Katha Pollitt on Hitchens

Dec 19th, 2011 12:12 pm | By

I’ve been hoping Katha would write something, because I knew she would have informed reservations. I remember her exchange with Hitchens when he left The Nation. I’ve been a fan of both of them for a long time, so their differences interest me.

Katha suggests that “he was possibly the least troubled with self-doubt of all the writers on earth” and that he didn’t wonder enough how he got from one position to another, radically different one. I think that’s a fair point, and yet…well I’m ambivalent, as I am about so many things, which is why, unlike Hitchens, I spend so much time staring blankly into space instead of being productive.

So many people have praised Christopher so effusively, I want to complicate the picture even at the risk of seeming churlish. His drinking was not something to admire, and it was not a charming foible. Maybe sometimes it made him warm and expansive, but I never saw that side of it. What I saw was that drinking made him angry and combative and bullying, often toward people who were way out of his league—elderly guests on the Nation cruise, interns (especially female interns).

That, on the other hand, gives me genuine pause. I don’t admire that quality, and I do know he had it. The CBC’s The National showed him doing it in its obit on Friday. He was talking to a reporter in Kensington Gardens, saying something disobliging about a memorial to Diana Spencer, and an off-camera male voice interrupted to protest, saying indignantly “you shouldn’t be in this garden.” Hitchens responded fast and ferociously, all but shouting, “Who the hell are you?” and then adding, “I’m sure you’re as stupid as you look.” That’s no good. Yes what the guy said was both silly and bossy (and servile underneath), but the response was overkill.

So far, most of the eulogies of Christopher have come from men, and there’s a reason for that. He moved in a masculine world, and for someone who prided himself on his wide-ranging interests, he had virtually no interest in women’s writing or women’s lives or perspectives. I never got the impression from anything he wrote about women that he had bothered to do the most basic kinds of reading and thinking, let alone interviewing or reporting—the sort of workup he would do before writing about, say, G.K. Chesterton, or Scientology or Kurdistan…

It wasn’t just the position itself, it was his lordly condescending assumption that he could sort this whole thing out for the ladies in 1,000 words that probably took him twenty minutes to write.

Yes. That certainly was not one of my favorite things about him. I said so in December 2006 in two posts on the Vanity Fair “women aren’t funny” article, Depends who’s asking and On closer reading.

But, Katha sums up,

as a vivid presence Christopher will be long remembered. A lot of writers, especially political writers, are rather boring as people, and some of the best writers are the most boring of all—they’re saving themselves for the desk. Christopher was the opposite—an adventurer, a talker, a bon vivant, a tireless burner of both ends of the candle. He made a lot of enemies, but probably more friends. He made life more interesting for thousands and thousands of people and posed big questions for them—about justice, politics, religion, human folly. Of how many journalists can that be said?

Firm but fair, I think.

 

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Pity the poor bishops

Dec 18th, 2011 4:48 pm | By

The Catholic bishops haz a sad again. This time it’s the Catholic bishops in the Netherlands. Not the ones in Belgium, nor in Bavaria, nor in Ireland, nor in Alaska, nor in Boston, nor in New York. No. These are the ones in the Netherlands. They haz a sad because

Tens of thousands of children have suffered sexual abuse in Dutch Catholic institutions since 1945, a report says.

Oh dear oh dear, say the Catholic bishops in the Netherlands. That is sad.

The report by an independent commission said Catholic officials had failed to tackle the widespread abuse at schools, seminaries and orphanages.

“This episode fills us with shame and sorrow,” said a bishops’ statement.

Does it? Why? Because it’s not a secret any more?

It’s hard to believe it fills them with shame and sorrow because of the nature of the abuse and sympathy for the children who were abused. It’s hard to believe they haz a sad about anyone but themselves. The reason for that difficulty is the date cited: since 1945. They didn’t haz a sad from 1945 until the present. The fact that they have one now, after the report has been published, seems to indicate that they could have continued with equanimity if only the whole matter had gone on being an ecclesiastical secret.

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Daughters!

Dec 18th, 2011 3:02 pm | By

This is from 2009, but I hadn’t seen it before.

A new video by Samar Minallah that highlights the importance of education for girls. It is the first pushtu/dari lullaby dedicated to daughters! The video has been shot and conceptualized by Samar. It has been sung by renowned singer Naghma and the poetry is by Watan Dost. It has been filmed in Kabul, Bagram, Khyber and Swat by Samar. It has been produced by WCLRF and Heinrich Boll Foundation Afghanistan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNKsyRoXQlE

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Bishop David Oyedepo

Dec 18th, 2011 12:33 pm | By

Dear sweet kind loving god, who deputizes men to hit women in the face.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uidhk7ioYO0

H/t ‘Yemi Ademowo-Johnson.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



One in the eye for ferrety bureaucrats

Dec 18th, 2011 10:40 am | By

Nick Cohen on Hitchens.

In conversation he was the most intellectually generous man I have ever met. More writers than readers like to imagine are fretful and suspicious. They bite their tongues and hide their thoughts in case rival authors “steal their ideas”. Hitchens was too much of an enthusiast for life and debate to waste time being pinched and cautious; too engaged in the battle of ideas to worry about others taking his.

When you had an argument you needed to work through or a book you had to deliver, he would sit you down, fill your glass to the brim and pour out ideas, references, people you needed to talk to and writers you had to read. You would try, and fail, to keep up and hope that you could remember a quarter of what he had said by the time the inevitable hangover had worn off the morning after.

That’s a beautiful snapshot, and entirely believable, because it goes with everything we already know on the subject – Hitchens was an incomparable extemporaneous talker. I’m on record saying this well before anyone knew he was checking out; I told the New Statesman about it in 2009.

His appeal is that he’s a brilliant writer with a huge range of knowledge. I admire that kind of thing. He’s also a brilliant talker, and I admire that too. When he was at the Hay festival a few years ago, even hardened BBC presenters were admitting he was hard to beat for impromptu wit and erudition.

I thought I had said that thing about the BBC presenters somewhere at B&W, too, but I can’t find it, so maybe I didn’t (or maybe it was in a comment and doesn’t turn up in a search). I remember being impressed by it though. It was someone who is no fool himself (it was a male), maybe Andrew Marr, and he expressed the same kind of awe that I felt – “how does he do that?”

Here’s part of what I did find that I said about that Hay appearance – it was in 2005.

Hitchens certainly was busy while he was in the UK. Multiple talks at the Hay Festival, Start the Week, and finally Night Waves. Did I miss any? Did he also fill in for Melvyn Bragg on ‘In Our Time’ and do the weather report on ‘Today’? Did he open Parliament and drive the number 85 bus? Did he announce the trains at Victoria and carry a sandwich-board up and down Oxford Street and sell tickets for the Eye? Was he, like, everywhere, or only almost everywhere?

So, in short, Nick’s picture is no exaggeration, and we know this. It’s a lovely point about the generosity.

Nick goes on to repay a debt. He said he was going to, he said so on Friday; it’s good to see that he did.

Glorious conversation survives merely in memory of the listener, however, and there is the booze question that has to be addressed as well. The BBC’s obituary was delivered by its media correspondent, Nick Higham, a ferrety cultural bureaucrat who has never written a sentence anyone has remembered. He assured the nation that Hitchens was an “alcoholic”. Hitchens could certainly knock it back. But he and everyone who knew him understood his distinction between a drinker and a drunk. If he were a true alcoholic he could never have written so much, so fast and at such a high standard. Nor would he have been loved, for addicts are too selfish to love.

A ferrety cultural bureaucrat. I hope that epithet sticks to Nick Higham for some time. And it’s obviously true about the “alcoholism” – if that’s alcoholism, everybody should aspire to being an alcoholic!

I cannot overemphasise how much he loathed people who stuck to a party line and tried to tell me, you or especially him what we must think; how every kind of bureaucrat, archbishop, rabbi, ayatollah, commissar and inquisitor roused in him the urge to fight.

A better and more accurate epitaph than “an alcoholic.”

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Mutilate the baby tastefully

Dec 17th, 2011 3:10 pm | By

Parents shouldn’t mutilate their children, amirite? I think that’s a pretty safe claim. But….

But it turns out it’s ok, as long as you make a show of angst about it first. It’s ok as long as you go on and on and on about your feelings on the subject, demonstrating how sensitive you are, and then in the end agree to lopping off a bit of your baby’s penis. The show of angst makes it ok, so it turns out that the mutilation of the baby is actually all about the feelings of the mommy.

Ever outspoken about what I considered the “barbaric” nature of the bris ritual, it is no wonder I was blessed with two sons. Experiencing it once was pure agony. But it was as I stood on the sidelines awaiting my younger son’s circumcision, in pensive conversation with my brother, that I realized I — and women like me — deserved to shed our status as victims and claim our own meaning in this tradition.

And so she does, at great and self-indulgent (or is that “pensive”?) length.

These days, the recent ballot initiative in San Francisco to ban the circumcision of minors (ultimately stricken by a local judge on a technical matter) is the latest manifestation of the growing anti-circumcision movement. Like shirking vaccinations, shedding strollers in favor of “baby wearing,” and embracing co- sleeping, it is increasingly popular to resist subjecting your newborn to such a “barbaric” procedure against his “will,” and to casually throw around terms like “genital mutilation.” Great. Just what I needed to add to my ambivalence over the decision to circumcise my sons — a healthy dose of the liberal guilt I thought I safely had left behind in college.

But I did not find the cries of the hyper-liberal terribly persuasive. Yes, choosing to circumcise your son involves making a difficult and significant decision on his behalf — but what in parenting doesn’t? And, after all, isn’t the irrationality bred of cult-like child-centric parenting ultimately akin to religious zealousness? Just trendier.

Yes, parents have to make many decisions for their children, but no, that doesn’t make it ok to snip off a bit of a baby’s penis for reasons of religion or tradition.

I chose to be awakened from my womb-like slumber, along with my new son, and confront that, while his pain may be my own, I cannot always protect him. Neither from physical discomfort, nor from the weight of the traditions into which he was born. For me, the bris served as an important reminder that there are things larger than me and my quest for rationality. Larger than my son and this brief encounter with pain. As one parent wrote about giving his son over for his bris, “I submit him [for circumcision] because I hope there is more to this than I can see or understand.” There are things I can’t explain, things beyond my control, even — especially — when it comes to this new life.

So she just abdicates responsibility, and lets it happen, because religion is bigger than she is. Therefore what? It’s ok to keep children out of school, to forbid girls to go to school, to hire people to hit children with metal poles, to marry little girls to adult men, to mutilate children’s genitals?

It’s a sad spectacle, someone going to all that trouble to come to a hopeless conclusion.

Update: Stewart did a graphic response so I helped myself to it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Ian McEwan on Hitchens

Dec 17th, 2011 11:48 am | By

In the Guardian/Books, as is appropriate. The Guardian has its flaws but it does hella good book journalism.

When I arrived from the airport on my last visit, he saw sticking out of my luggage a small book. He held out his hand for it – Peter Ackroyd’s London Under, a subterranean history of the city. Then we began a 10-minute celebration of its author. We had never spoken of him before, and Christopher seemed to have read everything. Only then did we say hello. He wanted the Ackroyd, he said, because it was small and didn’t hurt his wrist to hold. But soon he was making pencilled notes in its margins. By that evening he’d finished it.

He could have written a review, but he was due to turn in a long piece on Chesterton. And so this was how it would go: talk about books and politics, then he dozed while I read or wrote, then more talk, then we both read. The intensive care unit room was crammed with flickering machines and sustaining tubes, but they seemed almost decorative. Books, journalism, the ideas behind both, conquered the sterile space, or warmed it, they raised it to the condition of a good university library.

I love that last sentence. It puts books and journalism and ideas together, and then makes them all equivalent to a good university library. One of the things I love about Hitchens is his massive erudition and his skill at deploying it, which few if any academics can match.

Talking and dozing were all very well, but Christopher had only a few days to produce 3,000 words on Ian Ker’s biography of Chesterton. Whenever people talk of Christopher’s journalism, I will always think of this moment.

Consider the mix. Chronic pain, weak as a kitten, morphine dragging him down, then the tangle of Reformation theology and politics, Chesterton’s romantic, imagined England suffused with the kind of Catholicism that mediated his brush with fascism, and his taste for paradox, which Christopher wanted to debunk. At intervals, his head would droop, his eyes close, then with superhuman effort he would drag himself awake to type another line. His long memory served him well, for he didn’t have the usual books on hand for this kind of thing. When it’s available, read the review.

His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend. In Walter Pater’s famous phrase, he burned “with this hard gem-like flame”. Right to the end.

Superhuman effort.

 

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Wheen on Hitchens

Dec 17th, 2011 10:48 am | By

Friends of Hitchens are remembering him for our benefit.

Francis Wheen is. First there’s the unfathomably rude awakening -

Waking yesterday morning to the news of Christopher Hitchens’s death, I was gratified to hear it given second place in the Today programme’s 7am bulletin. The gratification ended moments later when the BBC reporter described him as a journalist, an atheist “and an alcoholic”.

“No he bloody wasn’t!” I yelled at the radio.

He also reported that stupidity at Facebook (and named the reporter). Nick Cohen said “I’ll do him.” I hope he does.

On to the better stuff.

He was a heavy drinker (“No argument about that,” he would say with a throaty chuckle on those rare occasions when we found something about which even he couldn’t take a contrarian view), but also a prodigiously energetic worker whose focus, as he observed the world and its follies, was never blurred. Even when he reached for another late-night whisky, his perception remained unerringly sober.

This is not an adjective that has often been applied to the Hitch. His sobriety was perhaps disguised by the frisky playfulness of his language,   the extravagance of his invective, the fearlessness of his risk-taking. Except for incest and folk-dancing, he’d try almost anything once, from being waterboarded to undergoing a Brazilian wax. Sometimes one felt that he had known everybody, read everything, been everywhere…

One did indeed; that’s almost exactly what I said about him nearly a decade ago:

…he seems to average three or four longish essays a day, along with reading everything ever written and remembering all of it, knowing everyone worth knowing on most continents, visiting war zones and trouble spots around the globe…

He wasn’t what you’d call excessively deferential, Wheen points out.

Unlike our own raucous and disputatious hacks, US commentators tend to be judicious pipe-suckers who take themselves (and   their “insider” status) exceedingly seriously: not for nothing is the New York Times known as the Gray Lady. Over breakfast every morning, Christopher would glance at the NYT’s front page to check that it still carried the smug motto “All the news that’s fit to print” – and to check that it still irritated him. “If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be,” he wrote, “then at least I know I still have a pulse.”

You can use that final phrase for a lot of things. What the hell is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be?

Part of our inheritance, that is.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Hello darkness

Dec 16th, 2011 4:40 pm | By

And as twilight falls, a last goodnight…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



It’s a poisoned chalice

Dec 16th, 2011 4:19 pm | By

Via Jim Houston in comments, a fitting valediction from Hitchens.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgYYxfpPC0

To me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having.

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Meanwhile, in Bangladesh

Dec 16th, 2011 12:06 pm | By

A woman pursued higher education without her husband’s permission. He (according to police) tied her up, taped her mouth, and cut off all five fingers on her right hand.

Hawa Akther Jui recovering from the attack

She is learning to write with her left hand.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Hitchens

Dec 16th, 2011 10:34 am | By

More on Hitchens, in no particular order.

Michael Weiss at the Telegraph -

The last few days had been, for those of us who knew he hadn’t much time left, a strange bundle of suffering commingled with the joy of recollection. We got to relive what endeared him to us from the start: the hilarious tabletalk, the Borgesian library of political and literary arcana that he kept inside his head, and the writing. Of course the writing, particularly the put-downs that never let their subjects get back up again: “No one has a higher opinion of Alexander Haig than I do, and I think he is a homicidal buffoon,” “a herd of antis in search of a climax,” “not only a bore, but the cause of boredom in others.”

It is undeniable that the world will be duller and less funny without Hitchens in it. Significantly duller and less amusing.

As for the politics, his critics always got him wrong on the supposed evolution (or devolution, as they’d argue) from Left to Right. There was the same foundational principle throughout, and if you think the hatred of the clerics and the censors and the commissars began after 9/11, you weren’t really paying close attention.

Christopher Buckley in the New Yorker -

One of our lunches, at Café Milano, the Rick’s Café of Washington, began at 1 P.M., and ended at 11:30 P.M. At about nine  o’clock (though my memory is somewhat hazy), he said, “Should we order more food?” I somehow crawled home, where I remained under medical supervision for several weeks, packed in ice with a morphine drip. Christopher probably went home that night and wrote a biography of Orwell. His stamina was as epic as his erudition and wit.

Intellectually, ours was largely a teacher-student relationship, and let me tell  you—Christopher was one tough grader. Oy. No matter how much he loved  you, he did not shy from giving it to you with the bark off if you had  disappointed.

The jacket of his next book, a collection of breathtaking essays, perfectly  titled “Arguably,” contains some glowing words of praise, including my own  (humble but earnest) asseveration that he is—was—”the greatest living essayist  in the English language.” One or two reviewers demurred, calling my effusion “forgivable exaggeration.” To them I say: O.K., name a better one. I would alter  only one word in that blurb now.

Of course he was. People who demur can’t have been paying attention.

Rick Warren on Twitter -

Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.

Tim Minchin on Rick Warren on Hitch, on Twitter -

Nauseating condescending clown RT @RickWarren: Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter -

Gone too Soon: Christopher Hitchens 62. Tireless supporter of human rights and fighter of dogma under any guise.

Center for Inquiry on Twitter -

Hitchens was a columnist for Free Inquiry for 10 years. “The Return of Indulgences” Read this op-ed piece.

You know what? I’m a columnist for Free Inquiry. I’m a colleague of Hitchens’s. That’s quite something.

Nevertheless –  the world will be duller and less funny without Hitchens in it.

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Hitchens the writer

Dec 16th, 2011 9:03 am | By

Another repost, this time of a repost – metametapost. I wrote it in 2002 or early 2003 when B&W was new, and reposted it last year, on

July 1, 2010

I wrote this about eight years ago for “In the Library.” It hints at why I hope Christopher Hitchens stays around.

Christopher Hitchens is a standing reproach to people who write the odd essay now and then. He is like some sort of crazed writing machine, he seems to average three or four longish essays a day, along with reading everything ever written and remembering all of it, knowing everyone worth knowing on most continents, visiting war zones and trouble spots around the globe, going on television and overbearing even noisy Chris Matthews’ efforts to interrupt him, and irritating people. And what’s even more painful is that this torrent of prose is nothing like the torrents of people like Joyce Carol Oates or Iris Murdoch, badly written in proportion to the torrentiality – no, this is a torrent of learned, witty, informed and informative, searching, impassioned history on the hoof. If Hitchens is a journalist then so were Gibbon and Thucydides.

Unacknowledged Legislation is a collection of essays on writers in the public sphere, as the subtitle has it. The essays are many things, but one of the most noticeable is that they are unexpected. The essay on Philip Larkin for example entirely declines the opportunity to express easy outrage, and instead digs much, much deeper. The one on Martha Nussbaum’s Poetic Justice wonders why she didn’t mention Mill’s autobiography and then at the fact that she seems unaware of the element of caricature in Dickens’ Hard Times. ‘When the utilitarian teacher M’Choakumchild – perhaps a clue there? – tells Sissy Jupe etc.’ Hitchens misses nothing.

Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation, Verso: 2000.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



The Hitch

Dec 16th, 2011 7:29 am | By

Update: a couple more. I didn’t include Salman Rushdie’s because it was more personal, but I see it’s also on Twitter where anyone can see it, so -

Goodbye, my beloved friend.  A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011.

And Richard Dawkins -

Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God.

My thoughts exactly.

Francis Wheen at Facebook -

BBC radio news at 7am reports the death of Christopher Hitchens, “an alcoholic”. How I wish Christopher was still here to challenge imbecile reporter Nick Higham over this lie. His epitaph, he once told me, should be “He never missed a deadline”. Farewell, dear old fruit.

Nick Cohen ditto -

The editor is letting me write about the Hitch. The fact that I had a gun to his head at the time is neither here nor there.

Also, a few minutes earlier -

Anyone who wishes to raise a glass of whisky in memory of an absent comrade can join Padraig Reidy and me at 5.30 at the King’s Head Islington.

That’s two hours from now, you have plenty of time.

Martin Robb ditto -

Now it’s up to the rest of us to stay on the case of Galloway and all the other friends of tyrants.

And on the case of the ultimate tyrant, Colonel God.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



How dare you ask for evidence?

Dec 15th, 2011 5:13 pm | By

Nice piece about Rhys Morgan in the Guardian.

So why does this floppy-haired teenager bother? Wouldn’t it be less hassle to focus on becoming even better at Team Fortress 2 or just kicking back and listening to his favourite bands, Muse and Radiohead?

“It can be nerve-wracking but I think that getting the message out there is a lot more important than me being sued,” says Morgan. “I think there’s a need for more people to speak out. I hate the idea of anyone being taken for a ride.”

And there you go. That’s what a lot of speakers-out think, and that’s why they speak out. Most of us weren’t clever and together and dedicated enough to do it at age 17, and if we had we wouldn’t have been worth listening to anyway, but the reasons are still the same.

But it was when Morgan was diagnosed with a serious illness – Crohn’s disease – that he plunged deep into the world of scepticism. While off school last year, he set about researching the disease and was alarmed at some of the “miracle cures” on offer. One particularly grabbed his attention: Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), which is described on its website as the “answer” to Aids, hepatitis A, B and C, malaria, herpes, TB and “most cancer”.

Morgan looked into MMS and was alarmed to find that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had warned that, when used as directed, the solution produced was “a potent bleach” and urged anyone using it to stop immediately and throw it away. Similar warnings have been issued in this country.

Bleach. Bleach!! People are peddling bleach as a treatment! That’s scary. (And puts me in mind of a horrible story about a volunteer at the zoo and some mice and a jar and some bleach…)

“A few people on support forums seemed to be pushing MMS on others. I started telling people on the forums, look, this treatment doesn’t seem to be that great.” He got “kicked off” one forum. “They told me I was being rude and inflammatory by questioning other people’s choices.”

Because medical treatments are just a matter of “choices,” and choosing the wrong one – say, bleach – won’t do any harm. Wouldn’t it be nice if people could learn to stop thinking that way?

So what does he believe in? Morgan does not hesitate: “Evidence-based medicine. If evidence can support something, I’m all for it. One thing that really gets me is when people claim sceptics have closed minds. That’s not true: a true sceptic will be convinced by evidence. And even if the evidence supported the most absurd claims, the sceptic would agree that it’s true.”

Is that rude and inflammatory or what?!

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



More weasels

Dec 15th, 2011 11:22 am | By

I’m starting to think it’s a pattern. I’m starting to think it may be that only opponents (or at least non-fans) reported this particular bit of legislation honestly.

Here’s the CNS version:

The legislation would prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions and bar  women from using subsidies under the Obama health care law to buy  health insurance that covers abortion, except in those cases involving  rape or incest or when the mother’s life is endangered. Also, the  legislation would protect health care providers who are opposed to  abortion for moral or religious reasons.

Again: that’s it. It doesn’t spell out that that means the legislation would make it legal for health care providers – including hospitals, not just individuals – to refuse to do abortions even to save the woman’s life. Given the preceding sentence about funding, which does include that exception, readers are primed to assume the opposite.

This probably helps to explain the lack of outrage, and the people like the staffer in one representative’s office who say “oh no, of course hospitals won’t let women die.”

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Weasels

Dec 15th, 2011 11:04 am | By

Interesting. The supporters of the “Protect Life Bill” aka the Let Women Die Bill are so ashamed of the let women die part that they conceal it in their press coverage; at least, the people at LifeSiteNews do.

The measure would amend President Obama’s Affordable Care Act to reflect the Hyde amendment by prohibiting taxpayer dollars from funding any health plan that includes coverage of elective abortions. The measure retains Hyde’s exception for abortions performed due to the child’s conception in rape or incest or to save the mother’s life.

The bill also makes clear that no health insurance carrier may be forced to provide coverage of abortion in any of its health plans, and strengthens the conscience rights of health care workers and institutions to reject abortion training, procedures, or referrals.

That’s it – that’s all it says. Notice the complete failure to mention that this “strengthening” means legalizing the refusal to do an abortion to save a woman’s life. Notice it and think about what it implies. It implies that they’re ashamed of it, or at least realize that other people would think they should be. It means they don’t want their readers to grasp that that’s what the bill would do if it became law. It means they’re hiding what the law actually does.

Disgusting.

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Projects

Dec 15th, 2011 9:28 am | By

Another item from the archive. No reason. Just for the hell of it. I saw a link to it somewhere and was reminded of it so thought I would summon it from ur-B&W.

June 17, 2011

I have a new project. My new project is to convince people on the left that they must work together with Tea Partiers.

This may seem like a difficult thing to do, but I like a challenge. There are many urgent problems in the world, such as countless people who still have the wrong kind of light bulbs, and the only way those problems can be solved is if I – yes I, I alone, I personally, I bravely yet gently yet determinedly yet lovingly – build a bridge between the left and the Tea Party. The division between the left and the Tea Party is divisive, and when there is divisiveness, problems don’t get solved, because people don’t work together, so it is urgent and vital and very important to heal this tragic divide by telling the left to forget about all the things they disagree with the Tea Party about. It would be pointless to tell the Tea Party to reciprocate, of course, and besides, the left is…well you know. So the work is to tell the left how to heal the divide, while not telling the Tea Party anything, because it already.

This is my healing work that I plan to do. I believe in love and reaching out and bridges and unity. I hope you all wish me luck and every success with my work, which I will be working on in many ways for many weeks to come, and which I will be reporting on via Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, the Washington Post, People, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Tikkun, First Things, Christianity Today, my seven blogs, some of my friends’ blogs which I haven’t counted yet, and CBS News. In spite of all this fame and exposure I remain impressively humble and kind of bashfully surprised by all the success and approval I report daily via Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, the Washington Post, People, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Tikkun, First Things, Christianity Today, my seven blogs, and some of my friends’ blogs which I haven’t counted yet.

Once I’ve got the left and the Tea Party squared away, I’ll get to work on getting feminists and sexists to work together, then unions and the governor of Wisconsin, then the Taliban and the women of Afghanistan. As I mentioned, I like a challenge. Thank you, god bless you, and god bless the United States of America.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



And how much deadly force would I use?

Dec 14th, 2011 5:10 pm | By

Frat boys are such fun. The very word reminds me of fun-loving George Bush, whom I usually thought of as frat boy. Some frat boys at the University of Vermont sound super fun.

The fraternity circulated a questionnaire to its members, asking their names, major, favorite frat-related memories, favorite actor, and who they would pick to rape. Just normal questionnaire stuff, you know.

Another source:

We were sent a copy of the questionnaire, which mostly consists of benign questions like name, birthday, major, amount of time with SigEp and favorite SigEp memories, hobbies, future goals, etc. It’s actually kind of nerdy and cute, until you get to the final three “personal questions.”

1. Where in public would I want to have sex?

2. Who’s my favorite artist?

3. If I could rape someone, who would it be?

Boys just wanna have fun, boom boom.

 

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Bishops run amok

Dec 14th, 2011 4:24 pm | By

Laura Bassett on the power of the bishops.

Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women

 finds it troubling that a group of men that has historically denied women the opportunity to participate in leadership positions is exercising so much power over such a broad range of women’s reproductive health legislation.

“Clearly there’s a problem when men take such an interest in the sexual function of women,” she said. “There’s something deeply off about it.”

Especially those men – men who are officially celibate, men at the top of a men-only hierarchy, men who have spent their entire adult lives in an all-male profession – and, of course, men who think they’re taking orders from the Topp Man, God Himself.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)