Unacceptabilify the Man Who Said Boobs on CNN
So Clay Travis of Fox Sports was being interviewed by Brooke Baldwin of CNN, and they were talking about ESPN, so the segment should already have had some crackle in it. But then Travis went on to say that he was a First Amendment absolutist, believing that only two things had never let him down in the history of our country, to wit, the First Amendment and boobs. He continued on, apparently being a serious man attempting to make a serious point, but Baldwin wasn’t having any. She kept coming back to variations of what did you say?
“Why would you even say that live on national television and with a female host? Why would you even go there?”
The episode was memorialized by @iowahawk by means of the image I have embedded to the right, and there has been, of course, a good deal of potheration, unacceptabilifying, throat-clearing, vexation of spirit, pearl-clutching, and so on.
An Explanation Called For
The bumfuzzlement has been pronounced enough that I thought I should try to explain things to everybody, using the helpful idiom that Baldwin used, that of “going there.” I am not talking about a sports commentator “going there” on someone else’s show, but rather want to point to the fact that our entire culture has been “going there” for quite some time now. In fact, we have been going there for long enough that we may safely conclude that we have now arrived. We have arrived, and have unpacked. We are settled in. This is where we live now.
And the point I desire to make is not really that complicated. It is that you can’t go there, and remain where you were previously. It is one or the other, so to speak.
Put this another way. You cannot simultaneously live in 1952 and 2017. Moreover, you cannot toggle between those years, depending on who or what just offended you. If you have been a whole-hearted advocate of coarsening the culture, and of all things guaranteed to coarsen it further, you cannot really complain, at the end of the day, about the coarsened culture you now have. “How did this happen? Why weren’t we informed?”
Let’s conduct a little thought experiment, you and I. Let us try to imagine what kind of discourse, what kind of language, is acceptable in the CNN newsroom when the cameras are not running, when that little camera light is not on. What kind of all-purpose adverbs, beginning with the letter f, might we be accustomed to hear in casual conversation, whether or not a female host might be on set? Does anyone seriously think that the guy behind camera one might shush the guy behind camera two? “Sirrah! I pray you to please remember that there are ladies present.” No, no, dear reader—you overshot by a century, and have confused the present year with 1852. No, no, dear reader—you are hallucinating.
We have had publishing events like 50 Shades. We have had raunchy routines from comediennes like Sarah Silverman. We have had rap artists cutting up their bitches. We have had reality television set ups that would clog the filters of a sewage treatment plant for a major urban area. We have gone from the time when Rhett Butler saying “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” was a national event, to the point now where it is a national event if the hostess of any given awards show doesn’t fall out of her dress. Our ruling elites, pretty much all of them, are gathered on Lot’s front porch, trying to find the doorknob while yelling incoherently about their incoherent lusts. Not only do they want to rape the angels, they are mortally offended that some sports guys said boobs on CNN.
In addition, and running concurrently with all of this, we have had unrelenting mockery for those uptight conservatives who have, for decades, been protesting the coarsening effects of all of the above. They are, of course, puritanical. They are uptight about sex, sexiness, sex ed, sex changes, and weird sexual pronouns. Their problem started early. They started having their censorious problems back when Elvis was swiveling and doing that thing with his leg.
Our Next Black Eye
But—and this is related to the point about 1952 and 2017—are we supposed to be puritanical or not puritanical? Are we supposed to be offended at crudity, or are we supposed to be liberated into crudity? These guys keeping changing the rules. Not only do they keep changing the rules, but they do so capriciously, arbitrarily. They change the “rules” in order to keep everyone off balance. I put “rules” in scare quotes here because they aren’t really rules—they are simply the function of whatever it is our betters happen to be demanding in the present moment. They veer this way and that way so that normal people never know what to expect. I know this is true because the phrase normal people is now hate speech.
They are the abusive boyfriend who knows that the best way to control everybody around them is to be utterly unpredictable. No telling what might set off the next explosion. No telling how or where we are going to get our next black eye.
And what is sauce for the goose is not, according to the progressive gander, sauce for anybody else. Just for you geese.
But Chesterton says somewhere—and despite googling I couldn’t put my finger on it—that the blunt word often condemns the sin while the polite euphemism carries excuses for sin everywhere it goes. And the blunt word is what the progressives have now liberated for us—but not exactly intending to liberate it for some of us. If we use our unconstrained liberty of speech to express a fixed moral standard, then they will do their level best to come down on you hard. This is how we have managed to combine, at all our official levels, an acceptance of the foulest speech coupled with censorious speech codes.
When the barriers come down, as they have come down, the hypocrites of the left want to control us by saying that they are the liberated ones of 2017, while we are all expected to behave as though it were still 1952. We must never speak in a way that upsets their project, even though their project is to upset and overturn everything else.
“But as Anthony Esolen has cogently pointed out, you can’t have ‘half a jungle.’ You can’t throw down all the walls and then wonder why there is no shelter any more. You cannot demand that everyone treat women as though they were men, and then cry foul because they are doing so” (Here).
They took a chainsaw to the orchard and are now wondering about the apple famine. You cannot fight for the right of women to swear like weaving sailors, and then, if you find they have heard something untoward, have them pull away their petticoats. And, of course, this brings to mind that prescient statement by C.S. Lewis:
“And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”[1]
Let us bring this back to Clay Travis, but just for a moment. He was apparently representing a worldview best described as a “good ol’ boy appreciation of mammary splendor,” which is a blinkered perspective. He was not looking at life from a biblical vantage, a fact I think we should all acknowledge frankly. But he certainly got everybody’s back up, and he revealed a lot more of their hypocrisy than many earnest preachers do, however much they might sweat in the pulpit.
Small-Breasted Biddies: A Reprise
Let us be frank. Nothing will be achieved through pretense. Although I do not belong to the same school of thought as does Travis, I have offended the feminists (along with not a few Christians cowed by the feminists) in a related area, on multiple occasions.
“So feminism — smash the patriarchy feminism — wants us to be ruled by harridans, termagants, harpies and crones. That sets the tone, and the pestering is then made complete by small-breasted biddies who want to make sure nobody is using too much hot water in the shower, and that we are all getting plenty of fiber. And if anyone reads these words and believes that I am attacking all women by them, that would provide great example of why we should not entrust our cultural future to people who can’t read” (Here).
“We like the word authentic, but we detest the reality. A fading beauty in Beverly Hills walks into an upscale bistro, her skin stretched out with botox, her breasts as fine a pair as DuPont could make them, her hair the color of nothing found on earth, and yet she double checks with the waiter (twice) to be sure that her salad will have hormone-free chicken. Why? Either because she is committed to going all natural, which would not seem to be the case, or because her table is only big enough for one hormone queen. She is insisting that the chicken be the authentic one” (Here).
“And briefly, the last distinction we must have is the distinction between the wise and intelligent women who understood exactly what Wilkin was getting at, who have dealt with real instances of such a haunting, and who actually have had a bloviating pastor modulate into his ‘pastor voice’ when answering a simple question, and the clueless women who blindly liked Wilkin’s article on Facebook, but who are themselves pushy broads, twinkies in tight tops, or waifs with manga eyes” (Here).
What am I doing here? Or, as some might want to put it, what do I think I am doing?
On Eating Their Own Cooking:
The demands of the current politically correct sensibilities are not customs or mores exactly. They do not rise to that level. They are arbitrary and contradictory. In the old days, if you violated a societal norm or rule, the discipline could be hard, but it was usually consistent and clear. Now, in these crazed times, while it is certainly true that you can run afoul of the authorities, the experience is more like encountering a tether ball in a tornado. The modern despots of the dictionary will get you for anything—and are willing to come at you from any direction.
But their power comes from the fact that people are trying to obey them, as though this were still something like the old order. People (especially cowed Christians) still try to be good, and still try to follow the rules, as though there could possibly be rules in this postmodern fun house. There are arbitrary diktats, and they are enforced, often fiercely, but the only thing that makes them so fearsome is the authority we cede to them. But these people are madmen, and consequently nothing should be ceded to them, nothing whatever.
Now if you were to ask me which society I would prefer to live in, one where society had set rules and reasonable norms or the society we have now, I would most definitely prefer the former. Not only would I prefer the former, but I would even take it with all its ridiculous little inconsistencies. For example, one time Winston Churchill was over here in the States and was attending a dinner—he was going through the line, and they were serving chicken. He asked if he could please have a chicken breast, and so the hostess apologetically explained to him that over here, we did not say “breast,” we said “white meat.” Churchill apologized fulsomely for his gaffe, and the next day the hostess received the gift of a very nice corsage, along with a note that requested that she be pleased to pin it on her white meat.
Not only would I prefer that society, but on the whole I think I would behave at better-than-Winston levels in it.
But in the society we actually have, in this chaotic place where the Gramscians have brought us, our arbiters of approved speech insist that they be the only ones allowed to shock, and that we be the ones to be dutifully shocked. In response to this proposed arrangement, I cheerfully refuse. I refuse to accept their authority in any of this, and I fully intend to make sure that they get an opportunity to eat their own cooking.
So if someone with a long enough face to be a dowager from Human Resources tells me that I am no longer permitted, as a cis-white-male, to make any observations or comparisons, metaphorical or otherwise, about any aspect of the female anatomy, guess what I am going to do? Guess what my next blog post is going to be about?
Go on, guess.
And don’t bother trying to tell me that I am being a troubler of Israel. That is what Ahab said to Elijah. Right. The guy who imported all the idols and brought the wrath of Heaven down on his nation, he is the one who wanted to pretend that the man who opposed it all from the beginning should take responsibility.
So the issue before us is not men or women. It is not bodies. It is not social mores or customs. Three cheers for all of that. It is that our new overlords are radical hypocrites, coupling their sham concerns about authenticthisnthat with a wholehearted promulgation of inauthenticthatnthis. And as long as Christians try to pretend that this radical relativism is just another set of societal norms, the longer it will be before we recover our sanity. And the surrounding culture will never recover its relative sanity unless the church recovers its grounded sanity.
There is always more than can be said about stuff like this.
Notes
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (HarperOne, 2001), 26.
Typo: “These guys keeping changing the rules.”
“Go on, guess.” — Too funny!
That’s Groucho. I don’t think Typo was in that one.
The irony of all of this—wow. Every NFL game has a lineup of jumping, gyrating, booby, short-shorted cheerleaders along with explicit adverts.
Somehow, it seems a desecration of the Great One and Ms. Dumond to link them with such a sad story:)
Yeah, it’s insane. If you’re a hetero male, you’re supposed to sort of enjoy the scantily-dressed cheerleaders (you can’t be a fundamentalist prude!) but you better not objectify the women. Of course that’s impossible…you can’t have it both ways.
And “plus-sized” models are supposed to wear as few clothes as possible and flaunt everything…while again, men are supposed to enjoy it with plenty of support and “you go girls!” …but don’t you dare fat-shame them or question their “body positivity.”
Bravo Pastor Wilson. This was inspired. You at your most bitingly Chestertonian!
In a timely coincidence, yesterday, riffing off something Gene Helsel said in the exhortaion of our worship service. I was put onto thinking about the good old days of relativism. Remember when reletivists , primarily the left, used that concept as a way to rebel against the stated mores of the day. These were generally the tenets of Christian morality which had percolated through history where violations–which were common–were considered hypocritical. With relativism you could have your own non-hypocritical return to (a’ la carte) paganism. Primarily where you could kill babies, have the sex you wanted, commission the government to… Read more »
“a bunch of not very bright teenage boys with matches.” ?????
Can we change that to “a bunch of not very bright “fake journalists” with matches.”?
I wouldn’t want to give teenage boys a bad name! ; – )
please keep clearing the path through the jungle. those of us reared in this culture desperately need the guidance.
First let me say, “pushy broads, twinkies in tight tops, or waifs with manga eyes” was cute, appropriate, and not shameful. Also, rather artistic wordsmithery. However, allow me to render myself even more unpopular than I already am,the hypocrisy does not stem exclusively from the progressive side of things. Christians have a long history of saying one thing and doing another. Our polite civility has been proven over and over again to often be nothing more than a thin veneer over the top of repressed perversion. A bit like draping a paper towel over a mess and just calling it… Read more »
I know.
In fact, I have a hard time believing that Clay Travis’s boobs have never let him down! ???? Even though I had never heard of him prior!
Here’s my vote in favor of repressing perversion.
LOL! I hear you. However, repression does not make it go away nor do we fool God, or anyone else for that matter. Our culture’s puritan values and repressed perversion has lead to the precise mess we are seeing all around is today.
MeMe, I’m not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that perverse sexuality shouldn’t be repressed? Or that puritan values (such as sexual fidelity and chastity) are wrong?
I am saying that repressing perversion always makes it so much worse, that repression is actually the path to sin,that believing we ourselves can be healed of anything by our own sheer will power alone is a fool’s errand. So we wind up with things like the Catholic priest sex scandal while praising ourselves for our stance against homosexuality and than we wonder why people find our evangelical fainting couch as neurotic and incoherent as a progressive one.
Is this moral advice of the “If you must sin, sin boldly” type?
Well, I suppose I am suggesting that we don’t get extra credits points for remembering to sin with cowardice.
At least if we sin timidly it shows that somewhere in our shriveled little hearts we recognize that our sins aresin and we care about that fact.
Flaunting our sins for all to see and pretending there’s nothing wrong with them shows that we don’t care that sin is sin.
We don’t get points for sinning. Period.
“At least if we sin timidly it shows that somewhere in our shriveled little hearts we recognize that our sins are sin..” No it doesn’t. If we feared God we wouldn’t be sinning at all. If our timid little hearts are recognizing sin and doing it anyway behind closed doors, all we’ve demonstrated is a fear of other people’s opinions and a desire to lie. I’ve long said, an unsaved flaming homosexual on a street corner is probably not ticking God off as much as one of His own, speaking about the sanctity of marriage by day and having affairs… Read more »
I think you are presenting a false alternative: either you are a brazen and bold sinner, or you are a sneaky, hypocritical sinner. I think you are discounting the possibility of a shamed and scared sinner who knows what he is doing is wrong, is perhaps struggling to overcome it, and doesn’t want to parade his sin proudly as if there is nothing wrong with it.
Even people who fear God fall into sin. At least, I do.
I don’t think it’s a false alternative at all. I think we make a grave mistake when believe we can hide and repress sin and that some how makes it better. I believe we lie to ourselves when we do this under the guise of discretion or alleged consideration for others. What is the first thing alcoholics do when they want to break their addiction? Admit they are an alcoholic in front of all the other people. We need community, accountability, relinquished pride, to admit our failures. This can never happen if our Christians are going to insist that repression… Read more »
I disagree with you probably 30% of the time you post on here This is not one of those times. I too am skeptical when Christians speak of the good old days. I enjoy music from that era like Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline. You don’t have to listen long to hear the hypocrisy and sickness under the Christian veneer. In my own family from both sets of grandparents and great grandparents the sexual debauchery still effects their descendents.
I don’t think you are being a “troubler of Israel”, but I don’t understand how your approach to dealing with the hypocrisy fits with Colossians 4:5-6.
??????
Colossians 4 talks about being seasoned with salt.
Who has a blog more salty than our host here? ????
Well, we now have as president a man who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, and who called his own daughter a fine piece of ass, and who routinely drops F-bombs on national television. A generation ago, a low-level White House staffer who talked like that in public would have been fired and out the door no matter which party was in power. And don’t even try blaming that one on cultural progressives; we’re not the ones who elected him.
” And don’t even try blaming that one on cultural progressives; we’re not the ones who elected him.”
Buy you almost single-handedly mainstreamed it, by the type of movies, TV shows, magazines and music (think gangsta rap) you either (a) pushed and approved or (b) screamed “How dare you?!” at anyone who questioned it.
Actually, a lot of cultural progressives, like me, are just as appalled at the blatant misogyny in gangta rap as you are. As for movies and TV shows, find me one in which the hero brags about grabbing women by the pussy, then we’ll talk.
I take it that you have never watched a James Bond movie.
Progressive Leftists created James Bond?
Matt, I figured you were still off in a corner somewhere admiring J. Jackson and Sharpton. Two guys who with questionable moral compasses…
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=122032
http://liverampup.com/entertainment/al-sharpton-claims-right-date-while-legally-having-wife-reveals-secret-weight-loss-good-health.html
Ian Fleming was many things during his life – a cultural conservative was not one of them.
Hollywood studios turned down the opportunity to produce the first Bond film in 1960 because the book was too overtly sexual. They learned quickly from that financial mistake.
But he was no progressive leftist either, progressive leftism as we know it today not even existing at the time. Nor did progressives make James Bond a financial success.
To the extent that the culture has gotten more vulgar over the past decades, middle-American conservatives have readily gone along with it at best and helped advance it at worst.
Matt,
Progressive leftism dates back at least to the Marquis de Sade in pre-revolutionary France.
I think that our host here would not disagree with you about conservatives aiding and abetting the vulgarization of society over the past decades.
It was a sad (pun) day when Pope Paul VI abolished the Index. Reading de Sade does no one any good.
Matt wrote:
Matt seems to be assuming that anyone who isn’t a progressive is therefore a conservative.
You totally missed the point. It’s not about saying a specific quote. It’s about the loosening or downright destruction of mores. Pick anything you want from the sexual revolution–maybe the awful movie “Easy Rider” with its free love and rampant drug use themes. That was totally championed by the left. In that environment, a sizable portion of males (alphas if you want to call them that) will demonstrate that kind of bravado. Randomly pick almost any rap song and you’ll hear a lot worse.
Not to be confused with a prior occupant of the White House that foisted himself on a subordinate with tricks including certain smoking implements. In any other context an incident with that much publicity would have resulted in the perp being frog-marched out the front door. Instead it was dealt with in the political realm where said perp was, in essence, absolved of his randy behavior.
Compare/contrast with President Kennedy was able to abuse underage women at will with all ignoring his little “predilection”. A blind-eye to statutory rape…..
A race to the bottom…..
Chip, I am under the distinct impression that if Trump built concentration camps and started gassing people, the response from his supporters would be, “But what about the Clintons”. Your post has done nothing to dispel that impression.
Forgive me for not putting forward my point in a less obtuse manner. I was merely echoing the overall thrust of Pr. Wilson’s column in that culture (politics included) has progressed in a way that Cultural Progressives support. The fact that Donald Trump was (riffing off of CSL’s Evolutionary Hymn) “what came next” was a bit shocking to the Cultural Progressives. Surely this was not, in any way, what we had intended when we approved of giving way to unbridled lust. This Trump dude is not acceptable. In. Any. Way. Much better is the lust that justifies Human Abortion…it’s just… Read more »
OK, I misunderstood your earlier post. I would disagree with you that there can’t be reasonable line-drawing — it’s possible, for example, to say the law should not interfere with an adult’s ability to read Playboy, but that doesn’t mean that child pornography should be protected. All or nothing are not the only two alternatives.
“And don’t even try blaming that one on cultural progressives; we’re not the ones who elected him.”
Amen! Indeed it was not. It was the defiant and rebellious working class, people like me who are uncertain what is more offensive, locker room talk or selective pearl clutching and fainting couches.
The pearl clutchers lost. Get over it.
Fine, just don’t complain then about the coarsening of the culture.
I won’t if you won’t complain about Trump anymore — which is the point. Not that Clinton makes it okay, but that it was Clinton that moved the needle that paved the way for Trump to be widely publicly acceptable. Literally nobody talked in public about the kind of stuff Clinton did in any medium that did not have a rating on it, until we got Clinton. And then it became part of the mainstream news. The point is not that Clinton did it too so Trump is okay, the point is that the people who brought us Clinton should… Read more »
Unlike Mr. Clinton, Trump made his vulgarities well known before the election, and Christians voted for him anyway. Your point would be better taken if Clinton had had a well-publicized affair with Monica Lewinsky before the election and progressives backed him anyway. But that’s not what happened. Also, Clinton took pains to keep his misconduct private and it was dragged out into the light by others, unlike Mr. Trump, who can’t stop reminding everyone what a vulgarian he is. So I don’t see the two as morally equivalent even if that were the issue, and I’m not sure the Clintons… Read more »
I’m calling Barnyard Substance (BS) on Clinton practicing any level of discretion before his election to POTUS. Everyone from Arkansas (including me) was shouting loud and long that he was a “lewd fellow of the baser sort.” He had a retinue of rape accusers following him all the way through every campaign. There were nationally televised interviews with some of his former consorts who were consenting and not raped. Hillary ran a hit squad to destroy women who exposed him in various “bimbo eruptions.” Anybody who didn’t know about Bill Clinton’s sordid (possibly criminal) life prior to his election must… Read more »
Brother Steve, there is a difference between knowing something, and being told something in-your-face style. Yes, everyone who wasn’t blind, deaf and stupid knew that Clinton was a womanizer. But unlike Trump, Clinton didn’t take pains to make sure everybody knew. In less coarse, more discreet days, there was just as much sleeping around as there is now and people just didn’t talk about it. And that’s the difference.
Clinton tried to keep it quiet. Trump doesn’t bother.
Because Clinton had already proved that the American people actually didn’t mind knowing all about a president’s whoremongering in fairly explicit terms, albeit from sources other than himself. So why should Trump bother with discretion (from his perspective, not mine)?
Jane, I think the American people did mind knowing all about the President’s whoremongering; I think the majority view was that they would have preferred never to have heard the name Monica Lewinsky. I think a consensus had emerged, or was in the process of emerging, that what someone does in private is their business so long as it’s kept private. Clinton was not the first whoremonger to occupy the White House, he was simply the first to have his sex life be the subject of a special prosecutor, a Congressional investigation, and an impeachment trial, with all the attendant… Read more »
Perhaps the progressives could take a step in the right direction and run a presidential candidate less odious than Trump.
With Hillary Clinton, they ran a candidate more odious than Trump.
That’s “What Happened”! ????
????
adad, I saw a cartoon the other day that showed an airline passenger addressing the other passengers and saying, “Those smug pilots have lost touch with us passengers. Show of hands: How many think I should fly the plane?” And that’s what happened. Yes, the Democrats seem to have forgotten how to do politics (including not nominating someone who is under investigation even if the investigation is nonsense), and yes, the Democrats can be condescending to middle America, and yes, the Democrats have created major public relations problems for themselves. All of this is true. But, she knew how to… Read more »
“I refuse to accept their authority in any of this, and I fully intend to make sure that they get an opportunity to eat their own cooking.”
Krychek, do let me know how your flight on “Air Benghazi” goes! Send me an email!
I hear that the Air Benghazi information technology department is ‘da bomb! ; – )
Finally, there are better sky pilots than Hillary Clinton, I do wonder why you chose her?
; – )
adad, security decisions for individual embassies are not made at the Secretary of State level; you could equally as well blame the governor because a traffic light isn’t working. As a Democrat, I hated that she was my party’s nominee. I wanted Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland. But she was chosen because she had spent the past ten years campaigning for the position and lining up support from all the right people, which is the way politics works. A better question is why, out of a field of a dozen candidates, the GOP chose Trump. There were several… Read more »
“State Department headquarters in Washington did refuse repeated requests from its ambassador in Libya for more security personnel. And it decided not to accept an offer from the Defense Department to extend the stay of one of its security units in Libya, reducing the level of security that was available. We rate Johnson’s statement True.” http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/may/19/ron-johnson/hillary-clintons-state-department-reduced-security/ By statute, the Secretary of State is responsible for the security of embassies and personnel, especially Libyan embassies, where the Secretary of State’s alleged masterpiece of foreign policy was playing out,…….. badly. Krychek, why do you keep thinking HRC was good a flying “the… Read more »
Adad, just think this one through for a minute. There are hundreds of embassies and consulates throughout the world; if the Secretary personally made security decisions for each of them, she would have time for little else. There’s probably someone at the State Department whose full time job is deciding security needs for the various embassies and consulates. I would be surprised if she was even made aware that there had been a request for more security. By your rationale, it was Reagan’s fault that the military barracks in Lebanon got bombed in 1983; since he was the guy at… Read more »
Reagan took “full responsibility” for the Lebanon bombing, hence, no reasonable person blamed him. Conversely, Clinton lied about The Benghazi attack being a”protest”, then had the gall to say “what difference at this point does it make?”,with the result that the thinking public, quite wisely, would not trust her. Aka, HRC does not know how to “fly the plane”, except into the ground! ???? On the other hand, look what I just found!: “I take responsibility,” Clinton told CNN in an interview while on a visit to Peru. “I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the… Read more »
K2,
Republicans chose Trump, despite his many manifest flaws, over all the other very likeable candidates for the same reason that Democrats chose Hillary Clinton, despite her many manifest flaws, over the very likeable Martin O’Malley.
They were both the most ruthlessly competent individuals on their respective sides.
You keep thinking that a modern politician is a serious, well-defined career. As in “He was a Congressman for 12 years and was on this or that committee…he’s qualified to lead!” As if we could evaluate politicians like we could doctors, engineer or plumbers.
With extremely few exceptions (Ron Paul being one), we haven’t a had a true statesman in many decades. Trump won because people are fed up with career politicians, lobbyists, pork barrel spending and the rest. He certainly wasn’t the best solution, but distinguished himself from the pack.
Trump got the nomination because there were a dozen other candidates splitting the votes. Had the RNC picked one of those guys (or Fiorina) to go against Trump, and told the rest they’d have to wait 4 years to try again, I highly doubt DT would be the President. But if it makes you feel better about yourself to pretend like Christians were eager, happy, or excited about having to vote for Trump in order to keep Clinton out of office, then carry on.
Remember that trump had an opponent. An opponent who was caught on tape bragging about how she got an accused rapist off.
Also, an opponent who insisted that woman who make accusations about rape should be believed, but who then trashed everyone who accused her husband.
Trump could have lost to an decent Democrat. But those are rather hard to find.
As his attorney, it was her job to get him off. Are you saying defense attorneys should not do their jobs?
But even if I agreed with you, the choices were still between a candidate (her) who understands basic governance, and a candidate (him) who obviously does not. If you need surgery, and your choices are between a competent surgeon with a troubled personal life, versus a hospital orderly who has a pristine personal life but who doesn’t know a scalpel from a Number 2 pencil, go with the person who knows what he’s doing.
“the choices were still between a candidate (her) who understands basic governance, and a candidate (him) who obviously does not.”
The first order of business in basic governance is to get yourself elected. She failed to do that. Therefore she obviously does not understand basic governance.
MeMe, so if she had gotten herself elected, she would then understand basic governance? Understanding basic governance is determined by whether someone gets elected?
“Understanding basic governance is determined by whether someone gets elected?”
Uh yes. It’s kind of a critical component in a democracy. Step one in basic governance, you have to get yourself elected. If the people don’t elect you, you don’t get the job.
So the better qualified person always gets the job? You need to get out more.
We the people get to decide who the better qualified person is. The fact that so many of her followers seem to still be questioning whether or not we have that right, actually becomes yet another reason why her understanding of basic governance was so inferior.
What her followers may think doesn’t tell us anything about a candidate’s understanding of governance. It only tells us that perhaps her followers lack that understanding. But, in any event, I don’t think most of the opposition were devoted Clinton followers. Most people I know would have voted for the prince of darkness in order not to have Trump. Not that they would see much difference between them.
“What her followers may think doesn’t tell us anything about a candidate’s understanding of governance.”
It absolutely does,especially since she was in leadership before the election. Followers follow and she lead her followers towards division and hatred, rather than acceptance and unity.
I was speaking in general terms. Your principle would suggest that the population will always select the better candidate, and this can’t possibly be correct. But, whatever one thinks about Clinton’s leadership, I don’t think it can be said that Trump is healing the divisions in this nation. I think we are divided close to the breaking point.
We the people voted for Clinton over Trump by more than 3 million votes.
Nonsense! But regardless, we the people outsmarted you with the electoral college and played the hand of democracy fair and square.
It’s way past time to get over it, put on your big boy pants, and to finally acknowledge you share this country with other Americans.
MeMe, I’m not sure what that means. I accept the results of the election, and I accept that a lot of people must have voted for Trump. That fact that there were only two ballots for Trump in my entire precinct makes this difficult for me to get my mind around, but I understand that the electoral college is more important than the popular vote.
But surely this does not mean that I have to like him, to respect him, or to refrain from criticizing him.
“But surely this does not mean that I have to like him, to respect him, or to refrain from criticizing him.”
You’ll have to figure all that out that yourself. I’m pretty irreverent towards our leaders, but just the same I do take Romans 13 pretty seriously. In the US we have to at least respect the office and the fact that our fellow citizens put him there.
I have never doubted that I share the country with other Americans; I just don’t think a political minority should exercise political hegemony over the majority.
You are not a member of the majority anymore, which should be self evident since your candidate lost.
Here’s the deal thought, this is actually a republic. If we were a pure democracy we would have mob rule. We don’t, we work to ensure that a political minority can have a voice. So either way you try to present the nature of the “problem,” you are still wrong.
We the people voted for Clinton over Trump by more than 3 million votes.
And Big State University’s football team scored more points over the course of the entire season than any of the other football teams.
They didn’t get the Championship Trophy because they lost 3/4 ths of the games they played.
This is not a hard concept to understand.
Arwenb, fine, but don’t make the claim that Donald Trump won a democratic election. He didn’t. He won an undemocratic election, because of an institution that twice in four elections produced an anti-democratic result.
He won the election by the same standard and practice by which presidents have been winning elections since nearly the founding of the country. (And, yes, I do know that at the very beginning, the winner got to be President and the first runner up was Vice President.)
If it is undemocratic, then it has never been democratic, and quite frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that, provided that the rules are clear and everyone is playing by the same set.
Krychek_2 wrote:
It’s sort of like how, in evolutionism, only the superior genetic specimen gets to mate and produce offspring.
Oh wait.
Does this mean that anyone who has ever lost a U.S. presidential election didn’t understand basic governance? Your definition would mean that the citizens will always elect the better candidate. Does history suggest this is true?
“between a candidate (her) who understands basic governance”
Based on what? Her appalling job as secretary of state and her New York-by-way-of-Arkansas senate gig? Acting like a slick politician doesn’t make you competent. Your surgeon example is a really analogy. One involves actual knowledge and skills; the other is pure theater.
I take “understanding basic (democratic) governance” to include “not being a known felon” and “convincing the voters that you can lead them somewhere they are willing to go”. If you can’t lead, you can’t govern, and you can’t do neither from a prison cell.
Funny, we didn’t all stop listening to CNN and Rush Limbaugh and everybody else when they started talking about unmentionable goings-on in the White House, did we? So I think really, we didn’t mind hearing about it, though we minded having it happen in the first place.
Or, we can go with your idea that Victorian Era standards of public discourse were in force until October 7, 2016, and it’s wholly the fault of Trump and his voters that the culture has been coarsened. I guess each reader can take his pick.
Jane, those aren’t the only two choices.
Correct K2. There’s the actual correct one, where Bill Clinton’s antics, and their widespread graphic public discussion, contributed significantly to (though I never said initiated) the coarsening of the culture. Whereby, Trump definitely comes in for his share of guilt, but absolutely should not be considered the source of the problem, nor his supporters be the only ones charged with contributing to it. Dave, that’s not quite right. The Whitewater investigation included and was significantly spurred on by Paula Jones’s accusations of sexual harassment during his governorship. The Monica Lewinsky situation became part of that because a history of sexual… Read more »
“Clinton was not the first whoremonger to occupy the White House, he was simply the first to have his sex life be the subject of a special prosecutor, a Congressional investigation, and an impeachment trial, with all the attendant publicity that came with it” K2 @ 206165 Jane, the special investigation was directed at the suspicious death of Vince Foster and of the suspicious Clinton real estate dealings. It was not about his sexual misconduct. Monika was just icing on the cake. To say otherwise is trying to change history. However, this was a point when those who want to… Read more »
K2 says: “Clinton tried to keep it quiet. Trump doesn’t bother.”
All that really shows is that Clinton, as a life-long politician, instinctively lied and covered up (with the help of his wife) his misdeeds. Trump, having a similar moral code, apparently did not feel the need to lie.
soylentg, everyone, including you and me, has aspects of our personal lives that we would not want to have splashed all over the newspapers. Are you seriously suggesting that Clinton’s misdeeds wouldn’t have been so bad if he’s been bragging about them rather than covering them up? At least he showed he has a sense of shame.
Thanks K2, your suggestion that Clinton “showed he has a sense of shame” is just the type of gut busting, back slapping joke that I needed to brighten my day!
“In less coarse, more discreet days, there was just as much sleeping around as there is now and people just didn’t talk about it. And that’s the difference.”
And this is precisely my point. Is it really “less coarse” simply because we pretend it isn’t happening? I say no, in fact, I’ll say it’s even worse. It is dishonest, hypocrisy.
“Clinton tried to keep it quiet.”
Right. He lied. He lied in the name of politics. He lied wanting to enjoy the benefits of polite society while living outside the bounds of it. Huge, hypocritical double standard.
Lying is bad, and he should have lost the presidency because of the perjury. But I really don’t want to live in a society in which there is no hypocrisy. I don’t want to live around people who don’t even try to control their vulgarity, sexuality, and uncivilized impulses. Life would be a jungle. Sometimes a decent concern for the opinion of others requires us to cover over our more primitive impulses–and I think that is a good thing. A lot of people, left to themselves, will eat, behave, and have sex in a way that would bring disgrace on… Read more »
I’m afraid your words about preferring hypocrisy over the truth of who and what we are, really is a mindset that permeates Christianity. The sad thing is that it is killing us. We are putting on masks and playing games and deceiving our own selves, ironically all things that delay and avoid genuine repentance and transformation. We don’t ever have to face the ugliness in ourselves or others because we’ll all just pretend it isn’t really there.
When it comes to my own life, I don’t pretend it isn’t there. When I have problems–whether they are sin or misfortunes–I need to deal with them. But I can’t expect other people to deal with them, and they shouldn’t have to. Take a really trivial example. My table manners out in public are pretty good. My table manners when I am alone slurping spaghetti over the laptop can be horrible. Am I being hypocritical if I make sure my best table manners are on display when I am eating with other people? Why should anyone have to tolerate watching… Read more »
” My table manners when I am alone slurping spaghetti over the laptop can be horrible. Am I being hypocritical if I make sure my best table manners are on display when I am eating with other people? ” Yes Jilly,it is hypocrisy. Spaghetti is funny, but other things are not, especially if they are cloaked in shame and repression. It’s okay to shoot heroin for example, just as long as no one has to see you do it, is unloving. Or you can beat your wife behind closed doors,just not in public because it offends our delicate sensibilities. To… Read more »
MeMe,
I do want people to be afraid of being known to do certain things, such that they hide or first look about furtively, if they’re going to do them at all. I want the thief forced to sneak, rather than able to rob me brazenly not caring who sees. That way I’ll be less likely to get robbed.
And I really, really don’t want anyone to feel a need to tell me exactly what he or she thinks of me. I am much happier with a pleasant and cordial assumption that we get along just fine.
“I really, really don’t want anyone to feel a need to tell me exactly what he or she thinks of me. ”
That’s a bummer too, Jilly. I actually appreciate it when people say what they think. They aren’t always right, some are downright appalling, but at least they aren’t indifferent to me. I really dislike polite indifference.
No John, what you want is for a thief to repent, have a change of heart, and stop being a thief.
Good grief, surely you don’t believe that simply shaming thievery is somehow going to protect you?
MeMe, What you really want is for it never occur to anyone to be a thief in the first place. Surely though, you are realistic in your expectations.
Fear of shame certainly does restrain some people, even when it comes to stealing, though we’re not simply talking about that here. When it does come to thievery, you want there to be definite obstacles before and possible consequences after. Surely you don’t want it make it convenient to be a thief?
I don’t think a hardcore criminal is going to be deterred by shame. But there are a lot of non-criminals who get bad impulses from time to time, and who may be deterred by the thought of unpleasant consequences. Any time I have been tempted to exceed my custom allowance, I am deterred by the thought of the stuff being found in my luggage at the border patrol point and how bad I would feel being carted off to wherever they take customs cheaters. I think a lot of casual shoplifters (or stealers of office computer software) would be deterred… Read more »
i simply can’t see that. Of course, I am not discussing wife beating which is criminal no matter where it happens. And nobody should be shooting heroin–but if people insist on doing that, I would prefer they do it at home and not in the street where they leave dirty needles for children to find. Is there absolutely no difference between how you act in private and in public? When you have a cold, are you more considerate with your coughs and sneezes around other people than you would be if you were alone on an empty beach? If you’re… Read more »
Honest to goodness Jilly, I try to be the same person all the time, at home, in person,on the internet. God sees me everywhere and I’m far more interested in His opinion, than the opinion of other people.
It strikes me as kind of sad that people put on their church face, their public relations face, a whole row of masks designed to hide the truth of who they are. Is who you are (generic you,) so hideous it would inconsiderate to let anyone see you? Is this like the Man in the Iron mask or something? Elephant Boy?
MeMe, of course we would want everyone to be truly “good” and not hypocritical about it, which can only come through repentance and the power of Christ (though “if anyone says that he has no sin, the truth is not in him”). However, we know that not everyone believes. There is a benefit to restraining evil behavior in society. This is done through law for certain things, and through public shaming for other things. Women who had children out of wedlock used to be shamed. I bet that cut down on the promiscuity quite a bit (before birth control was… Read more »
“Women who had children out of wedlock used to be shamed. I bet that cut down on the promiscuity quite a bit (before birth control was more reliable)”
It did not. Children born out of wedlock skyrocketted in the 1950’s. It began to decline dramatically in the 90’s
In fact, shaming is precisely the kind of thinking that has now led to abortion and many of our other social ills.
MeMe, where are you getting that statistic? According to the US census, the number stayed level through the forties and fifties, climbed slowly through the sixties (reaching 10% of all births) in 1970, and then shot upward through successive decades. https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/wm2934_bythenumbers.pdf
Let’s not confuse people with the facts…it may spoil their narrative!
MeMe, my knowledge is admittedly anecdotal when it comes to statistics. But I took a look at Jilly’s link, which showed a minor downspike in the ’90s, and then a continuation of the skyrocket. I don’t think you can blame shaming for abortion. That ‘credit’ goes to the enemy and his tools who want to spit in God’s face. But my point is that public shame associated with certain actions can be a motivating factor for people not to do them, which is beneficial for them and society. It can cause people to face their sinfulness and turn to God,… Read more »
No, but I am human with the usual assortment of human failings and weaknesses. My friends could tell you exactly what these are, so it’s not that I have managed to hide them. But neither should my friends, or anyone, have to deal with my failings and weaknesses every time we get together. There is a time for people to subdue their less worthy selves and put on their best behavior. I have a tendency to sarcasm. A few of my friends really enjoy that, but many people find it hurtful. So I have learned to think it in my… Read more »
“I am impatient with people who bore me. But it would be spectacularly unkind of me ever to let that show. ”
You tend to fear being “spectacularly unkind.” Also, your perception of what is “spectacularly unkind” is a really just a projection. You yourself would be hurt if someone called you boring.
“So I have learned to think it in my head without letting it cross my lips.”
You should probably start a blog. Before you explode.
I am far too lazy!!
“You should probably start a blog. Before you explode.”
Been there, seen that. And it ain’t pretty!
“Honest to goodness Jilly, I try to be the same person all the time, at home, in person,on the internet. ”
MeMe,
Knowing you wouldn’t cover up so as to be one way one place and a different way another, shall we assume you shower fully dressed? I’d rather think that than you go about publicly in the altogether. ;-)
LOL! You guys are really pedantric. Here’s the deal, once God has truly seen you naked and He loves you anyway, any such fears of being caught naked in public are pretty much gone.
Believe me, my concern is unselfish. It is the other people who might be appalled if they had to see this ravaged body naked in public.
MeMe, if I encounter a woman who is fat, ugly and stupid, should I be a hypocrite and say something encouraging to her, or should I not be a hypocrite and tell her she’s fat, ugly and stupid? Not every truth needs to be told.
Tact is not hypocrisy
But MeMe seems to think it is. I think that’s K’s point here.
Tact is the ability to avoid upsetting or offending people. When someone is having multiple illicit affairs and lying about it, they are not motivated by tact and a desire to be considerate of others, they are motivated by shame,pride, fear, self absorption, and hypocrisy.
We people really do seem to believe that we get extra credit points for committing sin with the sole of discretion, all due tact, good manners, and cowardice. What we often fail to realize is how much harm has been done to people behind closed doors simply because we hold that perception.
MeMe, but sin is less damaging if it isn’t normalized, and doing it behind closed doors is a statement that this isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) normal.
Why is an atheist trying to explain the finer points of sin to me? Also, by what standard are you defining “normal?” Is there really an atheist, liberal, progressive vision of “normal?”
Nevermind. I happen to believe sin is sin whether it is normalized, accepted, or frowned upon. It’s not human beings who define what sin is and it’s not the number of wagging tongues (or absence of them) who determine what is and is not moral.
MeMe, I believe that’s the fallacy of ad hominem.
I’ve yet to meet an internet hominem who didn’t use and accusation of ad hominem as an ad hominem.
OK, to answer your earlier question, the reason an atheist is explaining the finer points of sin to you is that he obviously understands the concept better than you do.
I understand and agree with part of what you say. Until he was ready to pull the plug, my ex-husband concealed his adulteries because he did not want the costs of a divorce, he did not want to lose my family’s affection, and he suspected–quite rightly–that his own family and our friends would side with me. These were not honorable motives. The secrecy did me harm in that it limited my options.
But I would still prefer someone who hides his adultery because he is ashamed of it to someone who parades his adultery because he is proud of it.
It reminds of the movement (in Christian and secular circles a few year ago) to be “authentic.” You were supposed to reveal your thoughts, feelings and struggles to everyone, all the time. While I understand this as a reaction to modern trends (especially social media, where most people only talk about the high points of their life), it’s not a societal panacea, either. If you read Proverbs, there are times for brutal honesty and others for discretion.
And wasn’t that a terrible time, especially when the sensitivity movement invaded the workplace. I can’t think of a more destructive thing than encouraging co-workers to share their secret hostilities towards one another. And only a fool responds with candor to a boss who says, “Tell me, Jill. What is something about you that you don’t want anyone else to know?” “My salary” I always replied.
If you were truly good, you would not think anyone is fat, ugly, or stupid. You would see them as Rubenesque, unconventionally attractive, and possessed of a unique and unorthodox kind of intelligence. Off to the re-education camp with you!
Yes, “fat is slim” and “ugly is attractive” per our own Newspeak. And fat-shaming is a hate crime!
Krycheck, that’s part of the point. With Clinton and Kennedy, these things were ignored by the press, because they were on the same team. With Trump, they pull audio from private conversations, bug his phone, and make every possible effort to make him seem ridiculous and outrageous. I recall reading, once, that he wears his watch too tight, with copious photographic evidence. Anyone can be made to seem coarse when he is the subject of a smear campaign. Now, I also acknowledge that Trump is somewhat boorish. But I don’t think he is some new grotesquery heretofore unseen in public… Read more »
Farinata, I well remember the Clinton sex scandals, and the idea that the press gave him a free pass is ridiculous. Kennedy got a free pass, Clinton did not.
Fair enough – some Clinton scandals were not buried like those of Kennedy. However, it is false to claim that they were investigated and re-iterated with anything like the vehemence we’ve seen with Trump.
To be fair to the press, Trump really is different.
Most politicians try to flee from scandals. The job of the press is to dig up a scandal’s hidden facts like deeply buried treasure.
Trump, who has been on more tabloid covers during his lifetime than any man in history, flipped that paradigm.
Rather than running away, he charged at the press, hurling scandals at them like a leprechaun flinging gold coins.
It’s fair to say that that was what won him the election: l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace
I thought that was Napoleon, but it is Georges Danton. Well, look where leniency got him!
May I ask if the Jebbies had a hand in your education?
I had to check the source too. I did attend the same Jesuit high school as a well-known SC Justice – but a generation later when society and The Society had undergone much alteration. So I’m not sure how much I can lay claim to a “traditional” Jesuit education. Still, it would be ungrateful of me not to thank and acknowledge them. There is another Danton quote that may be even more appropriate here. As he was awaiting his trip to the guillotine, dispatched there by the same Revolutionary Tribunal that he had help to establish a year earlier, he… Read more »
“like a leprechaun flinging gold coins” – is a fantastic simile. I can picture a leprechaun with Trump’s face and a little green hat moving to attack position… thank you for that.
But isn’t the difference really the attitude of the press when they find some dirt, and Trump’s when they call him on things? That’s my general impression – most of the things they dig up seem to be along the lines of “he said this mean thing twenty years ago”.
‘Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest?’ … ‘He grows a forest to hide it in’” (G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown) Trump, when he entered the race in 2015, could field no credible surrogates, faced a press on the opposite political side, and had more publicly known scandals than all the other candidates put together. Every expert dismissed him as a doomed joke. His strategy to solve his very real scandal problem was daring, brilliant and without precedent. He grew a forest of very… Read more »
So you attribute the various “gotcha” attacks as deliberate misdirection on Trump’s part? It’s possible they are strategic, but to maintain such an act for years at a time seems exhausting. I submit it is more plausible that Trump is about average-bad by politician standards, but differs from his fellows in responding to provocation like an aggrieved rhinoceros. The forest is there for all of them, but most considerable effort trimming it back.
I was pregnant and on bedrest during the first Clinton election, but I truly never heard anything about his sexual exploits until well after the election. Perhaps my husband at the time was censoring my news, but none of that crossed my radar. For me, he was someone who suddenly came out of nowhere and got the nomination.
It wasn’t that long ago that Gary Hart’s candidacy was destroyed when he dared reporters to follow him and they discovered Fawn Hall. He was a liberal Dem. Why do you think the reporters didn’t go after Clinton during the first campaign?
I’ve heard personal testimony from the Clinton’s private jet pilot in Arkansas. Let’s just say Caligula would be proud.
“Unlike Mr. Clinton, Trump made his vulgarities well known before the election, and Christians voted for him anyway.”
K2 comes out with another lawyer whopper. Clinton was well known before the presidential elections as a whore monger. To say otherwise is to rewrite history. Bro Steve points that out as well.
Dave, speaking of coarsening the culture, I see you are still incapable of disagreeing with someone without leading off with a personal insult. I also see you sailed right past the distinction I drew between everyone knowing Clinton slept around versus Clinton making a point of going to television to tell everyone that he sleeps around.
K2, that was not a personal insult. It was a fact. You typed a huge whopper. Stop your lawyer shift the blame tricks. In Arkansas, Clinton made a huge point of being a whore monger and bragged about it. He bragged about his escapades in D.C. as the president. The media did not want to show his poor side until he said “It depends on what your definition of is is.” Have you forgotten his little pickup truck with astroturf in the bed? Have you forgotten his using the D.C. tunnels for his sexual escapades? The media covered the tunnels… Read more »
Dave, have you considered talking to a professional about all that anger you’re carrying around? Don’t know what you’re mad at, but the rage just drips out of you. It can’t be a pleasant existence.
“As his attorney, it was her job to get him off. Are you saying defense attorneys should not do their jobs?” K2 @ 206203 And there are K2’s ethics along with the American Bar Association and the American Trial Lawyers Association. Get him off rather than seeing that justice is served or that the victim is taken care of. Defense attorneys should do their job, but not to the exclusion of getting around the crime. If you remember, K2 had one of his clients plea bargain out of a serious crime even though K2 suspected the individual did the crime.… Read more »
Dave, I respond in kind to you because every one of your posts starts off with a personal insult to me and vitriol directed at my profession. Try being civil and see what happens. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been having civil discussions with several other people here who disagree with me without insulting them. They are civil in their comments to me, so I am civil in my comments to them. And if you’re seriously suggesting that the attorney of a guilty client has an ethical duty to get his client convicted, you are mistaken. An attorney has to… Read more »
K2, you typed a whopper and I called you on it. You tried a quick shuffle and got called. You got upset because Clinton was a known whore monger. You tried to split the difference between known and talked about and failed. Your attempt to rewrite history was shot down in flames with smoke on top like a cherry on a banana split. My point was not ad homimen, however, your response was. About three decades ago, the American Trial Association wrote that attorneys were to look for where the the most money was and attack there, not where the… Read more »
Dave, get professional help. Seriously.
That strikes me as the most desperate, worst sort of ad hominem…
CHer, it would be ad hominem if I said that no one should pay attention to his arguments because he’s an angry person who can’t be civil. But that’s not what I said. What I said is that I was responding in kind because he’s consistently been uncivil. Disagreeing with him as to the facts, or to the application of the facts, is not a “lawyer whopper”; it’s a disagreement as to the facts or their application, which reasonable people often do. That aside, he is obviously an angry person; every post he writes drips with it. Talk to a… Read more »
K2 tries desperately to defend his indefensible position. K2 didn’t want the Clintons painted in the poor light that they had when he was King of Arkansas or King of the USofA. I called him on it and he is sore because he knows that he is wrong.
No anger here, just the facts. Just the facts.
K2 caught in the crossfire and can’t answer or defend his position except by ad hominem.
Dave, what did I say that’s ad hominem? Show us your Latin is better than your logical skills.
K2’s question doesn’t deserve an LOL. Instead it deserves a huge belly laugh! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
K2 you should review your troll academy notes. You were schooled by several individuals on this thread and you don’t have answers to your typing. Hahahahahahaha!
OK, so you can’t tell us what an ad hominem is, or show where I engaged in one. Thanks for the clarification.
K2 you really do shuffle the feet and attempt to hide your poor arguments. As an attorney, you are supposed to be able to read and understand English — aren’t you. Keep it up and the troll academy will revoke your troll license.
OK, so you can’t tell us what an ad hominem is, or show where I engaged in one. Thanks for the clarification.
Dave, I think that would be a difficult area for lawyers to maneuver in a justice system that has been set up to be adversarial. The presumption of innocence means that that the defense lawyer has to challenge each part of the state’s case. I don’t see how a lawyer could possibly do that while protecting the interests of the victim. And, even if he did, there is little doubt that his client would get a reversal due to ineffective assistance of counsel. I understand and share your frustration. But I don’t see how this system can be made to… Read more »
Jill, our justice system is polluted, just as our political system is polluted, our monetary system is polluted, and as many pulpits are polluted. It is not difficult at all to presume innocence and yet tell the truth. However, our judges, lawyers, jurors and investigators instead push for one outcome or another instead of examining the facts and working from there. Telling the truth isn’t all that hard and defending an individual who did commit a crime isn’t all that hard if you tell the truth. Ethics in the court room are pretty slim even though the state and federal… Read more »
I have read that some judicial systems do try to do that–establish the facts first, and then determine sentence based on level of culpability. In other word, we don’t dispute that Jill stole the flat screen TV from Best Buy. This is what can said in extenuation. She is old and poor and easily led, and she didn’t want to be the only person in Los Angeles watching the Emmys on her laptop two days after everyone else. Do you think that part of our problem is that we ruthlessly attempt to eliminate any intelligent person from the jury pool?… Read more »
Yes Jill, huge efforts are made to select the dumbest people for the jury. I was called for the jury pool on a vehicular manslaughter case where a tractor trailer was loaded improperly allowing the trailer to swing across a curve into the oncoming traffic. Two wives and three kids were batted into heaven by the trailer. The attorneys went to extreme lengths in efforts to exclude anyone with knowledge of physics or of tractor trailer loading. I laughed quietly as an elderly lady was asked if she thought the trailer was improperly loaded. She answered it was and when… Read more »
Dave, that is really pitiful. However, I loved reading the answers given by prospective jurors at the Martin Shkreli “Pharmaboy” trial. “Can you be impartial?” “Well, I’m impartial about which prison he goes to.”
And perhaps my favorite. Judge: “Juror Number 52, how are you?”
Juror no. 52: “When I walked in here today I looked at him, and in my head, that’s a snake — not knowing who he was. I just walked in and looked right at him and that’s a snake.”
Defense lawyer: ‘So much for the presumption of innocence.”
You know, I remember something about two elections Clinton was involved in, both of which happened after his reputation was well known and no longer possible to deny, albeit before the Lewinsky story broke.
Again, being well known, and actually being talked about, are not the same thing.
The problem as I see it is the Progressives DID have their say through the Impeachment Process. Although guilty, he was defended by a certain segment of the progressive camp who were willing to, ahem, perform acts of a certain nature on President Clinton in order to preserve the sacrament of Abortion. It was also at this point in time that you heard the justification of “it’s just Sex”, “what someone does in their private lives does not influence their public judgement” all became okey-dokey excuses for all sorts of untoward behavior. And we are shocked when out pops Carlos… Read more »
Chip, I voted for Clinton twice, and I think he should have been removed from office for perjury, and further, removing him from office would have been an enormous boon to the Democrats. In the first place, President Gore would then have been running for re-election in 2000 and probably won, which means W. Bush would never have been president, which means a lot of the really awful stuff of the past decade — the Iraq War, the 2008 economic crash, possibly even 9/11 since different people would have been running the intelligence services — wouldn’t have happened. And the… Read more »
Actually, he had a well known affair with Gennifer Flowers before the election, and progressives backed him.
And he settled a sexual harassment lawsuit for exposing his private parts to a woman, and progressives supported him., and even suggested the “one free grope” rule since he was sufficiently progressive for them.
And they excused the Monica Lewinsky affair.
And there were the rape allegations against Clinton. (Look up Juanita Broadderick and Kathleen Willey.)
None of this is said to defend Trump, but at least we have a press that attempts to hold him accountable.
Trump got most of the Christian vote across all social classes. How does this fit with the idea that Christians are repressive hypocrites who are to blame for the current social climate?
Jill, I would not say that Christians are repressive hypocrites who are to blame for the current social climate. I would say that Christians who voted for Trump are in no real position to complain about the coarsening of the culture, and are in even less of a position to complain if they haven’t called him out about it.
I agree with you. I was responding to an earlier post that suggested Christian hypocrisy had given us Trump.
Jilly, I am even more certain that Clinton hypocrisy gave us Trump! ; – )
If I had lived in a country where the election was between a Nazi who supported active murder and genocide, and one who embraced all basic Nazi principles but did not support enforcing this policy through murder and genocide, I may well have found myself for various reasons voting for the “non-genocide” wing of the Nazi party. This would not mean I somehow supported everything the less-virulent Nazi supported -it was a vote effectively against genocide, not for Naziism…, nor do I think I would have ceded my right to object to either the vile things that leader supported or… Read more »
Daniel, honest question: How do you reconcile that with a belief in a sovereign God? I’m an atheist, so I vote for the lesser evil as a tactical matter, but that’s because I don’t believe there’s a God out there who is going to come to our rescue and it’s all up to us. If, however, I did believe in a sovereign God, I don’t think I could bring myself to vote for evil even if I thought the alternative was even worse. I think at that point, since there is a God who is in control, I would simply… Read more »
Krychek, are all your questions honest? This one is a great question, and really makes me think. You have a great point, that doing right when it seems like, with worldly logic, it wouldn’t work, is what we are called to do because God can rescue us out of the fiery furnace. I don’t absolutely know what the right answer in this case is, though I fully support those who say that Trump was the lesser of two evils. I do know that the Bible acknowledges that governments are corrupt, yet says that God sets them up for his own… Read more »
K2’s questions are not honest. He is a troll out for a bit of Christian baiting. If you read his responses over several threads, you will see that he asks questions to avoid answering directly when the heat is on and that his position changes frequently depending on what he needs to type.
Dave, get professional help. Seriously.
K2 proves again that he is not honest.
Put very simply: I believe that every act no matter or how seemingly small and insignificant is completely, totally orchestrated by the hand of a sovereign God, who does in fact ordain “whatsoever comes to pass.” And I still wear my seatbelt. They save lives. Gods ordination of all things nevertheless utilizes all the normal, “natural” occurrences of providence, so if I believed that voting for the lesser evil would save lives, I may do it, for largely the same logic for which I wear a seatbelt when I drive. Or, to borrow & reapply from C. S. Lewis, if… Read more »
Daniel, but there’s nothing inherently evil about wearing a seat belt. There is (at least arguably) something inherently evil in voting for evil. As to your question, there is no such thing as an atheist perspective — atheists are all over the map. Telling you I’m an atheist tells you what I don’t believe — that deities exist — but it tells you little about what I do believe. There are atheists who disbelieve in the existence of morality at all, there are others who believe morality exists but it’s situational, and there are still others who do believe in… Read more »
The seatbelt illustration is simply to point out that belief in God’s sovereignty is inherently unrelated to the fact that the future consequences are dependent on our real choices… whether choices to wear sat elts or election votes….. Our choices really effect the outcome of things, so belief in God’s sovereignty doesn’t magically mean I ought not do what is within my power to bring about a more just (or less unjust) society, any more or less than that belief changes wearing seat belts. If we concur on that point, we can tackle the unrelated question of the morality of… Read more »
Daniel, humans are communitarian animals. We do not live solitary lives; we band together in groups. We can’t survive without groups, and certainly our lives are made better by living in groups. But in order for groups to survive, certain behaviors have to be encouraged and other types of behavior need to be suppressed. So asking what is the basis for human morality is like asking what is the basis for bees to build hives and ants to march in formation and wolf packs to have an alpha male at the lead. It’s what we do; it’s in our nature.… Read more »
Sure, all of that is consistent with an atheist position… but a few observations: 1) once we recognize that morality is merely an evolutionary social construct or inherited instinct, then we recognize that “evil” can mean nothing more than “ineffective for producing certain outcomes.” Thus an atheist must acknowledge that child molestation, murder, rape, racism, are not inherently evil, it is merely that they don’t produce certain culturally-agreed upon outcomes. 2) If another society or culture desires radically different results, or has a radically different idea about what they consider a “healthy society” than you, you must recognize that your… Read more »
1. “Child molestation, murder, rape, racism” are not merely culturally disapproved; they are inherently evil outcomes. 2. Societies, like individuals, grow and mature. Gassing Jews is inherently evil, whether a less mature culture thinks otherwise or not. But the notion that slavery is OK in this culture because this culture approves, and not OK in this other one, is nonsense. There is a reason we have different words for “morals” and “cultural mores” — they mean different things. 3. The “looter, thief, rapist, extortionist, or mass murderer” is a predator on society and is treated like any other predator. Yes,… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: 1. “Child molestation, murder, rape, racism” are not merely culturally disapproved; they are inherently evil outcomes. Nonsense. This cannot follow from Krychek_2’s evolutionary materialism at all. Krychek_2 has failed to demonstrate any rational basis for expectation of any kind, moral or otherwise, let alone that any particular behavior is inherently evil. In order for something to be inherently evil, it would have to have some innate valuation that was established independent of any external observer. In materialism, nothing has any value inhering within it. It’s all accidental, from top to bottom. Krychek_2’s values (such as they are) are… Read more »
We’ve dealt with these arguments from Krychek_2 in the past. I can only assume he has nothing more to offer. In any case… Krychek_2 wrote: We can’t survive without groups, and certainly our lives are made better by living in groups. Lot’s of animals survive just fine in isolation, and only come together to mate. Krychek_2 has never shown that humans can’t survive without groups, nor that nature prefers one behavior over the other. Isolated or social behavior is all completely accidental in his worldview. Krychek_2 wrote: So asking what is the basis for human morality is like asking what… Read more »
Katecho, I’m sure you have a point in there somewhere.
“We’ve dealt with these arguments from Krychek in the past.” Oh good, does this mean you’re finally going to stop claiming that I won’t respond to the substance of your arguments?
Krychek_2 wrote:
Using his latest comment here as an example, I’m going to continue to point out that Krychek_2 doesn’t respond to the substance of the rebuttals to his arguments. When he can be bothered to engage, he just repeats the same stuff as if it weren’t already completely refuted. This is why I observe that he seems to be at a worldview dead end.
(I tried to post this earlier, and am not seeing it show up, so I’m trying again; apologies in advance if it ends up getting double posted) Put very simply: I believe that every act no matter or how seemingly small and insignificant is completely, totally orchestrated by the hand of a sovereign God, who does in fact ordain “whatsoever comes to pass.” And I still wear my seatbelt. They save lives. Gods ordination of all things nevertheless utilizes all the normal, “natural” occurrences of providence, so if I believed that voting for the lesser evil would save lives, I… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote:
What happened to that other deterministic Krychek_2 who said that all choice making is just an illusion? Why is this one prancing about as if he discovers volition when he enters the ballot box?
Katecho, show me where I said that I exercise volition when I cast a ballot.
Krychek_2 wrote: Katecho, show me where I said that I exercise volition when I cast a ballot. This quote is surely going to haunt Krychek_2 on this blog. It captures his cognitive dissonance in such a compact expression. He’s sure defensive for someone who allegedly lacks volition. In any case, Krychek_2 claimed to be engaged in tactical voting, which is volitional language. Reactions don’t strategize. Only active volition and deliberation can employ tactics toward a desired goal. To settle on a desired election outcome, and then work toward that goal, is …. wait for it …. volition. I’m not sure… Read more »
Katecho, you’ve once more demonstrated that you don’t understand the material. I vote as I do based on a non-volitional world view that I hold, that I cannot change by an act of free will. I could not force myself to believe Trump is a good president, no matter how hard I tried. You could not force yourself to believe that national single payer health care is a good idea, no matter how hard you tried. We have the beliefs that we have, and we can’t make ourselves believe anything different than we do. So while I go through the… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: We have the beliefs that we have, and we can’t make ourselves believe anything different than we do. …he said, desperately trying to change our beliefs. It’s like he can’t even see himself in the act. Krychek_2 wrote: So while I go through the motions of marking a ballot, the choice was made by the non-volitional world view that I hold. So worldviews have volition, but Krychek_2 does not? So he holds no worldview, but a worldview holds him? Everything Krychek_2 believes and does and says must be an illusion. Why does he still believe there is any… Read more »
“Many Christians considering their vote had to choose beteeen two leaders they both found as vile and evil in different ways, but one that supported the wholesale elective mass-murder of innocent children, and one that opposed it.”
Trump the implacable foe of abortion? No, I don’t think so. This is not where the Christian cheerleading for Trump is coming from.
Infinitely more likely to support the pro-life cause than his opponent. And sure, there are other things that probably won him evangelical support over the alternative. Far more likely to eatablish people and policies that protect Christians from lawsuits stemming from trying to live their conscience, is another that comes to mind.
But where, then, do you perceive the “cheerleading as stemming from?
Matt, I think you might be a little unfair here. I do think a lot of Christians did not support Trump enthusiastically. There are exceptions, like the celebrity pastors who carry on about the Lord’s anointed one, but I think most sincere Christians who voted for Trump did so because of pro-life convictions, concerns about spending and the economy, and a desire for change from same-old, same-old. On top of that, many people have a visceral dislike for Clinton, just as many of us have a visceral dislike for Trump. I think some people here would have preferred Cruz. And,… Read more »
Seems a lot of the male heroes in movies these days (and in the past) are womanizers. Thinking here of Iron Man, GOTG, Batman, Captain Kirk, just to name a few (to say nothing of the fact that porn has largely desensitized an entire 2 generations, to progressively worse levels…the statistics on violent content are disturbing)
And then a womanizer gets put in office because no one’s that bothered by it anymore
It’s almost like there’s a connection…
This antedates Trump.
And Trump is a cultural progressive.
Well now let’s be fair to Mr Trump. He isn’t any kind of “roll back the clock” conservative like 90% of people here, but neither is he a cultural progressive, right in line with the contemporary left wing. Like most people he’s somewhere in the middle and like always it’s unclear whether he has any strong beliefs of any kind on these culture war matters.
Matt, his only strong belief is that government treasuries were made to be looted.
Krychek_2 wrote: Matt, his only strong belief is that government treasuries were made to be looted. The only thing left in government treasuries are I.O.U.s anyway. Krychek_2 has been vocal about morality and his freedom to vote for the lesser evil, which raises the question: Does running up trillions of dollars of debt even register as evil in the minds of progressives these days? It makes me wonder why Krychek_2 even brings up the treasury, given the Obama administration. I’m suspicious that Krychek_2 is just hunting for any excuse to dump Trump at our feet, as if we are obliged… Read more »
There wouldn’t be trillions of dollars in debt if we had the necessary taxation. Progressives understand that if we’re going to spend, somebody has to pay for it. It’s conservatives who keep throwing all those dollars on a credit card because they don’t want to raise taxes on the 1%.
Krychek said:
So, you believe in taking more money from some by force to spend much of it on programs that have repeatedly failed, all the while discouraging more wealth creation.
That about right?
Despite conservative talking points, most of those programs have not only not failed, they’ve been hugely successful. Elder poverty is way, way down since social security, just to name one example. And also contrary to conservative talking points, a lot of them actually encourage wealth creation. But all that aside, would you prefer to just throw the spending onto a credit card? Because the spending isn’t going to stop; these programs are way too popular.
Right on. Let’s all move to Venezuela where the poverty rates are decreasing, the poor are taken care of, the business are booming and the food supply is fantastic. Or, maybe we should go to Cuba where life is rosy and the health care is so good that the top brass have to have outside help for their medical problems.
Or we could go back to Dickenesian England where people died of easily preventable and treatable illness and a majority of the children went to bed hungry at night.
Health care premiums haven’t been doubling in order to save us from “easily preventable and treatable illness”. It doesn’t seem that Krychek_2 knows what unsustainable means.
Krychek wrote:
So, it looks like Krychek is saying one shouldn’t save for retirement because, not only will the government keep you out of poverty with Social Security when you retire, it will free up the extra money to be taken from you to pay for hugely successful programs such as farm subsidies, the ethanol program, and the war on drugs; not to mention funding important studies such as how monkeys gamble and why lesbians are fat.
Krychek_2 wrote: Progressives understand that if we’re going to spend, somebody has to pay for it. “Somebody”? As in our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc, etc, etc, etc? Using Krychek_2’s logic, does this mean that Obama wasn’t a progressive? Or does it mean that he didn’t run up $6 trillion in fresh debt without understanding or offering a viable clue of how to pay for it? Krychek_2 wrote: It’s conservatives who keep throwing all those dollars on a credit card because they don’t want to raise taxes on the 1%. Uh huh. Does Krychek_2 assume that anyone who isn’t a… Read more »
Obama actually reduced budget deficits from what they had been under Bush, but he can’t enact tax legislation without Congress.
Krychek wrote: Obama actually reduced budget deficits from what they had been under Bush… Krychek, deficits and total debt aren’t the same thing — kind of like weather and climate, as you progressive climatologists (since by virtue of being a progressive you are automatically an expert on climate) like to say. Here are the numbers, in nominal dollars: Deficits under Bush 43: FY 2009 – $1,630 billion (Bush’s deficit without the impact of the Economic Stimulus Act). FY 2008 – $1,020 billion. FY 2007 – $501 billion. FY 2006 – $574 billion. FY 2005 – $554 billion. FY 2004 –… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote: There wouldn’t be trillions of dollars in debt if we had the necessary taxation. … It’s conservatives who keep throwing all those dollars on a credit card because they don’t want to raise taxes on the 1%. Necessary taxation? The economic illiteracy is just staggering to behold. According to the IRS (2015), the top 1% of tax filers had a total adjusted income of about $693 billion. Given that our national deficits have been running well over $1 trillion every year, Krychek_2 could confiscate the entire annual income of the top 1% and still be digging himself deeper… Read more »
My perception of Mr. Trump is that he is likely to roll over for the group which gives him the greatest loyalty and adulation. I find it conceivable that he might flip on abortion if he were offered Dear Leader status with cheering millions and military parades.
Jill, I am married to a political reporter who is absolutely convinced that if the Democrats retake Congress next year, Trump will immediately become a liberal Democrat and push abortion rights and single payer health care for all. That’s because he would have legitimate concerns that a Democratic Congress might impeach him, and the way to prevent it would be to offer them a choice of a newly-minted liberal Donald Trump, or Mike Pence. Of course, that’s just speculation, and who knows if the Democrats even will retake Congress next year, but the thing that has to be worrisome to… Read more »
Krychek_2 wrote:
For a second, I thought Krychek_2 was going to try to persuade us that Trump isn’t a progressive.
None of this would surprise me, and I think the libs have handled Trump very badly. Looking back, I think they should have fawned on him, flattered him, given him parades in the streets, and a white toga with a laurel leaf crown. He responds to the directly personal, and I think there is no level of flattery too gross for him to accept. I would be kneeling at his feet, saying Please, Dear Leader, don’t deport my DACA friends. Please don’t kick my dying friend off her health care plan. I count on you and only you to save… Read more »
in 50’s bob hope woulda used bust-line but today boobies is aprapo. its not the coarseness its the patriarchy stupid!
Doug, you said, “In response to this proposed arrangement, I cheerfully refuse. I refuse to accept their authority in any of this, and I fully intend to make sure that they get an opportunity to eat their own cooking.”
Yes! Thank you, and keep on dishing it up.
I dislike that word. I won’t use it. I am somewhat bothered by how modest, virtuous Christian women now use it quite freely, but I don’t make an issue of it.
But it is insane that in 2017, that is somehow the only word you can’t say.
Jane, it is one of the words I can’t stand. It bothers me even more than its much more vulgar synonym. If one is determined to talk trash, then don’t be mealy-mouthed.
It’s certainly not the only word you can’t say.
It’s not even one of Carlin’s “seven words you can’t say on television.”
Some of those “words you can’t say on television” would cause far less of a public firestorm. You can’t go to Walmart without hearing them. Some of them would, however, cause conflagrations in their own right.
And yes, “only” was hyperbole. But there are things that are said publicly in the media every day that are far more vulgar and offensive. The entire discussion of Clinton’s Oval Office behavior was much more over the vulgarity/obscenity line, and that was just the beginning.
Some time ago, I was preparing to turn a bunch of my fresh garden tomatoes into spaghetti sauce. I mentioned that this would involve the use of a “China Hat.” (A large, cone-shaped sieve used to separate the tomato juice and pulp from the seeds and skins.) A co-worker was positively aghast that I would use such a racist, culturally inappropriate word. Ever the gentleman, I inquired as to the “proper” word to describe the object in today’s friendlier, inclusive society. She replied that the item is now called a “chinois.” I thanked her for her correction. Later, I looked… Read more »
I started laughing when I saw “chinois.” That is hilarious.
BTW, my brother-in-law is married to a Chinese born and bred woman, whose aging parents have come over and are now living on an adjoining property to my brother-in-law’s. Having spent their entire lives in Beijing, they are reveling in their country dwelling and the ability to grow a large garden. Though they speak little English, I know through my sister-in-law that they cheerfully refer to themselves as the “coolies” when they work in the garden.
It happens pretty often that way though. “Nigger” is just a slurred “negro”, after all.
The thing is, though, a Chinese hat was a real thing, that Chinese people actually wore, and as far as I know, it was never used as a slur. There’s nothing whatsoever offensive about it *unless* it’s somehow inherently offensive to use a metaphor that refers to ethnicity in describing an object. But if that’s the case, then chinois has exactly the same problem.
Yeah I’m not aware that this is offensive to anyone and Google is no help either. I suspect Dan Jones’ co-worker made an erroneous assumption.
Apparently, what is offensive is noticing.
When I was a child in British Columbia, the Chinese were a disadvantaged people. The hats farmers wore were called coolie hats, and it was the coolie part that made the expression offensive. It was the term the British used in Colonial Asia to describe indentured workers.
They are no longer a disadvantaged people in British Columbia, and I hope that the ghosts of their ancestors are laughing.
Right, but they didn’t call it a coolie hat, but a Chinese hat. And you know, it really was a hat, that Chinese people wore, and it looked a lot like the utensil in question. Unless the word “Chinese” is actually offensive, there is no basis for this particular form of offense, particularly since the offense disappears when you switch it from English to French, lol.
Gosh Dan, I guess you will just have to pardon your co-worker’s French!
????
Bwahahah! Funny, AND all the qualities of a Dad joke! Score two points!
Oh cap’n my cap’n! ????????????????
Just don’t tell me that our fearful trip is done.
Jilly, I think this is the point in the verse where the Grateful Dead take over and say:
“What a looooooooong strange trip it’s been!” ; – )
That reminds me of a story told by Jay Leno. An intern told him it was racist to say he didn’t like Mexican food. He had to explain to this college graduate that he didn’t like Mexican food because he didn’t like the taste of the food, not because the food was “Mexican”. Kids these days! ????
Go on. Drink the koolaid.
Doug…why, oh why didn’t you title this post, “Thanks for the Mammaries”?
Because the CREC said he couldn’t.
I watched the video.
Would it be improper to note that the offended woman had a neckline that plunged (if the laws of geometry were followed below the field of vision of the camera) to an end point at approximately her navel?
Yes, but only because Noticing and pointing out the hypocrisies inherent to the situation makes you a thought criminal. ^_^
In the military, we have endless seminars, symposiums, and workshops on preventing sexual assault, and how to create a culture where the men do not objectify the women and treat them as professional colleagues, not viewing them as sex objects.
Every time I attend, I suggest that, if the military is really serious about such, they could take an easy first step and remove the pornography from the sales rack in the on base exchanges,
And I am met with blank stares.
It was the same when I was in the military. And it’s like that everywhere else. Despite the hypersexualization of society, we can beat sexual harassment with “training.” Because we know education is the answer for everything…
And this dialogue came to my mind, with credit of course to Casablanca…
“I’m shocked, shocked to hear discussion of such coarse topics on live television.”
“Caitlyn Jenner is standing by for the queer pride interview, ma’am.”
“Oh, thank you very much.”
I can remember when Richard Prior and Robin Williams were on the bleeding edge of progressive comedy.
It was sad day for America when their profanity brought laughs.
Yes,but now that the cat is out of the bag, in the spirit of good comedy we should now take note of the fact that both free speech and boobs have let Travis down. So much for absolutism.
Also, if you’re going to use such language about women’s bodies, don’t ever include the word “down.”
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It made my day. Thank you.
?
Heh…that Brooke Baldwin…she’s such a boob.
I am inspired and educated by your posts Pastor Wilson. May God grant you a long and prolific life.
Nice one, Doug. Knocked it out of the park.
Doug,
Re: Chesterton says somewhere…? your succinct point re euphemism and sin:
In “Eugenics and Other Evils” Chesterton says:
“Evil always takes advantage of ambiguity, … evil wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.”
(that via “GKC The Apostle of Common Sense”)
One could almost assert, almost alliteratively, that “ambiguity always aids evil. “
“Nine times out of ten, the coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the word that excuses it.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=LtwZAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT3585&dq=Nine+times+out+of+ten,+the+coarse+word+is+the+word+that+condemns+an+evil+and+the+refined+word+the+word+that+excuses+it.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy47Kixb_WAhVF52MKHdZHBiUQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Nine%20times%20out%20of%20ten%2C%20the%20coarse%20word%20is%20the%20word%20that%20condemns%20an%20evil%20and%20the%20refined%20word%20the%20word%20that%20excuses%20it.&f=false
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