by hilzoy
You’ve probably already heard that Rush Limbaugh said that Michael J. Fox was faking his symptoms in the ad he shot for Claire McCaskill:
“Now, this is Michael J. Fox. He’s got Parkinson’s disease. And in this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. I know he’s got it and he’s raising money for it, but when I’ve seen him in public, I’ve never seen him betray any of the symptoms. But this commercial, he — he’s just all over the place. He can barely control himself. He can control himself enough to stay in the frame of the picture, and he can control himself enough to keep his eyes right on the lens, the teleprompter. But his head and shoulders are moving all over the place, and he is acting like his disease is deteriorating because Jim Talent opposes research that would help him, Michael J. Fox, get cured. (…)
So this is really shameless, folks, this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting, one of the two.”
And you’ve probably also heard that Fox’s tremors aren’t the result of not taking the medication but a side effect of taking it. In other words: Limbaugh is, as usual, full of it, and a jerk to boot.
But if you haven’t yet seen the video of Limbaugh saying these things, you really should. He’s flailing around, doing what I imagine is supposed to be an imitation of Michael J. Fox, but in fact looks more like an octopus having a seizure. It’s really jawdroppingly appalling.
What has always amazed me about Limbaugh, and some other similar commentators, is how they manage to convince their audiences that they are on the side of morality and decency, when if one thought for a moment about what they actually do, as opposed to the alleged dreadfulness of the people they are describing, it would be pretty clear that morality has nothing to do with them. It’s the same paradox you find in any hate-filled demagogue: as long as people listen only to what he is saying about others, and focus on those others and their sins, he is popular in a way that he would never be if people just stopped and asked: what does the fact that he spends all day whipping up hatred and spreading calumny say about him? And why would I listen to someone whose idea of morality seems to involve nothing but anger, contempt, venom and self-righteousness?
Often, it’s illuminating to watch someone like that with the sound turned off. But this video could do the trick as well. It’s really awful.
And Michael J. Fox’s response, which is also on the video I linked to, is a complete contrast: gracious, generous, and somewhat self-effacing. (I didn’t think much of Sam Seder, though — he comes on about halfway through the clip, and as far as I’m concerned I might have stopped watching then.)
Another minor point: suppose, for the moment, that Limbaugh had been right to think that Fox’s twitchings were caused by Parkinson’s, not by the medication, and that his going off meds would have exacerbated them. I think it’s fascinating that Limbaugh believes that for Michael J. Fox to stop taking his medication, to show the effects of his disease unfiltered, would be in some way dishonest. As far as I can tell, that’s a lot like saying that people with disabilities ought to hide them from the rest of us; that showing themselves as they are, with their disabilities in plain view, is automatically manipulative, or an attempt to play the victim. I would have thought that someone with a serious and disabling disease like Parkinson’s had enough on his plate without having to satisfy Rush Limbaugh’s requirements on how the disabled should comport themselves. Shows how much I know.
I will say what Timothy Noah of Slate doesn’t want us to say. Rush Limbaught is in fact, an insufferable buffoon and a moron. I will also take it a step farther. Anyone who listens to his show on a regular basis and agrees with anything he says, are the people who should be voted off of “Intelligence Island”. They are, in a word, idiots. Each and every one.
There. I’ve said it.
Michael J. Fox’s response was gracious.
Hilzoy, this post is restrained, and decent, but eloquently firm.
I disagree with both of you.
Limbaugh could be dropped with one punch and then made to bleed from the ears with a couple of hard kicks to the head.
He is a cocksucking (if the name Limbaugh gets through the servers at work, so should this) piece of subhuman filth.
Hogs across the country are butchered every day who have more decency than he does.
Thanks for listening.
John: I was sort of waiting for your response to this one 😉 As for mine, there’s something about writing this:
— that makes me suddenly feel that I just might possibly want to be a little restrained.
You are a better person than I am.
But sometimes a person just needs to rid the world of Liberty Valence, toss Poppie the carbine, and head back to the ranch.
Amen to the last paragraph.
Above all, I find the accusation that Fox was “faking it” most appalling. No one with any serious medical condition need go through accusations that they are putting on an act. Many people are pressured out of checking into possible medical ills because it’s “all in their head,” an “act” put on for sympathy, because in American society we are supposed to be TOUGH and in total control. It’s an attitude that is unendingly harmful, unfortunately for people in the beginning stages of discovering these illnesses. And when someone intentionalyl furthers this sort of thinking, it sets me off.
Your last paragraph rings true. Thank you for it.
John: I should probably add that if some deity with deeply perverse taste in humanoids were to decide to rapture Rush Limbaugh, I would not be too terribly upset.
Above all, I find the accusation that Fox was “faking it” most appalling. No one with any serious medical condition need go through accusations that they are putting on an act. Many people are pressured out of checking into possible medical ills because it’s “all in their head,” an “act” put on for sympathy, because in American society we are supposed to be TOUGH and in total control.
What’s “tough-guy” Limbaugh going to do next? Dump on a handicapped person? (A “cripple”?) Guess he must be sad Christopher Reeve is gone….
Limbaugh could be dropped with one punch and then made to bleed from the ears with a couple of hard kicks to the head.
Just because it needed to be said a second time.
Words fail for Michael Fox. An extraordinary decency, casual coutage with grace. One of the good things in my life. A hero.
The people who listen to Rush say he’s funny.
He sells calculated cruelty and sadism. U try to have some compassion for his listenersm, but they are not downtrodden peasants, desperate for relief. Someone without fluency in English could listen to the voice of Rush and understand why we torture. I think our President is a cruel man. Amazing times.
What’s “tough-guy” Limbaugh going to do next? Dump on a handicapped person?
That’s Ann Coulter’s job.
His “apology” asserted that if, then, Fox wasn’t faking it, then he’s just being manipulated by politicians for political gain. Because those with debilitating illnesses must also have lesser brains and therefore decreased free will. They can’t make a decision on their own (unless of course they agree with you), they must be manipulated by others. It’s sickening, but perhaps I’m just overly sensitive to this sort of thing — Rush is outright about it, but it’s a fairly pervasive attitude.
So Limbaugh is getting his jollies beating up on sick people…what else is new?
What has always amazed me about Limbaugh, and some other similar commentators, is how they manage to convince their audiences that they are on the side of morality and decency
Some of it comes down to them spending most of their time convincing their listeners that all other information sources are evil. The amount of time they spend attacking any media outlets or sources that disagree with them is incredible.
But if you look at what they do, it’s all about providing a set of circular arguments to defend against facts. They’re irrefutable from outside of the looped world of insanity they’ve created. Unless you can completely crack their faith in their prophet, er, pundit, you have no way to attack any particular point or even get traction.
Basically, I’m saying that there are large portions of public who, from a psychological perspective, should be thought of as cult members rather than political partisans. Bastards like Limbaugh are every bit as dangerous as the cult leaders we rightly decry. And, breaking people out of their grasp is just as difficult.
Though I don’t agree in any way with Limbaugh’s views on this, I think you mischaracterize the logic a bit in your last paragraph. The point he was attempting to make was not that people with disabilities should keep them hidden, but that Fox was exaggerating the true cost of his illness (and thus exaggerating his need for stem cell research) by rendering it ‘med-free’, which is not a condition he truly lives in. Again, this view is simply factually false and for many reasons I’d have no sympathy for it anyway, but while we’re kicking him we should understand what for.
Limbaugh is the Roman Coliseum of our modern times. He creates an enormous amount of blood and cruelty, but it’s all in good fun and everyone’s entertained., so hey it’s okay.
This type of one-sided post is exactly why this site should have regularly-contributing conservative commentators. Here we have Media Matters and Keith Olbermann and Sam Seder and Hilzoy on the left, and a Rush Limbaugh video snippet on the right. How could it be more fair and balanced?
Limbaugh also said this: “I did some research today, and I found his book that was published. It’s ‘Lucky Man,’ 2002, but he admits in the book that before Senate subcommittee on appropriations I think in 1999, September of 1999, he did not take his medication for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors of Parkinson’s disease illustrated, [which is a fair point] which was what he has done in the commercials that are running for Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent…” which is where he stuck his foot his foot in his mouth because he is engaging in pure speculation.
Fox confirmed Diane Sawyer’s show that that was what he did when he testified in front of Congress. With the McCaskill commercial, Michael J. Fox has now entered the political fray, and because he has admitted going off his meds in the past to exaggerate the effects of his unfortunate and irreversible disease in order to affect legislation, it’s a completely fair question to ask whether or not he was off his meds in this commercial. In the same segment, Olbermann also showed a two-year old commercial of Fox supporting Specter. The involuntary movements were perceptible, but not by much. You could tell that Fox was trying to hold it in. The difference between 2004 for Specter and 2006 for McCaskill is huge.
Personally, I really do want to know if Fox was medicated or not in the McCaskill commercial. If he takes his meds and functions reasonably well in everyday life but with small tremors, but goes off the meds for a few days and shakes all over the place in a political commercial, to me that is deceptive. It may reflect the worst parts of the disease but it doesn’t reflect how he actually lives. I think it’s reasonable to know one way or the other. While he’s at it, perhaps Fox himself could tell us whether the meds exaggerate or lessen his movements, rather than having armchair MDs make such pronouncements as if they were fact. That’s not much better than Limbaugh.
Another thing. I don’t have much of a problem with Fox exaggerating his disease in front of Congress, because our elected representatives face exaggerations all the time, and they should be discerning enough to know the real from the theater. It’s part of their jobs. But I do have a problem with Fox doing it in front of everyday people. He is using and exploiting his disease to manipulate voters, and there are questions about the content of his words. If this is considered OK by the panel of Hilzoyical ethicists, then it would also be perfectly within bounds to show paraplegics or victims of ALS who oppose on principle the federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines and who instead put their support behind other avenues of stem cell research.
If this is indeed the next new era of political advertising, well so be it. But in all fairness, let’s usher in all the victims, showing them all in their worst unmedicated ravages and have a real political free-for-all. Civility has already been shot to hell anyway. What can a few more circuses hurt.
Disclaimers: This does not mean I support Limbaugh’s claim that Fox was “acting” or that he was off his meds, nor do I approve of Limbaugh’s attempts to simulate Fox’s movements.
it would also be perfectly within bounds to show paraplegics or victims of ALS who oppose on principle the federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines and who instead put their support behind other avenues of stem cell research.
They already do. Did you not get those ads in Seattle?
Oh, and also:
Another thing. I don’t have much of a problem with Fox exaggerating his disease in front of Congress, because our elected representatives face exaggerations all the time, and they should be discerning enough to know the real from the theater. It’s part of their jobs.
Such charming naivete!
CB: I’m really unsure as to why my going off antihistimines to reveal the worst side of the common cold counts as deceptive. It would be a lie if I claimed I was on antihistimines, though I really was not — that would be deceptive.
Look, it seems as though putting up anyone who is a sympathy case — be it Fox or Reeves or someone with ALS — is in some sense emotionally manipulative, but surely it is no more manipulative for the person to exhibit the symptoms of the disease, when those symptoms are a daily reality for them.
Do you really want to get in an argument about how much MJ Fox was trembling? Maybe we can slo-mo the tape and critique the credibility of every swerve. And then somehow perhaps we will find grounds for deep indignation.
Is that really where you want to go with this?
CB: Incidentally, who is the “panel of Hilzoyical ethicists”? I sense something not very nice was meant by this.
He’s back! Sort of. Over at TiO.
Not that you need my two cents, but here they are anyway:
Limbaugh is just one of those people who cannot ever be wrong. Point out where he’s wrong, and he’ll attack your motives for pointing it out.
On the other hand, though, we all know that Parkinson’s is not degenerative, and we all know that people who suffer from Parkinson’s exhibit exactly the same set and degree of symptoms at every hour of the day and night. So of course he was faking it.
Hopefully I don’t need to close the irony tag.
I think more shocking than Limbaugh’s behavior is that Olbermann actually sounded like a journalist, there, for a minute or two. Until the bit where he had Seder on; then he reverted to the Keith I expect to see on TV. Limbaugh’s behavior is absolutely unsurprising, but not unrevolting.
Charles, I think you’re in the wrong, here. But welcome back all the same.
“Limbaugh is just one of those people who cannot ever be wrong. Point out where he’s wrong, and he’ll attack your motives for pointing it out.”
This is the standard tactic of the right nowadays, from the top down. Forget the facts, just state that the other person is an American-hating, terrorist loving, vengeful, bookselling liberal.
CB, appreciate the sincere attempt to be thoughtful, but personally, I think it was entirely approrpiate for Fox to go off meds so that the full impact of the disease can be seen. After all, it isn’t just about him, but about everyone with Parkinson’s and not everyone can afford meds.
BTW, IIRC, Limbaugh also did make some snide comments about Christopher Reeve back in the day.
And where are the comments about Limbaugh being an entertainer and not to be taken seriously that I have seen in the past. This man is dangerous.
And really ludicrous was the Sawyer interview that ABC aired with Sean Hannity. Be serious, Hannity is an unbiased source to go to to discuss Republican malfeasance?
This type of one-sided post is exactly why this site should have regularly-contributing conservative commentators.
… because people who makes fun of Parkinson’s disease deserve a robust partisan defense.
I suppose I should also say that it should be possible to opposed stem cell research on whatever grounds one is opposed to them. If one is opposed to stem cell research simply because one thinks Michael J. Fox is faking it, or some similar silly-assed reason, then one should be brave enough to say it straight out like that.
“to oppose”, as opposed to what I wrote, above.
I don’t listen to talk radio at all, so I have never heard him – not even once. And I really like Fox – always have. With that said, when you use your illness to promote a candidate you do open yourself up to this kind of thing. I can see some level of wrongness on both sides here.
Just as both sides portray the whole stem cell issue incorrectly. Republicans are stupid to portray an embryo as life, and Democrats are stupid to say that restrictions on federal funding represent a ban on research.
Two weeks to go… There is worse coming I am sure – from both sides.
I’m quoting extensively from CB’s first comment:
CB: Limbaugh also said this: “I did some research today, and I found his book that was published. It’s ‘Lucky Man,’ 2002, but he admits in the book that before Senate subcommittee on appropriations I think in 1999, September of 1999, he did not take his medication for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors of Parkinson’s disease illustrated,…” Fox confirmed Diane Sawyer’s show that that was what he did when he testified in front of Congress.
Link? In Lucky Man, he said this was in front of the Senate in 1999. If there were other occasions, I’d like to see them clearly identified.
Here’s how he describes it in his book:
Fox: “I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling.”
CB: With the McCaskill commercial, Michael J. Fox has now entered the political fray, and because he has admitted going off his meds in the past to exaggerate the effects of his unfortunate and irreversible disease in order to affect legislation, it’s a completely fair question to ask whether or not he was off his meds in this commercial.
I’ve bolded a couple of troublesome words. The word “admitted” implies that he did something sneaky and only owned up to it later. But that’s not the case. He told the Senate subcommittee that he was unmedicated. It’s right there in his testimony. From that transcript:
Fox: “For many people with Parkinson’s, managing their disease is a full-time job; it is a constant balancing act. Too little medicine causes tremors and stiffness, too much medicine produces uncontrollable movement and slurring, and far too often Parkinson’s patients wait and wait (as I am right now) for their medicines to kick in.”
CB: In the same segment, Olbermann also showed a two-year old commercial of Fox supporting Specter. The involuntary movements were perceptible, but not by much. You could tell that Fox was trying to hold it in. The difference between 2004 for Specter and 2006 for McCaskill is huge.
Oh, for God’s sake. He has early onset Parkinson’s. His disease could progress that badly in two years. He also, like any other patient, has good and bad days.
And most importantly, the flailing and tics in the commercial are NOT from Parkinson’s itself. These are the side effects of long-term medication. If Fox had deliberately left himself unmedicated, you would have seen true Parkinson’s symptoms: tremors (which != the large scale twitching and flailing of his drug-induced chorea) and stiffness. He wouldn’t have been able to speak as fluently as he did if he was off his meds.
“Could a patient on Parkinson’s show such symptoms even while he was on his medication? . … William J. Weiner M.D., professor and chairman of the department of neurology at the University of Maryland Medical Center [and] director of the Parkinson’s clinic there, [says]:
‘What you are seeing on the video is side effects of the medication. He has to take that medication to sit there and talk to you like that. … He’s not over-dramatizing. … [Limbaugh] is revealing his ignorance of Parkinson’s disease, because people with Parkinson’s don’t look like that at all when they’re not taking their medication. They look stiff, and frozen, and don’t move at all. … People with Parkinson’s, when they’ve had the disease for awhile, are in this bind, where if they don’t take any medication, they can be stiff and hardly able to talk. And if they do take their medication, so they can talk, they get all of this movement, like what you see in the ad.'” (source)
CB: Personally, I really do want to know if Fox was medicated or not in the McCaskill commercial.
He was talking well and was exhibiting the grand tics and flails of drug-induced chorea, not the stiff immobility of unmedicated Parkinson’s. Thus, he was not unmedicated. You’re welcome.
If he takes his meds and functions reasonably well in everyday life but with small tremors, but goes off the meds for a few days and shakes all over the place in a political commercial, to me that is deceptive.
Tremors and chorea are different symptoms. Please be more clear. And as neurologists have already said, if he went off his meds for a few days, he would not have been able to function as well as he did in that commercial.
CB:Another thing. I don’t have much of a problem with Fox exaggerating his disease in front of Congress, because our elected representatives face exaggerations all the time, and they should be discerning enough to know the real from the theater.
Are you now claiming he was deliberately exaggerating his symptoms? That’s different from showing the effects of being unmedicated (which, as noted, is laughable if you know anything about this disease).
CB: It’s part of their jobs. But I do have a problem with Fox doing it in front of everyday people. He is using and exploiting his disease to manipulate voters, and there are questions about the content of his words. If this is considered OK by the panel of Hilzoyical ethicists, then it would also be perfectly within bounds to show paraplegics or victims of ALS who oppose on principle the federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines and who instead put their support behind other avenues of stem cell research.
Do you have any evidence that Fox deliberately exaggerated his symptoms? Medical experts have stated CLEARLY that he displayed typical features of being on Parkinson’s drugs for years.
You know, maybe Bob Dole’s arm isn’t as bunged up as he claims it is. Maybe he pitches a mean horseshoe on his lawn at home when no media are around. Maybe he exaggerates the pain and limited mobility, even though medical experts say he’s displaying the kind of symptoms you would expect from a man who suffered his kind of injuries. I mean, if we can’t give Michael J. Fox the benefit of the doubt, why should we extend that courtesy to anyone else?
The difference between 2004 for Specter and 2006 for McCaskill is huge.
Do you not understand that Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease? Or do you not understand the meaning of the term “degenerative”?
The difference between 2004 for Specter and 2006 for McCaskill is huge.
Parkinsons is progressive. It gets worse as time goes on. In a couple of years, Fox will likely be unable to speak at all. Sometime after that, when pretty much every simple pleasure in life has been taken from him, he’ll die.
That’s Parkinsons.
Regarding Limbaugh:
I used to listen to his show now and then. I stopped when he broadcast a parody of “Luck Be A Lady”. His parody, entitled “Lick On A Lady”, was a smirking, smutty little ditty about a fictional lesbian affair between Janet Reno and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Charming.
Limbaugh is a reflexively conservative, self-aggrandizing blowhard, with a drug problem and what appears to be some profound issues with women. None of that bothers me. You can find guys like that at the end of the bar somewhere any night of the week. Not my problem.
My problem with Limbaugh is that he is indecent, and that he has chosen public political discourse as the arena in which he will make his indecency manifest. He and his ilk have made cheap, corrupt indecency the normal coin of political conversation.
Are there equally venal commentators on the left? Yes, there are. None — not one — have anything like Limbaugh’s audience or influence. Limbaugh is an honorary member of Congress. His show is broadcast, every day, on Armed Forces Radio. He is courted by people occupying the highest levels of power in this country. Make of that what you will.
Limbaugh is a creep. Worse, he is a creep for a living. He soils and curdles everything he touches, and appeals to what is soiled and curdled in his audience. That is the source and basis of his power.
He is an indecent man, and he makes everything around him indecent. He appeals to what is indecent in each of us, and makes indecency acceptable, even laudable, in public political conversation.
That’s why I don’t like him.
Thanks –
What Russell said.
And why would I listen to someone whose idea of morality seems to involve nothing but anger, contempt, venom and self-righteousness?
Brilliantly said.
Was Limbaugh being deceptive when he didn’t attribute the loss of his hearing to being on his “medication”? Was he being deceptive when he sent his maid out to score his dope? Who the hell is Rush Limbaugh to call anyone deceptive?
And why the hell is this hate monger on Armed Forces Radio? Is it the goal of the military to make our soldiers hate half of the American people?
Charles Bird, why don’t you just fuck off? If that was uncivil, I apologize.
Pug,
That’s at least two violations of the posting rules in one comment. Do it again and you won’t be in a position to apologize, as you’ll be banned. As the contents of this thread should illustrate, there are plenty of ways to express your displeasure with Limbaugh that don’t require the use of profanity or personal attacks on other commenters.
CB writes: “If he takes his meds and functions reasonably well in everyday life but with small tremors, but goes off the meds for a few days and shakes all over the place in a political commercial, to me that is deceptive”
What part of “progressive disease” don’t you understand, CB?
Are you under the illusion that Fox isn’t going to continue getting worse until he can no longer function at all? He’s a young man, likely in excellent health otherwise, and will probably live a long time during which his condition will deteriorate continuously.
My problem with Limbaugh is that he is indecent, and that he has chosen public political discourse as the arena in which he will make his indecency manifest.
there’s another variable in the equation: his listeners. he wouldn’t be popular without them, and he wouldn’t have influence if they didn’t want him to have that influence. but, well, he is popular and influential. there’s a large group of people who enjoy the smell of the crap Rush shovels.
and that’s a problem many millions of times larger than Rush himself.
cleek,
I agree. Limbaugh is just one manifestation of the intentionally obnoxious, skirting the line on racist, and preaching to the conservative choir streak that has been around for some time. Others have had the same spell of popularity and media stardom (e.g., Morton Downey, Jr., Andrew Dice Clay). Given the perpetual demand for this type, I’m not expecting it to end anytime soon.
there’s another variable in the equation: his listeners.
Speaking of, anyone still describe themselves as “dittoheads”?
Aside from the issue that the symptoms of the disease and the side effects of the medication both vary and worsen over time, there’s also the question of what you think the difference between Fox’s ads for Specter and McCaskill represents, Charles. Are you saying Fox agreed to make an ad for Specter but thought, “Ha, I’ve agreed to make this ad, but since he’s a Republican I’ll control my symptoms to make sure it’s not a very good ad!”?
CB: “Personally, I really do want to know if Fox was medicated or not in the McCaskill commercial. If he takes his meds and functions reasonably well in everyday life but with small tremors, but goes off the meds for a few days and shakes all over the place in a political commercial, to me that is deceptive.”
As other people have said, but it seems to bear repeating: the movements are side effects of the medication. Of course he was medicated. Otherwise he’d be displaying completely different symptoms.
If Rush Limbaugh had bothered to do the slightest checking before saying what he did, he would have known that.
And I linked the Olbermann video because it was the only video I could find of Rush’s performance. I actually looked around for another one, because I would rather have linked to something with nothing but Limbaugh’s flailings and Fox’s response. I couldn’t find one, though.
I’m glad to see you back, Charles, but fwiw: I was criticizing only Limbaugh, not ‘the right’. I explained why Limbaugh was wrong (“And you’ve probably also heard that Fox’s tremors aren’t the result of not taking the medication but a side effect of taking it.”) I linked to the only video I could find. It also had Sam Seder on it, but I said that I didn’t think much of what he said, and that I didn’t recommend watching it. But somehow this counts as enlisting Seder in my one-sided campaign.
Whatever.
Personally, I think that Rush’s conduct is a pretty one-sided issue, and I don’t see why it’s a left-right issue, since I can’t imagine why conservatives in general would feel any call to defend him here. If you wrote a post about the evils of some person on the left who had done something similar, I would hope that I’d just agree with you, not call it ‘one-sided’.
OCSteve: “With that said, when you use your illness to promote a candidate you do open yourself up to this kind of thing.”
Really? You open yourself up to false and ridiculous accusations that you are exaggerating your illness, that you are acting?
I can see opening yourself to being criticized for the content of what you say or the medium in which you chose to say it, but not to what Limbaugh said.
That said, please tell me which has more impact: someone explaining the effects of Parkinson’s or someone who is a visual testimony to the effects of Parkinson’s.
Oh: and I completely agree with Andrew about Pug’s comments.
How many more days until these damn elections?
Off Topic:
Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President “for torture.” We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we’re party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.
And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue to program.
Via Anderson
This type of one-sided post is exactly why this site should have regularly-contributing conservative commentators
well, Andrew and Von and Sebastian, your predecessor has called you out. Care to call out Hilzoy on her one-sidedness?
[of course, Charles’s failure to notice that the post was titled “Limbaugh” not “MJ Fox” is to be expected. but i’m sure there’s something that one of you can find that was inappropriate or unfair about what Hilzoy wrote, can’t you.]
on the same vein, CB’s comment is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the modern Republican party. He is incapable of recognizing that one of the most powerful non-governmental figures in the party is a mean-spirited thug. So anyone who attacks him must be “one-sided” and must be attacked in return.
Shorter Charles Bird, had he lived in 1934: ‘Why Does Our Joyless President Never Dance?’
OCSteve says I’m a liberal, so I’m exempt.
See a tongue-in-cheek visual that gives Rush Limbaugh a dose of his own medicine…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
I don’t see why it’s a left-right issue, since I can’t imagine why conservatives in general would feel any call to defend him here.
To his adherents, Rush is the infallible voice of the ‘Right’. As others have said, the bubble surrounding Rush and his listeners/cult followers depends entirely on the ABSOLUTE certainty that he is never wrong about anything. Without that, the whole thing comes crashing down. (After all, the only evidence we have that Rush is always right is his own word, and if his word is suspect, then maybe he’s not always right…) Even when Rush is obviously wrong about something, it’s never his fault, or there is some ‘mitigating’ irrelevency that makes everything better, allowing his hapless followers to continue living in Rush’s spiteful, self-contained little world.
It’s really not complicated.
Limbaugh’s a thug. His audiences know he’s a thug. That’s what they like about him.
You remember those budding sociopaths at school who made fun of “Cripples! Gimps!” and thought it was cool to beat up someone who couldn’t fight back?
Well, they grew up to be Rush Limbaugh’s audience.
panel of Hilzoyical ethicists
Boy, lose cable for a week and hilzoy has her own philosophy. Show me where I sign up.
Limbaugh is demonstrating one of the most common traits in Republican leaders: projection.
After all, he exaggerated his own health problems for the sake of narcissistic indulgence and to escape the law. He champions the cause of a president and vice-president who ducked out of the risks that they’re now pushing their counterparts of another generation into when it comes to war, and who are making the risk needlessly worse as they help their buddies enrich themselves int he process. His party’s leaders are now busily blaming the opposition for those leaders’ own lack of interest in sexual harassment of the very sort they were criminalizing in recent years until it became inconvenient to keep covering up. Limbaugh is the senior “independent” voice of a movement led by cowards, scoundrels, and hypocrites. Is it any surprise that they see the world in terms of cowardice, scandal, and hypocrisy? They have no other terms in which to judge, having conditioned themselves out of any sort of empathy or self-restraint. People who value honesty, integrity, and competence associate with them at their own moral risk.
Hilzoyical ethicists, the characteristics of which would include:
a respect for human dignity;
humility in our dealings with foreign countries;
application of gov’t programs based on science, not faith;
a certain skepticism in those who make strong and unlikely claims.
No, I’m not back. Just a short visit.
Did you not get those ads in Seattle?
No, Anarch, haven’t seen ’em.
I’m really unsure as to why my going off antihistimines to reveal the worst side of the common cold counts as deceptive.
Perhaps because common colds, Ara, aren’t progressive and irreversible?
He told the Senate subcommittee that he was unmedicated.
Thanks for the link, Mary. You’re right that he wasn’t being deceptive in his Congressional testimony, and he did say that he was without his medication at the time. Did he tell viewers in the McCaskill ad whether or not he was unmedicated?
Thanks also for the other links, but I would’ve preferred that MJF say it. After all, his political hat is now in the ring. If he wants to raise awareness of Parkinson’s and the treatments and the side effects, then this is the perfect opportunity. With this controversy, Fox can get on any talk show he wants right now and talk about it. I say all of this as a longtime fan of his, and I do respect the guy.
Are you now claiming he was deliberately exaggerating his symptoms?
He admitted that very thing when he stood before Congress. Re the campaign ad, I’m asking–not claiming–whether he was deliberately exaggerating. Limbaugh was the one doing the claiming, and he’s a fool for doing so.
You know, maybe Bob Dole’s arm isn’t as bunged up as he claims it is.
Maybe Bob Dole could go on television and expose his withered right arm in order to lobby for more veterans benefits. That would be the political simile, no?
Of course he was medicated.
Then it wouldn’t have hurt for him to disclose it, Hil. In his 2002 book, he wrote that we went off the meds to exaggerate his movements when he testified before Congress. The can with the worms coming out was opened by him.
On Limbaugh, we don’t disagree on his stupid words and his base antics. Anyone here who thinks I’m defending him is laboring under a whopping misimpression. I listen to talk radio, but I can’t take more than 15 minutes of Limbaugh without hitting another preset (same with Hannity). Limbaugh has major character deficiencies in his personal life, and they can’t help but spill over onto the airwaves. I don’t know what his ratings are, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were in decline.
But amid the idiocy, a valid point was raised. Michael J. Fox has done it in the past, and has admitted so in his own words. I would simply like to know if he did it again in his latest commercial. That is a valid question, and that’s really where I think you’re being one-sided (that, and the monolithically left-wing links). Because if he did purposely exaggerate for the cameras, then he is taking political manipulation to a new and higher level, or lower level as it were.
I don’t know if MJF’s movements are normally like that, and he did say that he has his good and bad days. I truly feel for the guy. My grandmother had the disease, too, but I was young and my parents told me to shush about it, but I could clearly see the debilitating effects and wouldn’t wish them on anyone (well, maybe a few people). But Fox is now in the political arena–just like Cindy Sheehan and others–and I think he should answer some questions.
CB, don’t understand your objection – his medication reportedly makes his condition more visible in this context, not less.
I don’t think he has anything at all to answer for, myself. In fact, until anyone’s foolish enough to actually ask him these questions, I’d be inclined to not care at all what his answers are.
Michael J. Fox is, in fact, suffering from Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s is, possibly, one disease that stem cell research could begin to positively affect. What on earth could his exact state of medication add to this discussion?
I mean, if I allowed my daughter to be filmed for a political ad, would you require that she answer some specific questions as to the exact nature of her disability, or would you possibly grant that maybe that’s an exercise in character assassination?
In his 2002 book, he wrote that we went off the meds to exaggerate his movements when he testified before Congress.
Once again, the medication causes the movements.
But Fox is now in the political arena–just like Cindy Sheehan and others–and I think he should answer some questions.
Including, apparently, every single scurrilous one. The next question for Mr. Fox should obviously be “has your disease prevented you from beating your wife?”
Charles, it seems to me that you’re glossing over a great deal of what posters are saying. That is, you’re hearing the words, but not quite grasping the full implications.
Diseases like these are medicated and the effects of these medications have a wide range of effects that vary from individuals. What he demonstrated is not an unnusual case for someone with his condition. And what he demonstrated is going to happen to him, WITH OR WITHOUT his meds. Why do you think it’s dishonest to show this?
“Admitting” is a loaded term. It seems like you’re just itching to criticize him without understanding the full extent of what he’s going through.
The beauty of all this is that if MJF had said in the commercial that he was on his medications then he would be attacked for misleading people about the disease by being on his meds when he did the commercial. It’s win-win all around.
maybe that’s an exercise in character assassination?
when you get right down to it, political campaigns are character assassination.
Of course, it’s possible that MJF is simply faking Parkinson’s all along, and has long-since abandoned his acting career in anticipation of eventually getting an opportunity to campaign in favor of stem cell research.
It all just depends on how silly and vicious a scenario you’re willing to build. Possibly there do exist one or more people who would be willing to give up millions of perfectly good dollars just to take a point of view Rush disagrees with.
Of course, it’s possible that MJF is simply faking Parkinson’s all along, and has long-since abandoned his acting career in anticipation of eventually getting an opportunity to campaign in favor of stem cell research.
Well, I’m convinced. Who knew Marty McFly was so….diabolical.
Limbaugh, like Coulter, complains about Democrats’ unfair use of “infallible” victims who can’t be criticized (though apparently it was perfectly fine in 2004 when Fox was supporting Specter), but there’s nothing wrong with criticizing the points raised. Respond to the arguments all you like if you disagree.
But when you suggest that Fox is faking his symptoms or that 9/11 widows are glad their husbands are dead, you’re not arguing with what they’re saying, and you’ve gone beyond the bounds of decency.
“I think it’s fascinating that Limbaugh believes that for Michael J. Fox to stop taking his medication, to show the effects of his disease unfiltered, would be in some way dishonest.”
This I think I disagree with though, given the hypothetical and assuming a lack of disclosure. If his medication was an entirely satisfactory one there would be much less force in the argument for stem cell research on the basis of an example of an unmedicated patient.
But the medicine is only a stopgap partial solution with side-effects, so the above is not relevant to anything – Rush’s rhetoric is GIGO, and the exact details of the black box isn’t much of interest to me.
Thanks for the link, Mary. You’re right that he wasn’t being deceptive in his Congressional testimony, and he did say that he was without his medication at the time. Did he tell viewers in the McCaskill ad whether or not he was unmedicated?
It was a thirty second spot, Charles. Was there time? Was there a need? We seem to agree that he’s honest, honourable and even admirable. Why do you think he needed to disclose the dog-bites-man news in the ad that as a patient with Parkinson’s, he was on his medications at the time? It is incredibly unlikely that he was OFF his meds and that the displayed symptoms were because he was off his meds. Several of us have beaten that point into the ground already.
If he wants to raise awareness of Parkinson’s and the treatments and the side effects, then this is the perfect opportunity. With this controversy, Fox can get on any talk show he wants right now and talk about it. I say all of this as a longtime fan of his, and I do respect the guy.
He may yet do this, and he may have already done so. I don’t see why he is morally required to discuss the side effects. It’s a shame that scum like Limbaugh have taken his open, honest statement (not an “admission”) in his book and made him suspect, when a simple Google search would have turned up the transcript I linked.
He admitted that [he was deliberately exaggerating his symptoms] when he stood before Congress. Re the campaign ad, I’m asking–not claiming–whether he was deliberately exaggerating.
“Deliberately exaggerating” seems ambiguous to me. Do you mean that he consciously exaggerated his Parkinson’s symptoms before the subcommittee — the tremors and stiffness — and that he may have consciously exaggerated the chorea (not a Parkinson’s symptom, but a side effect of his medication) in the commmercial? That is, he deliberately made his hands twitch or his arms fling about, just as Limbaugh was doing in that shameful piece of video?
I doubt this because you have said that you respect him, and I don’t think you’d respect someone who would deliberately and consciously exaggerate symptoms using the muscles under his control.
So maybe you meant “deliberately exaggerating” to mean “let nature take its course by not medicating himself.” Fox clearly stated that he did that in 1999. But there is no way for him to honestly say in 2006 “I went off my meds in the McCaskill commercial. My flailing and jerking were the result of being unmedicated” because that would not be true. Neurologists have said that those symptoms are the result of years of medication, not the result of going unmedicated.
CB: “But Fox is now in the political arena–just like Cindy Sheehan and others–and I think he should answer some questions.”
What questions would those be, Charles? “Hey Mike! Are you really as sick as all that?”
So then, are we to conclude that you are quite OK with the public, broadcast mockery of an afflicted person’s disease when they advocate for funding support in connection with a political campaign? I notice you have gone out of your way to avoid any approbation for Rush Limbaugh or his comments, but why the “questions” about Michael J. Fox? Or do you feel that once “politics” enters into the picture in any wise, all notions of civility or decency get to be thrown out the window? Or is it only when the issue at hand (Federal funding for stem-cell research, in this case) might reflect poorly on Republicans?
“Maybe Bob Dole could go on television and expose his withered right arm in order to lobby for more veterans benefits”
And if he did so (let’s say, for decorum’s sake, keeping his sleeve rolled down) – would you criticise him for it?
CB – “exaggerate” has a specific meaning that implies deception. Do you have any evidence that MJF intended to deceive? How is manifesting the symptoms of a disease, regardless of one’s state of medication, deceptive? You are speculating about intent based on assumptions about MJF’s alternatives without regard to what those alternatives really are. He could appear in the commercials twitching or nearly immobilized, and that’s pretty much it. The right apparently thinks he should have appeared without manifesting any symptoms of his disease or side effects of medication, which is clearly impossible. Let’s face it – the real issue is that he made a commercial at all, instead of vanishing into the mist like a good little gimp.
Rilkefan posted pretty much exactly what I was going to say, right as I was about to.
Are you now claiming he was deliberately exaggerating his symptoms?
He admitted that very thing when he stood before Congress.
If the “admission” you refer to is what is in Mary’s cite upthread, than you are wrong. He did not exaggerate anything, nor did he claim to exaggerate anything. Exactly the opposite, he presented the situation precisely as it actually was.
He did not take his meds, no doubt at the cost of great discomfort to himself, so that his audience could see the symptoms of the disease. No exaggeration.
He told them he was not on his meds. No deception.
Re the campaign ad, I’m asking–not claiming–whether he was deliberately exaggerating
Doesn’t seem like a dime’s worth of difference to me. Bad form, man.
Fox is sick. His disease forces him to choose between a combination of immobility and spastic tics, and constant uncontrollable motion. Eventually it will kill him. He’s not exaggerating anything, what you saw in the ad is what the disease looks like.
Is this really a battle you want to fight?
He did not take his meds, no doubt at the cost of great discomfort to himself, so that his audience could see the symptoms of the disease. No exaggeration.
Some might even label that “courageous”.
Am I the only person who doesn’t see any inherent problem with that? Bob Dole lost the use of his arm in combat fair and square. I can think of plenty of policy positions which the condition of his arm combined with his celebrity would (legitimately) help to illustrate on TV. It doesn’t seem worth getting worked up over.
And wasn’t it Bob Dole who went on TV as a pitchman for Viagra? (To a lack of criticism, I recall – lotta jokes, though, but no public insults!) At least shilling for veterans’ benefits would be a worthier cause than merely lining the pockets of Behemoth Pharma.
Bob Dole did go on television and make a pitch for a particular medication. But that was for another withered part of his body.
D’oh, Jay C wins
Oh, for pete’s sake.
Quoth the Bird:
He did no such thing, and he admitted no such thing. Shame on you, Charles.
Shame on you.
Charles has done what bullies and their enablers always try to do: move the converstaion from the bully to a discussion of how the victim is at fault.
Charles, you reason like a twelve-year-old. A not very nice twelve-year-old. I assume that you listen to Rush because you enjoy him. That means you take a vicarious pleasure in bullying. When people object to Rush the Bully’s behavior you respond exactly the way the middle school supporters of a middle school bully would respond.
1. Say that everyone does it
2. change the converstaion so that it is about the victim
3. make the victim look bad
4. pretend that the bullying incident is an isolated event and not part of a pattern
5. pretend that it is no reflection on you that you like the bully and rationalize on his behalf.
Would you tolerate this sort of behavior in your daughters? Either the bullying itself or the rationalizing about it?
[Tribalism]
The thing is they presume to lecture us on decency and honor. And morality.
[/Tribalism]
What’s going on with that RS thread Slarti links? None of it seems to make any sense.
(And CC, don’t close your tribalism tags so quickly — you’re going to need them in the coming months.)
c’mon, now, folks.
You can’t act too surprised about the filth spewing out of his mouth now.
He has always carried on this way–maybe you didn’t notice how ugly it was over the years, but it was always there, plain to be seen.
It’s just that hard times bring it out more clearly.
Still, if you are seeing him more clearly now for what he has always been, then maybe in the long run you’ll know better what to make of him.
It’s RS; I don’t think it’s supposed to make sense. They’ve gone balls-to-the-wall insane and they’re in your face about it.
A blast from the past:
See? A bully only to the thin-skinned. Classic. It’s the target’s fault.
yup.
you’re not learning anything from this that wasn’t obvious a long time ago.
why he still has the audience he does–and is still admitted into polite company–is beyond me.
Really? You open yourself up to false and ridiculous accusations that you are exaggerating your illness, that you are acting?
Politics these days seems to be all about false and ridiculous accusations. I haven’t seen a campaigne commercial this season that does not have at least some false and ridiculous accusations – from both sides.
Any celeb who inserts themselves into a hot-button policy debate is going to catch flack from one side or the other. I’ve never seem Fox in person, but Limbaugh apparently has – so he has at least some basis for his opinion – wrong as it is. I didn’t read is as wild speculation, I read it as hey, I’ve seen him in public and he does not act that way – why does he look like that on this commercial. Stupid and crass? Yes. But not entirely groundless.
OCSteve says I’m a liberal, so I’m exempt
I believe I said “left of center”. I certainly don’t recall calling you a liberal. I’ve never been able to get search to work here or I would track it down… Maybe it was something like ‘liberal for a military officer’. In any case I apologize if I did call you that and you take offense at it.
I take it kid is talking about Limbaugh here; but given mattbastard’s comment immediately above, kid’s comment applies to Charles Bird in about the same degree.
Steve,
No offense taken. My comment was meant entirely in jest.
That’s all beside the point, it seems to me. The fact that Limbaugh has a predictable pattern of abusive behavior towards anyone who disagrees doesn’t make the abusive behavior ok. Fox probably knew he’d be villified. That doesn’t lessen how bad the vilifiers are. And anyway the discussion shouldn’t be about Fox because he didn’t do anything wrong. Rush did something wrong.
OCSteve: “I’ve never been able to get search to work here or I would track it down…”
Try putting “foo bar site:obsidianwings.blogs.com” into google – it works well for me.
Fox probably knew he’d be villified. That doesn’t lessen how bad the vilifiers are. And anyway the discussion shouldn’t be about Fox because he didn’t do anything wrong. Rush did something wrong.
I.e., mocking cripples and sick people. There’s a fairly broad line between criticism and mocking, which Limbaugh crossed, with lights flashing and horns a blaring…
You can also use Google’s Advanced Search if you can’t recall the syntax.
Try putting “foo bar site:obsidianwings.blogs.com” into google – it works well for me
Awesome! Thanks for the tip.
What’s going on with that RS thread Slarti links? None of it seems to make any sense.
This statement is true for all n=”RS thread.”
Charles, you’re making less and less sense. In your latest post, you said:
[Ara]I’m really unsure as to why my going off antihistimines to reveal the worst side of the common cold counts as deceptive.
[Charles]Perhaps because common colds, Ara, aren’t progressive and irreversible?
What does the severity of the disease have to do with the right way to demonstrate its effects? Ara implied a scenario in which, for some reason, she wished to show how bad the effects of the common cold are. That implied scenario need not include an attempt to make the audience believe that the common cold was progressive or irreversible. Indeed, I am hard put to imagine such a scenario. Her point was, AFAICT, that showing the symptoms of a disease is a good way to show the symptoms of a disease. Whatever those symptoms may happen to be.
And later, you said:
Maybe Bob Dole could go on television and expose his withered right arm in order to lobby for more veterans benefits. That would be the political simile, no?
It would be a more exact analogy (not simile), yes. But since Dole did in fact use his withered arm for political effect (to showcase his heroism), the analogy is reasonably close as is. One claimed illness used for political effect, compared to another claimed illness used for a different political effect. Would you say that the analogy was a poor one because the illnesses were different? Then why do you say it is poor because the political effect is different? Of course, the closer the facts, the more perfect the analogy, but this one works fine without being perfect, as do most analogies.
Finally, you say:
Then it wouldn’t have hurt for him to disclose [that he was medicated], Hil. In his 2002 book, he wrote that we went off the meds to exaggerate his movements when he testified before Congress. The can with the worms coming out was opened by him.
I suppose it wouldn’t have hurt, but it’s hard to see how it would have helped. “Hi, I’m Michael J. Fox, and I’m here on my normal medication, by the way, in case you were wondering, or planning to accuse me of some weird kind of deceit.” I mean, huh? Being on his meds is the norm. When he went off them, then it made sense to note that, and he did. And being a normal human being, he probably assumed without even thinking about it that other normal human beings would make the normal, natural assumption that everything was normal.
In other words, you’re blaming him for not expressly saying that it was a normal day. Are there any other unbased scandals he should have defused, or any other points of the status quo he should have highlighted? Like, “I’m Michael J. Fox, and I’m on my meds today, as usual. Also, I’m not being impersonated by anybody, and I haven’t raped my daughter today. By the way, I haven’t been coerced into making this statement, and I’m not under the influence of hypnotic chemicals.” We could have ALL public figures make these disclaimers ALL the time — but why?
Redstate seems to have jumped the gun in their assessment of voter response to the MJF ad:
Right. — Letting people know the exact effects of one’s disease is “exaggeration.” It is not exaggeration, it is letting you see the disease unfiltered. Most people do not understand the effects of many chronic and terminal conditions out there. And many people who make no effort to hide those effects are criticized, because failing to hide those effects is really just acting out for sympathy.
This is not a left-right issue, and I see no reason to make it that way. This isn’t even an issue of Rush being exceptionally bad. He’s only making obvious several attitudes that are common in American society. They are subtler in everyday life, but ever-present.
Redstate seems to have jumped the gun in their assessment of voter response to the MJF ad
It’s ok, Rove has assured everyone that the Republicans will hold both houses of Congress this fall so we won’t have to start our long, slow, march back to the national nightmare of peace and prosperity for at least two more years.
Well, the left (or Harold Ford Jr., at least) does march to the
beat of a different (tom tom) drummer – just ask the RNC.
OT: feeling too cheery? go read How To Steal An Election.
We could have ALL public figures make these disclaimers ALL the time — but why?
because then people would have nothing at all to complain about, ever. utopia!
Thank you Mary for so clearly correcting our Charles Bird. To rephrase Charles’ opening line; just what this site needs, another right wing commentator who can’t get the facts straight.
Thank you mattttbastard for the wonderful quote in which Charles reminds us of how “factual” Limbaugh is. Limbaugh deliberately distorts facts, or just plain makes them up, every day on his show and essentially never corrects himself (even when he does, as he did with Fox, it is accompanied with another bogus remark to show he is still allegedly right in a larger sense).
It is nuts to claim that Fox, who told Congress during his testimony that he had deliberately not taken his medications so that the full effect of his disease would be apparent, is in fact “exaggerating” and somehow had to “admit” that he had done this sneaky thing. Right. I am waiting for Charles to do his best immitation of Limbagh admitting to factual error and correcting himself……..
Plus the simple fact that the medications, at the current stage of his disease which is several years after his appearance in Congress, now causes the symptoms. Without the meds, he freezes up and can barely move (or speak) at all. Wa Post: “Contrary to the charge that Fox might not take his medicine to enhance his symptoms, the medicine produces some of the uncontrolled body movements.”
Plus he made the same sort of commercial for Arlen Specter a few years ago, and for some reason Limbaugh and his sycophants saw no reason to complain.
So dear righty commentators, tell me why its OK for Specter but not for McCaskill? Or were those silly Dems just too slow to figure out that the sick and infirm are fair game should they dare to speak out?
______
And Seder’s appearance with Olberman in the video linked by Hilzoy is pretty clear and mild stuff (Seder can be off the wall — he was not at all in that segment). He makes an essential point about Limbaugh and the effectiveness of his hate speech — that it serves as a device to enable his listeners to insulate themselves from facts. Let’s make fun of sick people and baselessly accuse them of deceit rather than talk about the issue of stem cell research, which involves all those inconvenient facts.
And the tactic works — so much of the news coverage is now about the alleged “reaction” to Fox’s commercial and about the charge by Limbaugh that he’s just “acting” (with little commentary on how false and dishonest that charge is. “Balance” does not permit it.)
Seder can be off the wall — he was not at all in that segment
i turned him off after what might have been his first sentence – his remark about Rush being upset because Fox gets his meds legally.
So dear righty commentators, tell me why its OK for Specter but not for McCaskill?
Well, duh, IOKIYAR. Or, less cryptic, “we represent what is good and right in the world and therefore whatever we do to win is justified and what the Dems do is not, being on the side of the Devil and Ferrari cake.”
A reader sent in to Talking Points Memo a response to Limbaugh’s further comments on the Michael Fox ad that perfectly echoes my thoughts.
I believe this is similar to what Amanda was saying in a comment above.
The reader who wrote in is too easy on Limbaugh, in my opinion. Limbaugh’s vile imitation of Fox’s jerking movements did mock and insult all Parkinsons’ patients, who know very well how authentic Fox’s symptoms are.
So dear righty commentators, tell me why its OK for Specter but not for McCaskill?
Hmmm…probably it’s best to read all the way through comments before asking questions like that.
David Weigel has the best response to the anti-Fox ad featuring Patricia Heaton and several other ‘pro-life’ celebrities:
This stuff really hits me: Couric interviews Fox.
Here’s hoping for a big backlash against Limbaughism as a result of this.
Btw, what’s the expression about shining in a dirty world? I find Fox’s apparent decency striking.
I’m not hopeful about any backlash. Remember, you’re still hearing arguments against stem cell research that it hasn’t been fruitful. (Um, hello? Isn’t the POINT of research that you try to find out if it’s fruitful or not??)
Portia from Merchant of Venice:
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Here is the deal.
If you think stem cell research is wrong because it causes the death of embryos, who you consider to be genuine humans deserving legal protection, argue for that.
No doubt due to his illness, Fox would like to see stem cell research continue. If you want to make a principled counterargument, based on any principle you like, have at it. You’ll get no objection from me.
If you want to insinuate that Fox is deliberately exaggerating his symptoms in order to gain support for his point of view, the onus is on you to prove that claim. Fox’s appearance and symptoms are completely consistent with Parkinsons. It’s a shitty disease.
If you have any concrete evidence that Fox is deliberately trying to mislead anyone about his condition or the severity of his condition, put it on the table. Statements including verb phrases “could be”, “might be”, or “one might speculate” are excluded. Only provable statements including the verb “is” and only the verb “is” are allowable.
If you don’t have that, but continue to speculate on Fox’s behavior in spite of that lack, you’re a slime merchant and a bottom feeder. I can’t, possibly, see it any other way.
Kindly have the decency to put up or shut up.
THanks –
Great. Matt Lauer and Susan Estrich channel Charles and OCSteve.
Michael Fox has Parkinsons’ disease. For years he has advocated for research for it, including stem cell research, and as an outgrowth of that has campaigned for candidates of both parties who support stem cell research. He doesn’t have to account for anything.
Fox should expect to have his sincerity questioned, to be accused of “exploiting” his condition, because he dares to advocate — openly, consistently, and honestly — for research that is being held up by religious zealots on whom the Republican Party depends?
I have to quit reading about this kind of garbage; it makes me too sick and angry. Not to mention Corker’s disgusting racist trash, reinforced by the RNC bimbo ad. And this crowd has the freaking nerve to accuse Michael Fox of being the exploiter here?
A dozen Republican members of Congress are in jail, under indictment, or under investigation for selling their votes while steering tax dollars and overseas gangsters’ money into a network of campaign slush funds.
And all of them, under indictment and not, have sat on their hands, declining to ask any hard questions or pry documents out of a secretive, unaccountable, incompetent administration that’s exploited every single situation the country faces for political gain.
They’ve poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a criminal war into which we were dragged by lies, and blocked any investigation into the vast, feckless Republican-enriching looting spree that was “reconstruction” in Iraq. Three thousand Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and until the last two months nothing but the fullest support for the meatgrinding clusterf*** from GOP Senators and Representatives.
But for anyone who dared to speak the truth, acknowledge the futility of the occupation, and call for us to cut our losses, the same crowd are ready with trash talk and accusations of cowardice and treason.
I wish I believed there’s a hell, because then I could hope that Ken Mehlman, Rush Limbaugh, and Karl Rove burn in it for all eternity.
Kindly have the decency to put up or shut up.
politics is not about decency. and this is about politics.
politics is about throwing sh!t at people and convincing them that’s what your opponent smells like.
Excuse me, at least try to get the story right, OK?
Limbaugh apologized and withdrew the “acting” suggestion moments after making it. He did make the very legitimate point that Fox
admitted in his book going off his meds in order to make his symptoms more dramatic before testifying before congressional committees- and asked the very reasonable question whether he might be trying to manipulate the people of Missouri the same way.
“Genuine humans,” btw, are living members of the human species. Draw the line any narrower than that, and any line you draw will be purely arbitrary. Human fetuses are human fetuses, not wombat fetuses. And since cell division and growth are taking place, they are biologically alive. They are human. They are alive. They are human life.
So not all human life is sacred? Ok. Where do you draw the line? What other members of our species don’t deserve to have their lives treated as sacred? The mentally challenged? Newborns? Old people? If people aren’t capable of self-awareness, do they become less human? What if they’re inconvenient, or judged to be socially undesirable? Again, where would you draw the line- knowing that unless all living members of our species are included, it’s going to be moved sooner or later to rule more and more members of our species “life unworthy of life?”
BTW, fetal stem cell research has yet to yield a single cure for anything. Dozens of cures, on the other hand, have been achieved through the use of adult stem cells- which have the advantage of not causing tumors, as fetal stem cells often do, when injected into the brains of Parkinson’s patients like Fox!
Bob:
The question of where “human life” begins is not a scientific one, it’s an entirely subjective and really almost spiritual decision. Conception? Implantation? First heartbeat, first brainwaves? When it looks human? Birth? Or we could go back to the sperm and ova and deem them sacred as well. (Why, I’ve unwittingly killed dozens of children in that case by failing to find a man to have unprotected sex with me every month — oops.) Any point is arbitrary, and the definition of humanity, human life, etc. seem to call on the definition of the soul more than on anything technical and in the purely physical realm. You can’t say conclusively when human life begins any more than you can explain why a sunset is beautiful: you can describe the light and the colors, but why do those correlate with beauty? Why, exactly, does [specific point during pregnancy] correlate with a sudden development of worth and equality and humanity? It’s a personal distinction, and it’s really hard to make a sound argument on any of it.
It’s not an all-or-nothing argument, and slippery slopes don’t make the greatest argument either. And consider the thread you’re posting in: no one is suggesting we do away with any who “inconvenience” us: most are showing a heck of a lot of support for Fox and sympathy for his condition.
He did make the very legitimate point that Fox admitted in his book going off his meds in order to make his symptoms more dramatic before testifying before congressional committees- and asked the very reasonable question whether he might be trying to manipulate the people of Missouri the same way.
You know what my first reaction was to the allegation that Fox may have deceived that subcommittee? Disappointment. So I fired up Google and found the transcript in less than 5 minutes, where he clearly told the subcommittee that they were seeing him unmedicated.
Then I Googled some more and found out the difference between the symptoms of Parkinson’s and the side effects of Parkinson’s medication.
Rush just assumed the worst and spewed his conflicting and scientifically implausible theories and innuendo on the air. That doesn’t count as “reasonable” or “legitimate” in my book.
Nell, that Matt Lauer quote is unbelievable: “Didn’t Rush Limbaugh just say what a lot of people were privately thinking?”!? He was asking it of Laura Ingraham, and even she had the sense to get away from it and try to move the talk to destroying embryos.
Bob: He said that he apologized “if I am wrong”. Since I don’t seem to be able to navigate his website, I can’t see whether there’s anything after that, but that didn’t seem like a particularly good apology to me. — I mean, has he acknowledged that he is wrong since then?
To me, this issue is not about stem cell research. There are arguments against it, and one can make them the way you did: fairly and reasonably. This is about something else entirely: mocking someone for his disability, and impugning his honor. I think what Limbaugh did was despicable, but that has nothing to do with my views on stem cell research. If someone who supported a view I agreed with my making fun of Bob Dole’s arm, or suggesting that he cut it off to make people feel bad, I’d feel the same way.
As I said, I think it’s another topic entirely, but there are several points at which to draw the line for which one can make a principled argument. I favor the development of rudimentary sentience, myself. Also, when comparing the numbers of cures found for adult and embryonic stem cells, consider that embryonic stem cells were first isolated in 1998, whereas adult stem cells have been not just isolated, but used for therapies, since the 60s (iirc.) The normal chain of progression for the development of therapies in cases like this goes: characterize the cells, learn to work with them, and explore their properties; experiment in animals to see whether you can use them therapeutically, and whether it’s safe to do so; when you’ve established that therapies work and are safe in animals, start human testing.
It would be very surprising if we were at the human therapy stage eight years after embryonic stem cells were first isolated. It would mean either an awful lot of luck and some very quick experiments, or else really serious irresponsibility.
oops: in “my making fun of Bob Dole’s arm”, ‘my’ should be ‘by’.
and actually, that sentence should read: if someone who supported a view I agreed with tried to argue for it by making fun of Bob Dole’s arm…
Yikes. Connect brain to fingers.
Yikes. Connect brain to fingers.
Pffff. What’s the fun in that? 🙂
Bob Waters –
I’ll put you down as objecting to stem cell research because it causes the destruction of embryos. That may or may not be a position I agree with, but it’s a completely reasonable one, and you’ve offered it in good faith.
My point above was precisely that I have no issue with someone arguing against Fox’s position on the merits, whether they are scientific, moral, or spiritual.
I very much have an objection to someone like Limbaugh claiming, or Charles raising as a question, that Fox is exaggerating the symptoms of his illness, or otherwise exploiting his situation.
Fox’s symptoms as seen in the ad are completely consistent with his condition. Anyone with access to a search engine, which means anyone participating here, can find that out in a couple of minutes.
Yes, the symptoms are disturbing. It’s a disturbing disease. Yes, it is emotionally compelling, and yes, that is why he is willing to publicly present himself, in spite of all the ugly crap that is dished out to him as a consequence, in order to argue for policies that he believes will lead to a cure.
My guess, personally, is that he’d probably prefer to not appear on television with gross motor problems. That would be most people’s preference. He’s willing to put himself through it because he thinks it will be helpful.
There is, really, no place in any kind of decent or humane discourse for claims, suppositions, or hints that he is faking or exaggerating anything. If you think otherwise, you need to think again.
The man is sick, and what you see is what his disease looks like. He’ll likely die before his time, after a number of years of having his life slowly reduced to total helplessness.
Limbaugh will wake up tomorrow and play a round of golf. I don’t know what Charles will do, but it will certainly beat a day with Parkinsons.
Basic human decency would seem to call for leaving Fox, personally, the hell alone.
Thanks
Limbaugh apologized and withdrew the “acting” suggestion moments after making it. He did make the very legitimate point that Fox admitted in his book going off his meds in order to make his symptoms more dramatic before testifying before congressional committees- and asked the very reasonable question whether he might be trying to manipulate the people of Missouri the same way.
As has been pointed out several times in this thread, Fox “admitted” (to use your rather loaded term), to deliberately being off his meds at the time he testified. Persisting in referring to this as some sort of manipulation demonstrates either deliberate ignorance or deliberate dishonesty. Moreover, the idea that Limbaugh utterances on this matter constitute any sort of genuine apology for either the classlessness of his remark or his outright ignorance on the matter he was discussing, actually made me laugh out loud.
Again, where would you draw the line- knowing that unless all living members of our species are included, it’s going to be moved sooner or later to rule more and more members of our species “life unworthy of life?”
I see exactly zero rational underpinning for this statement. Most slippery slope arguments are pretty weak, but this one seeems particularly so. What reason do we have to accept the assumption that the line would ever move particularly in the direction that you seem to think it might?
BTW, fetal stem cell research has yet to yield a single cure for anything.
This is completely irrelevant from the standpoint of scientific research. Hilzoy has pointed out some of the reason why but
1. I think more importantly that it is a statement which completely misunderstands the nature of science in general and of this sort of scientific research in particular.
2. Part of the promise in this research is what it has helped us to understand about how the human body works in ways that we could have imagined even 5 years ago. This is major progress both for science and for the study of our own health even in the unlikely event that no specific treatment is ever developed on the basis of ESC themselves.
Dozens of cures, on the other hand, have been achieved through the use of adult stem cells-
This is flatly false and a statement that opponents of ESC have been touting for some time now. I suppose there might be multiple sources for this particular falsehood but I suspect a lot of it comes from David Prentice’s mendacious “list” of adult stem cell cures and treatments. There was an article in Science over the summer which dealt with Prentice’s dishonesty but like all zombie lies touted by the religious right, this is another that is tough to kill. The original article is not online as far as I can tell but I found a reference to it here on Pharyngula.
which have the advantage of not causing tumors, as fetal stem cells often do, when injected into the brains of Parkinson’s patients like Fox!
Again, simply not true. Making these sort of extraordinary claims really ought to be backed by some sort of cite to a reputable source.
Reading over my post, I realize that I may have left some things unclear. First “Part of the promise in this research is what it has helped us to understand about how the human body works in ways that we could have imagined even 5 years ago” should read “Part of the promise in this research is what it has helped us to understand about how the human body works in ways that we could not have imagined even 5 years ago.” That one was probably pretty obvious.
Secondly I should expand a little on my point about the nature of science and scienttific research. When someone says something like “x type of research has yielded no results,” they are demonstrating an attitude toward science which is harmful to the project of scientific inquiry and one that is almost the antithesis of scientific research.
All scientific research, if it is properly done, teaches us something. Even failed experiments give us results and add information to our understanding of the world even if it is only to tell us that specific hypotheses are wrong (and it usually teaches us much more than that). ESC research like all scientific research is not only about finding cures, its is about learning more about our biology. We have already learned a great deal about how some forms of cancer work and how certain types of disease may form, even if we don’t yet know how to control them. Even some of the more recent advances in Adult Stem Cell research have depended specifically on the knowledge we are gaining in our research on ESC.
Yes, obviously scientific inquiry needs to have ethical boundaries and I realize that is exactly what is in dispute here. But to make the argument that we ought to try and isolate any area of research on the basis of “pragmatic” or “positive” results, is to make a anti-scientific argument. It simply misunderstands what is going on in science and how it works.
BTW, fetal stem cell research has yet to yield a single cure for anything.
ARRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
This is circular reasoning!
Forget about your misunderstanding about the nature of scientific research. It’s just plain WRONG to make this kind of argument—the whole point of the research is to find out how and if!
which have the advantage of not causing tumors, as fetal stem cells often do, when injected into the brains of Parkinson’s patients like Fox!
There was a single study (rats or mice, can’t remember) in which the scientists found lesions in the brain that they suspected might be precancerous. All of the subjects were sacrificed before this effect could be studied further. I imagine that there will be some scrutinty of this going forward, but nothing is known yet.
How you get from there to “as fetal stem cells often do” is a case study in the mendacious use of what started as scientific information.
OCSteve- why is it that all you can come up with under these circumstances is ‘a pox on both your houses’? Can’t you just admit that the behavior was unacceptable by any decent standard without invoking some nebulous claim that ‘Dems do it too’ or ‘all political ads are inherently deceptive’?
Charles- Unlike others here, I haven’t missed you one whit. Even when you have it explained to you that 1)MJF never deceived anyone about his condition or whether he was medicated and 2)his appearance is consistent with his medication and the progress of his disease, you still cannot summon the simple human decency to admit your classless mistake. Instead, you persist with smear words such as “exaggerated”. Do the polls suggesting a Democratic wave election hurt you so much that you’re willing to lash out at a guy with a terminal disease, just for speaking his mind?
I’ve said it before but will again. The modern Republican Party is in the grip of a heresy identified by Christian theologians half a millennium ago: antinomianism. The idea is that once a true believer is saved, there’s nothing they can do to ever jeopardize their salvation, and they are bound by no moral law. The first part of that (that God’s saving grace is complete) is the common coin of the Reformation, and of Christianity in general. The second part is where it becomes heresy, because the Christian tradition is that believeres are under orders to live in certainw ays to show their redemption in action. The details get very complex, as is usually the case with any interesting bit of theology, but that’s the heart of it.
Republican leaders hold to a semi-secular version of that. True Americans, which means in practice themselves and those they wish to approve of, have endless license to do, well, anything. Want to say “fuck you” to a Senatorial colleague? Go ahead. Want to divorce your wife while she’s in the hospital recovering from cancer? Go ahead. Want to conduct the sort of sexual relationship with upper-age minors that you’re in the midst of criminalizing? Go ahead. Want to lie your way into a war and then refuse to ever consider the human costs? Go ahead. Want to cackle about screwing Aunt Millie for the sake of your company’s profits in energy trading? Go ahead. Want to mock a man dying of a terrible disease because you don’t like his policies? Go ahead. Want to go to a country famous for its underage prostitutes (including many kidnapped virgins available for First Worlders to rape) with a heady dose of erection-inducing medication? Go ahead. There’s nothing out of bounds to the elect, because you’re true Americans.
The only violation you can engage in that gets you in trouble is to question the power and preferences of the rest of the elect. You can conduct some good-natured ribbing and the like. You cannot, ever, suggest that there are major moral or criminal lapses going on. If you do, you will be cast out completely. Just as there’s nothing forbidden to the elect, there’s nothing saving available to the outcast. No past good deeds count, nothing protects you from their hostile scorn. And if you never were in the elect at all, then you are (just like the rest of us) sheep, to be used when convenient and ignored otherwise. That’s all the options you have in the face of this style of outlook, whether it’s held by Gnostic cranks of the 3rd century AD, anti-Catholic extremists of the 16th, or American politicians today. You’re all the way in, all the way out, or nowhere.
Life is harder for those of us who continue to believe that one’s actual actions matter in deciding whether one’s being good or not. We don’t have the freedom of unrestricted response nor a guaranteed right of forgiveness. We have to police ourselves as well as evaluating others. Damn if it wouldn’t feel good to just cut loose, but then that would not in the long really help. And of course the elect feel free to respond to criticism in any way that amuses them or indulges their base passions.
Bruce, excellent except for the f-word. However, I would suggest that the belief is not as absent from certain religious circles as the Catholic encyclopedia suggests, as it seems to underpin the whole notion of Baptist ‘backsliding’, which, while not a license for licentiousness, has that precise effect.
Bruce,
Most excellent rant.
LJ, a lot of serious theologians both Protestant and Roman Catholic would say that antinomian tendencies are shot all through American evangelicalism. Doctrinal purity is, um, not the top priority a lot of the time when one feels the Holy Ghost coming on. The Catholic Encyclopedia is written in many places with a surprisingly charitable approach to the other parts of Christendom and for that matter to the outside world.
Dan: Thankee.
True Americans, which means in practice themselves and those they wish to approve of, have endless license to do, well, anything.
note that this isn’t too far off a criticism conservatives love to level against liberals: they have no moral center, think “it feels good” is a sufficient justification for anything, etc.. you can find examples of this criticism everywhere, but here’s Google just gave me…
Defining liberal patriotism:
Patriotism to liberals means the pursuit of happiness — that’s it. If it feels good, do it, man. Sex with a goat? Who are we to judge? Sex with five men and three women? It’s cool! Marriage between a man and a man? Whatever makes you happy. Sex without consequences? That’s what they made the “morning after” pill for. If that doesn’t work, there’s always abortion. It’s a woman’s freedom of choice don’t you know. Liberal “patriots” think “the right to an abortion” is one of the amendments to the Constitution and that life, liberty and the pursuit of abortion are of paramount importance.
…
Yes, liberal patriotism: No God, no religion, no sacred national symbols, no guns, no standards, no morals, total anarchy and “nothing to kill or die for”. What does it all add up to?
Cleek: True enough. But of course it’s projection again, if you start to look at how people are actually living. (Andrew Wolcott wrote an icy review of demographic and moral basics in red states versus blue, with a good fresh reminder of just how hypocritical the red denunciation of blue immorality is.)
Sex without consequences?
This is what I don’t get, why does it have to have consequences?
In other news, Jim Webb is going to lose.
bruce baugh–
strong agreement.
I was recently writing to someone about the national-character version of this, which I called ‘sola fide Exceptionalism’.
Liberals tend to think that America is exceptionally good, and stands out from other nations, because of its *works*. It’s our history of putting high ideals into *practice* that sets our Bill of Rights apart from, e.g., the similarly high-toned pack of lies that the USSR had.
The current strain of right-wingers think that because America is exceptional, it can do whatever it wants. We’re the city on a hill, so we can roll around in the foreign-policy gutter all we want. Coups, torture, invasions, none of that matters. That’s just works, baby, and America don’t need no works to be justified.
sad state of affairs.
Re Steve Bowers’ rant about “liberal patriotism”:
“What does it all add up to?”
As far as I can see, it adds up mainly to showing that the author is an insecure, immature, authoritarian conformist who most blatantly shows that he has absolutely no idea what-so-bleeping-ever about what the terms “liberal” or “liberalism” (or for that “patriotism”!) actually mean. Outside, of course, their utility as a catch-all insult/dismissal of any sociopolitical viewpoint that doesn’t fit into his own self-righteous simplicities.
Easy math.
Carleton Wu:
Limbaugh’s behavior was unacceptable by any decent standard. Unequivocally, with no qualifications.
why does it have to have consequences?
the only thing i can think of is that it’s a way to keep people (women) too afraid to stray. “sex is dangerous! there are consequences! it’s only safe with the man God assigned you!”
In other news, Jim Webb is going to lose.
holy crap. yeah, i’d say that first excerpt is enough to do the job all by itself.
To be fair, if I were trying to parse the ‘sex without consequences’ line, I’d say not that sex somehow has to have consequences in the abstract, but that in the actual world, in which sex sometimes does have the consequence of pregnancy, despite the best efforts of the participants, a person who believed that abortion was the murder of another human being would say: to want sex without consequences is, in fact, to want to be able to commit murder to spare yourself the consequences of sex.
It would be like saying: I should be able to drive to work without impediments. In the actual world, in which a lot of the impediments to my commute will be pedestrians, other drivers, etc., the thought ‘why should I have to stop?’ will in fact involve thinking it’s OK to run other people over. This would not commit me to thinking: commuting just ought to have impediments, period; it’s not the sort of activity that we should even in principle be able to do unimpeded.
Bruce,
Great rant, it gets right to the heart of what I’ve been thinking about for a while now. It seems that liberal and conservative reasoning about many important issues are exact converses of each other. The conservatives reason, “We are the good guys, therefore what ever we do, it must be good.” The liberals reason “We are the good guys because what we do is morally correct.” It makes a big difference in what actions each finds acceptable.
dammit hilzoy, there you go being all rational and sensible where I just throw up my hands and pout.
I should be able to drive to work without impediments.
Every morning I think that there needs to be a button on my dashboard that requires everyone with a two mile radius of my car to pull over and get out of my damn way. I’d settle for people not driving like idiots and not parking on major District arteries during commute hours (note to D.C. authorities: you’re missing out on a lot of revenue not towing those idiots on 16th street every morning). If I had to compromise I’d settle for the latter.
I should note that the world is full of smart, perceptive, decent conservatives who take their moral duties at least as seriously I do, who respect human agency and human beings as ends rather than means, and so on. They are disenfranchised as thoroughly as the rest of us, because the bosses feel no gratitude for those who didn’t see through the “we’re the legitimate new leaders of the conservative movement” rhetoric in time. Antinomianism as a personality quality is like Big Noisy Idiot; after a while it stops mattering the alleged cause in which one is being one or the other.
It’s a good thing Republicans never write bad sex scenes (though I don’t understand why that article ignores Lynne Cheney’s lesbian novel).
Idle speculation: the strain of American conservativism that Goldwater tapped into at his best may be toast.
Rationale: There are times when a bundle of ideas becomes untenable. In the early 20th century, up until World War II, for instance, eugenics was taken seriously all across the board. The idea of medical intervention with breeding and development was…not entirely unquestioned, but seen as a matter to be guided by wise judgment and used benignly. The exposure of the Nazi death camps is what really brought that to an end – even today there’s going to be someone who brings them up when it’s time to talk about tinkering with other people’s lives that way. And most of us, I would hope, would take that a sa good thing despite the loss of any particular benefit from a specific eugenics program.
Other times the loss is a lot more conflicted or even outright bad. I would regard the loss of the old-school conservatism of the latter 20th century as such a loss, because (however much it bugs the rest of us sometimes) it actually does help to have a calm voice asking questions like “how much of this can you document?” and “what’s it going to cost?” But…as Rick Perlstein concisely documented, it is the very principled visionaries who founded their movement who went on to lead it into new depths of corruption and degradation. The same people – their movement was captured, they gave themselves up to the moral pit, and their followers let it happen.
Can you salvage a movement which really doesn’t have an honest, moral man or woman to its name in change? I don’t see how. It seems inevitable to me that at such time as the current regime finally does lose power (which I’m not expecting this year or in 2008, but would like to be wrong), it’ll fragment in quite a few directions. And what’s lost is likely to be precisely the temperate parts, that a healthy polity needs.
If I’ve missed any serious effort at a credible struggle to reclaim conservatism that might compare to the insurgency wtihin the Democratic Party (and around it), I’d love to know. I’m sure not seeing it at the moment, and I don’t quite see how one can make the effort in a way that isn’t basically sacking and pillaging.
There are times when a bundle of ideas becomes untenable.
This ties into a another subject. It’s been a recurring theme here at ObWi where liberal and progressive commentators have yearned for more conservative participants, in an noble effort I think to have their ideas placed in the heat of the crucible. But what if the crucible no longer gives heat? I think it’s fair to say at this point that on the majority of topics discussed on this blog (and yes there are exceptions), the debate is long since over. Especially on the topic of governance.
Just to be clear, it seems at this time most progressive commentators and “non-Republican” conservatives here are in agreement on some very high profile topics.
cleek and Ugh: I’m glad you’re not part of the GOTV operation in my county. You’re too easily spooked.
Off Topic – well this is just super:
LONDON (AFP) – An Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of links between Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured, a journalist told the BBC.
…
“What he claimed most significantly was a connection between … Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by (former US secretary of state) Colin Powell as a key piece of justification … for invading Iraq,” he told the broadcaster.
I still remember Fox as Alex Keaton, so I had this fleeting “how could they betray one of their own”? reaction.
Ugh, that’s awful about al-Libi, but it’s not new. See e.g. this post. I do have to pick up Grey’s book, though.
You’re too easily spooked.
imagine if it was discovered that a Republican Senatorial candidate had written a story with a scene where a father blows his young son, in public.
Nell – Radley Balko also believes the hubbub is hot air, noting that Webb’s book received plaudits at the time of publication from fringe media outlets such as Newsweek, the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly – not to mention that wild-haired radical John McCain.
The Allen campaign is desperate.
And imagine if a Democratic senator and presidential candidate read and praised such a story, cleek.
Of course, I’m sure the bipartisan, principled St. McCain will be standing up and denouncing this smearing misrepresentation of the book written by his fellow veteran.
cleek and Ugh: I’m glad you’re not part of the GOTV operation in my county. You’re too easily spooked.
Hey, can’t I make a prediction? I do have to say that most of the proposed responses for him to make that I’ve read seem rather lame compared to what people are going to think. Not that I think people should vote for Allen or stop GOTV efforts, but the whole father-son incest thing can’t play well in Virginia, fiction or not, McCain praise or not, and proper thing to think or not. The only thing I can see stopping this is if Webb get’s his hands on Allen’s divorce papers and they reveal some sort of serious physical abuse.
Though apparently Webb has said about this “It’s not a sexual act,” Webb told Plotkin regarding the “Lost Soldiers” excerpt. “I actually saw this happen in a slum in Bangkok when I was there as a journalist.”
Ugh, that’s awful about al-Libi, but it’s not new.
Yeah, after I posted I figured it probably wasn’t. We have such wonderful leaders in this country.
Radley Balko has some good information about the passage in question. Bottom line, it seems weird as hell to westerners, but it’s quite common in Asia. The passage in question is designed specifically to establish the ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore’ vibe, and I suspect it works very well in the context of the novel.
Bottom line: this is a tempest in a teapot. Unfortunately, it may still be enough to put Allen over the top.
“Unfortunately, it may still be enough to put Allen over the top.”
I tend to agree. But is typical of politicians who see themselves in a bind. Like wounded animals they lash out. And , perhaps more unfortuantely, we live in a country where too many people buy into it.
More and more races come down not to issues but to dirt. Attack the person, not the policies they champion. It accomplishes two things. It distracts the public and it keeps someone from having to talk too much about their own thinking.
And like a retraction in a newspaper which is buried away, most repsonses will also be buried away.
I have used the generic term “politician” but , and I really am trying to be objective, it seems to me that the Republican Party uses this technique far more than the Democratic Party at this juncture.
And in keeping with the subject of this post, this is why Limbaugh is so successful. He taps into the emotional part of people, not the reasoning part.
Keep in mind, this man is the one responsible for such gems as ” What happened at Abu Ghraib is no worse than frat boy pranks” and “The page set Foley up”.
In a better world, such a person would have been banished from his position a long time ago.
And imagine if a Democratic senator and presidential candidate read and praised such a story, cleek.
i’m sorry, but i just don’t see the lefty sites having the same blasé reaction, if a Republican had written stuff like that. in fact, i’ve seen more than enough jokes about the racy parts of O’Reilly’s and Lynne Cheney’s books to know exactly what the reaction would be.
… and, to finish the thought…
the story is going to get played in the worst-possible light for Webb. the Republican media is going to have a field day with this. and i think it’s going to be tough to counteract the first reaction a lot of people are going to get.
but if i’m wrong, good for all of us!
in fact, i’ve seen more than enough jokes about the racy parts of O’Reilly’s and Lynne Cheney’s books to know exactly what the reaction would be.
Consider that at least part of the motivation behind those jokes is O’Reilly and Cheney’s (perceived) hypocrisy.
Sweeeeeeet.
I was just reading that thread, Slart. Oy vey gevalt.
Consider that at least part of the motivation behind those jokes is O’Reilly and Cheney’s (perceived) hypocrisy.
at least part, sure. no argument there.
but i’m sure the Noise Machine has some handy hook of their own they can hang this on: proof of liberal degeneracy, maybe ?
but again, i’d love to be wrong.
Carleton Wu:
Charles- Unlike others here, I haven’t missed you one whit.
Seconded.
I tried to read the thread in question, but RedState appears to be currently broken.
“Charles- Unlike others here, I haven’t missed you one whit.”
Oh, come on. This would have been a pretty dull thread without Charles. I mean, without him, we can all agree that Limbaugh is an arrogant, obnoxious jerk, usually pretty ignorant. We can also clarify some detail concerning Parkinsons, maybe. As to on-topic stuff, that would be about it. Without Charles to refute, this would be like a more intelligently written Kos thread, no? Pretty stand-up decent of him to serve this role.
I tried to read the thread in question, but RedState appears to be currently broken.
It’s been problematic recently, I keep waiting them to blame evil Dems each time after they get it back up and running but so far they haven’t stooped that low.
Sweeeeeeet.
And, of course, the ever-present em esss em cover-up for their preferred candidates.
i’m surprised at RS – there’s actually a reasonable discussion going on down there about this, sprinkled with plenty of Moe’s sly hints that he’s gonna ban people, of course.
the “Pedophile Fantasizer” hook didn’t catch many fish.
I’d settle for people not driving like idiots and not parking on major District arteries during commute hours
And a pony!
Then they might park their ponies on major District arteries during commute hours.
“the “Pedophile Fantasizer” hook didn’t catch many fish.”
But the ones it did hook are – well, they’re tying themselves into so many knots, justifying how a passage from a novel written, presumably, for grown-ups renders Webb unfit for the US Senate.
Are they saying novelists shouldn’t get involved in politics? Or only kiddy-lit novelists can get involved in politics? Are they saying that any scene in a novel necessrily reflects something the writer likes, approves of, wants to do?
Basically, in order to make Webb look bad, Allen and the GOP mouthbreathers are coming across as even more illiterate, wilfully stupid, and peabrained than usual. And that, lemmee tell ya, is quite an accompishment.
CaseyL, US politics for some time has made it difficult for people who have written or spoken extensively to be elected to office. All of their work is scrutinized for passages that can be taken out of context and misrepresented. It’s one of the reasons Harriet Miers (and to a lesser extent John Roberts) was nominated — not having produced anything is a point in a potential nominee or candidate’s favor, because there’s less for opponents to analyze.
Bork is the one whose name has been given to the process, though I haven’t studied Bork’s nomination so I don’t know how many of the criticisms of him were really misrepresentations.
And a pony!
Ha! Actually, when I lived in San Francisco at 7am every morning they would have a fleet of tow trucks tow all the cars parked on the major one way street that runs downtown, like clockwork, no reason D.C. couldn’t do the same rather than just issuing tickets.
“It’s still gross and no Cambodian in America should ever be doing this.”*
That, ladies and gentleman, is my favorite quote from the most hilarious thread ever produced on the internets (see Slart’s link above to the Jim Webb-is-a-perv-thread above.)
And one poor guy gets banned for the sin of being mildly amusing and fairly well-read. He was accused of being condescending when all he was doing was leaning down to talk to the Hobbits so they could hear him better.
Nabokov, natch, takes his lumps, though Madame Bovary hasn’t yet been publicly flogged and Slothrup from “Gravity’s Rainbow” hasn’t yet made an entrance.
But, what I really love about the thread is Streiff’s and others’ repeatedly breaking in and bragging how they have been lots of worldly places and have seen the full human festival of perversion — but Webb not only wrote about it but must have THOUGHT about it before he wrote it, and probably for a few minutes afterwards, too.
But, Streiff points out again, I’ve seen it all. I don’t think about it, and neither should you, but I’ve seen it. It was in a little booth in a back alley in Thailand … stop making me think about it Officer Webb!
And, of course, the post is written by Erick, who at this moment is taking time out from not thinking about that disgusting Webb the war veteran guy to perfect his Parkinsons disease impressions for his mini-me Limbaugh road show.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read Tom Clancy’s version of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, wherein gleaming, priapically cylindrical military hardware erects itself in slow-mo to penetrate the waiting, heaving loins of Baghdad. I promise to keep one foot on the floor and my hands in sight.
*The individual who wrote this had to leave to visit the Asian part of town — just out of curiosity.
Seriously, though, I don’t agree with many of Webb’s opinions, but here we have another deocrated combat veteran savaged by virgin war-lovers so that he can lose an election to a racist piece of garbage whose Daddy once gave him a cap-gun and some fake chaps so he play tough.
Perversion ain’t what it used to be.
Hope those RS commenters freaking out about Webb’s novel never find out about a practce used by some moyels.
Hope those RS commenters freaking out about Webb’s novel never find out about a practce used by some moyels
I DIDN’T JUST SEE YOU SAY THAT.
*shudders* *scrubs brain*
*joins RedState to post about the evil Miss Austen*
Sorry, Jes, I did in fact misspell “practice”.
My recent post about sexuality in Jane Austen’s novels.
Ugh: Of course, you can make a prediction. You’re commenting on a blog. But activists are made of sterner stuff.
Someone whose immediate response to a desperate and stupid smear is to be convinced it will have the desired effect isn’t someone you want around the rest of the volunteers.
Last year, when Scott Howell’s over-the-top ads smearing Tim Kaine on the death penalty ran, the Virginia political blogs were filled with similar bleating. I’m on record in the comments sections of those blogs as telling people to get a grip. I was right.
I’m not saying we’re definitely going to win. It’s a dead heat. The last nine major polls are all within the margin of error; the last two show us up 3 and down 1 (and that one, Rasmussen, is a 2-point improvement for Webb). Turnout is everything. The fundamentalists are going to come out to vote for enshrining discrimination into our state constitution, and vote for Allen while they’re there. Maybe they’ll be energized by this. Certainly it feeds their need to feel morally superior. I bet they’re reading those excerpts over and over…
It’s a complete waste of time for anyone who wants to see the right thing happen to get freaked out by this pathetic effort.
Off topic – I see that, Bizarro World has snagged none other than the Speaker of the House Himself, The Penguin, to blog with some of these gems:
The goal of our enemies – global domination through murder, terror, and, at the earliest possible date, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction – was stated long before 19 young men hijacked four planes five Septembers ago.
Mmmm…ok, but this sounds more like we’re fighting Dr. Evil. Do we at least get sharks with laser beams out of this?
They have no political agenda or list of grievances.
Well, that’s just plain wrong Denny, but I know it’s hard to get through three paragraphs these days without at least one bald-faced lie, so I’ll let it pass.
As far as Republicans are concerned we are in a fight for our freedom and even our lives.
Don’t worry Denny, mama will be right here.
The Democrats disagree.
Well, they do prefer waking up to an un-wet bed.
After the first World Trade Center bombings in 1993, America was terrorized in quick succession: the Khobar Towers bombings in 1996, the African embassy bombings in 1998, the 2000 attack against the USS Cole.
Funny that you pick that time period Den-den.
All of these attacks – more brazen and costly than the one before – were launched against the United States while we pursued the weak, indecisive, pre-9/11 policies the Democrats still support.
And when the most brazen, most costly, attack was launched, who was President? Who had seen a document entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.” and responded with “alright, you’ve covered your ass”? What tough talking vice president headed what administration’s terrorism task force that managed to meet a grand total of one time in the eight months prior to 9/11? What administration pursued these same policies during that time? I know this is hard, I’ll wait.
Despite all predictions to the contrary, we have not witnessed a repeat of the 9/11 attacks on American soil.
I see someone reminded you of that whole anthrax thing. Plus, you know, it’s hard to knock down the WTC, twice. Though you reach great heights with the following sentence
The Afghanistan Taliban, Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, and tens of thousands of their most dangerous leaders and soldiers around the world have been erased.
Thank God for that. They were involved in 9/11, weren’t they?
Iran has been isolated.
Into doubling its nuclear capacity. Any more isolating and they’ll quadruple it.
We are criticized for our lack of an exit strategy in Iraq, but our exit strategy has been clear from day one: winning.
I’ve got an ongoing, online chess match series with Kasparov. You might think I’d learn that the horsey moves in an L-shape, about en passant, and when to castle. But no, screw that sh!t, my strategy: win. It’s going as well as the Iraq war. BTW, have you heard of the underpants gnomes?
In short, Democrats do not believe in the Global War on Terror. I don’t mean that they don’t support it, though they don’t.
Well, of course. Just the other day Nancy Pelosi appeared in a burka in Union Square and declared her undying fealty to the Caliphate. The entire city of San Francsico is now under sharia law, with exceptions for the color pink.
While Republicans believe the biggest threat to American freedom and security is the evil ideology that planned and executed the murder of 3,000 of our countrymen five years ago, and continues planning today, Democrats think the biggest threat to America is… Republicans.
So true. We remember when John Murtha introduced the “Water Board a Republican Act of 2005”; when John Kerry sponsored the “Habeas Corpus Suspension for Republicans Reconciliation Act of 2004”; and the notorious, Barney Frank inspired, “Death Penalty for Voting Republican” omnibus budget bill just this past month.
God bless you, Speaker Hastert.
‘nother OT: Allow me to throw in a quick appreciative comment here. I can’t keep up with all the threads, but I love being able to read such obviously knowledgeable people speak with (some amount of) civility. I’m a young’n and just beginning to learn much of what you folks already know, and don’t always have much to contribute, but count me as an often-lurker and occasional-poster. I like what I am reading here, from front-page posters and commenters alike, so thanks.
Well, I commented on Not Larry Sabato’s blog the afternoon he posted the “macaca” video that although Allen was obviously rude, it didn’t seem like that big a deal and the “monkey” thing was a real stretch (Allen’s French connection had not been revealed). A few days later I ran into him at a Webb rally and admitted how wrong I was. So I’m obviously not competent to make a prediction either way on this one, but like Nell, I’m not going to let it affect my doing what I can for Webb in the next week and a half.
Ugh, Hastert’s strategy was copied from Instapundit.
I thought the Penguin was vice president.
Someone whose immediate response to a desperate and stupid smear is to be convinced it will have the desired effect isn’t someone you want around the rest of the volunteers.
This is why I don’t volunteer. I hope that I am wrong (about my prediction, not volunteering).
I thought the Penguin was vice president.
It’s a toss-up, but I think Burgess Meredith, even from the grave, is up to portraying both.
Haven’t read the above comments, but I read about MJF’s interview with Katie Couric and he answered all of the questions that I had.
IIJM, or is it just a wee bit anomalous to see an ad for Shut Up and Sing on the frontpage at RedState? I would thought that ad would have blammed away inside an hour (or are they just responding to the call of the free market [ad-dollars]?).
From the Redstate post:
“Jim Webb had been exposed as a true perv — writing some seriously disgusting stuff…complete with fathers doing things with their sons. It’s vomiting.”
I’m still trying to figure out what it is that’s doing the vomiting.
CB: “Haven’t read the above comments, but I read about MJF’s interview with Katie Couric and he answered all of the questions that I had.”
Fair enough (in my book, anyway).
I watched the extended interview this morning and I’m totally going to put up a poster of him.
“I’m still trying to figure out what it is that’s doing the vomiting.”
To quote John Ashbery, “Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living.”
That’s a good one, but I like “Fiction or not – it’s not something you see Tom Clancy or Dale Brown or Stephen Coonts writing.”
‘Cause if those giants of the literary world haven’t written it, brother, it ain’t worth writing!
KCinDC, I had exactly the same reaction when the ‘macaca’ incident broke. (Although I understood the slur instantly; I just had trouble believing Allen had really said the word twice on camera and that enough people would know about the meaning of the term to have an impact).
But what really gave the incident legs was Allen’s (and the campaign staff’s) making up lies and excuses and refusing to admit he’d insulted the Webb staffer. A sincere (or sincere-sounding) personal apology from Allen within 24 hours would have killed the story before it killed his poll numbers.
Instead, their denials and defensive dithering confirmed what so many media people and pols already believed about Allen: racist and dumb as a bag of rocks.
That’ll just make it extra humiliating to be a Virginian if he squeaks back into the Senate. But Allen’s chances of ever being president are zero, which will be our tiny, bitter consolation. Yesterday at the post office I parked behind the car of a local Republican stalwart, and noticed her oval ‘Allen: President 2008’ sticker. It put a great big smile on my face.
(note to D.C. authorities: you’re missing out on a lot of revenue not towing those idiots on 16th street every morning)
And 21st Street every afternoon. >:-(
italiacto!
Compare and contrast Wingnuttia’s reaction to the incident described in Webb’s book with its reaction to the stories and photos of torture committed by US soldiers.
They find the former to be “sick and twisted,” and a reason to attack Webb (who only recounted something he had seen)… yet they’re not only jolly fine with the latter, not only consider Bush’s pro-torture policies a reason to keep supporting him, but are also prone to imagining, in detail, tortures and murders they’d like to see committed against an assortment of people they’ve got a hatin’ on for.
Wingnut morality is a whited sepulchre.
There’s no inconsistency there, CaseyL. They were outraged that anyone would recount those incidents as well.
Charles: I read about MJF’s interview with Katie Couric and he answered all of the questions that I had.
As if even one of your questions were legitimate. You
Nell: I agree with Digby, but it was good of Charles to acknowledge that his questions had been answered.
oops, hit return by mistake; was going to add: and I’m not sure we should pile on.
italiacto!
Thanks for that light touch of festive elegance, Slarti. The thread can use it. I’m going to lighten the tone by heading off to bed. ‘Night all.
italiacto!
Why do I picture this being pronounced with the flourish of a wand, Harry Potter-style? (and all the blogtype suddenly slanting, as if by magic!)
Too long at the keyboard, I guess. Bye.
italiacto est?
italiacto delanda est.
Two hundo!
If Mr. Fox is taking Haldol, the symptoms might result from the medication. Haldol has to be carefully balanced. It does actually restrain involuntary movements, but taken in too large a dose it can, in fact, cause movement. Treating Huntington’s Disease with Haldol has caused considerable controversy in that camp. And I’m shocked, shocked that political ads could cause such concern. Of course, Mr. Fox is cloaked with the moral high ground and Mr. Limbaugh cannot possibly be. Somehow the situation that stem cell research has accomplished very little, nor is it even close to be known that it will, could never be the issue. I suppose if we spend enough of our tax dollars we’d have at least died trying.
bbm, you realize that Hadol _causes_ the symptoms of Parkinson’s, but Michael Fox actually has an early onset form of the disease, which is generally linked with genetic factors. I don’t think anyone is treating Parkinsons with Haldol (in fact, there is a warning not to use Haldol if one has Parkinsons) Either you don’t know anything about the disease, or you are suggesting that Michael Fox is purposely developing parkinsons from ingestion of Haldol. If it is the latter, do you have any reason at all to believe this?
Blogs:
Welcome back!
There are plenty of venues in which to have a discussion of stem-cell research — its efficacy, its morality, its funding sources.
Were he interested, Limbaugh could have provided one of those venues. He could have invited Fox, doctors for and against, ethicists, etc for a sober discussion on his show.
Limbaugh has no intention of “cloaking” himself “with the moral high ground”. Cigars receive more moral intention from Limbaugh than he has ever expended on “cells”, fetal or otherwise.
Michael J. Fox may in fact be wrong about the subject. He would probably agree to debate you on the subject. And I doubt he would mock you by appearing normal and fit.
Limbaugh, at the cellular level, is merely a cruel “Tokyo Rose” for ruthless political interests. Not even your cells would matter to him if they happened to get in the way of the ends he wishes to achieve.
bbm: I’ll pose you the same question I asked Charles upthread (to an obvious lack of response, I see) – is it Michael J. Fox’s public advocacy of funding for stem-cell research that seem to so burn your backside, or is it that this ad was made in the context of a political campaign?
Again, to those of us who try to maintain some degree of objectivity in commentary of current affairs, the issue is pretty plain: a victim of a terrible disease makes a TV ad for a candidate (since they, not their opponent, supports funding for certain research into the disease). Whereupon, a national media figure like Rush Limbaugh, nationally broadcasts scornful mockery of said victim: publicly accusing them of fakery and/or exaggeration.
In this case, it’s not an issue of “moral high grouond” – wherever such ground might be, it’s a sure bet that Rush Limbaugh isn’t on it. And it doesn’t make any difference whether the advocate is Michael J. Fox the recognizable actor, or Mike Fox the electrician from Fresno: “mocking the afflicted” is just plain wrong.
Unless, of course, it’s politics, where concepts like “right” and “wrong” are competely variable?
Somehow the situation that stem cell research has accomplished very little, nor is it even close to be known that it will, could never be the issue.
That’s right. It can’t be. NOT WHEN RESEARCH IS BEING IMPEDED IN THAT RESEARCH’S BEGINNINGS.
Only idiots would argue that. Particularly when that fallacy has been pointed out again, and again and again.
I would note that you ARE defending “mocking the sick and croppled”. That’s not anywhere close to high ground, moral or otherwise.
As if even one of your questions were legitimate. You…
Whether you think my questions are legitimate or not, Nell, is of course your opinion. But to conflate Rush’s opinion with mine crosses the line into cheap shot territory, particularly since I criticized him fairly harshly upthread.
lj, there is also a warning with Huntingtons not to treat with Haldol due to its affect on cell degeneration at certain stages, but most neurologists have more Parkinson’s experience than Huntingtons and prescribe the regimine anyway. I recall most of your counters are ‘if not one, then certainly the other’; the ‘other’ being some position you’re imposing upon another. Of course Limbaugh buried the lede with his theatrics – fatal flaw. Mr. Fox was goaded or willingly waded into a typically nasty campaign here in the Show Me state. He featured his position and condition to make unsubstantiated and misleading claims, just like the rest of the scoundrals. His poo poo smells as bad as the rest. But of course, you are upwind. Good to see you again, keep in touch.
But to conflate Rush’s opinion with mine crosses the line into cheap shot territory
You certainly distanced yourself from Limbaugh’s presentation, but you initially thought his opinion that “Fox was being deceptive” valid.
blogbuds: I don’t see that Fox’s claims were misleading at all. stem cell research has not produced any human therapies yet — that seems to be the gist of most of the criticisms of Fox’s statements. But he never said he had; he said it was promising. And it is.
The fact that it has not produced any human therapies yet is completely predictable. Human embryonic stem cells were first isolated in 1998, eight years ago. After that, researchers have to characterize them and learn to work with them, try various possible therapeutic approaches in animal models to see which worked there, and only then try out those that work in humans. Given that for each of these steps they also have to apply for grants, get funding, etc., and that federal funding for them was nonexistent before 2001, and severely limited thereafter, it’s hard to see how therapies for humans could have been shown to work by now. (They could have been had scientists just skipped the first steps and started injecting stem cells into humans on a hunch, but that would have been unethical and nutty.)
There are some conditions in which the animal work looks quite promising. But there’s no way in which it could have produced human therapies by this point.
He featured his position and condition to make unsubstantiated and misleading claims,
Like saying “that stem cell research has accomplished very little, nor is it even close to be known that it will?”
Sorry, but that’s just a bogus point. It’s like you haven’t bothered to think it out for yourself and are just checking off talking points someone else has generated.
blogbuds: I don’t see that Fox’s claims were misleading at all. stem cell research has not produced any human therapies yet — that seems to be the gist of most of the criticisms of Fox’s statements. But he never said he had; he said it was promising. And it is.
The fact that it has not produced any human therapies yet is completely predictable.
Of course it’s completely predictable. But it’s not deterring pundits from bringing up this circular argument. It’s just another example of ideology triumphing over actual evidence and thought.
Blogbudsman is very wrong. Assuming his/her comments are in good faith, he/she is either extremely uninformed or has made a huge error in writing or in reading comprehension.
Haldol is not used to treat Parkinson’s. Never, ever. Haldol is an antipsychotic and a sedative; it can also control tic-like movements in Huntington’s disease or Tourette’s syndrome, but NOT the kinds of motor problems found in Parkinson’s, which it would only make worse. There’s no reason to think Fox is taking Haldol.
Huntington’s disease has nothing to do with Parkinson’s disease. People who can’t be bothered to learn the difference should perhaps be more modest about their opinions on medical research.
Hilzoy:
Nell: I agree with Digby, but it was good of Charles to acknowledge that his questions had been answered.
oops, hit return by mistake; was going to add: and I’m not sure we should pile on.
Agree about “piling on” in general, but is that present here?
Digby’s point (and I believe Nell’s when she quoted him) was that the “questions” themselves were illegitimate. And since Charles simply ignores the heart of the criticism about his comment, what’s so good about his response?
The upthread criticism of Charles probably centers most on this comment by Charles:
With the McCaskill commercial, Michael J. Fox has now entered the political fray, and because he has admitted going off his meds in the past to exaggerate the effects of his unfortunate and irreversible disease in order to affect legislation, it’s a completely fair question to ask whether or not he was off his meds in this commercial. (emphasis added)
This remark was grossly improper, since Fox did not ever “exaggerate” his condition nor have to “admit” being off his meds in connection with his Congresional testimony. He began that testimony by indicating that he was unmedicated so that the normal everyday impact of his disease would be apparent during his testimony.
Thus, Charles “question” is whether he was off meds again for the McCaskill commericial in order to “exaggerate” his symptoms, and whether he must “admit” to engaging in such a stunt again for political impact. I assume that when Charles said his questions were answered, that includes in part that Fox was medicated and therefore does not have to “admit” to “exaggeration.” This deliberately ignored the criticism of his prior comment, which was Nell’s point (or so it seems to me).
Of course, the facts are that now, several years after his Congresional testimony, Fox’s condition has deteriorated, and his meds now cause the awful jerking. Not taking them would leave him essentially catatonic and unable to speak. Not only was the entire framework of Charles “questions” out of line, it ignored Fox’s current medical condition.
Hob, if I remember correctly, BBM is caring for a spouse with Huntington’s. He might not know anything about Parkinson’s but he does know about Huntington’s.
I missed that he was talking about Huntington’s, so apologies for the quick reading. However, Fox has early onset Parkinson’s, as Hob pointed out.
I just had an odd thought.
I wonder if the people who are criticizing Fox, or who even think he’s a legitimate target of criticism, are under the impression that the drugs he and other people with Parkinsons now taking are treating the Parkinsons. That the meds currently available are all any of them need to lead normal, productive lives, and therefore they “don’t need” embryonic or any other kind of stem cell research.
That might explain why they think Fox is cheating somehow (either by going off his meds years ago for his Senate testimony or by not going off his meds now for the political ad) – cheating because he’d be just fine if he kept taking the drugs, or by not taking the drugs, or whatever it is they think he should be content to do.
If that’s the case, perhaps we need to clarify the issue a bit.
The drugs Fox is taking don’t treat the Parkisons, don’t cure it or make it go away.
The drugs only treat the symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself. At the very best, they might slow its progression down a little – though I’m not even sure about that, considering how much worse Fox has gotten in only a few years.
The symptoms will get worse, because the disease will get worse. At some point in the not-too-distant future, Fox will be totally incapacitated, with or without palliative drugs. And, not long after that, he will die.
That will happen regardless of whether he does or doesn’t take the drugs available to him, regardless of how many political ads he appears in, and regardless of how cruelly he is mocked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the dittoheads.
Information about Parkinson’s Disease.
Andrew, that’s very possible for a lot of rank-and-file people who’ve never had to deal with Parkinson’s, and providing the link is a real public service. I don’t for a moment believe it of, say, Rush, but there’s so much for any of us to know, it’s really easy to lose track of stuff, even when our first reaction isn’t to go on the air and mock another’s apparent suffering.
So: good idea!
Clearly those scientists who want to do embryonic stem cell research already know that it has no chance of leading to cures, or any useful information. They want to do it merely because of the joy they take in destroying embryos, or maybe they’re conducting Satanic rites.
Gwangung: It’s just another example of ideology triumphing over actual evidence and thought.
The ignorance regularly displayed by right wingers as to how basic science research works was at first astonishing to me, although it’s now become routine. Working at a research institute I have first-hand knowledge of how the work of my colleagues can take 10-15 years to go from the bench to the field. And, as you’ve pointed out, how the research doesn’t always work out exactly “way they thought it would”, but each experiment is part of the puzzle. If we stopped research right now, for example, into robotics because we haven’t built a good hand or foot to replace human hands or feet, we’ll never get there. It’s circular reasoning at its worst. But I think I understand why they do it.
Republicans are desperate to stop ESC now, because once they let the “genie” out of the bottle, and it inevitably (in some way) leads to therapies for people, they won’t be able to use it as a political issue anymore. The American public won’t stand for it when there’s the potential for their mother, father, grandfather, son or daughter suffering from some painful, terminal or progressive disease to be helped by a therapy that involves tiny clumps of cells that are being discarded by the millions already.
It’s the same reason they’re fighting the OTC availability of Plan B. Once it’s available, and society doesn’t suffer (or in fact it reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies), they’ll again lose another wedge issue.
So, to your point, Republicans hate anything science-related, because the facts don’t do their best to prove Republican talking points. This is why they’ve try to suppress reports out of NASA, the EPA, the GAO, etc.
Damn you liberal bias of facts!
KCinDC: You only think that’s an over the top parody…
(Read the comment I linked to, and the reply to it.)
Polarizing is easy when the subject’s this sharp and emotional. Everyone gets to put on their favorite team’s colors, and yell at the TV.
Michael J. Fox is not a scientist, and neither is Rush Limbaugh, but scientists are not moral experts, and this is a moral question.
Who are the moral experts?
The same people that gave us global warming and a world population over 6.5 billion and climbing?
Who did that?
It wasn’t the Amish, that’s for sure. How do the Amish feel about stem-cell research?
About primate research?
Is there a tight linkage between the inhuman obscenities of primate research and the benign sci-fi otherworld of stem-cell research?
Yes, there is, and I think for all the possible therapeutic benefits that may accrue, for all the lives made better and longer, the real drive behind them both is toward something far more fantastic.
Immortality. Physical immortality for human beings. The accession of immortality and the negation of evolution as a governing principle in the lives of the elect who pass through.
The keys to that door are bound to be somewhere in the labyrinth of the human cell.
Painting this debate as simply empathic pure-hearted researchers against vicious close-minded idiots is not just prejudicial – it’s inaccurate.
The public fora may be dominated right now by just such a polarized and bifurcated distribution, but then the Amish aren’t represented are they?
Keep in mind that the Amish, had their way of life been culturally dominant for the last hundred years, would not have given us forced anthropogenic climate change and its still-to-be-reckoned-with but increasingly dire consequences.
Their simple ways, time-tested and sure, are no longer quite so ridiculous are they?
This is the same polarization that blew up the anti-Darwinian debate, in fact that lopsided contest could be seen as a prelude to this one – the wedge being driven not by Republicans but by something less visible and much harder to name – and no one ever thinks to mention that for all their championing of evolution as the process that gave us our big brains and fast hands much of science is now dedicated to fighting evolutionary processes with everything available. Stem-cell research is precisely this, a campaign aginst the random selection of evolution, a denial of evolution’s reaping scythe.
Limbaugh is a demonic presence in the culture, to be sure – but that doesn’t automatically sanctify anyone who opposes him. Stem-cell research will have many consequences, only some of which will be the healing of previously incurable afflictions. We should be as sure as we can that what we do is aligned with our highest aspirations, not the base and immediate demands of selfishness and greed. Saving people’s lives is a heroic thing generally, though increasing the numbers of living humans now is surely not the highest good and shouldn’t be our only ambition.
Delivering the tools to forcefully gain immortality into the hands of the men who now run the world isn’t anywhere near a worthwhile goal.
Look at what it’s cost us already.
Won’t somebody please think about the Amish?!
Would an Amish blogger say “And a refrigerator!” instead of “And a pony!” ?
jcricket: The ignorance regularly displayed by right wingers as to how basic science research works was at first astonishing to me, although it’s now become routine.
I think more to the point (and recalling John Cole’s several quite splendid posts on Terri Schiavo, which offended many of his regular readers): there are certain beliefs held by many people who define themselves as right-wing. These beliefs are profoundly anti-science (indeed, profoundly anti-reality), and are opposed by anyone, regardless of their politics, who is pro-science – pro-reality.
(I was hoping to link to one or other of the posts about Terri Schiavo I remember on Balloon Juice, but all the links seem to have broken.)
Terri Schiavo was just one specific case of the anti-science brigade thundering forth in their efforts to destroy reality: it had a peculiar resonance because it was anti-science on a small, understandable scale. Ms Schiavo’s brain no longer existed – the autopsy proved what medical examination prior to bodily death had thought certain. Yet some right-wingers continue to claim that they were right, in the face of all scientific evidence that they were wrong.
The theory of evolution, and all the science that follows from it. The known human history of the world, which goes back 13 000 years ago. Recognition that normal human sexual orientation ranges from heterosexual to homosexual. Acknowledgement that a fertilised ovum is not a human being, and does not become one until a woman has invested nine months of solid physical effort to make it so. All of these things are part of scientific reality.
One may have differing political opinions about facts established by science, but there are beliefs that seem almost standard issue for many American right-wingers that are absolutely orthogonal to science: that evolution is just one theory, and other theories are of equal value; that the world was created in 4004 BC; that the only normal human sexual orientation is heterosexual; that the instant a human sperm penetrates an human egg, a human being exists with an absolute right-to-life. None of these beliefs correspond to reality.
John Cole has said publicly that it was the Republican anti-reality anti-science line on Terri Schiavo that triggered his break away from the party line. The Republican Party appears to have gone so far away from reality on so many issues that someone who is reality-based, scientifically-minded, must either give that up (and to the scientifically-minded, that’s akin to saying to a devout Catholic, “just give up transubstantiation, will you?”) or else cease to toe the Party line on issues relating to scientific facts – which may range from same-sex marriage to the Lancet report.
This is not an argument that left-wingers are more connected to reality than right-wingers, or that Republicans aren’t scientifically-minded and Democrats are, or snything like that.
(Tony Blair sent three out of his four children to a faith school where some of the teachers do not believe in evolution. And Blair is politically considerably leftwards of most electable Democratic Party politicians in the US, even though I consider him to be right-wing.)
But being anti-science – being anti-reality – has become a right-wing meme in US politics. Is it reversible? Probably: if enough right-wingers like John Cole and others say, loudly enough and often enough, that you can be a scum-sucking capitalist dog* and still hold to scientific reality.
*Or cat. My cats are definitely members of the capitalist landlord exploitative class.
One wonders what kind of chaos is going on in Iraq that an arab can say this:
“If they brought the Israelis, the Jews, and they ruled Iraq, it would be better,” said Karima, her face framed by a black veil. Sunlight bathed the room; electricity, as usual, was cut off. “It would be a million times better than a Sunni, a million times better than a Shiite.”
[LisaSimpson]Why would someone who wants our society based on what the Amish do be using the Internet?[/LisaSimpson]
PS: Santorum gets even crazier.
Juke, I think you’re mixing up two meanings of “believe in”. Scientists believe in evolution in the sense that they believe the process of evolution exists. They don’t believe in evolution in the sense that one believes in a religious doctrine — that is, there’s no implication that they believe in it as an absolute good. They believe in all sort of diseases, for example, but (unlike you apparently) they believe in curing them. Besides, cultural and scientific developments are part of human evolution as well.
What KCinDC said. The very act of survival is “a denial of evolution’s reaping scythe”.
Or, to repeat, evolutionary theory is DEscriptive, not PREscriptive.
Jes – I’ve been reading John Cole since the Terri Schiavo debacle. It’s been very interesting watching his “transformation” as the Republicans have moved farther and farther right, abandoning their “sane base” along the way.
Also, I’m sure you’ve read Chris Mooney’s “The Republican War on Science”, right? The Republican hatred for science is not limited to the set of “complicated issues” (like stem cell research, end-of-life decisions, evolution, etc.). It is now a pervasive all-encompassing drive that is now at the very center of their agenda.
I believe Republicans are trying to destroy science and scientific integrity because cold hard facts, statistics and, more importantly, the scientific method itself, threaten to expose that nearly every thing they say is a lie. From climate change, end-of-life decisions, to ESC research, to their lies about healthcare, the economy (tax cuts/revenue, health of SS, etc.), EPA reports on air quality at Ground Zero, etc. Nearly everything Republicans have done in the past 10 years or nearly everything they want to do, falls apart if subject to the strict scrutiny of scientific inquiry.
I’m not even talking the casual type of falling apart that happens when people promise a simple solution to a complex problem. But instead a kind of intentional mendaciousness and/or willful ignorance that defies logic (see Rush Limbaugh’s comments about MJF for the end result of this). Hugh Hewitt even went so far as to claim the entire discipline of polling people is biased towards liberals – obviously allowing him to therefore ignore/”discredit” anything that comes out of a poll (like the polls that show 75-85% of the public supports ESC research and does not object to federal funding for ESC research either).
Sadly, I am reminded of this quote, apropos of what Republicans clearly want:
“In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science.’ The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.”
Jes wrote: *Or cat. My cats are definitely members of the capitalist landlord exploitative class.
I would disagree with this. Although my cat certainly has the Laissez part of Laissez-faire down, she has failed to do any conspicuous consumption and has few demands. I tend to think of her as the scion of an aristocrat, wiling away her days in idle leisure, but not really oppressing anyone. She’s like Neil Bush or Roger Clinton, but without the drugs.
Let’s look at this more closely. The cat costs me about 1/10th of what the dog does (what with the food, the dog walker, the emergency vet bills). The dog is happy with lots of deficit spending (when’s she brought in anything to pay for her keep?), happy to despoil the environment, willing to take what’s mine to make herself happy and only concerned with the short-run when she chases bees she knows she is allergic to). Yes, my dog is a Republican.
OT: Can we please have a moratorium on photoshopped blackface images posted by liberal bloggers?!
Jeebus.
Matt: I’m game. I hereby announce a massive change in policy: henceforth, I will fail to post photoshopped pictures of people in blackface as part of a deliberate policy, and not just because I can’t imagine why I would want to do that.
There’s something tragic about Billmon.
hilzoy, I suppose a way to make that moratorium effective in your case would be to delink him from the left column.
I’d suggest emailing with your displeasure instead.
I’m curious, what would have been a way to make that same underlying notion of Wolf being shocked that would have made the point? (this assumes the point should be made, and all that, but this shouldn’t be taken that I am defending it, I’m just trying to think what should have been there instead in order to make the same point)
KCinDC – thanks for that. Yes I know.
But the corollary, that evolution gave us these attributes and abilities and now, well, now we don’t need it any more because we have them, or, we don’t like it anymore, or something, something changed and now it’s over, it’s too unpleasant, now we’ll do it ourselves thanks, only we won’t call it evolution anymore we’ll call it success. It’s still evolution, it’s just that now we can modulate it better, with the corollary of that that anywhere along the species timeline if whatever ancestor we had had had the tools and technology our own evolution would have stopped back then – that was sort of implied in what I said.
Did we vote on non-anthropocentric evolution being a bad thing? Or was it just taken for granted that everyone agrees on that?
Seeing something of value in what the Amish do and how they live isn’t the same as espousing their way of life.
Global warming is real, and they didn’t do it, and the people who did do it, the people whose approach to the world is responsible for having caused it, are not going to fix things with the same tools and technologies, and the same mind-set of arrogance and chauvinstic hubris that caused it.
Not having caused global warming is now kind of an admirable thing, and every day it becomes a more admirable thing than it was the day before.
Shame is coming our way, bigtime.
It just hasn’t hit yet.
Global warming wasn’t, isn’t, caused directly by overpopulation, but it’s being driven by it.
Effusion over life-saving technologies doesn’t have the same lustre anymore.
What we’re getting is the direct result of the incompetence of an organism that’s used its ability to thwart evolution’s culling mechanisms to achieve dominance and control over everything it can see that threatens it.
Lacking a mirror, but having microscopes and telescopic gunsights.
Harmony with the natural world and balanced living within it are ridiculed in much the same way the Amish are, and for the same reasons generally. Because they threaten the selfish complacency of the status quo. The terms can be rationalized into meaninglessness but they aren’t meaningless, anymore than because morality can be rationalized away – as it is, by the government of the US right now – it becomes meaningless.
Men hunt wolves from helicopters – the anti-Amish. These are culturally successful men, dominant players. Cheney’s canned hunts are not freak activities – that kind of stuff, and worse, is common among the vicious bitter boys who own and run the world now.
What I’m suggesting is that’s not something to encourage or reward, or even tolerate, and that stem-cell research is likely to have other benefits, including eventually the ability to thwart the aging process indefinitely, to stymie death, and that those men, or men like that and their children, will be the benficiaries – not the Amish, not the Guarani, not the bushmen of the Kalahari.
None of whom hunt wolves from helicopters, or ever would, and none of whom started the still-building climate disruption we’re presently calling global warming.
I’m not attacking the idea of saving lives or curing disease, I’m suggesting the polarization is artificial, and dangerous because of that – and the real moral questions aren’t even being asked, much less debated.
Juke, if you’re not attacking the idea of saving lives or curing disease, then I don’t know what you’re doing. You’re giving an awfully good impression of condemning technology in general because it has had negative effects along with the positive and apparently because it opposes evolution (aren’t human mental capacity and the resulting culture and technoogy a result of evolution?). If you’re not opposing curing disease or saving lives, then what’s the point of all this about how we’re being immoral in opposing evolution? Are eyeglasses immoral too?
All three blackface incidents (Gilliard, Hamsher, Billmon) were shortly before a primary or general election, so maybe we’re spared any more until 2008. At least this one featured a media personality rather than a Republican (or Republicanish) candidate.
racist Republicans to shower him with faux outrage.
I’m curious, are there such things as non-racist Republicans in your world? Are there any circumstances in which people who disagree with you politically might be permitted to express actual outrage at tactics like blackface?
Weird. How did Andrew respond to KB’s comment 50 minutes before it was posted? DST oddities?
KB, Jane Hamsher’s blackface incident involved a photo of Joe Lieberman on Huffington Post, shortly before the Connecticut primary.
billmon’s strikes me as different from, and less objectionable than, the Gilliard incident (don’t remember hamsher).
Gilliard got into trouble because the figure he ridiculed via blackface was in fact a black man, sc. the Republican candidate Steele.
This allowed a chorus of racist Republicans to shower him with faux outrage.
It was predictable, which made it a tactically stupid move on Gilliard’s part–it was an opening for bad faith, and bad faith rushed in.
Billmon is picking on Blitzer, who is not (so far as I know?) himself black. Can anyone generate even the *pretence* of outrage over this one?
I don’t see anything tragic about billmon–he is documenting some tragedies, but they’re only the tragedies we’re all living through.
Test.
John Cole cites the recommendations by the Marine Corps that Jim Webb’s book is a good read.
Meanwhile, civilian punk Erick at punk headquarters, Redstate, continues to call Webb a “dirty perv’.
Erick needs to meet a Marine and mouth off.
How did Andrew respond to KB’s comment 50 minutes before it was posted? DST oddities?
Something’s pushing certain comments to the end of threads, Thullen’s is that way right now.
I’m trying to anticipate comments rather than just respond to them. 😉
A pre-emptive strike!
I react with shock and awe.
Probably “Terrorreich” is more apropos.
How did Andrew respond to KB’s comment 50 minutes before it was posted?
I’m trying to anticipate comments rather than just respond to them. 😉
By “tragedy” I meant that I used to consider Billmon one of the best bloggers looking into the abyss but I now get the feeling the abyss has looked into him. Hopefully when the adults are in charge again in Washington he’ll be readable once more.
And now it’s rilkefan’s reign of terror, at least until 3:07pm.
Mine?
Your reign was short, Slartibartfast. Bwhahahahahahaha!
kid b: your comment (the one Andrew preemptively objected to) doesn’t actually imply that all Republicans are racists, but it’s hard to see what that word is doing there otherwise — I mean, it’s not as though something about Billmon’s post somehow selectively enables all and only those Republicans who are racist to express outrage. If you meant to imply this, it’s over the line; if not, it was gratuitous.
Just a grammatical observation, kid bitzer’s use of the word could also be viewed as way of assuring readers that he believes that there are non-racist Republicans. It sort of hinges on whether you think the outrage was faux or real outrage. I think. Something to do with the scope of the adjective, though my morning coffee has not yet been made.
It sort of hinges on whether you think
I agree!
Perhaps I should have written believe instead of think…
Seems to me the outrage could have been faux (my guess of the majority) without the outraged being racist. Unless one says that falsely protesting on anti-racist grounds is itself racist, which is counter-intuitive. Anyway, I saw the use of the adjective in question as having a logically restrictive intent.
sorry–the date stamping-weirdness meant that I missed Andrew’s query until just now.
Of course there are lots of non-racist Republicans. Some of my best friends, for instance.
But it was the racist ones whose outrage was faux. Right? The outrage expressed by the Republicans who are not racist, but instead motivated by a deep concern for racial equality, was not faux outrage.
Read it again, team:
“This allowed a chorus of racist Republicans to shower him with faux outrage.”
This is not really that controversial, is it? I.e. that some of the outrage was make-believe, and that some of that make-believe outrage came from Republicans who are in fact racist, and that some of those people used this episode as an opportunity to engage in this make believe?
I find it hard to see how anyone thought I was claiming that all Republicans are racist. But surely no one wants to claim that *no* Republicans are racist? Or that none of the people who expressed outrage at Gilliard were Republicans who are in fact racist?
Look, I am happy to make gratuitous accusations, and I’m happy to cross lines. But catch me at it when I’m actually doing it, okay?
I’m curious, what would have been a way to make that same underlying notion of Wolf being shocked that would have made the point? (this assumes the point should be made, and all that, but this shouldn’t be taken that I am defending it, I’m just trying to think what should have been there instead in order to make the same point)
How about Wolf’s head on Capt. Reynaud’s body in a screen grab from Casablanca?
This allowed a chorus of racist Republicans to shower him with faux outrage.
So, to be clear, there were also non-racist Republicans who were showering him with actual outrage, and your objection was to the racist ones with the faux outrage?
I find it hard to see how anyone thought I was claiming
And I’d just like to welcome you to my world, where I am quite frequently astonished at what people think I’m saying. 😉
That’s interesting. Though if the outrage were faux, because it seizes on a racial issue, isn’t it racist? Claiming that something offends you when it doesn’t is tauntamount to lying, so it seems to have some relationship to racism, though I see your point and it is a good one. It has to plug into the ‘MLK was a Republican‘ ads somehow, though I’m sure not the one to come up with the definitive explanation.
Sorry, that last was to rilkefan’s post.
Phil, Wolf as Claude Rains doesn’t get to the point. Capt. Reynaud is going along to get along, and at the end of the movie, he joins the good guys and you always knew his heart was in the right place. (I wonder if the original audiences ever thought that Bogie was going to get hung up by his thumbs, though I have to doubt it) That Wolf couldn’t say during the interview, but had to figure it out later that he was being called a traitor calls for a more powerful image than the notion of a good guy making a few wrong choices and finding redemption later.
Andrew–
I solemnly affirm the following:
1) I believe that there is at least one non-racist Republican;
2) I believe that at least some expressions of outrage directed at Steve Gilliard were sincere and honest (though misguided, in my opinion, but that’s a different issue);
3) I believe that at least one of the expressions referred to in 2) was expressed by one of the people referred to in 1)
4) I object to expressions of faux outrage from racist Republicans, because of their falsity and racism; I may object to sincere expressions of outrage from non-racist Republicans for other reasons, but not on the grounds of their being false or racist.
Hope that’s clear enough. Seems like a shame to spend this time parsing my unclarities; at least when we spend time clearing up what you said, it is more directly related to the actual post.
Which, if I recall, was originally about Limbaugh’s sliming of M.J. Fox.
Fox speaking at a rally for Sherrod Brown in Ohio:
Take that, Limbaugh.
You know, Alec Baldwin was right with what he said about Henry Hyde. It goes triple for this bunch of buffoons.
kid b: thanks. I think what you said was open to both interpretations.
To make up for the loss of your time, I take it everyone has seen this
I went and checked out the report Santorum seems to be referring to, and it counts any company that does business with a bunch of companies, including Libya and, oddly enough, Saddam’s Iraq. (The report is from 2004.) Also, Iran and N. Korea and the Sudan, and maybe a few more. It doesn’t list the companies, or even its methodology: the group responsible for it seems to have sent the portfolios of a bunch of states (as of 2004) to some group that assesses these things, but the report itself gives no indication of the criteria it uses.
And there’s more fun here: NRCC (the Republican House committee Rep. Reynolds runs) accepts money from (female) porn star who says, about the Bush twins:
The relevance of this being, of course, that RNC ad with the guy saying: “So he took money from porn movie producers. I mean: who hasn’t?” In fact, Ford returned the money as soon as he found out where it was from. Contrast this to the NRCC:
To be clear: I have no objection to porn money. It’s hypocrisy I mind.
lj: (I wonder if the original audiences ever thought that Bogie was going to get hung up by his thumbs, though I have to doubt it)
*waves hand*
When I was twenty or so, a new friend said casually that so-and-so was like the character in The Maltese Falcon. “What?” I said. “The movie,” she said. “The one with Humphrey Bogart.”
“Who’s Humphrey Bogart?” I asked.
(If you don’t quite believe anyone could be that ignorant: when I was 14 and a girl rushed into the art classroom and said “John Lennon’s been shot!” I was the one who looked up from the picture I was concentrating on and asked “Who’s John Lennon?” My ignorance rivalled a High Court Judge in those days. I could, however, recite large chunks of Shakespeare from memory and explain the difference between homousian and homoousian. I’m not sure I could do any of that now, but I do know who John Lennon is.)
Anyway, so, friend-with-large-collection-of-1940s-movies suddenly has eyes that light up like a battery-operated teddy-bear, and she invites me round and we end up watching more b/w movies than I’d ever seen before.
And finally, without warning me about any of the plot, she puts Casablanca in the VCR, assures me that it gets better when I look at her helplessly after the first two minutes, and watches me, not the TV screen, as Captain Renault says “Major Strasser has been shot!”
And I swear to you, lj, I really thought that Rick Blaine was about to get strung up. I’m prepared to bet that the original audience, who were watching it in a state of ignorance as blessed as mine, did too.
The Daily Show got there first.
Hilzoy, even more directly on point, the RNC, the organization responsible for the add against Ford, took money from a porn producer (though as far as I know he hasn’t said anything about the Bush twins, perhaps because he makes gay porn).
Hey…where’s my crazy bread?
I mind hypocrisy too, but I’m a little hesitant to condemn other people’s before I get my own cleaned up.
Kai Chang sums up my objection to Billmon’s ill-advised blackfacing of Blitzer (note: site is currently having technical difficulties – scroll to October 30th @ 4:12pm):
Additionally, ebogjonson has a handy flowchart for those white liberal bloggers considering the use of blackface.
As Prometheus 6 says in an open letter to Billmon, “When you want to use race metaphors, put down the Photoshop icon and back slowly away from the program.”
It’s that simple.
KCinDC: Not just a porn producer: a GAY porn producer. I’m waiting for the outrage from the non partisan (snicker) FRC.
*crickets*
BTW, didn’t Phil Gramm finance a porn flick back in ’70s?
matttbastard: that is a truly excellent flowchart. (And he’s a BSG fan! 🙂 )
“I really thought that Rick Blaine was about to get strung up.”
Would have improved the movie immensely.
Oops just noticed KCinDC already pointed out the porn orientation.
Somebody needs to construct a flowchart re: posting at work.
Billmon’s responds, Who are you to judge me?
“Billmon responds”. Sheesh. Getting too old to multitask.
Hil: I first saw it after the Hamsher debacle. Never fails to provoke a heartfelt (if somewhat bitter) giggle.
I’ve yet to see the new version of BSG, but will admit to holding some guilty affection for the original 70s series (along with Buck Rogers, even though Gil Gerard was, at best, the poor man’s Lee Majors).
Am still trying to wrap my noggin around a Starbuck with ovaries, though.
rilke: I for one am really glad that Billmon took time to inform us black folks what real racism is. Was kinda confused about that.
So, who’s up for poking fun at the Holocaust?
Well, I maybe tend to agree with his claim about what the worst (“real” is demagogy) racism is, not that I would venture to opine – but the “you guys suck so I can do whatever the hell I like” argument is not my favorite.
rilke: Agreed, to a certain extent. However, I resent the notion that the only ‘liberals’ offended by his use of blackface are overly-PC whites trying to score cheap brownie points with tha brothas and sistas (although I suppose it’s easy to reach a dismissive conclusion like that when one doesn’t bother linking to [or even reading? his blogroll is pretty melanin-free] the bloggers of colour who’ve also raised objections).
Once again, I quote Prometheus 6: “If you think you’d say it out loud in a room full of Black folks you never met before, go for it. Otherwise, consider another image.”
Sure, no argument.
That is, no one accepts my occasional argument that doing what one is comfortable doing to help (e.g., letting the people starve in wherever-they’re-starving when one is a well-fed-American) isn’t enough according to a consistent set of morals.
Rilke: yeah – that’s one reason why I cringe at cozy, sacrifice-free charity campaigns like Project Red, or Live8. (He said via his safe, privileged communication medium.)
Never fails to provoke a heartfelt (if somewhat bitter) giggle.
I’m just embarrassed when people do this. Doesn’t even matter what color they are; I’ve never seen it done in a way that makes me wish I’d done that.
And the first explanation for it is, naturally, that it’s racist. Which, you know, embarrasses me a little more, because now I’m doing it.
Slarti:
To quote Mike Patton, ‘what is “it”?’ (or, ‘that’?)
(ie, blackface, my giggling, the flowchart…?)
(er, replace ‘that’ with ‘this’.)
matttbastard: I haven’t had any problems with Starbuck’s ovaries, since (a) I never saw the original, and (b) I have yet to figure out anyone’s name in the new series, so have no clue who Starbuck is.
I suspect that Adama is EJOlmos, and since, after I said something about “the grumpy guy in the eyepatch” (or something), Andrew said “Yes, Tigh…” (or something), I’m guessing that TGOGITE is Tigh.
Hopefully, all should become clear once the miniseries arrives. Heh heh.
Hm, well I’m at a loss, as I really don’t know which one is Starbuck, either, although Google sez this is the keeper of the ovaries.
Dirk Benedict (best known for his role as ‘Face’ in the A-Team) played the original Starbuck.
mattbastard:
If you think *you* have trouble wrapping your brain around it, you don’t even have to imagine how Dirk Benedict feels, because he’s told us. Title: “Lost in Castration”. Take-home message: “Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women `hand out’ babies.”
I wouldn’t dare make this stuff up.
…
Just for that, I’m buying as much merchandise featuring the new Starbuck as possible. (And burning all my A-Team memorabilia. Faceman, you’ve broken my heart.)
Starbuck is the angry blonde. Katee Sackoff, I believe.
Tigh is the angry man with one eye.
Admiral Adama is EJO
Lee Adama is the one in the fat suit.
Well, I’m with him on the smoking.
Ironic that he touts the joys of macrobiotics, but goes off on a rant like that.
*this = blackface
*this being an instance of no class
What’s even more ironic about Dirk Benedict’s support for the macrobiotic diet (which he claims cured his prostate cancer) is that a non-trivial portion of the macrobiotic “leadership” has died of the cancer their diet supposedly cures.
(By non-trivial I mean nearly all).
That would be a stunning statistical case against macrobiotic diet if a) it were true, and b) the sample size was nontrivially large.
jcricket: What’s even more ironic about Dirk Benedict’s support for the macrobiotic diet (which he claims cured his prostate cancer) is that a non-trivial portion of the macrobiotic “leadership” has died of the cancer their diet supposedly cures.
So, a non-trivial portion of cancer sufferers died of cancer.
I’d say “color me shocked” but is that appropriate in this thread?
Matt: have you seen this musicvideo comparing old and new BSG series?
Hmmm…you understood macrobiotic “leadership” to mean cancer sufferers? I was eating macrobiotic back in the mid ’80s, but I had no idea that cancer sufferers owned it.
Live and learn, I guess.
Dutch: thanks for that – had forgotten how sextacular Lorne Greene was.
🙂
That would be a stunning statistical case against macrobiotic diet if a) it were true, and b) the sample size was nontrivially large.
Well, no, it would be a stunning case against “macrobiotic diet as a cure for cancer” vs. “macrobiotic diet as what somebody prefers to eat.”
Well, if everyone on macrobiotic diets was dying of cancer, I’d say it condemns the diet. Unless everyone on the diet started out having cancer, or had elevated cancer risk to begin with.
See also here.
Slarti – Check out the Wikipedia entry for macrobiotics. Besides the diet making no scientific sense (there is no evidence that the basis on which foods are picked as “good” or “bad” is supported. Any benefits are coincident or a result of very low calorie intake), the level to which it was (at least once) touted as a cure for many diseases is pretty irresponsible.
I would agree that for most “normal diets” this number of people dying of cancer would not, in any way, be significant. But when the creators and proponents of the diet (including Dirk Benedict) claim the diet cures your cancer, and then people on the diet keep getting and dying from cancer, it’s a pretty simple denunciation of their claim.
And no, this has nothing to do with this thread, except to attack Dirk Benedict’s credibility.
the level to which it was (at least once) touted as a cure for many diseases is pretty irresponsible
Possibly; I’d never seen those claims. I’d been exposed to macrobiotic diet, as I said, back in the mid 1980s, and besides noticing that it shared some footing with Eat To Win, among others, I had no idea that it was touted as any miracle cure.
I’d only pick nits here:
But when the creators and proponents of the diet (including Dirk Benedict) claim the diet cures your cancer, and then people on the diet keep getting and dying from cancer, it’s a pretty simple denunciation of their claim.
I’d say this: that the cancer death rate among practicers of macrobiotic diet may be condemnation, or may not be, depending on how those people got on the diet in the first place. If there was some a large test group that was subjected to A macrobiotic diet and a control group that ate normally, I’d agree that a statistically significantly higher cancer death rate in the macrobiotic group would signal the opposite of their claim. But suppose more people who had already contracted cancer were swayed by the cure-claims, then one would expect that if the diet did nothing at all as regards susceptibility to cancer, the cancer death rate would be much higher than in a random sampling of people irrespective of diet.
But I tend to fall into the camp that says diet and such can help a bit, but not necessarily cure. Proponents of such viewpoints tend to take a few cases of remission and credit it to X, where X is the thing they’re selling.
My sister was involved in the whole Hallelujah Diet thing, including the Amway-esque marketing of the products, and I’ve seen enough of that sort of thing to have developed a sort of immunoresponse to it.
My issue, btw, is now with practitioners at large, but the “leaders” of the diet. My basic assumption is that the number of people on a macrobiotic diet who get cancer will largely mirror the general public. I can say that because I don’t believe the diet has any effect on most cancers.
It’s one thing to claim “this diet might help you get less cancer” and another to claim “this diet cures cancer” or “you won’t get cancer on this diet”. Should you claim either of the latter, and then die of cancer later, you’ll have to excuse my Schadenfreude after years of you actively deceiving other people.
I say this as someone who works at a research center that does study cancer. It looks like 30% of your chances of getting cancer are purely genetic, 40% are environmental (so don’t smoke, don’t work in a coal mine, etc.) and the rest is probably some combination of “chance” (i.e. stuff we don’t understand yet, but that’s not really random) and stuff under your control (like diet).
Because of this, I’m like you. I have a response to the whole selling of fake cures, especially when couched in the language of “nature”.