I don’t understand the batshit craziness of some of the memes that are sticking.  I had lunch with Natasha today, and neither of us could understand the, “Ohmygod Scary Black Man wants to kill my Grandma” meme that just will not fucking die.  There is a provision in the 1000+ page bill that reimburses seniors who want counseling about what to do with their living wills.  That’s it.  That’s all.  Seniors get to talk with a medical counselor about what they want to do in end-of-life situations.  They get reimbursed.  Simple like that.

Then, all of a sudden, death panels!  Obama is gonna kill the elderly.  Ohmygod!  Scary black man!  Rationed health care!  Babies with Down Syndrome are gonna be put to death!  Stephen Hawking would have been put to death if he had been born in Britain because of his physical handicaps!   You think I’m kidding?  Investor’s Business Daily ran an op-ed about this very topic.  You know the drill.  I linked to a link that dissects the stupidity.  Read   Stephen Hawking is Alive and Well and weep.  Stephen fucking Hawking is a fucking British theoretical physicist.  Really.  This is the best they got?

I can’t take it any more.  The traditional media is invested in the status quo so it refuses to, oh, I don’t know, actually fucking report the news?  Death panels?  A lie.  Killing Down Syndrome kids?  A lie.  Forced sex-change operations?  A big fucking lie.  The fucking media needs to just say, “You’re a big fat lying liar–and an idiot to boot” when any GOP asshat starts spouting one of these talking points.  George Stephanopoulos, to his credit, did call out Newt Gingrich as the latter was bleating on and on about the death panels.  Stephanopoulos simply says, “It’s not in the bill.”  Five little words that have not been heard before concerning this stupid talking point.

The media needs to call the GOP shillers on this bullshit.  Media other than Rachel, Keith, Jon, and Stephen.  They are starting, but it’s not nearly enough.

You know what is the most frustrating part of all these stupid batshitcrazy memes?  There is no way to completely shut this shit down.  President Obama:  I don’t want to kill old people.  Batshitcrazywingnutter:  Yes you do!  Glenn Beck told me that!  President Obama:  There is nothing in the bill–.  Batshitcrazywingnutter:  Where is your birth certificate?  Why don’t you nip it in the bud and show the certificate?  President Obama:  I have shown my–.  Batshitcrazywingnutter:  Why do you hate Murrika?  Why are you an Islofascistpussy?  President Obama:  I don’t hate Amer–.  Batshitcrazywingnutter:  WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!!!

I watched some of the town hall meetings, and I was struck by how fearful these people were–over completely made-up shit.  Where were they when W. was invading Iraq on fictitious premises?  Where were they when W. decided that eavesdropping on Americans was A-OK?  Torture?  Bring it on!  That’s all fine and dandy.  Any fukkin’ librul who dared to protest the war(s) was unpatriotic and a traitor and should be dropped off on a remote island somewhere.  Back when W. was prez, it wasn’t patriotic to question anything he did.  He only appeared in “town hall” meetings in which the audience members were prescreened, as were the questions.

I don’t understand how now, it’s perfectly fine to call the president unAmerican, Hitler, Stalin, and a host of other negative slurs.  I watch these crying women and angry men at the town meetings, and I feel a surge of anger myself.  One after another, they mewl about how they’re afraid of losing their America.  ”This is not MY America, ” more than one wild-eyed loony bellows at the top of her lungs (and it is usually a her).

YOUR America?  You mean the one that decided white men were the norm and that anyone else must be deficient in some way?  The one in which queers remained in the closet or got their faggoty asses kicked?  The one in which a woman would just shut the fuck up and do her wifely duty of breeding, cooking, and cleaning?  The one in which it was OK to call a nigger a nigger and then go to church on Sunday and feel all fucking pious?

No, what you really mean is you want the America in which an uppity black man would get the shit beaten out of him if he even voiced his desire to become president, let alone win.

There are many in the left blogosphere who insist that the right would have gone as batshit crazy no matter who was president, as long as the president was a Democrat.  Yes, Obama’s race makes him an easy target, but it’s tangential, so this vein of thought goes.

I disagree.  Yes, the conspiracy talk and all that shit was intense back when (Bill) Clinton was president, but there is something about the racial angle that just makes it that much uglier.  I know it’s stupid, but I can accept villifying someone based on his party affiliation (though I don’t condone it, of course), but I’ll be fucked if I ever accept blatant racism as a reasonable response to a black man who’s done good.

The Republicans and their wingnuts are not arguing in good faith.  They are throwing all this shit out there and just hoping that something will stick.  The powers that be, including Big Pharma are peddling fear with all their might, knowing that people who live in abject fear that someone will take something away from them can always be counted on to act in a way that really isn’t in their own best interests.

There are legitimate concerns concerning health care reform, but those are getting shunted to the side in favor of cheap sensationalism.  I am hoping that in the end, sanity will prevail.  I can’t take much more of the craziness.

In no particular order, I felt guilty for not being married, for not having children, for being bi, for being loud about issues such as racism, for not being a Christian, for letting myself get out of shape, for thoroughly enjoying sex in so many different ways and with so many different people, for not making more of myself, for wasting my life, for not having to worry as much about money as do other people, for not being able to single-handedly save the world, for being alternately aloof and clingy, for being so damn narcisstic, for craving fame, for not working hard enough to get said fame, for being a repudiation of everything my mom is, for accidentally kicking Raven twice today, for not being a better aunt/sister/daughter/friend/cat caregiver, for the Cold War, for evaluating my worth as how skinny I am, for not being enough of ______  (fill in the blank) and too much of _______  (fill in this blank, too).

Now, while I’m worrying about everything little thing I’ve ever done wrong and will ever do wrong in my life, there are people who act like their shit don’t stink.  Because I follow politics, my examples are of politicians and of the so-called pundits who opine about said pols.

First, the song Crazy Bitch by Buckcherry because I need it.  It was suggested to me by one of those FB quizzes.  It’s my stripper song, apparently.

Ok.  Now, on to the screed.

Here are people who need to feel guilty and don’t (the short list because these are the ones who are currently bugging me the most):

1. Pat Rober–er, Buchanan
2. C-Street Mafia
3. Stupid rightwing pundits, especially the hacks such as Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg
4. GOP members who questioned Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court spot

First up, Pat Buchanan.  He is considered a prominent Republican for some unfathomable reason.  He has a permanent seat on the MSNBC lineup bench, and he’s frequently seen spouting his vitrolic venom on the webs as well.  His latest hatchet job has been on Sonia Sotomayor for entirely spurious reasons.  I know Rachel calls him “Uncle Pat” and thinks he argues with class, but even she raised her voice at him tonight in the segment on her show in which she called him out on his despicably racist views.  I don’t know how it ended because I clicked to the next video clip (about the C-Street Mafia, ironically) in order to try to tamp down my rage, and then, I got up and punched a wall.

Buchanan made it disgustingly clear that he is a racist fucker who thinks white people are always superior to people of color.  He dismissed all the accomplishments of Sonia Sotomayor (which are vast), and he got angry and defensive when Rachel called him on it.  He thinks that white men are the victims now–hey, Buchanan, quick heat check for you–take a look at the boards of all the big banks and tell me how many non-white men are sitting on them.   Look at the top of any corporation and see how many women of color are there.  Then, come back and fucking talk to me about racism against white men.

He went on to spout how this country was built by white men, how the constitution was written by white men,  and how the wars up until the Battle of…Normandy?  That can’t be right.  I refuse to look it up, though, were fought by white men.   So in other words, white makes right?  Or excuse me, might makes right.  Ed. note: Yes, he said Normandy.  Even though he’s been corrected on that many times before.

Besides, fuck you, Pat Buchanan!  This country was taken from the indigeneous people after a massive genocide.  This country was built on the backs of slaves from Africa and coolies from China.   This country is continuing to be built on the back of migrant workers who come here from Mexico in order to feed their families.  This country was run by white men because they decided it so, not because they were more qualified.  For you to suggest that to have only 2 people of color out of 110 is because the white people fucking deserved it more makes me want to punch you in the face.

I am a pacifist.  An angry, cynical, bitter pacifist, true, but a pacifist, nonetheless.  However, vitriol and smug entitlement like the shit you spew make me see red.  It’s an extension of this (and yes, I’m linking to myself.  So sue me), and Buchanan takes it to its ugly conclusion.

It’s beyond frustrating because there is no way to argue with this mindset.  Anything said in Sotomayor’s defense, for example, can be brushed away with, “affirmative action” and be done with it.  She made it into Princeton and Yale?  Affirmative action.  She graduated summa cum laude at Princeton?  Affirmative action.  She was the editor of the Yale Law Review?  Affirmative action.  Buchanan even trotted out the tired old, “Half the students graduate cum laude from Ivy League schools, Rachel!  I know it and you know it!” line.  By the way, I fucking hate that, “you know it” bullshit.  At least Rachel said, “No, I don’t know it.”  The problem with a bully like Buchanan is that he simply can’t be outshouted (though Larry O’Donnell gave it a hell of a try on a previous show).  Oh, and as for the ridiculous, “half the students graduate cum laude” at Ivy Schools, what a bunch of bullshit.  First of all, summa cum laude is the highest honor one can receive.  It’s not the same as cum laude.  Secondly, I graduated magna cum laude from a much lesser-known school (and Phi Beta to boot), and I worked my ass off (hey, maybe that’s why I don’t have an ass) to get my magna.  In fact, it was because of one messed up semester (my first one) that I didn’t reach summa.  I graduated with a 3.8 something in my major.  That was pretty damn hard, too.  I would have had a perfect 4.0 in my major if it wasn’t for the B I got in my Intro to Psych class and the shittiest prof ever, but no, I’m not still bitter about it, thank you very much.

The point of all my grade-flaunting is that I went to St. Olaf College.  It’s a private liberal arts college here in MN.  It’s a good college, and it has a decent reputation, but it is no Ivy League school.  Plus, at the risk of repeating myself, Sonia Sotomayor attended Princeton at a time when they had a quota limiting the number of women allowed to attend.  Justice Alito was involved in a group who wanted to keep out minorities and women from Princeton.  Maybe “Uncle Pat” and the insufferable bastards of the GOP should have a little chat with him about how Princeton operated back in the day?  They won’t, of course, because it would ruin their story line.

Hm.  This is running long as usual.  I will wrap it up about Pat Buchanan tonight and tackle the other three points on my list in a further entry (entries, most likely).  This is how I feel right now, by the way.  It’s Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N’ Roses, and it takes several seconds to load.

I am tired of MSNBC treating Pat Buchanan like the lovable loony uncle whom everyone avoids at the family reunion.  He is a vile, repellent, ugly, vicious, bitter old man who has lived a life of entitlement and who is now panicking because he’s perceiving that life being yanked out from under his feet.  He can’t fathom a woman of color being equal to (not to mention better than) a white man for any job (except maybe housemaid), especially not one as high as Supreme Court Justice.

In addition,  it was Melissa Harris Lacewell, Princeton associate professor and majorly gorgeous, who went on Olbermann’s show after it was disclosed that Sotomayor belongs (belonged now, she resigned) to an all-women’s professional association  called the Balezian Grove.  Predictably, Rush and others of his ilk mewled, “Imagine if a man belonged to such an all-male group like this.”  Oh, like, say, the Supreme Court?  Or the C-Street Mafia?

Anyway, Melissa Harris-Lacewell makes an important point on Countdown (about a month ago).  The Supreme Court makes decisions that affect all members of society.  Some white men (most likely subconsciously) can’t imagine having their lives affected so by a Latina!  As Harris-Lacewell stated, all white male Supreme Courts  ruled on slavery and immigration.  They got to decide things for people of color and for women for most of our history.  When you have the power, it’s unnerving to give up even a tiny portion of it.

I am disgusted by Pat Buchanan.  I wish MSNBC were, too.  Alas, old white male GOP members can say whatever the fuck they want and not worry about losing their jobs.  How the fuck isn’t that some kind of affirmative action?

Oh, and because I need a small picker-upper after watching “Uncle Fucking Pat” and writing this entry, I give to you, Kylie Minogue.  My fake hubby from BJ posted it there some days ago because he knows I have a (guilty) thing for Kylie Minogue, as does he.  He says if you’re gay and Australian as he is, it’s practically mandated to have a thing for Kylie.  She’s not the best singer, and she’s not my type, but she has a nice butt, and she’s having a blast in this video.  Plus, hot gay boyz.  I love ‘em.  I can’t embed it here, so link for you.  Enjoy.

It was an awful thing that happened.  You know the sick and twisted part?  Many on the right are trying to pretend that the asshole who did this (old asshole, yes, but an unrepentant asshole all his life, nonetheless) was a liberal because–well, it’s the same idiotic pretzel-shaping they did when the converted Muslim man assassinated that soldier.

“You all crammed multiculturalism down our throats, and…”  What?  Apparently, there are some on the far left who blame Jews for what’s ailing America.  I did not know that, and it’s appalling.  However, can you honestly tell me that when you hear of a white supremacist who hates minorities (especially blacks) and Jews and thinks the government is treasonous, who is packing heat and intent on doing damage to the greater population, the first thing you think of is, “Damn fucking liberals are shooting up the joint again!”?

Come on!  We’re not called the bleeding heart liberals for nothing.  The right likes to scoff at us for our empathy and our do-gooder ways.  Now, they want to do a one-eighty and say…I don’t even know what the hell they are trying to say.  Oh, wait.  Yes, I do.  They are saying the alleged killer hated the far right movement, so he must have been far left.  You know why he hated the far-right movement?  Because he thought they were a bunch of wusses who talked a good game, but who weren’t willing to lay it on the line.  The sad thing is that he’s right about that.  Most of the far-right pundits haven’t served their country in any measurable way.  They are not the ones protesting or filling the streets with tea bags.  They are certainly not turning down money from ‘the librul media’ which is paying them a handsome amount to spew their hatred.

Push that aside.  What I want to focus on is the ratcheting up of rhetoric from the far right.  On the very day the alleged shooter allegedly did the deed, Limbaugh was making a joke about Obama’s supposed lack of birth certificate.  Now, I don’t think Limbaugh actually believes that Obama is not an American citizen.  In fact, I would bet that Limbaugh doesn’t believe seventy-five percent of what he says on the air.  However, their is a birther movement that DOES believe Obama is not a US citizen, and therefore, not really president.  In fact, the alleged shooter was a birther.  He thought the Jews created Obama in order to…something.  Still not quite sure what.

Then, Shep Smith, the only sane person on FOX talked about the scary e-mail he receives from the FOX viewers and how some of them are truly nutty.  Now, Shep has been pretty heated in his opposition to the FOX rhetoric, but he still works there.  He acts like it’s just the blogs that stir people up when it’s his very own fucking station.  Naturally, the birthers and freepers and other rightwing nutters are now calling for him to be fired.  Frankly, I want him to stay so that there is one voice of reason on the station, but I think his days are number.

There have always been crazy people who are violent and dangerous.  The problem is, in the old days, they would have been viewed as what they are–crazy.  Now, the blurring between traditional media conservatism, the GOP, and the rightwingers has made it acceptable to voice the most outrageous accusations (such as the birth certificate drama) without any shred of evidence to back you up.  Paul Krugman had a great piece about this very symbiosis today, and he got a lot of heat from Joe Scarborough.  Who, by the way, is one of the biggest idiots on TV.

Of course, this has been said by progressive bloggers and Keith and Rachel for sometime, but the traditional media pooh-poohs the idea.  I think they honestly believe that they are fair and balanced.  Not FOX, though, those fuckers.  We have GOP representatives spouting crazy shit (yes, Ms. Bachmann, I’m looking at you) with a straight face, and no one in their party has the balls or ovaries to say, “Um, maybe we should dial it down a few notches.”

I am sick and tired of Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest of their ilk bleating about free speech.  Yes, we all have free speech in a loose sense (the part everyone loves to quote is actually about protecting the press from government, and I’m sorry, but there’s no way in hell the three aforementioned can objectively be called the press), but with those rights come responsibilities.  Rachel had an excellent segment on this very issue last night while discussing the shooting.  The whole segment is worth watching, but the little lecture about responsibilities takes place at 4:45.

England and Canada both have laws that outlaw hate speech.  I have seen many Americans, left and right who say that free speech is the most important thing, full stop.    It’s our right.  True, but where the hell is the responsibility?   The same people who call out for free speech were the first ones who told us to sit down and shut the fuck up when W. invaded Iraq.  We were supposed to support our president, no matter what.

Like many things, apparently, it’s just Democrats who need to do this.  For the Republicans, it’s apparently unAmerican to support Obama.  More than that, though, it’s apparently ok to call him worse than al Qaeda (for America) and other such nonsense.  If you wanna say that kind of shit (and by you, I mean Limbaugh, Bachmann, Palin, Jindal, all of the Republican leaders, Hannity, and the list goes on), then you better fucking stand by them when someone acts on them.  You better person up and say, “You know, maybe I went a bit far suggesting that Obama isn’t an American citizen.”

And I don’t want to hear about false equivalency.  Ooooh, you on the left have your crazies, too.  Yes, we do.  You wanna know the main difference?  We don’t fucking kill people for our political views.  I have never heard a crazy terrorist say he listened to Olbermann and Maddow, and that’s why he did what he did.  It doesn’t fucking happen.  So cut out the bullshit.  Seriously.  We went through one fucking civil war in this country.  Let’s try not to start another one.

So, just for this post, I am giving in to the baser side of me.  I need to vent.

Dear Religious Right,

Listen up.  For far too long you have gotten to choose how to frame the debate around abortion, gay rights, and other things which, quite frankly, are none of your damn business.  I am not talking about Christians in general here, but the wingnutters who are the extremists to the right.  I am not pretending that you are anything more than what you really are–domestic terrorists.  If you had brown skin instead of pale, pasty white skin, you would be known as a terrorist cell.  

I did not know that the last doctor murder was while Clinton was president.  In fact, there were none during the Bush years, despite the fact that abortions rose during Bush’s reign as Decider-in-Chief.  By the way, per that article I just linked, here’s a little fun fact for ya.  Abortions were at 24-year low when W. took office.  Gee, who was prez before him?  Why, one Bill Clinton.  Anyway, as the right gets out of political power, it appears that the batshitcrazyinsane portion of their party feels hopeless and helpless and shoots people to feel better about themselves.  They don’t give a shit that it’s the Dem presidents who actually do things to improve conditions so less abortions are obtained, because really, who needs facts to get in the way of a good hard-on for hate?  

Let me interject with two points.  One, fuck the false equivalency.  I am tired of the right saying, “But, but, but you have crazies on the left, too!”  Damn right we do.  You know the difference, though?  Our crazies don’t go out and fucking kill people with whom they disagree in order to get the opposition to comply with their wishes.  You know why?  Because that’s fucking terrorism.  Most of the lefty loonies smoke pot and wander nekkid through the meadow, all the better to commune with the Goddess of Life.  They don’t pick up an pistol or a revolver or an AK-47 and blow away people in righteous indignation.  So, fuck the false equivalency.  Your loonies are far more despicable than are ours. 

Second point of interjection:  Fuck Sully and Frank Schaeffer and their moral superiority/squeamishness.  While they both condemn the murder of Dr. Tiller and are pro-choice–it’s only to a point.  Both of them are opposed to late-term abortion for moral reasons.  Here is Sully:

“ I want to reiterate my personal moral opposition to legal late term abortions. I understand the awful tragedies and complexities involved. I know too that most of these children would die soon anyway – or be subject to grueling operations with many risks. I just find the ending of human life to be something we avoid as much as we possibly can. And we need to find many more ways to facilitate contraception, the morning-after pill, and adoption to make these tragedies much rarer than they are. ”

 
Do you see what he did there?  He acknowledged that there may be great problems with letting these pregnancies continue (though he did not acknowledege that many times, the woman’s life is in danger), but hey, we’ll just, you know, get the morning-after pill and better education because…because what?  How in hell will the morning-after pill help a woman who is going to die from her pregnancy if the fetus is not aborted?  

His maddening logic (if you can call it that) is one reason I no longer read him.  The boys over at Balloon Juice are enthralled with him, but I find that he’s much too conservative for me.  And, he’s going to be on Olbermann tonight, damn it.  He was an ass on Maher, and I don’t expect any differently from him on Olbermann.  Let’s face it.  He’s a privileged white guy who, if he were not gay, would never have questioned being a conservative or the conservative party.  He is against universal healthcare because of the Brit system, and he is against progressive taxes.  

At any rate, I find his reasoning above specious, but he is obviously very comfortable hanging out in moral superiority.  Next, is Mr. Schaeffer, who used to be a rightwingnut and now is a kinder, gentler, centrist.  He apologizes for his role in the Tiller murder, which is commendable.  However, he slips in the following paragraph, which incensed me;

“ But the reason this issue will never go away is that the Roe ruling was an over broad court decision that makes abortion legal even in the last weeks of pregnancy. Take away the pictures of all those dead late term fetuses and everything changes emotionally. Democracy and civil debate is messy but if abortion had been argued state-by-state abortion would be legal in almost all our states today and probably the laws would be written more like those of Europe, where late-term abortions (of the kind Dr. Tiller specialized in performing) are illegal and/or highly discouraged.”

 
See what he did there?  Oh, if we didn’t have the kind of abortions that Dr. Tiller provided, then he wouldn’t be dead because the right is so reasonable on other kinds of abortions.  Yeah, right.  Oh, if only they were illegal and/or highly discouraged, these late-term abortions.  You know what?  They are highly discouraged, and functionally illegal in many states.  

I was told, on Washington Monthly, by a troll that I was “naive” if I believed that Dr. Tiller performed all of his late-term abortions to save the life of the mother.  As I wrote yesterday, he also performed them for women (or girls) who found out they were pregnant much too lat and for women (or girls) who had been raped and didn’t have earlier access to a doctor.  However, you read the story I just linked and tell me, does that sound like the woman just woke up and said, “Gee, I’m 27 weeks preggers and it’s ruining my figure.  I think I’ll go get me one of them quick ‘n easy abortions!  Just in time for bikini season.”

Look, assholes, I’m going to make this simple for you.  Anyone who gets an abortion in the third trimester is making a gut-wrenching, horrific decision that is one she would much, much, much rather not be making.  You think the right answer is to FORCE her to have the baby so you can be easy in your morality?  Well, fuck you.

I’m about to get personal here.  I don’t want kids.  I never have, and I don’t think I ever will.  I also have a history of serious depression.  I have been suicidal, and it’s only because of supreme inertia (thanks to said depression) that I have not offed myself.  So.  Let’s say I were to get pregnant when I was in one of my depressive abysses, and I didn’t realize it for some reason until the third trimester.  I am very erratic in menstruating, so it’s possible.  Moral men like Sully and Frank Schaeffer (and, indeed, many men who consider themselves feminists) would have me have the baby because of the potential of said baby.

Now, I’ve never been pregnant, but I have heard from pregnant women that your body is not your own when you are pregnant.  There is another being inside that takes over.  Men such as O’Reilly sneer at the idea that a woman might have an abortion because she’s “depressed” or a little blue, but as control is a very big thing with me, I would go slowly out of my mind if I had something inside of me that I didn’t want, and I was forced to carry it to term.  Then, I would most likely kill myself and the baby, anyway.

You want to know why I am not a parent?  One big reason is because I know I am capable of abusing a child.  Well, the biggest reason is because I don’t want them, but the capacity to inflict great pain on a smaller being is another reason.  I am not comfortable stating this, but I know it to be true.  So.  These men would force me to have the child because of their moral squeamishness at abortion, and then what?  Well, there is no life after birth, is there?  Because, as I said, Sully is not for universal healthcare, and we have some of the shittiest child death rates in the world.

Plus, I can’t get over the fact that most of these men just shrug at the idea of a woman dying in childbirth.  People, it’s real.  It happens.  So why doesn’t the mother’s life count as much as the fetus’s?  Oh, and if the mother dies, the baby will most likely die, too.  If not, often times, it lives in excruciating pain for a few days or weeks or months and dies, anyway.  In addition, why then, do these very same people not give a shit once the baby is born?  Most rightwingnutters (Christian in name only) don’t believe in social safety nets or anything like that.  

So.  We have come full circle to my point of framing the debate.  The pro-life people have called us pro-abortion for years and have called us murderers, baby-killers and much worse.  They demand to be called pro-life, but from the comments I’ve seen concerning Dr. Tiller’s murder, they have no right to the label.  Well, ok, some of the more sane ones do, but I’m referring to the hardcore ones who don’t see anything wrong with gunning down a doctor in church.

So.  From hence on, I will call them one of the following:  

Anti-choice.  Because they are.

Anti-abortion.  Because they are.

Pro-birth.  Because they don’t give a shit what happens afterwards.

Pro-forced-birth.  Because, really, what is the antithesis of choice?

In addition, I would like to say that it’s pretty disturbing to listen to rightwingnuts talk about a woman being punished for not keeping her legs shut.  Seriously.  The way they talk ominously about slutty, out-of-control women who should just not have sex until they are ready to have children (saw that one on Balloon Juice today) makes me ill.  Not only are they grossly oversimplifying the complex issue of abortion, they are viewing children as a punishment for perceived sins.  Nice.

This started as on open letter, but now I’m ending with a warning.  This shit has got to stop.  Enough is enough with your misogynistic crap.  I am so fucking tired of your sense of religious righteousness.  I am awakening and emerging from the cocoon in which I’ve been hiding for the last fifteen years.  I am a staunch pacifist, but I am an angry one.  You need to be very afraid.  I will do what it takes, short of violence, to put an end to this culture war once and for all.

Now, Obama has actually made his pick, and it’s Sonia Sotomayor.  Predictably, the reaction on the right has been, “She’s an affirmative action pick!  She’s an activist judge!”  The more egregious quotes are of the, “here’s hoping she can get past her gender, racial, class issues and judge impartially” variety.  The chief idiot of the global climate change deniers, Senator James Inhofe, says that he hopes she can get past the gender, racial thing.  So do other Republicans.  Because, as we know, white men are never influenced by their race or gender, oh no.  Or their political ideologies–nope nope.  In fact, for any conservative who wants to natter on the objectivity of the Supreme Court, I have one thing to say to you, “Gore v. Bush!”  Suck on that.  That ruling was so flawed, even the SCOTUS said, “Hey, man, don’t base any future court rulings on this decision.”  

A commenter at Balloon Juice asked rather plaintively what Sonia Sotomayor would have to do to be considered legitimate.  In the eyes of the GOP?  Nothing.  There is no way they would consider her legitimate–oh, unless she was GOP presidentially-approved.  In the mind of the Southern old, crotchety white men party, there is nothing a person of color or a woman or a queer or someone who is disabled or an atheist or, really, anybody other than their narrow definition of pure ‘Publican base can do to be legitimate, unless the member of said discounted classes renounce their true selves and start spewing the Republican line.  See, Malkin, Michelle for a good example of that.  See, Keyes, Alan as well.   That is why I never considered being a Republican, not for a minute.  I don’t hate myself that much.

By the way, John fucking Yoo wrote an op-ed railing against Sonia Sotomayor.  Really, John?  Mr. Torture Memos who says the president has the right to crush a child’s testicles if need be?  Who clerked for and praised Clarence Thomas for his, wait for it, empathy?  So did Republican Congress people, just FYI.  See, that’s another thing that pissed me off.  All the shit the right is saying now contradicts the shit they said when it was their people they wanted to set into place, like Alberto Gonzalez.  

That is neither here nor there.  What is here or there is that Sonia Sotomayor will most likely be confirmed after a long, drawn-out battle.  There really is very little for the Republicans to do other than to fillibuster her, and that would be detrimental to their already-tarnished image.   However, that is not going to stop them.  The epitome of their stupidity is this guy (not going to link to it.  Gonna link to a link making fun of it, and then you can click on the actual link if you like.  Read the section called, Pronunciation Guide).  He doesn’t want to pronounce her last name the way she pronounces it because it’s so dang foreign to him.  They should have to assimilate to us.  And what’s his name?  Mark Krikorian.  Sounds pretty damn foreign to me.  I’m going to call him Mark Smith from now on.  

Newt is railing against Judge Sotomayor.  Rush is railing against her.  The new meme is that she is a reverse racist because she said this:

“ I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. ”

Now, taking out of context, I can see how there might be a barely perceptible hint of racial…ok, no, I can’t.  However, I can see how someone who is of the majority can see how this looks like reverse racism.  Rush used this one quote to go on a rant about how Judge Sotomayor is such a racist.  The thing is, she was giving a speech on being a Latina judge.  The text for the whole speech is here.    She was not saying that a Latina is smarter or better than a white man.   She is saying that someone’s background shapes how she sees the world.  This is only breaking news if you’ve never had to question your background as you view the world.  Here are two breakdowns of this meme and why it is so fucking wrong.  More yet, it’s stupid for the right to use this as their attacking point because they are already losing the votes of people who are, quite frankly, not old, white, rich and super-religious.  

I could list her resume and point out all the reasons that she is an exceptional woman.  It doesn’t matter to the GOP (and to some of the Dems, I dare say.  Yes, bitter PUMAs, I’m looking at you).  That is why I am trying not to get too upset over the squawkers–they’re dying out.  There will always be racism and intolerance and sexism and homophobia (I bet the next meme will be that she’s a closet lesbian), but they are all slowly ebbing away.

The sad thing is that with all this focus on her identity, there is very little real vetting about her decisions.  The SCOTUS blog helps remedy that a bit by going over some of her legal opinions.  The other thing that hasn’t got much play is the fact that she will be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court.  That is the one detail about her that bothers me.  I would love to see a person with no religious affiliation on the SCOTUS, but I think we will have an openly queer judge before an atheistic or agnostic one.

In the end, though, I am going to wait and see.  I will read up more on her and decide for myself whether or not she will be a good–oh, wait.  One more interesting factor at play here.  She’s a very warm person.  When I saw her talk, I immediately noticed a vibrancy around her.  I think it’s the New Yorker in her.  It’s going to be interesting to see how she shakes up the Supreme Court.  

In the end, my discouragement is based on the fact that white male privilege is still hanging on in American society.   The very idea that a Latina might be as competent if not more so than a white male shouldn’t cause such an outrage.  The fact that it does disappoints me and tells me that we still have so much work to do on these issues.  The people on the right look at Sonia Sotomayor and think the only reason she’s been picked is because of her race (it was widely assumed that the next SCOTUS would be female, so we’ve made some headway on that issue).   Hopefully, it’s just one more reason the GOP will be in the wilderness for some time to come.