The Automatik

Last night’s episode of The Daily Show played a clip of Glenn Beck from the 2010 CPAC.

CPAC, 2010

Watch the whole thing (if you can stomach it) here.
The “good” part starts around 7:40 in.

Immediately it became obvious that Beck thinks he can steal his material from others and that us “progressives” are too stupid to figure it out. (Hey, we go to those government-funded libraries, too, Glenn!)

Sorry Glenn. The truth is out.

Night Shift, 1982

Watch the clip from the movie here.

I watched Bill Maher on The Daily Show last night.

You know, I was with him with the whole “religion is crazy” bit, especially when he compared the ridiculousness of Scientology with Christianity, but here’s where things started to derail for me.

Clips of Bill Maher on last night’s episode. (I can’t view these because I’m in Canada so hopefully they’ll show up for you.)

1. Referring to Barack Obama as “our boy.” Now, I know he meant “our candidate” or “our voice” or “the guy we like,” but referring to an African American as “boy” EVEN IF YOU DON’T MEAN IT “that way” is not cool. Not acceptable. Not going to cut it.

2. The reference to “witch doctors” and Sarah Palin. Granted, I understand that Maher hates all religions equally (ahem!), but usage of the term “witch doctor” in such a pejorative context just smacks of, oh, I don’t know. . . at best, imperialism and at worst, racism.

3. Then he quite literally made my stomach turn when he made a comment about how if McCain and Palin get into the White House we might have a guy in there “with a bone through his nose.”
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I was just tipped off by a friend on the Internet to this article from Cristina Page on an alleged proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define contraception as abortion.

(Note: For some background on why contraception might be considered abortion, please see my May 7 piece called “Women Are Soldiers In The Misogyny Army.” )
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This is a long article, but I urge you to read the entire thing. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and according to AlterNet. . .
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Thanks to Resist Racism for posting this video.

It is powerful stuff. The whole thing is fantastic, but it gets really good around 5:30 and then gets even better. Stay for the end; it’s a whopper.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON RESIST RACISM.

From This Pop Life:

“The Oppression Olympics” refers to the idea that somehow, you can deny someone their suffering in order to posit your own. People who play the Oppression Olympics get so hung up on their own entitlement to being the Chosen Ones of Fucked Up History that they’re defensive that anyone else would try to lay claim to that legacy, even in what is clearly a show of solidarity.

Or as someone on the LiveJournal community Debunking White put it: “the I’m-oppressed-so-you-can’t-be game.”
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In light all of the recent outrage about Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I would like to weigh in.

Until today, I had not seen the Reverend preaching, although I had heard snippets of what he had supposedly said.

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Many news sites are reporting that a Pentagon study has confirmed there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
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In a development reported in multiple Internet news sites and blogs, “a federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.” (1)

It’s difficult to get one’s head around the idea that any state would consider sex toys a threat, but apparently that is the case. According to Statesman.com:

The state also argued in a brief that Texas has legitimate “morality based” reasons for the laws, which include “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation.” (2)

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Photocollage by The Automatik

CLICK FOR IMAGE DETAIL