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Help me deal with my global intolerant patriarchs

11:11 / 28.12.08

Pope Benedict said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment-

Gay groups and activists have reacted angrily after Pope Benedict XVI said that mankind needed to be saved from a destructive blurring of gender.

Monbiot has some interesting comments from the summer -

Last year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Church’s sinister enforcement agency, forbade a priest and a nun from ministering to gays in the United States, after they refused to sign a statement testifying that “homosexual acts are always objectively evil”.

...and says My guess is that the Pope is not gay, but that he has found in homosexuals a necessary enemy, an external threat which allows the Holy See to justify its iron grip on the lives of the faithful.

Which sounds reasonable to me and would indicate the Pope's stance will get more extreme rather than less.

Repubican party circulates a CD including a song 'Barack the magic negro'-

former Tennessee GOP leader Chip Saltsman said that party leaders should stand up to criticism over distributing a CD with the song. He earlier defended the tune as one of several "lighthearted political parodies" that have aired on Rush Limbaugh's radio show.<\a>

I'm not sure what to think. Is this just the usual intolerance, or a backlash, or what? And more importantly how can I deal personally with the impotent rage I feel when faced with this sort of news?

15:58 / 28.12.08

Ah, I went to school with Chip Saltsman, though he wasn't in my class. Pretty douchetastic, what he's into now. That song is from Rush Limbaugh, he played it all through the campaign. I think that his weak justification for it was that it came from David Ehrenstein's piece in the LA Times, and he's got some color to him, so it must be okay!
All through the campaign, I was really disturbed by the ferocity of hatred and vitriol for Obama, which was totally out of proportion with even any disagreements people could have with his policy or personality. There are always insane crackpots on either side, but there seemed to be much more of the absolutely outlandish conjecture on his past or his motives, and a huge undercurrent of racism, as well as the blatant racism. I think for some, nothing can change that. Otherwise, I think it's only going to be people seeing how Obama actually performs that might sway them.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:42 / 28.12.08

We were having quite an interesting discussion about the status and usage both of the trope of the magical negro and the uses of the term over in the Morrison Batman thread a while back, before stupidity intervened. I suppose we can just add it to the list of things which douchebags use as a justification to use terms that give them a little down-low tickle.

Anna de Logardiere

10:20 / 29.12.08

I was really disturbed by the ferocity of hatred and vitriol for Obama, which was totally out of proportion with even any disagreements people could have with his policy or personality

Isn't it in direct proportion to his role as strange political representation of hope? If you build a campaign on change and the abilities of young voters then you expect some ferocious hatred in response to some of the ferocious love being flung around. That doesn't mean racism is acceptable but his background is convenient for angry racists to latch onto so it's not massively disturbing. What's upsetting is that this hasn't been more condemned, there should be some institution connected to this guy that kicks him out because he gets such bad publicity for this. US- make your media machine work better!

13:11 / 29.12.08

Haus, I'm hesitant to go into the comics forum but I think I'll have a look - I hadn't come across the expression until the news about the song although the trope is so common (e.g. Morpheus, every Stephen King story ever).

It's weird that the GOP should use the phrase at all, a brief look at the web shows it couched in those terms to highlight the racism in the trope (and popularised by Spike Lee) so I can only assume the writer of the song (Paul Shanklin) is either deliberately glorying in the role of racist throwback or just doesn't realise.
*googles* Oh, he released a 2006 album called American Spastic, clearly glorying in the role.

13:42 / 29.12.08

Ow, I just read three pages of the Batman thread. I feel like I've been tormented in an isolation chamber by my foes.

17:00 / 29.12.08

God only knows what the Pope thinks he's up to. I suppose he just wants to be on television, and gets angry about his profile after a couple of drinks, but I wonder if the the doctrine of Papal infallibility shouldn't stop when it comes to his appearances in the media? Certainly, if I was in the Vatican's PR department I'd be pushing for that. What a drag those phone calls and e-mails must have been to take.

Other than that, you could pretty much set your watch by the antics of Rush Limbaugh and chums. I imagine no one's saying very much about it because what's the point? It's like complaining when it rains.

It's interesting, maybe, how forty-odd years ago the Democrats seemed to be the US party most affiliated with outspoken fringe characters (Hunter S Thompson, Abbie Hoffman, Lenny Bruce) but that these days the GOP's supporters are leading the charge in terms of wild, taboo-busting craziness. Not that I'm comparing the braying clowns on Fox to Thompson etc in any other way, but it is a bit odd, and quite fascinating, in an awful way, how the game's been turned around.

Not that it's worth worrying about, really. Anyone who wants a good reason to stick their head in the oven this festive season could do worse than read 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein.