Whiskey Fire

The Belt of the Crozier...

... ain't what it used to be.

Boston’s cardinal is to boycott a Jesuit college’s graduation where Taoiseach Enda Kenny is the commencement speaker, over his support for the proposed Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill.

In a statement, Cardinal Sean O’Malley said abortion was “a crime against humanity” and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has asked Catholic institutions not to honour those who promote it.

Mr Kenny is due to receive an honorary degree from Boston College at the May 20th commencement. Cardinal O’Malley said that since the college had not withdrawn its invitation and Mr Kenny had not declined it, “I shall not attend the graduation”.

This is the good bit:

“It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the bishops’ directives,” he said.

Ochone, the confusion, disappointment, an' harm the College is after causin'! It's thrown the worl' in a TERRIBLE state o' chassis!

It's rather difficult to believe at this late date that anyone much cares about, or even less for, the moral pronouncements of any Boston cardinal -- except perhaps for those scattered demented few who pay attention to the utterly discredited and darkly comical fatwas issued forth by the Radical Clerics of the U. S. Catholic fringe.

As for the notion that "Taoiseach Enda Kenny" is pushing for Mandatory Abortion in the Isle of Saints and Sages, haha no. No no no.

Anyway, hooray for these MA shouty idiots! Tim Corcoran and R. S. Devane salute you. Both of those fine fellows had nothing but praise for the Boston Irish, who never met a moral dilemma they couldn't use as a fucking bludgeon.

MAS. All you need to know about how screwy Irish American Catholicism is, never mind Irish  Catholicism, is to be Boston College and have to decide "huh, a visiting Leader of a Free Nation who was to speak and a local Bishop who would have waved, who wins?"

Eamon de Valera would have felt he had no choice but to ignore O'Malley in these circumstances, by the way. That's not even disputable.

You're No Rock n' Roll Fun

Women are not very excellent at music, for obvious reasons: as one of America's Top Feminists and Most Respected Cultural Know-Persons, Camille Paglia, once famously put it, "There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper." That is a very smart thing she said and is in no way glib and crazy.

In this enlightened spirit a Five Foot Furry explains Lady Music she dislikes.

There are fewer female musicians for me to hate, because a) there are fewer female musicians and b) I’m a chick.

It pains me to admit that I’m prone to the same irrational tribalism I denounce in others, but it’s true:

The second Sarah Palin strode onto that stage to accept the VP nomination, I turned into a six-year-old:

“A girl! A girl!! Yayyyyyy!!!”

I knew nothing about her policies. I didn’t care. I still don’t, much.

I have the t-shirts, the books, the old blog posts and even the custom Keds to prove my blind, fangirl devotion.

Because female performers are easier for me to identify with, they’re harder for me to dislike.

Uh, well, I suppose points must be awarded for up-front copping to being an easily influenced idiot with no real expertise before offering your opinion on a subject like "women in popular music, rock specifically." The HELLO I AM STUPID AND BIASED caution sign sure is useful!

#3 Sheryl Crow

When she dated Lance Armstrong, the nasty joke making the rounds was that Sheryl Crow is proof that cancer is contagious.

Thank goodness the virtuous Mr. Armstrong managed to heroically defy her harpy embrace.

Also, Crow is attractive and wrote some songs that had appealing hooks, and is a liberal. Our Five Feet of Furry admits she doesn't know fuck-all else about Crow's music before happily slagging it, but who gives a shit?

It's good enough for anti-government work.

#2 Lady Gaga

As a homely girl made good in the music biz, Lady Gaga kind of messes up my Sheryl Crow theory.

Yeah, a tidbit, a smidgen.

Lady Gaga is "homely"? I don't know; judge for yourself.

Frankly I haven't given much thought to Madame Gaga, and don't know any of her songs by name, as I am old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, and have only just taken down this old Internet to see who is lately wearing fishnets and a Cap'n Crunch hat.

All I actually know about L. GG is that she seems to be pissing people off whom I quite dislike. So I'm a fan!

Our Five Foot Furry knows as much about her as I do, and hence says:

Lady Gaga got rich on the indifferent stupidity and un-sophistication of the average person.

Nothing is more "un-sophisticated" and "average" than assuming your canned wisdom (idées reçues, redsnouts) is advanced sophistication beyond the grasp of the rubes.

But then....

#1 Chrissy Hynde

Gosh.

Look: “Brass in Pocket” is a dumb song.

No it isn't. It's fantastic.

Because it rather is. Listen to it -- do I really need to defend it? Can Hynde really not sing, or write pop--rock?

Really?

Oh, but there is more highly analytical criticism...

Chrissie Hynde is a boring lead singer, besides being a smug, humourless leftoid.

That "besides" does a lot of work to counterbalance the "obviously wrong because Hynde sells tickets" bit of reality.

Also Hynde has had issues with the people in her band, and every other rock band has not been nuts, so what is up with that bitch. (Literal head-banging recommended here; what else can you do?)

In conclusion, read the comments to the PJs Media Lady Gaga link. You wll be wowed.

Because reading these comments aloud will IN NO WAY SUMMON CTHULHU. THAT IS A PERNICIOUS MYTH. KEEP READING, PUNY HUMANS.

I JOKE. THERE IS NO CTHULHU.

 

Whoa, Nially: Or, Some of My Best Friends Are Also Pompous Idiots

Over There, I think I pretty much said all there is to say about Niall of the Nine Wankages, but since the only purpose of this blog is malice aforethought* there is no reason not to chew through the whole godawful slice of fried dung with a view towards pointing out that Ferguson is an absolute tit.

Last week I said something stupid about John Maynard Keynes.  Asked to comment on Keynes’ famous observation “In the long run we are all dead,” I suggested that Keynes was perhaps indifferent to the long run because he had no children, and that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations. Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’ wife Lydia miscarried.

What an asshole.

Ferguson didn't slur "people who do not have children," he slurred homosexuals, because he does that shit.

Because this is trebly stupid. Gay people as it happens can raise children! No kidding!

As for the rest, "I am only hatefully glib in my public appearances, here are the books where I am thoughtful, and by the way Sullivan" is a load of crap. 

--

*If I were a Drag Queen or Roller Derby Bruiser Chick my name would be "Alice Aforethought."**

**Actual Drag Queens or Roller Derby Bruiser Chicks are welcome to steal this, though a Whiskey Fire plug would be welcome, as well as amusingly baffling to your immediate audience.

Well, If YOU Have a Gun, I Sure Feel Safer!

Oh, hello there. More deep thoughts to share with us, then?

I cannot wait.

Teach gun safety in classrooms and leave sex education to parents. Plan B won’t save young people from incurable STDs, but guns will protect women and children from being raped or murdered. The more young people know about guns, the safer our society will be.

So, uh, what?

If every child in America carried a gun to school every day, America would be safer? Because their gym teacher would teach them about gun safety? So they can, I don't know, shoot chlamydia in its stupid face with a gun?

What?

Is THAT your thesis...?

Well, OK then --

Rush Limbaugh said on his talk radio show on May 1: “We know kids are gonna get guns anyway, why not teach them how to use them?” The king of talk was right. Instead of pushing morning-after pills on 15-year-old girls, we should be showing young people how to responsibly use the preeminent tool they have to defend themselves in the event of a violent attack—a gun.

All 15 year old girls should carry guns with them at all times? Because then they won't get pregnant? In what world does this make sense?

Beg pardon. Carry on.

Americans use guns to hold off assault far more than they use guns to commit murder or violent crime. Indeed, Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck has shown that Americans use guns to defensively prevent crime about 2 million times a year—often by merely brandishing a weapon in front of a would-be-assailant.

Hold on -- do you mean that 1992 study that "included gun uses against animals and did not distinguish civilian uses from military or police uses"? Because surely you realize as a thoughtful observer that you have to carefully analyze statistical research and account for bias, and that actually even this highly dubious study said "2.5 million" and not "2 million," so you've even botched your own point? Surely, you care about your facts -- excuse me?

What's that?

Right.

Well-rebutted.

Yes, I know I said "butt"...

Sure, point to you.

But how do we end gun violence, then?

More and more, psychiatric drugs are being miss-prescribed or abused and President Obama’s FDA is contributing to this mess. Medications are increasingly being prescribed to young people that could be setting them up for violent behavior. Instead of prescribing talk therapy, we are loading young people up on meds that are known to cause suicidal thoughts and/or incite aggression.

"Miss-prescribed"...?

Nevermind.

But... What medications are these? And... "talk therapy"? We need more Freud? What?

And if as you said before, violent crime is down overall, which you said is due to concealed carry laws, how could that be true when you then say that the youngsters, they're ever-more increasingly hepped up on goofballs?

Why, it's almost like you're totally whiffing on some obvious contradictions in what you're saying, or else you don't care, or else, perhaps, when the wind blows hard enough from the East your Western ear emits a mournful B-flat, reminiscent of what happens when a toddler learns how to make sounds breathing over an empty Coke bottle --

Gotcha.

Oh you're not done.

It’s time for young people to go through gun education before their teachers brainwash them about gun control.

Wait, weren't you going to tell us how if 15 year old girls had firearms training, they wouldn't need the morning after pill? Because that was kind of strange and I thought you'd maybe explain that --

OK.

Well congratulations, I guess, on finding the precise part of the world where you'll manage to keep yourself fed and employed. Since in the real world, you couldn't get a gig hiring yourself out as mulch...

Your Name Is Wild

Over at the Corner the Big-Zygotians are shell-cracking the Little-Zygotians over who gets to talk about teen girls and sex with the Greatest Authority. Yes, it's gross.

It begins with something almost vaguely sensible appearing at NRO; the jaw, it drops.

So why require a prescription [for the pill]? The federal government’s existing requirement isn’t about safety; it’s about controlling women’s health-care choices, forcing them to make annual visits to the gynecologist.

Well, yes.

The NRO comments to the above are exactly as sparkling as you'd expect. Here is a more or less randomly angled sweet brown trout:

Drugs that alter the menstrual cycle are not benign. They do in fact meet the definition of poison, not deadly if used under medical supervision, but none the same poison. They cause physical and mental changes in a woman's body. Regulation is supposed to assure medical supervision, which is really needed. It is best that government for the most part stay away from medicine, and absolutely prohibited for politicians.

Oh, one more. These are THE PRINGLES OF INSANITY, you cannot munch just one.

We are falling into the ridicule situation where a male teenager will be able to change his sex and grow breasts buying over-the-counter medicine, but he will not be able to buy testosterone to enhance his physique. It is time that government relaxes regulation in the entire health-care system. The country is not doing better than other countries

Well said.

There is however a more nuanced rebuttal on offer, front-paged by one Michael New:

I’d suggest that we will struggle to enact meaningful legal protections of unborn children until the culture becomes more chaste — and a chaste culture is incompatible with a contraceptive culture. All in all, pro-lifers would do well to remain skeptical of the panaceas proclaimed by contraception advocates.

There was ever a "chaste culture"? When? Not even the powers that be in Iran can manage that!

New's point is stupid, but at least it's consonant with its idiot premises. This wan rebuttal is a Fun Joke:

Sexual liberation and abortion are certainly related, but they’re not one and the same

Yes they are! The woman chooses!

Given that contraceptive use is pretty much ubiquitous and that premarital sex was the norm even in the 1950s, a great many Americans must be finding a way to reconcile pro-life views with their participation in the “contraceptive culture.”

No shit.

So, lots of Americans are willing to harshly judge other people for doing what they themselves enjoy doing? PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE CONDOMS!

I mean, sing it proud, again!

a great many Americans must be finding a way to reconcile pro-life views with their participation in the “contraceptive culture.”

That this all nonsense makes a zygote hash (yum!) of the whole idiot anti-choice "position" need not hardly be mentioned, but what the hey:

There is a fair amount of support for the pro-life perspective evident in opinion polls — sometimes even a majority, depending on exactly what question is asked. The more conservative states, at the very least, stand ready to restrict abortion as soon as the Supreme Court gets out of the way.

Laws have not been able to prevent human beings from desiring contraception... but they'll totally stop abortion!

Right.

Dear reader, like you, I oppose Big Government.

Oh wait I meant "I dislike unsanctioned fucking."

Darn typos.

Megan McArdle Explains Why She Did Not Write About Something. But There Are Many More Subjects, Including "Everything," About Which She Ought to Shut It

Megan McArdle is an asshole.

Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania abortion doctor, is on trial for a lurid series of lurid crimes at his clinic.

Gosh. Sounds lurid.

The evangelicals in my twitter and Facebook feed are asking, justifiably, why these crimes seem to be nowhere in the media.  You'd think that a lurid crime touching an issue of major national importance would be covered everywhere.

Right, because it's lurid.

Apart from the usual blah-blah, this is hilarious:

I know and like Sarah Kliff, and this seems harsh to me; there's a lot of news out there, and sometimes we don't cover everything our readers would like. 

You don't "cover" anything, you great horrible dink. You surf the Web, speak glib nostrums, order gilt-platinum arugula basters, and then go on vacation.

But Hemingway (who I also know and like), does have a point: the MSM has barely covered a story that could plausibly be named "The Trial of the Century".  And that demands explanation.  So I'll tell you why I haven't covered it.

So... McArdle is the MSM now? Who knew!

To start, it makes me ill.

You make me ill, and I'm doing this for free.

But I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective—of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by "our side." 

WHISTLE FLAG

Wait.

Megan McArdle is a "pro-choice mainstream journalist"?

The fuck?

Really?

Really?

And she is on "our side"?

Golly.

Moreover, as Jeffrey Goldberg points out, this has disturbing implications for late-term abortions.  It suggests that sometimes, those fetuses are delivered alive.  Worse, it hints at what we might be doing inside the womb to ensure that the other ones aren't.  I don't think that this affected my thinking, since I don't support late-term abortions of viable infants unless the mother's life is in danger.  But I understand why pro-lifers have their suspicions.

Good Lord. What it Disturbingly Implies is that if you make abortion hard to obtain, it goes into back alleys.

But that doesn't totally let me off the hook.  I knew about the Gosnell case, and I wish I had followed it more closely, even though I'd rather not.  In fact, those of us who are pro-choice should be especially interested.  The whole point of legal abortion is to prevent what happened in Philadelphia: to make it safer and more humane.  Somehow that ideal went terribly, horribly awry.  We should demand to know why.

We KNOW why. IF YOU MAKE ABORTION HARD TO OBTAIN, IT GOES INTO BACK ALLEYS.

McArdle is not pro-choice. She is pro-kitchen gadget paid know-nothing, and why she is paid for her opinions wobbles the mime -- surely the Dreary Beast could somewhere find a more pleasant aphid, or a more intelligent ringworm?

Same as the Young Twerp

Oh good grief. Really? Really?  Well, good luck to you, chirpy Townhall Tucker Hope.

Since our society is greatly influenced by pop culture, support for marriage is now counter cultured.

It is time to better market marriage to our generation. As millennials, we must make marriage relevant again as an institution. As millennials, we must use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to get our message out there. As millennials, we must tap into entertainment to promote marriage.

Oh my fucking God.

As an actual married heterosexual with kids... NEVER TALK TO ME EVER YOU SOUND LIKE A FUCKING NAZI AND I HATE YOU.

Apart from that, let's chat about diapers over tea.

"Counter cultured"... my hatred is crystalline.

"Could a Father Not Marry His Son?"

Let's hear it for Hollyweird.

Academy Award winning actor Jeremy Irons said Wednesday that while he doesn't have much of a strong opinion either way on same-sex marriage, he believes it poses interesting questions, including whether allowing same-sex marriage would open the door for interfamilial relationships.

"Could a father not marry his son?" Irons asked HuffPost Live host Josh Zepps. Irons argued that "it's not incest between men" because "incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don't breed," and wondered whether same-sex marriage might allow fathers to pass on their estates to their sons without being taxed.

Yeah, that's a good point. Rich people really are that Poe-Faulkner gothic-gross about taxes.

MAS. Oh yes the idiots.

 

ETTOCRAM ADNAMA! ETTOCRAM ADNAMA! ETTOCRAM ADNAMA!

Many years ago I postulated the Marcotte Theorem, namely, that "mentioning the words 'Amanda Marcotte' in a post quickly summons a ludicrously verbose troll." And that was funny because not only did that throwaway joke indeed summon a verbose troll, I became aware of this Sad Place of Misery, and golly was an offhand observation ever proved right.

Anyway most sane people don't spelunk Wingnuttia like I do, but if you're like me, and I know I am, you would have been kind of impressed by the squawking occasioned by this Marcotte post, wherein I myself thought Marcotte makes an unexceptionable point: don't drag strangers into your weird shit on the Internet.

Instead of applauding Davidson for this, adults should be appalled. All that's been taught here to young men is that they are entitled to women's attention simply because they ask for it. This lesson not only feeds the unjustified grievances of the Reddit users that Stoeffel describes as "tallying up women's socially obligatory acts of kindness." It also helps build the undercurrent of fear that many women, especially younger women, have to live with in their daily lives. This entitlement we teach men crops up all the time for women, and it's rarely as cute as a silly comedy video: When a man demands that you stop on the street to entertain his proposal of going back to his place and then follows you for blocks because you pretended not to hear him. When a rape victim is told that if she didn't want to have sex, she shouldn't have gone to the rapist's hotel room. When a woman files for a restraining order because she's afraid her abusive husband means it when he says that if he can't have her, no one can.

She's right. Adults should be appalled.

Look what I said up there: "don't drag strangers into your weird shit on the Internet."

That's rather a gender-neutral rule. All it means is, leave people alone, respect their boundaries, don't violate the personal space of others because your own "personal space" is so fragile.

You're kind of a willful idiot, I think, if you sincerely believe that nowadays, even after all the progress that has been made (and progress has been made), that women don't get a lot of horrible shit.

Conor Friedersdorf, who is unaccountably employed as far as any business logic goes, though to be fair, nearly a dozen people who pay him care about what he says, and this is nowadays an Enraptured Audience, says things that are dumb.

But I object to Marcotte's argument in a deeper way. Her ultimate purpose is pushing back against real, pervasive problems that women face: street harassment, rape, spousal abuse. That's a vital project. And those scourges are partly a function of the perpetrators' entitlement. In this instance, however, her focus on those themes has caused her to treat two individuals, Upton and Davidson, as if they are stand-ins for their genders rather than individuals. She has also portrayed a strong, successful woman as if she's a humiliated victim. In doing so, she diminishes Upton and vests Davidson with more power than he possesses or ought to possess.

Bullshit. Upton was pushed into a PR situation where she had to do a Graceful Thing, because Davidson played a game winningly--  and everyone played along.

Look. The key question here is how did Davidson win this game.

Why was a "strong, successful woman" compelled to be Internet Cool because some random You Tube sex-code hacker figured out what buttons to press?

The New Conservative Wonderland

I don't suppose it's possible to perform a post-mortem on CPAC; you can't technically conduct an autopsy on a zombie, can you? It's already dead. The question is not what killed it, but what keeps it groaning, ambulatory, and desperate to eat the brains it no longer possesses. As it clearly is desperate to do.

You can develop new analytic tools, I guess, such as the identification of the "Palindrone," which may be defined as the same goofy shite spelt backwards today the way it was spelt forwards in 2008.

Or else, if you have a lot of lube, credulity, and advanced yoga training, you can comport yourself as Patterico does, and reassure yourself through Internet Forensics and sticking your head up your ass that the Deep Reason blacks didn't vote for Romney was the Democrats' habit of "blaming the white people." Coordinated efforts to suppress the black vote were irrelevant; and also too, huckster panels where books are hawked promoting the idea that once black people realize that Jim Crow was a Democrat idea, and so Senator Bilbo = Barack Obama, aren't a symptom of some wider malignant idiocy.

And then there is this always comical mangy cur scavenging 'round for scraps at the Free-Market offal-pits: among other miseries, he yips that "Contrary to what the New York Times would have you believe, conservatives occasionally take time out from their usual business — hate, greed, and war — to laugh, sing, and dance."

Oh, gross. I bet Paul Ryan is the first one to knock back a few Bud Lite Platinums, stick a feather in his ass, and belt out a falsetto rendition of "Hello Dolly."

Beyond that, Robert Stacy McCain is as universally desired in a social setting as is Grima Wormtongue on a bad day for his halitosis.

Anyway, the real reason the Conservative Movement is floundering? It contains conservatives.