Praise the Lord and pass the denial.
There's an interesting article over at The New Yorker about the incongruent attitudes about pre-marital sex and teen pregnancy among Christian conservatives.
During the campaign, the media has largely respected calls to treat Bristol Palin’s pregnancy as a private matter. But the reactions to it have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors America’s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.
I think there are two things here worth noting. First, I tend to think this nonplussed reaction to teenage pregnancy is just an extension of the culture of denial that surrounds sexual behavior in these groups. It harks back to the days when you bundled your kid off to live with a distant cousin "for her health" to avoid the embarrassment of having an unwed, pregnant teenager in the house. They just pretend it didn't ever happen, just like they pretend their teenagers aren't horny and dancing in the sheets. Today's version of packing your daughter off to live with the relatives is to play the whole issue down, demonstrate to the world how open-minded and compassionate you are and talk about how your are proud of your daughter because she has "decided to take responsibility for [her] actions and decided to follow up with that and get married and raise this child." I'd be willing to bet things weren't that calm in the house when her daughter dropped the bomb that she was pregnant. I'd also be willing to bet the decision to get married was a lot more about ultimatums and less about decisions.
The second piece plays into why Sarah Palin is such a hit: everybody's doing it. I can just see two women at some church social, pausing at the punch bowl: "You have an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter? Me, too!" There's a sense of camaraderie that seems to exist. These women can sympathize with "poor Sarah" and the "trials and tribulations" she must be going through because of the dreadful choices of her wayward daughter. Never mind that's hardly a reason to put someone in the White House. Never mind that it was their deliberate misinformation about the realities of sex that got their daughters there in the first place.
HT: Greg Prince
Ruminations of a drunken homo
I've finally sat down and watched Four Weddings and a Funeral. You know what? I really liked it. OK, granted. I'm gay. Chick flicks are not exactly foreign territory. And I must admit the whiskey probably has had some influence on my thinking...or at least what passes for thinking when one has consumed as much whiskey as I have...
Apart from being a sappy love story, what I really liked about it was the gay couple. I suppose the best word for it was poignant. I don't know that D and I will ever get married. For my part: Been there. Done that. D, I think, has marriage bound up with all things religious, which tends to give him the heebie jeebies. Honestly, I cannot blame him.
Spoiler Alert (Surely I'm not the last person to see this movie...)
Nevertheless, married or not, the gay couple in Four Weddings and a Funeral was nice to see. An adorable May to November couple, the funeral was both touching in the expression of love that was given by the surviving partner as is was poignant (do you know how hard it is to spell that word when drunk?)—not only in the fact that they were careful never to appear a couple in public, but also when the surviving husband was introduced as "Gareth's closest friend" and not even in the course of the funeral proper, but as a preface thereto.
How sad is that? OK, the movie is still 20th Century. And over ten years ago, that was probably an extremely progressive move (even if it was "over there" in liberal, god-forsaken Europe). Still, even now in 21st Century America, homosexuality is still "the love that is only just beginning to dare speak its name." There are states where heterosexuals do not even have to make a formal declaration of their love. Spend enough time together and it's a done deal. On the other hand, out of 50 states, only two allow two men to claim the title of husband, as if love and devotion were the purview of human institutions.
Still, married or not, I love D. I know that one should never say never, but at this point in my life I cannot imagine myself ever loving anyone as much as I love my cute Mexican. And you know what? Government sanctioned or not, that should be good enough.
How racism works
From Greg Prince's Blog:
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?`
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said ‘I do’ to?What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5?What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?If these questions were seriously confronted, do you really believe the election numbers would be anywhere near as close as they are? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.
Educational Background:
Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum LaudeBiden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in JournalismNow, which team are you going to hire ?
PS: and what if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter...
Interesting
Mom was in town last weekend. During some of our time in the car Mom told me the current housing crisis was Clinton's fault. Apparently Clinton was the one who introduced the idea that people who couldn't afford homes should be able to own one anyway.
What is more interesting to me than blaming someone eight years removed from the problem is the assumption that it's the irresponsible poor who are losing their homes in this foreclosure mess we're in right now.
I sorta vaguely remember something about Clinton saying something about everyone deserving the chance to own a home and improve their lot in life. I am totally talking off the cuff here, so feel free to fact check and correct me, but my guess is that Clinton meant everyone deserved the chance to own a home, not everyone deserved a chance to own a bigger home. Again, no numbers to back this up, but my guess is at least equal numbers of people are losing their $300,000+ McMansions as are the working poor losing their homes in the current crisis.
Frankly I think more upper middle class folk are losing their homes than not. In fact, I'd be willing to bet the working poor haven't had much easier access to home loans than they have had before. A loan on a $75K fixer-upper in a run-down neighborhood to a guy working two dead-end jobs is a bad bet no matter what the state of the economy. It's the expensive property in "nice" neighborhoods that people were speculating on.
I can guarantee you it wasn't the working poor who created this housing mess. So who is it really who is irresponsible with money? And which is worse: being irresponsible with your own money or being irresponsible with someone else's money?
That’s the best you got?
Three years of being trashed by Apple in one of the cleverest ad campaigns I've seen in a while and this is the best (belated) response Microsoft can come up with? Apparently their marketing department is as lame as their engineering department. No wonder Apple is starting to eat into their market share. Good thing Microsoft owns a sizable interest in Apple.
It’s about time.
What a load of crap.
Anyone else see W's address to the nation this morning? The longer this goes on the angrier I get. "$700 billion is a significant amount of money." Really? I had no idea! "We have a wide range of tools at our disposal and we are acting aggressively to stabilize our markets." How's that for a non-answer?
How stupid do you think we are? Why do you think the promise of $700 billion hasn't stopped the slide of the economy? (Indeed the Dow droped 107 points just in the time it took W to blow his sunshine.) It doesn't have anything to do with the fox guarding the chicken coop does it? The Bush administration is more on the side of business than the consumer. The government is handing out billions of dollars to the same bastards that squandered our money in the first place! A condition of getting a single dime of the bailout money should have been that board of directors be fired and replaced. Why are we rewarding them for malfeasance?
Does anybody really believe the taxpayers are going to get that money back? Hell no. Am I going to see any return on my investment? Are we going to see any dividend payments? Tax rebates? No. Is the market going to rebound as fast as it tanked? Of course not. All it's going to do is allow CEO's to keep their mahogany desks in offices that are larger than most people's apartments. It's going to let them keep having "retreats" at high priced hotels and conduct their business on a golf course. It's entitlement and narcissism gone awry and all our precious government is doing is feeding it.
"We'll get through this together." Who's he kidding? Is his home in jeopardy? Is his retirement in jeopardy? Any of his ranches in Texas going on the market to shore up his loses? Idiot. How insulting.
You can talk about shoring up credit markets all you want. Based on the continued slide of the Dow and other market indicators, no one is buying it. Not even the people who supposedly understand it.
I stand corrected.
I've always said God did create Adam and Steve. He just didn't put them in the Garden together. I guess I was wrong.
Photo by Marc Da Cunha Lopez
Your what?
I could only take about ten minutes of the presidential debate before I had to get up and go into another room.
Senator McCain, you are not my friend. We have almost nothing in common. Granted I have as little in common with Senator Obama, but at least he's not presumptuous enough to claim to be my friend.
Additionally, a friend does not lie to your face. It stuns me that you are blaming Senator Obama for the current state of affairs. It is unfathomable to me that you claim the policies of the Democrats have led us here. Senator, which party has been in power for the last eight years? Which party came into office with a budget surplus and has squandered it? Which party has doubled the national deficit? Which party has championed policies of deregulation that have led directly to the current financial crisis? Which party has stubbornly defended spending billions on a war after all the original justification for engaging in that war proved to be false?
You have been a consistent reformer? A reformer of what? What exactly have you reformed?
Oh, and Senator Obama has cronies? Are you kidding me? Senator McCain, here is the definition of crony, according to Webster: a close friend especially of long standing (my emphasis). Hmmm...let's see Senator Obama has been in the Senate for a little over three years. You, on the other hand, have been in office twenty-six years. You can still do simple math, right?
Do you realize what an absolute fool you appear to be when you accuse Senator Obama of cronyism? Do you realize that you sound little better than an child whose best comeback to an insult is, "I know you are, but what am I?" Do you have no shame that your campaign is essentially about plagiarism and mud slinging?
Apparently not.
No punches pulled
The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time. (Rolling Stone)
HT: Greg Prince