"Of course I want to reduce the number of abortions," Warren told Beliefnet Editor-in-Chief Steven Waldman when asked if he was going to work with the Obama administration to achieve an abortion reduction agenda or if he thinks that the effort is a charade.
"But to me it is kind of a charade in that people say 'We believe abortions should be safe and rare,'" he added.
"Don't tell me it should be rare. That's like saying on the Holocaust, 'Well, maybe we could save 20 percent of the Jewish people in Poland and Germany and get them out and we should be satisfied with that,'" Warren said. "I'm not satisfied with that. I want the Holocaust ended."
I don't guess I need to point out that means Obama has effectively invited someone who equates him with a Nazi appeaser to participate in his inauguration—and, to give you some idea of the level of integrity Warren has, he accepted.
I also don't suppose I need to point out that, like most of the caterwauling nincompoops who blather on about how abortion needs to cease to exist, Warren does not make the prevention of sexual assault a centerpiece of his ministry.
Of course, a fuckneck who compares same-sex marriage to rape doesn't really seem to have given a whole lot of thought to either, now, does he?
Regarding Obama's asinine decision to invite anti-choice homobigot Rev. Rick Warren to do the invocation at the inaugural, some of you were asking for contact information to register your disapproval. You can send a message to the transition team here, and you can contact the executive director/CEO of the Inaugural Committee, Emmett Beliveau, by calling 202-203-1715 or emailing him at emmett@pic2009.org.
Also, care of Pam, below are the official talking points from Team Obama on the selection of Rick Warren, which, as Arkades said in comments, "sound pretty self-satisfied, which leads me to believe Obama's team has already anticipated criticism on this. (Yet went ahead with this anyway. Grrrr.)"
• This will be the most open, accessible, and inclusive Inauguration in American history.
• In keeping with the spirit of unity and common purpose this Inauguration will reflect, the President-elect and Vice President-elect have chosen some of the world's most gifted artists and people with broad appeal to participate in the inaugural ceremonies.
• Pastor Rick Warren has a long history of activism on behalf of the disadvantaged and the downtrodden. He's devoted his life to performing good works for the poor and leads the evangelical movement in addressing the global HIV/AIDS crisis. In fact, the President-elect recently addressed Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health to salute Warren's leadership in the struggle against HIV/AIDS and pledge his support to the effort in the years ahead.
• The President-elect disagrees with Pastor Warren on issues that affect the LGBT community. They disagree on other issues as well. But what's important is that they agree on many issues vital to the pursuit of social justice, including poverty relief and moving toward a sustainable planet; and they share a commitment to renewing America's promise by expanding opportunity at home and restoring our moral leadership abroad.
• As he's said again and again, the President-elect is committed to bringing together all sides of the faith discussion in search of common ground. That's the only way we'll be able to unite this country with the resolve and common purpose necessary to solve the challenges we face.
• The Inauguration will also involve Reverend Joseph Lowery, who will be delivering the official benediction at the Inauguration. Reverend Lowery is a giant of the civil rights movement who boasts a proudly progressive record on LGBT issues. He has been a leader in the struggle for civil rights for all Americans, gay or straight.
• And for the very first time, there will be a group representing the interests of LGBT Americans participating in the Inaugural Parade.
Totally infuriating. I'm so tired of "addressing the global HIV/AIDS crisis" being offered up as some get-out-of-jail-free card for homobigotry. Aside from reinforcing the idea that HIV/AIDS is a "gay disease" (at the expense of other communities it also disproportionately affects, while simultaneously reinforcing a long-held bias against gay men), it conveniently ignores that the political needs of the LGBTQI community exist beyond HIV/AIDS.
And I just adore that Warren's virulently anti-choice views are boiled down to sufficiently encapsulated in "They disagree on other issues as well." Got that, girls? If you're concerned about a misogynist who doesn't acknowledge your bodily autonomy being invited to play a prominent role in the inaugural, don't worry: They disagree on other issues as well.
And you know why they think they don't need to address progressive women? Because they assume that leading progressive men will do the job of telling us to STFU for them. So I damn well hope that the Shaker men will make their voices heard as feminist/womanist allies and explicitly say in your letters that you object to an anti-choice reverend being given this opportunity and feel like it's a stick in the eye to feminists/womanists and their allies.
So, I have been struck, in my caganerish wanderings, by the wondrous "everyone does it" aspect of the whole phenom.
Yes, it's something we all do, one way or another -- but I am struck by how facile and expressive the Catalonians are in their portrayal of the subtle aspects of howuniquely we each render our poopful offerings to fertilize the planet. For example, there is the "Bush Caganer":
First of all -- there's the whole "He's Got The Whole World . . . . Under His Arm, He's Got the Whole Wide World . . . Under His Arm . . " meme in play (which is alarming to me at all sorts of levels -- I mean, have other nations given him that kind of power, too?).
Then there's the problematic nature of taking a crap whilst attempting to keep an entire planet neatly tucked alongside. (I don't know about you, but personally, I'm kind of a "get down to business" gal when I get down to business, ya know?)
And finally, there's the problem of the Bush poo itself -- meager, scanty -- thoroughly unsatisfying -- I mean, if you're going to take a dump on the entire planet, can't you do better than that?
Honestly!
Far more gratifying is the contribution of the Caganer Buddha:
A nice fat turd that indicates that one might actually want to support the fecundity of the Earth -- what one of my friends used to call a "horseshoe floater".
Although why his robe would be blue from the front and red from the back is still a mystery to me.
Must be a Buddha thing. ============ This has been your Daily Caganer. Click Here for Parts I, II, & III.
He will also, if you behave yourself, squeeze your luscious heirloom tomatoes and compliment you on their ripeness.
[FYI: Sorry I haven't been in comments this season. My laptop is dead, and my TV's in another room, so until I get another one, I'm forced to miss out on the liveblogging. Which really, really sucks. I miss watching with you!]
What do you find to be the most overrated luxury food item?
I'm not terribly keen on caviar, but only because I don't like very salty food. (Most chips and crackers, and many soups, are way too salty for my taste.) When I've had less salty caviar, I can understand why other people find it tasty.
Probably the best answer I could give is lobster (which I know isn't a luxury food everywhere). It's not that I don't like lobster; I do. But it's not that great. I'd pass up lobster for some nicely done mussels any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
…to the award-winning Sean Hannity, Mr. Misinformer 2008! The honor couldn't have been bestowed on a more deserving fella.
"I'd like to thank Alan Colmes, without whose feeble acquiescence night after night I never could have won this coveted award…"
UPDATE: Hannity has, in return, just awarded Media Matters the "first-ever Left-Wing Obamamania Media Propaganda Sleaze Award," given to "the group or the person that does more lying and smearing than your average left-wing Obamamania media supporter."
Darn you, Media Matters! Shakes fist. We'll get you next year!
Oh, Obama. We were getting along so well, and then he had to go and do something like choose Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, who, not two weeks ago, was seen hanging out with Sean Hannity and mistaking the Bible for the Department of Defense handbook. And if that weren't bad enough, as my friend Steve points out:
Warren is opposed, on religious grounds, to abortion rights, gay rights, stem-cell research, and euthanasia. In 2004, he described these issues as "nonnegotiable" and "not even debatable."
What's more, just this month, Warren supported Prop. 8 in California for absurd reasons.
Those "absurd reasons," by the way, entailed Warren conflating same-sex marriage with polygamy, incest, and rape.
Apparently, Obama and Warren are personal friends, which doesn't actually mitigate the selection so much as make me wonder if Obama's been dropped on his head.
I understand that Warren isn't going to be driving policy, that he's only leading a prayer at the inauguration (and why there is a prayer at the presidential inauguration is a whole other post), but I also know that there are, literally, thousands of other religious leaders from multiple religions and Christian denominations, who aren't anti-choice, anti-gay, and anti-science, whose presence at the inauguration wouldn't be a sharp stick in the eye to progressive women and GBTQ men, and all their allies, so it would have been really fucking nice if any one of them could have been selected for this prominent opportunity instead of Rick bloody Warren.
I've been telling my BFF Tom Cruise for years, "Tom, it's fine if you want to be a total nutball who appears to be perpetually on the brink of either a massive breakdown or murder spree, possibly both—but, take it from an expert, you've got to at least have a sense of humor about it." And finally, he listened to me.
Here's my BFF Tom Cruise on The Late Show with David Letterman doing the Top 10 Things Craziest Things People Say About Him on the Internets.
10. I sleep upside-down suspended in a special bat-like harness.
9. During the filming of Days of Thunder, on a dare, I ate a tire.
8. I still wear those underpants from Risky Business.
7. My real name is Tom Blagojevich.
6. I once Heimliched a koala.
5. Once a month, I take the Universal tour naked.
4. I believe all emotional and psychological disorders can be cured with Vicks Vapo-Rub.
3. I'm a power mad ego maniac who's completely insulated from reality. Oh wait, that's Letterman.
2. After jumping on her couch, Oprah hammer-locked me until I coughed blood.
1. I keep a cell phone in my pants so I can tell friends to call my ass.
(At the end, he says, "That last one was true!")
I pick on old Tommy Boy a lot, but that was pretty funny—and I've respect for anyone who lets themselves be the butt of the joke.
Ezra reports that former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack will be appointed Secretary of Agriculture, and also explains why "the pick is not necessarily comforting."
Iowa is the nation's largest producer of corn, soybeans, and pork. As such, the state's second most important export is corn, followed by soybeans, followed by meat (interestingly, Iowa's most important export is tractors). Vilsack's agricultural experience has been as an advocate for those industries and a politician dependent on their favor. Appointing him to head the agency is like appointing the governor of a petrostate to head the Department of Energy. The pick may turn out for the best, but there's little evidence of that in the official record.
There's more at the link, including some caveats.
Meanwhile, The Hillreports that Republican Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood is likely to be named Secretary of Transportation. Appointing LaHood would be another sop to Obama's much-vaunted bipartisanism, and you know how I feel about that.
I have no idea what LaHood's credentials are re: transportation. All I know about him is that he's a whiny-ass jerk.
Add Kevin Drum, Lindsay Beyerstein, and Steve Clemons to the "almost unanimous blogosphere consensus" (Drum's words) opposing the latest threat to the Republic: the possible appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the Senate seat being vacated by Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton. From listening to some of the more strident dissenting voices, you'd think we were going to have to fight the British all over again.
The reasoning behind the opposition varies somewhat, depending on who's doing the opposing: friends of Clinton who would view a Kennedy appointment as a "slap in the face," given Kennedy's support for Barack Obama (support welcomed and applauded by some of the same non-Hillary voting folks that would now just as soon see Kennedy disappear); activists angry that Kennedy didn't support the progressive cause du jour back in the day; pundits bemoaning the deleterious effects of "political dynasties," lumping Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes alike into a single sinister subversive element, not unlike Cobra, SMERSH, or the Trilateral Commission. See Joe Klein for an example of such muddled thinking. Dynasty! Celebrity! Oh noes!
Seriously, when you find yourself on the same page as Klein - especially when it comes to what Democrats should do - you might want to check your assumptions.
A particularly troubling rationale among the Kennedy nay-sayers bears some scrutiny. Exhibit A, courtesy of Steve Clemons:
It seems hypocritical to on the one hand challenge Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's qualifications and readiness to have potentially assumed the presidency if something had happened to John McCain and if, of course, their ticket had won on November 4th and then on the other, say nothing about Caroline Kennedy's dearth of real policy and political experience to assume one of the most powerful offices in the country — even if a Senator is usually not as consequential as a President.
Never mind that Clemons partially invalidates his own criticism by the end of his statement; the disturbing thing is the amnesia at work here. It hasn't been so long since the general election that we should have forgotten that the issue with Sarah Palin was not merely her absence of experience, but her abundant and demonstrable disqualifications: most notably, an incuriosity that made George Bush look like a Rhodes scholar, and an opposition to serious thought on a wide range of national and world affairs. Any equation of Palin and Kennedy along these lines is strange reasoning indeed.
Perhaps Clemons preferred Palin's books on civil liberties and privacy rights to Kennedy's…oh, wait. Well, maybe Palin's work on funding public schools outshone Kennedy's…ah, right. But surely Palin's judgment and temperament were demonstrably equal to…oh, never mind.
I have to assume that Clemons knows better. Still, such wild comparisons and overstatements inform the mood of the "almost unanimous blogosphere consensus."
You'd think that if "political experience" was as important to some of these dissenters as they now claim, they would have voted for John McCain. But that was different, I guess.
I don't remember having ever seen this kind of contretemps involving what amounts to a caretaker Senate appointment. That we are seeing it now feels to me like a weird, delayed stress reaction: a backlash, however misplaced, against various high-level appointments made by Obama that may have displeased the progressive set. We'll show you! And by "you," we mean "somebody or other"! (Add: Perhaps it's an understandable case of PTSD after eight years of the Bush regime. As McCain once called us: "My fellow prisoners…")
At any rate: Too bad for Kennedy that she's in an inconvenient spot, eh?
It's possible that Kennedy could assuage some of the sturm und drang by, well, essentially campaigning. It's very odd that a (possible!) appointee would actually have to campaign, but that's the political mindset we have these days in Leftsville. When you're facing "observations" that range from "Cute little girl runs for Senate" to OJ Simpson comparisons (however oblique), it seems you have to work a little harder.
Add: Apparently we have just now discovered that political endorsements can result in consideration for political appointments. It's enough to make one clutch one's pearls and swoon.
There is a bout of holier-than-thou-ism making the rounds among the progressive set, and it's just weird.
David Brody, senior correspondent for CBN, the news channel for the Religious Right, notes that Arne Duncan, the nominee for Secretary of Education, supported the idea of a high school in Chicago for gay students.
Obama’s new pick for Education secretary is Arne Duncan, head of Chicago Public Schools. He’s been pushing for Chicago to start their first gay high school. Not kidding.
Obama is going to get a lot of flack over this pick from social conservative groups and it wouldn’t surprise me if Republican Senators raise a fuss about this during his confirmation hearing. Mark my words.
[...]
Look, I know how this will be spun. Some will say this isn’t really a “gay high school.” It’s really more a safe place and an educational environment that will cater towards gays and lesbians. But folks, let’s be real here. It’s a high school for gay students. Plain and simple.
He makes it sound like that's a bad thing. What is he expecting, a curriculum of flower arranging, the history of decor, and cooking for the boys and auto mechanics and home repair for the girls? Wild orgies during study hall?
One of the hardest aspects of growing up gay is that we don't get the chance to learn how to socialize with people we feel comfortable with. Kids learn about dating and the strictures of peer pressure in high school, which is tough enough for straight kids. Imagine what it's like to go through all of that if you're a teenage boy harboring a secret -- that you'd rather go to the prom with Jack instead of Jill -- or that you'd rather try out for the musical than the football team. I don't have to imagine it; I lived it.
I don't understand the Christianists' objections to the idea of a high school for gay students.
While the idea of a gay high school may be troubling for some, the problem for Obama is that a pick like this doesn’t portray him in such a centrist way. It gives the impression that he’s nominating wild liberals to his Cabinet.
A high school for gay students isn't a "wild liberal" idea; giving kids the most supportive environment while learning is a good thing and something you'd think conservatives would support. Making it easier for students to be comfortable with who they are is as much a part of education as learning the mysteries of math. And it's not as if it will be a "recruiting" tool for the Radical Homosexual Agenda; by the time a kid is in high school, he or she pretty much knows what their orientation is.
The Religious Right has always been in favor of schools that cater to "special interests," such as Christian schools were their kids can learn without fear of being bullied or teased because of their faith. Why is it any different for kids who want to go to a school where they can be true to themselves and not have to worry about being beat up by jocks with issues?
I think what really bothers the evangelicals is that giving gay students a comfortable learning environment goes against all the stereotypes they've put up about gays being unhappy, unhealthy, prone to addiction, and just plain miserable. (With all the persecution they dish out, you'd think they'd understand the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy.) Giving gay kids the chance for a normal high school experience kills off yet another pack of lies, and the intolerants will have to come up with some other outrage to marginalize us.
At long last, I am thrilled to have evidence proving my theory that the best relationships are had by people who consider Eraserhead a great date movie.
Important Background: Mama Shakes and I, while both being blubmeister generals who have to, for example, watch the final episode of The Office (UK) with a box of tissues between us, are overtly hostile to forced sentimentality. Very Special Episodes, Sweethearts' Day, cloyingly adorable expressions of affection…they all evoke the snark big time, and the worst of all are precious emails—"A digital rose for a wonderful woman"—especially the chain letter ones that end with a threat—"…now forward this to 10 other lovely ladies you know or DIE WITHIN 30 DAYS!!!"
Anyway, we got into the habit of emailing these to each other ironically, and then we started emailing each other any dumbass forwards we got, especially ones with "hilarious" sexist jokes and cartoons, with intros like "This is the best email forward you'll ever receive!" We also send each other good email forwards, too, like the one I sent her of a guy wearing see-through plastic pants and crapping himself, which is a classic. But the best are the ones we send touting their brilliance because they suck so hard.
So, yesterday, I got a link from her, which she had introduced with "HEE-larious!" so I knew it would be good. I click through, and it's "11 Funny Christmas Cartoons" compiled by Readers Digest, and you know they're going to be awesome, because "clean-jokes-and-laughs" is right in the URL.
Of course every last one of them is truly, astoundingly awful. I emailed Mama Shakes, "Each was more horrible than the next. You'd think at least one of them would have been accidentally funny, but...nope!"
Mama Shakes: The one with the squirrels and the nutcracker brought half a smile to my face.
Liss: You have a sickness.
Mama Shakes: DO NOT! I just happen to like nutcrackers.
Shaker Minstrel Boy will be appearing on Jeopardy! today, so set your DVRs! Wheeeeee!
Unless, of course, you're already out of the house for the day, in which case, you can wait for the video, which I'm sure some technologically adept Shaker *cough* Petulant *cough* will provide to us.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
Action Item
Oh, Obama. We were getting along so well, and then he had to go and do something like 
