Fiscal Heathcliff: Because Cats Make the Shutdown Slightly Less Sad

Via Fiscal Heathcliff

Forced Ultrasounds

I think I have a solution to the problem of states passing mandatory ultrasound laws that force women to have medically unnecessary procedures. Two solutions, actually. 1. The next time a state tries to pass legislation, ask the bill's sponsors to include a religious and moral exception. 2. Stop calling them "probes." Start calling them "dildos."

Facebook Theology, Part 1

Sometimes I simply can't understand what people are thinking when they post crap on Facebook. Here's this morning's version:

What They Probably Thought When They Shared This Image: "Ooo... this mentions God! I like God! And it's upbeat, too. If I share this on Facebook, that will really cheer up everybody who's having a bad day!"

What It Made Me Want to Do: I want to comment on this post 100 times. The first 99 times would be links to news articles. Articles about children being shot by racists. Articles about a cop who raped a woman. Articles about a soldier who shot civilians. Articles about poverty. Articles about disease. Underneath that list of articles chronicling the latest horrors the world has cooked up for us, I would write, "Do you honestly believe that your God wants this? Do you think your God arranged all of this just to set the stage for something good that's going to happen to you later today? If you do, then you need to go to church and apologize."

What I Actually Did: Incoherently muttered and swore to myself in the manner of Yosemite Sam.

It's Not Funny, Part 2

A quick update on Tuesdays post. I predicted Jay Leno would do the wrong thing. I just watched the monologue online. For a moment, I thought I would be proven wrong. Sadly, I was not. Somebody was assaulted, mutilated, and almost killed... but there was a penis joke to be made, so naturally Jay had to make it.

I'll say it again: It's not funny.

It's Not Funny

Today a story broke about a criminal who drugged their victim and tied them up. While the victim was waking up, the attacker took a knife and cut off part of the victim's body and proceeded to mutilate it.

Does that horrify you? Can you imagine how terrified the victim must have felt? Can you see the blood? Can you comprehend the physical pain?

The victim was a man. The criminal was his wife. The body part was his penis.

Is it funny now? If you have a husband, would you laugh and say "I'm going to take a knife and mutilate your body and maybe watch you bleed to death"?

Perhaps you've already heard this story on Facebook or maybe a friend e-mailed you a link. If so, make no mistake--it wasn't because somebody wanted to call your attention to the horrors of the world or to raise awareness for domestic violence. You heard about it because somebody thought it was funny.

Of course, the story doesn't open with a graphic description of the attack. The lead is "Woman Cuts Off Husband's Penis." It's stripped of the graphic truth and boiled down to two ideas:

1. Penis. Ha ha ha.
2. Men aren't always the ideal husbands. Ha ha ha.

There is nothing about this that's funny. But that won't stop the media from treating it like there is. Even when you see this on the evening news and they deliver the story with a straight face, you know they like the story because they simply like talking about titillating things.

And if you stick around after the news, I guarantee you that Jay Leno will be making actual attempts to get laughs from this. I hope he doesn't. I hope he has the common decency to realize that domestic violence, torture, vivisection, and attempted murder aren't funny. Does anybody think he'll do the right thing? Yeah, me neither.

But you can. When you see the e-mail about the assault land in your inbox, don't forward it to your friends like it's a good joke. When you see a link on Facebook, just type the following as your comment: It's not funny.

Don't Forget the Fear Mongering

I've noticed there's something that seems to be missing from the national discussion of violent rhetoric. The focus seems to be on the violent imagery as typified in Palin placing bulls-eyes over candidates districts or Angle saying the people may need "second amendment remedies." But the violent imagery is only half of the problem. The other key element is the turning your political opponent into a threat. The violent imagery is dangerous because it is taking place in an environment where the audience has been told that Candidate X is coming to get them and that they need to be stopped. It's a two-part strategy--first you define the problem (the president is a foreign-born friend of terrorists who has illegally overthrown the government with the intent of taking away all of our freedoms, forcing his scary religion on us, and make us all communist. Or maybe socialists. Or Nazis. Oh, and he wants to kill your grandma.) Second, once you define the problem, you tell people how to solve the problem: which is increasingly violent rhetoric that we need to get them before they get us.

Fear Mongering + Violent Rhetoric = Not Good

We can't forget the fear mongering component. A lot of defensive people on the right point out that violent words and phrases are everywhere in our language. Yes, they are. However, when we normally talk about "targeting" a district, the phrase doesn't convey any sort of threat because it's in the context of where somebody needs to target their advertising budget. When Sarah Palin says we need to target certain districts, the message is coming from the same person who previously warned the listener that Obama is fishy, that we don't know enough about him, that he pals around with terrorists, that he wants to form death panels. After you've said all of that (to an audience that seems to buy every word of it) it's very dangerous to start drawing bulls-eyes.

I saw somebody on Facebook who was pointing out that the left was hypocritical for saying we need to watch the rhetoric because they used to have "Fuck Bush" bumper stickers. That's not hypocracy. I would welcome and encourage the right to go out and make "Fuck Obama" bumper stickers. The problem isn't about expressing dissent or anger. The problem is that it's escalated to fear mongering.

The defensive people on the right have been quick to point out that you can't tailor your language so that it doesn't get misinterpreted by a mad man. That's absolutely true. It would be impossible to do that and I wouldn't want anybody to try. But the line that should not be crossed is the one that separates trying to get your audience to care about your issues and trying to make your audience afraid that there is an imminent threat against them. When you cross that line, you are chumming shark-infested waters. Some of those madmen are of your own creation.