Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds has a suggestion in the New York Post on what rich Republican donors can do with their money:
In her 2004 book, “Spin Sisters: How the Women of The Media Sell Unhappiness — and Liberalism — to the Women of America,” Myrna Blyth (a former Ladies Home Journal editor) explained in considerable detail the variety of “Mean Girls” feminism that the women’s media aim at their readers with every issue.
The message: There’s one way that women should think; people who don’t think that way are bad and stupid — and if you think the wrong way, women won’t like you.
For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.
For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.
This stuff writes itself, probably more easily than the Spin Sisters’ pabulum. And opening up a major beachhead in this section of the media is probably a lot cheaper than challenging major newspapers and TV networks head on.
The only losers will be the political consultants who ate up so much of the GOP’s cash this time around.
Not a bad idea, although a problem that is growing for the Right is that the Left is getting really good at policing advertisers, and the Internet gives a big edge to advertising-supported media over subscription-supported media. Women's publications are particularly advertiser-supported because women spend more money than men do (because men give more money to women to spend than women give to men).
I haven't looked at a paper copy of The Nation magazine recently, but the last time I did, it was crammed with ads. People on the Right tend to sympathize with advertisers, like the idea that "It's just business" and that there should be depoliticized areas of life, so they wouldn't dream of organizing a boycott of, say, Sears (the banner pops up when I went to TheNation.com) for advertising on The Nation.
People on the Left, in contrast, like getting worked up in a moral dudgeon and demanding that advertisers not advertise on the Right. This leads to the few ads on Right sites being pretty non-mainstream, which makes it look like conservatives are non-mainstream fringe folks, which makes them less appealing to mainstream non-fringe folks, whereas, obviously, The Nation is totally mainstream and non-fringe -- I mean, Sears advertises on it!
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178 comments:
A bit OT, but I wish someone would explain to me how The Nation manages to keep publishing. They haven't ditched the paper version, have they? So it's not like they've eliminated their costs. I've seen exactly one (1) person with a copy of The Nation in his hands in the last 20 yrs. It was a long-haired 50-something, probably a public defender, on a bus going through Sausalito.
Haven't there been a fair number of conservative-organized boycotts and outraged demands that someone be shut up, too? Like the advertisers of that American Muslim TV show were threatened by a boycott, right? Various people have been hounded out of media jobs for insufficient deference to Israel or being too positive about various Muslim extremists, but I don't remember if boycotts were threatened. The main thing I remember along these lines recently was some people boycotting chick-filet (sp?) for having a CEO who was opposed to gay marriage.
I strongly suspect that most boycotts have essentially no effect on the bottom line, but that management types tend to be influenced by them because the negative attention to their companies feels uncomfortable. Also, boycotts and protests offer the faction of the company who wants to do something (fire the offending anchorman, cancel a particular show, pull advertising from a TV show, oust the CEO) more ammunition in their internal power struggles.
"Not a bad idea, although a problem that is growing for the Right is that the Left is getting really good at policing advertisers, and the Internet gives a big edge to advertising-supported media over subscription-supported media."
Bingo. Germany in the 30s made it politically incorrect to buy from Jews, and so, there was a massive 'boycott Jews' movement under the Nazis.
No, it's boycott any company that opposes 'gay marriage'. Indeed, not only boycott but hound that business out of business.
leftism is theftism.
Bill Maher has communist Cornel West on. No problem.
Obama with his radical associations can be president. No guilt by association there.
But if you're on the 'dangerous right', you're worse off than leftists during McCarthy yrs.
But the problem of the right is its main passion has been anti-intellectual whereas leftist passion has been pro-intellectual. Buchanan, though a smart guy, has pushed an anti-intellectual style of pro-life-ism, creationism, and etc.
But then given the bad name that biological science got after Nazism, the right withdrew into spirituality.
Of course, it doesn't help the right that fifth columnist Neocons work with the left to hound, blacklist, and destroy the real right or reacons.
As the results of the last election prove, it's not that easy to get everyone to vote against their own interests. (Poor white men will do so as long as Jesus tells them to). It turns out that women are smarter than men, since they disproportionately failed to support an out-of-touch plutocrat whose policies favored only the banker class.
Slick advertising and focus on new media won't work. If the Rs want to win, they should consider advocating at least one policy that would benefit the people of this country.
It's kind of depressing to think that life in the new era will become hyper-politicized, and we'll have to worry about the political implications of what stores we shop at or what coffee we drink.
Sears is mainstream? The other day we went to a Christmas lights display, and driving home (along a road we don't drive very often any more) we drove by a large Sears store.
My wife, looking absently out the window, asked in a puzzled voice "Sears? They're still in business?"
To get around the advertising police, set up affiliate programs and just settle for a sales commission.
Are single women liberal because they follow celebrities like George Clooney and Leo DiCaprio or is it the other way around? Action stars can get away with being conservative but for some reason male romantic leads either can't or don't want to even try it. Aspiring male romantic leads want to seem as sexy to women as possible. Being a Republican would probably interfere with that.
Republicans are fiscally conservative, well, at least rhetorically. Women can be amazingly cheap when they're older and married, but when young and looking they despise cheap men. A man who watches his expenses is automatically boring to them. In evolutionary terms they aren't looking for a future solid farmer, but for raiders and pirates. The Republican fiscally conservative electoral theme, which is a scam anyway (they aren't fiscally conservative when in government), is making the GOP seem less sexy to young women.
Sadly, moral conservatism, behavioral restraint are not going to look sexy to childless women. I think Steven Tyler's fan base has always been mostly female. It's hard to seem like a rake while calling for family values.
How can conservatism be made to seem sexier to women? In the amazingly funny 80s British comedy show The Young Ones the most leftist character, played by Rick Mayall, was an utterly unsexy nerd. Nerds are more likely to subscribe to absolutist ideologies than any other sort of people. I should know that 'cause I'm a nerd myself. In real life in 2012 the absolutist ideology that gets most support from nerds is libertarianism, but who cares about reality? If movies and TV showed unsexy nerds being primarily obsessed with leftist ideology, women could be moved in a conservative direction. Didn't Whit Stillman put an unsexy leftist ideologue in The Last Days of Disco?
Tying liberalism to the image of welfare mothers would be effective with young women, not because young women would care about the waste of taxpayer money or about the long-term dysgenic effect, but because welfare mothers tend to be fat, coarse, unsexy, low class. But scaring young middle class women with welfare mothers would be harder to pull off in the current censorship evironment than scaring them with nerds. So the nerd strategy has more promise.
Class warfare is good for the right.
The natural drift of the elites is to be liberal. When you got all that money and privilege, you wanna do as you please. You don't wanna be restrained by moral values and institutions. The aristocrats of old were pretty decadent and flamboyant in their tastes and attitudes. They were quite 'liberal'. They fooled around and did all sorts of permissive stuff.
So, why were they were on the Right? Cuz they feared the unwashed masses. That fear of class warfare kept them on the Right.
But in the modern era, especially after the defeat of communism and triumph of Reagan-Clinton-globalism, there is no challenge to the very rich. They got all the wealth and freedoms, and they wanna use it anyway they want without social, moral, and national restraints. (The elites even control leftism. With rags like The Nation being funded by the superrich, the 'radicals' today are more into 'gay marriage' than class warfare. In fact, 'radicals' care more about millionaire gays and billionaire Hollywood Jews than about poor hillbillies. It went from class war to culture war.)
Since the current elites don't fear the masses--as class warfare is dead--, they wanna be as liberal as possible and dillydally with gays and fly around and have fun with their globalism.
So, paradoxically, the death of class warfare has allowed the elites to be more liberal than ever. If we want to drive the elites to the right, we must make them fear the masses, and that means class warfare.
This is what Hitler understood with National Socialism. Now, I'm not defending the crazy bugger or Nazism. I'm just pointing out that the elites will turn right when they fear class warfare. German elites feared communist takeover. And the threat inherent in National Socialism was that the elites better make concessions to the German masses or otherwise, the Nazis will rouse up the masses against the rich.
Elites hold real power, and so, the nature of the elites has a profound impact on society. So, the key to power is changing the nature of the elite. Since elites naturally wanna be liberal with their riches and privilege, they can only be driven to the right out of fear of class warfare from the masses. And so, the right must welcome the revival of class warfare. New American conservatism must be for the working and middle classes against the rich. And since the rich elites stabbed whites in the back in favor of globalism, we owe them nothing.
How pitiful Limbaugh, Romney, and Coulter and their ilk are. It's the superrich globalist class that created the new order that gave us Obama, but they are always yammering about how to defend the 'those powerless and beleaguered makers' from the 'socialist takers'.
Great analysis Steve. BTW, have you seen "The Geography of Gun Violence"? Its making the rounds of the liberal Blogo-sphere as one of the "deep" analyses whereby all facts - except race - are used to explain "Gun Violence". More fairy tales for the left.
Those who control the principles gain the power. Those who are controlled by principles lose the power.
When Insty (someone who's smeared both me and our host in the past) has an idea like this, see if he has a stake in any of the pubs he lists. I'm not saying he does, just that I wouldn't rule it out.
I suggest instead starting small, such as adding a Woman's Corner to The Blaze.
As for boycotts, if you consider the Teapartiers rightwing, look up #OpSLAM on Twitter. They think they can conduct an effective boycott of MSNBC's advertisers, and they don't realize how delusional that is. I've repeatedly tried to get their help with my small, targeted efforts at pressuring individual MSNBC hosts (eg this) without luck. Leftwing boycotts work better because they aren't like that.
http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Fatherland-Search-Elisabeth-Nietzsche/dp/0374157596
"In 1886 Elisabeth Nietzsche, the bigoted, imperious sister of the famous philosopher, founded a 'racially pure'" colony in Paraguay together with her husband, anti-Semitic agitator Bernhard Forster, and a band of fair-skinned fellow Germans."
Not to defend the nutty Elisabeth Nietzsche, but didn't Jews try to do the same with Zionism? Create their own racially pure Jewish state? Why wasn't that evil?
Folks on the right do boycott, just ask the Dixie Chicks. However, being politically correct about everything does open up significantly more potential targets.
People on the Right tend to like the idea that there should be depoliticized areas of life,
Exactly.
People on the right tend to view politics as just this thing that people do to pass time and try to keep a bit more of their paycheck.
Meanwhile the left understands politics is the continuation of war by other means.
The right doesn't even get that they are involved in a war. They get steamrolled every time.
Also there is the fact that the liberal leadership are MUCH more liberal than the average liberal, while the conservative leadership is MUCH LESS conservative than the average conservative.
We;re fucked
Have people realized yet the lowest information voters vulnerable to "vote cool" are probably college students and unemployed grads?
"although a problem that is growing for the Right is that the Left is getting really good at policing advertisers"
indeed. what underhanded tactics are they not either already good at, or getting better at every year?
A lot of the ads in the old Readers' Digest were for products made by... the old Readers Digest.
Start up your own women's magazine and create your own cosmetics/skin care/weight loss products too and advertise there. Scamway does it.
The loser talking about class warfare above is completely wrong the decadent aristocrats were the ones who backed Rousseau and Voltaire. Believe me de Maistre wasn't screwing around with the maid. You need to learn about a subject if you are going to use it to back your pet theory. In the future I suggest you just promulgate your theory without historic support that way you won't discredit yourself immediately.
There is an entire inustry of pundits and talking heads and ideological TV and radio and publications, which is all about making everything in life political. That's how they can exert infuence and make money. I sure haven't noticed less of this in conservative than in liberal circles.
Most people aren't very interested in politics, whether that's the details of the current power struggles in Washington, or the nuts and bolts of policy questions, or political philosophy or economics. Frankly, most people aren't bright enough to follow that stuff, and those that are mostly find it boring as hell. On the other hand, decidig what team you're on and rooting for it is accessible even to the least intelligent or informed.
"Meanwhile the left understands politics is the continuation of war by other means."
This is not quite right. For many on the Left, politics in their passion, their hobby, their substitute religion. They love politics. Most on the right don't. Plus many on right just aren't that intellectual. They care about their Money and family but - everything else is just too abstract for them. They'd rather watch a football game. The Right is full of morons who are always saying stuff like "We need to stop talking about all this other CRAP. The only thing that matters is...The deficit (or the WOT or the economy)!!"
Instapundit mistakenly assumes that Adelson wanted Republicans to win for the sake of Republicans winning. As it turns out, his real interest was keeping the Republicans from embracing immigration restriction, because cheap Hispanic labor powers his casinos. Ergo, that $150m Adelson "wasted" wasn't really wasted because open borders Obama won.
That and it was insurance, just in case Romney did win, Adelson wanted to make sure that Romney's prudish personal religion didn't affect his casino business.
A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year. Women know that men like that are out there and that they almost to a man identify as Republicans. And more than a little of this has popped up in mainstream conservative thought. I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns. Now, the Republican Party and conservativism in general are under no obligation to address my interests and those of other women but the door of non-support swings both ways. You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women.
Gloria
" Anonymous alonzo portfolio said...
A bit OT, but I wish someone would explain to me how The Nation manages to keep publishing. They haven't ditched the paper version, have they? So it's not like they've eliminated their costs. I've seen exactly one (1) person with a copy of The Nation in his hands in the last 20 yrs. It was a long-haired 50-something, probably a public defender, on a bus going through Sausalito."
Sausalito is great, isn't it? A whitopia of beauty, peace and prosperity.
Liberals tend to screw big cities up, not little gems like this place. That's because in a big city, they can isolate themselves in a cocoon of ignorance, far away from the reality of minorities.
Within a place like Sausalito, however, everything is local. No getting away from poor NAMs blasting the stereo, copping a feel on your daughter walking home from the local co-op, or engaging in senseless violence and property crimes. Its all in your backyard.
One reason the Left has so much power is because it can effectively organize boycotts. If the Left gets in high dudgeon over the statement of some CEO, they'll make that business pay.
Conservatives are generally far too disinterested in boycotts, but are also too rational. A conservative thinks in terms of himself - i.e., this company won't suffer by losing a few dollars worth of my business - while the Left understands that if it can get millions of people not to give that company their few dollars, they can shut them up. The Left also understands leverage - that by punishing one company, you make every other company live in fear.
"That and it was insurance, just in case Romney did win, Adelson wanted to make sure that Romney's prudish personal religion didn't affect his casino business."
What the hell do you know? There are gazillions of Mormons employed in the casino business.
Adelson recently revealed that he didn't leave the democrat party ... the democrat party left him.
He left only in the late 90's so apparently he was OK with LBJ, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton Pt I.
THAT IS WHO IS PULLING THE STRINGS IN THE GOP TODAY.
Why is the GOP moving left? Duuuuuuhhhhhhh. Freepers are confused!!
"Folks on the right do boycott, just ask the Dixie Chicks." - That was more they stupidly attacked their own fans then any kind of boycott.
The idea that conservatives are too high-minded to launch boycotts will no doubt come as a surprise to the Dixie Chicks, Phil Donahue, Bill Maher, and the country of France. Apparently Steve slept through 2002-2004.
"A bit OT, but I wish someone would explain to me how The Nation manages to keep publishing."
Huge donations.
"Believe me de Maistre wasn't screwing around with the maid. You need to learn about a subject if you are going to use it to back your pet theory."
Just look at the French aristocrats with powdered wigs and gayish stuff.
Watch Earrings of Madame De. I'm telling you that the buggers were fooling around. And the rich in Eyes Wide Shut were acting like aristocrats. And Ottoman Sultans were horny decadent bangers of chicks. And the Roman rich were into all sorts of indulgent stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdmV5NSvck
In Rules of the Game, the upper classes are fooling around like crazy.
Catherine the Great was a major humpress.
And look at the French monarchy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImLiQOaknMs
"A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year."
Because liberals have the power to SPIN the news.
Limbaugh was right about Fluke. She's a dumb slut.
And speaking of treating women like sluts, aincha heard rap music? Doncha know porn and MTV are controlled by liberals?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/9740044/The-cowardice-at-the-heart-of-our-relationship-with-Israel.html
Gloria,
I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns. . . . You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women.
The irony here is quite heavy. In a post that addresses low information women voters you make statements that are contradicted by facts, to wit:
"One of the least commented-upon aspects of the election returns is that well over fifty per cent of Caucasian females voted for Romney, too. Not as many of them as white men, of course, but a solid majority. Indeed, as a proportion of the total, more white women voted for Romney on Tuesday than voted for George W. Bush, in 2004, or for John McCain, in 2008."
If you were reading Steve and paying attention to Steve then you would know this. Clearly the majority of white women feel it is in their interest to vote Republican. You're in the minority of your demographic group. What's more astounding is that you're ignorant of why the majority of your sisters vote as they do.
You, dear Gloria, are the target audience, the low information female voter who doesn't really know what is going on but kind of intuits her position from the culture and buys into fabrications like "The war on women."
"I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns. "
"You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men"
indeed men are stupid voters who can't even get politicians to consider them as men.
end male sufferage!
"I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns."
Here's your chance to make those concerns explicit, but instead you leave us guessing. Not all women have the same interests - a fact mentioned in every Marriage Gap post. There is nothing novel in Sandra Fluke's pet issues; they are just a rehashing of feminist dogma except she is trying to inflict them on a Catholic institution - it is so transparent, and, she's not even Catholic. Maybe Limbaugh recognized that Feminism has done nothing to help preserve the native population and it provoked the invective - if he were a leftist he'd be forgiven his passion.
Are you sympathetic to ANY HBD issues - affirmative action? Disparate impact? Immigration? Don't these issues concern white women?
Maybe white men and white women just see the world differently and the divide will never be bridged. Today, I mentioned to my single sister that Obama was wiping phony dry tears from his eyes during a delivery of a script by his speechwriters (I wonder if he cried when he rehearsed it)- I've watched it a couple of times and I sense no authenticity. She looked at me in disbelief.
Remember that very anti-goy/man/white movie, Broadcast News, where William Hurt's insincere tears were portrayed as a symptom of psychopathy, why are white women so willing to buy them when delivered by a lesser actor?
Problem in Reynolds' analysis, like a lot of media-bias complaining, is the idea that creators, men or women, working at glossy magazines & chick web sites require a big undertaking at coordinating their message. As Blyth's book (good but not exactly brimming with discoveries you'd never make w/o reading it) details, the fundamental dynamic & the inputs for those careers yield the resentful anti-morality aspiring-urban pro-nomenklatura liberal symbol-manipulators' hymnal no matter how you try to constrain it. To a lesser extent that's true of primetime TV (daytime being pure prolefeed anchored by unemployed unwed demo)
Do a thought experiment with The View, the one that has a supposedly "strident conservative" family-values panelist/chatterbox on every episode. They complained each week (maybe daily, I'm not sure) that Romney wouldn't grace their august company. If he had--would that have changed 1 freaking thing
If I were trying to revamp The Nation I can imagine some commercials with treacly Ken Burns music talking about how this brand dates all the way back to the 1850s (?)... I think it is funny that the current boss's parents hosted that Leonard Bernstein Black Panther party & would try to work that in as well. Meanwhile the American Prospect needs its own gay dotcom gazillionaire, quick
I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns.
That's how you know this is an intelligently written blog. Try HuffPo, more your speed I suspect.
Easy refutation of Reynolds:
Look at any consciously right-wing attempt to ape "The Daily Show"--i.e. the Church of Low-Info Voters--and check how many weeks they lasted (not counting stuff like that God-awful running segment on the Newsbusters.org site).
This is all readily found on Wikipedia, friends.
Love the part where he cites left-wing snopes.com as the source of good Republican GOTV info
In Britain, the continuing female domination of society has lead to the general dumbing down of standards in both the print and televisual media - perhaps the internet has taken over from the pub as the traditioal male refuge.
The tabloid papers - particularly the execrable Daily Mail are filled with light weight fluff about 'celebrities', Kardahian, Brad Pitt, photographs of 'glamorous' women and all the usual tripe, idle tittle-tattle and gossip etc. A horrible plethora of glossy 'celebrity' magazines has sprung up, (there must be dozens of near identical titles), and prime time TV is dominated by trashy soap operas.
Not wishing to be the in-house misogynist, this is what you end up with in a female dominated society - taste and culture dies and useless trash truimphs.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Body+slamming+piglets+death+humane+pork+experts+with+graphic+video/7677326/story.html
Hogocaust. Ending this would be a great conservative crusade.
"Gloria said,
You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women."
Gloria, they are tone deaf idiots ...what can you say?
Surprising, I know, for such a smart group of readers ... but that is what idealogical blinders can do for you.
I have suggested several times on this blog (before the most recent election)that if the people who read Steve care about Whites and the preservation the family they would offer women cradle to grave security.
Make the Republicans the party of the women and chldren... with additional benefits to those who are married (such as raising the IRS deduciton for children).
At first the idea was ignored the second time jeered maybe this time it will only be ridiculed...
Really though it's pretty silly how they treat women, in particular the interests of single women, who look to the state as a substitute partner... and expect any votes from them.
At the same time of doing this they could go about dismantling the open borders policies by pointing out they are anti-family since they undercut wages of workers here already.
I guarantee you that a bunch of commenters here are going to torch this suggestion because it does not fit into their little cut and paste cookie cutter forumula be it paleoconservative or libertarian or whatever...
Really ... such a policy has a lot of upside if people would approach it with an open mind.
Since it would apply to all women and children who were here legally it would take the compassion issue right off the table and expose the Dems and their open borders and racial spoils system as the grotesque racist and anti-White and and anti-family monstrosity it is...
"how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were"
"don't expect white women ... to vote for a party dominated by white men"
Nineteenth Amendment was a bad idea.
It's kind of depressing to think that life in the new era will become hyper-politicized...
-
We sympathize.
I'm so old I can remember when women's magazines had actual editorial content, vapid though it was. Now the "articles" are disguised ads (This Season's Best Makeup; if you have an oily T-zone, try Such-and-such miracle blah-blah foundation [price and points of sale helpfully listed]).
I read Blyth's book and found it as silly as most conspiracy theories. A simpler explanation for the politics of women's magazines is that they have focus-grouped the topic and they print what sells, just as they do with any other topic. If they could make money pimping Rush, you'd see him on the cover--but Ellen sells better.
A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year. Women know that men like that are out there and that they almost to a man identify as Republicans. And more than a little of this has popped up in mainstream conservative thought. I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns. Now, the Republican Party and conservativism in general are under no obligation to address my interests and those of other women but the door of non-support swings both ways. You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women.
Can someone please translate this?
I read it several times and it makes no sense to me. As a woman, I figured I should be able to get it, but I don't.
A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year.
Right. Similarly, in 2008, women were so turned off by the MSNBC talk show hosts' ugly attacks on Sarah Palin that they helped elect President McCain.
I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns.
Well, what are your concerns?
Do you need free birth control? You can get it at Planned Parenthood, you know.
Do you want your husband's income to be mostly for your family or would you prefer it to be confiscated and distributed to other men's children here and around the world?
See, without defining your concerns, the statement is so vague, no one even knows what you are talking about.
Not all women have the same concerns. Unmarried women with bastard children don't have the same concerns as married women with husbands and children. We of course, don't know your situation, only ours. Republican policies trend toward supporting a status quo of productive, responsible, generally self reliant folks and a level playing field. Democrat policies trend toward subsidizing and rewarding failure and incentivizing dysfunction and waste. Sandra Fluke is 30, still a student and can't afford her entertainment of choice, sex. And evidently her partner doesn't value the experience with her enough to help out with the cost. So, my husband is asked to subsidize her from his productivity.
NOTA said... Haven't there been a fair number of conservative-organized boycotts and outraged demands that someone be shut up, too?
The view from the left.
A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year. Women know that men like that are out there
Men who think that women should buy their own goddam birth control, just as men do? Men like that?
women are smarter than men, since they disproportionately failed to support an out-of-touch plutocrat whose policies favored only the banker class.
Who reads The Nation, somebody above inquired. There appears to be a sizable overlap with the readership if iSteve.
"A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year. Women know that men like that are out there and that they almost to a man identify as Republicans. And more than a little of this has popped up in mainstream conservative thought. I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns. Now, the Republican Party and conservativism in general are under no obligation to address my interests and those of other women but the door of non-support swings both ways. You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women."
You're probably going to get attacked for this, but thanks for your perspective. I used to take the semi-misogynist position, until I made a conscious effort to see things from the woman's perspective. I try to think what it would be like if women I wasn't attracted to (fat, ugly, needy) wouldn't stop bothering me and would get mad if I didn't try to hang out with them. The Roissy crowd (rightly) attacks feminists and society in general for disparaging men's concern with looks, but disparage women for what they are attracted to.
Anyway, right wing politics offers to women the same things it provides to men: greater wealth, protection from criminals who rape/kill/vote for redistribution, better schools, etc. But the war against abortion and birthcontrol that Republicans have engaged in is truly sickening.
If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is. But the posters here identify with "Team Red." So even if they understand why pro-lifers are wrong on an intellectual level, they don't comprehend how sick those people really are.
The reason The Nation keeps publishing is because they regularly run ads soliciting contributions on top of subscription rates.
Anon at 6:51, Rousseau was lionized by aristos from de Warrens to Madame d'Epinay. After 1750 he more or less lived off the aristocracy.
Rousseau was most likely the first modernist. He was able to use mass media (just beginning to develope) and play the rich off the middle by exploiting a unique concept still very much alive, that of the noble savage.
He also knew that culture is what's left over after you forget what you tried to learn. This is key to modernism.
Gloria said: You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women.
Hunsdon replied: Ma'am, speaking only for myself, that is certainly not my wish, i.e., that the GOP serve exclusively the interests of white men. Indeed, our host's theory/program of citizenism is fairly explicitly in opposition to "exclusively serving white men." Rush Limbaugh is a buffoon and a blowhard.
Would you care to set forth for us some of your interests, which you feel the GOP is not serving, that we may either come to agreement or agree to disagree?
A lot of conservatives don't seem to realize how damaging Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were this year. Women know that men like that are out there and that they almost to a man identify as Republicans. And more than a little of this has popped up in mainstream conservative thought. I've been reading this blog along with comments for years now and I haven't seen any realistic policy prescriptions that would benefit me as a woman and almost no conversation that even discusses my concerns.
If you've been reading this blog and the commentary for years now and have seen "almost no" conversation that even discusses your concerns, you're of no concern to me. National survival (inter alia) is an issue that concerns everyone who concerns me. Just out of curiosity, what are you even doing reading this blog?
I suppose "as a woman" is the key term here; no, I'm not interested in your concerns as a woman, because they're already over-catered. It'd be like entertaining some morbidly obese guy's concerns about bon-bons.
This is not quite right. For many on the Left, politics in their passion, their hobby, their substitute religion. They love politics. Most on the right don't. Plus many on right just aren't that intellectual. They care about their Money and family but - everything else is just too abstract for them. They'd rather watch a football game. The Right is full of morons who are always saying stuff like "We need to stop talking about all this other CRAP. The only thing that matters is...The deficit (or the WOT or the economy)!!"
Riiight. That's why the Dems keep winning the NAM vote! Because they're so intellectual! Thanks for clearing that up.
Most of the major political magazines have always lost money. I'm pretty sure that's as true of The Nation as it is of The American Spectator. They are supported by wealthy people and foundations who want to get that information out there.
I never noticed any shortage of conservative political magazines last time I checked, but that was over five years ago.
As others have pointed out, the idea that conservatives don't wage successful boycotts is flatly false. Nobody suffered any consequences for supporting the Iraq War, but the Dixie Chicks paid a significant price for opposing it. In fact conservatives are probably better at punishing people for heretical viewpoints than liberals are.
Adelson wanted to make sure that Romney's prudish personal religion didn't affect his casino business.
Yeah you showed your ignorance there. Mormans ran the casinos when I worked in LV and I don't think it's changed much since then.
There may be gazillions of Mormons in the casino business, but run the numbers. How many illegals work in Las Vegas?
$150,000,000 was a pro immigration (cheap labor) play?
Look at the numbers. According to Wiki, Las Vegas Sands employs 40,000. If each employee working 2000 hours per year had to be paid just $1 more per hour due to the absence of cheap labor, that would cost Sands $80,000,000 per year.
$150,000,000 was a bargain.
Not to defend the nutty Elisabeth Nietzsche, but didn't Jews try to do the same with Zionism? Create their own racially pure Jewish state? Why wasn't that evil?
Most countries are racially pure, so that goal isn't really such a big thing. Hitler wasn't a bad guy because of his quest for racial purity - he was bad because he executed or worked to death tens of millions of non-combatants in his quest for global empire. Besides, Israel isn't racially pure - European Jews look as different from Oriental Jews (the ones who were kicked out of Arab countries) as WASPs do from Italians or Greeks. Heck, it's not even religiously pure, since a significant minority of Muslims and Christians exists within its borders. Egypt, with its 90% Sunni minority, achieved via the continuous persecution of Christians and massacres of pagans over a thousand years, is more religiously pure than Israel.
Gloria:
You can knock off the concern trolling. Romney carried white women and also white women under 30. Anyone who supposedly let Rush's comments about Fluke "offend" them such they run right back into Obama's arms were probably going to vote for Obama all along.
Others:
Yes, I know. Romney is personally prudish, but he keeps alcohol in his houses in case guests wants. I was just speculating. I think the cheap labor insurance is the better theory.
IA:
Um, I'm not quite sure why you directed that condescending little recap of well known information at me. I was responding to a previous poster who said that the rich back the right because even though they are personally decadent, they fear the mob. In fact, it was the aristocrats who backed the intellectuals who were largely responsible for unleashing the mob. I hope you little reminder gave you a self-esteem boost because it sure didn't teach me anything I didn't know.
Look if Romney is considered prudish rather than upright and moral upstanding by isteve posters whats the point. Porn and birth control really did make just about everyone a leftist when push comes to shove. Whatever their merits they made the re-imposition of a conservative system in America impossible. They made just about everyone in some way at least a part time libertine.
As far as all this "buy your own birthcontrol stuff," is it hard to see how taking that position towards only one prescription drug can be seen as anti-women? In a libertarian society nobody would have to pay for other people's health needs. But in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government, getting mad about one kind of pill exclusively used by women shows misogynistic tendencies.
As far as all this "buy your own birthcontrol stuff," is it hard to see how taking that position towards only one prescription drug can be seen as anti-women? In a libertarian society nobody would have to pay for other people's health needs. But in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government, getting mad about one kind of pill exclusively used by women shows misogynistic tendencies.
Contraceptives are recreational, not medical.
If sex is a need then medical insurance should cover the costs of prostitutes for ugly guys.
The whole thing is utterly stupid because contraceptives are cheap, or free if you are poor, and covered by most insurers anyway. Demanding that no employer/insurer ever exclude contraceptives is over the top totalitarian.
Also, why can't the guys who bang these chicks pay for their contraceptives? They are getting more out of this deal than the woman's employer.
Anon 11:11, you need to punctuate for less ambiguity. The first sentence can be read in two contradictory ways. No ones being condescending. I'm glad we agree. I don't get your vehement response to either myself or the original poster. Cheers.
I and many friends and acquaintenaces of the female persuasion voted for Romney (second time I voted R. Fist time was 2008; I simply could not believe how many people were taken in by psycho-fraud B.O.) Most are well educated and would profile as "liberal." I don't think the media (naturally) has paid much attention to the defectors from that religious cult--which is what it is. That doesn't mean we've joined the conservative cult. It just means we're calling it as we see it. A fraud who can stand up there and claim "he" killed a man whom the news reported as dead in December, 2001. The fraud could only do it with the absolute complicity of the media and the trance-like state that people have been in for the past 12 years.
But I don't think I'll be voting again. It's rigged. Romney should have won. It was rigged in 2008, but the vote was naturally closer.
There is no difference in these people. Psychologically, having a cast of mulattos in "control" is weird for most whites, and a feel-good for most blacks, browns, etc., but they really aren't in control of anything except their own complicity. Athough they certainly have moments of seeming to be influential, the real controllers are those not seen no matter who the elected officials are. It was decided years ago that a "black" person would be president, for various psyop reasons, but mostly for the fact that opposing him and his black appointees will be seen as "racism." I don't think they counted on people caring less and less about that. Only brow-beating by the owned-by-6-people-in-the-world media still makes a big deal out of it.
How can conservatism be made to seem sexier to women? In the amazingly funny 80s British comedy show The Young Ones the most leftist character, played by Rick Mayall, was an utterly unsexy nerd. Nerds are more likely to subscribe to absolutist ideologies than any other sort of people. I should know that 'cause I'm a nerd myself. In real life in 2012 the absolutist ideology that gets most support from nerds is libertarianism, but who cares about reality? If movies and TV showed unsexy nerds being primarily obsessed with leftist ideology, women could be moved in a conservative direction.
http://mypostingcareer.com/forums/topic/213-goonspng/
"Right, conservatives don't boycott anybody the way liberals do - they just collectively stop giving money to people they disagree with politically. It's completely different."
Right, that's what having a big public event where you run over their records with a bulldozer because they said they didn't like President Bush is. Not giving money.
People are by nature superiorist and if you repress one kind of superioritism, it has to be replaced by another kind.
Wasps used to be superioritist in their racial power. Now that they lost, they are superiorist in their redemptive power.
It's like Pee Wee Herman falling off his bike and saying, "I mean to do that."
On the bike, he thought he was so cool. But he fell on his butt, and so, he tries to preserve his pride by saying he meant to do it.
Wasps held the steering wheel but they lost control of it. They went from superiority to inferiority. But they try to rationalize their inferiority as a form of moral superiority, i.e. they relinquished control because they cared so much about principles and fairness and righting past wrongs.
I wonder... suppose Jews had never arrived in America. What groups could have posed a real threat to wasp elite power? Would wasps have willingly gave up their power to other groups? I don't think so.
Wasps got beaten but are pretending like they intentionally chose to got beaten out of some principle.
"How can conservatism be made to seem sexier to women?"
Produce more smart masculine men. Conservatism has too many dorks like Santorum. Women like men to be manly and smart.
Also, enough with loudmouth fatties like Limbaugh.
It's a sad day when someone like Ann Coulter has more balls than most conservative men.
What the Right needs is something like NPR and PBS.
More important than changing conservative minds, we need to change elite minds. Limbaugh and his ilk only attract dummies.
Elites are attracted to intellectual/intelligent stuff. If a rightist NPR-style or PBS-style outlet puts forth ideas and showcases cultural stuff like arts and letters and etc, then even libs will start watching... and their minds may be gradually changed. At the very least, we can sow seeds of doubt in them so they won't be so kneejerkedly PC.
"Contraceptives are recreational, not medical. "
What about viagra? Acne medication? A lot of medicine can be regarded as recreational or cosmetic. Yet nobody complains about anything except birth control.
"The whole thing is utterly stupid because contraceptives are cheap, or free if you are poor, and covered by most insurers anyway. Demanding that no employer/insurer ever exclude contraceptives is over the top totalitarian. "
Employers generally aren't allowed to pick and choose what health insurance plans will cover. The birth control mandate is no more totalitarian than anything else. It's those who complain about the birth control mandate that want a special exemption from a general rule.
Gloria, you are a moron and belong in Nancy Pelosi's party. How did you decide that Limbaugh's comments about Fluke, or even any Republican party position, represents "opposition to women"?
What you really mean is that you enjoy the post-1990 social order in which men must defer to women and consume themselves with being non-threatening. White men are now in the same position WRT you and your galpals as Sidney Poitier's character was to white men in "In The Heat of The Night," and you don't want to go back. That's okay, but just admit it.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163190
Lopsided coverage by Jewish media have reduced American support for Palestinian authority down to 10%.
Though Jews have been taking Palestinian lands for ages, most Americans--libs and cons alike--HATE Palestinians and blame them for everything and feel zero sympathy.
This is what media control can do. Never mind the facts. All that matters is the SPIN.
Then, we know why white conservatives have become so hated and despised in his country. They've gotten the Palestinian Treatment from the same media.
But then, conservatives are the biggest ass-kissers of American Jews, so they deserve it.
Meanwhile the left understands politics is the continuation of war by other means.
"The right doesn't even get that they are involved in a war. They get steamrolled every time.
Also there is the fact that the liberal leadership are MUCH more liberal than the average liberal, while the conservative leadership is MUCH LESS conservative than the average conservative."
This. This is a culture war for the future of America. Conservatives treat politics as a 9-5 profession. Liberals treat it as war, which is what it is.
Obama won because he pounded Romney on issues that he thought would benefit certain interest groups, and then got them enthused enough to vote. Sluts, latinos, gays, all got something. Then the auto bailout attacks harmed Romney among working class whites.
Romney did not fight to win on the cultural issues that make people FEEL. He only gave an intellectual account of why Obama was bad. He should have responded to Sandra Fluke with outrage that the federal government would FORCE a religion to fund birth control, and he should have used it in every stump speech throughout the midwest. he should have responded to Obama's abortion love with pointing out his truly radical view on the issue (legal til birth with no restrictions). Romney should have attacked Obama's amnesty proposal with one of his own to protect American workers of all races from competition.
But he didn't, and he lost.
Conn shooting.
This is another case of Holden Caulfield with guns.
Young men or boys with mental or personality problems using guns.
Nerd neurosis + John Wayne-ism.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flfeedback/readflfeedbacklennon.html
By the way, weren't all these white liberals laughing about Jamie Foxx and "I kill all white people" joke on SNL.
White women mostly HATE HATE HATE White men.
Tone-deafness or Asperger's? You decide.
White women and White men have diametrically opposed and MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE interests.
Insanity or hatred? You decide.
Body+slamming+piglets+death+humane+pork+experts+with+graphic+video
You gotta respect a URL like that.
If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is. But the posters here identify with "Team Red." So even if they understand why pro-lifers are wrong on an intellectual level, they don't comprehend how sick those people really are.
If you're remotely moral, you should regard "my body, my choice (man's responsibility)" as the rallying cry of the adult child. There's nothing remotely moral or respectable about demanding all of the reproductive choices, and that half of the responsibility be fobbed off onto the one you just took the choices away from. It's simply wrong and immoral to support a system whereby a wife can steal sperm from a discarded man she has just cuckolded her husband with, impregnate herself with it, divorce her husband and demand he pay child support for the resulting offspring. It's so wrong, I can't really express how bad it is. But this is America 2012.
Choose:
"My body, my choice, my responsibility."
"My body, our choice, our responsibility."
Make that "sperm from a discarded condom from a man she has just cuckolded her husband with".
"Look at any consciously right-wing attempt to ape "The Daily Show"--i.e. the Church of Low-Info Voters--and check how many weeks they lasted (not counting stuff like that God-awful running segment on the Newsbusters.org site)."
Red Eye is a pretty funny show with a conservative bent. I keep waiting for Steve to be invited, but I think Andy Levy would object.
But in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government
I have no problem with employers offering BC if they want to. Sandra Fluke's position is that employers shouldn't have a choice in the matter, even if the employers are opposed to it on religious grounds or any other grounds. She wants the government to force them to include it in their plans.
If she doesn't like it, she can attend a secular law school, or cough up the ten bucks a month herself, instead of paying her employer to pay an insurer to pay a pharmacy to get her pills.
Most countries are racially pure
If you mean major continental races (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid) then sure. But even North European Caucasians are the result of multiple prehistoric invasion and admixture events (see graphic below from Dienekes' Dodecad website. And there were a lot more minorities in European countries before the World Wars then there are now. I don't just mean Jews and Roma but Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, Hungarians in Romania and Czechoslovakia, etc.
eurasia7
"But in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government, getting mad about one kind of pill exclusively used by women shows misogynistic tendencies."
Not all other medical needs are subsidized. Health plans have great leeway in which medical "needs" they subsidize and which ones they don't. Some subsidize sterilization, and some don't. Some subsidize fertility treatments, and some don't. Some subsidize LASIK, and some don't. Most health plans have never, never, ever subsidized condoms.
The big issue isn't over whether or not various health plans subsidize birth control, it's whether they should be required to, even in cases where they are morally opposed. It's also a question of whether a government that can't balance its budget, secure the borders, or win the war in Afghanistan should be bothering with the minutiae of corporate healthcare plans. They should not.
"If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is."
Abortion just reeks of murder - I'm sorry but I've been indoctrinated by a few centuries of Western Culture. I feel that if we are going to enhance civilization, we need some lives to work with. I offer an alternative: incentivized suicide for those of us who might feel we're not up to snuff. There is always a chance a little unborn one might some day do something extraordinary, you can't really say the same about a 40 something who has yet to make his mark on the world.
"Not all other medical needs are subsidized. Health plans have great leeway in which medical "needs" they subsidize and which ones they don't. Some subsidize sterilization, and some don't. Some subsidize fertility treatments, and some don't. Some subsidize LASIK, and some don't. Most health plans have never, never, ever subsidized condoms.
The big issue isn't over whether or not various health plans subsidize birth control, it's whether they should be required to, even in cases where they are morally opposed. It's also a question of whether a government that can't balance its budget, secure the borders, or win the war in Afghanistan should be bothering with the minutiae of corporate healthcare plans. They should not."
Is there any other medication as common as birth control that employers have discretion over whether to provide? I'm guessing if employers were refusing to provide a common drug used by the vast majority of men and no women and the Obama administration let them get away with it, people here would be complaining about how unfair it all was.
The larger point is that it was bad politics for Republicans to run with this issue, and employers are forced to do so much anyway that the liberty interest at stake is miniscule.
Yes, the government is pretty incompetent. That's why we should applaud all steps it takes to stop the creation of more dependents. From the HBD perspective, birth control is a good thing.
"There is always a chance a little unborn one might some day do something extraordinary, "
No there isn't. Just about no high IQ women have unplanned pregnancies, and if they abort their potential children it's because of some mental abnormality.
Much more likely, aborted children would grow up to be drains on the state and make it much less likely that others do extraordinary things.
My own feeling on abortion is that it is a less important issue than eugenics. We can have eugenics with no abortion. The best way to prevent abortions is to sterilize the people who will have, or cause, the most of them anyway.
That way the sperm never meets the egg.
That the anti-abortion fanatics oppose oral contraceptives is one thing, but that they oppose sterilization is evidence they really are not as anti-abortion as they are wanting to be social engineers.
I have no problem with that because all government, all religion, and all education IS social engineering. But they should be honest.
I'd say the Dickie Chicks are a pretty bad example of a boycott. I mean they had an almost entirely conservative fan base and insulted the Republican president overseas. Not only that the insulted the intelligence of the people who did vote for Bush which is exactly who bought their records. It's more akin to when Adam Sandler (which is a horrible example he actually makes pretty good indy films) seeks critical approval for making an indy film and then wonders where'd my fans go.
You know the Marvin Gaye song that goes, 'save the babies, save the babies'.
I think we should sing...
'let our enemies kill their babies, let them kill their babies'.
"If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is."
Ugh, should and is are not related.
Just because one is convinced of HBD, it does not follow that his moral compass will point towards accepting abortion.
Gloria said: "You may want the GOP to exclusively serve the interests of white men but don't expect white women (or any other group of women) to vote for a party dominated by white men who see themselves in opposition to women."
Er, you obviously haven't got the memo yet, dear, so let me give it to you: the majority of white women DID vote Republican this presidential election -- whatever their age group.
As for us seeing ourselves in opposition to women, I fail to see how one bigmouth (Limbaugh) trashing one parasite (Fluke) is anything other than a contest between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.
"Red Eye is a pretty funny show with a conservative bent. I keep waiting for Steve to be invited, but I think Andy Levy would object."
Why? He doesn't object to Steve's Taki Magazine colleague Gavin McGuinness being a frequent guest on the show. Red Eye might not have the budget to fly Steve in from LA though.
I"m confused when it comes to the discussion about the whole Rush-Sandra Fluke fiasco.
For some reason, every time I see the topic discussed on concervative blogs, the fact that the pill is often used to treat legitimate medical conditions is completely ignored. From what I understand, SF's need for the birth control pill is medical, not recreational. Women with PCOS and some other conditions need the pill to balance their hormones, maintain bone density, prevent their tumors and other growth in their sex organs from turning into cancer and other serious business. Denying people medical treatment just because this treatment also can be used for reasons that may or may not be questionable is misanthropic. Insulin is used to manipulate weight loss/gain by certain people. Should those who need inulin to manage diabetes be punished for the questionable behavior of others?
The whole story makes it look as though the geezers on the right overreact and throw a fit when they encounter anything that might be related to sex, before they have a chance to get their facts straight. And that does play into the stereotype of the conservatives being stupid, uncool and unable to deal with modernity.
"I'd say the Dickie Chicks are a pretty bad example of a boycott. I mean they had an almost entirely conservative fan base and insulted the Republican president overseas."
I don't know too much about this, but it seemed to me that there was an element of ethnic-imposturing-found-out that did in the Dixie Chicks. They probably could have taken the position they did and said so, if they had justified their position on behalf of their fan base's more-or-less-ethnicity. It appears of the 3 singers, 2 were the real thing, local down-home scots-irish singers who weren't very political. The third seemed to be from one of the liberal/pacifist German-Texan populations, a Boston-trained professional musician with the standard political-leanings to go with it; she seemed to do the political talking for the group, which was unfortunate, as some of the things she said amounted to "we're the anti-Dixie chicks, or at least I am!".
(Caveat: the above opinion is based on one movie I sat through for some reason that apparently the band or its supporters made to explain this incident, it consists mostly of them talking about it. I came out of it knowing more than I wanted to know.)
Well, if one is convinced of HBD, but finds abortion morally repugnant, then I'd imagine that one would be all about promoting the use of the birth control pill for any and every purpose, and making it as widely available and easy to get as possible.
Sandra Fluke's need for birth control was unexplored in her congressional testimony as she only testified to her friends need for birth control. I would think it would be incumbent on the people who proposed the policy in the first place to mandate birth control only for those who need it medically. Of course that will soon be abused by recreational users looking to not have to pay, but that way it doesn't look like you are giving out a hand out to floozies. Also for a party of old geezers the Republcian party somehow got a majority of votes from under 30 white crowd.
But in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government, getting mad about one kind of pill exclusively used by women shows misogynistic tendencies.
In a society where the medication for the medical condition Fluke was complaining was not paid for when it was shows Fluke to be the flake that she is.
From what I understand, SF's need for the birth control pill is medical, not recreational.
SF does not need it someone she knows of does.
For some reason, every time I see the topic discussed on concervative blogs, the fact that the pill is often used to treat legitimate medical conditions is completely ignored. From what I understand, SF's need for the birth control pill is medical, not recreational. Women with PCOS and some other conditions need the pill to balance their hormones, maintain bone density, prevent their tumors and other growth in their sex organs from turning into cancer and other serious business.
What utter BS.
The pill is quite ineffective for treating any other conditions. It causes unbalanced hormones and osteoporosis and is carcinogenic four crying out loud. Besides, these uses are off label specifically because the Pill is not approved as a treatment for any condition because evidence of safety and effectiveness has not been established.
"What the Right needs is something like NPR and PBS." @ 1:50 PM
The alternative right gets doubly aced out by the Media's the blackballing of the Right. It leaves conservatives totally dependent on Conservatism Inc. who favors the Neo-Cons and the US Chamber types. This has led to tax cuts and war but little else. The liberal media and corporate advertisers / funders have absolutely no interest in ever letting men, whites, native born Americans, or anyone who might have a different view of Israel get so much as a minute of air time. This is why the public media is so critical. Theoretically at least, all Americans should have access. I am glad Bill Moyers has a show, I only wish Lawrence Auster, Vdare, and our host Steve Sailer had one too. A right wing with access to the airwaves and free of the need to raise money is what keeps the left fears most and there are people that will do anything to make sure that it never happens.
" And that does play into the stereotype of the conservatives being stupid, uncool and unable to deal with modernity.".
Why would Sandra Fluke attend a stupid, uncool, archaic institution and expect them to be reasonable? Why couldn't she just let the poor Catlicks have their superstitions?
Sandra doesn't look too cool - that's probably why she latched onto a sexy issue. Insurance companies usually make exceptions for unusual conditions. She doesn't want an exception-she wants to change policy, because that's how plain, average people become famous.
Red Eye might better coincide with Steve's normal working hours if they aired at 4 or 5 am Eastern instead of 3
The whole story makes it look as though the geezers on the right overreact and throw a fit when they encounter anything that might be related to sex, before they have a chance to get their facts straight. And that does play into the stereotype of the conservatives being stupid, uncool and unable to deal with modernity.
Sorry, but if you believe the scatterbrained junk you just wrote, you're a moron who doesn't have a lot of value to add. Birth control is cheap as hell, it doesn't need to be further subsidized even for medical uses (e.g. straightening out your hormones--something one has to remind the ladies is often out of whack).
The fact is, women's health issues get constant and loud high profile attention, so bitching about having to pay 1/3 of your cell phone bill for birth control is not going to endear you to people (I mean I pay more for vision correction, where's my handout). And guess what, normal women--whose hormones are properly working--aren't on your side much about this or other inane, faddish concerns. Go whine somewhere else--please.
"Limbaugh and his ilk only attract dummies."
I listen to Limbaugh - but not his "ilk". Rush is a lot smarter, better-read, more original, more creative, and funnier than someone like Hannity. The Onion had a headline-only bit about Hannity once: "Fox News anchor asks the questions others are too smart to ask". That joke wouldn't work with Rush, which is why lefties mock his weight and his past addiction to painkillers instead.
That said, I usually cringe when one of Rush's callers is in the air. They often sound dogmatic and not particularly sharp. But at least Rush doesn't take many calls. And if he only appealed to geniuses, he wouldn't have such a large audience.
"What the Right needs is something like NPR and PBS.
More important than changing conservative minds, we need to change elite minds. Limbaugh and his ilk only attract dummies.
Elites are attracted to intellectual/intelligent stuff. If a rightist NPR-style or PBS-style outlet puts forth ideas and showcases cultural stuff like arts and letters and etc, then even libs will start watching... and their minds may be gradually changed. At the very least, we can sow seeds of doubt in them so they won't be so kneejerkedly PC."
There was a reasonably highbrow conservative paper, the New York Sun, for a few years a little while back. (Pro-Israel, but, really, what do you expect in NY?) Didn't do well.
Maya,
That's a good point about the other uses of birth control pills, but there's a pretty simple solution: rebrand a generic version and sell it as a treatment for those conditions, rather than as birth control. But that would be an attempt to come to an accommodation, and I don't think that was the goal of Fluke & co.
Well, obviously, anyone who makes a point to jump up and down, screaming in front of an audience wants attention first and foremost. And that goes for almost any activist, politician, celebrity, ect.
Doesn't change the fact that each time the issue of the pill being covered or not covered by insurance comes up, the conservatives pointedly ignore the frequent medical need for and application of hormonal drug therapy. PCOS isn't rare. It's terrifyingly common, and menopause is universal.
And you are right. Fluke is coming off as unsympathetic and uncool by playing into the stereotype of a shrill, annoying, attention seeking femminazy.
However, again, this doesn't change the fact that the conservative right's pundits responded in a manner that suggested they are so uncomfortable with any subject that might be somehow related to girls having sex (or sex in general, who knows?) that being faced with it causes them to randomly lash out in a fit of vapours.
You see, it's perfectly possible for the cultural spokesmen of both parties to come off as repulsive. I'm a white woman under 30 who grew up in a very liberal cultural environment, into a solid liberal democrat voter. However, I've grown more and more disgusted with the left over time, and I don't expect to ever vote for democrats again. This doesn't mean that I find GOP to be a good replacement. People forget that party politics isn't a perfect zero sum game. I believe it'sbeen reported on this very blog that a notable number of white people didn't bother to show up at all this time around. A very good friend of mine from college is a conservative , clean cut engineer and a proud American of the founding stock. WE used to butt heads so much in our university days.As a gay man, he doesn't bother voting either. Plague on both of their houses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtELk8S3dhU
Watch 26:30
Rich people are naturally liberal. Wealth and privilege crave more choices and 'decadence'.
Only fear of class warfare keeps them on the right.
Michael Savage whatever you think of his ideas is a pretty smart guy. Borders, language, culture could have been VDARE's tagline.
@Udolpho,
Heh. Wasn't there a post around here a week ago about how an inability to debate and discuss without getting one's panties in a twist and resorting to personal attacks is a feminine trait? Assuming you are male, your response to me is kinda funny, in that light.
I don't have a dog in this particular race, having been blessed with perfect hormonal health (for now, "There, but for the grace of God..."). But unfortunately, hormonal imbalance conditions are fairl common , and they can lead to drastic health problems. Personally, I've never touched the stuff, being terrified that the hormonal intervention would mess with my good fortune and induce all those minor and major annoyances that I've heard about all my life from other women. However, since not everyone's experiences match those of self, it would be silly to deny another human being medication she needs to keep the cysts in her ovaries from developping into tumors. I feel the same way about insulin and antibiotics- don't need it, don't wantit, don't touch it. But, surely, as grown ups, we should have enough abstract imagination to allow that someone could be in a different situation than we are, and that situation could be such that it would have nothing to o with us at all. You see, sometimes when a person is having a sex organ removed while trying to still save another one or is trying to fight infertility, or a disfiguring skin condition, they aren't doing it as a statement against your feminism or patriarchy or alien cult, sir or madame. It's not about you, and it has nothing to do with my cell phone bill.
The general theme of the thread seemed to be the image and marketability of the conservative movement and/or GOP. My aim was to participate in that discussion, sir or madame, not to cause you personal offense. I didn't even know you were out there. I found that RL's response to SF's attention whoring was bad for the general image and marketability of the conervatives to the masses. I thought that the poorly infored and over the top response made RL and those associated with him see ignorant and uncoolthus hurting the conservativebrand,so to speak. I wrote it as an emtionally uninvolved party who supports neither the donkey nor the elephant. Thank you, sir or madame, for remindin me that ne must always be emotionaly invlved, lest one says something potentally insensitive and hurtful to someone who might be listening. So, I take it back. Rush came off as very cool and special. Sandra Fluke was also cool and special. And you, sir or madame, your response to me was very cool, and very, very special too. Everyone and everything they do is nothing short of amazing, especially when it comes to the people YOU like, sir or madame. How am I doing? Coud you,maybe, put in a good word with Steve, so I dont get sent to sensitivity training for noticing that a certain behavior isn't conductive to mass popularity?
I'm ambivalent about birth control. There have always been non-procreative sexual alternatives, such as masturbation, mutual masturbation, oral and anal. They have always been frowned upon in the West. I'm not sure that the fact that "We are all sodomites now", as Andrew Sullivan wittily said, has profited the white race. Birth control is a means to prevent overpopulation and all the miseries that go with it, but I personally feel that there is a morbid aspect to not having children when one is healthy, young, and relatively financially secure - I think that people have always felt the weight of that moral dilemma. It has nothing to do with modernity.
Fluke wasn't arguing for medical use exclusively. She was arguing for contraceptive use. Primarily to stick it to the Catholics. It was an exercise in power, not a practical policy proposal. "You don't like contraception? Too bad, we'll have the Feds force you to cover it."
This is what I never got: you want feminists like Sandra Fluke making more babies?
Let's pay for contraception, and abortion for them too!
"That's a good point about the other uses of birth control pills, but there's a pretty simple solution: rebrand a generic version and sell it as a treatment for those conditions, rather than as birth control."
No, it is not a good point. The Pill really doesn't work for all those medical conditions for which it is also prescribed. To get it rebranded, it would have to be approved by the FDA for those conditions and it would fail in clinical trials because it doesn't effectively treat those conditions and probably couldn't outperform a placebo.
This is what I never got: you want feminists like Sandra Fluke making more babies?
Feminists like Sandra Fluke aren't going to have more babies. She is just arguing for people to give more money to people like her. She probably prefers the more expensive pills because well, expensive must be better especially for special snowflakes like her or whatever. If someone else pays for it for her, then she has more disposable income for whatever it is she wants to buy. It is like welfare folks. They have more disposable income if all their needs are already met.
He should have responded to Sandra Fluke with outrage that the federal government would FORCE a religion to fund birth control, and he should have used it in every stump speech throughout the midwest
But the people who hated Sarah Palin would say that that was part of their war on wimmyn.
Udolpho:
To misquote Malcolm Reynolds: I can see that smart white womens' days of not taking your movement seriously are coming to a middle.
iSteve commenters are the friendliest audience for conservative ideas you will ever find. If the only respnse you can come up with to women on this forum is something dismissive and insulting, it's not too hard to see what success you are likely to have anywhere else.
Republicans should have done an end-run around the insurance issue by hammering Obama's decision to keep birth control pills prescription only. Once they're over the counter, they will become muc cheaper and not the insurance company's problem, at the same time. But they couldn't, because there was a part of their base that would have been offended by this decision--one with a lot less sensible arguments behind it than Sandra Flake.
Besides, these uses are off label specifically because the Pill is not approved as a treatment for any condition because evidence of safety and effectiveness has not been established.
A lot of drugs are given for stuff they are not designed for. Sandra generously wants these uses to be paid for by HMOs because doctors like that.
@ Maya
As I understand it, The Church permits the use of The Pill in cases of genuine medical necessity, and its typical health care plans cover the cost. This is justified under the doctrine of double effect.
The problem with Sandra Fluke is not that she's a "slut." If only she were so relatively innocent. But no - she's much, much worse than that.
She's a liar, and a betrayer. Which gets us a lot deeper into the circles of Hell than mere sluttiness.
Republicans should have done an end-run around the insurance issue by hammering Obama's decision to keep birth control pills prescription only. Once they're over the counter, they will become muc cheaper and not the insurance company's problem, at the same time.
Will this never end?
Birth control pills are not sold over the counter because they are dangerous drugs. People die from taking them. They do not and cannot meet the safety requirements for over the counter. Even if they did, the fact that they greatly enable having multiple partners means that they enable those persons most likely to be disease vectors who need to be checked regularly for STDs. Condoms, while crappy do actually somewhat reduce transmission of STDs if they are actually used.
How can the conservative movement appeal to women?
Affordable family formation is an obvious starting point. Safe streets, good schools, support for living a more-or-less traditional life raising a family (one or two incomes)--all that could be something the conservative movement focused on. Perhaps if Republican politicians spent, say, half the time they spend on trying to protect the richest fraction of people from taxes instead trying to get favorable tax treatment for married couples and families, this might make an impression. (Unfortunately, it wouldn't be as good for raising money.).
Instead of fighting a battle to prevent insurance companies and employers from having to cover birth control pills, how about fighting on behalf of Catholics by making private school tuition tax deductable? In general, the Republicans could spend a lot of energy fighting tax battles on behalf of most families, instead of very big donors, and they would probably gain some support that way.
How about student loans and college tuitions? That's a godawful mess right now, and a huge worry for middle-class families with kids, who neither want to wait till we're 80 to retire nor want our kids graduating college with $50K in debt that can never be discharged in bankruptcy. A party that cared about families and making family formation and maintenance workable would be very interested in fixing some of that.
Speaking just for myself, the weird Republican push against birth control during the nomination battle just seemed weird. Look, I'm Catholic, and I'm involved in my parish and know lots of other families who are involved Catholics--the folks who teach Sunday school and volunteer at Mass and show up every Sunday and every holy day. Families like ours, where the parents got married soon after college and now, in early middle age, have like two or three kids. It's kinda rude to speculate on acquaintances' sex lives, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most of those couples didn't suddenly lose interest in sex as of the birth of child number 3, so we are probably using our share of birth control pills and condoms and tubal ligations in my parish. There are huge Catholic families, too, and the distribution of family size is different in the parish than outside it, but most familes aren't the size you get with normal married sex lives, no contraception, and modern health care for the kids. That would give most families five or more kids easily. The weird battle over birth control perhaps was useful for getting formal support of the Church hierarchy, but it was, as far as I can tell, not too effective at convincing many rank-and-file Catholics. (By contrast, the GOP's position on abortion probably gains them a fair number of Catholic voters.)
Anon 2:48:
At the risk of being too flip, perhaps if you are ambivalent about birth control, masturbation, oral sex, etc., the best thing to do would be to refrain from those things yourself, while leaving the rest of us alone to do as we think best? Otherwise, I'll just offer you reassurance that there are billions of men living today whose teenaged years absolutely disprove those old ideas about growing hair on your palms or going blind.
Maya said...
Well, if one is convinced of HBD, but finds abortion morally repugnant, then I'd imagine that one would be all about promoting the use of the birth control pill for any and every purpose, and making it as widely available and easy to get as possible.
Up to the 20th C, everyone believed HBD. Up to the 20th C, essentially all Christians were both anti-abortion and anti-birth control. The set of beliefs you find hard to imagine was pretty well universal in the West for nineteen centuries or so.
Perhaps you should take your imagination in for servicing?
HAR said...
If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is. But the posters here identify with "Team Red." So even if they understand why pro-lifers are wrong on an intellectual level, they don't comprehend how sick those people really are.
You sound about as competent to judge "on an intellectual level" as most gnu atheists. When pro-choicers try to defend their ideas "on an intellectual level," a train wreck generally ensues, sometimes involving violinists.
Are you certain your "intellectual level" is higher than, say, a bumper?
A conservative women's site would never work. There'd be a month-long debate about whether to run the photos of "This Season's Worst Sluttiest Halloween Costumes," instead of just running it, in September, and then twice in October
A very good friend of mine from college is a conservative , clean cut engineer and a proud American of the founding stock. WE used to butt heads so much in our university days.As a gay man, he doesn't bother voting either. Plague on both of their houses.
lmao, guys we lost out on another true blue "conservative", first Andrew Sullivan, now her HIV+ college buddy
let me guess he wants to keep his gentrified neighborhood white and likes paying as few taxes as possible and that's what makes him "conservative" in your jaundiced view
just vote Bloomberg for president and get out of here
"But unfortunately, hormonal imbalance conditions are fairl common , and they can lead to drastic health problems."
The issue is this. Fluke is from an affluent family and should be able to afford her own BCP. She looks chubby enough. Tell her cut down on her food intake and spend the money on BCP.
If she were poor and really needed it, it would be a different story.
PS. I wonder about all this hormone imbalance stuff. Before BCP, how did women cope with it?
"No there isn't. "
Not even an itsy-bitsy one? I know the odds are long - call me a sentimentalist.
"Just about no high IQ women have unplanned pregnancies, and if they abort their potential children it's because of some mental abnormality."
I wonder if, in the course of an amniocentesis, Malthus' cleft lip and cleft palate would have triggered a red flag that would have prompted his mother to have an abortion - that would be an HBD irony.
Malthus did not advocate abortion.
Abortion is a pressure relief valve for a society that doesn't have the nerve to stop indulging its' underclass. We'd rather be depraved than stern.
Republicans should have done an end-run around the insurance issue by hammering Obama's decision to keep birth control pills prescription only. Once they're over the counter, they will become muc cheaper and not the insurance company's problem, at the same time. But they couldn't, because there was a part of their base that would have been offended by this decision--one with a lot less sensible arguments behind it than Sandra Flake
In other words - "My arguments are sensible, yours are not."
I'm sure that in your own mind, you're really intelligent.
This is what I never got: you want feminists like Sandra Fluke making more babies?
Let's pay for contraception, and abortion for them too!
If you want to pay for Sandra Fluke's contraceptives, nobody is stopping you from doing so. Don't force me to do it though.
"Limbaugh and his ilk only attract dummies."
Unlike the reflective and thoughtful people who are drawn to Bill Mahr and Jon Stewart and David Letterman?
The whole story makes it look as though the geezers on the right overreact and throw a fit when they encounter anything that might be related to sex, before they have a chance to get their facts straight. And that does play into the stereotype of the conservatives being stupid, uncool and unable to deal with modernity.
By your own admission you are a solid liberal Democrat voter. Perhaps you keep seeing Republicans as falling into some negative stereotype because you are predisposed to do so, regardless of whether they are actually doing so or not?
The fact they you are trying to turn this away from what Fluke actually wanted - free contraceptives - and towards something which nobody ever saw as an issue - HRT - does make it look as if you're the one having the fit.
in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government, getting mad about one kind of pill exclusively used by women shows misogynistic tendencies.
We do not have a society in which "all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government", so your silly argument falls flat on its silly face.
What next, women demanding that their insurance companies cover face-lifts - because after all, not to do so "in a society where all other medical needs are subsidized by employers and the government" is s sign of ThoughtCrime - or "misogynistic tendencies" in the psychobabble of the Left.
I'm guessing if employers were refusing to provide a common drug used by the vast majority of men and no women and the Obama administration let them get away with it, people here would be complaining about how unfair it all was.
I'm guessing you are a women. There is currently no "drug" which acts as a male contraceptive, but men who don't wish to have children still have options - most notably, condoms.
You will notice that in spite of what they told you in Womens Studies class, men have to buy condoms out of their own pocket. Our employers do not buy them for us.
"If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is."
I love the way people who do not believe A feel the need to tell people who do believe A that they must also believe B and C.
You see this all the time with atheists lecturing Christians (never Jews, for some reason) about what they must do to be consistent in their faith.
I"m confused when it comes to the discussion about the whole Rush-Sandra Fluke fiasco.
For some reason, every time I see the topic discussed on concervative blogs, the fact that the pill is often used to treat legitimate medical conditions is completely ignored. From what I understand, SF's need for the birth control pill is medical, not recreational
Yes, you are confused. Fluke has no "need" for the pill, whether medical or recreational.
Republicans should have done an end-run around the insurance issue by hammering Obama's decision to keep birth control pills prescription only. Once they're over the counter, they will become muc cheaper and not the insurance company's problem, at the same time.
I love the way in which, whatever the problem in question and regardless of what the Democrats do about it, it's somehow always all the Republicans fault!
Anon 5:02:
Well, if we were discussing what strategies the Democrats or the progressive movement should use to attract women, then I imagine it would be more on-topic to discuss what Democrats should have done differently. But if we're discussing how Republicans, or conservatives, or paleocons might appeal to women, then it would be sort-of silly to spend a lot of time talking about what the Democrats should be doing differently. Perhaps DailyKos will have a discussion more to your liking?
Anon 8:36:
So, the FDA panel that considered the matter disagreed with you. But they' just doctors and scientists, so you have to take their cnclusions with a lot more skepticism than you do a naked assertion from some anonymous poster on the internet.
@ vinteuil
I was making a pointabout the image and marketability of the GOP. RL throwing a fit about sluts didn't help. I didn't realize that my words would be understood out of context as those of support for Fluke. I thought it was clear frommy comments above that I don't think much of her. FOr the record, she is simply in search of an entry into an attention seeking career of an activist, in my opinion. Also, I agree that a religious institution shouldn't be forced to act against its basic values, just as a person shouldn't be forced to attend the said institution.
So it wasn't my intention to pick sides in this case (which , to me, looks like two people making assesout of themselves for attention), but toweigh in on the ways the GOP and its pundits might appear to potential allies. IT doesn't matter how SF comes off, if the goal is to sell the conservative brand, but the fact that RL acted like a fool, uninformed and uncomfortable with the very subject of sex matters a lot. Political partysanship isn't a zero sum game, hilighted by the large number of whites skipping the polls.
@Severn
The assertion made in that post a few days back that good sportsmanship and the ability to stay impersonal in debate is an inherent masculine trait is becoming more and more of a long shot.
From your decision to respond to me, I assume that you belive that you read my comments, and you are obviously literate. So the only reason I can think of that would cause you to read the words that weren't there or to change their collective meaning by shuffling them out of order is that you were responding to a persona you thought you detected, not the message. I'm a girl with a negative veiw of RL's behavior in certain incident, therefore I must be whatever it is you think such people are . My actual views and the context of the discussion are irrelevant.
the only reason I can think of that would cause you to read the words that weren't there or to change their collective meaning by shuffling them out of order ..
I have no idea what you are talking about. Examples, please.
@ Bill
Well, I was imagining people who are trying to come up with a realistic solution that applies to the contemporary world or find a realistically viable position to assume where they could begin to stand ground. The world has changed sinse before the 20th century- the infant mortality rate is down, for one. Poor choices don't lead to utter distruction as often. Starvation, fatal infection or being murdered outside of the pub by the shady characters you befriended aren't as common as concequences for bad habbits as they were, once upon a time.
Personally, I'm pro-choice, but I respect that to someone who is pro-life, abortion=murder. So... If you buy into the theory that low IQ, poor impulse control and weak future orientation are genetic, and thus understand that the very people that you need the least for a civilized society tend to be the most promiscuous, AND abortion, as the murder of babies, is morally unacceptable to you, woudn't contraception be the least repulsiveoption? Or is there another viable solution? You don't want certain people around. You don't want to kill them. You don't want to prevent them from being born. What is it that you want, realistically?
"Speaking just for myself, the weird Republican push against birth control during the nomination battle just seemed weird."
I guess this never will end.
Republicans never made any push against birth control. This is utter BS. All they said was that religious employers shouldn't be forced to pay premiums to pay for it.
This is so ridiculous. The Democrats brought it up and the media hounded Republicans on it. Aside from that, Republicans were not talking about it at all.
It is just like gay marriage. It was never an issue that the public ever cared about. It was entirely fabricated and promoted by media. Canada has had gay marriage for like eight years and now the percent of the population in same sex marriages is...
wait for it
wait for it
0.001%
Oh yeah, that is a major political issue.
And what percentage of full time employed workers with employer paid health insurance cannot afford birth control? Probably less than 0.001%
So, it is a non issue. No one ever cared about this issue except big pharma that wants to charge high prices for a product with guaranteed demand.
These BS issues are entirely media driven. Left to their own devices the public would never raise these stupid issues.
"You see this all the time with atheists lecturing Christians (never Jews, for some reason) about what they must do to be consistent in their faith."
Maybe because being Christian is a belief and being jewish is an ethnicity.
PS. I wonder about all this hormone imbalance stuff. Before BCP, how did women cope with it?
They were pregnant.
""If you're pro-HBD, you should regard the "pro-life" movement as the greatest threat to human freedom and enhancement that there is."
I love the way people who do not believe A feel the need to tell people who do believe A that they must also believe B and C.
You see this all the time with atheists lecturing Christians (never Jews, for some reason) about what they must do to be consistent in their faith."
I do believe in A and never wrote anything that indicates the opposite. I just don't subscribe to groupthink, whether it comes from the MSM or right wing blogs. The fact that that's difficult for some to comprehend should tell you something.
"These BS issues are entirely media driven. Left to their own devices the public would never raise these stupid issues."
Right On! Taking care of our Baby Boom Struldbrugs is a topic too terrible to talk about. The biggest issues are the ones unmentioned.
Besides, Israel isn't racially pure - European Jews look as different from Oriental Jews (the ones who were kicked out of Arab countries) as WASPs do from Italians or Greeks.
Race does not equal appearance.
Maybe because being Christian is a belief and being jewish is an ethnicity.
Maybe you're just stupid.
To Gloria, so you don't care about turning America into brazil? How dare we not be more concerned about the truly crucial issue of abortion, etc.
Maya is right. Abortion is a loser for the GOP. It turns off young white women. That doesn't mean you have to agree with Fluke but the issue is a distraction from more important issues like immigration, AA, etc..
Stop defending Palin. She taints the right with her dumbness. She is qualified to be a conservative hockey mom not a spokesperson.
Way too dismissive.
"Sandra Fluke is 30, still a student and can't afford her entertainment of choice, sex. And evidently her partner doesn't value the experience with her enough to help out with the cost. "
Beautifully written. Encapsulates the modern relationship between men and women. You should write for a living.
Anon 6:55:
Rick Santorum, who was the Republican frontrunner for awhile, had a bunch of public quotes about how contraception was morally wrong, damaging to society, and should be able to be regulated by the states. At about the same time, Rush Limbaugh was calling Sandra Fluke a prostitute and a slut (literally) for wanting birth control coverage to be part of the package of required coverage for medical insurance. He wasn't alone in nastiness or name-calling there.
Now, Flake may be wrong--perhaps it is better policy not to have such a requirement. But that line of attack, continued here, doesn't just turn off women or liberals. It's the kind of stupid. repulsive crap that turns most decent people off, many of whom are the natural voting base of a conservative party. It turned my stomach, and I am the target market for Republicans--white, married, homeowner, employed, with kids, Catholic, regular churchgoer, upper middle class. Indeed, this kind of personal nastiness about politics is one of the things I find most repulsive about the left's way of handling arguments about race and sexual orientation--the tendency to move directly from a disagreement about facts or what would be the best policy to a nasty personal smear.
Anyway, for a few months there, the actions and the words coming from the top of the GOP were about as friendly to birth control as, say, the actions and words from the Dems typically are to gun ownership. It did not take a Democratic partisan to hear this as hostility to birth control and willingness to make it harder to get or illegal.
Public polling numbers do not agree with your claim that nobody cares about these issues, by the way. Here is one link.
What else can the conservative movement offer for families and family formation? That is, assume we want to make it easier to form and raise families, as a policy goal, both because that's probably a better way for most people to live, and because people raising families are more likely to vote Republican. What policies would make sense to propose?
It is interesting to note that among the healthiest of the alternate press is the gun press, which has a core of advertizers unreachable by left-wing boycott, so they don't face this problem. It is interesting to also note that the non-gun Daily Caller site has a lot of gun-type features, perhaps to tap into these advertisers.
"Sandra Fluke is 30, still a student and can't afford her entertainment of choice, sex. And evidently her partner doesn't value the experience with her enough to help out with the cost."
Most of her partners were quite willing to pony up a few bucks, but they kept losing her phone number.
Rick Santorum, who was the Republican frontrunner for awhile, had a bunch of public quotes about how contraception was morally wrong, damaging to society, and should be able to be regulated by the states.
As usual with you NOTA, your claims are baseless. Santorm is opposed to abortion - only if you are one of those people who thinks that abortion and contraception are interchangeable terms do your accusations make any sense.
Nor was Santorm the one driving the public debate. The propaganda wing of the Democratic party, aka the media, spent the entire campaign pushing the Democrats "war on women" meme, Naturally you fell for it hook, line and sinker.
At about the same time, Rush Limbaugh was calling Sandra Fluke a prostitute and a slut (literally) for wanting birth control coverage to be part of the package of required coverage for medical insurance.
And your problem with that is what, exactly?
"Rick Santorum, who was the Republican frontrunner for awhile, had a bunch of public quotes about how contraception was morally wrong, damaging to society, and should be able to be regulated by the states."
No, fool, he said quite accurately that the state is legally able to regulate it. Unfortunately, you only listen to what the reporters claimed he said, which is what makes you a useful idiot.
Do you also believe that you are entitled to get Social Security because you paid taxes for it? You know that in 1937 the SCOTUS ruled that it is a plain old tax and any and all benefits and payments can be stopped at any time by simple legislation in the Congress.
Now, Flake may be wrong--perhaps it is better policy not to have such a requirement. But that line of attack, continued here, doesn't just turn off women or liberals. It's the kind of stupid. repulsive crap that turns most decent people off, many of whom are the natural voting base of a conservative party. It turned my stomach, and I am the target market for Republicans--white, married, homeowner, employed, with kids, Catholic, regular churchgoer, upper middle class.
And yet still too lazy or stupid to notice that the media said that crap and Santorum did not.
Anyway, for a few months there, the actions and the words coming from the top of the GOP were about as friendly to birth control as, say, the actions and words from the Dems typically are to gun ownership. It did not take a Democratic partisan to hear this as hostility to birth control and willingness to make it harder to get or illegal.
Public polling numbers do not agree with your claim that nobody cares about these issues, by the way. Here is one link."
The gullibility and idiocy on display here is really quite breathtaking. Yes, the public is easily misled by media, duh. And apparently so is NOTA. This is why it is hard to reach dumb people. The media is very loud and tells them simple but wrong stuff which they swallow whole. Women are notoriously easily deceived, also duh. Who is more likely to believe in climate change? Women. Ah yes, because women are known for being so into nerdy crap like data modeling and science. Oh wait. No, it is because they fall for whatever they are told more often than men.
@Severn
There were, probably a few "I'm"s in my comments, and I know there was a "solid liberal democrat voter". But you were the one who chose to put them next to each other in your own mind. Meanwhile, I admitted no such thing. In fact, I've clearly stated that I've grown disgusted with the left over the years, that I don't plan on voting for a democrat ever again and that I support neither the elephant nor the donkey, in those exact words.
Throughout this thread I see people reacting based on their percieved team and the perceived team of their perceived opponent rather than arguing with logic and facts. Sadly, that's common everywhere, including the manosphere and the conservative blogs. So I'm not exactly surprized that half of the people who responded to anyone here, commented in reaction to what they thought the previous commenter believes rather than to what the previous commenter actually wrote. I do find it amuzing that the most vocal conservative men around the linked blogosphere seem to think that members of their sex and political orientation are rational debators. Then, again, I've seen most feminazis around the liberal blogs express the same sentiment- that they are a group most capable of a cool-headed, logical, respectful discourse. Ditto atheists, Christians, fat acceptors and the post-Soviet nationalists. I guess flunging shit pies into the neighbor's cage while insisting that one's hands are clean is a common primate trait, and most people of all stripes can't overcome it.
"PS. I wonder about all this hormone imbalance stuff. Before BCP, how did women cope with it? "
Well... I'll treat this as a serious question, though it sure is strange.
Women (and men) coped with hormonal imbalances, in the olden days, the same way they coped with cancer, tooth decay, significant blood loss, infection and poor harvest. They prayed, hoped for the best and had as many children as possible, trying to insure that a couple of those kids would grow into adults healthy enough to take care of the parents and continue the line. And very often, they suffered greatly and died young.
Take a look at the oldest photographs and read some journals from before the photograph was invented. Some people glowed with life and lived till 80. But a great many didn't. A great many women were toothless, wrinkled, dried out, bloated and fragile-boned by 35. A human being is a very complex machine with thousands of mechanisms at work, so a lot can go wrong, and a lot does go wrong, and that has always been the case. Take a look at the number of women that died in child birth before the 20th century. It's staggering. It was the most common cause of death. Meanwhile, a woman is designed to give birth, if everything works correctly. But too often, everything doesn't work correctly. God's quality control is similar to that of a Chinese basement counterfeits factory, when it comes to human beings.
Myrna Blyth was hired by Robert Riordan in effort to turn around Ladies' Home Journal in the early 80s. Riordan said his best decision was to keep rather than fire Blyth, who had engendered a firestorm of criticism after starting as editor, purportedly because she had published a dark article about rape. Supposedly, advertisers were considering pulling out if the magazine didn't continue its tradition of sunny articles. Blyth was more conservative in outlook as we now know, and there was a general firestorm. I leave it to you to judge.
Riordan had bought LHJ through Family Media which owned Health magazine for about $1 million down and a $9 million note from Charter, which was a conglomerate with oil and other assets divesting itself of a money losing magazine for housewives in the era of modern women and high oil prices. Riordan's best decision was actually just raising magazine prices by about 50% after taking control, which instantly turned losses to profit. Riordan scooped the assets for $1 million down in the recession climate with low liquidity and sold LHJ a few years later (in 1986) to Meredith for $96 million, when LHJ had EBITDA of $3 million, 30x operating profit. That's a cool $86 million profit plus cash flow during the ownership period, reflecting two murky minded corporate counter parties, a moderate turnaround, some good judgment, and a boom period for prices of media assets in the dawn of the age of heavy M&A activity.
This was the Volker period, when the economy emerged from recession in a climate of low taxes, laissez-faire, and respect for the productive. Asset prices reflected real positive expectations by a charged-up productive class more than quantitative easing.
For his part, I don't think Riordan did a lot after LHJ other than dabble in some magazine concepts. The story of his professional life came down to just a few good decisions and perhaps a week or two of cumulative time to think through them.
Abortion just reeks of murder
The trouble with abortion is that there seem to be almost no genuinely valid arguments in favor of it beyond "it's best to give them what they want." Hey, I actually agree, it is best to give them what they want. But I've come to that conclusion after personally shooting every single argument the pro-murder side presents into Swiss cheese. Their arguments are just horrible (all of them AFAICT, though I haven't argued the matter nearly as extensively as racial matters).
Of course, some of the evil racists' arguments for abortion are pretty good. Like the one about how it keeps the black population much lower than it'd be otherwise, that's a pretty good one.
Denying people medical treatment just because this treatment also can be used for reasons that may or may not be questionable is misanthropic.
That's like calling conscientious objectors misanthropic. Probably not going to sell well.
I listen to Limbaugh - but not his "ilk". Rush is a lot smarter, better-read, more original, more creative, and funnier than someone like Hannity.
It's obvious to anyone listening to his show for a while that Rush is pretty verbally gifted.
When pro-choicers try to defend their ideas "on an intellectual level," a train wreck generally ensues
This.
"You see this all the time with atheists lecturing Christians (never Jews, for some reason) about what they must do to be consistent in their faith."
Maybe because being Christian is a belief and being jewish is an ethnicity.
Judaism is a religion, and in the context of the conversation it was obvious he was referring to Jews who belong to it.
@Svigor
Concientious objectors refused to kill another human being in any context and thus found it impossible to participate in any war, regardless of ideals behind the war.
You think it's analogous to withholding medication necessary for cancer prevention? All because someone else might, a person who isn't ill, might use the treatment recreationally? Are you also against using opiates to manage post surgery recovery and the pain of the terminal patients? After all, by your logic, since dirty junkies use opiates to get high, the substance is evil by default and shouldn't be employed ever, for anything. How about needles? Some degenerate addicts usethem to shoot up. If, as you seem to be suggesting, a tool that is sometimes employed for immoral reasons is forever tainted and unfit forany other application, should we stop administering medication through shots to people who can't take medicine orally?
It's just synthetic female hormones in pill form, Sir, not the devil. One of the uses turned out to be birth control which is accomplished by jacking up a healthy bodys level of these hormone's to such a degrree that it thinks it's pregnant and stops ovulating.
However, women with PCOS have cysts growing in their ovaries that lower their female hormones which in turn causes more cysts to grow and the existing cysts to grow bigger, in a vicious cycle. These cysts often turn cancerous given enough time without treatment. Other common side effects of this condition are excessive body and facial hair, infertility, acne, heart disease, weight gain, anger and mood swings. Drilling of the ovaries and hormonal intervention with synthetic female hormones that are most commonly manufactured as birth control are the most common forms of effective treatmen. A lot of women with PCOS couldn't menstruate without taking synthetic female hormone pills you know as birth control because their body doesn't create enough of the stuff naturally. Most often, thanks to The Pill, these women can lead normal lives. I'm sorry the little round box reminds you of sluts, prostitutes and transsexuals, but denying people medication that they need for a serious, potentially dangerous condition just because you have a negative emotional response to it, based on the first thing that comes to mind during free association of the treatment's common name IS misanthropic. It's also stubborn, silly and irrational.
Oh, and my grandma uses the same pill one of my college roommates used as birth control to maintain bone density after menapause. It was prescribed by her primary physician and seems to be working pretty well, according to him. I don't think grandma sluts around, but even if she did, she wouldn't be needing birth control.
The Catholic Church, though probably not the faculty of Georgetown, prohibits the use of birth control. Sandra is making a name for herself by using a creative argument to force it to participate in the undermining of its own doctrine. How can we tell if she is being honest? Did she write a letter on her friend's behalf to the insurance company asking for an exception, or does she just want birth control pills to be freely available to all students?
Yes, opiates are necessary for people suffering from severe pain, but does that mean that the Church's insurance company must subsidize them for every student without questioning the application?
I suppose there is a technical case for the alternative uses of the pill for hormone treatment. Now it is incumbent on supporters to show what percentage of college age women need that therapy. If it huge, they have a strong case, if it is small, then a person's doctor can usually petition successfully for coverage from insurance, or, one's law school friends can help write a letter. I believe the need is small and I believe that Sandra Fluke does not accept the church's teaching on birth control and that she never bothered to advocate for her friend as an individual, but preferred to make a name for herself by attacking policy.
Where are all the Georgetown Law Professors defending the faith? They probably helped her write her speech.
Oh, I completely agree that a religious institution shouldn't have to do anything that it feels might be against its religious values. People who don't feel comfortable with faith based values shouldn't attend faith based institutions of learning. And when I look at SF, I see a woman who wants attention that will, hopefully, turn into profit. Her behavior was neither sympathetic nor noble in any way. She's a depraved opportunist.
However, Rush's reaction to the situation, the language he used, things he said about the pill and the women who are on it, his uninformed position on the issue as a whole were all nothing short of disgusting and a turn off for many potential allies.
You think it's analogous to withholding medication necessary for cancer prevention?"
Withholding? You mean like all of us run out and grab it as it falls from the sky and won't let other people have it?
What the hell is the matter with you?
It takes a hell of a lot of work to gain the skill to even look for treatments for cancer. Then more work to develop and test something effective. Cancer meds aren't falling from the sky, you know. Real people have to go to work each day to make that stuff. I guess you consider workers and taxpayers to be your helots.
Bite your toungue, 2:48, I don't have cancer nor potentially cancerous growths. Right now, I'm the one who pays for health insurance while barely clearing the deductible every year, so I am the one who's paying for something she doesn't need while others get 12,000 worth of chemo/month, on my dime. And you know what? I consider myself to be the lucky one, by far. Think every sane person would agree. Sickness and suffering aside, the situation is perfectly moral and fair. That's the nature of the arrangement here. We buy insurance in case something goes wrong, and if, God forbid, it does, our expenses get covered with the money the company gets from the other insured folk.
Not sure where you're going with the whole "it takes effort to create this stuff" line of thought. It takes effort to grow food, and when I buy it in the store, it becomes mine. When people purchase comprehensive insurance policies, the right to have serious health conditions treated with existing, proven to be effective, and reasonably priced medication like the synthetic female hormones is defintely theirs. That's how civilized society works; when you sell a good or service and collect the money, you actually have to abide by the contract and give the sold entiy to the buyer.
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Thinking you can just plop content like that into the mag is probably not going to work. I think you either need some angle (Fox News or the like) that carves out the underserved niche. Or you need to be sneakier about feeding in your memes (maybe stories that cut a certain way and reinforce an ethic). Or stuff like South Park or underground humor or soemthing. But just assuming that people will mindlessly change views because of exposure (especially of jarringly different stuff) is not going to make it.
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