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Archive for July, 2007
Jill’s on fire today, asking pro-lifers some very pointed questions. In fact, the same questions that were asked in this video [now located here, because YouTube took down the one I’d embedded], which inspired the Anna Quindlen column Jill’s responding to:
I know there are at least a few regular readers who self-identify as “pro-life.” So here’s a question for you: How much time should she do?
One goal of the anti-choice movement is to outlaw abortion. But, as Anna Quindlen points out, anti-choice activists are almost never able to identify what the legal consequences should be for women who terminate their pregnancies. So, pro-lifers, tell me: What should the penalty be? How much time in jail should a woman face for abortion? . . .
Dana Goldstein examines some of the complicated and problematic stereotypes and roles in the Potterverse in The American Prospect. I agree with most of her points, including the parallels to 20th-Century racist classifications — in particular, those of Nazi Germany — in the whole mudblood/halfblood/pureblood distinctions and rankings. Rowling claimed not to have seen the parallels until a visit to a Holocaust museum, but I have a hard time believing that. Continue reading ‘It’s called the “wizarding” world for a reason’
Contortionists dressed as farmers’ daughters and singing about potato salad. No, really! Via Hoyden About Town.
Usually, I’m a pretty good cook. But, as we’ve previously established, I’m easily distractable. And last night, I had about five things going at once — I was doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, composing a post in my head, and trying to make seitan for the first time as well as whip up a nice big batch of curry with tofu, eggplant, green beans, tomatoes and coconut milk.
The seitan didn’t work out so well, but maybe I just need to use a different, higher-gluten kind of flour.
But the curry?
Oh, it tastes great — until you realize that I managed to not rinse all the salt off the eggplant before throwing it in.
I’m still tasting salt on the back of my tongue from dinner last night.
Carol “I am watching my 2-year-old for signs of chubbiness because that way lies hoochie-mama-dom” Lloyd* was bad enough, but now Tracy Clark-Flory ups the ante with this wistfully paternalistic little bit in a post about an Alternet piece describing the efforts of a young white woman to get her tubes tied, only to be told over and over that she was too young: Continue reading ‘I’m starting to wonder about Broadsheet’
“Flag desecration” and “sanctity of marriage.” I’d also like to see a ban on using “football field” as a unit of measure, but I’m kind of a dreamer.
From Dahlia Lithwick’s piece:
Do you want to know what’s destroying the sanctity of marriage? Phone messages like the ones we’d get at my old divorce firm in Reno, Nev., left on Saturday mornings and picked up on Monday: “Beeep. Hi? My name is Misty and I think I maybe got married last night. Could someone call me back and tell me if I could get an annulment? I’m at Circus Circus? Room—honey what room is this—oh yeah. Room 407. Thank you. Beeep.”
It just doesn’t get much more sacred than that.
The idea that the government is involved in something “sacred,” and that it is this “sanctity” that justifies the denial of equal rights to marry, really rubs me the wrong way. After all, marriage, as far as the state is concerned, is a bundle of rights and responsibilities. Churches may see marriage as a sacred union of two souls — the Catholic Church treats it as a sacrament — but there’s a reason the priest invokes the power of the state when solemnizing the marriage — without it, the marriage has no legal effect. But you can hit a drive-through wedding chapel and have exactly the same effect.
Then there’s “flag desecration” — again, resting on the idea that the flag, in and of itself, is a sacred object. And the fun part is that the people who are most upset by “desecration” of the flag seem to have the least regard for the ideals which the flag is supposed to represent. Such as free speech: Continue reading ‘Terms I never want to hear again’
I just realized that I only shaved one of my legs yesterday.
Shorter Will Saletan: Fat people are allowed to make friends? It may be politically incorrect of me to say this, but clearly, there’s not enough stigma attached to being fat! Keep those cooties away by abandoning and shaming your fat friends.
Shorter Dick Cavett: Sure, I had active junkies and wasted people on my show without worrying that anyone might imitate them, and scoffed at the idea that TV could influence violent behavior. But that was before I started seeing fat people on my TV!
Conservatism teaches that individuals are not inherently good and so must be carefully civilized.
Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter and conservative/religious shill. This is from a column in the WaPo entitled “The Kind of Village it Takes.” Takes to what? you may find yourself asking.
To be honest, I’ve read the article, and I can’t be entirely sure. Except that it has to do with teenagers having sex. Specifically, evangelical teenagers, and how Michael Gerson wants everyone to just stop saying that they have sex just like any other teenagers, and that being Right With Gawd doesn’t stop them from having sex any earlier than their “mainline Protestant” peers:
Recent books and studies seem to indicate disturbing sexual trends among evangelical Christians. And this time we’re not talking about their pastors or political leaders. The new attention is on evangelical teenagers, who reportedly start sex earlier than their mainline Protestant peers.
One gleeful headline on an Internet site recently read: “Evangelical Girls Are Easy.” That is not the way I remember it.
What is this? Rashomon?
I dunno, Michael, maybe it was just that you weren’t getting any. And that your peers who were maybe didn’t want to confide in you, because they suspected you might do something squirrelly like rat them out to their pastors. Just a guess.
After being confronted with that little factoid, Michael consults a social scientist, who assures him that it’s much more complicated than the “sniggering media” reporting showing evangelical kids have sex at the same age as their non-evangelical peers.
My, isn’t that interesting. A conservative embracing nuance when it serves his purpose.
Michael is quite relieved to find out that “intensely” religious kids put out a few months later on average than their less-intense evangelical peers and the irreligious mainline scum, meaning all that tithing has paid off:
When the statistics on teen sexuality are controlled for social and economic factors, conservative Protestant teens first have sex at about the same time as their peers — the average is midway through their 16th year. That is hardly comforting to conservative Protestant parents, who would expect more bang for the bucks they spend funding Sunday schools — well, actually, less bang.
But these numbers shift when controlled for religious intensity. For those who attend church often, sexual activity is delayed until nearly 17, while nominal evangelicals begin at 16.2 years, earlier than the national average.
So, really, the “nominal” (and what a nice way to distance yourself from these results) evangelicals put out earlier than the non-evangelicals, and the “intense” evangelicals put out later. Which, I’m sure, when averaged together, gets you right back to the beginning: evangelism is no cure for teenage sexuality. But still, speaking in tongues and snake-handling and believing in literal demons only buys you about 9 months over the rest of the WWJD crowd.
But that’s inconvenient! So Gerson pulls out a bunch of statistics about cohabitation and children out of wedlock that really have nothing to do with teenagers having sex, but everything to do with making the uncomfortable fact that evangelical kids fuck, too, a little less uncomfortable. Oh, and have we directly bashed liberals yet? We have not! So, back to Michael:
These messages of responsibility are often reinforced by tightknit religious communities, but they are not owned by them. Wilcox notes that American liberal elites often “talk left and walk right, living disciplined lives and expecting their children to do the same, even when they hold liberal social views.” Divorce rates among college-educated Americans, [Sociologist Peter Berger] points out, have fallen since the 1980s, as it became more evident that casual divorce did not serve the long-term interests of their children.*
Because they can’t really be liberals if they do moral things! They can’t really be liberals if they lead disciplined lives and give their children the tools to do the same things!
Kind of a problem he has with the “live and let live” concept, isn’t it? But then, this is the guy who also has trouble with the idea that atheists can have a moral framework when they don’t have an angry invisible friend threatening them with eternal torment if they fart the wrong way.
Now, he does recognize that support networks are crucial for influencing behaviors, and he does recognize that kids who have goals and ambitions are less likely to get sidetracked by early pregnancy. And he even recognizes that abstinence-only sex miseducation doesn’t automatically confer any sort of protection against having sex. But his solution — to the extent he offers one — just seems to be more of the same; more intense and tight “moral” networks, more rigidity. Heaven forfend he might concede that those socially-liberal parents who give their kids accurate information and the tools to make good choices might have something there.
H/T: Thers.
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* Actually, my understanding of the reason for falling divorce rates among college-educated Americans has to do with the fact that they tend to marry later than non-college-educated Americans, and not just because they want to have sex. Though the real statistic he should be looking at is the divorce rate among evangelicals as opposed to other groups. But I’m guessing that wouldn’t have worked out well for him.
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