Monthly Archives: February 2007

Safe sex never looked so f—ing scary

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From the nihilistically astute folks at Cruel.com, this may be the most disturbing public service announcement ever (note: not for the sqeamish):

I have to wonder whether this is a situation where the shock value of the ad’s content vastly overshadows its message. Safe sex = extremely important, but violence against women = extremely fucking uncool. By the end of the ad, I had similar feelings to those I had at the end of Taxi Driver or Reservoir Dogs, as in general feelings of pessimism about the human condition. Not necessarily the most effective way to encourage condom use. It is, however, a good way to get a lot of blog posts on the topic.

I think I’ve been played.

Use condoms. This message brought to you by whatever punk-ass freak made the above ad.

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More thoughts on the HPV vaccine debacle

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Here’s an account of an attempt to put a human face on this saga from the Fort Bend Herald:

Every three months, Amanda Vail will relive her rape as she undergoes another pap smear to check for cervical cancer.The man who attacked her in December gave her a virulent strain of the human papillomavirus, or HPV. Vail’s doctor told her she has up to a 70 percent chance of developing cancer.

At a Monday night hearing, she urged lawmakers to spare other young women from the same fate and kill a bill that would override Gov. Rick Perry’s anti-cancer vaccine mandate.‘‘I would not have to be repeatedly violated had I been vaccinated,” said Vail, a 29-year-old graduate student from Houston. ‘‘That option wasn’t available to me, and it is now available to these young women.”

This is sort of what I have been trying to get at on this issue. Not all sex is voluntary (to put it in highly inappropriately casual terms), and not even all consensual sex occurs with all facts out on the table. Even seemingly monogamous married couples have the risk of bringing HPV in from earlier in life. But that is not really the argument opponents seem to be making. I will leave the argument related to the vaccine’s expense alone, because that actually has some validity (it also requires balancing the vaccine’s approximate $360/dose cost against the cost to taxpayers of caring for cancer and STD patients, which requires more arithmetic than I care to do at the moment and will inevitably lead me into a rant against pharmaceutical companies.) My beef is with the argument about parents’ rights et al–the argument that mandating a vaccine compromises parents’ rights to raise children as they see fit. Never mind that any parent may opt out of having their child vaccinated; all children must be denied the vaccine to protect the rights of some parents to withhold information about the birds and bees from their children (presumably until their wedding nights).

Conservatives oppose the vaccine requirement because they believe it contradicts Texas’ abstinence-only sex education policies and strays too far into families’ lives. Others have balked at the $360 cost for the three-shot series and questioned the vaccine’s efficacy and safety.

There have been good arguments made pointing to doubts about the vaccine’s safety/efficacy, to be sure. The “family’s rights” argument is always the one trotted out first, though, as near as I can tell, and it just doesn’t make any sense to me. Do conservatives oppose checking children for scoliosis in schools because it impacts parents’ control over their children’s spines? Okay, that is a silly hypothetical, but think about the principle–parents are asserting a right to raise their children as they see fit (fine) and to guide the moral development of their children (also fine) in ways that affect public health (maybe not so okay). This vaccine guards against one STD, so it is hardly a license to throw caution to the wind. I suspect that this quote may more accurately reflect a major objection (and I do sincerely hope there is context lacking here):

Robert Morrow, a small government activist from Austin, said he’s offended that Perry would want to spend taxpayer money to interfere with parents’ rights. ‘‘I do not think the state of Texas should be in the business of preventative health care for teenage sluts,” Morrow said.

Wait, who is the slut in his assessment? I do not want to go where his statement inevitably leads, but someone has to–is he calling rape victims sluts? Or people who engage in sexual activity without access to all of the facts because their parents and state government decided that simply telling kids not to have sex would be enough? I don’t know. I do know that framing an argument against the vaccine as an argument against “sluttiness” is just disappointing. Pop quiz: How many times do you have to have sex to get HPV or any other STD? Answer: Once.

Is someone who has sex once automatically a slut? Honestly?

You want to argue about the cost? That is fair.

Are you concerned about the adequacy of testing prior to bringing the vaccine to market? Good point.

Do you have libertarian objections to government-mandated vaccinations in general? No problem.

Do you have problems with the way the drug is being marketed? I’m inclined to agree with you there.

Is there evidence of some sort of crony link between Rick Perry and the drug’s manufacturer? Let’s see it.

These are valid arguments, and most likely valid objections, but they do not appear to be the main objection. This debate is not about cost, nor is it about libertarian principles of small government. HPV is a very effective scare tactic to promote abstinence, and now there is a danger that the scare tactic is not as scary as we thought. Given the general tendency to oppose sex education in nearly any form, it would be a pretty important loss.

This is a fight to protect rhetoric, that’s all.

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Battlestar Galactica renewed for a fourth season!!! YES!!!

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Exciting news: the best show currently on TV, possibly the best show of the decade, if not of the past several, has been renewed for a fourth season, despite declining ratings.

From the L.A. Times:

“Battlestar Galactica” stands as one of the most critically acclaimed series on television. It also won the prestigious Peabody Award and was counted among the American Film Institute’s top 10 outstanding TV programs two years in a row. Critics often describe the show in lofty terms, referring to it as a multilayered allegory for a post-9/11 world that raises questions about the ethics and politics of war.The Sci Fi Channel cites the series’ strong buzz and critical praise — a halo effect that can’t be quantified in ratings points or ad dollars — as the reason for its renewal.” ‘Battlestar’ is a cachet show. It gives us a lot of credibility with the creative community,” said Mark Stern, head of programming for the cable network. “It’s the kind of series we want to continue producing in the future.”

Now then, please please please watch this show!

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Evolution as Conspiracy???

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From the Dallas Morning News, this is just embarrassing:

The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a Georgia lawmaker’s call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges.

The memo assails what it calls “the evolution monopoly in the schools.”

Mr. Bridges’ memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect’s beliefs.

“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years.

He then refers to a Web site, www.fixedearth.com, that contains a model bill for state Legislatures to pass to attack instruction on evolution as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as “Kabbalists” and laments “Hollywood’s unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism.

I guess the idea is that, if all people have equal worth and deserve respect and attention, then likewise all ideas deserve equal attention. Not to get all existential, existence preceding essence and such, but there actually are some very, very bad ideas. It just seems so self-evident to me. Dammit, I’m too tired to get into this.

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Humor, Fox News style

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The Blog Bob Cesca: Step Away From The Jokes, Fox News, Before You Hurt Yourself The Huffington Post

I don’t have much more to say that isn’t said in the posted linked above.

There appears to be a Fox News response to “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” premiering soon. From the brief teaser available on YouTube (I’m not embedding it because I don’t want to help them get hits), it looks like the format of the Daily Show, but with conservative jingoism replacing the humor.

A few years ago Comedy Central ran Straight Plan for the Gay Man, an enjoyable send-up of that Bravo show. It was funny because it lampooned the source material without really negating its premise–that gay men have a lot to show straight men about fashion and hair care, or something like that. Straight guys have a thing or two to say about chilling the fuck out every once in a while. The show’s humor may also have benefited from the fact that it only ran for three episodes–the joke didn’t have time to get old.

Fox News’ “The 1/2 Hour News Hour” (sigh…), from what little I’ve seen, fails because it does not acknowledge its superior source material. All it does is imitate–also, I honestly believe that “The Daily Show’s” principal motivation is humor, and the “liberal” slant derives from the fact that there are far greater resources to mine for humor in that area. Fox’s show’s principal motivation is conservatism, and it proceeds on a snipe hunt for humor. The show seems to proceed from the belief that conservatives can do their own funny fake news show even better than Comedy Central can–then again, how the hell do I know what they’re thinking? All I really know is that it isn’t funny…in fact it’s so unfunny that it’s painful to watch.

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Happy f—ing Valentine’s Day

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You may not have guessed this, but I used to be quite openly bitter and cynical. I like to think that my cynicism has been sublimated at least somewhat since my angst-ridden high school and college years. Still, on this Hallmarkiest of holidays, I can’t help but think back on those days when I wondered if a person could die of boredom. I therefore offer this little bit of bitterness of old, written sometime in high school and not terribly original. I’m sure it was a longer poem, but this is all I can get from memory:

Roses are red, violets are blue
Women are evil, and nice guys get screwed

Have a happy Valentine’s Day.

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Losing the war of ideas

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How did we win the Cold War? Because people in East Germany preferred McDonald’s to communism, to put it simply.

How are we winning the War on Terror? Can we win it by blowing more and more shit up? Or is it really a war of ideas, the same as the Cold War? The ideas are different, and the difference between cultures is greater, but this is still more a war over whose ideas are m more compelling–western civilization or whatever the alternative is. What is it that makes western civilization so great? Maybe, just maybe, it is not self-evident to every human being on earth that western civilization is the model that should be followed. And maybe the reason for that is not a flaw in the message, but in the messenger. Maybe our actions in the Middle East fail to effectively demonstrate all that is worth emulating about western culture.

What is so great about western culture, anyway? I could list about a thousand things or more, but here are a few:

  1. Habeas corpus – Protecting us from government overreaching since 1215.
  2. Separation of church and state – America has it, and churches are overflowing. Europe doesn’t, and churches are not overflowing at all. Do the math.
  3. Freedom of the press – Sometimes “reporting the good news from Iraq” is just a polite way of saying “propaganda”
  4. Freedom of speech – It was difficult for Soviet citizens to overcome those pesky communists, largely because they tended to kill people who didn’t say nice things about them
  5. George Washington – In 1781, he could have taken his Continental Army and made himself a king, but he didn’t. That changed the whole course of human history.
  6. The Fourteenth Amendment – What good does it do to protect you from infringement of your rights by the federal government if the states can do as they please?
  7. The Ninth Amendment – We do too have rights, Mr. Gonzales.
  8. Women’s rights – Wouldn’t it get boring pretty quickly if all women were subservient?
  9. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, Marshall, etc. – They had their flaws, to be sure–they were human, after all–but they were also freakin’ geniuses. No other country in history has ever been so lucky as to have so many wise people working together.

I could go on and on and on and on, but you get the picture.

These are the tools that will ultimately win the war on terror. And we seem to be dismantling them one by one. In the minds of many who support the tactics of the Bush administration, a decent summary might be that it was necessary to destroy our freedoms in order to save them (ironic analogy to Vietnam intended). We have seen much jingoism, but very little progress. And are no nearer to a clear picture of victory than we were yesterday.

This war is not about freedom, or democracy, or safety from terrorism, or defeating extermist ideologies wherever they may be found, or whatever other rationale is offered as old ones are shown to be false. It is about power. I would say American power, but I’m not even sure that is entirely correct. And lest I sound like a tinfoil hat crackpot, it is not some global conspiracy run by a SPECTRE-like syndicate. It is much more disappointingly mundane than that. A group of people, generally accustomed to getting what they want without much effort, found an opportunity to experiment with power in upsettingly predictable ways (at least in hindsight for most), and now they can’t bring themselves to admit how bad they’ve f—ed things up. We’re America, dammit, and if America does it, then by definition it is the right thing to do. Anyone who says otherwise is a traitor (and possibly a child molester, or a drug addict, or a habitual Zima drinker, and so on).

I’ll end with words from a more artful blogger than I:

The first plan the Pentagon geniuses came up with was to intimidate the Iraqis into submission by demonstrating our invincible might, kind of like a huge fireworks display in which only very narrowly targeted, and deserving, victims would be killed–presumably the bombs would serve as judge, jury, and executioner only for resolute followers of Saddam, and if we could label other victims as “collateral damage”, we could get away with the inevitable mistakes. What the geniuses were aiming for was some sort of veneration by the Iraqis, as if the US were God-like in its power. But the Pentagon could not pull off the plan because technological war is by nature vast and messy. Technological war could not help killing, wounding, and alienating civilians, missing the well-protected ruling class and Saddam himself, and being the first demonstration for the Iraqis and the rest of the world, of who the Americans were–heartless, careless, murderous, robotic aliens intent on interfering in a country that was not generally agreed to be the Americans’ business, no matter what the Americans themselves asserted.

Let me end on the most positive note I can think of at the moment: I hope I’m wrong.

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"Victory" defined???…Holding my breath………..

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There’s a new kid on the block, goes by the name Victory Caucus.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that my biggest pet peeve is when people complain about something but fail to state an alternative to whatever has them up in arms. By this standard, I have bones to pick with both major political parties. An equally insidious pet peeve is when a proposed solution is stated so vaguely as to not be a solution at all–which brings me to “victory.” So many have lambasted Democrats and anti-war activists for being against “victory.” The word has enough emotional resonance to take a toll on those being criticized, and it is also vague enough in meaning to not require anything whatsoever from the person making the criticism. It is my sincere hope that someone, anyone, will offer a coherent vision of what “victory” means in this context. Could the Victory Caucus be the answer?

Let’s take a look at their mission statement:

  • Deliver the perspectives and news on the war effort which the mainstream media neglects to help the American public understand the nature of our conflict and its true progress
  • Provide tools and infrastructure to help citizens who are committed to victory organize into a recognized and influential caucus
  • Identify opportunities for the caucus to act and exert influence on America’s leaders and to directly aid and support the men and women of our military

Emphasis in original. A few thoughts:

“Deliver the perspectives and news on the war effort which the mainstream media neglects to help the American public understand the nature of our conflict and its true progress.” It would be easy to accuse the writers of this point of falling into the old blame-the-messenger fallacy. The news media is to blame for not reporting enough good news. I have no problem with offering news of positive developments in Iraq, but the big picture still looks bleak. A quick scan of the news offerings did not show much relating to “true progress,” but I did find quite a bit about Iran’s influence–influence it did not have before the U.S. invasion, for what it’s worth.

“Provide tools and infrastructure to help citizens who are committed to victory organize into a recognized and influential caucus.” Super. Are you all psychically linked by a shared vision of “victory,” or will someone explain it at some point? I’ll be waiting. Good luck organizing if you can’t articulate your organizing principle.

“Identify opportunities for the caucus to act and exert influence on America’s leaders and to directly aid and support the men and women of our military” That is a superb idea, seriously. Especially since the Pentagon still isn’t supporting them enough. The people who demand victory from the troops, regardless of whether they know what that means, owe it to our troops to support them in that mission, regardless of whether they know what it is.

I do not mean to make light of the sacrifices of our troops. I have friends in Iraq, people I care about deeply. And it is for that reason that I want to know why they are there, and what it will take to get them out of harm’s way. I want America to succeed in Iraq more than anything, but I am also not blind to what has been going on for the past four years. When things do not go as planned or promised, the administration tries to pretend that they never had such plans/made such promises all along. Truth be told, I have no idea what “success” in Iraq would look like at this point, and I am not convinced that any of the people behind the Victory Caucus do, either. I feel some personal responsibility for this, for not speaking up sooner. America as a whole bears most of the responsibility–we need smart people, super-hyper-intelligent people, if there is to be anything that could objectively be described as “success” or “victory.” Instead we have a man that much of the American electorate chose because they would like to have a beer with him (a recovering alcoholic, I might add, so maybe not the best drinking buddy).

Will the Victory Caucus add something meaningful or useful to this debate (if you can even call it such–I don’t hear much actual debating)? It is far easier to call people names than to propose actual ideas. Democrats –> Defeatocrats. The sad truth, that brings me no satsifaction at all, is that the course so far is not working. Nothing we say about it one way or another is likely to embolden anyone, because the reality is in plain view. We need smart, serious people to propose serious alternatives. The Democrats did that, even if many people do not like the alternative. The only response they have gotten so far is name-calling. This tactic was effective on the playground, but it ceased to be a good way to resolve a conflict around the time most of us hit puberty.

“Democrats are against victory.” That about summarizes the argument.

It is hard to respond to such an argument, as the argument contains no points to be refuted. This leaves our national leaders channeling Pee Wee Herman saying “I know you are, but what am I?” The greatest nation on earth should be above this.

Will anyone step up and say something meaningful about “victory”? Let’s look at the Victory Caucus’ beliefs:

  • We support victory in the war against radical Islamists. We supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and we believe victory is necessary in both countries for America’s self-defense.
  • We believe that the radical regime in Iran, while not representative of the Iranian people, is a menace and that it cannot be allowed to obtain or build nuclear weapons.
  • We believe that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Americans and which waged war against Israel in violation of every law of war this past summer, and will do so again in the future.
  • We believe Israel is our ally and friend and deserves the full assistance of the United States in its battle with radical Islamists. We believe that Israel has repeatedly shown its willingness to negotiate a just and lasting peace, but that its enemies do not want peace, but the destruction of Israel.
  • We believe that the American military is the finest in the world and indeed in history, well led and superbly trained, and populated at every level by America’s best and brightest.
  • We support the troops, and those organizations which assist the wounded in their recoveries and support the families of those who sacrificed everything.
  • We support leaders who support victory.

I’m going to skip over most of these and jump straight to the last one. “We support leaders who support victory.”

Sigh.

I’m going to the source:

Victory: 1 : the overcoming of an enemy or antagonist. 2 : achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties

That really doesn’t help either.

I’m not ready to write off the Victory Caucus just yet. I know one or two of the principals involved, and they are people I respect. I just hope someone can formulate an answer to what seems like a simple questions. If no one can…I’d rather not think about it this late at night.

I am reminded of a poster I saw back in college, from a girl running for student body president against an opponent who did not seem to take the race, or the mpending responsibilities of president, very seriously: “It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s whether you even know what game you are playing.”

Well said. I wish it didn’t have to be.

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Do people really take "24" seriously?

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After being appalled enough to almost write a bitchy letter to Fox about “24’s” Season 4 premiere, in which around a dozen people are killed in order to cover for a sinister plot that is revealed as a red herring by the third episode or so, I pretty much stopped paying attention to the show altogether. I never could tell if the show was meant to be a thrill-ride-type show remarkable mostly for its ability to strain credibility without ever quite breaking it altogether (traumatic amnesia?), or more of an especially prurient form of “terror porn,” to steal a phrase, aimed at making us feel safer knowing that someone is out there to gouge out the eyeballs of those who would do us harm.

I still recall how the premiere of the show was delayed post-9/11, then edited to remove the more disturbing scenes of an airplane exploding over the Mojave Desert–now all you see is a orange glow off-screen as the uber-yummy Mia Kirschner parachutes out of the plane and then strips naked in front of a bonfire. I cannot bring myself to fully condemn that kind of filmmaking, but I do have to wonder why it was necessary to blow up a passenger plane in order for an assassin to adopt the identity of a German photographer on board the plane. Couldn’t the bad guys have kidnapped the German after he landed, taken his ID and killed him, rather than having the lovely Ms. Kirschner seduce him on the plane, steal his wallet, then blow the plane up? We kinda already gathered that she is evil, and they still could have contrived a reason to get her naked.

Maybe I’m just being square, but “24” is really just the Rube Goldberg Guide to Terrorism. As long as your terrorist places more stock in crafting an elaborate and lengthy plan than in actually succeeding in his mission, a few well-placed electrodes, amputations, and sleepless nights will thwart the plot. I can’t claim to know how a terrorist’s mind works (I bought a book but haven’t read it yet), but common sense would dictate that simplicity would be a key factor, rather than the two or three levels of redundancy necessary to keep a show like “24” going for the requisite 24 episodes.

There seems to be some indication that some of the torture allegations coming out of Iraq may have, at their root, inspiration derived from Jack Bauer’s exploits. Really, has there ever, in all the history of espionage and intrigue, been a “ticking bomb” situation like the ones that occur with logic-rattling frequency in the “24” universe?

Anyway, before I end up writing all night about this, I’ll just end with this–it’s a freaking TV show that makes no sense if you think about it for more than two seconds. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular.

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Death before having to mention sex to kids, say religious conservatives

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Perhaps I’m being a little bit melodramatic with this topic, but I really do want to know if religious conservatives find it preferable to keep life-saving vaccines away from people rather than run the risk that kids might get the idea in their heads that sex exists.

From liberal conspiracymongers People for the American Way:

Following a recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control, a number of states have implemented or are considering vaccinating girls attending public school against HPV, a virus that causes 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. While vaccinations against measles, mumps, and tetanus are not controversial, the Religious Right sees HPV differently: It is sexually transmitted. The Family Research Council’s Bridget Maher warned that young women may see vaccination “as a licence to engage in premarital sex,” and former Focus on the Family advisor Reginald Finger said that marketing the vaccine “would undermine the abstinence-only message.”

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[T]he Religious Right’s strong reaction against “forc[ing] little girls to be shot with a sex virus vaccine” leaves little room in the debate for details about which form parents have to fill out to preserve so-called “parents’ rights.” Instead, the Right’s abstinence-only refrain makes it sound like Texas is requiring girls to carry condoms, as one right-wing group put it. The emphasis on abstinence to the point of excluding other information is already dangerous policy when it comes to sex ed, but it’s doubly so when it comes at the direct cost of passing up a life-saving cure – especially when many on the Right acknowledge that abstinence might not be enough. Vaccination would protect not only the 94 percent of women who have sex before marriage, but also those who “practice[] abstinence and fidelity” yet “could
be exposed to HPV through sexual assault or marriage to an infected partner,” as FRC’s Sprigg admitted.

First of all, can anyone maintain a straight face while arguing that the “94 percent of women who have sex before marriage” do so because they learned about sex in public school? Actually, I’m sure some people can. They’re wrong. I’m happy to argue that point further, but I’ll move on.

The position seems to be thus:

  1. We should not teach sex ed in schools.
  2. We should not educate kids about, nor distribute the means of, protection against STD’s or pregnancy.

I suppose the resulting assumption, then, is that people are endowed by God with all the necessary knowledge re: sexuality on their 18th birthday? Well, since our tax dollars are also being spent to encourage abstinence among adults, maybe that is not the case.

Some say it is a slippery slope (yes, I’m talkin’ to you, CK)…okay, where would said slope lead? If we have to give sixth-grade girls shots of yet another vaccine is the slope that we would have to tell them more and more about sex, or that we would have to start giving them more and more vaccinations? Today, an HPV vaccine…tomorrow, a vaccine against, uh, herpes…by next year, we will be vaccinating our children against livestock-based STD’s. I don’t see it happening.

If the concern is about having to explain it to kids, a few questions:

  1. How many sixth-grade girls really listen to their parents? Seriously, I have no idea, but I doubt it’s a huge number.
  2. How is vaccinating someone against a virus that renders its victims infertile and/or kills them a bad thing? Why not play up the aspect of “this will protect you from an unpleasant bug” rather than “now you can shag little Johnny from down the street with reckless abandon”? It’s the religious conservatives who are constantly cataloguing the omnipresence of sexuality in our culture–a catalog I would totally want to see, BTW.

My point is this: kids aren’t taught sex ed, kids aren’t taught about contraception, kids aren’t protected against preventable STD’s, kids develop hormones, nature takes its course in secret because the ‘rents would totally freak, and then adults act surprised and horrified when teens turn up pregnant or with STD’s or cancer.

Sure it’s a slippery slope–I just have not been convinced that it’s a slope leading anywhere particularly bad.

And no, I don’t have kids. Anyone who thinks I lack the right/ability to opine on this subject because I am not a parent probably has kids who will grow up to join a Sataninc cult and/or lesbian commune to spite your haughty sense of morality. Or maybe I’m wrong.

BTW, WWJD? He seemed to have a thing for helping the sick. Preventing disease in the first place would have freed him up for even more miracles.

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