Suzanne Franks gets something right

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Michael

For those who weren’t here for Femi-crazy Invasion 2010 here at FTSOS, Suzanne Franks is one of those caricatures of feminists that really has no place in rational discussion. Hell, she demands people refer to her as “Zuska”, and should one refuse to delve into her weird Internet fantasy game, she’s liable to start throwing down some bans (or call you sexist: whatever works at the moment to get her whiny way).

She’s a forgettable character in the blogosphere, but I am still getting hits from her post all about me; I admit I clicked around a little recently. And one of the things I clicked was this post. It’s all about this image.

For Franks, there is no distinction between this image and the one in her post about CNN. She believes that virtually all images of the female body are sexist. The basis seems to be that since men tend to dominate and run things, pictures of women are only meant for the sake of objectification (except maybe face shots). In reality, this is just a ridiculous tool Franks and her friends use so they can whine that everything is sexist. And there’s no practical way that sexism can ever go away under this mis-definition. In essence, Franks should be pointing out nearly every picture of a woman under her caricature philosophy. The fact that she focuses on particular images belies what she probably actually recognizes – not all images are sexist.

In the image in question here, yes, it is actually sexist. Lindsey Vonn’s body is specifically being viewed at the expense of her other talents. One sports writer disagrees and it’s here that Franks takes out her frustrations and anger.

Silly ladeez! Chris Chase mansplains why you are WRONG!!!! (Though I note, alas, poor Chris is unable to actually directly link to the womentalksports.com post he is mansplaining.)

Because the ladybranes are tiny, I am here to help. I am going to translate Chris’s mansplaining post into a more direct communication that really gets the message across, so that even the teeniest tiniest ladybraned ladeez out there will understand what is meant. Chase’s original text is in boldface. Here we go!

She goes on and on from there, inserting some imaginary conversation she’s having in her head. This is where Franks is generally wrong. All she’s showing anyone (except her faithful in-group commenters) is that there are certain things that might please her if any reasonable man actually said them. She seems to have this sort of desire to hear a man say “but Vonn’s cover is awesome because, while she is posed in a classic come-hither-and-fuck-me-hard-you-know-you-wanna stance…” just so she can validate her philosophy in her head. If a man actually says it, then I’m right! Until then, I’ll just pretend really, really hard that men actually think this way.

One final, bit of a non-sequitur point on the term “mansplaining”. In the past Franks has tried to define the term, claiming that it isn’t just the act of explaining while male. Instead, it’s giving a condescending explanation to someone who does not need one. This is a lie because within that definition is the qualifier that it’s really a man explaining something to a woman, but that can be ignored for a moment because Franks and friends also point out that women can be guilty of “mansplaining”. Of course, they’d never be able to give any examples, but I can take this at face value. Let’s say, sure, anyone can mansplain. But then wherein lies the intrinsic masculinity? If anyone can do it, then there are two options. Either there is nothing inherently masculine about condescending explanation or Franks and friends are grouping the majority of men together as if there is something inherently wrong with how men behave. This is itself sexist since it is discriminating against one sex based upon an unfounded stereotype. (And here I use “sexist” correctly, i.e., discrimination based upon sex, not the doltish ‘it’s just discrimination of women’ definition caricature feminists have to offer.)

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This is retarded

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Michael

Rahm Emanuel recently said this.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Emanuel, exasperated upon learning that liberal special-interest groups were planning to run ads against conservative Democrats not supportive of health care reform, blasted the plan as “f—— retarded” over the summer.

This prompted Sarah Palin, that beacon of hope for morons everywhere, to say this.

In a post titled “Are You Capable of Decency, Rahm Emanuel?,” Palin wrote, “Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the ‘N-word’ or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable,” adding, “it’s heartbreaking.”

I’m always amazed when I see people trying to make such tenuous connections. The reality is that the only thing that connects “retard” and racial slurs is that both are meant to be offensive. Why each one is offensive is another thing.

“Nigger” is meant to disparage a person based upon race as if there is something inherently negative about being a certain color. Since reasonable people tend to agree that skin color has no normative value, the word can be rejected because it is offensive in a wide array of contexts (though not when specifically defined). “Retard” and its derivatives, on the other hand, are meant to disparage a person for saying or doing something unintelligent, as if there is something inherently negative about not being smart. Reasonable people tend to agree that there is something negative about a lack of intelligence.*

There is, however, a narrow band of usage where “retard” might be considered legitimately offensive to people who are actually retarded. This would be when one uses the term to reference the goodness or general value of a person. Emanuel didn’t do this, instead referencing the quality of the idea of weakening the Democratic party with the goal of passing healthcare. (And he’s right – weaken the Democrats and who do these people think will take power?)

I hate political sensitivity at the expense of linguistics.

*Boy! I can’t wait for the first Clever Carl who disagrees with me to come by and turn this one around on me! Internet. Scoff.

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Second-class citizenry

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Michael

Missouri Highway Patrol Cpl. Dennis Engelhard was hit by a vehicle that lost control in the snow on Christmas day. His partner will not see anything from the state.

Under the rules of the state pension system that covers the Missouri Highway Patrol and Department of Transportation workers, if a trooper dies in the line of duty, his or her spouse is eligible for lifetime survivor benefits.

The yearly benefit is equal to half of the officer’s average salary during the officer’s highest-paid three years as a trooper. For Engelhard, the benefit would have been $28,138 a year.

Engelhard’s partner, Kelly Glossip, was at the hospital when Engelhard was pronounced dead. He mourned with the other troopers – just as they would have mourned for their own wives. The difference is that Missouri condones bigotry, so Glossip will not see any of that pension.

“I’d take 100 Dennis Engelhards. He was an outstanding trooper,” said Capt. Ronald Johnson, head of the Highway Patrol troop that covers St. Louis and surrounding counties. “His lifestyle had no bearing on his career.”

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This is getting ridiculous

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Michael

Suzanne Franks has a couple of posts where she tries to explain what a “mansplainer” is. Delightfully, she uses me as her prime example.

First, some clarification. Just what is mansplaining? I like this definition.

Mansplaining isn’t just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.

Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!

My favorite part is that it starts out with the faux attempt at equality by saying “mansplaining” isn’t just the act of explaining while male, but then quickly goes on to say “Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman…you are wrong about something you are actually right about…” That precisely is what this ‘definition’ just purported to not be. The claim is that if a man dares hold a position and explain it – and to a woman! the audacity! – then he is being condescending. How is this not sexist? A man can obviously be right while a woman is wrong and he can explain why. Furthermore, he can be wrong while she is right and not be condescending based upon sex. That should be obvious to anyone who hasn’t taken the plunge off the crazy bridge. But I’m disagreeing and giving my reasons why, so I guess I must be mansplaining. What a convenient term, huh?

Oh, and men can have no positions on sexism, what constitutes sexism, why something is good or bad in regards to sexism, or how sexism can be a two-way street. If they do, they’re being sexist.

Franks then goes on to list three things that make me a mansplainer.

1. You MUST explain why everything I said is beside the point, and wrong, and silly.

2. You MUST explain why you are not a mansplainer, then re-explain things to the wimminz. Also, call them sexist.

3. You MUST explain that you mansplain because you assume that blogs are written by men, then re-explain things to the wimminz AGAIN.

All those come with links to comments I left on her blog. Go to her post to get to them.

In number one, she was wrong. I explained why, even as audacious as it is to explain things while being guilty of having a penis. (I mean, come on. She called a black woman white just for the sake of dragging racism into the whole thing and then she couldn’t admit her mistake; she’s a child – and not because she has a vagina.) Instead of addressing anything, all Franks offers is declarations. She isn’t interested in defending anything she thinks; she’s happy just having a relatively large audience who is receptive to her deep-end philosophy. This contrasts with the quality seen on most of ScienceBlogs.com since most bloggers there will tend to actually argue their points.

Number two is just a re-hash of the ‘definition’ from earlier. If a man explains something to a woman, it’s sexist. It’s a convenient cop-out.

As I (audaciously!) explained in previous posts, I never said my assumption (that the post was by a man) was good or bad. What’s more, I was also going on the fact that Franks looks like a man with long hair in her picture. I didn’t originally raise that point for the sake of not being so crude, but if she’s going to hammer on the point, then that’s what’s going to happen. What I did say, however, was that because I had assumed the post was by a man, I couldn’t possibly be “mansplaining”. That blows this whole dumb claim of condescending explanation based upon sex out of the water. Of course, instead of addressing that, Franks has decided to pretend I made a normative claim about my assumption. She looks like a man, I assumed she was a man, and I thought I was arguing against a man.

But then Franks goes on to make this condescending post about men. Her basis, yet again, is another man who dares disagree with her. This one, though, I think is more entertaining than her post on me because all she did was quote an entire post by the user Jon. The implication is that his post is so absurd that it needs no comment. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Let’s say that I agree with the premise that there’s a particular kind of male behavior that is condescending to females.

Now, let’s say that while I agree that this behavior exists and has certain identifiable qualities, more conceptual clarity is needed, in that there needs to be some sort of boundary around this behavior.

For the sake of argument, let’s also assume the following:

(1) that not everyone has a clear idea of where this boundary is and some of their examples may not fit the initial definition.

(2) the possibility of error, i.e., that some of you are potentially incorrect in identifying certain behaviors as mansplaining when they’re better described as some other behavior (may or may not be related).

(3) a male is actually able to participate in this discussion and disagree without being a mansplainer and the same goes for a female without being a FemaleMansplainer

Okay, if you agree with that I’ve written, I want to you imagine your perfect interlocutor, presumably someone that’s well-informed about the issues and the arguments. Imagine that this interlocutor nonetheless disagrees with some or all of your arguments. What criticisms would they offer?

What constitutes the best possible argument against this idea of the Mainsplainer? Can you play devil’s advocate and come up with arguments? What would they be?

Whoa, whoa, whoa! This is absurd! Jon is going off on all this fruitful discussion and other mansplaining bullshit! How could he.

I suppose the joke really has been on me. I have a pretty severe case of SIWOTI, so I pretty freely fall into these sort of useless ‘discussions’ on the Internet (and by “discussions”, I mean I was discussing something; Franks’ and co were making declarations, likely out of the emptiness of their deep-end philosophy). It should have been clear with what sort of person I was dealing: Franks and friends aren’t interested in furthering any causes of women. No, these people are more interested in being caricatures of feminists. They are the fodder of bad sitcoms. They are part of the reason people like Sarah Palin is a big deal. They are little more than Poe’s Law applied to deep-end feminists. These people do feminism a disservice when they declare everything to be sexism – especially when they feel it so crucial to employ sexism to make their points.

But there I go, mansplaining and all again. How dare I disagree with feminists on the Internet. The only reason can be that I think I’m inherently better.

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Expanding on sexism

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Michael

I recently wrote about this awful post from Thus Spake Zuska (“Zuska” is Suzanne E. Franks, an engineer and scientist). It’s centered on this image from a CNN story about problems obese women face while trying to get medical care.

[The above image is shown] just so you can be sure to remember that the world is staring at and judging you when you are overweight, young lady! No, we don’t need to see your head or even your whole body. Just the boobs and crotch – the pieces that define women’s worth. White women only need apply for our decapitated torso shot, please, even though the problems of access to adequate medical care and weight-related health issue are just as critical and maybe even more so for brown women.

There are some inherent problems in this post, ones Franks refuses to address because her feminism, which has obvious value, has taken her off the deep end. First, the image doesn’t focus on “boobs and crotch”. It focuses on the most obese areas of two obese women. The mid-section is often the focus in these sort of images, but sometimes butt shots are used to show the fatness of people. But does anyone believe Franks wouldn’t have objected to those sort of images?

And has Franks not seen the average TV news report on obesity? When it’s about men, these same sort of areas become the focus. When it’s about Americans, the focus is again the same but with both sexes shown.

What is being muddled by Franks’ deep-end philosophy is that this is not an objectification of women: it’s an objectification of fat people. She has no standing to raise concerns here based upon her sex. As a human she has standing because it can be argued that objectification is always bad, but that goes beyond being male or female.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that Franks is inanely trying to bring race into the equation by calling both of the above women white. The one on the right clearly is not white; she has the skin tone of Obama. Even in the comment section of her post, Franks won’t acknowledge this error (which was noted by both myself and another person).

CNN is basically re-reporting a story from Health.com, which is primarily aimed at women. That may explain why the story focuses on the problems being overweight causes for women, as if overweight men didn’t experience any issues with obtaining adequate health care.

The story does not suggest overweight men don’t experience difficulty in obtaining health care. It specifically talks about studies on women’s health care. Those can probably be generalized to overweight men, but that would be going beyond the source material. This is just an instance of Franks trying to find sexism where it doesn’t exist (what with her deep-end mentality).

But what I find really interesting is comparing the photo that Health.com chose to illustrate their story, as compared to CNN. It’s this:

First of all, the photo takes up a lot less real estate on the page than CNN’s photo does. It sits beside the story, instead of blaring across the top of the page as something you have to scroll past before you can get to the story. And finally, CNN’s photo says to the female reader “this is how the world sees all you fat bitches” whereas Health.com’s photo says something more like “you are taking control of your health”.

Okay, so here’s what Franks has told us: 1) Her opinion about website aesthetics not only matters but is somehow relevant. 2) Health.com’s picture is far more acceptable even though it says “accept” and “reject” based upon weight.

To be fair, Franks later goes on in the comment section to point out that she did not actually read the scale. But let’s just pretend it was a normal scale with straight forward numbers. Is that really better? In that it does not objectify obese people, maybe. But that isn’t Franks’ ‘point’. She believes it’s better because it doesn’t objectify women. Of course, that was never the point of the image, and I’ve already shown that female-ness isn’t the concern but rather obesity (as can be seen all the time in news reports; coverage of obese people is equally objectifying towards men and women – Franks just wants to see sexism where it does not exist; it’s pathetic).

But the most interesting thing of all this comes from the comment section. I responded there but again and again I get accused of “mansplaining” and only making my points from a male perspective. I guess it is inherently male-y to point out where the fattest part of humans tends to be. It’s male-y to point out that people are being objectified, not a particular sex. And most of all, it’s male-y to ever disagree with a deep-end feminist about sexism. But I’m the one being sexist, right? I’m the one making accusations based upon sex, right? I’m the one who is stereotyping a person because of his/her chromosomes, right?

Finally, of interesting note is that Franks’ comment section had been completely open until just today. Comments yesterday did not require her approval. Now they do. It will be interesting to see if my latest comment shows up at all now.

Update: Franks has since made a new post on another topic, indicating that she has logged in. My comment has not appeared. I take this as evidence that she is unable to defend her position.

Also, on a final note, I defended myself against criticisms of “mansplaining” and other non-sense by pointing out my assumption that I was reading a post from a man (I can’t “mansplain” to another man, I presume). It’s true that I often assume I’m reading writing from men on the Internet, but that’s simply a product of the fact that the main blogs I read are by men, not to mention the fact that most blogs are by men anyway. This is an explanatory claim, not a normative one, and should be understood as such. But that isn’t the whole truth. I said I hadn’t noticed Franks’ picture on her front page while reading her post. I actually did see it, but I still thought I was reading a post by a man – just one with long hair. That isn’t to say that Franks’ appearance takes away the value of anything she has to say; it doesn’t. I knew I was in hostile, deep-end territory, so any comment on the appearance of anyone* was likely to be taken drastically out of context. But to repeat the point I was making, I thought I was reading a post by a man. This effectively defeats the silly claim of “mansplaining”.

*And by “anyone” I mean only women since these people are sexist in that way.

Double Update: My post finally has shown up – well after this post.

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Pay your damn taxes

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Michael

As the upstanding citizen I am, I just finished getting through all my taxes. As it happens, I am getting money back, but I would have certainly paid up if that’s how the math worked out. Maybe I wouldn’t be doing that in January, but I would do it by April 15th. Paying taxes as they are due is just such a basic concept that one must be ignorant, stupid, or a crook to do otherwise. It turns out the Mormon Church is run by crooks.

The Mormon church worked to hide its involvement in the 2008 effort to ban gay marriage in California, telling the Proposition 8 campaign that it wanted “plausible deniability” in its connections with the movement, documents revealed in a California courtroom Wednesday show.

In the seventh day of testimony in the landmark gay-marriage trial in San Francisco, lawyers for the gay-rights side presented emails showing “close links between the Proposition 8 campaign and leaders of the Catholic and Mormon churches,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Any reasonable person would have to conclude that this sort of political involvement demands the Mormon Church pay its taxes. Maine had this same problem with the Catholic Church recently. In both cases, no taxes will be rendered. It doesn’t make any sense. Ignoring for a moment that religious institutions generally should not be tax-exempt (except as they function as charities), if government is going to grant certain groups privileges, those groups should have to abide by the rules. They constantly and consistently do not do this. No one is saying “No! You can’t support cause X!”. Go ahead, support your bigotry or yearning for a theocracy. Just pay your damn taxes when you do it.

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Ted Olson

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Michael

Ted Olson is one of the lawyers arguing in federal court that same-sex marriage is a right for all consenting adults. He’s long been in the middle of conservative circles, including Reagan’s administration. He has recently written a piece of Newsweek in which he makes the conservative case for gay marriage.

This procreation argument cannot be taken seriously. We do not inquire whether heterosexual couples intend to bear children, or have the capacity to have children, before we allow them to marry. We permit marriage by the elderly, by prison inmates, and by persons who have no intention of having children. What’s more, it is pernicious to think marriage should be limited to heterosexuals because of the state’s desire to promote procreation. We would surely not accept as constitutional a ban on marriage if a state were to decide, as China has done, to discourage procreation.

His final line is especially compelling. Of course, the procreation argument has long been a failure given all the people who don’t procreate, not to mention the fact that the government says nothing encouraging to the point anyway, but the comparison with China is the final nail in this long buried coffin. Give it a thought. What if, say, Montana offered tax breaks for specifically for couples with only one child? Or if Washington added a special tax for every child a couple has but the first? Would, then, a ban on marriage be acceptable? Of course not. Clearly, procreation is not the overriding factor here. It’s a lie when claimed otherwise.

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples? Tellingly, when the judge in our case asked our opponent to identify the ways in which same-sex marriage would harm heterosexual marriage, to his credit he answered honestly: he could not think of any.

It’s obvious why he couldn’t think of any. Aside from the fact that same-sex marriage doesn’t harm heterosexual marriage, this isn’t actually an argument at all. It’s pure political rhetoric. It’s useless.

And, while our Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise our individual religious convictions, it equally prohibits us from forcing our beliefs on others. I do not believe that our society can ever live up to the promise of equality, and the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, until we stop invidious discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

This, in truth, is the central argument against same-sex marriage. It isn’t always front and center per se; it’s often the other dishonest arguments that get put forth. But the reality is that the religious want to impose their beliefs on everyone without justification. That is part of the fundamental evil religion has always cultivated: We’re right and you’re wrong and we know it. We just know it.

These decisions have generated controversy, of course, but they are decisions of the nation’s highest court on which our clients are entitled to rely. If all citizens have a constitutional right to marry, if state laws that withdraw legal protections of gays and lesbians as a class are unconstitutional, and if private, intimate sexual conduct between persons of the same sex is protected by the Constitution, there is very little left on which opponents of same-sex marriage can rely. As Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented in the Lawrence case, pointed out, “[W]hat [remaining] justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution’?” He is right, of course. One might agree or not with these decisions, but even Justice Scalia has acknowledged that they lead in only one direction.

Of course, it’s unlikely Scalia will abide by his own conclusion, instead making a purely political decision, when this case makes it to the Supreme Court. But, for once, he is right. There is no longer any valid legal argument* standing in the way of equality for same-sex couples.

*Key word legal. As for valid arguments based upon reason, understanding, and rationality, they’ve never actually existed.

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The criminalization of homosexuality

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Michael

The wildly homophobic right-wing would love nothing more than to criminalize homosexuality. In 2005, 45% of Mainers voted against giving people equal rights simply for being gay. This was after three attempts where a majority voted to deny people rights. It’s astounding that so many people can be, frankly, so stupid. A moment’s pause: nearly half of Maine would prefer to have the right to fire people from their jobs at Home Depot, the fire department, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, etc simply for being gay. It’s absurd. This will be a hard one to explain to the grandchildren.

As late as 2003, there was laws on the books banning sodomy. Some applied to all sodomy, some to sodomy between unmarried people, and others specifically to male sodomy. At any rate, the vast majority of these laws were designed to criminalize homosexuality. In 1998, Houston police actually arrested two men (which then led to the 2003 Supreme Court case) for having anal sex. Oh, the horrors of consensual, adult sex! Of course, some conservatives actually maintained that the government had a right to invade the privacy of one’s home in this way. Antonin Scalia, the worst legal mind in the nation, actually wrote his dissent on the basis that it would be inconvenient for other law. That’s right: sodomy should remain illegal because other case law has already been built upon that notion. It’s a terrible legal argument, but it’s a worse lie. He’s just another known homophobe.

Scalia’s dissent represents the epitome of what the right-wing social movement wants (and really, Scalia makes almost all his decisions based upon his social views, not anything remotely related to law). It wants to make homosexuality illegal. Since there are constitutional protections in the United States, however, they’ve had to move on to Uganda.

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

Rick Warren has also been involved in telling Ugandans evil lies about homosexuals, comparing them to pedophiles and other things more fitting for systematically sexually repressed priests. But it gets worse. Much, much worse.

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

This is about one step further than what they want. They do want homosexuals to be viewed as far, far – far – less than human. I doubt most homophobes want death, but they do want to see homosexuals stripped of all rights, of all personal liberty. There is obviously no concern for rights among these monsters. The Ugandans pushing for this bill are just the next logical step in the systematic abuse of rights as they pertain to homosexuals: They aren’t human and they do harmful things. Kill them to stop them.

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

Lively, Brundidge, and Schmierer are scum. Pure scum. And, Christ, they are paranoid. Look at the Amazon description for Lively’s book.

A concise, practical guidebook for parents who wish to protect their children from pro-homoesxual indoctrination and the possibility of recruitment into the homosexual lifestyle.

He thinks there is some actual agenda to make more people gay. Despite what the fucked up right-wingers think, one does not just become gay, just as one does not just become straight. It doesn’t work like that. If religion didn’t offer such a childish view of sexuality, that would be a bit more clear to these people.

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

“Now we really have to go undercover,” said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ”

When a nation starts treating part of its citizenry as somehow intrinsically less worthy, you get thousands of these Ugandan grandmothers.

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Pouring a coat of sugar

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Michael

PZ Myers has a post on cancer and the quacks and filthy liars who try to take advantage of the disease.

Barbara Ehrenreich had breast cancer, and ugly and frightening as that disease is, she found something else that was almost as horrible: the ‘positive thinking’ approach to health care. People are stigmatized if they fail to regard their illness as anything other than an uplifting, positive life experience, an opportunity to examine their lives and identify what is most important to them…and also, most disturbingly, if they fail to appreciate that the attitude that they bring to the problem will determine whether they live or die. It’s the Oprah-zation of medicine.

I can’t help but think of the Andreas Moritz’s and naturopaths of the world who are genuinely dangerous to the well-being of people struggling with cancer and other diseases. Some of these people are sincere, I can grant that. But sincerity does not equate to qualified. It does not equate to safe. And in the case of someone specifically like Moritz, it’s pure charlatanry. That adds a loathsome level to the situation, but the effect is precisely the same as a naturopath or janitor or Deepak Chopra ‘treating’ the disease.

Besides, it takes effort to maintain the upbeat demeanor expected by others – effort that can no longer be justified as a contribution to long-term survival. Consider the woman who wrote to Deepak Chopra that her breast cancer had spread to the bones and lungs: “Even though I follow the treatments, have come a long way in unburdening myself of toxic feelings, have forgiven everyone, changed my lifestyle to include meditation, prayer, proper diet, exercise, and supplements, the cancer keeps coming back. Am I missing a lesson here that it keeps reoccurring? I am positive I am going to beat it, yet it does get harder with each diagnosis to keep a positive attitude.”

Chopra’s response: “As far as I can tell, you are doing all the right things to recover. You just have to continue doing them until the cancer is gone for good. I know it is discouraging to make great progress only to have it come back again, but sometimes cancer is simply very pernicious and requires the utmost diligence and persistence to eventually overcome it.”

It’s disgusting. The man is preying on vulnerable people and he knows it. There isn’t an honest bone in his body. To make matters worse, he isn’t doing a damn thing to help the cancer-ridden bones (and lungs and livers and breasts and…) of anyone. Anywhere. Ever.

I thoroughly despise these sugar-coating, money-grubbing scumbags.

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"Basically the atheists are just stupid…" … "Lol."

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Michael

An atheist group has a sign up in the Illinois state capitol which reads as follows:

At this season
OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE
may reason prevail.

There are no gods,
no devils, no angels,
no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world.
Religion is but
a myth and superstition
that hardens hearts
and enslaves minds.

This is the same message that was posted in the Washington state capitol last year. If you click that link, you’ll see Bill O’Reilly’s take on the issue. Now he has the genuinely dumb Ann Coulter chiming in this year.

First Billo says atheists are stupid for making people angry. Really? Bill O’Reilly is making this a central part of his argument? It’s a strategy that has clearly brought him success.

The next point he makes is that this is a “Christian-generated holiday”. First of all, Christmas has its roots outside Christianity. Second of all, it’s a federal holiday that the Supreme Court has ruled has been secularized to the point where it sufficiently lacks enough religious connection to be allowable as a holiday in the first place. As I said last year, if it was deemed to simply be a Christian celebration, it would not be a federal holiday today. Third, the Illinois state capitol does not endorse Christianity.

For some bizarre reason, Billo then says that atheists are demanding to be allowed to call people “idiots” for believing in Christianity or Christmas. First, no. Second, I ‘believe’ in Christmas. I plan on celebrating it like I have every year. I don’t intend on telling everyone at the Christmas party to stop being idiots, myself included. Third, the atheist group is stating its position that belief in gods and devils and angels and other such things are false beliefs. If a Jewish group put up a sign saying there is no hell, that would inherently be telling hell-believing religions they are wrong. Would Billo and Little Anny Coulter be jumping down their throats? Christ. It’s a group promoting its view. Deal with it.

Billo next says it’s just insulting to be called an idiot. Again, no one did that here, but if it makes him feel better, I can get rid of this strawman for him: Billo. You’re an idiot.

Little Anny then goes off into kook land and claims that the U.S. was established on the belief in God and makes distinctions between religions. She’s an idiot, too.

Finally Little Anny tries her hand at analogies. Being someone who is genuinely dumb, she fails – as one should expect. She says this is all like everyone bringing in a picture of his or her pet but then one person brings in a sign that says “I hate Fluffy and Fluffy sucks”. She concludes that this doesn’t fit within “the public forum definition” and thus shouldn’t even be tolerated. (Conveniently, she just defined herself as a bigot for me. Thanks, Anny.) In other words, the Illinois state capitol is open to religious displays and religious displays only. I find this fascinating since Little Anny has time and again argued that atheism is a religion. I guess if atheist signs should be banned for not being religious, then atheism isn’t a religion. Crazy! Who would have thought a genuinely dumb person would hold entirely contradictory positions at once?

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

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