FoxNews.com
Fox News captures Chris Matthews explicating the
conservative mind in a rare moment of diabolical
infestation:
I think they hate Obama. They want him out of the White House
more than they want to destroy Al Qaeda. Their No. 1 enemy in the
world right now, on the right, is their hatred, hatred for Obama.
And we can go into that about the white working class in the South
and looking at these numbers we’re getting the last couple days
about racial hatred in many cases…this isn’t about being a better
president, they want to get rid of this president….
(October 31, 2012)
New York Times Book Review
Columbia University’s professor Mark Lilla, midst a
tendentious review of Charles Kesler’s perfectly sensible I Am the
Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism, spies a mouse,
hoists up his skirts, and lets out a horrible shriek:
They [conservatives] love casting their eyes back to the past to
avoid seeing what lies right under their noses. The story always
involves some expulsion from Eden, whether by hippies in the 1960s,
or the suffragists, or the wretched refuse of the shtetls, or the
French Revolution, or the Enlightenment, or Luther, or Machiavelli
or the sack of Rome. Next thing you know they’ll be repeating
Mallarmé’s judgment that “all poetry has gone wrong since the great
Homeric deviation”….The point is, the conservative apocalypse has
always been a movable one.
(September 30, 2012)
New York Times
An amorous editorialist at the Times bravely shouts “stop”
to two thugs engaged in a tireless conspiracy to halt the free flow
of prophylactics, intrauterine devices, and other contraceptive
marvels that are the hallmark of the modern Progressive
asylum:
If Mitt Romney and his vice-presidential running mate,
Representative Paul Ryan, were to win next month’s election, the
harm to women’s reproductive rights would be extended far beyond
the borders of the United States.
In this country, they would support the recriminalization of
abortion with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and they
would limit access to contraception and other services. But they
have also promised to promote policies abroad that would affect
millions of women in the world’s poorest countries…
(October 20, 2012)
The Progressive
Alas, horrified by the bleak legacy of Citizens United, the
once hopeful Progressive magazine turns to “the Framers” for
succor, the very same patriarchal, closed circle of plutocrats and
slave owners who got us into this mess in the first place. Is there
no hope?
The Framers gave us a “Republic.” But by a Republic, they meant
a “representative democracy.” And by a “representative democracy,”
they meant a government with a branch that would be “dependent upon
the People alone.” The simplest and most important objective of any
constitutional amendment must be to restore that critical principle
by removing a dependence on anything save “the People alone.”
(October 2012)
The Nation
In the sedate pages of the Nation a storm trooper
commandeers space, and in the background we hear the old “Host
Wessel Song” sounding. Indeed, even the Nation is turning to the
right:
The Republicans have built on a white revanchism located among
the racists and the fearful within white America. These voters not
only despise the idea of an African-American serving as president
of what they believe to be a white republic; they are terrified
that the demographics of the country are changing in favor of
people of color. For this reason, calls to boycott the election or
turn toward third-party candidates miss what is going on. The right
wishes to perpetrate a massive disenfranchisement in its desperate
effort to preserve the rule of a reactionary white elite.
(October 2, 2012)
New York Times Magazine
Writing to the Times Magazine’s saintly ethicist, Kasey of
New York confesses to a new form of Democratic voter fraud only to
meet with stern disapproval:
My parents live in the South and are staunch
Republicans. I usually don’t care about politics but lean
Democratic and liberal. I live in New York City and know that Obama
will win the state handily with or without my vote. So is it O.K.
for me to vote for Romney as a birthday present for my mother in
lieu of buying her a gift?
Kasey Taylor, New York
This is a weird gift (and, frankly, kind of a dumb idea). But
whom you vote for, or if you vote at all, is always your democratic
prerogative. You can use whatever reasoning you want, including bad
reasoning. Welcome to America.
(November 4, 2012)
New York Times Book Review
Miss Harriet Lerner, late of the Plumbing & Drainage
Institute, makes some esoteric points about her peculiar
understanding of her craft in the New York Times Book Review
immediately before being committed to a public
institution:
To the Editor:
Add my name to the thousands of women who thank the goddess for
Toni Bentley’s brilliant review of Naomi Wolf’s latest book (Sept.
16). I especially appreciate her noting Wolf’s misuse of the word
vagina to refer to everything “down there.” For several decades
I’ve written on the subject of female genital mislabeling,
illustrating how the ubiquitous avoidance of the word vulva harms
girls and women. This work has been met by a dignified fraternal
and feminist silence. Indeed, many educated adults still think that
this other V-word refers to a Swedish automobile or is otherwise
unspeakable. In our vulva-phobic culture (thank you, Eve Ensler and
Naomi Wolfe), we give our daughters no name for the whatchamacallit
that is the center of erotic pleasure and (short of X-ray vision)
all that’s available for visual inspection.
Harriet Lerner
Lawrence, Kan.
The writer, for three decades a senior staff
psychologist at the Menninger Clinic, is the author of “Women in
Therapy” and “The Dance of Anger.”
(October 5, 2012)
NBCMontana.com
And thus begins another affecting tale of compassion and
human kindness from a young man destined to someday become a
seething sexual maniac:
The CARE (Condom Access for Responsible Encounters) group,
associated with the on-campus Curry Health Center, sent out the
“Protection Pumpkin”; a costumed staff member to offer condoms to
students.
It’s an event the health enhancement group offers for several
holidays (the Latex Leprechaun and the Condom Cupid are other
characters) to encourage safe sex and offer information to
students.
Coordinators say it can make what can be an awkward situation
for students, a little easier.
“It can be kind of uncomfortable just because it’s not something
that we talk about a lot in our society, sometimes in our families.
Some people do talk about it, but for some people it can be
uncomfortable,” said Curry’s Health Promotions Specialist, Brent
Hildebrand. “So just making it kind of relaxed, a little bit fun,
makes it easier for students to not have to worry about any
associated stigma.”
The “Protection Pumpkin” can’t solicit students or force
products on them. CARE just offers condoms and educational
information for students who want them.
(October 31, 2012)
Celeb Stoner
Mr. Killer Mike, an Atlanta-based rapper and apparent
vegetarian, defends his dietary needs prior to stepping into the
voting booth:
“I like smoking marijuana,” he tells
Spin. “I believe that it’s ridiculous that a plant can be
outlawed. I’m actively involved in the political process because I
want to support candidates who are progressive. As you go to the
polls, ask yourself which candidate is going to give you something
for your vote. Whatever your thing is, find your thing. Marijuana
just happens to be my thing. And I use that in a very passionate
way. It keeps me wanting to stay involved in the political
process.”
(October 24, 2012)
