Sorry Baby, But Nobody Rules The Tom Monster

What Is Abortion Really About?

2006-02-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

Conor links a very interesting debate between two pro-choicers debating abortion policy, and remarks “It's striking how differently each of these pro-choice thinkers feels about abortion.” Funny, William seems to have more in common with a moderate pro-lifer like me than with orthodox pro-choicers.

As recently as a year ago, I was a conventional pro-lifer. However, my ever-growing distaste for religious conservatism, coupled with some healthy introspection on the matter, caused me to shift my position. While I remain doggedly opposed to Roe, I’ve come to the conclusion that abortion’s ultimate legality does not concern me. Everyone—especially the unborn—would be best served if the pro-life lobby abandoned the cause of prohibition (which is never going to happen nationwide) and put all of its heart, energy, and funding towards preventing unwanted pregnancies. Encouraging adoption is wonderful and important. So is abandoning abstinence-only education and religious admonitions against contraception; when I’m a father, I’ll rather my daughter lose her virginity safely than get pregnant before her time.

Simply put, I think it's more important to reduce the number of abortions than pipe-dream about it being outlawed. Funny, I seem to have more in common with a moderate pro-choicer like William than with orthodox pro-lifers.

Lord of the Blinds

2006-01-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

Imagine if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were the first Tim Burton film you’d ever seen. “My God,” you might exclaim to your couch mate, “This claustrophobic, fairy-tale aesthetic is brilliant; it fits Roald Dahl’s vision perfectly. This Tim Burton is a genius!” Your enthusiasm might wane, however, were your friend to inform you mid-reverie that this is how Tim Burton directs all of his films; in fact, he would have directed both Gladiator and Pride and Prejudice with exactly the same style.

A similar revelation happened to me about 100 pages into Jose Saramago’s Blindness. Initially, I was deeply impressed by what I believed to be a brilliantly appropriate aesthetic choice: in a novel about an epidemic of blindness, Saramago deprives his readers of one of their “senses” by using the only bare minimum of punctuation. How brilliant! How insightful! How…utterly disappointing to find out he writes everything like this. That’s what I get for reading Wikipedia.

That aside, Blindness gets off to a strong start as various unnamed citizens of an unnamed city in an unnamed country are suddenly—and inexplicably—struck blind as they go about their daily lives. Saramago takes advantage of epidemic’s ability to spread through casual contact, giving us a fascinating Six-Degrees-of-Separation cross-section of the city as the affliction spreads. The characters were diverse and interesting, and this first act was a (perversely) fun read.

I lost interest, however, during the second act, which should have been the most interesting; to restrict the spreading of the disease the government confines the blind into an increasingly crowded mental asylum where anarchy and cruelty quickly take hold. Admittedly, it was a fine portrayal of how quickly civilization and civilized behavior break down so easily, and how much we take simple things like a ready food supply and sanitation for granted (I recently read somewhere that the civilized man and the savage are separated only by about three days’ worth of food). However, I felt that the power of the events described in this section was undone by the fact that I’d seen it done elsewhere a million times before: it was 28 Days Later without zombies, or Lord of the Flies with sex. In short, this path was so well-trodden, that Saramago’s blind characters could have stumbled their way along it without too much trouble.

Conclusion: 6/10. Strong at the beginning and end, powerful but utterly predictable in the middle, and undone by unduly its pretentious style.

Nonetheless, much thanks to Amber for the excellent idea of online book club associated with her envy-inducing blog Prettier Than Napoleon.

A Definitive Definition

2005-07-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Thus spake Apollo:

Andrew Sullivan yesterday provided a link to an article in the New York Times showing Pope Benedict XVI’s “rush back to the Middle Ages” on the issue of evolution. This was more than the “reactionary radicalism” he expected from Benedict, it was “stupidity.” The move against evolution, Sullivan speculates, might be political, because Benedict wants to ally himself with the “Protestant right” “in order to pursue his war against freedom for gays, or reproductive freedom.” Intrigued, I clicked.
…
There seems to have been a complete disconnect from reality between what the essay says and how the Times and Sullivan reported on it. The essay has little to say about evolution per se, but instead addresses a particular sort of evolutionary theory which Schonborn calls “neo-Darwinism” and defines as the belief in “an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” Schonborn is arguing that statements by Pope John Paul II that give credence to evolution shouldn’t be taken as supporting just any theory of evolution. Schonborn quotes the late Pontiff: “"It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity." So evidently JPII did not support notions of evolution being simply “unguided, unplanned processes of random variation and natural selection.” He uses some other quotes, and presuming they are accurate, Schonborn proves his point, namely that Catholic dogma doesn’t support “neo-Darwinism.”
…
In a thought-provoking conclusion, Schonborn says that materialistic philosophies such as neo-Darwinism are “an abdication of human intelligence.” This is true, insofar as the purpose of human intelligence is to answer the question of self-awareness, namely “Why are we here?” Neo-Darwinism’s answer is a shrug, but a strangely definitive shrug: “We don’t know, dammit!” Humanity is not even the Ecclesiastical dust in the wind—helpless over our fate, but being carried along by something unseen. Instead, we are Darwinian farts in the wind—the results of some unplanned and unguided biological processes, cast out rather carelessly.

I agree. The problem here—besides Andrew’s penchants for hyperbole and occasional panic—is the inability to differentiate Darwin’s Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection and Darwinism.

Darwin’s scientific theory basically runs as follows: a) all organisms share a common descent; b) that while each generation inherits most of its parents’ traits, it also varies slightly from its parents, i.e. it mutates; c) those offspring whose mutations make them more fit for survival will be more reproductively successful than their lesser-fit siblings; and d) over time, this leads to speciation.

Darwinism, however, states that these variations are random, i.e. they have “no specific pattern, purpose, or objective.” According to Darwinists such as Stephen Jay Gould—who was quite emphatic on the point—life isn’t, and has never been, progressing in any particular direction; interesting and wonderful as human beings may be, Darwinism argues that we can’t be the purpose of evolution because evolution has no purpose. We’re here, it’s queer, get used to it.

This, Apollo and the Cardinal rightfully argue, is not compatible with Christianity; God cannot not care. What the Cardinal was getting at, and what Sullivan so severely missed, was that it is possible to a) believe that Darwin was right in his science but slightly off in his philosophy and b) reconcile Theism and Evolution without having to resort to the dubiousness of Intelligent Design1. with a call for Heraclean attention to slight changes in wording, I propose replacing the pesky adjective random to describe mutations with the broader and more universally palatable unpredictable. It strikes me a small loss for purists—indeed, something that is unpredictable may well be random—while allowing just enough wiggle-room belief that, while it may not be possible to justify it rationally or empirically, we might be here for a reason after all.

1. By staking so much on looking for God’s signature in Creation—specifically by arguing that some systems are so “irreducibly complex” that they must have been the product of a Creator—Intelligent Designers seem to laying the foundation for a strong rhetorical case against the existence of God if, indeed, it turns out that such systems can be explained by non-supernatural phenomena.

Gettin' Icky With Ricky

2005-06-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

An interview with Senator Rick Santorum about--guess what--social and religious issues with an off-hand mention of man-on-dog sex (wait 'til Brent Bozell finds out!). No, I don't think Santorum is a nascent Torquemada; in fact, it's well worth mentioning that he's a truer conservative than most in some ways (elsewhere in the interview, he talks about taxes as a taxpayer, not as a senator, which is very refreshing). Nonetheless, this interview really goes to show the extent to which Santorum really is the embodiment the Religious Right's takeover of Republican party, and everything that is un-conservative about the RR's world view:

AP: Speaking of liberalism, there was a story in The Washington Post about six months ago, they'd pulled something off the Web, some article that you wrote blaming, according to The Washington Post, blaming in part the Catholic Church scandal on liberalism. Can you explain that?

SANTORUM: You have the problem within the church. Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don't be surprised that you get more of it.

Notice how Santorum leaps immediately from talking about a problem within the Catholic Church--and, presumably, about how liberalism within the Church is causing problems--to talking about a constitutional right to privacy? The problem, according to Santorum, is that the government is less judgmental about the private behavior of its citizens than the Catholic Church is. Last time I checked, the Church is God's earthly institution charged with bringing all of humanity closer to God and salvation, whereas the government is there to, you know, make sure everybody drives on the same side of the road. Seems to me that the two of them might set standards just a liiiiiitle differently.

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your
home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it
does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you — this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, here it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

So, to answer the question: yes. Rick Santorum, Senator of Pennsylvania, thinks that it should be illegal for two men to have sex at home. Just for the record. Lest there be any confusion.

Back to my point, I agree that the Right to Privacy is an invention of the Supreme Court, and I'm not a believer in the notion that there can be constitutionally-protected rights that are not, you know, in the Constitution. However, unlike Santorum, I think there is a need for such a right to enumerated. Putting abortion aside for the moment--as it's debatable whether it is a "private" decision--I like the idea of there being legal protections against someone prying into my medical and financial records, and I don't like worrying that if I put my email address on a petition about the local water utility, it means that I'm destined receive a cagillion emails graphically showing how I can enlarge my genitals. More over, I do think people should be allowed to whatever they want in their own homes, so long as it does not hurt or impune others. To summon the great line of every curmudgeon, I don't want anyone--private or public--stickin' their nose into my private affairs. Rick Santorum, however, seems to disagree. Again, I am not upset that he judges; I am not upset that he is against relativism; nor am I even slightly perturbed that he is concerned with society or that believes that their is such a thing as indecent--even deviant--behavior. What does worry me is that I cannot tell where Santorum draws the line between what is moral and what should be legal.

Question for an Enterprising Researcher

2005-05-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

So just how did the Koran-Flushing incident travel across the world and end with riots killing more than a dozen people? Did al-Jazeera or al-Arabiya pick it up? Muslim bloggers? Some other newsource?

Ethical but Stupid?

2005-05-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

Ur has some very legitimate challenges to my last post:

I have to disagree with you, though, about the appropriateness of using techniques particularly designed to offend the religious sensibilities of the interrogee, for reasons that I think Sullivan has mentioned before. We are bending over backwards here trying to show that the war on terror is not a war on Islam (despite a noticeable contingent of people in this country who think that's exactly what it should be). If this becomes a war against Islam instead of against a group of fundamentalist whack-jobs who like to kill infidels and don't fear death, we are guaranteed to lose. Using interrogation techniques that specifically target Islamic beliefs is quite likely to push borderline cases over the line between cursing out names and actually trying to kill us.

An absolutely fair point. While I made a distinction between what is ethical and what is effective, I should also have considered whether the techniques were wise. I hereby revise my criteria to justify an acceptable interrogation technique: 1) it must be at least minimally ethical, 2) there must be a reasonable expectation of getting useful information through its use, and 3) it must not undermine our strategic goals.

He continues:

Of course, rioting over the supposed flushing of a Koran is fucking insane. But that's what we are dealing with. In any war, one of the prime strategic goals is to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war. Al Quaeda doesn't exactly have factory complexes or airfields or tank farms to bomb - their resources are pissed-off fundamentalist Muslims who hate us enough to risk (or sacrifice) their lives to destroy us. That is what we have to deprive them of, and the only way to do that - short of genocide - is to avoid giving any evidence, however slight, to the argument that we are enemies of Islam itself and not Al Quaeda or Hamas (or any other terrorist group) in particular. Telling a prisoner to 'fuck Allah' isn't an evil thing to do (unlike actual torture, which you rightly point out is a problem in and of itself). It is, however, fucking stupid.

Here's where I demur, since I honestly question whether world-wide Muslim opinion of the United States is in anyway connected to reality. No matter how good some kids are, their parents still beat them at the slightest provocation, and--in such situations--there are always provocations. Honestly, do you think Newsweek's retraction about the flushing incident is going to make any difference in Pakistan, or were we condemned before this even happened?

Abuse By Any Other Name

2005-05-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

Few pundits were more outraged by the prison abuse scandals of the past year than Andrew Sullivan. In numerous articles, and in dozens of blogposts, Sullivan has effectively shown that: A) our military has undoubtedly physically tortured prisoners, some of which was sanctioned from above, some of which was extracurricular*; B) the Bush Administration has farmed-out terror suspects to foreign governments whom we know to use torture (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc); and C) there has been almost no outrage about points A) and B) from those who are the first to call this war just.

Not only is torture—the infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion the—extremely unreliable from what I gather, I think it goes without saying that it is unethical. Simply put, I don’t want American soldiers and Marines ripping out fingernails or committing any other act medieval sadism on our prisoners; it’s going to do little to help, and much to hurt us. I am in complete agreement with Lee (and should likewise caution about my utter ingorance of how to run an interrogation).

Beyond this, however, Sullivan and I disagree. In much the same way that he has criticized others for inventing a definition of “abuse” so expansive it could include anything that wouldn’t kill the victim, Andrew now defines “torture” to mean anything, anything that might play on the cultural and religious taboos of a Jihadist. Commenting yesterday on the scandal involving allegations that Marines flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet during and interrogation, he writes:

A simple question: after U.S. interrogators have tortured over two dozen detainees to death, after they have wrapped one in an Israeli flag, after they have smeared naked detainees with fake menstrual blood, after they have told one detainee to "Fuck Allah," after they have ordered detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head, is it completely beyond credibility that they would also have desecrated the Koran?...It is not being "basically, on the side of the enemy”…to resist the notion of government-sanctioned torture and to report on it. It is patriotism and serving the cause that this war is about: religious pluralism and tolerance.

Notice how Andrew draws no distinctions between our troops murdering a prisoner, and draping the Israeli flag over him. He goes on:

“[W]e do know for certain that other "techniques" designed to use religion as an interrogative tool have been deployed, including the smearing of fake menstrual blood on detainees' faces. This religious warfare was also deployed at Abu Ghraib. I wrote in my review of the official records of the torture:

One Muslim inmate was allegedly forced to eat pork, had liquor forced down his throat and told to thank Jesus that he was alive. He recounted in broken English: "They stripped me naked, they asked me, 'Do you pray to Allah?' I said, 'Yes.' They said 'Fuck you' and 'Fuck him.'" Later, this inmate recounts: ''Someone else asked me, 'Do you believe in anything?' I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"

We are fighting an enemy who is homophobic, sexist, anti-Semitic, religiously bigoted, and deeply, deeply superstitious. In other words, they are probably extremely vulnerable to methods of psychological interrogation that are physically benign, like many of the ones Andrew lists. Considering our objections to the use of physical torture, shouldn’t we at least consider exploiting their profound cultural and religious neuroses to our advantage?

There needs to be clearly defined limits on what kind of things our military and intelligence agents can do, limits that need to be set for by ethical boundries and pragmatic constrainsts. But I ask you: if we were fighting Sinn Fein, would it really be so unconscionable to threaten to flush fake communion wafers down the toilet? if they were Nazis, would it be so bad to threaten to give them a transfusion of a Jew’s blood? Not so, according to Andrew Sullivan, who thinks that the more screwed-up, retrograde, and narrow-minded our enemy’s culture is, the lighter we need to tread.

That Pesky Reporting

2005-03-13T15:00:00.000-08:00

About two months ago, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that a sticker placed on science textbooks in a suburban county violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by unduly singling-out and dismissing evolution as a “mere theory.” The decision generated a lot of news coverage, as have a number of similar battles in recent months.

After doing some research, I noticed a glaring factual error in the way this story has been reported, and attempted to make a post on subject. However, I was convinced that this error indicated Something Profound and I spent over a week wracking my brain, trying to discover what this Something was. By the time I realized that there really wasn’t much to it beyond the identification of an error, everyone else had forgotten the story. I let it go.

But just this week, Lee at Right-Thinking made post on the subject:

There is, as we all know, a large creationist movement in the Southern states, specifically Georgia and Florida, who are working to get stickers placed on science textbooks stating that evolution is a theory and should be approached with a critical mind.

Lee has done an excellent job over the last few months of demonstrating that Intelligent Design and Creation Science are dogmatic while true Science—despite its limitations—is about a genuine search for the truth and has self-correcting mechanisms built into it. That doesn’t mean it’s always right; if it were there wouldn’t be any need for self-correction. Instead, Science is designed to react to new evidence and, if necessary, disregard old theories and assumptions.

Same goes for good bloggers, which brings me back to this business about stickers in Georgia, and the factual error that I had not been able to do anything with before. Lee has, unfortunately, fallen for the widely promulgated meme of this story: that the stickers represented an attempt by the School Board to denigrate Evolutionary Theory. Not so.

As reported by most of the Press—but not, to give credit, the New York Times—the basic gist of the sticker story was that the Cobb County School Board ordered stickers placed on all science textbooks in the district in response to pressure from their constituents. The stickers read “This textbook contains materials on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.” Five parents in the school district, however, objected to these stickers on the grounds that it unduly singled-out and denigrated evolution. In the lawsuit they filed, they argued that the county’s actions violated the establishment clause of the US Constitution. In January, Judge Clarence Cooper ruled against the School Board and in favor of the objecting parents. Enlightenment: 1; Forces of Darkness: 0.

Except, that’s not how Judge Cooper saw things. As described in his oft-quoted-but-seldom-read decision the School Board decided, in 2002, to reevaluate its science curriculum. At the time, their policy stated that no student could be required to take courses covering evolutionary theory, and that human origins could only be discussed in elective courses. After some discussion, they decided to get rid of this policy and replace it with one that taught more evolutionary theory in High School.

Some parents objected to this, saying that the new curriculum would not give adequate attention to "Alternative Theories” of the origin of life. "Alternative Theories" meaning everything from Intelligent Design to a literal interpretation of Genesis. One lady in particular, Marjorie Rogers, was so miffed at the prospect of her children being taught Godless Darwin without anything to counteract it, she organized a petition-signing operation and managed to accumulate over 2,000 signatures to urge the school board to reconsider. Badly wanting to avoid further controversy, someone at the School Board came up with the idea of the sticker, which they hoped would deflate the situation.

Unfortunately for the School Board, some parents thought the stickers went too far in dismissing evolution—and only evolution—as a “mere theory” and filed the law suit. The judge’s decision, in essence, stated the School Board threw too big of a bone to the opposition in their efforts to teach more evolution.

Now, I have my own feelings on the merits of the decision, but here’s a point implicit in the judge’s story, but wholly absent from the news coverage: we’re winning. The real story here is not that the judge ruled in favor of the parents who objected to the sticker, but that a school board in Georgia changed its curriculum to conform more closely to empirical science. That’s good news, and it’s a shame it’s been lost in all this.

To whack or not to whack? And with what?

2005-01-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

My friend Amber has a post about a product called the The Rod, a nylon whip designed to be used for corporal punishment, and a link to a discussion about the subject in general. An interesting subject, especially considering that corporal punishment is now banned in two European countries and seems to be generally on the wane elsewhere.

I confess I've never given the subject much thought. I have only one memory of being spanked, by my mother with a spoon, and it doesn't even register on my list of complaints about the way my parents brought me and my sister up (it's a reasonably short and unexceptional list...they did a good job).

So it should hardly come as a surprise that I'm mildly in favor of corporal punishment, if done correctly; it should be reserved for severe misbehavior, and never none in the heat of the moment. I'd be inlcined to send the kid to his or her room first, with instructions to come out in 15 minutes for a spanking; that'll give me time to cool down, and the kid time to stew.

That being said, I'd never use The Rod, and would find it hard to sympthize with someone who did. There is something sadistic--if only slightly--about an object being designed and purchased specifically for the purpose of causing another person pain. The fact that the manufacturer claims to have ceased production because he's having trouble procurring the padded grips is...well, you draw your own conclusions.

Speaking of padded grips, I'm inclined to disagree with Dobson's belief that--when spanking is merited--one should always use an inanimate object, reserving the hand for love. If I ever spank my kid, I'd only do it with my hand, so that a) I'll know exactly how hard I'm hitting and b) it'll make the experience that much more unpleasant for me.

First Sight From A New World

2005-01-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

Wow.

New Thought

2005-01-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

For the sake of this post, I’d like to ask everyone to—just for a moment—ignore your opinion on whether abortion should be legal and whether the Iraq War was justified.

Last week, I was watching the O’Reilly Factor (yes, I watch the O’Reilly Factor; Trey and Matt are vulgar and Bill’s a blowhard). As I was saying, I was watching the O’Reilly Factor and Bill was discussing a recent ruling by California Attorney General Bill Locklear, allowing a public school to release a student from class for medical reasons (including to have an abortion) without having to inform the student’s parents. Jerry Brown, the far-left former governor of California who was a guest on the show, commented:

"This is probably viewed differently in California than other parts of the country. If a woman's old enough to get pregnant, the right to privacy has to be protected."

Bill objected, saying that a pregnant 14-year old hardly qualifies as a woman. Now, compare Brown's statement with an oft-quoted editorial by William Rivers Pitt:

“Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a victory for anyone. We the People should have known better, We the People should have been given the facts before sending 851 of our children to die.”

Look, I was a ROTC cadet for three years before being released over an old knee injury, a rather fantastically stupid decision for the military, but a lucky break for me. Suffice to say (and to paraphrase Lileks), I could very easily mouth-off a number of epithets for those in the military—both positive and negative—but “child-like” just doesn’t come to mind.

The point of all this being that, according to the Left, we should assume a knocked-up eighth-grader to be a mature adult, capable of making her own decisions, while also presuming that a nineteen year-old PFC is, well, just a kid.

The American Thinker Agrees!

2005-01-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker for picking-up my "Defending South Park" post. Lifson is a great guy who has published two excellent pieces by my father in the last few months. Check them out...and buy a copy of The Siege of Western Civilization while you're at it.

It's A Shpadoinkle Day!

2005-01-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Amber, Lee, and Andrew for the links, and welcome fellow Bamberians, Right-Thinkers, and Sullivanites! This is the blogger equivilent of jumping into bed only to find that you're sharing it with a set of naked, blonde triplets.

A number of people have made an excellent point about my fisking, one which I'm inclined to agree with: it would be more far more accurate to say that South Park is the only popular TV show likely to convert young people to a particular brand of conservatism, likely one Bozell doesn't endorse.

My mother also made a legitimate point that--even if the moral of the episode is sound--the content is still rather extreme. I'm fine with it being on cable at 10:30 pm on Wednesdays, my mom's not. Of course, it'd be impossible to have that argument if your knowledge of South Park was limited to Bozell's piece. The point stands that Bozell is a doofus who either a) wrote an article condemning a TV episode he has not seen (at least in its entirety), or b) intentionally witheld information from his article that would have undermined his thesis, much as Michael Moore would do.

I'm sending an email to Bozell. I'll let you know if he says anything.

Article of Mass Distortion

2005-01-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

An article by Brent Bozell recently came to my attention. It is, simply put, a perfect example of Paleo-Con stupidity and the kind of misdirection and lies that the author condemns in his book, "Weapons of Mass Distortion."

The article in question, "Winners and losers, 2004," provides the reader with a brief description of what the author believes to be the high and low points of entertainment in 2004. Though it's not a terribly inspired article, it makes some Michael Medvedesque points about how Hollywood goes out of it's way to ignore productions that might cater towards families and conservatives (indeed, he quotes Medved). I’m inclined to agree. But then there's the following passage:

Loser: "South Park." The producers of this curdled, malodorous black hole of Comedy Central vomit want to elicit only one sentence from viewers: "Did I just see that on television?" For anyone who thinks television today is not as offensive -- and downright stupid as those "prudes" say it is, we suggest a look at the Dec. 1 episode. At the South Park "Whore-Off" competition, Paris Hilton inserts an entire pineapple into her vagina. A gay man in a biker vest then takes off his pants and puts the entire body of Paris Hilton up his rectum. Remember this episode the next time some TV critic raves about the "talent" behind "South Park."

Before continuing, it is well worth mentioning that Mr. Bozell's description of the conclusion of episode 812, "Stupid Spoiled Whore" is--technically speaking--100% accurate. The events, so far as he describes them, transpire exactly as he states. Of course, many of the things in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 were--technically speaking--100% accurate. They were still lies. Such is the case with Bozell's smearing of South Park.

The episode begins with the grand opening of a new store at the South Park Mall called "Stupid Spoiled Whore." The store caters towards girls and is the exlcusive retailer of products endorsed by its patron, hotel heiress Paris Hilton, such as:

1. Tot-sized thongs;
2. Paris Hilton's new perfume "Skanque";
3. The "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Play Set," a toy which allows girls to broadcast homemade porn (ala the sex tape which somehow catapulted Ms. Hilton to celebritydom) and comes complete with a video camera, kid-sized condoms, ecstasy pills, and a losable cell phone.

All of the girls in South Park are enraptured with the store and quickly persuade their parents (generally, their mothers) to buy these products, so that they can be more like their heroine, Ms. Hilton, who is onsite to dedicate the store.

All the girls, that is, except for the rather precocious Wendy Testaburger, an eight-year old South Park student who thinks that the talentless and vapid Ms. Hilton is a terrible paragon. Unfortunately, Wendy is unable to persuade her playmates, who spend the rest of the episode trying to emulate Ms. Hilton's hyper-sexuality. Unsure of who to turn to, Wendy consults Mr. Garrison, her fourth-grade teacher, and his boyfriend, Mr. Slave, the gay man who Mr. Bozell described in his article.

Though Mr. Slave is a self-admitted whore, he is horrified that anyone--least of all fourth-grade girls--would hold either him or Hilton up as role models. He confronts Ms. Hilton on the matter, who dismisses him as not being on her level of whoredom, and promptly challenges him to the "Whore-off" Mr. Bozell took so much offense at. After Hilton's rather spectacular "exit," the townsfolk cheer Mr. Slave, who promptly chastises them for over-sexualizing their daughters and encouraging behavior that can only lead to future promiscuity. Mr. Bozell didn't tell you that, now did he?

South Park is not for everybody (certainly not for children), and I resisted it for years, finding the humor not worth the vulgarity. However, the show had greatly improved by its third season and--while it is still vulgar and crude--it's now infinitely funnier than it was initially, and is blatantly libertarian and often traditionalist in its politics. The show is openly hostile to sexual harassment legislation, environmentalism, and the "tolerance" movement, and consistently embraces the idea that children are best raised by their parents, not by incompetent teachers, do-gooder liberals, and anyone else who does not have their best interests at heart.

It is also worth noting that Parker and Stone are also the creators of Team America, the only major Hollywood release to address, let alone condone, the War on Terror. Of all popular entertainment aimed at young people in America today, South Park is one of--if not the--most likely to persuade them of the value of conservative principles. And fart jokes.

Politics is War By Other Means

2004-12-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

Isn't that what we're doing in Iraq?

A.C.E., My Ass

2004-11-21T23:28:00.000-08:00

One of the more irritating manifestations of political correctness--and there are many--is the useage of B.C.E. and A.C.E (i.e. "Before/After the Common Era") instead of B.C. and A.D. I've railed against it for quite a while, arguing that it's a pathetic attempt to remove the obvious meaning of a perfectly clear word; call it what you want, but the date refers the (best estimate) of the birth of Christ and that's an end to it.

But a new argument struck me today; shouldn't the new set of words be vastly more offensive? B.C. and A.D. reference a specific event that is important to our civilization; no value judgement is offered beyond that. There is nothing to imply that our system is superior to any other; we use Jesus, Muslims use Mohammed, etc, etc. They're just different. But now, some ivy-towered prick who feels uncomfortable referencing religion every footnote comes up with a new system that--while obstensively created to be more sensitive--demonstrates far, far, far greater hubris, self-importence, and arrogance than the original. Exactly, what Common Era are we referring to here? Hmm? Ahh! The Common Era! The One and Only, mine and yours. Oh, I see the light!

Yeeechhh!

Yeow!

2004-10-25T01:17:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer is one of those guys who has the irritating habit of always being right (curse him!). But after reading his latest column Sacrificing Israel, I figured that ol' Charley had finally lost it. Sure, it would make sense for Kerry would sell-out the Israelis in exchange for the international support he's promised, but would he really do that? I mean, who else would think Kerry might be that low?

Yassir Arafat.

...and now for something completely different

2004-10-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sick and tired of the God-cursed election, so--for a change--I thought I'd talk about what I've been reading lately.

The last book I read was Patrick O'Brien's Post-Captain, which is the the second book in the Aubrey-Maturin series and even better than its predecessor, Master & Commander. This is only the latest in my year-long binge on 17th and 18th-Century British Maritime novels, which has also included the Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy, as well as Dava Sobel's Longitude (six books on a topic within a year counts as a binge, right? Right?)

The Bounty Trilogy is both an excellent story and a rather fascinating piece of historical fiction. For any who are shaky on the subject, the story concerns the HMS Bounty, commanded by Lt. William Bligh, which left England in 1788 on a mission to bring live breadfruit treesfrom their native Tahiti to the British Caribbean (it was believed at the time that breadfruit would provide a cheap and effective staple food for the slaves--turned out not to be the case). Though Bligh was an excellent seaman and navigator, he managed to alienate both his crew and his officers on the journey out. through a combination of a bad temper, ambition (his desire to circumnavigate the globe costs them months of wasted time), and the usual strict disapline that goes hand-in-hand with a British naval ship. Suffice to say, everyone--except Bligh--was overjoyed when they reached Tahiti, and most of the men promptly took Tahitian wives/mistresses. Disapline went from rather severe, to extreme lax.

Some monts later, the breadfruits were loaded and Bligh ordered the men back on the ship. Without too much incident, they complied. While some of the men were eager to return to their families, others clearly wanted to return to Tahiti. One such man was the ship's acting second in command, Flecther Christian (Bligh had had a falling out with the ship;s Master, John Fryer, whom Bligh accused of cowardice.). Though circumstances immeadiately proceeding the mutiny are unclear, within a very short period of time Christian and his followers gained control of the ship in a bloodless coup. Some of the men wanted to kill Bligh then and there, but Christian argued for clemency, and Bligh was put into the ship's launch with 18 men loyal to him, and cast off with some food, a few sabers, and and a medical kit--no navigational tools or maps.

At this point, the story splits. Christian and the mutineers sailed the Bounty back to Tahiti, where they dropped-off some of the men who were either loyal to Bligh but were unable to accompany him in the skiff, or men who were willing to risk capture to stay on the island paradise. The remaining mutineers--a rather nasty bunch, with the exception of Christain--set sail for some of the least explored parts of pacific, eventually beaching and destroying the Bounty on a beautiful and sublime little island named Pitcairn's Island, which--they discovered--was not located correctly on any map. But while the Island provided them with both safety and sustenance required for a micro-civilization, the citizens were not up to the task; by the time the Island was finally discovered 18 years later, all but one of the men had been killed by the other islanders, as well as some women. What should have turned into an eden-esque isle of innocence, turns into a harrowing distopia; Lord of the Flies, just with adults and alcohol.

But if people killing each other on an island paradise isn't ironic enough, the fate of 19 men in a 23-foot skiff, commanded by a man famous for his temper, turns out to be an incredibly up-lifting story. Despite all of his many problems as a leader in good times, Bligh was master at rallying his men together through the worst adversity and--rather convienently--an almost inhumanly good navigator. Over the following six weeks, Bligh managed to navigate over 3,600 miles to the nearest port, while losing only one man (who was murdered by unfriendly natives at one of their infrequent stops).

The novels read quickly, and the prose--while not particularly creative--is both effecient and lucid (no small accomplishment that). The narration of the first two books, Mutiny on the Bounty and Men Against the Sea, focalizes on a single, minor, semi-fictional character and who presumably write their tales years after their experience. There was a great deal of historical material to draw on for the first two, as there was a public courtmartial for Bligh when he arrived in England without his ship. Pitcairn's Island, however is largely fictional, and based off of contridicting eye-witness testimony from the mutineers descendants.

UPDATE: On an interesting note, the Bounty has been in the news lately.

UPDATE II: I meant to reivew Post Captain and Master and Commander. I'll do that tomorrow.

What does it mean to be a conservative?

2004-09-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

Governor Schwarzenegger is a hawk, is fiscally responsible, and is both pro-choice and against the FMA. He is a "moderate" conservative.

President Bush is a hawk, is fiscally loose, and is pro-life and in favor of the FMA. He is a "strong" conservative.

John McCain is a hawk, is fiscally responsible, and is pro-life but against the FMA. He is a "moderate" conservative.

Patrick Buchanan was against the Iraq War, is fiscally responsible, and is both pro-life and against the FMA. He is a "strong" conservative.

Anyone care to draw a conclusion from this other than the idea that social issues are the only way to judge the extent of one's conservativism?

The Difference Between the Conventions

2004-09-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

The Democrats tried to pass their presidential ticket off as moderates.

The Republicans tried to pass their party off as moderate.

The Real Kerry-Vietnam Question

2004-08-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

Kerry has recently stated that he stands by his 1971 testimony that US forces committed systematic and horrific atrocities against the people of Veitnam. If so, how can one reconsile this with Kerry's insistance that he is proud of his service and that of his "Band of Brothers"?

If the Democratic Party Was A Jane Austen Heroine...

2004-08-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

...the previous chapter would have told how she was persuaded by a sage counselor to end her attachment to Mr. Dean. Although Ms. Democrat subsequently became engaged to Mr. Kerry--a handsome, albeit dull, gentlemen of whom all of her acquaintances approved--and although Dean's unsuitability was now beyond question, she found the absence of her dear Howard's affections to be most vexing.

Unbeknownst to Ms. Democrat, however, it now appears that Kerry--not Dean--is the novel's scandalous male with an objectionable character. If this turns out to be true, and if Ms. Democrats accepts that she had been talked out of one bad marriage in exchange for one even worse, then I don't see how this can end happily.

Soldiers need Liposuction?

2004-07-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

What!?

A little bit of Justice.

2004-07-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimesg, bad things happen to bad people.

2004-07-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

Lee from http://www.rightthinking.com was good enough to post dad's latest article. To illustrate dad's suggestion that we need to put our sophistication aside for just a moment and divide the world into two categories (those who want us to suceed and those who don't), Lee asks the following question:

Right now, who is being more proactive in hunting down terrorists, Pakistan or France? I rest my case.

Some idiot responded with the following:

Pakistan has had OBL either within its borders or just outside it for, what, two years or so? And we’re looking of pictures of Saddam in a court room, but not OBL? How pro-active is Pakistan exactly?

First, I think KMS would demurrer.

Second, when President Bush took office, Pakistan was allied with the Taliban and was at the brink of nuclear war with India; today, Pakistan has thousands of soldiers searching for al Queda and Taliban remnants, and is getting along (begrudgingly) with India. Is it just me, or is this the most unheralded dimplomatic victory of the last decade?

America's Second Black President?

2004-07-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Sighhhhh.....

Three Actual Lies

2004-07-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

1) The NAACP and the "Black Community" are inseperable; by refusing to speak to the former, Bush denies representation to latter.

2) One's conservative credentials have nothing to do with one's stance on fiscal policy, the war, foriegn policy, pork-barrell spending, 2nd Amendment rights, or anything else whatsoever, but are defined solely by one's stance of homosexual marriage.

3) The FMA was an unprovoked attack by the right-wing.

Tom's Dad's Article on NRO

2004-07-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Dad explains how the CIA can fix its problems immediately in his latest article on NRO. Is this another scandal for the Ignore Herb Committee?

Gore Lied!

2004-07-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

A NRO intern researches Gore and Kerry's claim military families have had to host bake sales to buy proper body-armor for their loved ones because--they imply--the President is a cold, heartless bastard who didn't serve in Vietnam (although, in case you haven't heard, John Kerry did). Oddly enough, she finds that it's not quite true.

All of our troops had been issued the older kevlar vests by the time the war started, although few of them had yet recieved the newer ceramic armor that the military ok'd in 1999 nor had their HUMVEE's been armored. Since January, however, all of our ground forces have had the new stuff, and the HUMVEE fleet should be upgraded by August. In the meantime, police departments have donated their old kevlars to the military to be used to gerry-rig armor for HUMVEEs, and some parents tried to purchase the new armor for their sons and daughters directly from the manufacturers (only to find-out that all of their stuff had been ordered by the Pentagon). While their have been lots of fundraisers and bake sales to raise money for our troops and their families, none of them seem to have been connected to body armor.

So, Gore and Kerry has repeated statements which have since been proven false. They LIED!

Tom's Dad To Be On The O'Reilly Factor Tonight

2004-07-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

He'll be talking about the CIA and intelligence, probably specifically about the Senate's new report.

5/8pm PST

The Importance of Choosing Edwards, Part II

2004-07-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

Jonah Goldberg hits it on the nose.

By picking Edwards, Kerry has made it clear that he doesn't think this election should be framed on Bush's terms and that he wants to make a very different case to the American people.

Simply put, if Kerry really thought the war on terror was as big a deal as Bush does, there's no way he would pick John Edwards...Clearly, Kerry doesn't want to "balance" his ticket with a moderate, he wants to reinforce it with another liberal who can sell Kerry's message.

In other words, Kerry thinks his lack of cool is a greater problem than being perceived as a dove. The Johns are going to run an anti-war campaign. Just watch them.

One other point: much has been made of the fact that Bush had even weaker foreign policy credentials in 2000 than Edwards does now. Absolutely true; it was one of the strongest cases against Bush then. What gets no mention, however, is a) Bush was nominated pre 9-11, and b) He was aware of the deficiency and nominated (quite literally) an old war horse to try to make up for it.

The Importance of Choosing Edwards

2004-07-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan musters an excellent fisking of John Kerry's first speech since naming Edwards as his runningmate. Quite rightfully, Sullivan points-out that Kerry's speech is merely a series of exhausted cliches that were old by the time of the Big Bang. Moreover, it fails to make even one substantive statement about either Iraq or the War on Terror. As Sullivan puts it, Kerry envisions an America that's "about the future, and children, and the future of children..."

But while Sullivan is right to say that this underscores how bad a candidate John Kerry is, he nevertheless insists that Edwards--whose entire popularity was based on his ability to sell this kind of stuff--is the perfect choice for Kerry. It never seems to cross Sullivan's mind that the act of choosing John Edwards can only guarantee .more of this syrupy slop, and less discussion about the War. Put another way, Kerry's decision to augment his lack of charisma by choosing Edwards rather than enhance his foreign policy credentials by choosing someone like Dick Gephardt says more about his campaign than anything he might say at a stump speech: John Kerry really doesn't give a hoot about the War

John Edwards, I wish you could be around all the time...

2004-07-06T09:20:00.002-07:00

It would appear as if the Johns have heard my friend Amber Taylor's call for a National Kissing Day.

Anti-Semitic Jews?

2004-07-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

Anti Semitic Jews and Anti-Semitic Jews?

I can understand people who are critical of Israel or Israeli policy, but I cannot have any sympathy with someone who waves the Palestinian flag. Palestinian identity is based on hatred towards the Israelis and on absolutely nothing else. To be pro-Palestinian (and not merely anti-Israel or Israeli policy) is to be anti-semitic.

So I guess these are anti-Semitic Jews. South Park was right.

Picture of the Day

2004-07-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

Do I hear 250,000? Going once...going twice...250,000! 250,000 victims of the former dictator. Do I hear 275,000...

Kudos to Medved

2004-07-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Michael Medved deserves ‘Quote of the Day’ yesterday for some extremely quick thinking. While discussing the transfer of power in Iraq, a caller likened the new interim government to Pinocchio. "You must not know how the whole story;" said Medved, "Pinocchio becomes a real boy at the end."

My gut feeling is that the President has rushed the process because he thinks it'll get him reelected, but to expect the Iraqis--or anybody else, for that matter--to govern themselves effectively after 25 years of tyranny and only 15 months of relative freedom is…hopeful. I'd have preferred a longer occupation that would have given us the time we needed (and did not have because of the 6/30/04 deadline) to properly deal with the likes of Zarqawi and al-Sadr. But what's done is done. Best of luck to the Iraqis.