Month: December 2008

There is some scholarly dispute about how best to pronounce this:

Blagofuckinjevich? The insert almost invariably goes before the stressed syllable – the exceptions are, to my knowledge, all after a prefix, such as unfuckingbelievable – and so, surely, this is wrong. Especially since the governor’s name is pronounced much more closely to blagoy-evich than blago-yevich. Just try saying that out loud: Blagofuckinjevich. Now say Blafuckingojevich. The first one turns into that pseudo-Swedish prosody. The second one allows you to hit the "goy" with satisfactory savagery.

I believe Professor Pullum has erred.

Indeed.

Good night:

Warren says he believes that the Bush administration engaged in torture, as is now indisputable. But in his many conversations with the president, he never brought it up:

BELIEFNET- Did you ever talk to President Bush to try to convince him to change his policy?

WARREN – No. No.

BELIEFNET- Why not?

WARREN — Never got the chance. I just didn’t.

But he managed to discuss abortion with Obama, and, so far as I know, Obama has never aborted any fetus. But Bush has authorized the torture – even to death – of many, many prisoners. Warren says that Bush would have had to have brought the subject up to earn his moral censure. But even now, Warren refuses to say that the president is guilty of a moral failure. Really.

Roger Ehrenberg explains the concept of fraudulent conveyance:

Say you were an investor in Madoff’s funds. A few years back you decided to diversify. You asked Madoff for your money back and you got it. You then invested the proceeds in an array of other assets. Madoff then goes bust in a massive fraud. One day you get a letter from a bankruptcy trustee. The letter says that you need to repay a large chunk of your original investment in order to satisfy the claims of other investors who were less fortunate (or smart) than you. Is this fair? Is this right?

Horton takes on Reuel Marc Gerecht:

The piece lives in the world and morality of Fox’s Twenty-Four, and it falsely confuses the rendition programs that existed pre-Bush with the extraordinary rendition program put in place after 9/11. Gerecht knows better. The devices he advances are crimes. People who use and authorize them have in the past been sent to jail for long periods—some have even been executed. There is no legitimate difference of opinion on this, only a willingness on the part of some to commit serious crimes in the expectation that they won’t be held to account.

What to make of this:

Warren claimed he supported Proposition 8 because of a free-speech issue — asserting that "any pastor could be considered doing hate speech . . . if he shared his views that homosexuality wasn’t the most natural way for relationships."

Well, yes, you could be considered as engaging in hate speech. But so what? As long as there are no criminal or legal penalties for religious speech – as guaranteed by the First Amendment – being called a hater is part of living in a democracy. I should say that I would not use the term "hate" for a principled theological defense of heterosexual normativity. And I have engaged very deeply with the arguments on those grounds. But fanning paranoia among Christians that somehow civil gay equality requires that they lose any free speech rights whatsoever is irresponsible, and presumably a conscious untruth.

Update: The relevant transcript can be found here. It’s an absurdity, it seems to me, to argue, as Warren does, that civil equality in marriage violates anyone’s free speech or could. If Rick Warren refuses to acknowledge my husband as my husband, fine. But my pointing this out is not a denial of his free speech in any way.

David Kuo responds to this.