Hendrik Hertzberg, one prescient son-of-a-bitch, on December 15th at The New Yorker:
On the other hand there was Senator Rebecca Felton. In 1922, Thomas Hardwick, the governor of Georgia, hoping to ingratiate himself with newly enfranchised women voters (he was in the doghouse for having opposed the Nineteenth Amendment), made gimmicky history by appointing a woman, the first ever, to the world’s supposedly most exclusive club. Mrs. Felton, an eighty-seven-year-old suffragist and prohibitionist, spent one day in the job before being displaced by an elected successor. If she is not remembered today as a feminist heroine, perhaps it has something to do with her bloodcurdling enthusiasm for murder as the surest remedy for interracial relationships of the sort that gave us our soon-to-be President. As she said on August 11, 1897, “When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue—if it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from drunken, ravening beasts—then I say lynch a thousand a week.”
Between 1880 and 1930, 2,500 black Americans were lynched — for being suspected of a crime, for being convicted of a crime, or for no reason at all other than racist terrorism.
Between 1976 and 2005, 43,500 American women were murdered for leaving their husbands, hurting their husband’s feelings, or for no reason at all other than misogynistic terrorism.
UPDATED: AltHippo uncovers more dipshittery from The Effluence. Today “bostonboomer” totally misidentified a source for a post attempting to tie Obama to Blagojevich. The president of the “ethics group” National Legal and Policy Center is not lifelong Dem Peter F. Flaherty, he’s Peter Flaherty, the former chairman of the lobbying group Citizens for Reagan and a self-described “Hillary expert.” What qualifies him as an expert? Well, in 1993 Flaherty and the NLPC successfully sued Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Health Care Reform Task Force and in 1996 the Hillary-bashing book The First Lady that he co-authored with his brother was published. One conservative critic wrote, “The book contains the specific detail of the dishonesty and ethical corner-cutting that has characterized Hillary’s entire adult life.” So, ya know, it’s nice to see that Flaherty’s “ethics” are appreciated by bostonboomer.
As the late, great Molly Ivins noted in her seminal take-down, Camille Paglia is the queen of the categorical statement. Unlike the rest of us, who have opinions on people or cultural phenomena that we might call “personal preferences,” Paglia’s likes and dislikes are definitive.
You think that’s easy? Her role as the sole arbiter of significance makes it impossible for poor Paglia to merely hold an opinion on any subject. She must instead confer mantles of cultural significance to an odd assortment of singers, actors, writers and politicians and defend her stamp of approval forever, no matter how events might overtake her original assessment.
This is what the sky looks like in Montana. As you can see, it is big.
Got back from visiting relatives in Montana late Sunday night and I’m still trying to get back into blogging mode. I was blissfully disconnected from the innertubes and politics for five days and it done me good. I had massive piles of smoked meats from my in-laws’ gorgeous bbq restaurant shoved under my chin, chased bunny rabbits with my lovely niece Lily, and woke up to this view every morning. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. I was seriously two ticks away from pulling a Hilton the day before I left, so the timing couldn’t have been better. If I had to witness the demonization of Caroline Kennedy by the leftosphere or the faux-outrage over Corrugate in real-time I think my head would have exploded. Thanks to Betty, poputonian, marindenver and Noah for keeping things hopping during my absence. They, quite clearly, rock.
I’ll be back in a bit with a post about some of the womyn-powered wingnuts and flawless PUMA puritans who are really, really angry at that despicable Jon Favreau for having the audacity to grope Hillary’s cardboard armpit. Yep, it’s great to be back.
Of course Hannity is a warmongering thug who hasn’t the faintest idea how foreign policy power functions in the country he is so transparently eager to bomb. Nothing new there. But can we stop pretending Rick Warren is a moderate now? He is also either shockingly ignorant about what the bible actually says or willing to twist its message to appeal to Hannity’s troglodyte core audience. My money’s on the latter. No respectable politician should ever take this creep seriously again.
which doesn’t, um, exist. That we can see. As Marin Cogan recounts in the New Republic:
careful listeners would have noticed a recurring theme of anxiety: that Obama was going to use the newly acquired levers of government to destroy them. Specifically, conservative paranoia over the possible reinstatement of the “fairness doctrine,” a defunct policy requiring that broadcasters allow opposing points of view to be heard over the airwaves, has reached a fevered pitch. In September, George Will was warning his readers that, “unless McCain is president, the government will reinstate the ... ‘fairness doctrine.’” In October, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page chimed in, predicting that under the spooky-sounding “liberal supermajority,” the fairness doctrine was “likely to be reimposed,” with the goal being “to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.” And, two weeks before the election, the New York Post blasted: “Dems Get Set to Muzzle the Right.”
Then more fuel for the fire - On election day Sen. Chuck Schumer messed with their little minds on Faux News with this statement:
after Fox News host Bill Hemmer cornered him about the issue on the air. Schumer just smirked: “I think we should all try to be fair and balanced, don’t you?”
In all the hoopla following the election, this story kind of slipped under a lot of radars. Rachel Maddow picked up on it yesterday. On November 7 the New York Times wrote:
The Bureau of Land Management has expanded its oil and gas lease program in eastern Utah to include tens of thousands of acres on or near the boundaries of three national parks, according to revised maps published this week. National Park Service officials say that the decision to open lands close to Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument and within eyeshot of Canyonlands National Park was made without the kind of consultation that had previously been routine.
The inclusion of the new lease tracts angered environmental groups, which were already critical of the bureau’s original lease proposal, made public this fall, because they said it could lead to industrial activity in empty areas of the state, some prized for their sweeping vistas, like Desolation Canyon, and others for their ancient petroglyphs, like Nine Mile Canyon.
The bureau’s new maps, made public on Election Day, show not just those empty areas but 40 to 45 new areas where leasing will also be allowed.
The tracts will be sold at auction on Dec. 19, the last lease sale before President Bush leaves office a month later. The new leases were added after a map of the proposed tracts was given to the National Park Service for comment this fall. The proximity of industrial activity concerns park managers, who worry about the impact on the air, water and wildlife within the park, as well as the potential for noise, said Michael D. Snyder, a regional director of the Park Service who is based in Denver.
As they said, the leases are scheduled to be sold at auction on December 19. As the Times articles notes, if the leases are sold and delivered to the buyers before the inauguration there will little, if anything, the new administration can do about it. The Bush administration’s calloused end around of the National Park Service in this decision pretty much sums up the “Drill, drill, drill” mantra of the (not so) Grand Old Party these days.
Crappy 80s child actor turned crappy Evangeliban grown-up thespian Kirk Cameron discusses wholesome family films and opines about gay marriage on the Bill-O show:
Bill-O gushes about Cameron’s latest mega-hit with the Christianist set, Fireproof, which took in an astonishing 33% of the take garnered by a movie about talking Chihuahuas and 15% of the weekly haul of a cartoon featuring zoo animals on the lam.
