From the Archives. (September 2006) I loaned Dorothy Allison’s Trash to Danishgrrrl a few weeks ago and found myself flipping through this book about class, geography, and gender issues last night.
Allison articulates things about my childhood and shame and adult anxieties that I never even acknowledged out loud to myself before reading this book.
She also goes a long way toward explaining my anxiety about taking Danishgrrrl to SC to meet my family of origin.
Meanwhile, I have been shaking my head at the fact that Andrew Fastow is going to the slammer for a mere six years. I mean, think about what this guy did and its repercussions (not to mention the fact that he already received a great plea bargain agreement that reduced his sentence to just 10 years behind bars).
My question is, why not punish this man the way his crimes punished others and take away his retirement accounts and benefits and compensation and job, then force him to spend the rest of his days living on a fixed minimum-wage income?
The judge defended Fastow’s light sentence by saying that he had been persecuted and portrayed as a symbol of corporate greed after Enron’s collapse.
Aw.
(Excuse me but wasn’t his choice to perform criminal activities that led to Enron’s collapse the very thing that earned him this reputation in the first place?)
Maybe I am naive, but my impression is that most law-abiding citizens frown upon criminal activity, especially when the criminals rake in millions while leaving tax payers to bail out the people he bilked.
My understanding is also that justice is theoretically blind, but this articulate white sociopath with a is getting off way too fricking easy.
Question: does anyone believe for a moment that this judge would extend a comparable rationale to, say, a child molester?
Oh you poor man, your neighbors shunned and persecuted you and crossed the street when you approached and made you suffer so. Oh you poor, poor man. You have paid such a steep price already, So I tell ya what I’m gonna do. I'll sentence you to four years less than your plea bargain agreement because of your awful, awful suffering.
And inquiring minds want to know what exactly this guy’s “extraordinary steps toward rehabilitation” were.
Did he donate one of his MacMansions to the thousands of Enron employees whose savings he bilked?
Nope. Near as I can tell, the judge was referring to the fact that the poor man had to raise his two kids alone for one year while his criminal wife served her similarly minimal sentence.
Guess the judge doesn’t recognize that members of the law-abiding population struggle to raise their kids with limited resources and in single-parent homes too—and will have an even harder time of it now that we have to bail out these corporate crooks.
Unbelieveable.
Meanwhile, the Georgia branch of the Christian Coalition voted to leave this organization because it is just not conservative enough for them anymore.
Their stance is that the organization ought to be focusing solely on the core issues: criminalizing abortion and legalizing homophobia
(coz the Bible tells them so).
I suggest that they realign themselves with Fred Phelps so that everyone knows exactly what kinds of bigots we are dealing with.
No time right now, but I also made a mental note to research Republinazi pollster Frank Luntz’s materials. He’s the guy who provides speaking tips to the GOP and, apparently, his 160-page memo “The New American Lexicon” is the source of GOP members’ current insistence on using Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party.
LISTENING TO: George Winston’s “Summer”
READING: A fascinating article on fused participles (yawn). Last night, I also flipped through Great Lies for Adults to Tell Kids. (My personal favorite is “Wine makes mommy clever.”) Also Dorothy Allison’s Trash, which I will excerpt later.
SANG IN SHOWER: do your chain hang low? Do it rattle to the flo? (I curse Danishgrrrl’s teenagers for getting this stuck in my head!)
BEST-OF SPAM: Did you know that statistics say that sex makes you look 12 years younger?
Showing posts with label Fred Phelps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fred Phelps. Show all posts
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
79. WILLFUL IGNORANCE
From the Archives
(April 2005) SC voters will soon decide whether their state constitution should be amended to ban same-sex marriages. I grew up in the deep south, completed undergrad studies there, and can already tell you that their answer will be yes.
Sadly, I also know that many of the southerners in my extended family would vote to legalize this selective bigotry.
And speaking of the humid Carolinas, someone just emailed me to say that notorious homophobe Fred Phelps and his clan plan to protest a high school production of The Laramie Project near Duke University. This play is about the afteraffects of the savage death of Matthew Shepard, the twenty-one-year-old gay man who had recently moved to Laramie from nearby Chapel Hill, NC.
Phelps is the asshole who held up “God Hates Fags” signs at Shepard’s funeral and shouted to his mourning parents that their son was in Hell where he belongs.
(Cruel. And to do so in the name of Jesus! These homophobes have no decency and it is so deeply offensive that they couch their hatred in Jesus’s name.)
Phelps et al. show up in DC too, where their seething hatred is a sight to behold.
How will Dukies react to this show of hate? I'd like to think that kids in the art department will make paper-maché Jesuses with their arms around a gay couple and holding big “Hate Is Not A Family Value” signs. Or maybe Jesus can wear Reeses shirts and their placard can read “Look. They put their hatred on my Jesus” or something.
What rocks did these hate-filled people crawl out from under?
(April 2005) SC voters will soon decide whether their state constitution should be amended to ban same-sex marriages. I grew up in the deep south, completed undergrad studies there, and can already tell you that their answer will be yes.
Sadly, I also know that many of the southerners in my extended family would vote to legalize this selective bigotry.
And speaking of the humid Carolinas, someone just emailed me to say that notorious homophobe Fred Phelps and his clan plan to protest a high school production of The Laramie Project near Duke University. This play is about the afteraffects of the savage death of Matthew Shepard, the twenty-one-year-old gay man who had recently moved to Laramie from nearby Chapel Hill, NC.
Phelps is the asshole who held up “God Hates Fags” signs at Shepard’s funeral and shouted to his mourning parents that their son was in Hell where he belongs.
(Cruel. And to do so in the name of Jesus! These homophobes have no decency and it is so deeply offensive that they couch their hatred in Jesus’s name.)
Phelps et al. show up in DC too, where their seething hatred is a sight to behold.
How will Dukies react to this show of hate? I'd like to think that kids in the art department will make paper-maché Jesuses with their arms around a gay couple and holding big “Hate Is Not A Family Value” signs. Or maybe Jesus can wear Reeses shirts and their placard can read “Look. They put their hatred on my Jesus” or something.
What rocks did these hate-filled people crawl out from under?
Monday, September 24, 2007
64. DEATH BE NOT PROUD
From the Archives
(31 March 2005) Well the poor woman’s body has finally been allowed to die.
I’ve been looking out the window at ominous clouds wondering how many of Terri Schiavo’s angry mourners mourned Matthew Shephard’s death, how many of them supported “Rev.” Fred Phelps, who protested at the funeral and tortured Shephard’s grieving parents by screaming that their son was in Hell where he belongs and that God Hates Fags. There’s a fine example of Christian charity ... or was that faith-based moral judgment at tax-payers' expense? (It’s getting closer all the time.)
There were no good outcomes in this tragedy, but these hypocritical Christians and opportunistic politicians really disgust me.
How can DeLay, whose morals have long been in question and who removed life-support from his own parent, look at himself in the mirror? How can Frist, who no doubt advised families of patients who had suffered irreversible heart damage to let their loved ones die with dignity? Surely some reporter can find these people and expose him for the opportunistic fraud he is.
Yahoo! reports that “Dawn Kozsey, 47, a musician who was among those outside Schiavo’s hospice, wept. ‘Words cannot express the rage I feel,’ she said. ‘Is my heart broken for this? Yes.’”
Did Dawn Kozsey protest after Matthew Shephard was murdered? Express rage? Was her heart broken?
Yahoo! again: “Rev. Frank Pavone [said] ‘This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve [the deceased’s passing] but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again.’”
Did Rev. Pavone grieve Shephard’s murder? Make a public statement against homophobia? Did he work to create safeguards to decrease the likelihood of such a thing ever happening again, preach a sermon about loving all of God’s children?
I was on a bus in New York City when I heard the news about Matthew Shephard and overheard the woman behind me saying “Those fags deserve to die. Fuck!ng in the butt like they got no sense.”
The irony of the pope being on a tube is not lost on me. Nor is the irony of a man being arrested for offering a reward for the murder of Michael Shiavo (because he supports life, no doubt).
I have been in a situation where we had to make a decision to remove or not remove life support four times. It is a horrible decision to have to make, but which decision was best seemed clear each time.
My grandmother, who climbed mountains in her 80s and who had been in excellent health for all of her life, had a massive heart attack. Tests showed that she suffered major damage. A surgeon could have performed an extremely invasive surgery that would have kept her alive (and in ICU) for a few more weeks, but she had no chance of meaningful recovery nor would she have ever left the hospital.
Who would make the decision to perform that surgery? Removing the shell of her body from life support while expressing gratitude that someone so wonderful had lived so long and died so quickly was clearly the right decision and I am so grateful that I was able to hold her hand as she died.
My father—and this is useful information for everyone to know—signed a DNR in the hospital, then was released and readmitted a few hours later. The admissions clerk told him that he did not have to sign a DNR again but, when he went into heart failure, the doctors insisted on reviving him because he had failed to sign a new DNR upon readmittance.
So, instead of being able to die naturally from the cancer that had metasticized all over his body (cancer that no one knew about until the evening before this event, when he was admitted for tests), he lived with no brain activity for another five days because one of my sisters—who was separated from her husband and days away from delivering her first child (a child who would now never know her grandfather)—refused to believe the doctor when he said that Daddy was a vegetable. She argued with him, told us we wanted to murder our own father/husband, said he was in the room recovering, come see.
It was awful, but my mother was right that the decision should be unanimous. So he lay there for days basically melting as the cancer attacked the part of his brain that regulates temperature, until my sister finally agreed that we should remove life support and let his outer shell go.
Thankfully, Mud’s father was a surgeon who understood that his wife had no chance for meaningful recovery, so Mud and her dad and I were in the room with her when she died peacefully from (seemingly) natural causes.
We made the decision to not remove life support from my teenager brother after his traumatic motorcycle wreck, despite heavy pressure from medical personnel to donate his organs to someone who had some chance of a meaningful recovery. They told us that he had less than a one percent chance of survival and that he was horribly injured, but we could see that he was also screaming when the equipment registered him as dead and watched him bite a nurse when the doctor began a cut-down on him without anesthesizing him.
We decided that he was clearly fighting for his life and taht he deserved to continue fighting, even if he did only have a 1 percent chance of living (and lo, the boy lived to drink and drive another day).
•
David Morris’s Alternet column today explores how “organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level..." Let’s call its institutions by their proper name, he says, “superstition-based institutions...: The impact of moving towards superstition-based institutions would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary,” he says. “Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:
(31 March 2005) Well the poor woman’s body has finally been allowed to die.
I’ve been looking out the window at ominous clouds wondering how many of Terri Schiavo’s angry mourners mourned Matthew Shephard’s death, how many of them supported “Rev.” Fred Phelps, who protested at the funeral and tortured Shephard’s grieving parents by screaming that their son was in Hell where he belongs and that God Hates Fags. There’s a fine example of Christian charity ... or was that faith-based moral judgment at tax-payers' expense? (It’s getting closer all the time.)
There were no good outcomes in this tragedy, but these hypocritical Christians and opportunistic politicians really disgust me.
How can DeLay, whose morals have long been in question and who removed life-support from his own parent, look at himself in the mirror? How can Frist, who no doubt advised families of patients who had suffered irreversible heart damage to let their loved ones die with dignity? Surely some reporter can find these people and expose him for the opportunistic fraud he is.
Yahoo! reports that “Dawn Kozsey, 47, a musician who was among those outside Schiavo’s hospice, wept. ‘Words cannot express the rage I feel,’ she said. ‘Is my heart broken for this? Yes.’”
Did Dawn Kozsey protest after Matthew Shephard was murdered? Express rage? Was her heart broken?
Yahoo! again: “Rev. Frank Pavone [said] ‘This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve [the deceased’s passing] but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again.’”
Did Rev. Pavone grieve Shephard’s murder? Make a public statement against homophobia? Did he work to create safeguards to decrease the likelihood of such a thing ever happening again, preach a sermon about loving all of God’s children?
I was on a bus in New York City when I heard the news about Matthew Shephard and overheard the woman behind me saying “Those fags deserve to die. Fuck!ng in the butt like they got no sense.”
The irony of the pope being on a tube is not lost on me. Nor is the irony of a man being arrested for offering a reward for the murder of Michael Shiavo (because he supports life, no doubt).
I have been in a situation where we had to make a decision to remove or not remove life support four times. It is a horrible decision to have to make, but which decision was best seemed clear each time.
My grandmother, who climbed mountains in her 80s and who had been in excellent health for all of her life, had a massive heart attack. Tests showed that she suffered major damage. A surgeon could have performed an extremely invasive surgery that would have kept her alive (and in ICU) for a few more weeks, but she had no chance of meaningful recovery nor would she have ever left the hospital.
Who would make the decision to perform that surgery? Removing the shell of her body from life support while expressing gratitude that someone so wonderful had lived so long and died so quickly was clearly the right decision and I am so grateful that I was able to hold her hand as she died.
My father—and this is useful information for everyone to know—signed a DNR in the hospital, then was released and readmitted a few hours later. The admissions clerk told him that he did not have to sign a DNR again but, when he went into heart failure, the doctors insisted on reviving him because he had failed to sign a new DNR upon readmittance.
So, instead of being able to die naturally from the cancer that had metasticized all over his body (cancer that no one knew about until the evening before this event, when he was admitted for tests), he lived with no brain activity for another five days because one of my sisters—who was separated from her husband and days away from delivering her first child (a child who would now never know her grandfather)—refused to believe the doctor when he said that Daddy was a vegetable. She argued with him, told us we wanted to murder our own father/husband, said he was in the room recovering, come see.
It was awful, but my mother was right that the decision should be unanimous. So he lay there for days basically melting as the cancer attacked the part of his brain that regulates temperature, until my sister finally agreed that we should remove life support and let his outer shell go.
Thankfully, Mud’s father was a surgeon who understood that his wife had no chance for meaningful recovery, so Mud and her dad and I were in the room with her when she died peacefully from (seemingly) natural causes.
We made the decision to not remove life support from my teenager brother after his traumatic motorcycle wreck, despite heavy pressure from medical personnel to donate his organs to someone who had some chance of a meaningful recovery. They told us that he had less than a one percent chance of survival and that he was horribly injured, but we could see that he was also screaming when the equipment registered him as dead and watched him bite a nurse when the doctor began a cut-down on him without anesthesizing him.
We decided that he was clearly fighting for his life and taht he deserved to continue fighting, even if he did only have a 1 percent chance of living (and lo, the boy lived to drink and drive another day).
•
David Morris’s Alternet column today explores how “organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level..." Let’s call its institutions by their proper name, he says, “superstition-based institutions...: The impact of moving towards superstition-based institutions would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary,” he says. “Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:
I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.
He quotes Robert Green Ingersoll, who traveled the country explaining
why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man."
Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,’ he insisted. ‘It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge—that is to say, of science. When man [sic] becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men [sic], then, and not until then, will the world be civilized."
And he quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who
explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindu woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man [sic], of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it."
Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth."
Finally, he notes with alarm that
Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the recent enactment by several states of laws that allow pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients whose behavior conflicts with the their superstitions.
The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is behind much of the violence around the world.
If you want to read the entire article, it’s here
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