The Fundamentalist Right: an oxymoron

We’ve learned a lot from this election. We’ve learned that Jerry Springer airs on PBS in Oklahoma. We learned that we should post signs on the side of the highway when you cross the Mason/Dixon line that say, 'Caution: Minds Narrow’. We learned that we must never forget that there is a large section of the country where the terms “cousins once removed” and “coitus interruptus” are pretty much the same thing. We learned that “compassionate conservatives” are most conservative with their compassion. We learned that the reason they call it America’s Heartland is because clearly the brain is not there. But mostly we have learned that if we’re not extra special very careful, America is going to hang itself with it's Bible Belt.
I know that for the next four years we’ll have to get used to seeing the clock set back on many of the advances we’ve made over the last century. These changes will be accompanied by odd ironies and logic that just don’t make sense to those of us who live outside of the faith-based community.
And come 2008 Americans will ask each other, “Are you better off now than you were 400 years ago?”
The fundamentalists want to eliminate sex education in the schools. Abstinence is the answer. Ever notice most of these folks who preach abstinence as a way to temper appetites are 75 pounds overweight? Go to Disneyland just to be sure.
Masturbation is a sin and will be outlawed. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Masturbation is “self abuse”. Masturbation is “abuse” and boxing is a sport. I personally only once suffered a knockout, but I was in training.
They don't want teenagers to have condoms, in that "Silence of the Lambskins" campaign they’re running. Then they still try to blame teen sex on rock and roll music. Teenagers have sex because they're horny and because of peer pressure. If you're going to peg teen sex on rock and roll, why don't we just blame incest on Country and Western?
Regarding a woman’s right to choose, everyone is entitled to their beliefs; this is America. My belief happens to be that life begins when you start minding your own fucking business. I have a theory that the religious right wants to haul all of the coat hangers out of the closet to make room for the gays they want to shove back in. Remember, class: "Sodomy is evil". Unless it's a Glow Stick up an Iraqi prisoner's ass, lighting the way for Freedom across the globe. Then it's a Toby Keith song.
And, finally, they refuse to believe in evolution. That part I can understand, actually. Because if you subscribe to the theory of evolution, well then, there's a tacit obligation to PARTICIPATE in evolution. For some people that's a little too much pressure. Many of the righteous can’t recognize that Faith is a way to avoid responsibility. It’s always the people with recessive genes who don't believe in evolution. “I believe in Creationism,” they’ll say. Really? I believe in critical thought. But then, my reading matter is a little more up to date than yours.

Mike Dugan-C&L

Hmm. Do you think it's really a good idea that one multinational corporation controls the vast majority of the international food supply? Haha, just kidding. Of course it's a good idea! That's why one of the first things we did when we invaded Iraq was to announce a law that farmers could no longer save their own seed:

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.

The company has used the agreements to spread its technology — giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto's genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto's genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

Poor Ted. Nobody understands him like I do. Too bad, because he's been dumped by the Waco Trib.

Just got a missive — unguided missile? — from my pal Ted Nugent saying he’s been fired by the Waco Tribune-Herald, which has new owners as of a couple of weeks ago....continue you on to read his missive.

And you can add him to the list of conservative psychos who don't understand what the First Amendment stands for.

Construct8ve, bold criticism is cool. It rocks. It can literally change the course and destiny of an individual, neighborhood, community, and nation. It is the most basic of our Constitutional rights — the 1st Amendment. Failing to criticize emboldens politicians to stay on course regardless how many icebergs are dead ahead. Political correctness is the cancer of journalism, not its cure.

America and Texas was born with a defiant streak. Those genes still flow through my veins. To request that I not criticize is to spit on the memory of those who gave birth to America. Again, I criticize where I believe criticism is due. That’s my civic job and your job as Americans. If the editor of this newspaper doesn’t like that, he will have to fire me. I will not surrender to his wrong demands.

In the words of another famous American military man, William Barrett

Travis, commander of the Alamo: God & Texas. Victory or death.

Who can forget the Alamo? He hits all the right notes this time, doesn't he? You have to read some of the comments for some real humor.

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[H/t Media Matters]

Brian Kilmeade put on a classic display of the way today's right-wingers cling to old half-baked notions of race and eugenics yesterday morning on Fox and Friends, discussing a Scandinavian study of the benefits of marriage:

Kilmeade: Leave it to the Finns and Swedes to come up with something. Because that's a -- we are, we're a, we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other --

[Crosstalk]

Kilmeade: I mean the Swedes -- the Swedes have, uh, pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes. Because that's the rule. Finland -- Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we marry everybody. So we marry Italians and Irish and --

Dave Briggs: OK, so this study does not apply.

Kilmeade: It does not apply to us.

Other species? We marry other species? Since when? What, is this the man-on-dog sex that Rick Santorum was on about?

And what the hell do "pure genes" -- whatever those are -- have to do with marriage behavior?

It's astonishing, really, the level of complete and utter idiocy that passes for professional news talk on our cable TV these days. Charles Pierce is right.

Pharyngula:

Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn't notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved's latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

But, he hastens to add, modern African-American genetics have been leavened with the genes of recent, self-selected immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, so their unfortunate stay-at-home genes have a "less decisive influence".

Okay, I realize that being a conservative pundit means never having to say anything factual, but how can anyone be so unafraid to show his utterly bigoted ignorance? Does any brave soul want to listen to his program and get a list of sponsors so we can ask them if this is the kind of idiocy that they want their businesses associated with?