Month: November 2009

This is a welcome development, both substantively on the merits (I oppose federal funding for abortion) and politically for the president:

"Passing this amendment allows the House to meet our criteria of preserving the existing protections against abortion funding in the new legislation," the Bishops wrote in a letter to individual members. "Most importantly, it will ensure that no government funds will be used for abortion or health plans which include abortion."

The group goes on to say, "The Conference will remain vigilant and involved through this entire process to assure that these essential provisions are maintained and included in the final legislation. With this important step forward we hope the House can come together and finally move forward essential reform which truly will protect the life, dignity, conscience and health of all. We also hope the Senate will follow the example of the House and include these essential safeguards in their version of health care reform legislation."

It's important to note what the theocons will never mention. Catholic teaching very, very strongly backs universal health insurance as a moral imperative.

 

John Williams reviews The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved:

Disclaimer: Like many people born in 1974, I’m incapable of writing a purely objective review of anything related to The Simpsons. The 1990s may have been a decade of peace and prosperity in the U.S., but it left much to be desired on the pop-culture front. The 1960s had the British Invasion, the 1970s had the golden age of American film, the 1980s even had its goofy-but-inimitable mix of MTV, early Letterman, and John Hughes movies. By comparison, Soundgarden and Singles seemed like a raw deal. But my generation in its youth had The Simpsons in its youth, and more than just the best thing ever made for TV (Homer’s clan was practically redeeming the existence of the entire medium when The Wire was but a twinkle in David Simon’s eye), the show’s glory days look more and more like the last gasp of eloquent mischief.

A few fascinating bits of Simpsons history after the jump:

[Producer James] Brooks’ reputation allowed the show to operate with an unusually low amount of flak from the suits, and it helped that the biggest suit of all — Rupert Murdoch — was a fan of the show. Wanting to establish his young network’s bona fides, he even moved The Simpsons to run opposite The Cosby Show on Thursday nights. “Cosby must be coming to the end of his run,” Murdoch boldly — and accurately — predicted. “[H]e’s been there forever.” (Simon, peeved at his show being put in such a tough spot, created the vacuous and vaguely Cosbyesque character of Dr. Hibbert to vent a little.)

Ortved is a perceptive enough devotee that he understood the need for Conan O’Brien to have his own chapter; not just because O’Brien is the show’s most famous alumnus, but because he most perfectly represents a certain pivotal strand of its DNA. […] Former staff writer Brent Forrester said, “Conan’s monorail episode was surreal, and the jokes were so good that it became irresistible for all the other writers to write that kind of comedy. And that’s when the tone of the show really took a rapid shift in the direction of the surreal.” Episodes credited to O’Brien managed this surrealism brilliantly, but they also planted the seeds for crasser, zanier shows like Family Guy and South Park to emerge — and for The Simpsons to become weakened, in turn, by the influence of its spawn.

Image from Matt Groening's cartoon strip, "Life In Hell," created in 1977. More background here.

The former vice-presidential candidate and leader of the GOP base gave a speech last night in Wisconsin. From the scattered notes of someone who was there, it seems like it was a good speech, and rehearsed some serious applause lines on abortion, and revealed a new sophistication on the subject. I’m not sure how much time Palin has spent reading John Paul II, but she sure knew how to quote him. Here’s a passage as written down by an attendee going rogue:

Those who believed in the sanctity of life were told to sit down and shut up. Well, Wisconsin, you went rogue! Women who are protectors – protectors of the womb – you can’t just get over it and sit down and shut up. You’re changing hearts and changing minds. We’re dealing with the truth. The gift of knowledge lets us see truth with life. John 16:13: “spirit of truth.” Spirit of truth is being poured out on the country today and people are getting it.

But here’s the weird thing: no press was allowed. Here were a few of the restrictions:

• No exit and re-entry allowed • No cell phones • No recording devices • No video or still cameras • No laptops • No photos or recording allowed

There were metal detectors to enforce this extreme lockdown. And all bags were searched for recording devices. The question I have is: why? Here is a national politician addressing a state pro-life group, saying things that are presumably supposed to be part of a public debate and yet the whole thing is shrouded in secrecy. It’s a similar pattern to the campaign. Here is a public figure insisting on rules that no other public figure demands. Why? What is it about sunlight and an open debate that Palin is afraid of?

Graeme Wood continues his fascinating first-hand account of the Quds Day demonstrations in Tehran last month. More here.

Jonah Lehrer reviews some research showing the cognitive benefits of arts education:

The current obsession with measuring learning certainly has some benefits (accountability is good), but it also comes with some serious drawbacks, since it diminishes all the forms of learning, like arts education, that can't be translated into a score on a multiple choice exam.

Markos pulls the veteran card:

TNC riffs off this post by Brian Chase:

I have loved–and love–many people in my time. Many of them were bigoted against some group, somewhere. This expectation that "good people" won't be bigots is rather amazing. I came up in a world where it was nothing to hear the word "faggot" bandied about. Where those people awful human beings? Nah. Where they bigots? Yep. And I will tell you, without a moments hesitation, that I was one of them.

The case of the census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "FED" written on him gets murkier.

A reader writes:

I teach at a large university in a conservative part of the country, and I think a large part of this fear of children learning that – gasp – people can be attracted to the same sex, has to do with the religious right's emphasis on marriage as a primarily sexual institution. They would not agree with that, of course, but look at how they teach sexuality education to their children:  "Abstinence til marriage.  Nothing else need be said."  (Thus sending the message that sex and marriage are yoked at the hip.

The conservative youth group "Young Life" is very active where we live (high schools and college), and I cannot tell you how many young people (18-21) I know who have gotten married because they simply cannot hold out sexually any longer.  They get married in order to have sex.  They don't get married because they love the person; they may be deeply in love, but that's not why they're getting married at that particular time — they're getting married before they finish college, before they have decent-paying jobs, before they have health insurance, because they are afraid they won't be able to control their sexual urges any longer. 

Sex is intrinsically linked to marriage.  Sex=marriage=sex.

I also have known quite a number of people in their late 20s and early 30s (students) who are now divorced (or unhappily married), who tell me that that is exactly why they got married 10 or whatever years ago — and they are now stuck with two or three kids, trapped in a marriage they recognize was entered based on an immature idea of what "love" is and pressure from their families and conservative churches to, no matter what, NOT have sex before marriage. 

This is not to say that many of those young couples can't make their marriages work, but to point out that the pressure — and the conflation of sex with marriage — is intense.

It is no wonder, then, that for a religious conservative, the thought of their first-grader coming home asking questions about their female teacher's wife, or reading about Heather and her Two Mommies, scares the bejesus out of them.  Marriage is all about sex, and sex is already an extremely scary topic (see again their resistance to any kind of true sex education), and Good God …!  It's downright terrifying for them.

I'd never really thought of it that way – and it's very helpful. Of course, to my mind, marriage is not really about sex, although it certainly includes that. For me, the core virtue of marriage is friendship.

Nairobi, Kenya, 6.13 pm