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Dubya's Federal Communications Commission has been punishing the television networks for the airing of 'fleeting expletives', such as those used by Bono, Cher, and Nicole Richie at award shows. A federal appeals panel tells the FCC to fuck off:

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

It only gets funnier when the Bush Administration actually challenges another about who has a better grip on reality:

Mr. Martin, the chairman of the commission, attacked the panel’s reasoning.

“I completely disagree with the court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families,” he said. “The court says the commission is ‘divorced from reality.’ It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality.”

It is also a relief to think that time is running out on our Christianist friends in power. Bye, and go ahead and just pray for us!


(Source: Stephen Labaton for The New York Times)

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HOUSTON, April 25 — A revolt by lawmakers has blocked Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to make Texas the first state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

... Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist close to the Republican leadership, said the mixture of “under-age girls, cancer and sex” had proven too volatile.

-- Ralph Blumenthal for The New York Times

I was too quick in praising Texas for rising above itself. Score another for the religious whackos.

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Maybe I'm just too jaded and out of step with something truly good that might be in the process of happening, that is, a move to a more santized culture. We've been headed this way for some time - long gone are the heady days of the seventies, when entertainment was wild and fun, and sexploitation, for instance, ran free on movie screens. Now, there is this expression of a will to go back to the days of false decency, in which representations in entertainment are limited to our best behavior, the days of "Father Knows Best" or "Leave It To Beaver" or "The Andy Griffiths Show." Bleh.

Mind you, I'm not saying that we should not have realms of higher discourse. It's just that it is inhibiting and stultifying and hypocritical to impose full-scale political correctness on all outlets. For instance, I suppose they don't even want people to be free on satellite radio, so that not even Howard Stern can have his lesbian contests to see how much they can turn men on.

After all, it's not like the real world will be free of racism or that women will not be objectified as sex objects. It just won't be a matter of freely available entertainment. After all, the golden days - those "Father Knows Best" days - were the most racist and sexist, just not on TV or in the movies or on radio. And I think they should concentrate on the real instances of racism and sexism, not on how we voluntarily entertain ourselves, which may also be seen as a catharsis for the pressures of living in such a hierarchical and domineering society.

Anyway, Here is Bob Herbert's column that spurred this rant. It's just too self-righteous for my taste. It's like letting the religious right win the culture war.

( Herbert column )

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I saw this picture and this Ann Coulter column, and I just have to dip into this story one more time. Ann, of course, has had her own troubles with that hard-working mouth of hers.

( Coulter )

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"It's a completely different scenario. [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about ho's that's in the 'hood that ain't doing shit, that's trying to get a nigga for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthafuckas say we in the same league as him."

-- Snoop Dogg

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Sometimes I just think that we are fucked. I posted earlier today about how our progressives/liberals are given to accepting Islamist values. Now, here is a post by Andrew Sullivan that shows how conservatives/Christians are sympathetic to Islamism. Sullivan quotes an evangelical who has lived in Pakistan for a year:

First, the vast majority of people I met were gracious to a fault, hospitable, and quick to condemn violence in the name of religion. They were, at the same time, largely uninterested in trying to delineate the boundaries of religion in public life. "Islam," I was often told, "is about all of life." Coming from an American culture in which religion is often considered unwelcome in the public square, this was a real change. For better and for worse, religion in Pakistan is more than the language of private devotion; it is still the most potent language of public life as well.

Second, in spite of feeling far from home, time and time again I found that I felt surprisingly comfortable in Pakistan, precisely because it was a deeply religious society. Despite the points of shared history and shared values, at the end of the day, I believe something quite different than the Muslims I met and lived with and prayed among. But I still came away admiring their devotion and appreciating a society in which religious conversation and values are honored.

Maybe people are not meant to live lives based on reason and freedom.


(Sources: Andrew Sullivan)

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Federal and state lawmakers have launched a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, reviving a feminist goal that faltered a quarter-century ago when the measure did not gain the approval of three-quarters of the state legislatures.

... The renewed push to pass the ERA, which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly in 1972 and was ratified by 35 states before skidding to a halt, highlights liberals' renewed sense of power since November's midterm elections. From Capitol Hill to Arkansas, legislators said they are seizing a political opportunity to enshrine women's rights in the Constitution.

... The amendment consists of 52 words and has one key line: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." That sentence would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same strict scrutiny given by courts to allegations of racial discrimination.

-- Juliet Eilperin for The Washington Post

It's the seventies, again! This was a little morning jolt. I thought this was deader than disco and platform shoes. It just goes to show that you never can tell.

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If there is a clash of civilizations, Caroline Glick argues that the West is at a disadvantage in that a leftist elements seem to favor the Islamist side:

Last month, two students at Cambridge University's Clare College became victims of this state of affairs. The students dedicated an edition of their satire magazine to the one-year anniversary of the global Muslim riots which followed the publication of caricatures of Muhammad in the Danish Jyllands Posten newspaper. As the students recalled, those riots led to the deaths of more than a hundred people.

Although the British media refused to republish the caricatures, British Muslims held terrifying protests throughout the country where they called for the destruction of Britain, the US, Denmark and Israel and for the murder of all who refuse to accept the global domination of Islam.

In their magazine, the students published some of the caricatures and mocked the Muslims for their hypocrisy in accusing British society of racial prejudice while calling for its violent destruction.

The Muslim reaction was apparently swift. Fearing for their lives, the students were forced into hiding.

But the Muslims were not alone in their anger. Clare College set up a special disciplinary court to consider action against the students. And the Cambridgeshire police opened a criminal investigation against them in late February.

The persecution of these students provides a case study of the two-pronged offensive being carried out today against Western culture. First there are the jihadists, who call for our destruction. Then there are the leftist intellectuals and public figures who defend radical Islamists and work to silence those who criticize them by criminalizing speech and condemning free thinkers as racists.

... The leftist-Islamist front is eroding the free world's sense of justice. Rather than assert our liberal, democratic values and defend our freedoms, fearing leftist condemnation, politicians and opinion shapers have permitted themselves to become shackled to ideologies that negate everything for which the free world stands.

Maybe she's putting it a bit strongly, but I don't know. Although it would seem that we are not in any jeopardy of being subjected to Islamist rule, it strikes me as a misguided and wrongful application of the ideal of tolerance to criminalize those students for their satirical and critical magazine article, and that it probably encourages the Islamists.


(Source: Caroline Glick at RealClearPolitics)

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