December 14, 2005

Armand Hearts Viggo Mortensen

He's not just a rather talented pretty face. He's got sane standards about political behavior too:

“I’m not anti-Bush; I’m anti-Bush behavior,” Mortensen told Progressive magazine. “In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.”
Posted by armand at December 14, 2005 01:15 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


Comments

For Viggo, er, Aragorn fun, check out Reality is for People with No Imagination.

The premise is that Aragorn and Legolas have, ah, women in their lives, who have a correspondence.

Posted by: binky at December 14, 2005 01:27 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
Let me get this straight. You object to the people magazine approach that putting the Presidents' faces on quarters brings to politics, but you think it's important to note the political views a someone whose face often appears on People magazine. Take a stand. People magazine: Love it or hate it?

Posted by: Morris at December 14, 2005 07:54 PM | PERMALINK

Uh, I'm pro-Viggo and anti-People. As my posts would seem to make clear, and even you have picked up on. So what's the problem here? You have noticed that Viggo Mortensen is not a cheap, glossy magazine - right?

And honestly I'm having trouble trying to think of what you could possible be getting at, presuming you realize Viggo isn't a magazine (and this quotation doesn't come from the particular magazine you mention). Is it that you think I shouldn't be able to compliment Viggo for making a sane statement about political life in America just b/c he's an actor? That would be awfully arbitrary and closed minded.

Posted by: Armand at December 15, 2005 04:08 PM | PERMALINK

The question at the heart of this is why does it matter what Viggo Mortensen believes something unless you thinks it adds something to this debate. And obviously it doesn't, he's saying the same thing actors have been saying about conservatives since the McCarthy hearings. And even what he does says is substantively wrong because if Bush truly was a religious fundamentalist, he would have never nominated Harriet Myers to be on the Supreme Court and in doing so gotten into the ill favor of the religious fundamentalists in our country.

If your argument is that within the context of the Presidency we can't look at history as simpletons who give credit to a President just because something happens in their term, then what I'm hearing is that we should look at the complexities of the times and the issues rather than just say because James Garfield was in office we give him credit for everything that happened during his term. What I'm getting out of your message is that we need to look at the zeitgeist, the surrounding political and cultural forces, rather than look at the individual who is President. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that just because George W. Bush is President doesn't mean we give him credit for low unemployment rates because low unemployment rates could have come from dozens of sources. If I get you, you're saying that most things (in this case unemployment rates) have systemic explanations that are far more widespread than the actions of one man.

The apparent contradiction comes when you offer (back to Viggo) one man's opinion as being substantive when its devoid or anything substantive except who it comes from. Yes, you could talk to your neighbor Al and post on your blog about how you heart your neighbor Al because he agrees with you about politics, even though he doesn't offer anything new to the discussion. But if you tend to explain things systemically, then it doesn't really matter what your neighbor Al thinks because unless it brings something new to the table that changes the dynamics of our debates. The fact that one man has such an opinion is not a sufficient explanation, just as the fact that one man is President does not sufficiently explain whatever is accomplished by our country during the time that person was President.

Posted by: Morris at December 15, 2005 10:49 PM | PERMALINK

OK, let me walk you through this Morris.

Look at the title of the post. That tends to give you a sense of what the post is going to be about. In this case, it conveys that I like Viggo.

Then look at the text of the post. It conveys WHY I like Viggo. It's because he IS saying something substantive. It's that all these complaints about people just hating Bush are off the mark - we don't hate the sinner, we hate the sin. And it would be useful to de-personalize the debates that supposedly go on in DC. Stop talking names, labels or personalities, and actually examine behavior and policy choices because fundamentally that's what people should be up in arms about.

This is something I agree with, so I decided I'd spend 20 seconds of the day noting that someone made this observation. True, the observation came from someone with a well-known name. But to me, being famous doesn't mean you might not still have something reasonably important or interesting to say.

If you would have preferred I'd titled my post Armand Hearts' Viggo Mortensen's Beliefs - fine. But I also like him as an actor, so it seemed fine not to include "Beliefs" in the title - though that was my focus.

And save the anti-actor tirades for Fox News or go up to Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson (prominent Republicans) and taunt them to their face.

Posted by: Armand at December 16, 2005 12:31 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
What's with you and Binky and the paranoia of late? I didn't say anything against him because he was an actor, Reagan was an actor. James Woods is an actor. Being an actor does not in itself disqualify someone from holding rational beliefs. But back to Viggo, what he did to which you didn't respond was characterize Bush behavior as religious fundamentalist behavior. And the only people who see Bush as fundamentalist are those who take an either/or absolutist view of religion and spirituality. If Bush mentions God, that means he wants to enslave everyone in a theocracy according to his own religious beliefs. Because if he didn't want to proselytize that kind of religious fundamentalism, then there's no way he would even mention God and leave those who don't believe in God feeling left out, or feeling guilty about being reminded how not everyone is as smart as they are, like those unfortunate close minded republicans who've been brainwashed by the opiate of the masses.
But this is absolutism because last I heard Bush has never advocated any Muslim, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist (put together that's a few billion unfortunately closed minds) convert to the practice of his religion, or told them that Christianity is right and their religion is wrong, which is exactly what makes someone a fundamentalist. He may believe this, but he hasn't done more than talk about this as his belief. He hasn't even mentioned all the research that shows how people with some spirituality and religion tend to adapt better to life's crises than people who believe they have all the control in their life (blissfully ignorant, unfortunate, closed minded republicans).
Your boy Viggo is the closed minded absolutist in this debate.

Posted by: Morris at December 16, 2005 01:53 PM | PERMALINK

You on Viggo - "he's saying the same thing actors have been saying about conservatives since the McCarthy hearings." To me, that reads like you are slamming actors engaging in political expression.

As to Bush not pushing a religious fundamentalist agenda - the mind reels. I'm stunned you are actually arguing he isn't. The abortion consititutional amendment he want, the anti-gay constitutional amendment he wants, how he's running the FDA and the education department - the president's a big old backer of the would-be far-right Christian oppressors.

Posted by: Armand at December 16, 2005 02:25 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
It's called research, not religion. That's how he's running the education department, by requiring we don't spend hundreds of millions on programs that have no research base, as we've done for decades. The research on abortion shows that there is no fine line, that the trimester argument is without a basis in research. Yes, I know, he doesn't believe in gay marriage, but that's what the liberals argue is how he got elected, because a majority of this country fervently believes enough to go out and vote for him that gay marriage is not okay in our country, the "values voters." Are you trying to say that a majority of our country is made up of religious fundamentalists? Are you trying to say that 80% of my state that voted for the ammendment banning gay marriage here, 80% of Louisiana is made up of religious fundamentalists? Again, I agree with you on the issue, but to use it as evidence of religious fundamentalism ignores the pervasiveness of this belief. Again, why nominate Myers if he's a far right oppressor, there were plenty of possible justices to the right of her.

Posted by: Morris at December 16, 2005 02:48 PM | PERMALINK

Why nominate Miers? B/c he's 1) fiercely loyal 2) loves sychophants and 3) isn't especially interested in competence or qualifications.

As to his religiousity - uh, look at research and FDA behavior - the idea that everything going on there fits with actual research is absurd. Or look at the Education Secretary getting in a huff about what's on cartoons in the middle of the day. The issue isn't so much what the president thinks (though he is out of the mainstrean on abortion rights), but what he prioritizes. And he's often spending time sopping up things to please this flank of his party - and pulling the Miers nomination is a perfect example.

Mainstream America would like him to fix the budget deficit, strengthen the economy, and ensure that Americans can get health insurance. But he spends loads of time and effort on stuff like the war on gays.

Posted by: Armand at December 16, 2005 04:11 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
I hate to break it to you, but almost half of California--CALIFORNIA-voted in support of their governor's proposition which stated abortion takes a human life. Now if the state that has two of the most liberal senators in the nation can't muster more than a slim majority in favor of the idea that abortion isn't the taking of a human life, then what does that say about where the average American voter is on the issue?

You know, being fiercely loyal is actual something many Americans admire. And after eight years of Clinton Harvard at the White House leaving us so vulnerable to a terrorist attack because of misplaced priorities, maybe he's figured out it's not about where your staff went to school or how many letters are after their names, those "qualifications" didn't help. His priority has been the war on terror for the last five years, and in that time we've averted that many attacks on our soil, by taking risks like the kind Lincoln took during the Civil War, by not holding to the line and losing sight of the bigger picture.

And mainstream America would like to fix the budget deficit, but they don't want higher taxes to do it. They would like to give health care to everyone but they don't want to bankrupt our country to do it, or to lose the best health care in the world to do it.

Posted by: Morris at December 16, 2005 04:36 PM | PERMALINK

You are simply factually wrong.

"And mainstream America would like to fix the budget deficit, but they don't want higher taxes to do it." - Actually if you look at the latest polling, that is exactly what the country wants. Higher taxes beats spending cuts by about 20%.

And I don't know what vote you are talking about, but whether or not abortion is viewed by some percentage of voters in one state as taking a human life, the polls are quite clear that most Americans believe in the right of women to choose to have an abortion.

And loyalty in and of itself isn't a terrible thing, but keeping on dangerously incompetent people in positions of power - and even promoting them - is probably not something Americans really want. I haven't seen any polling on that specific questions - but given the terrible job ratings of the Vice President and company ...

Beyond that - 1) Comparing Bush to Lincoln is an insult to Lincoln, unless you are referring to the fact that both have acted in an unconstitutional manner - which shouldn't be something that reflects well on either one of them. 2) Clinton Harvard? Even your pathetic reliance on labels to make what you seemingly consider arguments is factually inaccurate (Clinton went to Georgetown and Yale Law). 3) And Clinton vs. Bush on the war on terror? Puh-leeze. Not even close. There's voluminous evidence that Clinton did far more to protect America from terrorism than Bush did pre-9/11. And let's remeber that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, not Clinton's.

But more than that - wtf does Clinton have to do with anything? I was under the impresssion that I was talking about Viggo.

Posted by: Armand at December 16, 2005 06:00 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
Go to pollingreport.com and type in abortion. From polls this year, about sixty percent of Americans favor greater restrictions on abortion (or no abortions at all), only 26% say it should be always legal, almost 70% favor a parental consent law, 64% say a woman should have to notify her husband if she's married and seeking an abortion, and I could go on. Yes, people still poll in favor of Roe v Wade and being pro-choice because they want to see abortions available if the mother's life is in danger or in cases of rape or incest, but the vast majority of this country favors more, not less, restrictions on abortion.

At the same site, if you go to national priorities and click on the budget/taxes link, they have a pew poll from two months ago that says 70% of people object to raising taxes as a way to lower the budget deficit, up about 5 points from when they asked the question last March. It's true that people have a view of Bush's tax cuts that appears to be remarkably consistent with their view of Bush's Iraq war and Bush's approval rating, but people today are still just as opposed to paying higher taxes to lower the deficit as they have been the last several decades.

"Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Bush and Lincoln both understood this.

Right, I remember what Clinton did to protect us on the war on terror. He signed into law budget cuts for our intelligence agencies and essentially abandoned human intelligence in favor of electronic intelligence. Of course, just because he was President, can we really blame him for his signing those budgets?

Actually, you stopped talking about Viggo when you took a shot at Bush for not relying on the same measure of qualifications which you think should be applied. I know it would be easier if I kept talking about Viggo and let you keep bashing Bush and then accuse me of going off topic if I defend him. Oh, right, that's exactly what you did.

Posted by: Morris at December 16, 2005 07:35 PM | PERMALINK

You went off topic ages ago - as usual, to continue to praise the oppressor in chief, who according to your cheap labels we should all call Bush Harvard (since Bush did go to Harvard, albeit just for an MBA).

Look you can continue to bash Clinton all that you like - but it's damn silly and OFF TOPIC. We were talking about Bush. And let's see, who downgraded the terrorism brief at the NSC Clinton or Bush? Bush. Who saw 3 or his first 4 anti-terrorism chiefs at the NSC (HIS OWN APPOINTEES PLEDGED TO PROTECT THE COUNTRY FROM SOME OF ITS MOST DANGEROUS THREATS) resign in disgust over th president's inattention to these topics (including AFTER 9/11), Clinton or Bush? Again that would be Bush. You can say Clinton didn't do enough, fine. But if you look at were we were in 2000, and where we were in September 2001 the facts are crystal clear - Bush took terrorism far less seriously than Clinton did, only bothering to notice AFTER the worst attack on this country in its history, and even AFTER that he saw some of his own most prominent appointees resign in disgust b/c he STILL wasn't taking the issue seriously.

And I'm all for Emerson - but you do realize you are essentially laughing off unconstitutional behavior, right? Me - I thought that engaging in that was illegal. But me - I seem to have much more respect for the law than the president does.

The numbers I was giving on taxes versus spending cuts were from a poll out just this week in one of the national dailies. But frankly I'm not in the mood to spout poll numbers at the moment. I mean I'm not for the tyranny of the majority like you are (well, unless you are in the mood to back the tyranny of the president - I'm never entirely clear when you think the mob should rule and when the dangerously deluded self-appointed king who's violating the constitution should).

Posted by: Armand at December 17, 2005 01:11 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
Don't act like you don't know why I called it Clinton Harvard. He made this big fuss about bringing in a bunch of young intellectuals to replace what the libs were calling old party hacks of the earlier Bush administration. Of course, their lack of experience with the value of human intelligence and their reliance instead on new wave electronic intelligence may have been part of why we didn't find out about 9/11 until 9/11. And you can talk all you want to about how seriously Clinton took terrorism but he wasn't successful at stopping the New York bombing that was the first use of chemical weapons by terrorists on our soil, though of course the terrorists who engineered it didn't realize the chemical weapons would vaporize when their bomb exploded. Clinton had Osama handed to him on a platter by Sudan but he didn't take him because he trusted his CIA and state department people, like the one you lament resigning, and these people with all their intellectual qualifications told him he couldn't trust anything that came out of Sudan. He did exactly what you suggest Bush should have done but and our country got burned for it. Bush sent an FBI-CIA team to Sudan within a few months of being elected and requested their information on Osama a few weeks before 9/11. Sudan also had intelligence on the embassy bombers in Africa which our country missed out on because the State department and CIA had their own agenda about what America should do.

Right, I described how you misread what the polls said in the post above. These polls on this last batch of tax cuts are remarkably consistent with approval rates for the war and for Bush's job performance (read between the lines, the variable being measured by those questions wasn't how Americans feel about raising taxes, it was how Americans feel about Bush's tax cuts, and more precisely how Americans feel about Bush). When Bush's approval rate goes back up, so will Americans' opinion of his tax cuts.

Posted by: Morris at December 18, 2005 12:23 AM | PERMALINK

Look - I give up. I'm not going to argue with you if you don't have any interest in dealing with the actual facts, or staying on topic.

At this point I don't much care about what Clinton did as president. Raping babies in the basement or whatever it is that the far-right is spouting as his latest crimes - none of that has ANYTHING to do with fighting the fight we need to be fighting now. I'd rather fix current mistakes that'll affect our future position and safety. Whining about Clinton is like whining about Warren Harding or Grover Cleveland.

That said, there are a lot of people who'd disagree with your interpretation of what went on during the 1990's, and you, as usual, fail to show the slightest interest in 1) very clear facts that go against your case and 2) things that don't fit the FoxNews talking points.

And I find it astonishing that your answer seems to imply that we should ignore experts when making policy - though that does fit with your "do what makes you feel good and helps your self-esteem" general approach to policy.

Hey, if you want to spend the rest of your life bashing Clinton - feel free. To me, the embarrassing, dangerous and illegal actions of the guy who's CURRENTLY in charge and will be for THREE more years is what we should be worried about. Already the number of Americans who've been killed by terrorists on his watch vastly surpasses those who died on Clinton's watch. As I noted in my last comment, his own people - HIS OWN PEOPLE - have resigned in disgust over his mismanagement and ineptitude in the fight against terrorism. Hell one (appointed after 9/11) even became a prominent player on the Kerry campaign he was so disturbed by the president's actions, and another regularly bashes Bush in books and on TV programs.

But you seem to think all will be well with, I don't know, MassComm majors from the local community colleges running foreign and defense policies. Whatever. I'm tired of this fight - it's just your regular attack against people with knowledge and people who don't want to rely on their gut, whims and moods to set national policy. Me, I'd like informed people in charge. And the Foreign Policy Decision Making literature is very clear - when you've got an interested president, experts involved in the process of decision making, the top group working as a cohesive team, and set structures of decision making that demand methodical behavior and careful planning - you get better policy outcomes. It's not a hard scientific law in that those things lead to the best outcome 100% of the time. But there is a significant relationships - you'll get better outcomes.

As to your last paragraph, I didn't misread anything. I simply stated the poll results. If you don't like 'em, fine. But I gave you the facts printed on the page. Spin those at your leisure.

Posted by: Armand at December 18, 2005 10:58 AM | PERMALINK

Bro,
I do trust my gut, you trust your intellect, so we understand each other that these are simply two approaches to making decisions, neither of which are 100% effective. But I do trust my gut sense, not my mood, not necessarily whatever helps my self esteem, and not necessarily whatever makes me feel good, those are very distinct things. And if you presume according to your decision making models that the comparison groups all used their gut sense, that's a whopping assumption. They may have used their mood, whatever helped their self esteem, or whatever made them feel good. Our gut sense is a very old (and you'd have to admit somewhat reliable, otherwise we wouldn't have survived this long) way of assessing a situation, the way when you meet someone the hair on the back of your neck stands up, then you get taken in by their charm and forget all that, then you pay the price for forgetting it. It is not just a blind desire, an emotion, or even a sense of intuition. It's a feeling that you're supposed to do (or not do) a certain thing at a certain moment, and you only notice it's there when the certain thing you feel you should do is opposed to what you think you should do, what you've been taught to do, and what you feel you're expected to do. It takes guts to trust a gut sense, because it's tougher to explain your desicion, because you have to accept that there's something more important than understanding, than being understood, than understanding yourself. So in a way it's a very Zen and Taoist way of approaching a problem, something more universal than the way you characterize our President's vision as being from a fundamentalist Christian perspective. You don't see this in the way he makes his decisions because if you did that's how you'd be making decisions too. You ignore the fact that several somebodies along the way told him he was breaking the law with these wiretaps, that he could go to jail for this, and he did it anyway because he wants to protect our country that much, because he knew that he was called for this, that something awful would happen to our country and he should be President so he could protect us from it happening again. As you say, he's fiercely loyal.

Posted by: Morris at December 18, 2005 01:23 PM | PERMALINK

I don't care who marries whom; I believe we should have the best education in the world for our country's children, which we could afford as a nation if our educational funding wasn't set into law by rich people who send their kids to private schools and basically wish poor people would just eat chit and die; I want poor women and children and the elderly to have decent health care and do not believe that our country can't afford it when we can spend a billion dollars a day to try to change the face of a barbaric country like Iraq so rich people can maintain control of oil fields so they can get richer; and I am a woman and I will fight to the death if need be so that CONTROLLING RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES can keep their damn hands OFF MY BODY!

People who want to push their hypocritical double-standard on women should be prepared to put their money where their mouth is: NATIONAL HEALTHCARE, INCLUDING DENTAL (yeah, baby, you want to argue poor children should suffer and die when they're sick or should have rotten teeth and just live with the pain of that, then face that you're a heartless monster and have the balls to admit it); make it illegal to cut men's balls so they can't impregnate women, and pass laws for men who father children and don't support them in EVERY way so they will be hunted down like dogs and chained to their home, forced to care for their own children while the MOTHER goes to work. Also make it law that these men should be FORCED to take DNA tests for paternity if they deny parenting the baby, with the full force of the law going after them if they run.

Too extreme? Well, that's what you're suggesting for women, you jerk. Force them to have children they don't want or can't afford. If men had to take the same responsibility a woman does when she bears a child, you wouldn't think for ONE MINUTE of forcing him to do that, would you?

And if SHE gets pregnant, she didn't do it alone, did she? So either accept that a woman has the RIGHT to control her own choices of terminating or completing a pregancy, or FORCE MEN to share EQUAL responsibility, DOWN TO CHANGING DIAPERS, COOKING MEALS, AND WASHING THE LAUNDRY.

Small-minded idiot! How many children have you bourne and raised, anyway? Next time someone pisses you off by saying YOU SHOULDN'T BE GAY, remember me, you self-righteous snot. While you're wheeling down some beachfront road in your BMW sportscar, imagine it's full of car seats and crying children who have to pee and are hungry and sleepy. Then when you're about to put the moves on your hot date, think about a little kid crying out and puking all over the house for the next 12 hours if YOU were the caregiver. And when you're out shopping for that expensive watch you love, or those designer shoes and suit you've decided on...go check out how much decent child care or your kids' BRACES are going to hit you for this year and let go of any thought of what YOU WANT ever again.

And single parents who have those problems are the lucky ones. The dirty little secret in America is that children go hungry in this country every day. I was a teacher, I know what I'm talking about.

Too rich or careless or without any fear of such an event in your gay world to imagine this? Well, then you have a hell of a lot of nerve trying to force your morals on the average single woman who might be working one or two jobs for $25,000 a year before taxes, if she's lucky, and trying to raise a child or two on her own, with little-to-no help? Who is the government to butt into something as personal as a woman's medical choices of reproduction? It's ghastly that religious zealots think because a grown woman actually got lucky and had five minutes for sex with a man who actually was interested in a mother like her, that she should have NO CHOICE but to HAVE THE BABY if her birth control plan failed because she hasn't needed it in two years. Who is godly enough to pass judgment and law on a woman who never got the sex education she needed in school, because of the "abstinence" program so popular among the right wing--who will NEVER FAIL to send their "wayward daughters" WHEREVER they need to go to get an abortion should the need arise--and they can afford it. Whose business is it even if a woman was careless and ended up pregnant? Or does this fall under the same judicial category as "gay acts of sodomy are illegal under the law"? Or is oppression good for women but not for gay men?

And that's not even touching on a two parent-working class family who just isn't living the wealthy American fantasy of MEMEMEME 24/7. It's no easier for blue collar workers who can barely find a job in this country any more for minimum wage, much less decent, affordable health insurance, yet nonetheless have no less desire to have sex than you do...but between heterosexuals, it just sometimes ends in PREGNANCY you didn't plan for. Condoms do not work 100% of the time--look it up. Not every woman can take birth control pills, either. Duh.

But how would a gay man know about living with these issues all your sexually active life? You couldn't. Single white males have the highest standard of living in this country, including DIVORCED FATHERS--but not their ex-wives and children. So if it's not a problem for you in your man-on-man-no-reproductive-issues-world, then keep your irrelevant ass out of it!

Sorry if I'm being a bit abrasive, but just imagine that you'd read a post in essence advocating that homosexuals should be LEGALLY forced NOT to have sex with their partners or else they get a LIFE SENTENCE. That's how you made ME feel. Because children are FOR LIFE.

You see, some of us REMEMBER what it was like before women had a CHOICE. Just like we remember what it was like when GAYS were beaten with social approval. Blacks were treated like animals. It was a terrible time. So why in the last 6 years in this country people seem to think we should turn the clock back is beyond me. But I'm ashamed of every single American who pretends to support personal freedom in a democracy while voting to END IT for everyone who doesn't do what they're TOLD under the DOUBLE-STANDARDS of the ELITE RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVE RULING CLASS.

MY BODY, MY CHOICE!

Oh...and I love Viggo! He's got balls and stands up for what's right and good. Not because it's politically correct, but because IT'S RIGHT. George W. Bush is a stupid asshole with a fourth grade education who is a puppet for power-hungry, money-grubbing, uncontrolled capitalists across the planet. They do not care if babies are tossed up and shot for target practice, if it can get them elected! Enron was no fluke, it's the standard now. Read the book and watch AT&T, owned by SBC, buy an SBC owned company, SBT. Same old shell game! The evil empire is winning!

Dammit! I'm going to live in a cave.

Posted by: at April 5, 2006 12:51 AM | PERMALINK

Um, I don't know what you're up to with the gay stuff. I don't think it's appropriate, and I don't it's accurate here anyway.

Posted by: binky at April 5, 2006 07:44 PM | PERMALINK

Binky,
Maybe there is such a thing as transference after all.

Posted by: Morris at April 5, 2006 11:07 PM | PERMALINK

It is in fact a very interesting post, now that I think about it. I mean it's pro choice, but most of it's spent bashing religious people, people without children, rich people, Bush, "a barbaric country like Iraq." This is significant because most supporters of women's rights are also supporters of human rights, yet this commentor finds a way to see a tragedy in the difficulties faced by gays, blacks, and women, but appears to think that Iraqis aren't Americans so they don't deserve anything, which makes me wonder where she believes the rights of blacks, gays, and women to fair treatment come from that doesn't also provide for the rights of Iraqis. And I know I relate other stuff to threads when you all think it doesn't fit, but she doesn't even mention Viggo until the 13th paragraph. This might fit in a thread on abortion, of which we've had several if she wanted to look for one, but she (I'm presuming it's a she) posts this into a three month old Viggo thread. She appears to be attacking me, yet if she were familiar with my blogging she would realize I'm not a religious fundamentalist, gay, BMW driver in the elite ruling class; I'm a taoist with a big problem when it comes to making subtle points. If she were familiar, she'd realize I have yet to make up my mind on the abortion issue as a matter of law because abortion has an individual reality for each person, but I do recognize that for pro choicers to assert biological separations where none exist is absurd, as is the idea that the vast majority of our country is in a good place with abortion on demand. My heart goes out to her former students, and not just because they were hungry. It is such a strange point for her to bring up, what with the fact that abortions have been available for the last three decades. Where is the outcry against a government that doesn't provide free breakfasts as well as free lunches for those children who can't afford them, at a time when abortion is legal? I don't think anyone who's gone hungry for even a day would want to deny that. But to mix it in with the abortion debate as though it is a lack of available abortions that necessarily leads to hungry children is muddling both issues.

Posted by: Morris at April 6, 2006 12:12 AM | PERMALINK

Morris -

Let's please let this thread die. Having said that 2 things you wrote must be responded to (though we're not going to agree, so let's not continue this):

"It is such a strange point for her to bring up, what with the fact that abortions have been available for the last three decades." Roe v. Wade did not make abortions available (far from it), it just made them legal. Lots of women don't have access to that sort of health care, for a host of reasons tied to their lives, and of course it's not unusual for there to be only 1 abortion provider in an entire state.

Relatedly, "I don't think anyone who's gone hungry for even a day would want to deny that. But to mix it in with the abortion debate as though it is a lack of available abortions that necessarily leads to hungry children is muddling both issues." The two are very much connected and it's not muddling anything. Women who can't afford the procedure or don't have access to those service are often stuck with kids they can't afford. And "can't afford" can mean can't afford to feed.

No can we PLEASE go back to commenting on threads from 2006, or at least ones tied to current events/new information. :)

Posted by: Armand at April 6, 2006 09:15 AM | PERMALINK
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