Johnson & Johnson had used an ad that applauded adultery, it could not have been more offensive than this."
Contact Johnson & Johnson, Chairman William C. Weldon, One Johnson & Johnson Plaza, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08933, Phone: 732-524-0400; online contact form at: www.jnj.com.
I have to say, if they hadn't pointed it out, I would never have noticed the double entendre.
Sometimes Racism is just so obvious
Said Bennett: "But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."
He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
I realize this is old news by now, but I spent the weekend studiously NOT watching news.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster
Continuing to bring you the very best in web humor...
Thanks to Steve Caldwell for bringing this to our attention.
Pink Girlie Men visiting U. Iowa
Continuing today's theme of Only Funny Things,
Here's a patently ridiculous silly moment.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
"Focus on the Family is promoting the truth that homosexuality is preventable and treatable"
If you want to understand, really understand, what the Religious Right thinks, there's not much of a better way than to attend an anti-gay/ex-gay/"pro-family" conference like this one.
In my work as a researcher, I've attended bunches of these religious right events, and I strongly encourage you to go if you're in New England. Love Won Out is the cornerstone of the anti-gay/ex-gay organizing, and it rarely is held in the Northeast. Given the current anti-gay marriage political campaigning in Massachusetts, it's a rare opportunity to see these committed concerned conservatives in action.
If that's not enough reason, Anne Heche's mom is one of the speakers.
I also encourage you to attend only if you can do so to learn how their world-view makes sense to them. ..and to be polite and respectful.
HEADLINES: Focus on the Family is focusing on mine.
MailScanner finds possible Fraud!
see below for details! lol.
Protect Marriage in Massachusetts - Sign the Petition
Today!
Dear Friend,
The threat to traditional - one-man, one-woman - marriage has never been greater.
Now is the time to take action and defend traditional marriage in Massachusetts.
So far, 18 states have acted to protect marriage by enshrining traditional marriage in their state constitution. The people of Massachusetts deserve the opportunity to make their own decision on the definition of marriage. It is time to stand up to your activist Supreme Judicial Court and reclaim marriage.
Our friends at MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "imdl.net" claiming to be VoteOnMarriage.org - a coalition of pro-family, pro-marriage groups - have been diligently working to see that marriage is reclaimed in your state. In order to place this issue before the Legislature, the state requires at least 65,825 registered voters to sign a petition in favor of traditional marriage within a 60-day period. Because each signature must be certified, the committee is hoping to gather 120,000 signatures before the November 23 deadline.
But MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "imdl.net" claiming to be VoteOnMarriage.org can’t do it without you! There is much work to be done in
a very short amount of time. I’d like to ask you to prayerfully consider becoming involved in this vital effort.First, sign a petition you can download from MailScanner
has detected a possible fraud attempt .... Then, sign up on the same Web site to become a signature gatherer and carefully follow the instructions for gathering signatures if you're able to commit to additional involvement. You can either make copies of the petition prior to collecting signatures or download additional copies. Once you have gathered the signatures, please return the petitions to the address listed at the bottom of the petition.
Please join with MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt ... in the critical effort to restore the traditional definition of marriage in Massachusetts. Thank you for standing in defense of marriage and family in your state.
Sincerely,Tom Minnery
Vice President,
Government and Public Policy
Focus on the Family
P.S. - To learn the latest on the petition efforts, visit our CitizenLink Web site.
It's really them, not a circumstance of fiscal internet fraud, but the assignment of the term is, I think, appropriate.
This site is certified 39% evil
The Gematriculator's reasoning?
- Amount of letters
25053 25053=7x3579 - Amount of different words
1603 1603=7x229 - Amount of words beginning with vowel
1507 1+5+0+7=13 - Amount of words beginning with consonant
4207 4207=7x601 4+2+0+7=13 - Value of all words
2089465 2089465=7x298495
I especially like "Amount of words." Even my poor gramar and speling knows that's knot rite.
The kicker that it's a joke site? It then recommends that you go kill everyone here.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
"Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus"
This may be better than submissive wives.
"Economic liberal" for corporate economics?
Someone who understands economics better than I please go take that test. In retrospect, I'm wondering what my answers that were percieved as indicators of economic liberalism were asking about. Personal freedom of economic choice in buying low-cost? Personal access to jobs that pay a decent wage? Corporations have the "right" to do whatever they want if it's in their corporate best interest?
someone please ponder this, yes?
what is my political stripe
Right now. I'm taking it in another tab and writing about it as I go along. when i'm done i'm not going to edit my comments, even if it makes me look idiotic. It's full of binary type statements with teeny tiny variables thrown in...
Tradition is a reliable guide in deciding what's rightWell, I think tradition is A touchstone, of many, in deciding what is right. They've asked me if it is a reliable guide, not the reliable guide. If I answer agree, does that make me conservative? I respect my elders, and it's important to know what tradition says, did, and why. I'm going with Agree.
The separation of church and state has demoralized our society.
Demoralized? De-MORAL-ized? Well, I believe in the absolute separation of the institutions, but I don't believe in the separation of religious beliefs and politics/political beliefs, which is where the MORAL bit comes in. I'm going for strongly disagree.
So far this is my favorite:
It should be legal for two consenting adults to challenge each other to a duel and fight a Death Match.Sometimes I wish certain consenting adults would duel to the death, but, alas, I don't actually think it should be legal.
The life of one American is worth the lives of several foreigners.There was that great episode on The West Wing (the government we should have), where they were discussing this. i think it was Leo who said, "I don't know [why] sir, but it is."
well, let's see, here it comes: on my dial up, it's still coming
and coming.
not quite, just a couple more things...
Damn, I'm a Socialist!
Well it says cut and paste here, so here goes.
And yes, the SATs and GREs made me nuts! I took the Miller's Analogies too b/c it was nice and flexible. Turns out if you go by the Millers, I'm really smart.
| You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (11% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid |
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Race as Meme and white privelege
Karl Popper advocated [meme resistance] in the strongest possible terms: "The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us."I agree with others that the concept of race has become a powerful meme, a powerful idea that may exist separately from observable testable reality. I also believe the concept of race, the meme of race, has become part of how people identify themselves as part of a group, a very human need, consciously or not, and how people judge others, consciously or not.
Personally, (and at the risk of over simplifying the argument) I think we can't end a meme by ignoring it, or simply saying that it's an unscientific concept. It's become a social concept that is imbued with all kinds of complicated power structures, utilized by people who either don't agree that race is a logically meaningless category, or who believe that race doesn't matter and therefore don't examine how race/identity/racism influences them unconsciously.
I was listening to talk radio the other night on my way home, and a caller, who identified himself as a hard working trucker, stated that you can watch "these people" outside the superdome and know what they're about, that giving $2000 cash cards to "these people" was wrong headed, and that 3/4 of the people displaced from New Orleans were on welfare anyway, so we're just still just paying for them one way or the other.
The (articulate and educated) talk show host didn't contradict the premise that 3/4 of New Orleans was on welfare.
He didn't ask who the caller identified as "these people" or who the caller identified as "we."
So who was the caller referring to? What kind of power to shape public opinion and the very perception of reality does this meme have? I think tremendous, and ignoring it isn't going to make it go away.
My family history of our lives as french/scottish/irish is full of stories of oppression, assault, sub-human indenturedness, and poverty. "Irish need not apply" was a real discrimination that had real consequences. But today when I hail a cab, or a policeman, that Scotch/Irishness hasn't "memed" into something that will interfere with what I'm trying to do. I'm hailing the cab as someone who is perceived as a white person. I'll never be mistaken for Danny Glover. (hell, when hailing a cab, Danny Glover isn't mistaken for Danny Glover.)
The history of slavery in America has turned into something very specific for African Americans in ways the history of Irish oppression didn't.
Personally, I'm with Noel Ignatiev and believe that one of the most powerful things that people identified as white can do to end the meme, or concept of race, is to refuse to use the privelege that comes from whiteness.
The cops that pulled me out of the car did so because they privileged whiteness and assumed that a white person wouldn't choose to ride in a car with 5 black people. They thought they needed to protect me, and, I would suggest, my whiteness.
Several years ago I was in Provincetown with my extended family which is multi-racial, multi-ethnic. The large imposing woman staffing the rest room leaned over like we were friends and asked me, loudly, in front of my two African American god-daughters,
"Are these your foster children?"
I was appalled. I had a foster child at one time, and I loved him, but these weren't him. What, the only reason a white woman would have black children is if their own mother couldn't care for them?
The girls froze, faces full of fear.
I did better than the time the police pulled us over in the car.
I looked the woman straight in the eye and said, "What? No, this is my family. Oh, I see what happened, you thought I was white. Yea, that happens all the time. Have a nice day."
I believe actions like that help to extinguish a bad idea. Refusing those moments when our whiteness priveleges us, or seems to make some kind of special bond between two otherwise anonymous people, that's the best meme-buster.
peace,crankycindy who is pretty happycindy that this conversation is happening.
Friday, September 09, 2005
The Rubix Cube of Racism and Classism
But this morning I decided to not go into the office till later, to give my eyes a break from the computer, and my hands a break from collating, but, just for a sec, I thought I'd pop online and see what was up.
I read a few blogs, followed some commenters and links, and now, here I am, not cleaning the bathroom or making bread, but responding, writ large, to these conversations that seem to say classism and privelege, not racism, is the problem, and people are being distracted by a focus on racism.
I start, like any good feminist, with my own experience.
When I grew up, a white fundamentalist, working-class farmer kid in the mountains of NY just south of Canada, my whiteness seemed irrelevant.
What was relevant was that we didn't have any money.
I wore other people's used clothes (sometime I'll blog about the first day of 7th grade when Janine, the nastiest girl in class, pointed out loudly that my carefully pressed new shirt said "to Janine from Gramma" on the collar tag,) I ate what we grew, which meant a lot of canned green beans and tomatoes, stir fried in a thousand different ways with eggs or hot dogs. I was the kid in the lunch room who begged other kids for their Tunaboats. "Are you going to eat that?"
My dad was a farmer and a pharmacist. The first, and only, member of his family to go to college, he became a pharmacist because they couldn't afford to send him to medical school which was what he wanted to do. He worked his way through college and was in the Reserve. The little money a pharmacist made at a prison in the 60's- 70's went into the farm; land and self-sustenance being the fall-back safety net for both of my parents families, generations of Nova Scotia, Maine and Massachusetts dirt farmer people. My one grandfather sold shoes door to door and raised chickens, the other was a PartsMan at a Ford Dealership working than less than minimum wage, who tended an amazing and giant backyard garden that fed them.
My dad got up at 5 every morning to feed and water cows and chickens, then worked 7-3 at the prison, then came home to work the farm. Most of his vacation each year was taken in early spring so we could pick rocks that had risen in the fields over the winter, and then later in summer so we could get the hay in. When we did go on vacation, it was camping at a state site, bringing with us our green beans and tomatoes, eggs, and hot dogs. Once, he saved up forever to take us on a week long trip to Pennsylvania Dutch Country. In one year he bought a used pickup-bed camper, and a couple of years later he'd saved up enough for us to take the week and drive there.
My understanding of racism was theoretical and far away. For my middle-school years my favorite imaginary game was "raise an army and go rescue South Africa" for g-d's sake.
My experience of class and classism in America has been a journey - I left that mountain home; went to college; lived in a collective while being an activist and working at the 7-11; went to seminary; made the ethical decision to make it clear by the work/volunteer experience I left on my resume that I was a lesbian, and oops! didn't get a professional job out of Seminary. Of 75 resumes I sent out in response to job ads for which I was qualified, I got one interview, and got this 1/2 time live-in job at a college. Couldn't pay college/grad school loans, couldn't get those root canals (thanks Will for that great touchstone), defaulted on the loans. After a year, they hired me full-time, but still, it wasn't a job that payed enough. I loved working with college students, and I was good at it. I taught january term classes in fundamentalisms and liberation theologies and such, and generally tried to keep my head above the water that was filling in the financial rut I was in.
After several years, I found a 3/4 time job working at an agency as a staff educator and foster parent trainer. It was for less money but I was actually learning something I knew would be useful in the future. I wanted to learn how to be a great stand-up trainer on someone elses' dime.
Finally I fell into this job at the UU. I was at an Exodus International conference doing research about the ex-gays when my friend Karen called me there and told me that the UU was hiring, but that I'd have to move fast. It was the first time that knowing someone had benefitted me. I applied, competed, and got hired as an acting DRE. A year later they hired me permanently, and after a few years moved up to the UUA's mid-level salary for a congregaton my size. Of course, I'm still 100,000 in default (are you "in debt" if you're in default?)
I'm the epitome of class confusion in the US. Am I middle class because of my education and that fact that I finally have some semblance of job security? Was I working poor as a child even though my father had a professional job? I'm a 43 year old woman who will probably always be a renter, w/ a 5 year old Subaru my parents gave me last year when they downsized from 2 vehicles to 1. I'm working on a Soyo computer running Win 98 on a dial-up connection, and I got my wedding suit at a tagsale. But I own 1,500 books, and two hundred videos, (which sucks, as a renter, because I'm constantly having to pack them again.) Last year I did have a root canal instead of having it pulled because I have dental insurance now. What class am I?
Class is something I can't escape. I don't come from the social world that my upper middle class congregation resides in, I don't have the clothes or social skills that would enable me to blend in, and my personal politics are to the left of most of them. I don't answer the phone b/c it might be a bill collector. Whatever class I am, I cannot escape having to deal with it, I cannot escape the ways my lack of access to money or privelege limits my choices.
So. There might be some who would think that this post is about how challenging classism is. It's not.
It's about how I can never choose whether or not to deal w/ classism in my personal life, b/c it's just the way my life is. People of color have the same experience around racism. If they're poor, it's more difficult, not instead of difficult.
Another story: It's summer and hot. I'm in a car with 5 friends on the way to a picnic. We rock/paper/scissors for the hump in the back seat and I lose. After a while, a police cruiser follows us, we watch with nervousness in the mirror as they talk on the radio, and we compulsively watch our speed, travelling at exactly 55 mph. No more, no less. Then, after a few miles, they pull us over. They tell the women in the front seat to put their hands on the dash, and the three of us in the backseat to get out.
One puts the two men spreadeagled on the front hood of the car, and the other walks me to the back of the car and says, "Are you ok, miss?"
I'm confused. I say, "Yea, what's the problem officer?" not getting it.
He says that the car was suspicious, and he wants to make sure I'm ok.
I still don't get it. "Why are you asking me instead of them?"
As the words come out of my mouth I realize that I'm the only white person. My black friends are suspect.
I wish I could tell you that I hollered at him and reamed him a new one, but I can't, because all I said was "These are my friends."
He says, "I'm just trying to help you here, Miss."
I say, shaking my head incredulously, "I don't need any help, I'm going to a picnic with my friends, what's the deal?"
He calls to his partner to let the guys up, and as they walk back to the car I hear one say, "fuckin' fags."
So how do we pull this apart? Classism, Racism, and Homophobia all had a place in this story, but the core reality is that we weren't pulled over because we were (mostly) poor, or activists, or gay. We were pulled over because one white woman in a car with 5 African American people was a danger signal to these police officers.
Class didn't identify a car as dangerous. Sexual identity didn't identify a car as dangerous. Race did.
Most of the time, racism doesn't go to the gut of my experience like that. I'm a white woman, and my whiteness is what people see first, leaving me something of a blank slate until I open my mouth and my class falls out, or until they watch me walk and my dykeness leaks.
I can never ignore the complexities of classism in my life. Those people we could call "owners," those with privelege and power, do indeed make huge sweeping corporate and governmental decisions that benefit them and hurt poor people. The bankrupcy law changes of the last decade have completely screwed me. I'll be in debt forever and I'll never own a home, lacking a rich relative with an estate.
I could choose to ignore the complexities of racism, because except for occasional circumstances like the above, racism doesn't effect me in the same way as classism does. But people of color can't ignore it.
When I tell this story to white people, they often find it hard to believe -- they often say the types of things I've heard about the incident at GA -- well, it must have been a bad looking car, or maybe you were being loud with the radio and hollering, or maybe it was because you were a woman in between two men. Domestic people of color, particularly African American people, are rarely surprised by this story.
I could choose to ignore the complexities of racism, but I choose not to.
These bankrupcy laws disproportionately effect poor black people because there is a disproportionate percentage of black poor people in our country. It's not as simple as saying their problem is classism and privelege, not racism.
Racism, classism, homophobia -- these aren't different sides of the same coin, they're a freakin rubix cube.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Respectful of Otters
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
THIS is the best explanation for why I place responsibility on Rumsfeld and Rice and others...
from REspectful of Otters, go there to read the rest:
CNN Quote: Displaced survivors in the Houston Astrodome can choose from counterfeit and abandoned clothing, toys, and even dog food.
More than 100,000 items were quickly taken from warehouses and more will follow, said Kristi Clemens, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection division.
The agency has some 1 million items stored, and Customs officials are going through their inventory to see what else would be useful. While the initial shipment went to Texas, officials are looking toward a wider distribution, Clemens said.
Respectful: At first that story made me smile. I could picture some frustrated worker at Customs, someone whose responsibilities had nothing at all to do with disaster relief, watching hour after hour of CNN until it hit them: we've got things those people could use. Disaster relief isn't supposed to be our mission, but it could be.
No, Seriously. Go there now.
Take me out to the Ball Game
Shoes, Baseball, Broadway, Texas Ranch, Montana:
Why are people harshing on the Pres and his Posse?
Our federal government were totally representing our nation during the Hurricane and immediate aftermath:
Labor and Manufacturing
Sport Jocks and Loafer Lifters
Red States- Blue States
Rural - Citified
Conservative Christian - New York Jews
Really, people. The President and his advisors were simply enjoying the broad diversity this nation has to offer.
Except of course New Orleans Jazz and the rich culture created by descendants of slaves and French Canadian immigrants.
picky picky.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Kanye West Rocks
The coverage at Democracy Now! was good.
The clip is here
There are bloggers who think that class, not race, is the problem in terms of the government's response to this crisis. I think this must come from a sense of really really wanting for racism to not be a problem anymore.
Google gives me this for a single blond haired blue eyed beauty.
| Web | Results 1 - 10 of about 521,000 for "natalee holloway" aruba. |
If there were 25,000 Natalee Holloways' in the SuperDome everyone would have sent helicopters.
We can't get people moved, fed or housed, but
Friday, September 02, 2005
Blaming the Victims
- The act of choosing; selection.
- The power, right, or liberty to choose; option.
- One that is chosen.
- A number or variety from which to choose
- The best or most preferable part.
- Care in choosing.
- An alternative.
The news story is from http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/index.html
A Conversation at FEMA:
"What's another way to say, 'It's not our fault?'"
"We didn't know?"
"No good, we kinda did see it coming."
"It's the locals fault?"
"Good."
"Yea, that's it-- it's local government and local individuals' fault. Plus, that message is consistent with fundamentalist republicanism and a lot of our base will buy into it."
"I know, let's talk about the CHOICE people had to leave, and how their CHOICE "not to heed warnings" led to their deaths."
"That's awesome, with the added benefit of fitting into our use of the word choice as a code word for death, so it's consistent."
(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates."Let's bury it by making it clear that the local folks said that bad news first."
"We're going to have to get around to saying the true death toll soon anyway, let's use this opportunity to bury the first pronouncement that changes the likely number from hundred[s] to thousands."
Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands."Slam hard on the idea that people could have saved themselves if only they'd listened (like the children they are)."
"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN."Make sure not to suggest that poverty, physical and mental illness, hospitalizations, mobility challenges, and not having a car weren't the cause of staying in these areas. Leave room for the assumption that this CHOICE people made was one that involved ACTUAL OPTIONS."
"Yea, let's not mention that drug addicts are going to become desperate quickly without a supply of drugs, or that when people run out of their prescription drugs for blood pressure, mental illness, or diabetes, their thinking will become disordered."
"Oh crap, that disordered thinking happens when people get dehydrated too, doesn't it? Yea, best keep the subject to their individual choices. That's a nice American image--individuality, bootstraps, and cowboyism."
I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, " he said."But make sure to show that you feel bad for these poor people. Don't let it seem like you don't care."
"Make sure to emphasize that the hurricane and the evacuation was a local issue, not a federal one until after the catastrophe itself."
"Don't suggest that having 4 days to prepare meant that the federal government could have, say, started that hospital ship going in the general direction of, um, south."
"Yea, and give the appearance of sticking up for the Mayor while you distance the federal govt from responsibility.""And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there."Hit again the idea that poor people have options that they choose not to exercise."
"It's got to be spun like welfare reform... If we're going to have to be helping these people for months, which no way we'll pay for, then we've got to start blaming them for their plight now."
"But end on a nice strong note of helping out, looking like a good guy."
"So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good," Brown said. "Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them."
I just imagined this conversation, right?
Where is our leadership?
Dick Cheney is still on vacation in Wyoming,
Condelezza Rice is watching a Broadway show and buying shoes ($1000's),
Karl Rove went to Texas to hang out with 6 bush supporters at Crawford,
and Bush is, I guess, in the rose garden smelling them.
Although Thursday evening he admitted that there were hungry and thirsty people in the Superdome, by the morning of Sept 2, Michael Brown, the head of FEMA was once again swearing on tv that people in New Orleans at the Superdome had adequate food and water.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Looting or Lunch?
MSNBC says, "Looters take advantage of New Orleans mess"
People in New Orleans who were too poor to be able to get out of town, who had to live at the Superdome, who don't have cars, looted (an AP story on MSNBC and CNN).At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.
No electricity, the food in their fridges rotted.
And it's not like there were any stores open to sell them diapers and food.
Looting is wrong, and lots of the looting was just plain stealing stuff, but please, there's no food for sale in New Orleans!
In 1983 I got caught out in a Monsoon in the Philippines with a couple of friend. We were trapped by water, and slept on a porch of a store, and ate a pineapple that'd been left in the corner of the porch. We were ready to break in for water and food when the rain stopped and the water started receeding. It could have been called looting, but I would have called it lunch.
The most unfortunate thing Howard Dean's said since the Scream
We
can
Do
Better."
I saw this as I was falling asleep, on Letterman, I think. Can anyone confirm?
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
McDonald's French Fried redux
Why McDonald's Fries
Taste So GoodBy Eric Schlosser Excerpt From 'Fast Food Nation' (Houghton-Mifflin, 2001) From The Atlantic Monthly http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/01/schlosser.htm 1-17-01
http://www.rense.com/general7/whyy.htm
Twisty Turny of craziness. Fred Phelps as Gay Plant
The Religous/Theocratic Right has enjoyed the useful existence of Fred Phelps for years now, for they can claim that they're not as bad as he is-- that they love people, just hate their sin, whereas Rev. Phelps hates the people and the sin. Here's a good example, from what might be called generic evangelical conservative Christians, by that I mean people who are Christian first and whose politics follow what they believe is clear and fairly consistent biblical teaching... and here's one put out by one of the more vehement anti-gay organizations of the Theocratic Right, where politics is cloaked in the rhetoric of religion.
In an incredible twisty turny, Peter LaBarbera, (who once attended a Leather Party in D.C. just so he could count how many acts of sodomy he witnessed,) has, in the same essay, condemned Fred Phelps for not supporting the idea that gays can change, and simultaneously hypothesized that that Phelps is a gay plant, not really a homophobe.
silly rabbit.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Justice Sunday II
Especially surprising is the silence on Justice Sunday, the Theocratic Right's assault on judicial independance. Normally, I'd have watched the Justice Sunday event on tv, while taping it and taking notes about who said what where on the tape, fussing a little, thinking about excerpts to use when teaching, and maybe even a little of this new blogging thing.
The basic origin of the Justice Sunday was in opposition to the idea of "activist judges," which has been discussed at length elsewhere. In particular, this right wing rhetoric of anti-independent judiciary went from bristling and posturing to outright public fits when gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts.
They said things like this: (thanks to the PFAW coverage)
James Dobson said “Consider this: In the next few months, and certainly in the next few years, the Supreme Court is going to be issuing rulings on a variety of extremely important issues, including the very definition of marriage. The family itself is at stake here. . . .
Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly [said] “The biggest threat facing America today is the out-of-control judges who are banning our acknowledgement of God in schools and public places, overturning marriage and morality, and imposing their social views on us.” ... “I call these judges supremacists,” while others call them “liberal activist judges” or practitioners of “judicial autocracy.”
Tony Perkins [said] “The Court has expanded the Constitution to include the right to kill unborn children. They've expanded the plate so that they can find this right to homosexual sodomy. . . . "
Former Democratic Senator Zell Miller (GA) stated wildly, “[The court] has removed prayer and the Bible from schools. Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus, halo, manger, and all, from the city square. It has legalized the barbaric killing of unborn babies, and is ready to discard like an outdated hula hoop the universal institution of marriage between a man and a woman.
I didn't see the Justice Sunday event. Didn't even remember to videotape it.
I got married instead.
To my female partner.
In a church, with a license and officiant, parents, family and friends.
Happy details on happycindy.blogspot.com
Thursday, June 30, 2005
I'm working on the template of this blog today
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
I was wrong
What's an old radical to do when business interests start co-opting old socialist and nazi art in a counter propaganda way. And when they do so using fake police forces. (So I was a little right)Recently, the MTA received a number of inquiries from
MARC riders concerning the "Watch, Ride & Report"
poster which was commissioned by CSX last year.
MARC contracts with CSX for its commuter rail service
on the Brunswick & Camden Lines. Both lines are owned
and operated by CSX.
CSX displayed the poster at rail facilities during
the last year as part of its campaign to promote
passenger security awareness. You may consider
contacting CSX Corporate Communications to inquire
about its origin.
MARC did not post or distribute this poster.
Please note that the term "MARC Marshals" is a
phrase used on the poster named by CSX and is not
an official MARC program.
MTA Customer Communications
I specifically asked MARC to provide me with a contact at "any other agency, business, or interest that may have posted this poster." Alas, what is clearly a form letter response didn't provide one, so I'll keep looking.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
we believe things when they fit in our view of the world
the number thrown out there by the admittedly liberal instructor and may have let that, and other unsubstantiated statements by their instructors, influence their ideologies in subsequent years.
Apparently, he didn't think twice about believing this number. It was clearly a much more believable number for him, and so merited no investigation. Tho' one might think that if one had a website/blog, they might be basically proficient in internet research.
So I was cranky, and didn't buy the 4,000 number. I lived in NYC for 3 years, my own experience said that there were more than that, by a factor of 10 or 20. I thought I'd look it up and email him the results. At this point in the research and this story, I was simply mad at this guy for not checking his facts or reading the original article carefully enough to make him wonder if apples were being compared to oranges. Very hungry apples and oranges.
Had he pondered the incredible difference, or wondered at the genesis of this discrepancy, he could have simply Googled or Clusty'd the question.
So I did for him.
The FIRST response that came up in my search was a Coalition for the Homeless Fact Sheet
In February 2005 some 36,200 homeless men, women, and children were sleeping each night in the New York City shelter system, including 14,900 children, 12,600 adult family members, and 8,700 single adults. Thousands more sleep on city streets, park benches, and subway trains. Since 1998 the New York City homeless shelter population has increased by 72 percent, from 21,100 people in shelters each night to 36,200 people per night currently.One of many advocacy research documents.
Even if one were disinclined to trust statistics put out by advocacy organizations, and presumed that the above liberal professor had friends in such liberal professions as social work and social justice, the simple fact of 36,000 beds being utilized each night would indicate that, hmmm, something is wrong here. But nope, not for this blogger, he bit into the 4000 figure right off, it proved his instincts were right all along and so a quick google was unnecessary.
The second result was a socialist newspaper. I skipped it without even looking, because if a professor at Plattsburgh State University was too liberal, this blogger would never accept anything the socialists purported.
The third result was a WABC article in 2002 which noted the homeless population went over 30,000. Of course, they also cited the above advocacy organization, so maybe he wouldn't believe that either.
The fourth one tho', that's the NYC Department of the Homeless Services. And we all trust government statistics, so I was sure I'd find something to send him.
Their statistics page has several documents. This (pdf) is the result of a survey conducted by walking around the streets. It indicates they found 4,395 individuals who were on the street and not in shelters. It wasn't the homeless population, it was the population of people who weren't in a shelter that night, those that they could find.
So I'm grumpy, still mad at that original blogger for not checking things out before repeating them, but now the NYC survey smells incredibly rotten. Only 4,300 un-sheltered homeless? This smells like the kind of rotten that is on a 650 calorie energy bar that proudly advertizes Zero grams of fat as if ingested unused sugar isn't turned into fat in your body.
Even so, my ideology, my worldview means that I'm just as likely as the aforementioned blogger to believe what is most similar to what I already believe, so the right thing to do is to keep investigating.
Their search for volunteers went out like this:
Project HOPE 2005, the annual census of New York City's homeless, will take place on February 28th, when around 2000 volunteers will set out to assigned areas to count the number of street homeless they encounter between the hours of 10:30pm and 4am. The information and statistics gathered on this night are crucial to all policy-making and aid initiatives at DHS and throughout the City government for the remainder of the year.They used a "scientific method." They divided the city into small areas, groups of city blocks, or a park, divided into low and high density (of homeless people), then walked through a RANDOMLY SELECTED AREA for four hours.
It's named much like a military operation naming aggressive action Operation Fuzzy Bunny of Freedom.
Project Hope. Like,
i hope i don't get mugged,
i hope I don't find any frozen dead people.
I hope i can count them from a distance.
That's like trying to estimate the gay people in Massachusetts by randomly sampling Taunton, Framingham, Turner's Falls, and Stockbridge, and one known high density area, say, the South End of Boston. But without counting the gay people where you know for sure they are, like, say, Provincetown, Cambridge, Northampton, you aren't going to get a statistically accurate anything.
I'm all ready to email him when I discovered that his identity didn't exist on his web page and it wasn't possible to email him. (tho' the subsequent use of whois led me to identify him as male).
So I opted to link to his plattsblog site and talk about it here.
Plus, now i'm mad at the NYC Dept for Homeless Services, helping M. Bloomberg lower the # of homeless people one statistic at a time.
Well, here's a lovely article by the Coalition for the Homeless about the under counting in this survey. They do a great job of debunking this silly idea of random sampling homeless people, methodological flaws, and other data.
So my blogging rant can stop
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
I'm sticking my neck out against blogosphere public opinion. I predict that the MARC poster is subversive art, not Homeland Security
There’s an incredible thing in the blogosphere today – we are willing to believe that our Homeland Security folk (or even the Maryland Transportation Administration) would put a Watch, Ride, and Report poster on the Maryland Trains. I believe that people are stupid, but not stupid, ya know? Agencies under Geo. Bush using Soviet looking posters? I can't see it happening.My penchant for accuracy go the best of me... and my declaration, at 2:06 pm is that it's public art as social intervention.
The site that the photo is on is of
The use of the word "Marshals" suggests Air Marshals, so it would seem to make sense on quick glance, but I think not.
Resources:
The Billboard Liberation Front's discussion of "Questions for Redressing the Imposition on Public Space"
Looks like the Propaganda Remix Project
http://www.obeygiant.com/main.php OBEY -= Manufacturing Quality Dissent since Engineering Propaganda
or The Praxis Group, "a Minneapolis-based unit which stages site-specific, unsanctioned and unsolicited projects within the confines of public spaces which are privately owned."
Other satire and subvertizing posters like this can be found at About.com here
And a nifty film of made by robbie conal “guerilla etiquette and postering guide” is at http://www.robbieconal.com/guerrilla.html (needs quicktime) The rest of the website's cool too.
Clearly, this site is doing wheatpaste, not getting posters inside "official" displays...
My opinion, and I'm sticking with it until someone proves me wrong.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Cold McDonald's French Fries...
Does anyone know why? Like, do you know the science of why they're tasty delicious when hot and disgusting when cold?
Michelle? Anyone?
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Mark Felt and COINTELPRO
This is a nice time to remind people that the Patriot Act is not without precedent. The difference is that before, the Federal Govt, via the FBI, violated constitutional rights extra-legally, now they're doing it within the permitted baloney of the PA.
The Salt Lake Tribune says today (06/02/2005 01:10:49 AM) that
MR. Watergate Deep Throat was an "imperfect hero."
Now that Felt has outed himself, the most famous mystery of the Watergate affair, which brought down Nixon's presidency, has been solved.
The larger questions, though, go beyond "Deep Throat's" identity. Was Felt a hero or a traitor? He seems to have wrestled with that question himself for years.
He was a hero, though like others, not a perfect one. The political dirty tricks of the Nixon campaign in 1972 were bad enough, but the president's attempt to cover up the wiretaps, burglaries and other misdeeds approached the tactics of a police state.
Felt was right to cry foul, even if he used cloak-and-dagger methods to protect his own identity.
Were his actions criminal? Possibly. He did reveal secrets of a criminal investigation. But there is little doubt that by doing so, he served the greater good.
One blog says "Felt's leaks were disloyal on a personal level, but were loyal to American democracy. This is what makes him a hero."
Chuck Colson and Pat Buchanan lament that W. Mark Felt was a snitch. "I'm still in a state of shock," Colson told "Today" show host Matt Lauer. "I never thought anybody in such a position of sensitivity in the Justice Department would breach confidence. And if the FBI can't be protected to keep confidences, then it shakes you - it shakes the citizens' confidence in government."
Rejecting the description of Felt as a national hero, Buchanan said "there's nothing heroic about breaking faith with your people, breaking the law, sneaking around in garages, putting stuff from an investigation out to a Nixon-hating Washington Post."
He didn't mean, of course, the COINTELPRO activities mentioned below, but sneaking out to meet reporters.
Mind you, this is the same Pat Buchanan who "opposed virtually every civil rights law and court decision of the last 30 years, published FBI smears of Martin Luther King Jr. as his own editorials in the St. Louis Globe Democrat in the mid-1960s. "We were among
(see more at the Fair Report of Feb 26, 1996.)
W. Mark Felt was a high ranking official during most of the time of CointelPro.
The Church Committee Report on INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE RIGHTS OF AMERICANS (Book II, section A. Violating and ignoring the Law) states that
"Internal inspection at the FBI has traditionally not encompassed legal or ethical questions at all. According to W. Mark Felt, the Assistant FBI Director in charge of the Inspection Division from 1964 to 1971, his job was to ensure that Bureau programs were being operated efficiently, not constitutionally: "There was no instruction to me," he stated, "nor do I believe there is any instruction in the Inspector's manuals, that inspectors should be on the alert to see that constitutional values are being protected." He could not recall any program which was terminated because it might have been violating someone's civil rights.
Thus, Felt testified that if, in the course of an inspection of a field office, he discovered a microphone surveillance on Martin Luther King, Jr., the only questions he would ask were whether it had been approved by the Director and whether the procedures had been properly followed.
When Felt was asked whether the Inspection Division conducted any investigation into the propriety of COINTELPRO, the following exchange ensued:
Mr. FELT. Not into the propriety.
Q. So in the case of COINTELPRO, as in the case of NSA interceptions, your job as Inspector was to determine whether the program was being pursued effectively as opposed to whether it was proper?
Mr. FELT. Right, with this exception, that in any of these situations, Counterintelligence Program or whatever, it very frequently happened that the inspectors, in reviewing the files, would direct that a certain investigation be discontinued, that it was not productive, or that there was some reason that it be discontinued.
But I don't recall any cases being discontinued in the Counterintelligence program.
As a result of this role definition, the Inspection Division became an active participant in some of the most questionable FBI programs For example, it was responsible for reviewing on an annual basis all memoranda relating to illegal break-ins prior to their destruction under the "DO NOT FILE" procedure."
I'm very glad that Deep Throat blabbed. It mattered to us as citizens. Immensely.
But it doesn't make him a hero.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Breakfast Club to Dead Zone and a rant about racism on tv
Darned if there's Anthony Michael Hall, formerly known as the geek on The Breakfast Club. (A great movie for Coming of Age classes BTW, read the script here, and hear a sound clip of "the breakfast club letter" (it's the second clip down the page).
I LOVED The Breakfast Club.
And now I love it that Anthony Michael Hall has gone from a skinny geeky "brain" teenager to a large hunking handsome guy. He's another example for the late bloomers everywhere (Kevin Sorbo being another good one).
In case you haven't guessed, in the 1970's, I was a combination of the brainy geek and the basket case.
So anyway, this is an interesting episode. A prediction of sudent gun violence leads to school administration overreaction. I was all into the show, thinking that this is a cool premise, a guy who sees the future when he touches someone, and then tries to avert disaster. Just the kind of mindless binary entertainment I want on a Friday afternoon. Plus, Robert Iler is in it, and he's a great little hoodlum.
So I'm watching Hall's character stalk around a school full of mostly blond and brown haired white kids having visions of the future. He sees 25 (white) kids put on a play w/ Presidents with one or two African American kids in the background and an American flag in the foreground. He sees hallways of (white) kids running scared while another kid in baggy pants and a hoody walks around shooting at things/people. All of the speaking part characters in this episode appeared to be white.
At this point though while watching it, I thought of this school as maybe being in Colorado, it seemed like a predominantly white school, which I thought of, at that point, as just "a school" (which, honestly, from my socio-historical viewpoint usually means an automatic assumption of whiteness.)
Then comes the big conflict scene outside the school. Someone threw a bottle at the security guard who was attacking a kid. Suddenly it's a tense crowd-might-riot moment.
You can see a whole series of photos from the episode here.
I've posted two of them below.
As soon as this attack on a student by a security guard started, the camera panned the surrounding crowd in a circle for the kid that threw the bottle. All of a sudden the image is of a school full of kids of color with puffy coats and hands in pockets, and one making a gun with his fingers. African American kids, Hispanic kids, Asian kids and only a couple of white kids.
As soon as it's a "riot" scene, it's no longer an all white school.
It turns out, in the end...
SPOILER ALERT
... that the shooting was in the far future, and was a white kid trying to shoot the (white) pedophile music teacher. It was averted by (white) Anthony Michael Hall catching the (white) perv. Ultimately the (white) kid who threw the bottle was shot by the (white) security guards. But that wasn't the strongest image I was left with.
The most powerful image of the whole hour was the camera panning around in circles at the "scary" crowd, some one of which threw a bottle, then back to the security guard with the kid on the ground, and back to the "unruly" kids of color for more panning.
This rant isn't about who was identified as the perpetrators in this episode, but how the film makers constructed their pool of suspects at different points.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
my words come back to bite me
"Sometimes I enjoy some of those earlier [spiritual development] states. I sometimes find comfort in the mythic literal faith of elementary school children in a universe where the good guys always win, its easy to tell them from the bad guys, and the answer to the bad guys is to simply “Poof!” make them go away. I’ll tell you a secret – I love shoot ‘em up movies. I get a great deal of pleasure in those films where there is a Bruce Willis or Stephen Seagal as the one guy against a gang of evildoers, or an environment-destroying corporation in Alaska.
But regardless of whatever moment of surety those bits of fiction give me; those are not the places from which I can make moral decisions for the real world. We must make our moral decisions based on the highest and best state of faith and humanity that we can. We must make our decisions based not on the comfortable or emotionally reactive state of faith, but on the appropriate one."
Several years ago I supervised a student employee for a couple of years at Hampshire College. Although I tried not to have favorites, Erin Runnion was one of mine. She was an open, loving, smart, creative young woman with a heart of gold.
She had a child, Samantha. I remember holding Samantha as an infant, and looking up from her eyes with awe and wonder and telling Erin that this girl was an Old Soul, that she was a special gift to humanity. There was something special about Samantha, and I knew it with that kind of knowing that isn't cognitive or intellectual, but a heart-knowing. I felt the gift that was Samantha, and spoke of it in a distinctly un-Cindy-like fashion.
Five years later I was flipping channels and I saw Erin Runnion on television talking about the abduction, rape, and murder of her daughter. I thought the woman looked like Erin, until she talked about the abduction. I resumed flipping, thinking to myself, "That's a terrible thing to happen to someone, I wonder why she looks so much like Erin. I won't watch any news today." It wasn't until the next morning when my brain would allow me to recognize that it really was Erin, and she was talking about Samantha.
In the time since, Erin has done what I expected her to. She's turned this into an opportunity to create peace and justice and protect children at The Joyful Child.
When this predator was caught, I found myself wishing it was Andy Sipowitz who caught him, and that Andy beat the crap out of him. Andy always said that you only beat a man when you know he's guilty, not just because you think he is. It was not a good moment in my moral development. I don't believe in police violence, ever, but there I was, wishing for it.
Over the past years I have watched the news of the trial, and was glad that the evidence so clearly showed the man guilty, and that he was convicted.
During the penalty phase, we learned of the horrific abuse and violence this man experienced himself, yet like many predators, he showed no remorse. I watched a man who had so viciously broken a little girl, who was himself broken, and I had to keep reminding myself that I have a faith in people, in a sacred continuity that spans all time and space, that connects us all.
But he broke that continuity, by his own actions. And now he's been given the death penalty, and I have the conflicting emotions I expected.
I always knew that one day my mythic-literal faith desire for Andy Sipowitz to beat the crap out of a pedophile would somehow meet a real life experience and not remain in a Sunday afternoon movie or Tuesday night (always after the Religious Education Committee meeting) NYPD Blue, and that I'd have to look carefully at the ways my moral and ethical beliefs and desires didn't always match. But I never expected it to be quite this close to home.
Someone once suggested that the proper punishment for murderers was for them to have to watch home movies of their victims for the rest of their lives -- just project them on the wall in their cell. I like that, except making a shamed, broken man more shamed or guilty isn't redemptive.
Is there redemption for him? I don't know.
I know that my desire to see him die for what he did to Samantha says more about me than it does about him. And killing him for what he did says more about us as a people than it does about him or his crime.
But if anyone should die for a crime, it should be this particular crime against children.
But I oppose the death penalty, and will continue to, even when my feelings don't match my beliefs; because these feelings are from an old, wounded place, not the place of hope, faith, and belief that humanity can do better tomorrow than we did yesterday.
I still believe this: "We must make our moral decisions based on the highest and best state of faith and humanity that we can. We must make our decisions based not on the comfortable or emotionally reactive state of faith, but on the appropriate one."
I still believe it, but I'm not quite as full of myself about it as when I wrote it about September 11th and President Bush.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Trying out Hello for picture posting to blogs
This is me, un re-touched.
Don't be fooled by the joy on my face, it is not indicative of my immediate mood. The photo was from a summer-time picnic with the in-laws, lots of fun people that I get to be related to without the baggage of childhood.
It only took a billion years of searching through the Hello Online Forums to find out that there is no direct way to post a photo directly to my blog profile with Hello, it only wants to send it here as a blog entry. The profile page wants a url, but Hello doesn't tell you a url.
There is, however, a work-around, which I post here for the general edification of cranky people everywhere.
First, Hello seems to hate Netscape, so use the evil demon Explorer. (I haven't tried it with Opera yet.)
Use Hello as directed, it will post your photo as a new blog entry.
Reload and view the page. Your photo will (should) be there.
Right click the pic and open into a new window.
At the top is the URL where Hello/Blogger is storing the photo.
Select the URL.
Open the blogger dashboard and go to edit your profile.
Paste the URL onto the line that asks for a URL.
Also, you may be gratified to find that finally my photograph head on this page isn't still as big as my actual head.
The other happy bit is that Hello is FREE!
Monday, January 24, 2005
Sponge Bob has SQUARE Pants
Peter Marshall: In the "Wizard of Oz," the lion wanted courage and the tin man wanted a heart. What did the scarecrow want?
Paul Lynde: He wanted the tin man to notice him.
An old fashioned filthy little square. We can tell because just as Tinky Winky had a big winky on his head, Sponge Bob has square pants. Anyone can tell from the little asides, winks, and nods, that the Sponge is a Square. He doesn't drink; he'd rather binge on ice cream. He doesn't smoke. But he holds hands with the tin man, er, Patrick.
Focus on the Family has had it's sights on Sponge Bob for a while now. Cartoon characters as symbol, as representation of the terrible sign of the times, proof that "popular animated personalities are being exploited... agenda ... morally offensive" There are people who work hard to find these analogies. This excerpt is from Focus' Plugged In Online (an online magazine of Conservative Christian reviews and discussions of entertainment), an undated review of the Sponge Bob Square Pants Movie, by Marcus Yoars. I occasionally use this review site because they so completely give away the plot, content, jokes and ending, so I can informatively decide if I'm taking any of the children in my life to a movie. Most review sites work hard to give you a sense of the content without a blow by blow, but not FotF, oh no, they can really blow.
SEXUAL CONTENT
One of the times Patrick’s bareness is beheld, he has a pole wedged between his, ahem, cheeks ... a pole with a flag labeled “SpongeBob.” (Patrick asks SpongeBob, “Did you see my butt?) Plankton gives a (male) TV reporter an adoring "look" when he asks for an interview, then coquettishly replies, “Anything for you.” SpongeBob creeps into Squidward's shower and begins scrubbing his back for him. And Patrick prances about wearing women's high-heeled boots and stockings.
It's obvious, though I’m loath to write it, that The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie doesn't just allude to the building mystery surrounding its characters’ sexuality (see the Conclusion for more on this), it repeatedly plays with it. It revels in adult-minded asides that fly right over kids’ heads and straight into the disbelieving stares of parents.
“Is it just me, or do SpongeBob and Patrick act even more immature and effeminate than ever before?” asks Christianity Today movie critic Russ Breimeier. “I had to shake my head in disbelief at the site of Patrick in thigh-high leather boots and fishnet stockings—I squid you not. Do not take your kids to this if you felt that Shrek 2 was inappropriate.” Lawrence Toppman, in the Charlotte Observer, noted the peculiarities by quipping, “It took some guts to make Bob and Pat so apparently gay.”...
So when a buzz began a couple of years ago about SpongeBob being gay, I shook it off as yet another sign of his not-so-innocent times. First Bert and Ernie, then a Teletubby, now a sea sponge? I was content to hear SpongeBob’s creator, Stephen Hillenburg, vow that his animated star was not homosexually inclined. Sure, he acknowledged the gay community’s affinity for the show that periodically features SpongeBob and his (pink) best friend holding hands. But his explanation seemed to hold water. “The attitude of the show is about tolerance,” he pointed out. “Everybody is different, and the show embraces that. The character SpongeBob is an oddball. He’s kind of weird, but he’s kind of special.”
Case closed, right? Believe me, I wish it were that easy.
Not that nods to sexual uncertainty are the only trouble spots for parents to consider before allowing little ones to cozy up to Bikini Bottom.
The larger issue, of course, is one which gets lost underneath this drama. It is a simple one. Which members of congress attended the incredibly partisan event, at which James Dobson, head of one of the most powerful anti-gay, anti-diversity groups in the US proclaimed this shocking announcement? Which members of congress do Mr. Dobson and the other political activists claim as their own?
The answer to the first, according to the sponsor of the event, the Family Research Council, is Senators Bill Frist (R-TN,) Sam Brownback (R-KS,) and Representatives Mike Pence (R-IN,) Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) and Joe Wilson (R-SC). The second is 106. One Hundred and Six members of Congress threw a no-hitter in the eyes of the anti-diversity, anti-equity right.
The FRC press release the following morning tells you all you need to know about this event at which these congressmen and women were honored and a cartoon character vilified (should that be your perspective on gayness):
Washington, D.C. - Last night at the Historic Willard Hotel, 106 members of Congress were honored for their unfailing commitment to protect pro-family values at the 4th Annual True Blue Awards Banquet. Among the nineteen Senators and eighty-seven House Representatives to be honored, Senators Bill Frist (R-TN,) Sam Brownback (R-KS,) and Representatives Mike Pence (R-IN,) Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) were on hand to receive an award.
To qualify for the prestigious conservative award, members must have voted 100% in favor of a pro-family stance on a number of critical issues during the second session of the 108th Congress. Votes taken in to account include, for the House, The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, rejection of legalized prostitution, protection of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and sponsorship of a Marriage Protection Amendment. In the Senate, votes included opposition of "hate crimes" legislation, approval of pro-life judge confirmation and sponsorship of a Federal Marriage Amendment.
Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council was on hand to present awards and Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of Traditional Values and the Honorable Claude Allen took the stage as key speakers for the over 350 attendees.
Featured speaker and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hailed the November election as an historic victory for the conservative movement. Senator Frist pointed to the election of five pro-family senators as a huge boost to overcoming filibusters to the president's judicial nominees. The majority leader announced plans to build on last year's pro-life legislative victories and vowed to push the mandate given by the "values voters" to fully protect marriage.
The Family Research Council has been kind enough to prepare a complete voting list on these issues.Don't be distracted by Sponge Bob's Squareness. The real issue is one hundred and six members of congress who voted "100% pro-family" in the last session. They voted against millions of people and their human and civil rights, Sponge Bob isn't just a sign of the times or an analogy, he's a distraction.
