blacksundae

John H. Richardson in Esquire:

As a man wise in the ways of human madness once told me, “You think it’s money with the Republicans and sex with the Democrats, but really it’s the other way around.” That’s why folks in the Bible Belt buy more porn than anybody else, and why their pregnancy and abortion rates are the highest in the nation. Because it is always the Other that we desire. Crazy two-legged beasts that we are, teetering in this awkward upright posture, we define our civilization by carving sins out of the category of acceptable human behavior — and then immediately begin committing them with the most feverish enthusiasm.

It’s no accident that much of this impulse comes from the southern states, which recent polls suggest are virtually united in their opposition to President Obama. After all, this is the region that fought government intrusion upon its freedoms by forming its own government to intrude upon its freedoms, that imposed the Fugitive Slave Law on other states in the name of states’ rights, that fought for slavery in the name of liberty. None of this was particularly logical, but then again, logic is just another iron law of compulsion.

Read on.

McClatchy:

On Wednesday, Fagan’s 7-foot statue of the nation’s 40th president will be unveiled at the U.S. Capitol, replacing the likeness of a lesser-known California hero, Thomas Starr King. Nancy Reagan is expected to attend, along with Fagan.

It’s the end of an era for Starr King, a 19th-century San Francisco Unitarian Universalist preacher who’s received star billing at the Capitol for 78 years.

It also caps a five-year effort by California Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who launched the campaign to remove Starr King shortly after Reagan’s death on June 5, 2004.

“I thought, well, you know, he was a great person, but he’s been here for a while. Maybe we can replace him with Ronald Reagan,” Calvert said. “And one thing led to another. … We were able to get it done.”

Because Reagan is underrepresented in the public sphere? Also, nice logic. “Washington was a great guy, and all… but the city’s been named after him for a while. Why not change it to Mister T, DC?” Link

Michael Bérubé:

[I]n 1974, I was a freshman at Regis High School in New York, where I heard one of my more conservative classmates say, in the course of a discussion about affirmative action, that he had been the victim of reverse discrimination for too long. Exasperated to the point of flummoxation, I noted in reply that (a) affirmative action showed up only yesterday, (b) you’re thirteen years old, d00d, and (c) you’re attending an elite, tuition-free Jesuit high school that does not admit women. And the reason I remember that moment 35 years later is that it has never gone away: guys like Stuart Taylor and Fred Barnes are still thirteen years old, still the victims of reverse discrimination, and still questioning the credentials of smart women while campaigning for the protection of conservative white men under the Endangered Species Act. Taylor graduated from Princeton in 1970; Barnes from the University of Virginia in 1965. Neither of them had to compete with women for admission; Princeton started opening its doors to that half of the population in 1969, Virginia a year later. That’s why guys like these worry so much about the decline of standards in college admissions since 1970, you understand. Because things were tougher and people were smarter when white guys only had to compete with 44 percent of the population for admission to elite colleges, positions of power and influence, and so forth.

Read on. Via Pharyngula

I have a healthy appreciation for bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally very anti-bullshit, especially when it comes to things like justifications for war, regressive anti-science and scaring people to (literal) death. You know: things that matter.

But I must confess, I do take a certain amount of pleasure in watching bullshit separate fools from their money. If it’s audacious enough, it can be like watching a well-crafted crime caper.

Which leads us to H²Om.
Read the rest of this entry »

Truthdig:

If I had to choose between George W. Bush, naked and neighing on all fours while being ridden around the Oval Office by a spurred cowgirl Condoleezza Rice, or enduring his shredding of domestic and international law to wage an illegal war and bilking of the country on behalf of his corporate backers, I could learn to stomach a wide array of sexual escapades.

Let our elected leaders and candidates have quick homosexual encounters in airport bathrooms, bring as many hookers as they want to their hotel rooms, and screw around with their campaign staff as long as they exhaust their libidos on lusts other than war, torture and economic mismanagement. Adolf Hitler, after all, was an abstemious and monogamous vegetarian who loved his German shepherd.

Read on.

Sue Jones-Davies, the actress who played Judith Iscariot in Monty Python’s Life of Bryan, is now mayor of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth* and is trying to lift the town’s ban on… The Life of Brian!

Some religious groups picketed cinemas which screened the film, and it was banned from being shown in some towns and cities, including Aberystwyth.

Nearly 30 years on, Mr Bell, vicar of the town’s St Michael’s Church, said the restriction should remain in place.

“There’s been no change in attitude or response to the film amongst the Christians who have spoken to me in Aberystwyth,” he explained.

“The film at its root is poking fun at Christ and we don’t want that to happen. I don’t think that the film should be shown. Why should the ban be removed?”

Asked if he had ever seen the film, Mr Bell said he had “seen a small clip, that’s all”.

Surprise, surprise. Read the whole thing.

*Gesundheit!

Mark Witton/PA Wire

Interesting article on azhdarchids. By the way, it’s gratifying (?) to see that America doesn’t have a monopoly on shitty science journalism. Pterosaurs are not, in fact, dinosaurs. That’s something I’ll bet a lot of school-kids know.

As if Louisiana didn’t have enough to worry about.

As we noted last month, a number of states have been considering laws that, under the guise of “academic freedom,” single out evolution for special criticism. Most of them haven’t made it out of the state legislatures, and one that did was promptly vetoed. But the last of these bills under consideration, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), was enacted by the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday. The bill would allow local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories, allowing poorly-informed board members to stick their communities with Dover-sized legal fees.

Read on.

MetaFilter’s billyfleetwood posted an absolutely wonderful comment today. Here’s a snippet, but you should probably read the rest of the thread for context.

Nobody trains their kids to be killers. Your hyperbole shows an astounding and dare I say juvenile lack of understanding of the world, and the people in it. People raise their children to believe in things outside of themselves. Family, community, country, tradition. People raise their children to believe in simple things like right and wrong, good and bad. and you know what? There is a great benefit to us all in people raising their children to believe in such things.

So sure, we could ask hundreds of thousands of young men and women to follow your lead, abandon their trust in their communities, their country and their traditions. We could raise our children to believe in noone but themselves. We could stop telling our kids that Being President is a noble aspiration, that the word “leader” is a word we reserve for the best and brightest.

We could stop teaching kids that they shouldn’t take their privileges for granted, and that under no circumstances does freedom require sacrifice.

Or we could continue teaching them all of those things, and instead of cynicism, demand that the the few people we choose to lead us not shit on those beliefs, misrepresent that truth and send our kids off to kill and be killed for profit, politics and a misguided sense of personal glory.

The thread. Made me kinda misty.