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Posts from March 2012

Cultural relativism in gaming

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Here you go:

The specific subject that MovieBob talks about is an incident involving a man named Aris Bakhtanians, who was confronted for publicly verbally sexually harassing a female player who he was coaching in a video game reality show. In brief, Aris defended his actions by saying that sexual harassment is part of the fighting game community, and that if you remove sexual harassment, it is no longer the fighting game community. 

Here’s where MovieBob attains Super Bigot Fighting Hero status. MovieBob doesn’t take (much) time addressing the specific instance for which Bakhtanians was criticized. Instead he opens up a dialogue about the argument itself – its weakness, its lameness. He points out that this excuse is used to justify many forms of racism, sexism and homophobia. He takes to task similar arguments like “It’s just how things are” and “This is the last place that it’s okay to talk like this.”

Pamela Geller is vile

Pamela Geller is vile published on 1 Comment on Pamela Geller is vile
Previously I knew Pamela Geller as a “creeping Sharia” proponent, the kind of person who makes a living off making Americans as afraid of Muslims as possible to the point of encouraging us to refuse them the rights we would ordinarily recognize as existing for any American; for any human. She is that, but her reaction to the Fluke/Limbaugh matter shows that she is a female misogynist as well, past the ranks of Ann Coulter. There’s a special category of political commentator that should place them beyond consideration by anyone who strives to be rational. This category I called “unhinged,” and Limbaugh and Coulter have dwelt in it for a very long time. Now, Geller makes me wonder if another category is needed for the super extra unhinged, the kind who might need to be institutionalized but instead are treated as a relevant political voice by…well, some. It’s hard to tell how many. 

Exhibit A:

A 30-year-old poses as a 23-year-old, chooses a Catholic University to attend at $65,000 per year, and cannot afford ALL the birth control pills she needs… so she wants the US taxpayers to pay for her rampant sexual activity. By all accounts she is banging it five times a day. She sounds more like a prostitute to me. She must have an gyno bill to choke a horse (pun intended). Calling this whore a slut was a softball.

Exhibit B:

I have had it up to here with Fluke’s vagina. Seriously. Clearly she’s a plant. I don’t have to exalt or honor women who debase and lower themselves to meat status. I will not honor this pig. I will not teach children to debase themselves. I will not teach children that this is “empowerment.” I explain it to young girls this way. Go into any Wal-Mart or Target. There are hundreds of black handbags for sale in bins, hung on display walls, all cheap or moderately priced, and they can’t give them away. Now  go into Hermes. There is one black, gorgeous, impossible to get, crocodile Birkin bag. There are waiting lists for this bag. No one can get that bag. It costs a fortune and still everyone wants that bag.
Be that bag. I despise the women’s movement. I despise what they have done to women (and men). Just look at Fluke. She is a full-fledged activist and an embarrasment [sic] to decent young women. 

Note: Sandra Fluke is not the one who made this about her sex life. Sandra Fluke did not make any mention of her sexual activity, and it wouldn’t matter if she had. In no way did Fluke pretend to be anything other than what she is, and it’s not her fault if conservative commentators made assumptions which proven to be erroneous. And Sandra Fluke is not the one comparing women to merchandise.

Women aren’t an ideological group. We are a biological/cultural one, so there’s no sense in which the behavior of one woman should be considered an embarrassment to the rest of us. But if one should be considered such, it doesn’t seem like Fluke is that woman.

The “what you did” vs. “who you are” distinction matters

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So Rush Limbaugh’s brother David is sticking up for him and complaining that people aren’t accepting Rush’s sincere (yes, that’s how David characterizes it) apology for being a bigoted lout. The apology in which, I would note, Rush further insults those whose pardon he ostensibly seeks by suggesting that his poor behavior amounts to sinking down to their level. The refusal to accept this apology as authentic and satisfactory by liberals, David says, amounts to rank hypocrisy. You can probably guess the basis for that complaint before I even quote him:

What I am observing is the most radical display of hate and intolerance that I’ve witnessed in years. It does not surprise me, but it is ironic that the very people who masquerade as exemplars of tolerance, civility and compassion have no room in their hearts for forgiveness.

The immediate response to this, of course is– radical display of hate and intolerance? Are you talking about your brother’s behavior? No, he is not. He is honestly saying that hateful and intolerant liberals are refusing to accept Rush Limbaugh’s apology because they “want his scalp,” and this is ironic given how much liberals like to talk about tolerance and compassion and stuff.

I would like to meet the liberal– the anyone– who defines tolerance and compassion as being nice to people who act like bigoted assholes for twenty years and then offer a backhanded apology for it once their sponsors start to pull out. No, when liberals advocate for tolerance and compassion, what they’re advocating is for people to stop being vocally bigoted, especially to stop legislating their bigotry. You can be a bigot, but behind closed doors please. Stop pretending that the sight of a gay couple holding hands somehow damages your psyche and grow up. There are still Americans who haven’t yet grown up and accepted the sight of an interracial couple holding hands, but we’re making progress. Tolerance is recognizing that what people are, if they’re consenting adults and aren’t harming anyone, is not your business. Compassion, in this context, means not foisting your private moral disapproval on them by attempting to outlaw what they are, or at least the expression of what they are. Acceptance would be not disapproving in the first place, but people don’t have a lot of control over what they accept. Acceptance is a feeling, and it’s unfair to try and dictate peoples’ feelings.  They can certainly, however, change their behavior.

Back to Rush Limbaugh. People are condemning him because of what he did, which was express bigotry against someone for who she is. Some people are taking the low road and making fun of his weight, yes, but the slams against him are not in general about immutable or semi-immutable traits. When you attack who someone is, you are by extension attacking everyone who shares the relevant trait in common. In calling Sandra Fluke a slut for wanting birth control, Rush called every woman who wants birth control a slut. And “every woman who wants birth control,” in the U.S., is nearly all of us. Birth control is fundamental to womens’ freedom and autonomy. In order to lead successful and independent lives, we need to be able to be sexually active without getting pregnant. That is why the war on birth control is being characterized as a war on women. In supporting it, especially by deeming it appropriate to insult and impugn the moral character of every woman who has used birth control, Rush attacked women for who they are. That is intolerant.

Refusing to be nice to individual people who have behaved abominably, especially intolerantly, is not intolerant. Tolerance has never been about being nice to individuals; it has been about respecting the autonomy and interests of groups. Every time a conservative attempts to conflate these two by whining about those liberals being so hypocritical by being mean to a bigot, a dittohead gets his wings.

Weekend web readin’

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From The Guardian, Wired for Culture by Mark Pagel; Beyond Human Nature by Jesse J Prinz; Together by Richard Sennett – review

Money quote:

Central to his thesis is the fact that humans do not co-operate mindlessly, unlike other creatures that establish elaborate societies, such as ants and termites. In these cases, the role of the individual is suborned totally to the greater good of the nest or hive. Humans are still capable of expressing great individuality within a society. So think of our role in society as more like that of a venture capitalist who is trying to invest money, says Pagel. We seek out individuals with whom we can form the best alliances needed to set up friendships and businesses. The rewards are bountiful and can be seen in all the glories of modern civilisation, though we have to take care. This process only works if we select good candidates for co-operation and are selected, in turn, by others. To make sure this happens, says Pagel, we need to have good reputations. “Reputations act as the currency we use to buy trust and co-operation,” he states. Thus we hold open doors, stand aside for others, help the elderly, give to charity and even risk our lives to save animals. It is all done to build up our own reputations so that others will seek us out and co-operate with us. But sometimes, says Pagel, it all goes a little bit too far and reputations are elevated to an almost religious status. They are considered to be heritable and are reckoned to run in families. As a result, those who are thought to be endangering a family’s reputation are attacked by their close relatives. The result is an honour killing. Seen from this perspective, the act is a co-operative one taken to a grotesque, overzealous level. “A reputation acquires the worth of a human life,” as Pagel puts it.

From TV By the Numbers, Syfy Original Series ‘Monster Man’ Will Showcase Hollywood Creature-Making Family Beginning Wednesday, March 14

Money quote:

Syfy will premiere its latest original docuseries Monster Man on Wednesday, March 14 at 11PM (ET/PT), immediately following the second season finale of Face Off at 10 PM (ET/PT). Monster Man will return to its regular timeslot, Wednesdays at 10 PM (ET/PT), the following week on March 21. Monster Man goes behind the scenes of one of Hollywood’s most respected practical effects workshops. For more than thirty years, when studios want a bizarre creature or out-of-this world alien, they turn to Cleve Hall and the team at SOTA FX. Only the horrifying monsters they build match the craziness of this extremely talented family. 

From Digital Life on Today, The “lost” cell phone project, and the dark things it says about us

Money quote:

At 6:30 a.m., the finder opened the calendar, private pix, social networking, online banking, HR salaries, remote admin, corporate e-mail and passwords. For the rest of the day, there was near continuous rummaging through the phone, including the eventual launch of File Manager to see the entire phone’s contents.  “It’s relentless. He can’t get into online banking so he goes back to the file that has passwords in it, checks the passwords again and tries again,” Haley said. “He tries to log in remotely to the computer, can’t get on so he goes to password to get the password and tries again.” By nightfall, activity on the phone stopped, and it remained relative dormant until it was moved to New York City’s Chinatown area at 5:35 a.m. Feb. 9 — one week after it was lost — and wiped clean, probably for sale on the black market.

From Dispatches From the Culture Wars,  Badass Quote of the Day

Money quote….okay, only quote:

‎”Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” — Howard Zinn.

What Rush hath wrought

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On the Daily Show clip in my previous post, Jon Stewart begins (after introducing the show) by noting that Rush Limbaugh’s profession is to be a loathsome human being. It’s just a matter of fact– he’s good at it, and has done it for over two decades with considerable success. But it’s easy to forget that there are people who think otherwise. People who actually take him seriously. People who think that he has things of value to say. People who pass such messages on to their children. Who then pass them on to other children.

A Daily Kos member going by the name “beantown mom” posted an account entitled “I’ve spent the past two days trying to convince my 16 y/o she is not a slut.” Long story short: her daughter had to go on hormonal birth control due to menorrhagia and secondary dysmenorrhea. Her daughter then went to a five day camp for band members, during which any prescription medicine had to be kept by supervisors and distributed at the beginning of each day to those who required it. Pretty standard procedure, right? Here’s what happened next:

Thursday, my daughter came home from school and seemed to be a little out of sorts. I chalked it up to being tired and trying to get caught up on homework and such; however, I did ask her if everything was alright and she said yes, she thought so- it was just that at lunch there were some girls whispering and pointing at her in lunch and then they would break out into little fits of laughter. She couldn’t figure out why they were singling her out but admitted that a couple of the girls were ones she had once had a problem with. They were the “popular” girls, 2 of whom were cheerleaders, and last year they had singled her out calling her names and such when they got bored and, in my daughter’s words, “ran out of girls to harass and make fun of in lunch”. I gave it no further consideration- we went on about our business of getting homework done, etc. Friday morning, I took my kids to school and headed off to my mother’s to do some errands and such for my family. With the impending storms and bad weather bearing down on us, I sent my daughter a text that I would pick her up from school. My son had baseball so I only had to worry about her getting home. I pulled into the parking lot and saw that she was standing inside the doors at school, her head down and shoulders shaking- I thought she was laughing at something someone said or was looking at her phone reading something funny. I honked and waived [sic] to motion her out, not sure if she saw me. She never looked up, just pushed open the door and practically ran to the car. She flung open the door and I started to say something about the wind and rain, but stopped mid sentence because of the look on my child’s face! She was sobbing, face streaked with tears, cheeks red and eyes so swollen I could hardly see her beautiful brown eyes- I slammed the car into park right in the middle of the parking lot and asked her what was wrong.

Apparently I’m a slut- a whore- a bitch who is screwing every guy in school! 

She was speaking but it wasn’t making sense- who said this? What are you talking about? For a minute we were talking over each other and finally I said just get in the car and tell me what is going on! She handed me a wrinkled piece of paper. I could tell it had been opened and closed, folded and unfolded wadded up and straightened out so many times it almost looked like it was going to fall apart in my hands. 

Little miss innocent, huh? Whatever slut- you take birth control pills so you can f*&# every guy in school! What a joke- u are nothin but a whore! Pretty bad when some guy on the radio who isn’t afraid to tell the truth has to break it down for everybody- if u on the Pill u are nothing but a skank ass ho! My mom said girls on the pill are tramps who just wanna get laid and don’t care about nothin- is that how u are?

I thought I was going to throw up! I was crying- crying for my sweet daughter who was in a puddle on the front seat of my car, crying because I was so angry I didn’t know what to do first! I drove home with one arm around my daughter and one hand on the wheel; I was saying things but for the life of me I can’t remember any of what I said now. I just wanted to take the pain away from my child! I wanted to make her stop crying, wanted to erase all the horrible pain that she was feeling.

I read about this at Pandagon, where Amanda Marcotte has a pointed and optimistic essay about the ridiculous effort to portray the vast majority of American women as somehow shameful because they have or will rely on birth control at some point in their lives. That group which, statistically speaking, almost certainly includes both the bully who wrote the note above and her mother. Amanda describes such shaming as “backsliding” in a culture where hormonal birth control has been a realistic option for three generations:

These kinds of attacks on individual women—in this case, a 16-year-old girl in high school—are only effective in an environment where the bullies can imply that using contraception and/or being sexually active is deviant. The idea is to isolate the victim, make them feel weird and different, and terrify them for it. But when you have the President in the White House talking about contraception as a normal part of health care for pretty much all women, it becomes clear that being sexually active and using contraception is the national norm, as wholesome and American as apple pie. The high levels of support for the HHS mandate suggests that most Americans are already there. This panic reaction is the last gasp of the old order trying to turn back the clock, to a time where it was scandalous for people to live together without being married, to when women who have sex with their boyfriends worry about their reputation, and when contraception was seen as embarrassing, and so some people tried their luck without getting any, and usually failed.  The thing is, as this example above shows, backsliding is possible. (If anyone in my high school was bullied for using contraception, I don’t remember it.) Which is why it’s more important than ever to talk about sex, and specifically how normal it is, how universal it is, what the benefits are, and to shame anyone who would say otherwise. We have the numbers on our side. We just need the courage. Remember, the people who think there’s something bad about women just because they fuck are the weirdoes [sic] here. Don’t be afraid to really believe that and act on it. 

Hear, hear. The word that keeps coming up for me is “irrelevant.” Birth control is normal, uncontroversial, and necessary for men and women, married and unmarried, with children or without, young and old. People who try to pretend otherwise in the name of sexual propriety and are attempting to use this issue as a means to shame American women in general (and specifically) are badly out of touch, have nothing of value to say on this vital topic, and have shown themselves to be truly…irrelevant.

If you still need some levity after the above (I sure do), check out the Mother Jones “Are You A Slut” flow chart. It’s ridiculous in its accuracy and accurate in its ridiculousness.

The Daily Show rips on right wing reactions to Limbaugh

The Daily Show rips on right wing reactions to Limbaugh published on No Comments on The Daily Show rips on right wing reactions to Limbaugh

Technically this doesn’t count as me saying something, because it’s Jon Stewart saying something…right? A lot of things. A lot of very funny things, regarding Limbaugh but specifically regarding Republican presidential candidates’ and Fox News’ reactions to his shenanigans:

On what’s relevant if you’re female

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1. At Camels With Hammers today, Daniel Fincke takes an admirable crack at a topic people have danced around quite a lot in discussing Rush Limbaugh’s ridiculous portrayal of why women want birth control: not only does it have nothing to do with promiscuity, but you don’t get to just assume there is something wrong with promiscuity regardless. That’s not something on which we’re all in agreement, okay? Never mind how difficult it is to define what counts as a “promiscuous” sex life as compared to a regular one, the problem with slut-shaming at its foundation is that it assumes there’s something wrong with being (whatever you define as) a slut! So Fincke’s post, No, You Can’t Call People Sluts, bluntly points out that “slut” is to begin with a term meant to cast shame on something not only nebulous but (surprise!) not necessarily shame-worthy:

In no way, shape, or form do I take promiscuity to be, in itself, an immoral thing. So, no, I don’t think there is any word that you can use that I would find morally acceptable. You call that controlling your thought by not allowing you whatever insult you want? Sorry, that’s morality. It controls some things. You don’t want to be subject to my moral standards? Well, I don’t want consensual, responsible, promiscuous people who do not harm anyone to be subject to yours. I have a lot of good moral reasons to think they don’t deserve derision and that such treatment of yours towards them is unfair and worth calling out. So I’m not allowing that any abusive word aimed at men or women over their promiscuity is copacetic. I don’t have to acknowledge your moral right to use insults to bully people who are not doing anything morally wrong. Legally, you may say whatever you want that does not cross the line into actionable harassment, threats, or libel, etc. But morally if I allow you to call people sluts as perfectly acceptable, then I’m approving your value judgment as perfectly acceptable. You’re entitled morally to argue for the wrongness of promiscuity if you like. Your “distaste” is not an argument and nor is it a justification for dictating to others or for denigrating them.

2. At her blog, Greta Christina talks about how last when when she was speaking at the University of Chicago on the topic of atheism and sexuality, someone defaced a promotional poster for the event by writing next to a photo of her that she is “the ugliest of all atheists!” Because….somehow, that’s relevant. Note: she admonishes readers not to attempt to reassure her that she’s not ugly (which is true– had to say that) because that undermines the point that it is, actually, not at all relevant. It’s not relevant to how well she writes, how well she speaks, how qualified or educated she is, whether what she has to say is well-reasoned or compelling or humorous or insightful or timely or fun or….anything. But because she’s female, people (both male and female) tend to think otherwise:

I’m reminded of something Tina Fey said in the New Yorker about show business. “I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women though, they’re all crazy. I have a suspicion — and hear me out, because this is a rough one — that the definition of crazy in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.” It’s not just show business. The definition of crazy is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore. Or, indeed, a woman who keeps talking even if the person she’s addressing doesn’t want to fuck her. A woman who keeps talking even if the person reading the poster advertising the talk doesn’t want to fuck her.

If it’s not a battle, why make it one?

If it’s not a battle, why make it one? published on No Comments on If it’s not a battle, why make it one?

The ever-controversial American Atheists have erected billboards in Paterson, New Jersey (large Muslim population) and Brooklyn, New York (large Jewish population), respectively, with the following two messages:

Even though the CNN Belief Blog notes that AA president Dave Silverman says that the billboards are intended to reach atheists in these communities who feel pressured by those around them to conform to religious beliefs and customs, their title for the piece still claims that “Atheist group targets Muslims, Jews with ‘myth’ billboards in Arabic and Hebrew” and portrays the billboards as taking a step further in the “battle between atheists and believers.” Because that’s more exciting, I guess. Quote from Silverman:

“Those communities are designed to keep atheists in the ranks,” he says. “If there are atheists in those communities, we are reaching out to them. We are letting them know that we see them, we acknowledge them and they don’t have to live that way if they don’t want to.”

Hence writing the text both in English and in these languages. Reactions from Muslim and Jewish figures in these communities hover around irritation, amusement, and disdain, as you might expect:

Mohamed Elfilali, executive director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, laughed when he learned the Arabic billboard would go up in the same town as his office. He says he’s surprised that someone is spending money on such a sign. “It is not the first and won’t be the last time people have said things about God or religion,” Elfilali says. “I respect people’s opinion about God; obviously they are entitled to it. I don’t think God is a myth, but that doesn’t exclude people to have a different opinion.” But Elfilali bemoaned the billboards as another example of a hyper-polarized world. “Sadly, there is a need to polarize society as opposed to build bridges,” he says. “That is the century that we live in. It is very polarized, very politicized.” The Brooklyn billboard is likely to raise eyebrows among Jews, in part because Orthodox Jews don’t write out the name of God, as the billboard does. “It is an emotional word, there will be an emotional response,” said Rabbi Kenneth Brander, dean of Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future. “People will look at it in a bizarre way. People won’t understand why someone needed to write that out.”

Except that the billboards aren’t intended for observant Jews and Muslims (ostensibly). They’re intended for atheists living in neighborhoods dominated by such people who are probably visibly indistinguishable from those who are observant, because they are afraid of backlash. I get it. In theory, at least, these are intended to be advertisements to give such people the message that they are not alone; that there are others out there who have seen fit to question and even abandon their religious faith. One major thing a lot of people wrestle with in this process is the feeling of having to give up the support structure that a religious community provides, and this is probably doubly, triply, a concern when your religion is a minority one. And, you know, when you live smack dab inside one of its enclaves. This is something that appears to have flown right by Elfilali and Brander, who can only interpret the billboards as directed toward the entire body of Muslims/Jews.

…Not that I can blame them, exactly, when the billboards say “You know it’s a myth.” I think that if the intent of the billboards is, as Silverman says, to reach out to specific people who have abandoned or are abandoning their faiths, the message would be made drastically more clear– and drastically less obnoxious– if it read “If you believe it’s a myth.” Here’s why:

1. It’s presumptuous, but more importantly often dishonest, to tell other people what they know. If you haven’t heard a prior statement from them claiming such, or witnessed them facing evidence that directly contradicts their belief, then you have no idea what they know regarding it. And even if you have been exposed to such things, you can’t quite be sure. Knowledge is justified, true belief. If people do not believe a thing, they cannot know it. If there is a possibility that a person is ignorant or mistaken, it is erroneous to claim that they know. People sometimes claim to believe what they know to be false, but to suggest that to an entire community simply because you believe (or even know) what they believe is false is an error. And an offensive one, because it accuses them of dishonesty in addition to ignorance/mistakenness.

2. “If you believe it’s a myth” sacrifices nothing in terms of epistemological grounding, and gains everything in terms of clarity and consideration. It doesn’t entail that the speaker loses any knowledge of whether the religion in question is a myth, but acknowledges that the listener (reader, in this case) may or may not believe it to be a myth. Indeed, that’s what determines whether the billboard is speaking to that particular individual or not. A person who does not believe that his/her religion is a myth might have use for an atheist organization according to the atheist organization, but probably not according to him/herself, so can safely ignore the message and– more importantly– need not be offended by it. After all, for every religious doctrine out there, there is someone who considers it mythological in the sense of not being true. A person who is offended by this fact would be just as offended by the existence of a billboard advertising for any other religion besides his/her own.

“If you believe it’s a myth” does not entail that a person can’t also know it’s a myth. After all, all of those who know also believe. But the use of the words “if” and “believe” would enable the billboard to more effectively pick out the members of these communities to whom it is ostensibly directed, and do so far less offensively without sacrificing its own viewpoint. Win-win, I’d say. And they should keep “And you have a choice,” because presumably that choice is about what to do regarding this view that the religion which predominates in one’s community is a myth. You believe it’s a myth; now what? Well, I guess you go to www.atheists.org and proceed from there, on your way to becoming a well-adjusted atheist.

JT Eberhard has a post up today saying that the billboards are an answer to “fatwa envy.” “Fatwa envy” is a term for the resentment some Christians voice when atheists are insufficiently (in the Christian’s view) critical of Islam, suggesting that the reason is that atheists refrain from such because they fear Muslims but not Christians. It’s masked as a complaint about inconsistency, but in this particular form is really a case of the Christian making the complaint ruing the fact that they aren’t as scary– that they can’t say “I’ll make you shut up” and have anything with which to back up that threat (whether that means Christian terrorists or laws against blasphemy, or both).

Sure, the billboards count as equal opportunity pissing off of religious people. I just don’t see any particular reason to piss them off in this case, view it to be a matter of incoherence of message and failure in logic, as well as counter-productive. Four counts against it, and none for it (at least, if you count this as an argument for altering the message rather than silencing it, which is the intent).

Eberhard then posts a couple of pro-religion billboards, one which depicts a boy with a gun aimed at you (the viewer) which reads “If God doesn’t matter to him, do you?”; the other simply asks “Where are you going? Heaven or Hell” with an enormous phone number underneath: 855-FIND-TRUTH (you can dial that; I sure am not going to). Yes, those are offensive– strangely enough, for much the same reason that the American Atheist billboards are. They all make unfounded, presumptuous assumptions about both the person reading the billboards and the beliefs (or lack of beliefs) they attempt to depict. There is no evidence whatsoever that if God doesn’t matter to a person, people don’t. None. Fail on that one, for a crap argument which offensively suggests that a person’s lack of belief makes them violent. The second billboard compounds the error of assuming what the reader knows with an outright (and ironically vague) threat: heaven or hell?  You’re going to one of them, for some reason, and we’re not saying why but we’re sure you know it! Or maybe I’m reading it wrong, and it’s a one-question quiz: Where are you going? A) Heaven, or B) Hell? That, I suppose, would make the acronym in the phone number at bottom make a lot more sense. However, in that case it assumes that you don’t know your eternal destination whereas whoever/whatever answers the phone can tell you.

So ultimately, bringing up those billboards amounts to a tu quoque: they’re doing it, so why shouldn’t we? The answer can be expected: Because two wrongs don’t make a right. Because not all offense is created equal. Some people are offended simply by being told that their beliefs are false, sure– the more important the beliefs are to them, the more offense is likely. But the A/A billboard claims that not only are religions myths, but that the person reading those words– who is more likely to be an actual observant Jew/Muslim than anything else– knows it. That’s justifiably offensive for reasons that I have already explained, and what’s more completely unnecessary. No better than telling someone they know that they are going to Hell, another version of asserting someone’s beliefs for them. Not nearly as bad as telling someone they’re likely to be a murderer because they don’t share your beliefs, or telling other people falsely that they are, I’ll grant. But still offensive, and pointlessly, counter-productively so. What’s to be gained from that, I really don’t know.

The last I hope to say on this is…

The last I hope to say on this is… published on No Comments on The last I hope to say on this is…

…That you really should go read Ken at Popehat’s entire commentary on the discourse regarding Limbaugh/Fluke. I have nothing to add, and couldn’t agree more.

Why no women? Well…

Why no women? Well… published on No Comments on Why no women? Well…

Byron York at the Washington Examiner reports that Sandra Fluke’s testimony for the Democratic Steering Committee and the necessity for having it was a bit…manufactured. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa says that the Democrats originally waited for days before suggesting witnesses for the hearing before the Oversight and Reform Committee until the afternoon before the hearing, and then proposed Rev. Barry Lynn (head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) and Fluke. The Republicans invited Lynn; the Democrats said “No, wait!” but it was too late, so they disinvited Lynn, then complained that there were no women present at the hearing which occurred.

Dear Dems….why? Barry Lynn would have given great testimony; I’m sure. But was there such a paucity of female witnesses to invite that you couldn’t have picked two of them? Assuming, that is, that having a woman testify is so important (and I agree that it is)? That would have prevented the indignity of having to call up someone you specifically selected to present testimony and say “Oh wait, never mind” because it would mean that you couldn’t moan about the lack of women later after having been given the option to hand pick one and botched it.

None of which is Sandra Fluke’s fault, of course. Nor is it her fault that this happened:

Issa explained that Democrats had requested Barry Lynn, that Lynn was invited, and that Democrats then retracted the Lynn request.  As for Fluke, Issa said Republicans had never heard of the Democrats’ last-minute choice.  “I asked our staff what is her background, what has she done,” Issa said at the hearing.  “They did the usual that we do when we’re not provided the three days and the forms to go with it. They did a Google search. They looked and found that she was, in fact, and is a college student who appears to have become energized over this issue and participated in approximately a 45-minute press conference…I cannot and will not arbitrarily take a majority or minority witness if they do not have the appropriate credentials, both for a hearing at the full committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and if we cannot vet them in a timely fashion.” (Fluke is in fact a 30 year-old law student with an extensive history of activism in leftist causes.)

Extensive history of activism or not, she was not as easy to verify as Barry Lynn with a quick Google search (which was only necessary because proper notice and forms had not been submitted), so Issa went with Lynn. If this is all true, I can’t blame him for that. Maybe there’s a good reason I don’t know of why the Democrats were so slow in getting their proposed witnesses in. But as it stands, it doesn’t seem like the Republicans are entirely to blame for that hearing being composed exclusively of men.