I've finally achieved consistency in my life. Any person of average or above intelligence can predict what I will say next with unerring accuracy. And what I say will always be wrong.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

[ItsAllAboutMeMan] Re: [progressive] Generation Bieber and the war on women's choice

 

Justin Bieber is a teenager for dog's sake.  He's not fully formed. The writer could have looked a little more balanced by praising his support for universal health, and his quote about denying people medical assistance as being "evil" - but single issue folks only want to drill in on the one thing that concerns them, and if it means worrying about what some teenager thinks about something, they can live with that. So can I, but I'm not going to respect them much for it.

She takes his rape comment out of its original context to score points - she ignored additional context Rolling Stone provided (http://justinbieberwig.com/blog/2011/03/06/justin-bieber-rolling-stone-misquoted-controversial-rape-comment/) over a month before the publication date attached below.

I like the blogger's comment:  "Does anybody really lose sleep over not knowing Justin Bieber's stance on abortion for rape victims? If you do, you should probably talk to someone."

I'm available for a little trauma counselling if Burrows needs it.

And finally:  "He's not a politician, an activist, or even a voter. So it doesn't really matter at all. Carry on."

He's not even a voter in Canada, where he lives. He's only recently become old enough to legally drive. 

All this goes for Rose and Huckabee and others who are using Bieber's comments to advance their cause too - but then, they don't have anything to do with our crowd, now do they?  To complain about them is like Hillary Clinton complaining about human rights records in other countries while we sink into tyranny. 

I think Bieber made a mistake letting himself relax around those Rolling Stone sleazes, and casting about for answers to tough questions he had probably never thought deeply about. I'm sure any of us would ignite a firestorm of protest of somethign we believe, and we're adults. What were his handlers thinking?

Remarkably, Rolling Stone's political and economic coverage is still good (or good again, after their love affair with Reagan) but on popular culture they are mainly known for getting female performers to strip down for their photo shoots. The magazine is mostly a waste, just a cesspool of gossip and trivia, and a whole lot of objectifying and exploiting women (and teenagers).  Maybe Burrows would like to take that issue on.

On the other hand, there's about 5 wars on now, I'm not going to waste any more time on this.

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:52 AM, <wytheholt@cox.net> wrote:
 

Generation Bieber and the war on choice

Justin Bieber's insulting comments about abortion and rape speak volumes about the right's success in spreading its anti-choice views, writes Madeline Burrows.

April 13, 2011

Justin Bieber performing in Philadelphia (Stephen Eckert)Justin Bieber performing in Philadelphia (Stephen Eckert)

WHAT DOES Justin Bieber have to tell us about the abortion debate? Not much, you'd think. But in its March issue, Rolling Stone magazine asked the teenage pop star what he thought about abortion, and his insensitive response--and the lack of criticism he got for it--exemplifies both how much ground the pro-choice movement has lost and the need to rebuild an unapologetic abortion rights movement.

According to Bieber, abortion is killing a baby, and rape "happens for a reason." Sound familiar? That's because these are right-wing talking points their assault on a women's rights.

Anti-choice groups were quick to congratulate Bieber. Lila Rose of Live Action--the group behind the recent smear campaign against Planned Parenthood--said that she hopes Bieber's young female fan base will provide a target audience for anti-choice messaging. "We encourage all of his fans to spread the pro-life Bieber Fever," Rose said. "[T]eenage girls make up nearly a third of Live Action's 50,000 Facebook fans."

Mike Huckabee called Bieber's comments "refreshing...For the first time since 1973, more people now identify as pro-life than not. And the reason those numbers have changed is because of younger people."

Of course, we should be outraged any time a public figure--especially one as famous and popular among Tween girls as Justin Bieber--speaks so ignorantly about a woman's right to choose. But Bieber's clear lack of familiarity with any pro-choice arguments speaks to problems that are more important and far-reaching than what he said.

Unfortunately, Huckabee's assertion that more young people identify as "pro-life" than ever before is correct. The most recent Gallup Poll shows that 47 percent of Americans support a "pro-life" view, while 45 percent consider themselves pro-choice. The sharpest decrease in pro-choice sentiment is among young people aged 18 to 29. This is in keeping with a trend over the last 10 years, where pro-choice sentiment has declined nationally.

Justin Bieber--as powerful as his publicity team would like to think he is--was not the cause of this shift in public opinion, nor is his commentary on abortion and rape the driving force shaping anti-choice rhetoric today.

Rather, Bieber's offhanded comments speak volumes about the way the right wing has been able to dominate and shape the discourse around abortion. In turn, they have influenced a generation of young people who are growing up as the right to choose is being ideologically and legislatively rolled back.

The latest anti-choice attacks are more draconian than ever. Bills have been taken up in South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska that are aimed at redefining the meaning of "justifiable homicide" to include the murder of abortion providers. In Ohio, anti-choice groups are attempting to have a fetus to "testify" against pro-choice legislation. In South Dakota, women are now required to wait 72 hours before having an abortion, and to seek out "counseling" through a Crisis Pregnancy Center.

As it is, abortion is technically legal, but widely inaccessible and unaffordable. In 2005, 87 percent of U.S. counties had no abortion provider. One-third of American women live in these counties, which means they have to travel outside their county to obtain an abortion. Those statistics will undoubtedly grow with the onset of additional restrictions.

Meanwhile, comprehensive sex education continues to be rare in public and private education in the U.S. The Guttmacher Institute's 2011 study on sex education reports that in 2010 alone, the federal government spent $50 million on state-run abstinence-until-marriage programs. Thirty-two states require sex education programs to include abstinence, and only 13 states require that sex education programs be factual and accurate. Few programs deal honestly with abortion or treat sex and unplanned pregnancy as a reality of young people's lives.

So the same generation that has grown up without a fighting women's movement will be the one most affected by the recent attack on choice. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 18 percent of U.S. women who obtain abortions are teenagers. Women in their 20s obtain more than half of all abortions in the U.S.

And what about Bieber's statement against abortion even in the case of rape because "everything happens for a reason"? An original clause of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act"--Republican legislation introduced in the U.S. House this year--sought to redefine rape as "forcible rape," as if some kinds of rape are consensual.

Bieber's off-handed comments about rape and abortion represent the outcome of the right's decades-long assault on women's rights and the resulting shift in public opinion on this issue.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MAINSTREAM CRITICISMS of Bieber's interview mainly dismissed his comments because of his age. On The View, Barbara Walters said, "You can look at it as something that's coming out of a young mind that is still growing." But many elected officials--legal adults with far more power to legislate away a woman's right to choose--share Bieber's perspective.

Bieber's opinions are shaped by a political context in which the pro-choice movement has lost tremendous ground on the question of abortion. He--and millions of other young people like him--will not inevitably become pro-choice with age. If we want to transform the abortion debate, we need to start by learning the history of how a fighting women's movement defined a pro-choice atmosphere, and how that ground was lost over the ensuing decades.

Support for choice in 1973--the year that the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion legal throughout the U.S.--stood at around 75 percent, according to polls. Opinion on abortion, as well as a whole range of issues related to women's rights, was shaped by the women's liberation movement of the 1970s and its slogan "Free abortion, on demand, no apologies."

Who is to blame for the rightward shift on the question of abortion--especially in a context where Americans are shifting to the left on most other issues? A look at the aggressive strategies of the anti-choice movement versus the concessionary ones of pro-choice organizations over the last few decades offers some insight.

During the 1990s, the major pro-choice organizations threw their support behind professedly pro-choice Democratic Party candidates like Bill Clinton, deemphasizing protest and unapologetic political demands. In 1989, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America) issued a "talking points" memo to staff members instructing them not to use phrases like "a woman's body is her own to control," and to instead portray abortion as a "privacy issue." Between 1992 and 2004, there were no major pro-choice rallies in the United States.

The result? Bill Clinton was sitting in the White House when the biggest attacks on women's access to abortion to that point--including mandatory parental consent laws and enforced anti-abortion "counseling" in scores of states--were taking place. And the concessions made by Democrats during the Clinton years opened the way for the current Republican-led attack on abortion rights.

In the years that the pro-choice movement was on the retreat, anti-choice organizations were in the streets, organizing walks "for life" and pickets outside abortion clinics. The National Abortion Federation reported 16 death threats to abortion providers in the U.S. and Canada in 2009 alone, along with over 40 bombings and 175 cases of arson since 1977.

These days, it is impossible to go into a Planned Parenthood without first being verbally assaulted by anti-choice protesters--often men--telling women that they are committing murder for exercising their right to control their own bodies.

The right gained tremendous ideological ground in this period because, unlike the pro-choice movement, they refused to cede ground or make compromises. And yet, many pro-choice organizations still maintain the need to meet the anti-abortion movement in the middle.

Planned Parenthood recently ran an online video that begins: "Even anti-choice representatives speak out against the House's war on women's health care." The video then shows clips from testimony by anti-choice politicians Reps. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) and . Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.).

Among other things, these two congressmen rely on the myth that women's health and abortion access are two separate issues. It's no surprise, then, that Justin Bieber and many others like him see no contradiction between supporting universal health care and opposing abortion, as he did in his Rolling Stone interview.

Abortion is a basic medical procedure and a staple of women's health care. Without abortion access, women lack comprehensive health services. In Bieber's native Canada, abortion is a medical procedure covered by the Canada Health Act. This means Canadian women do not have to pay for abortion, though access varies widely depending on region.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

GIVEN THE right's aggressive and well-funded strategy over the past several decades, alongside the pro-choice movement's passivity, it is no surprise that thousands of young people like Justin Bieber who were born in the years after the 1980s consider themselves "pro-life."

The anti-choice right-wing is clearly trying to attract young people with an array of new youth-led organizations and right-wing social media. CNN recently ran a special called "Right on the Edge," which highlighted young right-wing "activists" like Lila Rose and her anti-choice organization Live Action. Rose--with CNN's blessing--is portrayed as an embattled activist in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.--she even cites his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" as inspiration for her work.

Live Action's blog features photos of young anti-choice activists at a rally holding signs that say, "Women deserve better than abortion." Calling itself "a youth-led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending abortion," Live Action organizes rallies and urges young people to get involved and "grow the movement."

But Live Action does not speak for the majority of teenagers in the U.S. Teenagers are not mindless drones without opinions or agency of their own. Hundreds of students walked out of high schools across Wisconsin in February and March to protest Wis. Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union law. Undocumented students led the sit-ins in congressional offices last year against Arizona's racial profiling law S.B. 1070.

And despite the right-wing shift in abortion rhetoric and legislation, thousands of young people still consider themselves pro-choice. In fact, in the past several months, the attack on abortion rights has been met by an inspiring outpouring of activism from the left--in large part led by young women and men who refuse to go back to the reality of their parents' generation, when abortion was a crime and thousands of women died from unsafe abortions every year.

We need to rebuild an unapologetic abortion rights movement that can educate this generation about what life was like before Roe v. Wade, and explain how legal--and funded--access to abortion saves millions of women's lives ever year.

In the meantime, perhaps we should remind Bieber what one of his idols, Tupac Shakur, rapped about abortion: "And since a man can't make one / He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one." This is the kind of unapologetic stance our movement needs to take.

We can't let the right wing obscure the voices of thousands of young women who will face unintended pregnancies this year. When pro-choice activists pour into the streets and demand no more concessions to a woman's right to choose, Bieber and thousands of teenagers like him will be singing a different tune.

http://socialistworker.org/2011/04/13/generation-bieber-and-war-choi




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Thursday, April 14, 2011

[ItsAllAboutMeMan] speaking truth to power.

 

Chomsky says there's no point in speaking truth to power, they already know the truth and they don't want to have anything to do with it.  He says to speak truth about power. I like to comment on various websites (of mouthpieces for power), the rationale (or rationalization?) being that they won't be responsive, but other people may see it, and may be encouraged  to think independently and to speak, and.  Today's windmill tilting:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/04/14/journalism-afghanistan#comments

 
0 new comment was just posted. Show
"Listening to NPR is always good for a laugh. Your guest talked about journalists in Afghanistan encountering troubles because they had to talk to the Taliban as part of their job. Wow, why do they have to do it? You don't have to. The only people you ever talk to are government pr flacks, and former government employees now shilling for this or that "think" tank. I'm hearing an example of that RIGHT NOW on Talk Of The Nation, but it's the norm for all your programs. I enjoyed the guest patting herself (and you) on the back by saying western reporters have a laser-like focus on the facts. What you have, as you and I both know, is a laser-like focus on telling the story that your governmental and corporate bosses want you to tell. Congratulations! If Orwell weren't already dead, I'm sure a short time with NPR would do him in very quickly"

The listeners are still way smarter than NPR gives them credit for, many call up and ask inappropriate questions despite the relentless, lulling message that our rulers may not always agree on everything, but they are all honest, smart people doing their best to take good care of us. I used to listen for NPR for hours, now I can only stand a few minutes at a time.

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

[ItsAllAboutMeMan] RE: hey there

 



  • Matt Love
    3 Min ago
    Matt says
    Hey, Meghann

    I'm glad you noticed how beautiful I am.  You and I have something very important in common:  we agree that I'm the best, and we both love me forever.  drop me a line at mattlove1@gmail.com and I'll tell you more about myself.

    Matt
     
  • Meghann Diplock
    50 Min ago
    Meghann says
    your thе mоst beautіful рersоn аlіve yоu'rе thе bеst аnd i lоve уou forеvеr, and аlways lоvehttp://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZ29vLmdsLzBhN3
    Uw
     

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    Monday, April 11, 2011

    [ItsAllAboutMeMan] Fwd: Howard Goes Mac

     

    Sometimes Bob is great, sometimes he just bites. This is one of the latter times. I guess he's never seen this vid (or the dozens of copycats):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg

    Largely inspired by this vid, my wife got a Droid (not an HTC Evo) and she's very happy with it.  I was an early mac fanatic, but for 15 years, more or less forced to use PCs.  When I finally got a Mac, I was wondering what the big deal was about. I have both now, and I spend most my time on the PC.

    And why exactly would I take Howard Stern's word for anything?  Bob's devotion to that slimebag is incomprehensible to me, as incomprehensible as his devotion to Steve Jobs.

    I'll leave with a link to a vid from a guy that really understands Steve Jobs:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX5n5G3nFx0

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    From: Bob Lefsetz <bob@lefsetz.com>
    Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 6:37 PM
    Subject: Howard Goes Mac
    To: mattlove1@gmail.com

    And he can't stop talking about his iPhone.

    First there was the switch to Verizon.  "I even have a connection in the basement!"

    Then there was the talk about BBM.  That was the rage, for a minute, using BlackBerry Messenger to stay in touch with your friends.

    But then Howard Stern switched to an Android.  Because of the apps!  Everyone was talking about it.

    But he just could not get the thing to last.  The battery always pooped out.  He downloaded an app to track its draining, he was working on the problem.

    Meantime, the iPhone comes out on Verizon and the MacHeads in his posse start telling him he needs to switch.

    NO WAY!  Howard needs a keyboard.

    He's resistant.  Like a little kid who's decided he loves his blankie and won't give it up.

    But then they convince him to switch.

    AND EVERY DAY HOWARD TESTIFIES HOW MUCH HE LOVES HIS iPHONE!

    And he switches to Mac.  Buys a lot of photography gear and everybody says for that pursuit you've got to be on a Mac and Howard goes to the Apple Store and loads up.

    And when he talks about how much he loves his gear, people start sending him accessories and he tells them to STOP!  He's RICH!  HE CAN AFFORD TO BUY HIS OWN GEAR!

    And how did Howard Stern get rich?  Did he rob a bank?  Did he have a rich father?

    No, he earned it.

    And this combination of being self-made and uninfluenceable makes whatever he says catnip to his audience.  Whatever Howard says, they listen to, they do, BECAUSE HOWARD STERN IS AN INFLUENCER!

    Oh, I could wax rhapsodic about Apple, welcome Howard Stern to the tribe, but that's not my point.  My point is he speaks and people listen.

    And they don't listen to those being paid to hawk/tweet/sell.

    Now I'm not saying paid spots never work.  But now, more than ever, we want trusted sources, who come to their preferences themselves.

    These are the people you want to reach.

    But how do you reach them?

    First and foremost by making a great product.

    It's almost impossible to get free Apple gear.  They don't come to your house and load you up.  People buy it based on sneezers, the others in their circle who influence them.

    And the true tipping point comes when someone like Howard, with a big media presence, joins the bandwagon.

    In other words, if you've got crap, like that Android phone Howard was using, you're just a day away from being supplanted by something better.

    There's very little good out there.  Which is why purveyors focus on the marketing.

    But if someone finds something good they tell everybody they know about it.

    Howard tells Robin not only does she need to get an iPhone, IT MUST be on Verizon.

    Robin switches to Mac.  She expresses some frustration.  Howard holds her hand by telling her she'll get up to speed quickly.

    In a nation where everybody is whored out to a corporation, where those not tied up yet are looking to do so, we only trust those who are unfettered, who are making independent choices, revealing what's good or bad from their heart.

    Like artists.  Great music sells itself.

    But agents won't tell you this.  Because they're whored out.  So is the label.  They don't want you to be you, then they won't get PAID!

    But the way to get paid and keep getting paid is to do something of quality and wait for an influencer to lead the charge.

    And if you think it's otherwise you're a cynical bastard living in the last century who's a parasite upon the community whose reign will be brief, even if it's lucrative.

    The times have changed.  Wake up.


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