Remember Gonzales v. Carhart? That's the Supreme Court decision from last year that upheld the Congressional ban on partial birth abortion. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion, and lawyers tied themselves up in knots trying to interpret it. Most agree it was a narrow victory for the pro-life cause, but it was a victory. That can be seen in last Friday's decision by the 8th Circuit to allow a South Dakota abortion law to go into effect, a case in which FRC filed a friend of the court brief.
Prior to Gonzales v. Carhart, such laws were routinely struck down before they ever came into binding, legal force. Kennedy specifically noted, however, that this approach (another of the distortions abortion causes to the law) would no longer be followed. If someone wanted to challenge a law as it was applied to them, they could, and the court would decide whether specific provisions of that law, rather than the entire law, violated the Constitution. The 8th Circuit applied that logic to a challenge to South Dakota's law, and allowed the law to go into effect.
The law merely provides that women seeking an abortion should be given complete information about the risks involved, etc, but Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry wanted to stop it at any cost, as usual, regardless of the fact women deserve to receive such information. However, the 8th Circuit rejected their old "business as ususal" approach to litigation concerning abortion and replaced it with some common sense.
In the state of Virginia, no animal may be hunted on Sundays with the exception of raccoons, which may be hunted until 2 a.m.
In Prince William County, VA: no person may keep a skunk as a pet, it is illegal to cuss about another, and it is illegal to park a car on railroad tracks. (Though Darwin's theory on natural selection might take care of any scofflaws of that one.)
In North Carolina organizations may not hold their meetings while the members present are in costume. Which is why the McClusky family does not hold it's reunions there.
In Dunn, NC no one may visit departed love ones after dark and in Zebulon, NC no one may stand outside the police station for any purpose after dark. That last law would also presumably include police officers so if you want to commit a crime in Zebulon, wait till sundown. Also in Zebulon no one may walk on top of the water tank of the city, presumably to discourage any cheap Jesus imitators.
As expected the state of California has some of the weirdest laws on the books. In the Golden State it's illegal to ride a bicycle in a swimming pool, animals are banned from mating publicly within 1,500 feet of a tavern, school or place of worship and it is a misdemeanor to shoot at any kind of game from a moving vehicle, unless the target is a whale. Apparently after failing as a sea captain Ahab became a CA state legislator.
Lastly, in San Jose, CA, you can't sleep in an outhouse without the owner's permission. A word of advice, if the owner says yes, do not, under any circumstances, agree to sleep in the basement.
Michael, one additional point on Kennedy's decision and also a comment on castration of sex offenders if I may.
As a military blog first pointed out and major news sources picked up, Justice Kennedy got a number of things wrong in his decision. Justice Kennedy used as part of his justification that the federal government has gone out of its way to NOT include the death penalty for child rapists. However that simply is not true:
But just two years ago, Congress did enact a law permitting the death penalty for the rape of a child, which makes the number of authorizing jurisdictions seven (Louisiana, Georgia, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and the military), not six.
Section 552(b) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, 119 Stat. 3136, 3264 (2006), provides that "[u]ntil the President otherwise provides pursuant to" UCMJ article 56, "the punishment which a court-martial may direct for an offense under" the amended UCMJ article 120 "may not exceed the following limits: . . . For an offense under subsection (a) (rape) or subsection (b) (rape of a child), death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct."
That is a congressional statute expressly authorizing the death penalty for the rape of a child. How come neither side in the Kennedy case even mentioned it?
Personally I am opposed to the death penalty - but at the same time do not believe there is a pit in Hell deep enough to put anyone who would harm a child in. I am also not convinced castration is an answer. Castration only reduces testosterone levels and
may control arousal and libido. However rape of any kind is never a sexual act but one of violence and control and castration would never be a surefire way to suppress that deviant and despicable behavior. Child rapists deserve a life in prison with no chance of parole in my opinion - their vile acts have little chance of rehabilitation.
On the same day that Justice Kennedy ruled that "the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed a bill into law authorizing the castration of child rapists. Certain sections of the comentariat-up to and including Fox News-have ridiculed the measure.
Jindal's law replacing execution with castration, however, is not without precedent. When William of Normandy conquered Anglo-Saxon England in 1066 he abolished the death penalty at the urging of the Roman Catholic Church-under whose banner he had won the Battle of Hastings. Nonetheless, a punishment was necessary for capital crimes, so in his Coronation Charter King William said, "I also forbid that anyone shall be slain or hanged for any fault, but let his eyes be put out and let him be castrated..." Justice Kennedy, having followed the inclinations of Bishop Odo, finds himself faced with Bobby Jindal deploying edicts suited to King William. Plus ça change...
This is further evidence that when Kennedy references any sort of "evolving standards of decency" his referent is likely a fiction, and he is merely citing his own preferences and proclivities.
I'm seriously not trying to pick on our friends to the north. I grew up right near the border in Upstate New York and have fond memories of trips across the border. However what are they thinking by giving the man responsible for bringing legalized abortion to their country twenty years ago the Nation's highest honor, the Order of Canada.
His comments show he is a man who has no remorse and in fact credits himself for Canada's low crime rate because his efforts have successfully killed off generations that might have committed crime.
He said that in the 20 years since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal law against abortion in the case that bears his name, abortion has become one of the safest surgical procedures. Women are no longer killed, injured or left infertile because of abortions, he said, and violent crime has become much rarer due to a decline in unwanted pregnancies.
"There are people out there who would otherwise have been murdered. That makes me very happy indeed," he said.
According to Canadian abortion groups over 110,000 abortions are performed in Canada every year a ratio of about 30 abortions to every 100 live births. There are no real conscience protections to speak of and pro-life counselors are not permitted by law to directly advise an individual to not obtain an abortion.
This man who is responsible for at least 2,200,000 deaths in Canada since 1988 does not see himself as the violent one but according to him the pro-life churches in Canada are the vicious ones
He said he is surprised that the negative reaction to his honour from religious groups "is not more violent that it already is. The negative opinions all come from the usual suspects: the Catholic Church, fundamentalists, women opposed to women's rights."
His opinion on the views of people of faith is eerily similar to those who are pro-abortion such as People for the American Way and Americans Untied for Seperation of Church and State in the U.S.:
He said opposition to abortion on religious grounds does not trouble him, "as long as they are not allowed to influence other people, by force or by any other means."
This week in Minnesota, the location of the Republican Party Convention this summer, new abortion statistics have been released:
Abortions in Minnesota declined 1.5 percent last year, after an increase in 2006. The 2006 numbers showed a 5 percent increase overall and a 16 percent increase among teens 17 and younger.
This year, the number of abortions among teens 17 and younger declined, but the number of abortions among 18- and 19-year olds increased. The net effect was just four fewer teen procedures in 2007.
While it is always good to see the number of children being killed go down, clearly even one is too many. The reasons listed for having an abortion included not wanting children at this time, already being a single parent, the economy and having unfulfilled educational goals.
The local abortuary, Planned Parenthood, notes that abortions actually increased in 2006, but conveniently cites that as an "anomaly." There are others who have perhaps a better explanation for the numbers:
Scott Fischbach, executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, said the 2006 increase was a problem - corrected in 2007 with $2.4 million in state funding for programs promoting abortion alternatives.
Considering the increase in economic concerns, he recommends more funding for alternatives, including programs that provide women with housing, education and adoption planning.
"In so doing," he said, "we believe that the mothers and their babies will flourish."
Activist Alveda King points out another sad fact of the Minnesota numbers that is certainly no "anomaly."
"While African Americans comprise only 4.5 percent of Minnesota's population, black received almost 25 percent of the abortions performed on Minnesotans," stated Dr. King. "Nationally, black women are 4.8 times more likely to have an abortion than white women. It's hard to believe, as the abortion lobby would have you believe, that this discrepancy is caused strictly by economics."
"Abortion has been a scourge on all Americans, but particularly African Americans," added Dr. King. "The numbers speak for themselves. The abortion industry has targeted minority neighborhoods for years. It's not only time that our leaders investigated why this is happening, it's time they stopped indirectly subsidizing these killings by giving our money to businesses that do abortions."
Michigan citizens will likely be considering a ballot initiative this fall on embryonic stem cell research. The proposal would promote more embryonic stem cell research by overturning Michigan's long-standing prohibition on destruction of embryos for experiments.
In Missouri, a judge has denied a temporary restraining order on disbursement of life sciences funds. The lawsuit will still be heard; it attempts to clarify clashing guidelines between prohibitions in the funding of life sciences projects (prohibiting use of the funds for any human cloning) and the new provisions in the Missouri constitution, from the 2006 Amendment 2, that preclude funding prohibitions. This is the first legal test of the new constitutional provisions that allow human embryo cloning in Missouri.
Louisiana Governor Jindal signed into law a prohibition on use of state funds for human cloning, while Ohio Gov. Strickland used his line-item veto to remove a similar prohibition in a funding bill, keeping human cloning and its funding legal in Ohio.
No eggs or cloning, latest California grants favor iPS cells
An analysis in Nature's stem cell blog, The Niche, notes that no proposals for nuclear transfer cloning were approved in the latest round of grants awarded by California's stem cell agency, CIRM. In fact, no proposals were funded that called for use of human eggs.
Instead, the focus was on embryonic-like iPS cells and comparisons between iPS and "traditional" ESC.
No proposals were funded regarding adult stem cells either though, except for one that proposed creating stem cells using spermatogonial stem cells, iPS cells, and ESC for comparison.
For a good discussion of this issue regarding using human eggs for cloning, see this recent commentary by Jesse Reynolds.
"Empty nesters looking to relive all the fun of raising children without reliving the turbulent teens are adopting some of our closest relatives: monkeys.
Families are dressing up capuchins, feeding them at the family dinner table and treating them like any other member of the family. They're called monkids."
Apparently these "monkids" once they are older are not unlike some ungrateful real children in that they turn on their "parents"
"I walked into the room and he just, he bit me everywhere he could bite me. He ripped my elbow open, right across my wrist, on my hand, the back of my knee," Sampey said. "And it all happened within, like, three seconds. I got out of the room as fast as I could. But I got out of the room bleeding all over the place."
If you combine this with Spain's parliament recently voicing its support for the rights of apes to life and freedom in what was the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans then I think we all know where this is headed.
Do you think it is coincidence this is all happening after Charlton Heston died?
He Is Welcome In the United States - But Do We Really Want Him Back?
During the Vietnam War deserters would flee to Canada where they were welcome as "conscientious objectors," since there was a draft going on and, supposedly, those fleeing were morally opposed to war. Things are very different now that the U.S. has voluntary military service - yet we still tend to get the best and the brightest who sign up and stay in. Unfortunately some in the military are unwilling to fill obligations that they freely signed up for and are still fleeing to Canada. However Canada realizes these soldiers are deserters and not some sort of peace heroes. Unfortunately (or amusingly) it appears that the Canadian Left is just as desperate and clueless as their American counterparts (i.e. Cindy Sheehan) in picking those they stand up for.
Since deserting his unit in Iraq and fleeing to Canada two years ago, Corey Glass has become the poster boy of the war resisters movement. Thursday in Toronto, supporters are planning to protest his scheduled deportation back to the United States.
But it turns out Glass has had little reason to be on the lam, ABCNews has learned.
Unknown to him and his legion of supporters, Glass, 25, was actually discharged from the U.S. Army shortly after he went AWOL in 2006 . . .
"I had absolutely no idea that I had been discharged," said Glass when ABC News informed him of his status. "This is insane. This is so weird. There are no warrants? No one is looking for me?"
According to U.S. Army documents and officials, Glass was discharged from the California National Guard Dec. 1, 2006, four months after he arrived in Canada.
"He is not considered absent without leave. He is not considered a deserter," said Maj. Nathan Banks, an Army spokesman. "He is running for no reason. He is fully welcome in the United States."
Hold on their Major Banks - can we put it to a vote to see if we want him back?
Lots of news lately hasn't made it into the mainstream press.
One big item only covered by specialty news sources, but very significant, was news from Australian scientists that they had successfully treated Parkinson's disease in animals using human nasal adult stem cells. In some cases the nasal adult stem cells came from Parkinson's patients, indicating they could be the source of their own stem cell treatment.
There are numerous advantages to these adult stem cells:
Patient specific stem cells
Disease specific stem cells
Can generate the cells of interest in a disease
Can make them work in an animal model of disease
Takes 20 mins to get tissue in outpatient setting
One month to grow cells
Seventy lines established thus far
Being patient specific there are no transplant rejection issues
No cancer formation as with embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent cells
Large numbers can be grown to study the disease and transplant the cells
No need for embryos, nuclear transfer cloning, animal-human hybrids
No need to inject new genes or retroviruses as in induced pluripotent cells
Highly efficient whereas embryo and reprogrammed skin cells are not
No ethical issues
No destruction of tissues
No need to hyperovulate women to get multiple eggs for embryo generation and cloning
This is the same group that showed in 2006 that they could get multiple tissue types from this adult stem cell source, including heart, nerve, liver, and brain cells.
Judge Rules Free Speech is Fine, As Long As No One Hears You
Apparently a judge in Virginia thinks a large cross is "shouting" and is ordering a church not to display their cross at a Fourth of July picnic. Would this judge have the same "noise" concerns if it was a 30 foot tall Ronald McDonald balloon or a Good Year blimp advertisement? Luckily Alliance Defense Fund is on the case.
Judge denies Christian group's request to display cross
By Austin Wright
NORFOLK
A local Christian group has a right to free speech but they "don't have to shout," a federal judge in Norfolk said Tuesday when he denied the group's request to display a 12-foot-tall cross at a Fourth of July celebration in a Chesapeake city park.
Last year city employees asked Christian Rights Ministries to remove the cross from the celebration at Lakeside Park following a parade. The group alleges that city employees said the cross was "too blatantly Christian," but the employees said during Tuesday's court hearing that they had the cross removed for safety reasons. More . .
It's Nice To Have A Friend Who Will Stick Their Neck Out For You
Anyone who knows me (well those who will admit to it at least) knows I disdain zoos and circuses (despite having done a stint at the latter.) I couldn't help but chuckle at the following story:
Giraffe helps camels, zebras escape from circus
Updated 04:01 p.m., June 30, 2008
Amsterdam police say 15 camels, two zebras and an undetermined number of llamas and potbellied swine briefly escaped from a traveling Dutch circus after a giraffe kicked a hole in their cage.
Police spokesman Arnout Aben says the animals wandered in a group through a nearby neighborhood for several hours after their 5:30 a.m. breakout.
The animals were back at the circus later Monday after being rounded up by police and circus workers with the assistance of dogs. Aben says neighbors fed some of the animals _ which he said was a bad idea _ but they were tame and nobody was hurt.
Says Aben: "You have to imagine somebody rubbing his eyes first thing in the morning and saying, 'Am I seeing things or is that 15 camels walking past?'"
"Defamatory statements" - or the politically incorrect truth?
The theme of this week's episode of the FX series 30 Days was homosexual adoption. FRC's own Vice President for Policy, Peter Sprigg, was interviewed, during which he referred to several problems with homosexual parenting that are rooted in the homosexual lifestyle itself: "Homosexuality is associated with higher rates of sexual promiscuity, sexually-transmitted diseases, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse."
Predictably, homosexual activists were outraged by what they characterized as a "defamatory statement," and pulled out all the stops to coerce the producers to edit out Peter's statements. To their credit, the producers refused, and those watching were at least presented with the other side of the story, which contradicts the positive and uncritical depictions of homosexual parenting typically found in media stories.
But what about the statement itself - are homosexual activists correct in asserting that there is "no credible scientific research that backs Sprigg's claim"? There is, in fact, credible research indicating the negative health effects of homosexuality, including the following:
"require any federal building constructed for public use, with a total expenditure in excess of $1,500,000, to have a 2 to 1 ratio for women and men's restrooms."
In case you were wondering this is all done at taxpayer expense.
The letter was filled with wonderful facts such as
"According to the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), individuals vary significantly in the frequency with which they need to urinate and defecate, with pregnant women and women with stress incontinence needing to urinate more frequently."
Uhhh, may I ask why OSHA is studying such things? I would think it is not really an issue taxpayers would take (forgive me) sitting down.
Three studies in the early 1990's gave birth to the widespread belief that homosexuality is determined before birth by some biological (possibly genetic) factor. Although those three studies have been largely discredited, the search for the "gay gene" or, in some cases, the "gay brain," goes on. Now another such study is in the news, reporting difference between the heterosexual and homosexual brain.
Studies like this are invariably reported as providing evidence that people are "born gay" and can't change, when they don't provide anything of the kind. All they show is a limited correlation between certain biological markers and homosexuality, but one of the first principles of statistics and science is that "correlation is not causation."
I can't critique this entire study on technical grounds, although I have read it. The sample size of 20 to 25 in each group (by sex and sexual orientation) seems fairly small, but the authors claim statistical significance for their findings. However, they give no explanation of how the study subjects were recruited, so there's no way to evaluate whether this sample is likely to be representative of the larger population.
What many people don't understand is that conservatives on the issue of homosexuality have never denied that there may be biological factors which correlate with homosexuality, or even ones which may, to some extent, influence its development. But what has never been found is any such factor that can be proven to cause homosexuality in a deterministic way.
If there were a genetic or biological factor which could fix and determine for all time that a person would be homosexual, then you would expect that factor to be present in every homosexual and in no heterosexual. That's not what you find in this study, or in any of the similar studies. While there may be a difference is the average level of "cerebral asymmetry," for example, there's also considerable overlap between members of the homosexual and heterosexual sample.
One irony in this study is that, in essence, all it is saying is that the brains of homosexual men are more "feminine" that those of heterosexual men, and the brains of homosexual women are more "masculine" than those of heterosexual women. But don't homosexual activists object to that as stereotyping? I thought they liked to claim that sexual orientation and gender identity are two completely different things.
The real bottom line here is that the "gay brain" and "gay gene" studies have so far produced findings that are only marginally interesting from a scientific perspective. The real reason these studies get so much media attention is because proving that people are born homosexual and cannot change would serve the political purpose of persuading people that sexual orientation is like race, and that it should be treated like race under the law. That's all that's really going on in the brains of homosexual activists.
An Open Letter to Rob Boston on Secular Arguments against Same-Sex "Marriage"
[Note: On June 17, Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State posted an item on their blog criticizing Family Research Council for ads that we ran in several California newspapers for Father's Day. Below is a response.]
Dear Rob,
I read your June 17 blog post in which you said, "I challenge the FRC and other Religious Right groups to come up with one good secular reason against same-sex marriage. I don't think they can do it."
Perhaps you just haven't been paying attention. I am sending you a complimentary copy of my book, Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage (Washington: Regnery, 2004-also available online). You can ignore Chapter 8 if you like, since it offers nine pages of religious arguments. Concentrate instead on Chapters 1-7, which offer 107 pages of secular arguments against same-sex marriage.
Not all of California is one banana short of a bunch. One area of sanity is in Kern County where the elected clerk and auditor-controller, Ann Barnett, has decided instead of being complicit in the destruction of marriage that Kern County would stop performing marriages. The reactions to her actions expose quite a bit of the intolerance Christians can expect more and more of as the "same-sex" marriage movement goes beyond California.
On Thursday, she appeared stung by critics who have labeled her a "religious terrorist" and called for her resignation; by the hate mail that has flooded her office; by the unceasing requests for interviews, so many that she has unplugged her home phone.
"I'm just a county clerk trying to do my job," said the tall and soft-spoken 53-year-old, dressed in business attire, hands folded primly on her lap. "I wasn't out to make a statement."
The local leader in the area's homosexual community makes it very clear what should happen to people who disagree with him.
"If it really bothers her conscience, she might want to consider stepping down," Wedell said.
25 years after the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the leader of the World Health Organization's efforts against the disease has finally admitted the obvious--there will be no worldwide AIDS pandemic among the general heterosexual population.
"Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients," reported the British newspaper The Independent, which published an interview with Kevin de Cock of the WHO on June 8
In the article, however, one line stood out in particular:
"Any revision of the threat was liable to be seized on by those who rejected HIV as the cause of the disease, or who used the disease as a weapon to stigmatise high risk groups, he said."
In other words: We couldn't tell the truth, because it might have made people think there is something wrong with homosexuality, prostitution, and drug use.
What do you do if you're a pro-embryonic stem cell physician and can't get federal dollars to fund your research?
The answer is obvious: make a Lifetime/afterschool special - caliber movie that demonizes conservative pro-life senators.
The Los Angeles Times reports on a new film called Hope premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie depicts a pro-life U.S. Senator whose son is injured in an automobile accident. The son's only "hope," of course, is an experimental embryonic stem cell treatment --- which he must travel to India to receive. He can't get it in the United States because of his father's evil polices.
The Los Angeles Times could barely control its praise for abortionist Harvey Karman whose May 6th death was announced by the paper this past weekend. Unfortunately for The Times, the truth cannot be smothered in the internet age, and it had to grudgingly give up some facts about Karman.
The obituary writer, Elaine Woo, revealed that "[w]hile training in psychology at UCLA, [Karman] started an underground abortion referral service and eventually performed abortions himself, for which he was convicted and sent to state prison for 2 1/2 years." I don't think psychologists are "trained" to perform surgery - or am I missing something? In truth, Karman was practicing medicine as a surgeon without training, a license, or facility privileges. His criminality actually involved killing Joyce Johnson in April 1956 after he botched her abortion.
Well, Karman gained early release from prison and went on to butcher more women - once again, here is Ms. Woo:
"Karman also had many detractors, particularly because of his attempt to revolutionize second-trimester abortions with a device called the super coil, which was inserted into the uterus and expanded when exposed to moisture, causing a miscarriage. It caused serious complications, including hemorrhaging and infection, when it was used on about a dozen women in Philadelphia on Mother's Day in 1972."
One of the activists, Carol Downer, who co-founded feminist women's health clinics in SoCal in the 1970's told the Times, "Harvey engaged in some very irresponsible experimentation on women's bodies." "Irresponsible experimentation" - that is very charitable. But, Downer had to offer praise because Harvey was "a real change agent." And, if a change agent wants to make an omelet, he may have to break a few eggs.
If you want to read a very different bio of Karman - read all three pages of this web post written some time before Karman's death; and then this on the death of Joyce Johnson. The account rendered here of the carnage Karman wrought on Mother's Day 1972 in Philly is somewhat more detailed:
"Keeping sloppy records, working well into the night, the abortion team managed to pack the 15 patients selected for 'super coil' abortions by the early morning hours. One woman ended up hospitalized in Pennsylvania due to lacerations. Others needed to be hospitalized upon return to Chicago. Local health authorities contacted the Centers for Disease Control, which investigated and found that two of the patients had been lost to follow-up, one required a hysterectomy, one was hospitalized for twenty days with infection, and one continued to bleed until she became anemic. In total, nine of the 13 patients who could be tracked down had suffered complications."
What a guy!!! For more details on Harvey Karman's career as a butcher, see Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., and Richard N. Ostling, Aborting America (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1979): pp. 85-93 (Nathanson, a distinguished ob/gyn, provides excellent medical-scientific insights into Karman's medical activities and inventions.)
Susan G. Komen Foundation has ties to country's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood
Please click below to see the facts on the Komen Foundation- Planned Parenthood ties including the fact that Susan G. Komen for the Cure awarded 72 grants to Planned Parenthood afflilates during the years 2000 through 2005. When stopping to speak with a Susan G. Komen for the Cure sidewalk volunteer over the past Mother's Day weekend, I was greatly alarmed to hear that she was not aware of the Komen-Planned Parenthood connection. This older woman stated that she was pro-life and shocked to hear of any Komen Foundation involvement with Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider.
"Pro-life citizens who are interested in fighting this deadly disease should be aware that one breast cancer organization, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, has a policy of offering financial support to abortion providing facilities."
Jury selection in the high-profile child pornography trial of rapper R. Kelly begins today in Cook County, Illinois. Mr. Kelly has pleaded not guilty to having videotaped himself having sex with a minor. Cook County prosecutors have doggedly pursued this case in order to protect children, arrest the degradation of women and establish community values of decency.
We can only hope and pray that the old comedic line "don't believe your lying eyes" does not prevail.
On April 25th, I wrote here about Quin Hilyer's terrific column describing some vile television programming he encountered. Well, I don't think even Quin could have dreamed up one TV network's recent ad campaign. This vile promotional campaign was created and distributed for The Gossip Girl, a national broadcast from the CW network.
Gossip Girl is a relatively new sleazy teen and young adult-centric show that glorifies sex, drugs, and drinking in a group of Manhattan college prep students. After a spring hiatus, the show returned with new episodes on April 21st preceded by a blasphemous and soft porn ad campaign. As one website put it: "The desperate ad campaign clearly shows that the producers want Gossip Girl's viewer to know that there will be a whole lot of sex scenes in the coming episodes."
The attack on decency was multi-pronged.
First, a once-respected magazine, New York, sold its soul to carry the most vacuous review of anything ever written or broadcast. The piece came complete with a cover featuring the program's stars lying in bed together pretty well undressed in orgiastic poses. In the center of this cover photo, one finds "Best Show Ever*" imposed, and, as is befitting of such art, the cover story was duly titled, "The Genius of Gossip Girl."
Second, the new season is supported by raunchy still photo and video ads. Both promotions are focused on the phrase "OMFG" - which is probably not a phrase you are familiar with. "OMG" is an abbreviation for "Oh, My G-", the ubiquitous disrespectful exclamation of the popular culture. Well, "OMFG" is a spin-off of this phrase whose etymology is not certain but seems to come from the teen internet subculture. Yes, the "F" stands for what you think it does.
When I say that the still life ads are sleazy, I mean they are SLEAZY. Now that you are familiar with the lingo, take a look at those posters that are appearing on standard street-size and sidewalk billboards:
The OMFG theme isn't exactly hidden, and neither is the sexually explicit content. There is also at least one offensive OMFG video ad for Gossip Girl that is available on the CW website, YouTube, and on television. Of course, a CW honcho denied in an interview with CNN's Brooke Anderson that OMFG means what it clearly means. Anderson was incredulous, so she conducted "man on the street" interviews to prove her point. Only two women over 60 were not able to define OMFG. See the CNN interview featuring Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council. Kudos to Anderson.
Let's be clear: this is an ad campaign and television program promoted by a major American broadcast network and targeted at teenagers and young adults. Parents who are concerned about this might wish to contact one or two of the Gossip Girl sponsors and complain about the blasphemy, the decadence, and the cruel indifference to the moral lives of the young revealed by the network and its advertisers.
At times like this I think: wouldn't it be nice to have the power to tell my cable provider that I don't ever want the CW network to be seen in my house again? It sure would. It's definitely time for cable choice and time to find out how the presidential candidates feel about consumer empowerment over the media content that comes into our homes.
