Tag Archives: Republicans

How to ensure that your lefty Jewish friends do not take you seriously.

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I do not have the knowledge — or the kevlar underwear — to opine on the situation in Gaza, but I’ll say this:  nothing seems better designed to ensure that Jewish lefties simply tune you out than the choice to use inflammatory — borderline anti-Semitic — language.

I’m a liberal and a Jew, and would be the natural audience for arguments that Israel has — what’s the technical foreign policy term? — seriously fucked up this time.  But when I hear words like “genocide” or “apartheid” or see images of Israeli politicians with blood on their hands, I don’t think, “Hmmm, that person has an interesting point I should think about.”  I think, “asshole.”  Or, with slightly more nuance, “grandstanding asshole who is more interested in left-wing tribal solidarity than actually having a rational dialog.”  And ultimately:*

Image: Graphic of the small toolbar from the upper right side of a web browser that offers the choices of minimize (a flat line), restore (two small squares), and close (an X), with a red arrow pointed to the X.

 

 

 

 

I know this can be said of almost any fraught issue in American politics today.  If you say either “baby killer” or “the government wants to own my uterus” you are not interested in having a rational discussion about abortion; you are expressing tribal solidarity.   I’m firmly convinced that tribal solidarity drives most political opinion.  Once you’ve identified as a Republican and that has become part of your identity, it’s hard to say, “you know, perhaps we should treat children arriving at our border with compassion.”  Your tribe has made it a mark of in-group-ness to decry these children as shock troops of an invading horde of Obama-inspired future Democrats,** and taking a contrary position would be as hard as making a Red Sox fan cheer for the Yankees.  It is similarly hard, I think, to get most Democrats to even admit that people who oppose abortion might do so from deeply-felt, well-thought-out reasons and not simply because they hate or want to suppress women.***

So ultimately if your goal in discussing the situation in Gaza is  just to express tribal solidarity with your co-opinionists, go for it.  Use whatever inflammatory language makes you feel like part of the in-group.  If you actually want to have a rational discussion with people who just might share some of your lefty views, you might want to reconsider.

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* Well, no, ultimately what I feel is fear, because historically when people start down this road, things do not end well for Jews.

** Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

*** Two additional notes about this.  First, these two examples are in no way intended to suggest some sort of faux balance.  In my view, Democrats remain largely right, policywise, and Republicans largely wrong.  Second, I think tribalism is stronger on the right than the left because one of the substantive values of the right is conformity, while one of the substantive values of the left is iconoclasm.  Which makes it all the more ironic and, to me, disappointing to hear left-wing tribalism.

 

 

You look great! …

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… I recently told a friend who had lost weight.

“Not to be sizist about it, but you do, you look terrific.” She thanked me and talked about the time she had put in at the gym. And she did look great. But then, she looked great before she lost weight, too. And as you can tell from my smartass qualification, the exchange had me thinking — mid-exchange — about fat shaming and how to respect one person’s goal for her body while equally respecting other bodies of different shapes.  I’ve been thinking a lot about it since I stumbled on the a blog called Dances with Fat.  (Motto:  “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not size dependent.”)

It’s easy: just respect every body.  Everybody and every BODY.

This concept is at the core of the disability rights movement. That bodies of all shapes and functionalities — and the people inside them* — are equally deserving of respect. Hell, it’s at the core of the civil rights movement: that people, regardless of the color of their skin or shape of their privates, are equally deserving of respect.

But it seems like the last group of people it is respectable to out and out ridicule — besides lawyers — are fat people.  From Conan’s mocking of Kirstie Alley and a female Olympic weightlifter (who pwnd his sorry behind), to Jiminy Glick a/k/a Martin Short in a fat suit, we hear and apparently tolerate jokes about weight that we would never, in a million years, tolerate about, say, race or religion.**

And we’re supposed to “fight obesity.”  In one of many examples, the Denver Post reported in July

A 2011 state law requiring 30 minutes of physical activity a day for elementary students was supposed to mark a new tool in the fight against childhood obesity . . .

OK, that’s not a report, it’s a sentence fragment, but in that one fragment, you see the problem:  can we encourage physical exercise without “fighting obesity” — which is really asking us to fight against someone else’s body?  Why on earth is the shape of your body any of my business much less something I should fight against?

Health risks?  Everyone gets to take their own risks.  Health care costs?  If that’s the real worry — and not our judgmentalism —  then encourage healthy eating, not fat shaming.

Here I have to take issue with the First Lady — on whom I otherwise have a totally embarrassing girlcrush.  I’m very sorry she decided to label her cause “the epidemic of childhood obesity” rather than keeping the focus on kids eating a lot of stuff that’s really bad for them. You can be a healthy fat kid and you can also be a scrawny kid who eats only poptarts, peanut butter, and microwave pizzas. Though I doubt that either Lady Bird Johnson or Pat Nixon could have gotten me to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Moral:  Be happy with your body; don’t judge other people’s bodies; eat more fruits and vegetables!

For example, from a website about my favorite fruit, I <Heart> Coffee

Graphic featuring 3 red coffee beans that reads: "Coffee is technically made out of FRUIT! HECK YES! That takes care of that food group."

 

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*Assumes a duality that we could argue over — from a philosophical, religious, and/or identity perspective — for days, possibly millennia.

** Outside the fringes of the Republican party.

 

 

This is why I never read comments on news stories

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On Friday, the judge in our case against Hollister stores and their inaccessible front entrances ordered that the violations be remedied within three years.

Red Alert Politics — “an online publication written by and for young conservatives” — gave the case a straightforward, factual write-up.  There are two comments.  The first is I guess a typical conservative response:  it’s their store; they can do what they want.  Not respectful; not even legal; but plain vanilla conservative.

The second comment was this, by someone designated with a little star as a “Top Commenter”:

yeah well obama is all about controlling and lying…he’ll cost anyone money he can, direct the DOJ to infringe on multiple constitutional rights and keep doing it…

think about this, any speech charge, using what you say in court against you – is against the first amendment, that is saying that you’re freedom is speech can be used against you – that’s a law to the contrary, or the second ammendment – you have the right to keep and bear arms….

article 6 is the supremacy clause and the oath that judicial branches, judges, senators, congressmen, even the president takes….

any charge for a speech or a gun is unconstitutional — ever wonder why when they charge people with murder charges, the gun NEVER EVER comes up? lawyers of that caliber would shit on it….just like america needs to shit on obama, and carry guns, and exercise their god given rights, that their ancestors fought to ensure were protected.

So in response to the fact that Hollister stores will be required to fix their raised front entrances to make them accessible to customers in wheelchairs, we are supposed to “shit on obama and carry guns.”  Ladies and Gentlemen, I present:  Conservative Logic and Spelling 101.

 

The Modern Conservative Movement: randomly insulting your neighbors.

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Several days after the election, while my in-laws were at their local gym, someone slipped this under their windshield wiper:

That’s right, some industrious jerk in Parker, Colorado, took it upon himself to create and print these little flyers, and walk around putting them on his neighbors’ cars.   Getting an early start on the 2016 GOP Campaign to Win Votes through Random Insults.

“Fail.” You keep using that word . . .

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Since my brother and I appear to be communicating by blog these days (::waving::  Hi, Bruce!), I’d like to respond to this post* by paraphrasing my second favorite movie line:**  “‘Fail.’  You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Republicans are fond of saying that Obama is a failed president, that his policies have failed, and that there’s just a whole lot of fail going on.  The only possible definition they could have in mind for the word “fail” is “not doing what Republicans would like a president to do.”  Because by any reasonable, apolitical, measure Obama is a resounding success.  I’d really like to know how the definition of “fail” accounts for:

  1. Killing bin Laden.
  2. Saving the US auto industry.
  3. Repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” ending defense of DOMA in court, and supporting marriage equality.
  4. Supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi.
  5. Signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
  6. Getting us out of an expensive and destructive war we should never have started.
  7. Appointing two righteous women to the Supreme Court.
  8. Passing Obamacare.
  9. Passing the Stimulus.
  10. Passing Wall Street Reform — not enough, but it’s better than nothing.

This is just sort of Amy’s top ten; there are a number of websites devoted to listing the President’s accomplishments, including

There are, in fact, several very business-oriented metrics that suggest President Obama is a success.  For example, the Dow was at about 8,000 when Bush left office; it closed at 12,820 on Friday.  (This continues the general trend that the Dow likes Democratic presidents much more than Republicans.) And Corporate profits are way up under Obama.   So, um, “socialist” doesn’t mean what they think it means either.

I think that leaves for the definition of “failed” when used as an adjective in the Republican mantra “failed president” such things as

  • Failing to cut taxes for millionaires.
  • Failing to appoint Federalist Society members to the Supreme Court.
  • Failing to leave the health of our citizens to the mercies of the perverse incentives of the insurance industry.
  • Failing to continue the war in Iraq.
  • Failing to not be concerned about bin Laden.

Ultimately, it is perfectly reasonable for Republicans like my brother to disagree with Obama.  But calling his administration “failed” seems like a weirdly transparent but ultimately content-free branding campaign.

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* The upshot of Bruce’s post is that all teen-age boys do cruel things, so we should not judge Mitt Romney by his decision to assault a classmate to cut off his hair or physically trick a blind teacher into walking into a door.   I don’t think any of my brother’s escapades (he takes the fifth but I’m aware of at least some small percentage of them) rise to the level of cruelty the Washington Post article describes of Romney.  But if in fact all boys do these things, perhaps it’s time to elect a girl to the presidency.

** My favorite is “Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna.  Never will.”  Don’t ask me why.  I have actually used this quote on opposing counsel, though not to his face.  We have an opposing counsel who has, on his voice mail, a pompous quote-of-the-day, which you have to listen to, all the way through, before leaving him a voicemail.  It’s generally something from Gandhi, or the Buddha, or a Hallmark card, and it’s often very long, with no option to push # and just skip it.  After several years of superhuman effort exerted toward not saying, “Dude, you are working your ass off to deny the civil rights of people with disabilities; stop it with the quotes, already,” I finally left him two quotes of my own.  The first was this one; the second was “I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.”   No reaction to either one from him, but I cracked myself up!