I’ve read articles more or less exactly like this one, from Insight News, a local Afro-American community paper, since I was probably ten years old (although few of those pieces have buried the lede as far as this one, down in paragraph nine or ten.  For your convenience, I’ll try to exhume the lede for you):

According to the State Council on Black Minnesotans, as of the year 2000 census, Blacks make up approximately 18.03% of Minneapolis and 11.71% of St. Paul. However, the number of Blacks in Minneapolis accounted for 40.12% of the Black population statewide, while the St. Paul population accounted for 19.565% statewide.

Minnesota blacks are concentrated in the metro – got it.

Now come the all-important Minnesota incarceration rates, and according to Tom Johnson, former Hennepin County Attorney and current president of the Council on Crime and Justice, “We know for example that in 1999 in Hennepin County you had [a number equal to] over half of all African-American males between eighteen and thirty arrested in that one year.”

It’s the “Blacks are overincarcerated” meme.

And it’s true.  The number,and per capita rates, are astounding, and a national scandal – one that should shame…

…well, lots and lots of people.  Almost forty years worth of leaders, in both the black and white communities.

But we’ll get back to that.

(And what’s this “[a number equal to] over half of all African-American males between eighteen and thirty arrested” number supposed to mean?  Could the writer even pretend to give this statistic some meaning?  Does it mean “half of all black males in Henco were arrested?”, or does it mean “Five percent were arrested ten times each?”, or…)

The reaction by some is that the police are patrolling in minority neighborhoods whether they are Hmong, Native American, Hispanic, Somali or African-American, because that is where the majority of the crimes are occurring.

But according to Johnson, the numbers do not support this: “To use who is arrested as a gauge to make a decision about who is committing crime isn’t accurate or fair.”

Er…why?

I mean, could we be bothered with some evidence of this claim? Because it’s a big one and, given that North Minneapolis and Frogtown and Phillips  and Dayton’s Bluff seem to be where most of the crime in the cities themselves happens, I’d be interested in knowing – both as a city resident and someone who is concerned about equality in our society, exactly how that’s “inaccurate and unfair”.

Because from where I sit, it sounds like lawyer weasel-words.

Others look to racial profiling – where police stop Black people just because of the color of their skin – as a potential cause for increased incarceration rates for African Americans.

In a study conducted over a six-month period in 2000, Minneapolis police stopped Black drivers at a rate of more than twice the numbers in their population, and an examination of St. Paul police records showed a similar trend.

Question for those “others” that look to racial profiling; are these “stops” (as opposed to arrests for specific incidents of crime) converted into convictions?  Is there any evidence that these convictions are based on wholesale fraud?

Because if there is evidence of masses of Afro-American citizens being framed and railroaded, we do have a scandal here.

Consequently, when studies show further that once they are in the Hennepin County or Ramsey County criminal justice system, Blacks are more likely to be charged with certain crimes like drug offenses, and Blacks are more likely to serve time in jail.

And again – and I ask this knowing I’m skirting on the edge of the usual, tiresome charges of “racism” by the usual bleating classes – is there any evidence that this likelihood of being charged is disconnected with a likelihood of having actually offended?

The resulting statistics equate to Blacks in Minnesota having the highest incarceration rates in the country as compared to whites. In addition, seven out of every ten inmates who leave prison come back, so the question then becomes: what, if anything, can be done about this alarming trend?

The article – incoherent as it often is – focuses on recidivism programs.  Which is, I suppose, more manageable than, say, trying to reverse the damage caused by forty years of debilitating nannystatism, which began about the time 400 years of slavery and discrimination ended.

Sean Aqui from Midtopia – a gratifyingly prolific MOB blog – notes that our new surveillance culture may have officially gone too far:

Welcome to Buhl, Minn. Population 1,000. It’s a small, sleepy community where nothing much ever happens. Indeed, it disbanded its police force in 1999.

Which is why it clearly needs surveillance cameras to keep the peace.

Local law enforcement officials are pushing a plan to place six surveillance cameras around this Iron Range town of less than a thousand people.

Sgt. Pat McKenzie of the St. Louis County Sheriff’s office, which has overseen law enforcement in Buhl since the city disbanded its police department in 1999, said it’d be a tool for solving and deterring crime. But some residents are asking: What crime?

Scratch your head, ask “why?”…

…and read Midtopia more often. It’s a great, and undertrafficked, blog.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an episode where a WalMart cashier politely, genially asked me to pass a pack of bologna in front of the scanner for her.

“No bigs”, I figured. Odd, in that “don’t touch pork even if it’s in a blister pack” is one of those rulings by a small, rather extreme group of imams in the Twin Cities that aren’t recognized – indeed, draw chin-scratching – from Quranic authorities elsewhere. But whatever – I ran the offending product over the scanner – not much different than my not scheduling late-Friday meetings with my highly-orthodox Jewish colleague, or leaving cattle at home in my IT shop.

No biggie. I paid it not much further thought.

Except that yesterday, I was at WalMart again. And I saw the cashier.

One thing I omitted from the original post; the cashier is hot. Smokin’ hot. Yowwwww hot. She was wearing a headscarf, and an ensemble of Walmart-cashier duds that were stretched to maximum, tight effect.
I nodded, and she grinned. With her fully-visible face.

Now, let’s be clear here:  I don’t care that she’s attractive.  Indeed, in the interest of making a better society, putting up with attractive women is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.  You can thank me later.  And a smile is a very good thing.

I just thought it was odd – the cashier is utterly punctilious about observing the most picayune edict of a group of fringe imams when it comes to handling pork, but as re the whole “female modesty” thing, she’s completely out-of-mosque (and yes, some of the Somali women who work at WalMart do wear the full robe ensemble)?

I can hardly make it up fast enough.

Of course, as Ed and Katherine show us today, you have to try to, anyway.

The murder of Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor was a senseless, stupid tragedy, of course.  It seems to have been a hot burglary gone horribly awry; the four suspects apparently broke into Taylor’s Fort Meyers (FL) home intending to pilfer stuff.  Taylor surprised them, they allegedly shot him, and he died after apparently bleeding out.

The story has many victims – Taylor’s son and family, friends and teammates. 

And, farther down the list of victims, we can add “rationality” and “logic”.

I don’t turn to Sports Illustrated for informed commentary about politics or current events.  But stupidity is stupidity is stupidity:

A sad part of the story, of course, is a child growing up fatherless, for no good reason. But another sad part, and one that will make good people across the NFL cringe, is that [Taylor’s teammate Chris] Samuels, a gentlemen among gentleman, will be applying for a permit to own a gun this week.

Um…huh?

Taking responsibility for defending oneself from society’s scum is the opposite of being a “gentleman among gentlemen?”

That someone would take it upon him/herself to resist being a victim, to tacitly tell the world’s criminal scum “I will be at the very least a speed bump, if not a surprise bridge abutment, on your road as a thug” is a “sad part of the story?”

“I was always scared of guns growing up,” Samuels said. “But this situation has told me I need one. I’d rather be prepared than to be like Sean was, and not have a gun in his house when he really needed it. I’m going to go through all the proper procedures, get a license, get training for it, and have it in my house, where I lay my head at night.

Reading between the lines, it’d seem Samuels is going to get a Florida carry permit – which, like the system in Minnesota (and 35 other states) requires the applicant to show a clean criminal, substance abuse and violent mental illness record, and take a training course to enforce competence and knowledge of applicable law.

Tragedy?  Hell, no – it’s a victory.  When law-abiding citizen (and the piece in SI works overtime to show Samuels is not one of the caricaturish thugs that infest the NFL today) that decides to draw that line in the sand and say “me and mine are off limits, thugs”, it sends the message our society’s layer of criminal scum need to hear; that you are one bad choice from having your chest cavity blown out through your shoulder blades, and than you should think twice about your chosen vocation.

“I wish a lot of people thought like I did, that violence is bad. But unfortunately that’s not the way the world is. Sometimes the world is not a nice place. It’s sad I have to get a gun.”

And that’s yet another tragedy of Sean Taylor’s death.

No, it’s a rescue of three bits of good news from a senseless tragedy; he’s another armed, law-abiding citizen. 

 He’s a role model that other law-abiding citizens can use to get over the stigma that the nannymedia has labored to put on the law-abiding gun owner these last four decades.

And finally, it’s another journalist exposed as the patriarchal nannystater he is.

It’s pretty much a given that nobody appreciates this country like someone who left his/her old life to come here.  As a fourth-generation American, the grandson of people who were born here, I am deeply thankful for what we have in this nation – but not nearly so much as those who come here, sometimes leaving or risking all, do.

Indeed, there is nothing that warms the heart, shivers the spine and quivers the lip quite like seeing a swearing-in ceremony, where dozens, hundreds or thousands of newly-naturalized citizens take the Pledge of Allegiance, and take up permanent residence in the Shining City on the Hill.

And as a cherry on the sundae?  They’re turning into Republicans:

Previously, new citizens could be relied upon to vote Democratic by a ratio of up to 10 to one. But in San Diego this week there were indications that this could be changing.

“I’ve had several people here, Hispanic people, say ‘No, I’m a Republican’,” said Bill De Risa, a Democratic worker eagerly registering voters outside Golden Hall.

His colleague Mary Kennedy said that one woman had told her she wanted to be a Republican because of immigration policy.

“She felt the Democrats were too soft. She wanted higher fences. It’s a very polarising issue.”

The high fence – and wide, brightly-lit gate – draw comments:

“For a long time, immigration was OK,” said Sara Wright, 49, a seamstress from Mexico who arrived in the US legally in 1986.

“But now, no more. A lot of really bad people come from Mexico and commit crimes.

“People are coming in and having two, three, four babies and going on welfare. Some are making money here and spending it back in Mexico.

“That’s not right. They should go back to Mexico and get a permit.”

Mrs Wright, whose American-born husband Ed served in the US Navy, was one of 1,591 people from 89 countries who became citizens at a ceremony in San Diego’s Golden Hall on Tuesday.

Immigration:  Keep it safe, available and legal.

I was going through the checkout at the store on Sunday.

The woman at the till, wearing a hijab scarf but speaking with a Minnesota accent, pointed at the package of bologna. “Could you pick it up and put it in the bag for me?”

“Huh?”

“It’s pork. I can’t touch pork”, she said, smiling. “Can you…”

I thought about responding “No, it’s plastic.  You can touch plastic, ya?”

I thought, then again, about asking “you do realize that it’s just a tiny little film of overdramatic imams in Minneapolis that are knotted up about check-out girls touching pork products swathed in blisterpak, right?”
I shrugged, and picked up the package. She scanned it, and I put it in the bag.

We’ve taken our shots at liberal bumper stickers in recent years.

Dr. Emil from Atomic Trousers has taken the logical next step; a top ten (?) list.

To wit (with some post-facto nominations of my own):

“COEXIST” (spelled out with various religious symbols) – If some of the followers of the religion represented by the crescent moon “c” on your cute little bumper sticker would stop hijacking planes and blowing up buildings, coexisting would be a little easier.

“Honorable” mention in this category: “My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma”.  That’s right, oil-belching Subaru-driving earth-granny, the fact that you don’t attend a “church” with other “believers” does make you “better than me”.  Or whatever.

“A PBS Mind In a FOX News World” – This particular bumper sticker is positively oozing with smugness. “God, I can’t stand being surrounded by these Wal-Mart-shopping, NASCAR-watching, deer-hunting troglodytes. How can these country-fried rubes allow themselves to be spoon-fed White House talking points from Bill O’Reilly? They must not be smart enough to enjoy watching some dusty old Brits mumble through a clunky drama on PBS like I am.”

 As if Bill Moyers isn’t the left’s high-gloss Bill O’Reilly (or, for that matter, that Bill O is a “conservative” in the first place).

“Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live” – The airheads with this little chestnut on their bumpers are confusing simple wordplay with incredible profundity. This bumper sticker sounds really deep until you realize that a.) it doesn’t mean a damn thing and b.) the dork in your office who asks if you’re workin’ hard or hardly workin’ is making an equally clever play on words.

And when all of us tax-paying, charity-donating first worlders move to yurts and revert to tending cattle and hunting and gathering, who is going to help those who can’t “simply live”, simply, live?  Without western (read: First-World) charity, whither Gambia? 

(…)

“Pro-Child, Pro-Choice” – I’m for the kids, but I’m also for aborting them willy-nilly too. This bumper sticker has the intellectual consistency of “Pro-Ants, Pro-Raid.”

• A close runner-up in the worst abortion-related bumper sticker goes to “Against Abortion? Don’t Have One.” (Against Robbery? Don’t Rob People!)

(…)
“Defy Corporate Domination” – I spotted this gem on the rusty bumper of a Honda Civic on November 8th. Chances are you have never heard of Honda, but its a small automobile-making co-op based out of Mazomanie.

(…) 

“Peace Through Music.” – Trouble in the Sudan, you say? Send in State Street’s bongo-playing hippies. They’ll calm things down. Al-Qaeda insurgents wreaking havoc in Iraq? I’m sure Mr. Johnson’s fourth-hour band class can get in there and straighten things out.

A few nominations of my own:

“You Can Not Simultaneously Prepare for Peace and for War” – This quote, attributed to Einstein, ignores the fact that Einstein had to flee for his life from a continent that largely “prepared for peace” after World War I, in the face of a belief that repudiated “peace”, and ran to a nation that did prepare (belatedly) for war.  Better sticker idea; “Preparing for peace without preparing to defend it is worse than meaningless”. 

Convince the lefties that reproduction is bad for the planet.

We’ve got a start right here:

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.

Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.

While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.

“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.

“Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.”

While most parents view their children as the ultimate miracle of nature, Toni seems to see them as a sinister threat to the future.

Ah, but hostility to children is an aberration.

Right?

Well – it depends, says this Bay Area mom…:

I often am seen in the company of three children who call me “Mom.” These traits have led people to freely let me know that they think I’m overpopulating the world. Probably the strangest experience I’ve had is being pregnant in the Bay Area. During my other pregnancies, I lived in Sacramento and was used to people smiling when they saw a pregnant woman. Here, no smiles — mostly scowls.

My favorite story is this one: When I was getting physical therapy when I was six months pregnant (after falling and breaking my wrist), the therapist asked me whether I was pregnant with my first child (she had already told me that she had one child and planned to have only one). When I said, no, this was actually my third child, she immediately asked me whether I was going to have my tubes tied after the birth.

After my baby was born, the hostile looks and mutterings continued. While I was waiting in line for coffee one day with the kids in tow, one woman offered to me that she thought three children constituted a big family. When I told her it really isn’t considered a large family in many other parts of the country, including the Midwest town I had recently moved from, she asked me with disdain, “Where was that, a religious community?” Then there was the woman who said to me as she pushed by my stroller, “Three? Don’t you think you have enough?” It’s not like I was asking her to contribute to their college fund! I was just taking my kids to the bathroom.

I’ve noticed a thin film of “child-free” people on the periphery of my circle of acquaintances, in the past few years.  Not “don’t have kids yet”, not “don’t really want a family”, not “I’d rather have all my own money and free time for myself”  or “I think I’d bew a lousy parent, and I haven’t been to Nepal yet” – although I know all of them. No, I mean “child-free”, in the sense of “Smoke-Free” or “Chemical-free” – as if one is ridding ones’ life and the world of some noxious pollutant.

Which is bad news for the future of liberalism, presuming they don’t get into power before the last one dies off and enforce a nationwide spay/neuter law…

Maloney The Radio Equalizer: Brian Maloney

While talk hosts and bloggers across the country have been pounding away on the subject, the Boston Globe hasn’t found room for a single mention of the ongoing anti- troops outrage in Cambridge.

Earlier this week, the rabidly anti- American city banned local Boy Scouts from collecting items for care packages destined for soldiers in Iraq, calling their efforts a “political statement”.

Proving that liberals really are against the troops, the resulting outrage has been covered extensively by talkers, including KSFO/ San Francisco hosts Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers, syndicated talker Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, Boston’s Howie Carr and many more.

Maloney overreaches, to be sure – not all liberals are against the troops. Far from it, indeed. But it does take me back to one of my most popular posts.

[cue the harps and the soft focus]

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy:

If You Believe: …that America has problems – huge problems – then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that America’s problems make it an inherently rotten concept, then maybe you should think about whether you’re living in the right place.

If You Believe: …that America’s projection of power around the world is immoral – then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that any projection of American power is inherely unjust because it’s America, then maybe you should be living in, say, Sweden? Just an idea.

If You Believe: …that capitalism is wrong because its inequalities are inherely unjust, then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that the free market is inherently, irrevocably evil, perhaps China would be a better fit? Just suggesting…

If You Believe: …that invading Iraq was wrong, then dissent is American.
But If You Believe: …that our temporary administration of Iraq is worse than Hussein’s 30 year reighn of horrors, then perhaps you should rot in hell we need to have an attitude adjustment.

Just a hunch.

In three years, I’ve found little reason to change it.

Chad at the Fraters notes notes one of the things Europeans have consistently gotten right – drinking.  Specifically, drinking laws.  Chad notes the lethal effect (on few, but tragedy has no minimum threshold) of the 21 minimum age:

Instead of trying to come up with a largely arbitrary age (why twenty-one and not twenty or twenty-two?) when you let people drink legally, why not make it the same age that we legally consider people adults, eighteen? But instead of making it a milestone for being able to drink as much as you want, let’s return it to an event that carries with it added responsibility along with its freedoms.

You’re eighteen. It’s time to grow up and act like an adult. It’s time to be serious about your life. You can drink and have fun, but you’ll be expected to drink like a adult.

You can vote and join the military at 18; you can help determine this nation’s governance, operate a machine gun (in the military), become a cop in some jurisdictions, start training in any number of medical and emergency-response trades…

…but you can’t drink?

In Europe, the “forbidden fruit” aspects of alcohol just don’t exist – and the punishments for inappropriate behavior are sure and strict (you don’t want to get busted for drunk driving anywhere in Europe).  Sure, Italian and Scottish footie fans get drunk and obnoxious – but does anyone think that imposing and jacking up a drinking age would change that?

Part of this would involve introducing alcohol at an earlier age in controlled settings. There’s no reason a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be taught how to enjoy a glass of wine or beer with the family at dinner. Alcohol shouldn’t be a taboo and drinking shouldn’t be all about getting loaded and acting stupid. Kids should be taught both the positive side and the peril of drinking. The message shouldn’t be all or nothing, that you’re either a teetotaler or an alcoholic. The path of moderation is one that far too few Americans discover until well past the time they should have.

What we’re doing now is clearly not working. You can further infantilize society by move the drinking age out again, you can prohibit people from drinking at midnight on their twenty-first birthday (as Minnesota does), and you can warn people all you want about the dangers of binge drinking. But until you change the culture of drinking in America and teach people how to drink responsibly before they reach adulthood, it’s not going to make a difference.

Chad is right.

On that anyway.  On the other hand (emphasis added)…

Eric Felten is a cocktail connuissuer

That’d be Connoisseur.  I mean, if you’re gonna be a foodie boozie, you’re gonna have to get that one straight, at least…

I’m all about the learning.

When it comes to gays, the left talks a big game – but as we’ve been noting for years, when the chips are down, lefty commentators are vastly more likely to resort to gay-bashing than the mainstream right.  (Note:  opposing gay marriage is not “Gay-Bashing”).

I noted this years ago in re Nick Coleman’s abortive, abortious “radio show”, which consistently  tittered and giggled like a couple of junior high kids over a bunch of “gay” cheap shots. Of course, even the most rigorously reputable regional media outlets aren’t above gay-baiting cheap shots.

Taranto notes its’s not just a regional phenomenon:

There’s almost a year to go before the presidential election, and already the Angry Left is employing gutter tactics against the Republican front-runner. One ugly theme has emerged:

* “Could the United States, for that matter, elect a cross-dresser? The Rudy Giuliani surge would be comic if its broader implications were not so grave.”–James Carroll, Boston Globe, Oct. 29

* “Rudy’s acceptance of Pat Robertson’s endorsement is equally foolish. Not only has it made utterly transparent that Giuliani isn’t just a cross dresser but also a man capable of practicing the oldest profession as well as any Jezebel . . .”–Gloria Feldt, Puffington Host, Nov. 9

* ” Rudy Giuliani did Hillary imitations, complete with mincing steps and effete hand gestures, looking just like the cross-dresser we know him to be.”–Stanley Fish, New York Times Web site, Nov. 11

* “The old guard, Pat Robertson, has just endorsed the cross-dressing former mayor of New York to defeat what he called Islamic ‘blood lust.’ “–Andrew Sullivan, Times (London), Nov. 11

They make Giuliani sound like Boy George. In fact, as we’ve noted, he’s more Monty Python, having donned a dress on a couple of occasions purely for comic effect.

It’s especially sad to see Andrew Sullivan, who styles himself a champion of gay rights, resort to a rank appeal to homophobia in order to score cheap partisan points.

Sad?

More like “predictable”.

I’d love to see how the region’s more-prominent gay-activist bloggers (pretty much universally left-of-center) treat this.

Or “if”.

I link to a lot of people on my blogroll.

A link doesn’t necessarily imply complete agreement on every – or any – issue.    I link to David Strom, Fraters Libertas, Kool Aid Report and Ed Morrissey even though I’m not against the North Star line, am not Catholic, ignore the Packers (to say nothing of Notre Dame, Hockey and parrots) and never cared much for Iron Maiden, and oppose smoking bans.

Indeed, I link to the likes of Blanked Out, Blog of the “Moderate” Left, MNSpeak and Powerliberal even though I don’t agree on much with any of them.

So let’s take a brief – and final – run through last month’s week’s dismal little flap.

• I’m pretty loathe to call someone “racist” frivolously.  When you apply it to a person, it implies a pretty broad character judgement – that, deep down in the pit of their gut, they believe other races are inferior to their own, down to the DNA level, and deserve to be subjugated, oppressed or eliminated.  It’s a serious accusation; its collateral implications involve Slavery and Auschwitz.
• Tracy Eberly’s piece last week last month, which the local Sorosphere has been tossing about like a bunch of poo-flinging monkeys, had some background – an obnoxious commenter – and an underlying point (not all cultures are equally good, and other cultures can and should be criticized as freely as our own).  Observing this helps explain the piece, I think…
• …but doesn’t excuse the fact that Eberly didn’t just push some rhetorical hot buttons about which Native Americans are legitimately sore – he jumped on them wearing big clunky boots.  He said some things that, depending on your point of view, one could call “dumb”, “insensitive” (yeah, like a real conservative is going to use that term) or “racist”. 
• I distinguish between “saying racist things” and “being a racist”.  (Your mileage may vary, but then I didn’t really ask anyone else’s opinion).
• I don’t disagree with Michael Brodkorb for whacking Anti-Strib from his blogroll.  He makes his reasons pretty clear in this post – and given his position, I can’t say as I fault his reasoning.
• I don’t even blame the local Sorosphere for piling on.  That’s the way the “game” is played.  Que sera sera (or as John Kerry would say, Que seared…seared).
• But Karl Bremer was deeply disingenuous (and playing to the Daily Mole’s audience’s ignorance) to turn Eberly’s article into a smear of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB).  Nobody expects anything but skulking yellow hackery from Bremer, as worthless and yellow a “writer” as exists, an embarassment even to “Dump Bachmann”.  But neither does one expect “Drinking Liberally” (the left-of-center social group) to enforce any standards of behavior on the local Sorosphere, because, duuuuuude, they’re just a bunch of lefties who get together to drink!  So why is the MOB – whose charter is, if anything, less politically motivated than DrinkLib – suddenly accountable for its members’ opinions?   The MOB strives to be apolitical, and I have dozens of email invitations to local leftybloggers (and apolitical bloggers) to prove it.  The MOB is mostly center-right and/or non-political bloggers, of course; my theory is that too many regional leftybloggers are afraid to be seen in a  room with people they disagree with, but I don’t know.  At any rate, there is no enforcement arm to the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers; there is no MOB editorial board; the sole function of the MOB’s capi di tutti capi, Brian and Chad and King and I, is to call Terry Keegan and ask if it’s OK to invite 100 of our closest friends over to drink on a Saturday night.  The MOB  is a blogroll and two annual parties that are explicitly open to everyone who wants to show up.  And that means you, whether you’re Michael Brodkorb or Steve Perry for that matter.  The entire “when will the MOB police itself?” “argument” is akin to asking “when did you stop beating your wife”.  It’s a cowardly stawman set up (and supported) by yellow hacks with intent to obfuscate.
• When the likes of Karl Bremer and Steve Perry start demanding accountability from “Drinking Liberally”, or Flash’s “Drinking Moderately”, for the gaffes and offenses and beliefs of their attendees , maybe they’ll have earned the right to squawk be worth a listen.  But nobody’s demanding that accountability, because it’d be dumb; that’s not DL or DM’s purpose!  Declaring the MOB different is purely agenda-driven wishful thinking. 
• That being said, responding to this incident by claiming it’s “bowing to political correctness” to disapprove of the way Tracy expressed himself in his post – as claimed by several Anti-Strib supporters in Michael’s comment thread – is an evasion of responsibility.  Says me.  It’s something we expect, rightly, of the giggly fratboys and callow wannabees of the Sorosphere.  Man up and take your lumps.

I would never put a racist blog on my blogroll.  And I don’t think Tracy Eberly or Anti-Strib are “racist” in any sense that a victim of genuine racism (as opposed to agenda-flogging selective indignation) would recognize.  So they’ll remain on my blogroll; I’ll continue to support them – and hope and trust that they’ll express their views about race and culture a lot more artfully, if no less forthrightly.

As a friend, I’ll both agree with Tracy that our culture does have plenty to be proud of and is objectively better in balance for the vast majority of its people than most of the world’s other societies.  America, and the West that it leads and (with Britain) defined, eschews ritual genital mutilation, the stoning of gays, the lynching of adulterers, and…the list goes on.  Our language, unlike so many of the world’s tongues, doesn’t have different words for “human” that grow more derogatory the farther from “American” or “English” one gets.  Our society is far from perfect, but it strives to uphold not only the rights of women and social and cultural and ethnic minorities and has done more than any other society in history to atone for the wrongs of its own past than any other culture in history.  Tracy is right about this; I’d like him to express that point without pissing in Native Americans’ wheaties along the way, just for the sheer South-Park-olicious fun of it.

As a blogger who reads Anti-Strib (at the very least for Hot Telanovela Chick Friday) and supports the local center-right blog scene, I’ll criticize the offense – partly because actions DO have consequences to a principled conservative, and partly because I’d hate to see one of the Cities’ more prominent center-right group blogs get trashed for no good reason.  Anti-Strib has some good friends, some good writers (Badda, Kermit, and yes, Tracy) along with some notso-hotso ones (it’s Tracy’s party, he can invite who he wants), and above all some solid points to make.  Anti-Strib did yeoman work in exposing the casual, racist screedmongering of Minneapolis School Board member Chris Stewart and American Hot Sausage (which passed without a word from  Karl Bremer, and earned a flakky puff-piece from Steve Perry – even Eva Young covered that one); Anti-Strib makes a valuable contribution to the local blog scene, and will do so in the future.  They deserve (and have earned) both criticism and recognition; they also deserve, I think, the benefit of a doubt.

I’d hate to see Anti-Strib’s rep get shredded (or shredded further) over Tracy’s gaffe, or maybe worse, defending something that’s just not worth it.

The Night Writer notes that political correctness is hardly new:

It’s the birthday of poet E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1894), who became interested in communism as a young man and traveled to Russia to see it firsthand. He was horrified to find the theaters and museums were full of propaganda, and the people were scared to even talk to each other in public. Everyone was miserable. Cummings went home and wrote about the experience, comparing Russia to Dante’s Inferno.

His view of communism was not popular in the literary world at the time, and magazines suddenly began refusing to publish his work. For the next two decades, he had a hard time publishing his books, and he got terrible reviews when he did. Critics thought his exotic arrangements of words on the page were silly, and they said he wrote like an adolescent. Then, in 1952, his friend Archibald MacLeish got Cummings a temporary post at Harvard, giving a series of lectures. Instead of standing behind the lectern, Cummings sat on the stage, read his poetry aloud, and talked about what it meant to him.

It resonates today, of course:

Today our theaters and museums (and Nobel nominating committees) are full of propaganda and things such as so-called Fairness Doctrines and Hate Crimes proposals still try to make people afraid to talk to one another. And if your views aren’t acceptable to the gatekeepers at the Ivory Towers you won’t get invited or, if you do, you get food thrown on you.

Of course, to be fair, liberal commentators speaking at conservative universities face a phalanx of the same kind of hatred.

CORRECTION:  My bad – they don’t!

…the days until a leftyblogger actually addresses the facts of a Katherine Kersten column, rather than just blurting out facile, juvenile ad-hominem.

Two of her recent columns have drawn the ire of the not-too-smartosphere (here and here)

I’ll start the count at one day right now, based on these two (obtuse and selectively ignorant) posts bits of blog discharge.

We’ll start with obtuse; Matt Snyders, who seems to be on a mission to rhetorically peck at Kersten’s ankles, writes:

Depending on what kind of reactionary observer you ask, these individuals had it coming because they a) blocked traffic, b) taunted police in mysterious ways that the MPD has so far been unable to describe, c) are bourgeois hipsters and bourgeois hipsters deserve to be beaten, g*d damn it!, or d) some combination of all of the above.

Actually, there’s an option “d”, one that I suspect is the real answer that Matt Snyders (and the entire CP staff) dare not whisper:  Critical Mass are patsies for other people.

This topic comes up for discussion again a month-and-a-half later for two reasons: first, the resident she-jackal at the Strib  [She-jackal?  I feel like I’m reading a screed by some Campus Maoist – Ed.] has had a field day with the incident, penning two columns in the past three weeks on her newfound bogeymen. Check ’em out here and here. You won’t be disappointed. (“Minneapolis isn’t the only place where the Mass mob has strong-armed the police and City Hall,” it wrote on October 8, presumably with a straight face.)

One ad-hominem (ad-feminem?), two giggly but unsupported inferences…zero actual beef.  I mean – would Snyders at least let us knuckle-draggers in on where Kersten might be wrong?

Secondly, Critical Mass supporters launched a website earlier this week in order to “support the victims of the police violence and brutality” and to “help resist the remaining charges that are being leveled against 4 individual participants so that the cops and the city can save face and have someone to blame for their misconduct.”

Well, that should settle it then.

Look – as I wrote before, as a guy who dices it out with Twin Cities drivers on my bike at  least a couple of days a week (having the kids back in school cuts down on my biking time), I’m not unsympathetic to at least the part of Critical Mass’ agenda related to raising awareness about bikers.  But Snyders doesn’t apparently feel it necessary to show the reader where Kersten is supposedly wrong about Critical Mass.  Perhaps the CP staff knows that their audience is going to reach the conclusion they want no matter what they write – it’s nothing new. Or maybe Snyders needs to work on writing to an actual point, lest he be regarded as “the worst writer in the Twin Cities’ altmedia since the legendary Margaret Grebe”.

You be the judge.

Oh, it gets worse. This’d be the guy from “mobjectivist”, which if you want to get nit-picky about philosphy might be too-telling a name after all:

Trying to understand her obsession over bicyclists, I think the StarTribune columnist, Katherine Kersten, has tried to frame and conflate other recent Critical Mass events with the sanctioned ride.

Well, actually, she wrote about the ride that turned into a riot.  Remember that? 

 And another local assbag blogger, [“Assbag”? Mommy?  Is that you?  – Ed.] thinks it has something to do with prepping “greens” for bad behavior when the RNC comes into town next year. I guess what better way to practice intimidating conservatives than a bunch of bicyclists roaming the streets?

Prepping greens?

Where on earth did the “writer” get that?

Look, numbnuts “WHT” – I could care less about “Critical Mass”.  Indeed, I bike, so if they have something in mind to actually get drivers to stop knocking us off, more power to ’em.  Indeed, friends of mine ride with ’em.  And as far as “intimidation” goes, most of them are from Minneapolis, and if they ever crossed the river they’d need me to help them get out alive.

But if either of y’all have any ideas about facts that Kersten supposedly got wrong, sound off, m’kay?

(And “Needing someplace to refer to her as a snaggled-tooth witch” isnt’ even warm).

So – one day and counting!

NRO notes the corrosive racism in the left’s attacks on Bobby Jindal, who won the Louisiana governor’s race last week:

After “progressive” racists spent months trying to use his ethnicity against him, I think it’s a feather in Jindal’s cap that everyone talks about it now. Something, by the way, to remember next time you see the Left run for the moral high ground on perceived “racism” — as though it meant something to them beyond their party’s political success. It wasn’t just the Louisiana Democratic Party, but also self-styled “progressive” bloggers, writers and message-board posters who used Jindal’s race against him during this campaign.

There’s nothing ‘progressive’ about being liberal.

Ask Linda Chavez.

You could see this coming.

After St. Thomas disinvited Desmond Tutu (at the behest of its president, Father “Havana Denny” Dease, who certainly should be a laughinstock), you could count the hours until some lefty claimed that there was a culture of intimidation against liberal speakers on campuses.

Mitch “The Other Mitch” Pearlstein brings a note of reality to the discussion:

I agree with Smith when he criticizes the University of St. Thomas, an institution I very much respect, for its original decision, several months ago, to disinvite South African Bishop Desmond Tutu from speaking on campus. Well-intended and solicitous to the Jewish community as that move might have been, it nevertheless was unprincipled, dim and hugely counterproductive, and university President Dennis Dease was right, of course, to recently reverse field and reinvite Tutu.

But at the risk of framing this issue excessively in ideological terms, there was at least a subtle implication in Smith’s column that scholars and speakers on the left such as Tutu are generally treated by colleges and universities no worse than their counterparts on the right; that all different kinds academics and activists are abused and censored equally. Yet no way is this true.

For example, was there any left-leaning commencement speaker this past spring who was treated as abysmally as Republican Sen. John McCain was by graduating boars at the New School in New York? Or who on the liberal side of the aisle in recent years has needed police protection to get in and out of lecture halls as frequently as conservative writer David Horowitz?

And as for retrieved invitations, I know of no one other than Linda Chavez — in the supposedly open-minded 1980s — who was told by a college president in New York City, “If you insist on speaking, I can’t guarantee your safety.”But you invited me, or at least members of your faculty did,” she said in amazement, before being escorted from the building by bodyguards for a waiting car — but getting punched anyway.

Multicultural mavens frequently went batty at the thought of Chavez (a former head of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission during the Reagan administration) speaking on their campuses, as she just wasn’t their style of minority. The president of the University of Northern Colorado, for instance, disinvited her after students rallied against her scheduled appearance. And then (you’ll love this one), instead of apologizing to Chavez, he apologized to the students for the “grossly insensitive” invitation in the first place.

Read the whole thing.

On October 23 – next Tuesday – the Saint Paul School Board is going to hear yet another attempt by a group of well-connected “youth” “anti-war” “activists” to get the Board to bar military recruiters from Saint Paul campuses.

A little bird sent me their internal email:

NOTE: The “adult” peace and justice movements MUST stand in solidarity with our youth who are challenging the militarization of their schools!!!

That, of course, is hilarious stuff.

At the last meeting I attended, the “anti-war” group included perhaps three high school kids, and well over a dozen adults and/or college kids. 

“Standing in Solidarity?”  They’re standing in substitution!

But I digress: 

 So far, the StPaul School Board has IGNORED YOUTH VOICES on the issue of military recruiters being given free rein.

Actually, they’ve given the YOUTH VOICES attempt after attempt to sway the Board – largely because at least two members of the board, Ann Carrol and Tom Goldstein, seem to more or less favor the idea of barring recruiters from the campuses, career fairs and so on. 

Which, if the author of this email is any indication, might actually benefit the military:

 Too many of our kids are being CHANNELED into the military–especially youth of color & low-income youth in inner cities & rural areas are being TARGETED by recruiters.

Largely because they, traditionally, join the volunteer military in vastly greater numbers than the white, upper-middle-class children of liberal parents – the ones that make up groups like these. 

They are offered NO OTHER CHOICES–NO trade schools or apprenticeships, NO help going to college–just “join the army”.

 Really?

So when you go to a “career day” or a “college fair” at a high school, it’s a chimera – nothing but booth after booth of military recruiters stretching from wall to wall?

High school kids?  Anyone know about this?

Lydia Howell, host/producer of CATALYST:politics & culture on KFAI Radio

Hm.  Big charges. 

Worth looking into.

At least, if Twin Cities’ college student Andrea Jackley, as evidenced in this Strib op-ed, is any evidence.

Last Friday, former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award denotes a shared effort in diagnosing (and proving) global warming and bringing the pending environmental disaster to the attention of the world as one of the greatest challenges ever known to the human race.

And/or denotes the most amazing marketing effort for totalitarianism in the history of the world…

Nobel prizes are not meant to be political,

The Nobel Peace Prize nearly pure, distilled politics.

but nevertheless speak volumes [AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAGH! – Ed.] in terms of public opinion.

Among Norwegian academics? Perhaps.

And this year, as it always does, the award spurred controversy. Is the Norwegian Nobel Committee trying to criticize the Bush administration and its policies? Not really.

Hm.  Interesting conclusion.  Care to elaborate?  I’d like to see the carefully-honed reasoning that led to this rather sweeping – and groaningly implausible – observation.

Are they trying to tell us what to think?

Well yes, actually. The committee made its message quite clear: “By awarding the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby reduce the threat to the security of mankind,” said Chairman Ole Danbolt Mjøs.

In other words, the Nobel academics have decided what’s good for the rest of us, and want to do their bit to give an American patrician carte blanche to run the nation and the world.

No, Andrea.  Nothing political about that.

As a full-time college student burdened by two jobs, I’m completely immersed in my own busy life. I’m not sure what I was wearing yesterday, let alone what’s going on in the steadily changing world of politics.

[Aside:  So naturally, the Strib gives you an op-ed slot.  I guess it’s no worse than Susan Lenfestey]

But in an America deeply, and quite publicly, divided by issues ranging from war to health care to — of course — climate change, I am acutely aware of the floundering patriotism, national pride and participation of younger generations. But can you blame us?

As a group?  No.  Just about every generation – at least, the generations anyone notices (mine, a demographic shadow, slipped through while everyone else was barbering about the Baby Boomers) – goes through a bout of narcissism, solipsism, and self-adulation; a period where it is the center of the world (and for the Baby Boomers, it’s never ended).

There is a constant deluge of reports in the media about how poorly the world thinks of Americans and how often our government lies to us…The past six years have done immeasurable harm to our nation’s foreign relations.

Which is why Sweden and Austria are swamped with immigrants, and lines of Indian and Saudi and Dutch are queued up to go to schools, apply for our jobs, and raise their families in Norway.

In a world becoming more and more closely linked on a daily basis, economically and socially, a cavalier and autocratic attitude is a luxury not even a superpower can afford. Contrary to what some of our politicians may think, America is no longer the stag leading the herd as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

Ding.

And so Ms. Jackley would prefer a leader who would, like Jimmy Carter, lead America to become a Big Sweden.

But then there’s Al, who has catapulted to almost movie-star status with his Oscars, who has appealed to the masses with giant outdoor concerts featuring acts like U2 and given his whacky, tree-hugging notions about the environment credibility. He’s all of the things college students love.

You just wanna put him in a bong and ingest the guy.  Or maybe kick him around like a hackey sack.

Seriously – what does this say about “young people” today, assuming Ms. Jackley’s right?  That the most important things in a leader are:

• They’re kinda like really cool rock stars
• The rest of the world loves them
• Oh, yeah – and all that “crushing democracy on behalf of a deeply controversial and far-from-proven theory” thing.

If Algore isn’t available, maybe Brad Pitt or Leo Decaprio could run.  Because they’re just dreamy, and they’re also interchangeable non-American in outlook!

More important, he’s an established, world-renowned figure with a fresh Nobel Peace Prize in his hands. That makes him something the rest of the world can love, too.

And goodness knows we need to get the rest of the world’s approval!

Gore is exactly what this country needs. He can appeal to younger generations and give us reason to get up and vote, and perhaps feel proud of our country again.

Andrea Jackley – people whose entire concept of politics and of this nation is as shallow and facile as yours shouldn’t be voting.  Indeed, you appear, from this glimpse into your personality, to be a prime example of why “get out the vote” efforts harm this nation.

He is someone who might be able to repair some of the damage to America’s reputation. He is someone who will, at the very least, start the ball rolling on energy independence and alternative sources. He is someone who will give us the leadership we’ve been craving. We need him desperately.

I desperately need an Advil.

While I think my parents thought I might grow up to be an academic, I turned off that track bright and early. One of the things that sparked that swerve was the notion that you could – and many would-be professors do – slave away for years and years, and are still not really considered professors until they get “tenure”. Until they got tenure, life was an endless parade of crummy jobs, moving constantly, being treated like (by academic standards) crap.

I preferred the much more stable world of radio.

The point, of course, was that life on the academic track was nasty, brutish, and tenuous – until one achieved that magical state of tenure.

Which was, if nothing else (in theory) a fairly objective state. Either one had it, or one did not, and one usually knew what was required to get it. It was pretty black or white.

Some of life’s issues break out like that – with a black or white answer. Others, not so much.

And with still others, it really depends on how you come to the issue.

———-

Abortion’s never been my biggest topic. The way I figure, if we lose the war on terror, the Planned Parenthood staff and the Pro-Life Minnesota staff are both pretty well screwed. If this nation isn’t secure, none of us will be protesting at abortion clinics; if the nation is prosperous (ergo Republican), people will be either financially secure enough to want the babies, or working too hard to have sex enough to make it an issue.

Make no mistake about it, I’m pro-life. I think abortion is wrong. A pro-“choice” dogmatist will try to read some big pathology about “wanting to control women” into that. It’s garbage, of course; with two teenagers, I realize that my odds of “controlling” anyone are slim to nil.

No, it’s because I value human life and because being pro-“choice” involves a leap of faith that I can’t justify.

That’s right. The “anti-religious” stance on abortion requires the leap.

Bear with me here.

Last week, I was reading Jeff Fecke,writing over at “Shakespeare’s Sister”, your one-stop shop for shrill, skin-deep “feminism”. Now, I’ll admit – I’ve given Fecke a hard time this last year or so; partly due to things like this, sometimes for things like this, and largely for his nonpareil skills as a single-A-league Atrios impersonator.  Sometimes I read, sometimes I ignore.

But since he refers to me (later on), I figured it was worth a read.

My memory was tripped by this Monday quote from Mark Steyn. Ordinarily you’d expect he’d be saying something about how the Muslims have taken Oberammergau,

Given the influence of John Stewart on the left’s sense of humor, in a generation no liberal will be able to dismiss an opposing idea without some sort of labored exaggeration. I may hold a telethon.

But I digress:

but on Monday, he decided to take a break, and instead defend the stalking of a 12-year-old boy and his family:

Michelle Malkin reports that the blogospheric lefties are all steamed about the wingnuts’ Swiftboating of sick kids, etc.

Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game. [Emphasis mine]

“Fair game.” Now where had I heard that before?

I’m tempted to answer “the same place the writer learned – or didn’t learn – about context”.

But never mind; we’re about to find out!

Back in May, my friend and then-editor at Minnesota Monitor, Robin Marty, announced she was expecting a child. It was great news for Robin and her husband Steve, and obviously those of us who know them were happy for them.Now, Robin was and is a longtime supporter of abortion rights. Something about women having the right to determine what happens in their own bodies.

Well, let’s cut the euphemism; abortion rights is the ability for women to (depending on your point of view) destroy an inconvenient (or, rarely, dangerous) tissue mass, or destroy a human that can’t quite exist outside the womb yet.

Everyone can “control what happens to their own bodies”; it’s called “wearing a rubber”, “taking precautions”, “being aware that sex has consequences”, or – heaven/goddess/physiology forfend – keeping your clothes on.

The usual response is “sex shouldn’t be tied to having kids”. And it’s there that pro-life and pro-“choice” people split.

We’ll get back to that very shortly.

Anyhow, like many pro-choice women, Robin was still able to enjoy her pregnancy, knowing that even though it was early in her term, the fetus that she carried was going, eventually, to grow into her child.This is, of course, something those of us who are pro-choice get.

I remember that moment back when my daughter was in about her 25th week, when I was almost certain she was going to be a Crock Pot. The funny part was, I felt the same thing about my son!

I’m not quite sure what Fecke means by this; as a pro-life father of two, I most definitely knew my kids were – God or physiology or blind capricious fate willing – going to grow into the vexing, voracious teenagers they are today. Does he really think that there’s something about being OK with abortion that grants some special perspective on rearing children?

I’m willing to chalk it all up to sloppy writing – Fecke is nothing if not reliably imprecise. If, on the other hand, that is what he (or any other pro-“choice” person) believes – well, I’d love to hear more.

Let’s chalk it up to “sloppy writing” and ignore the digression and move on:

I knew that at one month, two months, even four months, my daughter really didn’t exist yet.

Let’s stop right here – since it does, in fact, illuminate the entire difference between the sides in this “debate”.  The overarching question is “when does life begin”; the empirical answer is “we don’t know yet”.  To the pro-life person, the response is “err on the side of life, since life is absolutely sacred”.  To the pro-choice person, it is…

…whatever it takes to support the fundamentally political thesis that undergirds the pro-“choice” movement.  In other words, a leap of faith.

Let’s start at the beginning.

A fertilized egg – without the aid of any medical intervention, either either caring for it or “terminating” it – will spontaneously abort itself, or “miscarry”, about 1/4 of the time.

And in places with no medical care whatsoever – including Minnesota, not much over 100 years ago, during our great-great-grandparents’ lifetimes – a child was 1/3 likely to die in childbirth, or within the first year thereafter.

Thus – without any aid (or assault) from medicine – a conceived egg left to its’ own devices has a 50-50 chance of becoming a living, breathing, independent human being, through a process that exists for no other reason than to create human beings, using physiology that – pleasurable and species-reinforcing side-effects aside – exists purely to create more human beings. Human beings that need some help getting started – a place to quickly evolve, we hope, from zygote to fetus to baby.

To the pro-“life” person, the implication is that one of sex’s consequences is that, if the right sperm meets the right egg, the couple – fella and dame – are entering into something that transcends either of their own lives, much less their own bodies; the creating of another human being, who will – physiology or God or remorseless chance willing – will one day be just like us, only maybe a little better. Because sex has such far-reaching, legitimately life-altering consequences, we alter our behavior accordingly – we abstain (even to the point of abjuring sex outside of marriage), or we are extra-cautious, believing as we do that a “fetus” is something that might not be “viable”, per se, but that is intended to be viable (knowing also that no “fetus” is “viable” until it can hold a job and pay its rent), and which is imbued with a moral significance by the very fact that it is intended to be human one day. Something we have no more right to extinguish for being inconvenient than a hospital has to euthanize intensive care patients (who, indeed, are often no more capable of living outside the ICU than a 18 week old fetus is of living outside the womb.
To a pro-“choice” person, the zygote is a mass of tissue until – at some hard-to-determine point that nonetheless seems to usually swerve to the side of convenience, including up to the moments before birth in all-too-many cases – it isn’t.

In summation: cohesive view about the role of reproduction in life and the ethical and place of the “fetus” in that process, versus belief in a mystical change in state from “tissue mass” to “human” that takes place…when? When the head comes out? When the “fetus” gets past the earliest point medical science has been able to sheperd a preemie to life? When government, in the infinite wisdom of a body of people who eschew studying either science of philosophy for the here-and-now noodling of the law, says it turns into a human?

Given that, wouldn’t it be much more fair to say that “given my attachment to the notion of this mystical unknown threshold, I believed she didn’t really exist yet”. Because you have no objective, empirical measurement – nothing analogous to, say, “it exists”. Such a belief is, objectively, no more grounded in fact than belief in a flat earth or Ron Paul.

And – since this post moves on to talk about thresholds for taking offense at satire – Fecke should be aware that the notion that a fetus “doesn’t exist” is no less objectionable than saying a profoundly handicapped child or a comatose person “doesn’t exist”.

Had my ex-wife suffered a miscarriage, we would have been sad, of course, but I know in my bones that we would not grieve the way we would…well, let me put it this way. I can type “if my ex-wife suffered a miscarriage.” I can’t even bring myself to type out the hypothetical that would apply to my daughter now. The mere thought makes me sick to my stomach. If anything happened to my daughter, a part of me would die, forever. I would never be the same, and I would never want to be. Had my ex suffered a miscarriage? It would have been sad, and we would have grieved for the idea of the child we’d expected.

Which is true, as far as it goes; every day of my then-wife’s pregnancy, I hoped and prayed for her health, and theirs – just as I hope God or blind cruel fate keeps the drunk drivers and diseases and random tragedies at bay for them. I hoped for this before they were born, and as they’ve grown and turned into people with personalities with whom I have three combined decades of history, it’s only grown.

But – this is rather important – that’s a matter of human nature, a sign that you are a fairly normal parent.  One has developed attachments and history with a seven year old; with a “fetus”, there are only hopes.
It’s not an objective metric about the beginning of life.

This is a roundabout way of saying that one can believe a fetus is not yet a person, and still be excited about pregnancy.

Abortion is, obviously, one of the most contentious issues there is. Like many such issues, there is a hard core of 10% on the right that wants it banned and criminalized, and 10% on the far left that wants to make it a civil sacrament. In between, there are an awful lot of shades of belief, including many – myself included – who are fundamentally libertarian, but believe personally that life begins at conception and that a “fetus” – given the fate that God or physiology or remorseless fate has in mind for at least half of them if you leave them alone – is attended with a little more moral gravity than a toenail or a plantar’s wart, and that just because God or evolution or what-have-you has set things up so that that incipient life form needs a female uterus for a few months isn’t a sign of its lack of ethical and moral weight, but a sign of how much weight the whole idea of physiology, sex, pregnancy, reproduction and men and women themselves have in the great scheme of things.

Is it a belief? Yes. Not much different than “a fetus is a blob of tissue until we really want it not to be.

Which ties us, at long last, into the real subject of this post – something that was even more contentious than the abortion issue itself, at least among regional bloggers, few months back:

And Robin was. So like any good blogger, she posted an image of the first ultrasound.

At this point, enter Tom Swift, crazy Minnesota blogger and erstwhile GOP candidate for school board in St. Paul. (I won’t link to him, and if he finds his way back here, Melissa, terminate him with extreme prejudice.) [As good a symbol of gutlessness as I’ve seen, really – Ed] He blogs under the name Swiftee, and he created an image to welcome Robin and Steve’s child into the world:

You get it? Because Robin was pro-choice, she might decide to abort the child she wrote about, so let’s get it some protection.

Not to speak for Tom Swift – a person who truly needs nobody to speak for him – but that is the most overdramatic possible reading of his point.

What was his point? Maybe that any “fetus” – not Robin’s, in particular, or not just hers – might have reason to be nervous, since the same consciousness that decides he or she is important enough to carry to birth can change his or her mind. Or maybe – given the number of people who don’t credit a fetus with “existence” until the umbilical is cut – that given the existence of partial birth abortion the “fetus” is never really safe. Maybe that a mythical, cognitive “fetus”, lacking an objective, hard-wired standard like “Tenure” that’d cause his/her parents (in general, not Rew and Smartie) to consider him/her a real person, isn’t any safer than that non-tenured professor – except the fetus isn’t going to wind up teaching freshman literature at Normandale if he/she doesn’t make the convenience cut.

Caustic, tactless and very, very pointed? Sure. Not that that’s ever really stopped anyone from ripping on commentators before.
But we’ll come back to that.

That’s not the interesting part of the story, though. Swiftee’s image got those of us on the left seething, but we let it go, primarily because we don’t want to give him the traffic. But that seething got back to local blogger Mitch Berg, who styles himself as a “reasonable conservative,” someone who believes in hitting his opponents hard, but fairly. And Mitch’s response to Swiftee was what I remembered:

Is Robin and Smarty’s baby “fair game” for satirists, given that

1. she put the ultrasound out on her public website, and
2. she and her colleagues from the “Minnesota Monitor” rentablog she “edits” have stumped for abortion on demand and partial birth abortion, and fumed and phumphered when the SCOTUS shot the procedure down?

Well, I’d say “I hope not” – but of course, in the world of internet “cartoonists”[…]pretty much everything is fair game. If there’s an unflattering or embarassing pic of yourself out there somewhere online, it’s going to pop up sooner or later, intended to dink at some belief of yours or another.

So – did Swiftee “cross a line” with his cartoon? What line? Where? In the coarse thrum of the political blogging interchange, I’m not sure there’s a line left anymore; any line one person draws is someone else’s sport to cross, and ones’ best bet is to strictly separate the personal and the public (as, indeed, I do). The one that civil people try to observe when dealing with one another…

Very Pilate-like, Mitch was. But it was that line — “fair game” — that caught my memory. Mitch styles himself as reasonable, but if you cross out the official hemming and hawing, [I’m official? Who knew? Did anyone catch my title? – Ed] Mitch’s meaning is clear: heck yes, the child of Robin and Steve is fair game. If you can make a political point by attacking the Martys, then by all means, go for it.

Well, that’s one way of looking at it.

Here’s something else I wrote about the whole flap last spring – something that reveals a lot more about my side of this flap than the bit Fecke chose to quote:

A fetus baby with a helmet. It’s kinda funny, if you don’t know the people involved. Still funny when you do, but it makes me a little uneasy. I generally prefer to keep politics impersonal. And yet it’s hard to look at, say, this (not safe for work or queasy stomachs; it’s the end-result of a “partial birth abortion”, and it’s horrific) and not want to make it very personal and not-abstract-at-all for those who support it.

One thing that most of us who favor free speech accept as a given is that nobody has a right not to be offended. Many of us – myself included, and the orthodox Catholic Tom Swift even more so – are offended by the existence of abortion, especially the partial-birth variety, via which parents not a whole lot different than Rew or Smartie could decide that the baby, as Fecke noted at the beginning of this post, “didn’t exist yet”.

Did it bother me that Swift took a photo from someone I actually know, like and respect? Of course it did. I like the Martys. I wish ’em the best; I’d be pleased as punch to bring a basket of garf rags (cloth diapers), A’nD and Desenex to the baby shower. I also think that, as people who’ve assumed the role of public figures (when Rew took on the job of editing the local sorosblog “Minnesota Monitor”) they were nuts to put any part of themselves or family life out in public. I’ve been a “public figure” of one sort or another since I started in radio when I was 16; I’ve had anti-semitic death threats (I’m not Jewish), I’ve had stalkers (and still do, although they’re really not very smart ones) – and so I keep my kids, my job, my girlfriends (when I have one) and their kids religiously out of this blog and everything else I write. Partly because anything you do put out there is “fair game”; partly because the concept of “fair game” is unfair.

Tom Swift is also a friend, someone I know and respect – but to call him a “bull in a china shop” is to underestimate a bull’s tact, as least on the blog. He’s the kind of person every pro-“choice” activist wishes would just shut up and go away.

And while I wish that the world – and its agent, in this case, Tom Swift – had left Rew and Smartie’s ultrasound pictures alone, and that this flap wouldn’t have involved two sets of friends of mine (and that puppies didn’t die, for that matter), the fact is that Swiftee was right. It was perfectly-aimed satire – and for left-leaning public figures (as Fecke is) to barber that it’s “tasteless” opens us all up to an endless dissertation about “tasteless” satire that the left defends even more blythely on principle, and with even less consideration, with counterexamples and counter-counterexamples, ad infinitum.

It sucks that it involved people I know.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fecke post without the jump from out-of-context to unsupportable:

What is happening to the Frosts is not unusual, and not unique. It happened to Melissa and Amanda when they had the temerity to be women with opinions who wanted to work in politics

Who had made a blogging career out of saying some things that were every bit as objectionable as Fecke finds Swiftee, and which a bunch of unpaid conservative bloggers had the “temerity” to point out to people. That’s what we do. To paint Melissa Macewan and Amanda Marcotte as hapless victims is both a crime against context and, oddly, intensely anti-feminist.

It happened to John Murtha, who had the unmitigated gall to be an anti-war ex-Marine. It’s happened over and over, and will happen over and over again.

Just ask Gennifer Flowers!

Mitch was right: there is no line anymore, at least for the right. Everyone is “fair game.”… If they can attack a woman using her own ultrasound records for the sin of being both pro-choice and an excited expectant mother, they will do it.

Leave aside Fecke’s sloppy use of the omnipresent “they”, as if right wing bloggers are part of some monolithic medusa controlled by some central brain, and the irritating victim-mongering. Let’s shoot for honesty, here (on the off-chance that any of Fecke’s audience read this) – nobody “attacked” Robin.

And if the “fetus” “doesn’t exist” as a person yet – that was Fecke’s line, remember – then where’s the attack?

I’ll ignore all criticism, by the way – I think I’ll adopt Jeff’s “I know you’re not really a person” as a defense…

(more…)

Not to say that the Dems don’t “get” the heartland, but…:

Stock-car racing fans filled Lowe’s Motor Speedway in North Carolina yesterday, erasing concerns that a political dispute in Washington had erupted into a full-scale health scare at NASCAR events.

Democratic House staffers, who were attending the Bank of America 500 race as part of a fact-finding mission of health and homeland security issues, took the unusual step of getting inoculated against several rare diseases and a sexually transmitted illness.Republican staffers refused the shots, saying they are not necessary. The recommendation also angered some lawmakers, who thought it was insulting to suggest that race fans might be infectious.

I’m tempted to spread a rumor among dems that dragons roam west of the Missouri.  Five’ll get you ten Hillary Clinton’s staff shows up wearing armor and carrying swords.

I think I’d be more surprised if this hadn’t happened:

An anti-semitic message that included a swastika was found etched into the wall of a bathroom at Columbia University on Thursday, just two days after a noose was discovered hanging from the door of a professor at Teachers College.

In a message to the Columbia community, President Lee Bollinger said he was saddend by the second incident of hate in a week.

Not counting Ahmadinejad’s speech, natch.

Google has yanked a bunch of ads critical of “MoveOn.Org”, because the ads – according to Google – violated the copyright (of a logo that MoveOn otherwise works hard to propagate throughout the entire world at every opportunity – like most public organizations do with their logos).

Foot has had about enough of the double standard, and is doing what he does best; mocking it:

PHOTOSHOP CONTEST!
   

Photoshop this famous trademarked logo:

Here’s my dashed-off MS-Paint effort:

Think you can do better?  (In point of fact, only Ken Avidor could possibly do worse)

Get over to KAR, oil up your copy of Photoshop, and get cracking.

(more…)

HBO is going to make a movie about the Duke lacrosse case:

Variety, an entertainment industry magazine, reported that HBO plans a movie from the book “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case,” which was written by KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr.

The movie would explore the dynamics of racism and class that made the case a national story, Variety reported.

Yes, I just bet that the movie will star racism and classism.

This one, I have to see.

Gisleson from Norwegianity starts out on the beam…:

The Strib is doing an instant (i.e., bullshit) poll on “Can campuses reject some speakers and still respect free speech and academic freedom? Desmond Tutu was not invited to speak at the University of St. Thomas, apparently because of some past statements.”

Because, of course, matters of integrity and principle are best decided by unscientific polls, which is why the vote is currently deadlocked even though this is, morally, and open and shut case.

True.  Although I don’t know that anyone, even the Strib, is pretending to “decide” this issue so much as “troll public opinion”. 

But then he swerves into the bridge abutment:

Desmond Tutu is not a terrorist. He is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Yes.  And as we all know, being a Nobel Peace Prize winner means you could never be a terrorist (or even a worthless dictator-coddling thug, or merely utterly useless).

And seriously – who’s called Tutu a terrorist?  Anyone?

Or is this just another straw-peace-prize-winning-man?

CJ in the Strib:

Comedian  Lizz Winstead is looking for you if you’ve been on the receiving end of a worthless gift.

“Gift Intervention,” her new Lifetime Web show, will be hunting for talent from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Mall of America for the next two weekends.

Someone gave me a tape of the “Best of the Lizzzzzz Winstead show” once.  That was pretty bad.