I just find it kind of staggering that Clinton is out of office for six years now and Bush supporters are STILL trying to use him as a WMD: Weapon of Media Deflection. Anytime Bush does anything, they try to deflect criticism by claiming, “Oh yeah, well…Clinton did something similar/dissimilar-but-let’s-pretend-it-was-similar, and so how come Bush gets criticized? Huh? How come? Huh?”
As if Clinton was never criticized. As if he wasn’t frickin’ impeached.
How about this notion, Bushies: How about that Bush and his strutting, preening, self-righteous, holier than thou associates should be endeavoring to be SUPERIOR to Clinton? How in the world is, “Yeah, well…the previous guy was no better!” any sort of a defense anyplace other than in the mind of Bush’s most devoted and myopic supporters? If Bush’s entire approach to running for the President was “Vote for Bush–We’re No Better Than Clinton,” there’s no way he wins (I’m sorry, There’s no way he’s appointed.)
What’s it going to take for the Bushies to tumble to this? If Bush has an affair in the Oval Office and then lies about it, what’s the approach then? “Well, we can’t impeach him, because with Clinton it was justified but in Bush’s case it would just be partisan politics?”
Actually…yeah. That’s likely exactly what they’d say.
PAD
• 
As for Libby, I’m not sure if the prosecutor’s statement constitutes a definitive ruling on the law, but that’s the problem, the law is almost intentionally vague, so it’s open to wide interpretation. I doubt we’ll ever see any prosecutions on the leak beyond Libby.
Uh, boy, I’ve touched off a mini-firestorm here.
That’s ok, Bill. My wife and I hate the radical feminists too, so you’re not alone. 😉
But you did hit the right point about them: there’s a certain segment of the feminist population, the extremists, who are not there to make sure women are equal to men, but to make women more powerful than men, and to make men more subservient to women.
They seriously want a 180 role reversal in society on the basis that men have ruled long enough, and they’re doing it with some of the examples that have been mentioned in this thread.
Something to remember about Hannity, Limbaugh, Colter, Franken, et al:
The more controversy they stir up, the more people are talking about them. The more people are talking about them, the more people get curious. The more people get curious, the more people tune in, either because they agree, vehemently DISagree, or just wanna see what they say next, the more their ratings go up. It’s not much different than a sweeps stunt casting of (INSERT FAVORITE CELEBRITY HERE.) To the True Believers, well, they’re going to be tuning in anyway, so ya gotta keep the fires burning hot! And to those that disagree, very rarely are actual, constructive arguements offered into the mix. It’s, to go all Python, the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says. I could teach a parrot to say 40% of what passes for intelligent conversation on these programs. I’d try for more, but then PETA would be on my back for cruelty to animals. I got enough problems as it is.
the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says
Look, if I am to argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
TWL
(sorry — force of habit!)
I wish I knew more about feminism in general and radical feminism in particular so I could say things with authority (My sister knows more about it, and we often have long discussion about women’s roles in popluar entertainment). But, although I am critical of some of the attitudes of radical feminism (when I encounterthem without research), I think they are getting harsher criticism in this thread than they deserve. I doubt that they want “to make women more powerful than men, and to make men more subservient to women,” or that they are responsible for that many ills of our society. It seems to me that like in the case of other radicals, there is a bit of truth in what they say, but they tend to become caught up in their own rhetoric and dogma. Perhaps it could be said that they have caused direct harm to society (in the few times they were actually able to affect society at large, usually society rejects radicals), but mostly they sem to have harmed feminism itself. In radical feminism part of the problem seems to be that they latched on too strongly to rhetoric influenced by marxism and the fight against racism and colonialism, such as oppressors and oppressed, class struggle, a war of liberation, revolution, in a way that ultimatly did not help either the empowerment or equality of women. Another problem seems to be becoming so caught up in fancy academic language as too loose touch with the real problems. However, let’s not forget that sometimes there is some important insight in what they say, which should not be ignored because of their stupid rhetoric, and that althogh feminism has been guilty of too much inflamatory rhetoric, it has also turned our attention to very serious issues, like real sexual harassment.
There are some very vocal radical feminist here in Israel, and every once in a while I read a column or something and I the inflamatory rhetoric just drives me crazy, even more so when there are real issues that need to be addressed.
“Posted by: Darren J Hudak at March 31, 2007 03:35 PM
// A speaker (forget her name)
Was it Andrea Dworkin? //
Honestly don’t remember the name, I remember being offended by the statement, and I knew lots of students and faculty, including other women, who also found the idea offensive. There were editorials back and forth in the Campus newspaper about it for weeks. It could have been , but I just looked up Dworkin’s picture on the net and unfortunatly the face didn’t ring a bell.”
Try looking up Catherine McKinnon. There’s a picture in wikipedia.
Tim, I knew SOMEONE around here would rise to the challenge.
Just as an aside–if you’re ever trying to perform Python on stage, the Arguement Clinic or the French Taunters specifically, don’t do it with someone that has a lisp, runs all their words together, and you need an electronic ear to hear. Trust the Voice Of Experience on this one. One of the more horrifying experience of my life.
You did a little more than blame extreme feminists for eroding the wall between the private and the public.
And when you blame any school of feminism for doing so, I still have no idea what you are referring to.
My question was asked pertaining to modern feminism. As you admit the extreme views you cite do not pertain to maintstream feminism, you’ve answered my question in the manner it seemed right to answer. Thank you.
I believe the worst of the feminist excesses is behind us. There was a certain point in the late 90s, in the highest point of the PC fad, when it looked like things could go crazy, but it has passed now.
One thing I find more interesting and more relevant nowadays is how feminism seems to be at odds with another part of the liberal arsenal of ideas: multiculturalism.
It bugs me a little when the same people that defend the rights of women and gays in the West seem in favor of turning a blind eye to the extreme abuse of women and gays that goes on in Islamic countries, for instance. Apparently we can’t mention such abuse, because we have to respect their culture.
I find this notion poisoning, and while I consider myself a liberal, I never quite swallowed multiculturalism. If you’re going to fight for human rights and democracy, then you have to fight for the whole package, everywhere.
Not saying that you should fight for it using violence, of course. US actions in Iraq have actually strengthened the religious element in Iraq society, making it more likely that women rights will devolve there.
The attempt to adopt a corresponding pretense of invulnerability is a mistake I agree a lot of feminists make, and is why I don’t consider adopting feminism seriously.
But holding this school of feminism against the women who adopt it, by branding them extremists, seems as wrong as discouraging women that they can be president, too. Holding someone’s self-interest against them seems oppressive. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are two of the richest men in America, and no one characterizes them as extremists.
Tim, I knew SOMEONE around here would rise to the challenge.
It’s what my wife calls the “Python neuron” — both my dad and I have it. It’s basically flooded in serotonin 24 hours a day, and whenever triggered in even the slightest degree it’ll just start spouting off, leaving me helpless to prevent it.
And as for your aside, I’ll certainly believe that. I have performed Python on stage occasionally (Dead Parrot in one case, the job interview gone horribly wrong in the other), but never with that particular problem.
TWL
Rene–first off, I HOPE so. I’m not nuts about ANY excesses, no matter their ilk. But you also hit a discussion that I’ve heard a few times, that being different parts of the Liberal Agenda(see, it’s capitalized, so it MUST be important) are at odds with each other. There is no ONE liberal viewpoint, just like there’s no one conservative viewpoint. There’s just a lot of views that people like to apply labels to.
Tim–does your wife at least know the sketches? I’ll spout out something and unless it’s from Next Generation, more often than not Stace looks at me like I’m the weirdest thing on two legs. (Not saying I’m NOT, at least in our house.)
does your wife at least know the sketches?
Oh, hëll yeah. I think we might have put a condition to that effect in the vows. 🙂
(Okay, maybe not … but the ceremony DID include quotes from Kermit the Frog.)
TWL
Most people cannot adopt a new identity and accept a new worldview.
Oliver Sacks wrote of a patient who had been blind almost since birth, and had recovered his vision in mid-life. He had been confronted with sensations we live with our whole lives to train most of our brain to process.
As a blind person, managing his environment was a matter of managing his environment in time — the coffee table simply did not exist until he encountered it. As a sighted person, when he saw a mountain in the distance, he was flabbergasted that he could reach out and not touch what he saw. A dog could run into his field of vision, and he would recoil as if a bug tried to jump on his eyeball. Sacks reported the recovery of sight in this instance as very unpleasent, as it altered the subject’s very identity and worldview, and admitted to some relief on his behalf when he relapsed into blindness.
I think the liberals who encourage respect of stricter cultures have a greater intuitive inderstanding of the challenge of insisting people change their identities and worldviews even to adopt egalitarian values.
I’ve read this book from Oliver Sacks that contains the story you mention, “An Anthropologist on Mars,” great book.
I don’t think it’s advisable to try and change people’s identities abruptly and forcibly, but I still think it’s a liberal’s duty to do whatever he can to foster gradual, progressive change.
There is a woman living is Holland called Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She escaped from Somalia when she was in her 20s, and has been living for the last 15 years in the Netherlands. She studied, became a political scientist, and started working for the emancipation of Muslim women, denouncing stuff like the beatings Muslim women receive behind closed doors in Netherlands’s Muslim community.
Now, while most liberals in her country supported her, there were some that viewed her as a tool for Western Imperialism, because she denounced the forced marriages, the domestic violence, all that stuff.
I mean, there was a time when only conservatives were telling people who they should or should not marry, and that they couldn’t escape unhappy marriages. It made me extremely uncomfortable to read about liberals criticizing someone who preaches against forced marriages.
I understand their misgivings. Governments all the time use the spread of freedom as a pretext for wars that have nothing to do with freedom, and more often than not result in less freedom than what the people had before the war. Bush’s War on Terror seems to only enhance the very Muslim fanaticism he says he wants to reduce.
But still I believe there are core human rights that are universal. Even at the risk of giving people who want to demonize Muslins more ammunition, things like domestic abuse shouldn’t be ever accepted.
As someone who has been criticized by liberals here for citing the complete lack of self-interest of the middle-class demonstrated in reelecting George Bush, I can only agree to the more extreme lack of self-interest of liberals (Dutch?/Somoli?) in criticizing someone who preaches against forced marriages.
Where people adopt the cultural identity passed to them, and aren’t equipt to construct their own worldview — as with the middle-aged Virgil and his blind-world — waiving the right to marry as they please may come with a sacrifice too severe to pay.
Den & Tim,
Hey, I guess if I had used the context clues and thought back a little (I assume this is the exchange that started with “wussy” and went on from there?)
Anyway, I really took no offense, and it really warms my heart to have a bunch of bleeding heart, bed wetting liberals like ya’ll (sorry, I was born with that) wanting to make sure that a Right wing Conservative extremist like me is clear that none of the name calling was actually aimed at me. Thanks for making me feel welcome.
As for my political leanings, well, I’ll admit that I am a little further left today than I was a couple of years ago (An extended vacation @ one of Uncle Sam’s little work camps will do that to a guy!)
Glad you didn’t take offense, Ryan. Put up your feet and stay a while.
TWL