Sunday, April 5, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Dictionary H - Louisiana Historical Association
Dictionary H - Louisiana Historical Association
HAAS, A. M., planter. Born, Alsace, France, August 18, 1833. Immigrated to Louisiana, ca. 1845. Married Mary Macarinah ("Maccie") Marshall (1848-1876). A colonel in the Confederate Army; member of the honor guard at funeral of Jefferson Davis (q.v.). Owned the plantation on which the town of Bunkie is located and asked permission of Texas and Pacific Railroad to name the town in exchange for the right of way. Named it "Bunkie," nickname of his daughter, Mary Maccie. Children: W. D. Haas, Nannie Haas, Mary Maccie Haas, A. Marshall Haas, and Alice Haas. Died, February 24, 1908; interred Marshall Family Cemetery, Evergreen, La. S.E. Sources: Interview with Mrs. Helen Haas Ducote; Sue Eakin with La Commission des Avoyelles, Crossroads of Louisiana (1981).
HAAS, Samuel, merchant. Born, Alsace, France, June 29, 1836; son of Samuel and Harriet Haas. Emigrated to United States about 1852. Operated a store at Bayou Chicot, La. Married Martha A. Cole, daughter of John Cole and Lavinia Hudson, March 15, 1862. Five children. First lieutenant and captain, Prairie Rangers, Company K, Third Louisiana Cavalry, during Civil War. Returned to mercantile business and began acquiring land. Business thrived and owned hundreds of acres in four parishes. Member police jury, St. Landry Parish, 1892-1907. Removed to Bunkie, 1907. Died, Opelousas, January 9, 1919; interred Bayou Chicot. A.W.B. Sources: Clement A. Evans, Confederate Military History, 13 vols. (1899), vol. X; St. Landry Clarion, January 11, 1919; Opelousas Star-Progress, January 11, 1919.
HAAS, A. M., planter. Born, Alsace, France, August 18, 1833. Immigrated to Louisiana, ca. 1845. Married Mary Macarinah ("Maccie") Marshall (1848-1876). A colonel in the Confederate Army; member of the honor guard at funeral of Jefferson Davis (q.v.). Owned the plantation on which the town of Bunkie is located and asked permission of Texas and Pacific Railroad to name the town in exchange for the right of way. Named it "Bunkie," nickname of his daughter, Mary Maccie. Children: W. D. Haas, Nannie Haas, Mary Maccie Haas, A. Marshall Haas, and Alice Haas. Died, February 24, 1908; interred Marshall Family Cemetery, Evergreen, La. S.E. Sources: Interview with Mrs. Helen Haas Ducote; Sue Eakin with La Commission des Avoyelles, Crossroads of Louisiana (1981).
HAAS, Samuel, merchant. Born, Alsace, France, June 29, 1836; son of Samuel and Harriet Haas. Emigrated to United States about 1852. Operated a store at Bayou Chicot, La. Married Martha A. Cole, daughter of John Cole and Lavinia Hudson, March 15, 1862. Five children. First lieutenant and captain, Prairie Rangers, Company K, Third Louisiana Cavalry, during Civil War. Returned to mercantile business and began acquiring land. Business thrived and owned hundreds of acres in four parishes. Member police jury, St. Landry Parish, 1892-1907. Removed to Bunkie, 1907. Died, Opelousas, January 9, 1919; interred Bayou Chicot. A.W.B. Sources: Clement A. Evans, Confederate Military History, 13 vols. (1899), vol. X; St. Landry Clarion, January 11, 1919; Opelousas Star-Progress, January 11, 1919.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
English: "Keep us flying. Buy War Bonds." Color poster of a Tuskegee Airman (probably Lt. Robert W. Diez) by an unidentified artist. 1943. source (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Portrait of Tuskegee airman Edward M. Thomas, standing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)68 Years After WWII, Former
Tuskegee Airman and Female
Civilian Military Pilot Meet
Elder James H. Brown and Jane Tedeschi, who both served as pilots during WW II, met for the first time on May 17, 2013. Tedeschi had always wanted to meet a Tuskegee Airman, who she delivered planes for as part of her military service, a rarity for women, as it was for blacks, who were pilots. (Photo: Wish of a Lifetime)
Back in the early 1940s, it was almost unfathomable for the collective imagination to conceive of African-American and female pilots, particularly lending their talents to the battle of World War II. And yet, at roughly the same time, programs were developed by the U.S. military that made that seeming improbability a reality.
Elder James H. Brown, one of the prestigious Tuskegee Airmen (the corps of African-American pilots who participated in World War II), and Jane Tedeschi, a former member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) corps, are products of such programs. They challenged the popular stereotypes of the times that promoted the belief that neither black men nor women were fit to be pilots.
While their paths never crossed during the war, Tedeschi had always wanted to meet one of the brave Tuskegee Airmen, some of whom were stationed near the base where she served, and whose exploits she admired.
Tedeschi just recently got to do just that, bonding with Brown for the first time over their unique places in American history. On May 17, through a partnership between the Brookdale senior living community where Tedeschi resides, and Wish of a Lifetime, an organization that fosters appreciation for seniors by fulfilling life-enriching requests, Jane got her decades-old wish. Sixty-eight years after the end of World War II, Jane, now 93, and Elder, 87, finally had the chance to connect. The result? Mutual appreciation and thanks.
Jane said that the meeting with Elder was “wonderful.” She discovered that the women who were in her ferry command, the group of pilots tasked to deliver planes, had delivered planes specifically to his group in Alabama.
“We had heard so much about the Tuskegee Airmen and I always respected what they did,” Tedeschi told theGrio. ”Although I was stationed not far from them, in Salem, Alabama, pretty close to Mobile, I never had reason to land on their field, but I had heard about them from our pilot. I admired them for their flying capabilities and their fierce determination. They intended to fly and they did.” This is a determination she and Brown shared in the face of cultural opposition.
For Elder, their meeting was also an opportunity to reflect. “I always wondered who brought the airplanes to the base of operations. It was a pleasure and an honor to finally meet the people who did the job,” Brown said. “Jane brought up our trainer planes, the AT-60s, to Alabama. Those women didn’t get any credit for what they did.”
Through talking deeply on that day in Colorado, where Elder and Jane both live today, the details of their parallel paths emerged.
The makings of a WASP: Jane’s Story
Tedeschi’s love of airplanes began when she was about ten years old, after her grandmother took her to see the film Wings (1927). Despite the fact that her decision to learn to fly was not a popular choice for a young lady at that time, her mother, a college graduate and a suffragist, supported her “all the way.” In her early 20′s, Jane earned her pilot’s license.
In 1942, just as the country found itself with a deficit of pilots for the war effort, an experimental program was created to train women to fly military planes so male pilots could be released overseas for combat duty. In 1944, over 1000 women, who were civilian volunteers, graduated from the WASP training program. Jane Tedeschi was one of them.
These women tested planes and learned to fly all types of military aircraft, such as B-29 bombers, and ferried planes to both military bases and departure points all across the country.
“I was in the training command, so I got to do a lot of things,” Jane reminisced “We were required to do some acrobatics in order to see that the plane we were flying had been repaired. The men just had to fly straight and level, but not us! Here we were, women pilots, who they said couldn’t fly, yet we flew on a field that was still under construction, and all three elements of [our] training took place on the same field. The men never did that; they had a separate field for their training. And, we managed not to run into each other.”
Ignoring naysayers, becoming a female pilot
On the subject of naysayers, Jane quipped, “I never really worried too much if somebody thought I couldn’t fly, because I knew I could. I was already a pilot in civilian life, but they told me that they would teach me to fly ‘the army way,’ and I think it paid off a little bit.”
While the WASP group expected to become part of the military proper during their service, the program was canceled after just two years. It wasn’t granted military status until the 1970s. Jane last flew in 1945, then decided to dedicate time to her family; but, she is proud of her accomplishments.
“I just wanted to fly and I happened to be at a point in history when the world needed what I had to offer,” Tedeschi said. “And talk to any of us pilots. Almost everyone would have said that we just loved to fly.”
In 2009 the surviving members of the WASP program, about 300 at the time, were granted theCongressional Gold Medal by President Obama.
Flying while black: a Tuskegee Airman’s story
Elder James H. Brown, of Denver, Colorado, found early inspiration in Spanky Roberts, one of the first African-American military pilots and a member of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, who was accepted into the Army Air Corp in 1941.
“Spanky’s mother actually taught me in school, and I saw him when he came home after graduation. Maybe it was the uniform and all of the excitement, but the idea of what he was doing thrilled me,” Brown told theGrio. Before 1940, African-Americans were barred from flying for the U.S. military; thus, those early pilots were true role models.
At nineteen, Brown volunteered for the army. Elder began his training at the Tuskegee Field in Alabama in 1945.
The Tuskegee Airmen, originally referred to as the 332nd Fighter Group, were the first African-American pilots in the U.S. military. There were some 900 men in the program, and about 450 of the airmen flew missions overseas. Brown recounted bitterly that the training program was “a joke,” because the instructors did not want to teach black men. Not to be discouraged, Elder says he was a fast learner. “Explain it to me one time and then turn your back. I’m going do whatever it is you showed me,” he said.
“I cannot explain to you what a joy it was for me to be able to fly,” Brown continued, “because at that time they didn’t think that we could do it. Don’t tell me what I can’t do. I am going to try anyway and when I do, I’m going to do the best job I can. I proved them wrong.”
Related articles
Tuskegee Airman From Blountstown Honored(wjhg.com)
McKeesport doctor honored for service as Tuskegee Airman(triblive.com)
Tuskegee Airman Joe Gomer Describes Segregation During WWII(northlandsnewscenter.com)
Dempsey Morgan, Tuskegee Airman, dies in Roanoke(stripes.com)
Senate honors Tuskegee airman on final day of session(postonpolitics.com)
Remembering George Hickman: Tuskegee Airman, 12th Man(seahawks.com)
"The Borinqueneers": Award them the gold(dailykos.com)
Several Tuskegee airmen at Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
- "The Borinqueneers": Award them the gold(dailykos.com)
Tuskegee Airmen 332nd Fighter Group pilots ppmsca13245u (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: Pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group, "Tuskegee Airmen," the elite, all-African American 332nd Fighter Group at Ramitelli, Italy., from left to right, Lt. Dempsey W. Morgran, Lt. Carroll S. Woods, Lt. Robert H. Nelron, Jr., Capt. Andrew D. Turner, and Lt. Clarence P. Lester. (U.S. Air Force photo) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Flagpole plaque for Alphonza Davis outside of the Great Plains Black History Museum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
LawrenceRobertsDedication4 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
LawrenceRobertsDedication1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
LawrenceRobertsDedication3 (Pho
LawrenceRobertsDedication2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tuskegee Airman flight certificate signed by Parrish (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Survival Guide: Dodging Locusts -- National Geographic
Survival Guide: Dodging Locusts -- National Geographic
This reminds me so much of the storms I seen from Afghanistan
the dust bowl
This reminds me so much of the storms I seen from Afghanistan
the dust bowl
Friday, May 17, 2013
National MS Society Blog: Enough Already.
National MS Society Blog: Enough Already.: Katie Jennings We often use the phrase “self-conscious” to describe someone who’s very aware of what other people think. A teenager in h...
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Monday, November 12, 2012
Sen. Rand Paul Compares SCOTUS Decision Upholding Obamacare To Pro-Slavery Dred Scott Decision
Sen. Rand Paul Compares SCOTUS Decision Upholding Obamacare To Pro-Slavery Dred Scott Decision: pSen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is not known for his measured understanding of the Constitution. He once suggested that Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution, and he opposes the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters because he believes allowing widespread segregation is “the hard part about believing in freedom.” Nevertheless, in a op-ed attacking the [...]/p
Friday, October 5, 2012
Why Are Bosses--And Lawmakers--Mistreating Pregnant Women?
Why Are Bosses--And Lawmakers--Mistreating Pregnant Women?:
Sun, 09/30/2012 - 11:33
The following article first appeared at Working In These Times, the labor blog of In These Times magazine. For more news and analysis like this, sign up to receive In These Times' weekly updates.
Whatever our political conflicts, we can generally agree that we should treat pregnant women nicely. We don't hesitate to help them carry their groceries or give them a seat on the bus. Yet when pregnancy comes up as a political issue, lawmakers are far more fixated on what an expecting mom's womb is doing, rather than her hands--as she slips the check under your plate and hopes for a decent tip--or her mind--as she loses sleep wondering whether she’ll lose her job as her due date nears.
Under current law, it's easy for bosses to mistreat pregnant women or force them off the job. Yet the men who run Congress are too busy sponsoring anti-abortion bills and slashing social programs, it seems, to protect pregnant women in the workplace. One of the many labor bills left off the congressional radar is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, (PWFA) which would help prevent pregnant women from being arbitrarily fired and make employers better accommodate them.
According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, the PWFA builds on existing anti-discrimination laws by extending specific protections to pregnant employees. The legislation directs employers to “make reasonable accommodations" for an employee or job applicant's limitations stemming from "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” unless this would pose “undue hardship” on the business. In addition, as the New York Times' Motherlode explains, the law would bar employers from "using a worker’s pregnancy to deny her opportunities on the job [or] force her to take an accommodation that she does not want or need.” The bill also directs the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to set regulations for implementing these laws, including “a list of exemplary reasonable accommodations."
It was introduced earlier this year in the House and this month in the Senate--and not surprisingly, faces pretty bleak odds for being enacted.
The bill expands on legislation passed in the 1970s that protects women from discrimination related to pregnancy. Those earlier policies have been interpreted in such a way as to let companies refuse to make reasonable adjustments for pregnant workers. Similarly, federal and state family-and-medical-leave acts protect women from discrimination related to a seeking medical care, including for pregnancy. But many expecting mothers are left unprotected by these measures; the FMLA for example covers only unpaid leave--not the paid leave time that's essential to protect the health of workers and their families--and generally only workplaces of 50 or more employees.
The PWFA would not shield expectant women from mistreatment altogether. The “undue burden” clause may give employers some leeway, for instance, to refuse to provide accommodations in job duties or schedules for a mom-to-be. Still, the measure would press firms to make sensible modifications for pregnant workers, such as no longer lifting heavy weights.
As with many women’s rights issues, this is also a matter of economic fairness. About 60 percent of women who gave birth in a given year also worked during that time, according to recent data; many moms are primary breadwinners, too. Making workplaces more pregnancy-friendly isn't about coddling women; it’s about putting pregnancy on par with other medical or physical challenges workers face. Sarah Crawford, director of workplace fairness at the National Partnership, noted in an email to Working In These Times:
Moreover, if a pregnant woman is unfairly fired, she may have trouble simply getting hired as a new mom, which some employers may see as a liability. (Not to mention affording quality child care so she can hold onto that new job).
The National Partnership also notes major health implications for women who lose a job during pregnancy, and for their babies: The stress incurred may raise “the risk of having a premature baby and/or a baby with low birth weight." If she can earn more before having the baby, she can potentially take more time off for maternity leave--meaning more time for bonding, breastfeeding and other essential nurturing tasks for parents that our labor structure tends to ignore.
Ironically, companies themselves suffer when they arbitrarily dismiss workers for pregnancy or childbirth-related reasons, because high workforce turnover is counterproductive in the long run.
Yet many workplaces still make women bear the brunt of the cost of childbearing. So next time you graciously offer your bus seat to a pregnant woman, just think about how our politicians fail to stand up for the labor rights of those who do the work of bringing us into the world.
Under current law, it's easy for bosses to mistreat pregnant women or force them off the job. Yet the men who run Congress are too busy sponsoring anti-abortion bills and slashing social programs, it seems, to protect pregnant women in the workplace. One of the many labor bills left off the congressional radar is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, (PWFA) which would help prevent pregnant women from being arbitrarily fired and make employers better accommodate them.
According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, the PWFA builds on existing anti-discrimination laws by extending specific protections to pregnant employees. The legislation directs employers to “make reasonable accommodations" for an employee or job applicant's limitations stemming from "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” unless this would pose “undue hardship” on the business. In addition, as the New York Times' Motherlode explains, the law would bar employers from "using a worker’s pregnancy to deny her opportunities on the job [or] force her to take an accommodation that she does not want or need.” The bill also directs the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to set regulations for implementing these laws, including “a list of exemplary reasonable accommodations."
It was introduced earlier this year in the House and this month in the Senate--and not surprisingly, faces pretty bleak odds for being enacted.
The bill expands on legislation passed in the 1970s that protects women from discrimination related to pregnancy. Those earlier policies have been interpreted in such a way as to let companies refuse to make reasonable adjustments for pregnant workers. Similarly, federal and state family-and-medical-leave acts protect women from discrimination related to a seeking medical care, including for pregnancy. But many expecting mothers are left unprotected by these measures; the FMLA for example covers only unpaid leave--not the paid leave time that's essential to protect the health of workers and their families--and generally only workplaces of 50 or more employees.
The PWFA would not shield expectant women from mistreatment altogether. The “undue burden” clause may give employers some leeway, for instance, to refuse to provide accommodations in job duties or schedules for a mom-to-be. Still, the measure would press firms to make sensible modifications for pregnant workers, such as no longer lifting heavy weights.
As with many women’s rights issues, this is also a matter of economic fairness. About 60 percent of women who gave birth in a given year also worked during that time, according to recent data; many moms are primary breadwinners, too. Making workplaces more pregnancy-friendly isn't about coddling women; it’s about putting pregnancy on par with other medical or physical challenges workers face. Sarah Crawford, director of workplace fairness at the National Partnership, noted in an email to Working In These Times:
The result for working pregnant women is that they are too often forced to quit or take unpaid leave because their employer denies them reasonable accommodations that are lawfully required for other workers with temporary disabilities.Losing work a double-blow for pregnant women who need to prepare financially for a new member of the household. Even if they're not outright fired, Crawford points out, "some employers force pregnant workers into unpaid leave prematurely, which means that women are forced to take a heavy financial hit just as they are about to give birth."
Moreover, if a pregnant woman is unfairly fired, she may have trouble simply getting hired as a new mom, which some employers may see as a liability. (Not to mention affording quality child care so she can hold onto that new job).
The National Partnership also notes major health implications for women who lose a job during pregnancy, and for their babies: The stress incurred may raise “the risk of having a premature baby and/or a baby with low birth weight." If she can earn more before having the baby, she can potentially take more time off for maternity leave--meaning more time for bonding, breastfeeding and other essential nurturing tasks for parents that our labor structure tends to ignore.
Ironically, companies themselves suffer when they arbitrarily dismiss workers for pregnancy or childbirth-related reasons, because high workforce turnover is counterproductive in the long run.
Yet many workplaces still make women bear the brunt of the cost of childbearing. So next time you graciously offer your bus seat to a pregnant woman, just think about how our politicians fail to stand up for the labor rights of those who do the work of bringing us into the world.
GOP Involved in Real Voter Fraud; Ignored by Fox News
GOP Involved in Real Voter Fraud; Ignored by Fox News:
Mon, 10/01/2012 - 06:27
Four years ago Fox News helped turn ACORN into a dirty word among conservatives by leading an often-hysterical right-wing crusade against the community activist group, charging it time and again with "voter fraud" on behalf of candidate Obama. In order to bolster its flimsy "voter fraud" attacks, the network repeatedly harped on reports that ACORN canvassers had submitted questionable voter registration forms.
Yet this week Fox has shown little interest in covering the unfolding story out of Florida, where the state's Republican Party has cut ties with a consulting firm accused of handing in more than 100 dubious voter registration forms.
From Tuesday night's Palm Beach Post:
Yesterday, Michael Isikoff reported that the registration troubles had spread:
The allegations lodged against Sproul's company are similar to the ones ACORN faced in 2008; workers submitted voter registration forms that contained dubious information. In `08, that was enough to light a short fuse on Fox News and within the right-wing media, as players rushed in to condemn the independent ACORN group as a corrupt and a criminal extension of the Obama campaign. (In 2009, a majority of Republicans believed ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.)
Note that in the unfolding Florida story, the firm in question was paid directly by the Republican Party and is accused of ACORN-like activities. But on Fox News, it's crickets.
In fact this morning, Brian Kilmeade hosted a Fox & Friends panel discussion about voter fraud. In 2008, the allegation that ACORN submitted questionable registration forms was routinely referred to and condemned as "voter fraud" on Fox. (To this day, Fox treats misaddressed voter registration forms as "fraud.") But this morning, Kilmeade and his guests made no mention of the fact that the Republican Party was just forced to fire a consulting firm for submitting potentially bogus voter registration forms; forms being reviewed by local law enforcement.
At Fox News, the hotbed for "voter fraud" stories, the embarrassing news from Florida is of little concern.
Yet this week Fox has shown little interest in covering the unfolding story out of Florida, where the state's Republican Party has cut ties with a consulting firm accused of handing in more than 100 dubious voter registration forms.
From Tuesday night's Palm Beach Post:
The Republican Party of Florida is dumping a firm it paid more than $1.3 million to register new voters, after Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher flagged 106 "questionable" registration applications turned in by the contractor this month.In an interview with blogger Brad Friedman, Bucher described the "similarities in the signatures and certain characteristics in the applications that were very disturbing" on registration applications collected by the firm. The "disturbing" defects on the forms included addresses of existing registered voters changed to commercial buildings or addresses and, "in some places, they were changing political parties."
Yesterday, Michael Isikoff reported that the registration troubles had spread:
NBC News has learned that four other Florida counties have also reported hundreds of possible fraudulent registration forms submitted by the firm, including apparent dead people being registered as new voters. Prosecutors in two counties are investigating possible voter fraud by the GOP consulting firm, officials said.And Thursday afternoon, Republicans in Colorado also pulled the plug on the voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, run by veteran GOP consultant Nathan Sproul.
The allegations lodged against Sproul's company are similar to the ones ACORN faced in 2008; workers submitted voter registration forms that contained dubious information. In `08, that was enough to light a short fuse on Fox News and within the right-wing media, as players rushed in to condemn the independent ACORN group as a corrupt and a criminal extension of the Obama campaign. (In 2009, a majority of Republicans believed ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.)
Note that in the unfolding Florida story, the firm in question was paid directly by the Republican Party and is accused of ACORN-like activities. But on Fox News, it's crickets.
In fact this morning, Brian Kilmeade hosted a Fox & Friends panel discussion about voter fraud. In 2008, the allegation that ACORN submitted questionable registration forms was routinely referred to and condemned as "voter fraud" on Fox. (To this day, Fox treats misaddressed voter registration forms as "fraud.") But this morning, Kilmeade and his guests made no mention of the fact that the Republican Party was just forced to fire a consulting firm for submitting potentially bogus voter registration forms; forms being reviewed by local law enforcement.
At Fox News, the hotbed for "voter fraud" stories, the embarrassing news from Florida is of little concern.
Jon Stewart on the Ridiculous 'Expectations Game' Before Tomorrow's Presidential Debate
Jon Stewart on the Ridiculous 'Expectations Game' Before Tomorrow's Presidential Debate:
Tue, 10/02/2012 - 07:46
On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked the common but horribly pathetic practice of campaigns lowering expectations for their candidates going into a debate. Both sides are guilty of this; the Romney camp is all over the media this week claiming that Obama will likely win the first debate, while some Democrats say Romney will do better. Among those Dems is former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who you might recall was pretty fired up about Obama at the DNC just a few short weeks ago:
As Stewart notes, "So all these guys have to do is show themselves to have a mild familiarity with the English language, and it's considered a win." American electoral politics, ladies and gentlemen!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't all tune in, if for no other reason than Romney's advisors have been feeding him "zingers" for weeks now. "I find the best zingers are the ones that you practice for two months," says Stewart. Indeed.
Watch the segment below.
As Stewart notes, "So all these guys have to do is show themselves to have a mild familiarity with the English language, and it's considered a win." American electoral politics, ladies and gentlemen!
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't all tune in, if for no other reason than Romney's advisors have been feeding him "zingers" for weeks now. "I find the best zingers are the ones that you practice for two months," says Stewart. Indeed.
Watch the segment below.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Democalypse 2012 - Negate Expectations | ||||
| ||||
Why That Crappy Presidential Debate Won't Change Anyone's Mind
Why That Crappy Presidential Debate Won't Change Anyone's Mind:
Thu, 10/04/2012 - 02:50
This piece has been updated.
By most accounts, Wednesday night’s presidential debate was one of the worst anybody could remember. Moderator Jim Lehrer, anchor of the PBS NewsHour, seemed largely absent, President Barack Obama brought little fight to the game, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, presented a pile of lies that were left either unchallenged or ineffectively countered.
Add to that the barrage of numbers issued by each candidate, and you have the recipe for a very boring and dispiriting debate. And it was.
This first presidential debate in a series of three (heaven help us), which took place at the Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, probably didn’t change many minds. Election 2012 finds a more highly polarized electorate than normal; only 6 percent or so of voters are deemed “persuadable” by pollsters, and it’s unlikely that a majority of those undecided voters were even watching the debate.
On our highly polarized political landscape, debates are fought for the amusement of media industrial complex, and not for the voters. It’s part of the media’s jobs program for campaign consultants and former consultants who become ubiquitous on television as “expert” interpreters of what viewers witnessed on the debate stage.
But the narrative of the debate that is crafted by the media could have an effect -- not on voters’ determination of their preferred candidate, but on turnout. Unless the president steps up his game in the next two debates, those “likely voters” who tend to side with him just might decide not to show up on election day, because right now the two themes taking shape in the narrative are that the president lost the debate, and, thanks to the current craze for instant fact-checking, that Romney is a big old liar.
Of those two themes, only the first one is news. Fact-checker upon fact-checker has revealed many of Romney's claims, made throughout the campaign, to be untrue, so, big whup. That's the way the news business works.
Snap polls give Romney a big win
And that’s why devices such as CNN’s “snap” poll matter. Corporate media need to make even the most boring of political events seem exciting; how else will they get viewers to tune in. So instant polls of viewers’ reaction, along with on-screen dial scores of real-time focus groups have become regular features of television debate coverage. But what if the poll sample is just plain wrong?
At the Daily Kos, the blogger who writes as The Silver Monkey took a look at the internals (PDF - page 15) of CNN’s snap poll, which found that 67 percent of those watching the debate declared Romney the winner -- the highest percentage for a single candidate in any of their snap polling of previous debates. But look behind the curtain, and one finds the poll’s respondents to be nearly all white, Southern and over 50. Non-whites were so statistically insignificant as to register as “not applicable” when the numbers were assessed by race, as were samples of respondents from other regions of the country. Do they really believe that the numbers of northeasterners who watched the debate were next to nil -- or do they have a bad poll? UPDATE: The folks at the TPM, which keeps a close watch on polls say that CNN has shared more information with them, and the make-up of the polling sample used by CNN seems to be "very much line with normal standards for randomized sampling."
In contrast, the CBS News snap poll of uncommitted voters showed 46 percent calling the debate for Romney, 32 percent calling it a tie, and 22 percent for Obama. The CNN poll did not specify its sample as uncommitted voters.
Perhaps CNN was simply seeking to counter the current right-wing conspiracy theory that nearly all national news media polls are skewed in favor of Democrats, the news media being in the tank for Obama and all.
What about the 47 percent?
Polls aside, Obama seemed to have come to the debate with a determination not to seem too combative, in the hope that Romney would be his own worst enemy. During the debates of 2008, it was often said that Obama had a judo strategy, using his opponents’ weight against them, and perhaps that’s what he hoped to effect in Denver. If he did, it failed.
Perhaps the most damning event Romney has had to respond to in this campaign is the secretly recorded video of a fundraiser, exposed by Mother Jones, in which Romney asserts that 47 percent of the American people think of themselves as victims, and expect the government to provide for them. Yet, in a debate segment of the role of government, Obama never once uttered the words “47 percent.”
While the president did raise the fact that Romney’s lie that Obama seeks to cut Medicare by $716 billion, Romney simply repeated the claim later in the debate.
Obama’s overly-cautious tack likely stemmed from the fact that national and swing-state polls show him winning, and he doesn’t want to mess that up. But Obama’s recent advances in the polls likely have something to do with his populist rhetoric on the stump, and the recent stumbles by Romney -- especially the infamous “47 percent” video. Yet he failed to use either circumstance to his advantage.
Perhaps, given the racialized character of the presidential campaign since the very beginning of primary season, Obama was concerned about coming off as the right-wing caricature of himself, otherwise known as the angry black man. But if the sliver of undecided voters that concern him heard a more forceful Obama sounding more like he’s fighting for them, I’d imagine that they might enjoy seeing that Obama.
Obama did manage to thump Romney for his absence of detail in his tax plan, which the former governor sells as cutting taxes with no impact on revenue.
“At some point, the American people have to ask themselves: Is the reason Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret, is it because they’re going to be too good?” Obama asked. “Because middle-class families benefit too much? No.”
Obama also said that Romney’s “big, bold idea is ‘Never mind.’”
The comedian Chris rock suggested via Twitter that when, in the discusson of Romney's Medicare plan -- which Romney says won't change for people 55 and over, Obama cautioned people who are 54 or 55 to "listen up," he would have done well to also mention people who are, say, 47 -- just to get that famous number into people's consciousness.
Perhaps Obama should hire Chris Rock.
Killing Big Bird and an ode to bipartisanship
If Obama treaded lightly for fear of alienating those not solidly in his camp, Romney’s challenge appeared to be to seem reasonable to that tiny group of suburban swing voters, while throwing some red meat to his right-wing base.
For the base, Romney promised to pull federal funding for PBS -- meaning, one assumes, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the publicly financed entity that provides the Public Broadcasting System with an ever-dwindling percentage of its budget.
PBS is a favorite bugaboo of the right, whose leaders contend that its programming is hopelessly biased to the left. (Must be all that science programming. You know how they feel about science.)
Asked what he would do to trim the deficit, Romney began with this attack on PBS, addressing his comments to the moderator, who is employed by that network. “I’m sorry Jim; I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” Romney said. “I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.”
Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting actually accounts for around one hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Did anybody mention that? No.
Immediately, two fake Twitter accounts emerged under the Big Bird name, with @BigBirdRomney tweeting:
Then there was the racial dog whistle when Romney accused the president of lying, when Obama asserted that what's known of the Romney tax plan would raise taxes on middle class people. "I’ve got five boys, Romney said. "I’m used to people saying something over and over so I’ll believe it."
It was an especially audacious claim when one considers that if this race were to be settled by a truthometer set on Wednesday's debate, Romney would lose not just big, but huge.
But Romney also felt compelled not to present himself as the "severely conservative" former governor he's been telling the right-wing base he is, so he made a big show of talking about how he passed health-care reform -- anathema to the base -- in a bipartisan manner, working with a Democratic legislature. He then blamed Obama for passing his own health-care bill without Republican votes.
Did anybody care to mention the fact that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared as his number one goal not the passage of legislation, but that of making sure Barack Obama was a one-term president? No. Not the president, not the moderator.
The best Obama had to offer was this: "I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate..."
Do lies matter?
To their credit, mainstream media have created a whole new sub-industry of fact-checking speeches and debates, but it obviously doesn't matter. Why else would Mitt Romney conclude that a winning strategy is to repeat lies that multiple fact-checkers have concluded as such? This, after all, is candidate whose pollster, Neil Newhouse, told reporters, "We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
To wit, Romney's lie about Medicare cuts, which has been debunked by just about every fact-checking shop out there, was repeated by the candidate himself in the debate even after the president debunked it.
Which is not to say that Obama campaign is always pure. But when measuring pure mendacity, Romney is the clear sinner. Just look at CNN's fact-checks of the Denver debate. Of the five claims CNN fact-checked, Romney was found to untruthful in all, while Obama was found to be spinning a bit on his claim that Romney would rank Donald Trump as a small business.
This is the same CNN whose snap poll found Obama to have lost the debate by a wide margin.
In his book, The Political Brain, neuroscientist Drew Westen offered proof that voters make their decisions regarding candidates based on emotions, not facts.
Mitt Romney and his campaign operatives have apparently decided that the easiest way to manipulate those emotions is to lie. The task for Obama, then, is to speak to those emotions without lying. To do that, he'll have to talk about values, about the story of America as he sees it, and not just a statistic-laden laundry list of policies.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing: If you want to win, you can't let the other guy walk all over you.
By most accounts, Wednesday night’s presidential debate was one of the worst anybody could remember. Moderator Jim Lehrer, anchor of the PBS NewsHour, seemed largely absent, President Barack Obama brought little fight to the game, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, presented a pile of lies that were left either unchallenged or ineffectively countered.
Add to that the barrage of numbers issued by each candidate, and you have the recipe for a very boring and dispiriting debate. And it was.
This first presidential debate in a series of three (heaven help us), which took place at the Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, probably didn’t change many minds. Election 2012 finds a more highly polarized electorate than normal; only 6 percent or so of voters are deemed “persuadable” by pollsters, and it’s unlikely that a majority of those undecided voters were even watching the debate.
On our highly polarized political landscape, debates are fought for the amusement of media industrial complex, and not for the voters. It’s part of the media’s jobs program for campaign consultants and former consultants who become ubiquitous on television as “expert” interpreters of what viewers witnessed on the debate stage.
But the narrative of the debate that is crafted by the media could have an effect -- not on voters’ determination of their preferred candidate, but on turnout. Unless the president steps up his game in the next two debates, those “likely voters” who tend to side with him just might decide not to show up on election day, because right now the two themes taking shape in the narrative are that the president lost the debate, and, thanks to the current craze for instant fact-checking, that Romney is a big old liar.
Of those two themes, only the first one is news. Fact-checker upon fact-checker has revealed many of Romney's claims, made throughout the campaign, to be untrue, so, big whup. That's the way the news business works.
Snap polls give Romney a big win
And that’s why devices such as CNN’s “snap” poll matter. Corporate media need to make even the most boring of political events seem exciting; how else will they get viewers to tune in. So instant polls of viewers’ reaction, along with on-screen dial scores of real-time focus groups have become regular features of television debate coverage. But what if the poll sample is just plain wrong?
At the Daily Kos, the blogger who writes as The Silver Monkey took a look at the internals (PDF - page 15) of CNN’s snap poll, which found that 67 percent of those watching the debate declared Romney the winner -- the highest percentage for a single candidate in any of their snap polling of previous debates. But look behind the curtain, and one finds the poll’s respondents to be nearly all white, Southern and over 50. Non-whites were so statistically insignificant as to register as “not applicable” when the numbers were assessed by race, as were samples of respondents from other regions of the country. Do they really believe that the numbers of northeasterners who watched the debate were next to nil -- or do they have a bad poll? UPDATE: The folks at the TPM, which keeps a close watch on polls say that CNN has shared more information with them, and the make-up of the polling sample used by CNN seems to be "very much line with normal standards for randomized sampling."
In contrast, the CBS News snap poll of uncommitted voters showed 46 percent calling the debate for Romney, 32 percent calling it a tie, and 22 percent for Obama. The CNN poll did not specify its sample as uncommitted voters.
Perhaps CNN was simply seeking to counter the current right-wing conspiracy theory that nearly all national news media polls are skewed in favor of Democrats, the news media being in the tank for Obama and all.
What about the 47 percent?
Polls aside, Obama seemed to have come to the debate with a determination not to seem too combative, in the hope that Romney would be his own worst enemy. During the debates of 2008, it was often said that Obama had a judo strategy, using his opponents’ weight against them, and perhaps that’s what he hoped to effect in Denver. If he did, it failed.
Perhaps the most damning event Romney has had to respond to in this campaign is the secretly recorded video of a fundraiser, exposed by Mother Jones, in which Romney asserts that 47 percent of the American people think of themselves as victims, and expect the government to provide for them. Yet, in a debate segment of the role of government, Obama never once uttered the words “47 percent.”
While the president did raise the fact that Romney’s lie that Obama seeks to cut Medicare by $716 billion, Romney simply repeated the claim later in the debate.
Obama’s overly-cautious tack likely stemmed from the fact that national and swing-state polls show him winning, and he doesn’t want to mess that up. But Obama’s recent advances in the polls likely have something to do with his populist rhetoric on the stump, and the recent stumbles by Romney -- especially the infamous “47 percent” video. Yet he failed to use either circumstance to his advantage.
Perhaps, given the racialized character of the presidential campaign since the very beginning of primary season, Obama was concerned about coming off as the right-wing caricature of himself, otherwise known as the angry black man. But if the sliver of undecided voters that concern him heard a more forceful Obama sounding more like he’s fighting for them, I’d imagine that they might enjoy seeing that Obama.
Obama did manage to thump Romney for his absence of detail in his tax plan, which the former governor sells as cutting taxes with no impact on revenue.
“At some point, the American people have to ask themselves: Is the reason Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret, is it because they’re going to be too good?” Obama asked. “Because middle-class families benefit too much? No.”
Obama also said that Romney’s “big, bold idea is ‘Never mind.’”
The comedian Chris rock suggested via Twitter that when, in the discusson of Romney's Medicare plan -- which Romney says won't change for people 55 and over, Obama cautioned people who are 54 or 55 to "listen up," he would have done well to also mention people who are, say, 47 -- just to get that famous number into people's consciousness.
Perhaps Obama should hire Chris Rock.
Killing Big Bird and an ode to bipartisanship
If Obama treaded lightly for fear of alienating those not solidly in his camp, Romney’s challenge appeared to be to seem reasonable to that tiny group of suburban swing voters, while throwing some red meat to his right-wing base.
For the base, Romney promised to pull federal funding for PBS -- meaning, one assumes, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the publicly financed entity that provides the Public Broadcasting System with an ever-dwindling percentage of its budget.
PBS is a favorite bugaboo of the right, whose leaders contend that its programming is hopelessly biased to the left. (Must be all that science programming. You know how they feel about science.)
Asked what he would do to trim the deficit, Romney began with this attack on PBS, addressing his comments to the moderator, who is employed by that network. “I’m sorry Jim; I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” Romney said. “I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.”
Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting actually accounts for around one hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Did anybody mention that? No.
Immediately, two fake Twitter accounts emerged under the Big Bird name, with @BigBirdRomney tweeting:
@MittRomney just DM-d me. He told me if I don't shut my beak, he's going to tie me to the roof of his car. =( #DebatesAnd one called Silent Jim Lehrer began tweeting such gems as: "...I...so, I...guys..."
Then there was the racial dog whistle when Romney accused the president of lying, when Obama asserted that what's known of the Romney tax plan would raise taxes on middle class people. "I’ve got five boys, Romney said. "I’m used to people saying something over and over so I’ll believe it."
It was an especially audacious claim when one considers that if this race were to be settled by a truthometer set on Wednesday's debate, Romney would lose not just big, but huge.
But Romney also felt compelled not to present himself as the "severely conservative" former governor he's been telling the right-wing base he is, so he made a big show of talking about how he passed health-care reform -- anathema to the base -- in a bipartisan manner, working with a Democratic legislature. He then blamed Obama for passing his own health-care bill without Republican votes.
Did anybody care to mention the fact that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared as his number one goal not the passage of legislation, but that of making sure Barack Obama was a one-term president? No. Not the president, not the moderator.
The best Obama had to offer was this: "I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate..."
Do lies matter?
To their credit, mainstream media have created a whole new sub-industry of fact-checking speeches and debates, but it obviously doesn't matter. Why else would Mitt Romney conclude that a winning strategy is to repeat lies that multiple fact-checkers have concluded as such? This, after all, is candidate whose pollster, Neil Newhouse, told reporters, "We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”
To wit, Romney's lie about Medicare cuts, which has been debunked by just about every fact-checking shop out there, was repeated by the candidate himself in the debate even after the president debunked it.
Which is not to say that Obama campaign is always pure. But when measuring pure mendacity, Romney is the clear sinner. Just look at CNN's fact-checks of the Denver debate. Of the five claims CNN fact-checked, Romney was found to untruthful in all, while Obama was found to be spinning a bit on his claim that Romney would rank Donald Trump as a small business.
This is the same CNN whose snap poll found Obama to have lost the debate by a wide margin.
In his book, The Political Brain, neuroscientist Drew Westen offered proof that voters make their decisions regarding candidates based on emotions, not facts.
Mitt Romney and his campaign operatives have apparently decided that the easiest way to manipulate those emotions is to lie. The task for Obama, then, is to speak to those emotions without lying. To do that, he'll have to talk about values, about the story of America as he sees it, and not just a statistic-laden laundry list of policies.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing: If you want to win, you can't let the other guy walk all over you.
Not Just Big Bird: 6 Examples of the Right's War on Beloved Children's Characters
Not Just Big Bird: 6 Examples of the Right's War on Beloved Children's Characters:
Thu, 10/04/2012 - 09:32
Mitt Romney's comments, during Wednesday night's debate, about cutting funding for PBS despite his “love” for Big Bird, immediately got a response from the Internet: FiredBigBird popped up on Twitter shortly after the comments and was quickly joined by Sesame Street colleagues FireMeElmo and FiredOscar, as well as BigBirdRomney.
PBS has long been a conservative target, despite the minuscule amount of savings that cutting it would actually produce. As Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos, “Romney's setting up the need for $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts. His answer? Fire Big Bird to save $445 million.” Big Bird and his cohort are just collateral damage in the Right's war on anything public; Romney can sadly shake his head and say that even though he loves Big Bird, the big yellow guy just has to go because of the deficits!
Whether Romney gets to fire Big Bird or not may be up to the voters this fall, but it's certainly not the first time right-wingers have painted a target on a fictional character. From children's books and movies to TV, conservatives—especially the religious right kind—have declared war on many a beloved character. Here's a rundown of the top 6 attacks on fictional favorites.
1. Harry Potter worships Satan!
Google “Harry Potter Witchcraft” and you'll find a plethora of Web sites from various ministries claiming that the multi-million-selling children's series is teaching children how to worship the devil and leading them away from Christianity.
Linda Harvey of Mission America claimed that Harry Potter was turning children to an especially dark source: therapy. No, really. “[T]he therapy that they need is to find special powers within themselves to battle the demons, real or imagined, out there, so they never look to Jesus Christ.”
Not to be outdone, televangelist John Hagee ranted:
2. Elmo will lead to gay male prom queens!
Yes, that's right. According to author Ben Shapiro (who wants to take Big Bird and Elmo “out back” and “cap 'em”), former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and of course, Sean Hannity, watching "Sesame Street" will lead to families embracing gender-neutral parenting, little boys playing with dolls, and yes, Blackwell claims, schools allowing gay boys to be prom queen.
Of course, it's Fox News, so none of them bother to explain what's wrong with any of that, but in their minds, it's terrifying.
3. Muppets hate capitalism!
In the most recent Muppets movie, the villain was an oilman named Tex Richman (subtle, that) who wanted to get rid of the Muppets theater to drill for the oil underneath. This, according to the Fox Business Network, means that the Muppets are wily socialists “using class warfare” and “trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism.” Obviously! Because oil is totally great, you need it to power cars and ambulances and stuff.
Tom Chivers at the UK Telegraph joked, “One only needs to look at A Muppet Christmas Carol to realise that the whole furry lot of them are anti-business, anti-the hard-working capitalist trying to make an honest living: demanding crippling impositions on small firms, like a day off for workers at Christmas.”
The only solution, Chivers noted, is for the right to cough up some counter-propaganda, “Putting the Fun in Hedge Funds” or something else. But Glenn Beck already had that idea, and it didn't seem to get anywhere...
4. SpongeBob Squarepants has a radical green agenda!
That's right, folks, SpongeBob is the reason your kids might be aware of this little problem called climate change. Don't believe me? Just ask Glenn Beck's site, the Blaze, which warns that the U.S. Department of Education is “indoctrinating children” with the idea that “man-made global warming” is a fact, using free books featuring the Nickelodeon character.
Fox & Friends got in on the SpongeBob bashing with a scary on-screen ticker declaring “SpongeBob's Bias." Gretchen Carlson complained that SpongeBob didn't show kids that global warming was “a disputed fact,” and Steve Doocy claimed that parents were uncomfortable with the “over-the-top green agenda."
5. G.I. Joe wants you to be part of a one-world-government nightmare!
Glenn Beck isn't only angry at Glee and SpongeBob. Nope, he's angry about the way the recent G.I Joe movie made the former military hero, star of a kids' cartoon and a heck of a lot of toys, into a “casualty in the war on the American way.”
Seriously.
You see, in the new movie, Joe is out of the Army, and according to Beck, “Hollywood now has him answering to some bullcrap international force like the U.N. We all know that the U.N. is a toothless bunch of pansies. They don't deserve somebody like Joe, even the little plastic version.” He followed that up with, “I believe some are trying to indoctrinate our kids into hating their own country, turning us into some one-world-government nightmare; hating America, turning it into a dirty word."
For Beck, G.I. Joe is a “symbol of national pride,” just like Superman, and you don't mess with those. (Nobody's told him that Superman was created by a couple of Jewish immigrants, right?)
6. Dora the Explorer is an undocumented immigrant!
This one's a bit disturbing, as my colleague Julianne Escobedo Shepherd pointed out earlier this year. Right-wingers took to posting a mugshot of cartoon character Dora, a young Latina, that had been doctored to give her a black eye and busted lip. The “charges” against her? "Illegal Border Crossing Resisting Arrest." (Oh, and the number they gave her? 666 666 666. Um.)
The images came up after Arizona's “Papers, Please” law was passed, and wound up in the middle of the debate over the issue—in part because Dora is bilingual and travels the world, apparently. Still, it's bad enough that a children's cartoon character became a target for the Right, but did they really have to beat her up, too? Sure, she's not real, but the fact that the response right-wingers have to an immigrant child is to want to see her with a black eye and bleeding?
PBS has long been a conservative target, despite the minuscule amount of savings that cutting it would actually produce. As Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos, “Romney's setting up the need for $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts. His answer? Fire Big Bird to save $445 million.” Big Bird and his cohort are just collateral damage in the Right's war on anything public; Romney can sadly shake his head and say that even though he loves Big Bird, the big yellow guy just has to go because of the deficits!
Whether Romney gets to fire Big Bird or not may be up to the voters this fall, but it's certainly not the first time right-wingers have painted a target on a fictional character. From children's books and movies to TV, conservatives—especially the religious right kind—have declared war on many a beloved character. Here's a rundown of the top 6 attacks on fictional favorites.
1. Harry Potter worships Satan!
Google “Harry Potter Witchcraft” and you'll find a plethora of Web sites from various ministries claiming that the multi-million-selling children's series is teaching children how to worship the devil and leading them away from Christianity.
Linda Harvey of Mission America claimed that Harry Potter was turning children to an especially dark source: therapy. No, really. “[T]he therapy that they need is to find special powers within themselves to battle the demons, real or imagined, out there, so they never look to Jesus Christ.”
Not to be outdone, televangelist John Hagee ranted:
“Think about that, we’re in a moral free fall where your children can be taught witchcraft by Harry Potter; that Heather has two mommies; you can substitute Christmas for a midwinter holiday, call it anything you want to but don’t call it Christmas, kick God out of the Christmas event; you can let your daughter go to school and she can get an abortion without your permission or without your knowledge but she cannot get an aspirin without your knowledge.”Hagee, you'll remember, is the pastor whose endorsement got John McCain into hot water because when he's not slamming Harry Potter, he's insulting the Catholic Church. At least Potter's in good company.
2. Elmo will lead to gay male prom queens!
Yes, that's right. According to author Ben Shapiro (who wants to take Big Bird and Elmo “out back” and “cap 'em”), former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and of course, Sean Hannity, watching "Sesame Street" will lead to families embracing gender-neutral parenting, little boys playing with dolls, and yes, Blackwell claims, schools allowing gay boys to be prom queen.
Of course, it's Fox News, so none of them bother to explain what's wrong with any of that, but in their minds, it's terrifying.
3. Muppets hate capitalism!
In the most recent Muppets movie, the villain was an oilman named Tex Richman (subtle, that) who wanted to get rid of the Muppets theater to drill for the oil underneath. This, according to the Fox Business Network, means that the Muppets are wily socialists “using class warfare” and “trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism.” Obviously! Because oil is totally great, you need it to power cars and ambulances and stuff.
Tom Chivers at the UK Telegraph joked, “One only needs to look at A Muppet Christmas Carol to realise that the whole furry lot of them are anti-business, anti-the hard-working capitalist trying to make an honest living: demanding crippling impositions on small firms, like a day off for workers at Christmas.”
The only solution, Chivers noted, is for the right to cough up some counter-propaganda, “Putting the Fun in Hedge Funds” or something else. But Glenn Beck already had that idea, and it didn't seem to get anywhere...
4. SpongeBob Squarepants has a radical green agenda!
That's right, folks, SpongeBob is the reason your kids might be aware of this little problem called climate change. Don't believe me? Just ask Glenn Beck's site, the Blaze, which warns that the U.S. Department of Education is “indoctrinating children” with the idea that “man-made global warming” is a fact, using free books featuring the Nickelodeon character.
Fox & Friends got in on the SpongeBob bashing with a scary on-screen ticker declaring “SpongeBob's Bias." Gretchen Carlson complained that SpongeBob didn't show kids that global warming was “a disputed fact,” and Steve Doocy claimed that parents were uncomfortable with the “over-the-top green agenda."
5. G.I. Joe wants you to be part of a one-world-government nightmare!
Glenn Beck isn't only angry at Glee and SpongeBob. Nope, he's angry about the way the recent G.I Joe movie made the former military hero, star of a kids' cartoon and a heck of a lot of toys, into a “casualty in the war on the American way.”
Seriously.
You see, in the new movie, Joe is out of the Army, and according to Beck, “Hollywood now has him answering to some bullcrap international force like the U.N. We all know that the U.N. is a toothless bunch of pansies. They don't deserve somebody like Joe, even the little plastic version.” He followed that up with, “I believe some are trying to indoctrinate our kids into hating their own country, turning us into some one-world-government nightmare; hating America, turning it into a dirty word."
For Beck, G.I. Joe is a “symbol of national pride,” just like Superman, and you don't mess with those. (Nobody's told him that Superman was created by a couple of Jewish immigrants, right?)
6. Dora the Explorer is an undocumented immigrant!
This one's a bit disturbing, as my colleague Julianne Escobedo Shepherd pointed out earlier this year. Right-wingers took to posting a mugshot of cartoon character Dora, a young Latina, that had been doctored to give her a black eye and busted lip. The “charges” against her? "Illegal Border Crossing Resisting Arrest." (Oh, and the number they gave her? 666 666 666. Um.)
The images came up after Arizona's “Papers, Please” law was passed, and wound up in the middle of the debate over the issue—in part because Dora is bilingual and travels the world, apparently. Still, it's bad enough that a children's cartoon character became a target for the Right, but did they really have to beat her up, too? Sure, she's not real, but the fact that the response right-wingers have to an immigrant child is to want to see her with a black eye and bleeding?
Daryl Hannah Arrested for Protesting Keystone Pipeline in Texas
Daryl Hannah Arrested for Protesting Keystone Pipeline in Texas: Daryl Hanna and Texas farm owner Eleanor Fairchild, 78 yrs old arrested on her farm for stopping TransCanada from destroying her land in Texas for the Keystone XL Pipeline
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)