The Roman Catholic bishop whose diocese includes the University of Notre Dame says he will boycott President Barack Obama’s commencement speech at the Catholic school because Obama’s policies on stem cell research and abortion run counter to church teaching.
Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend said in a statement Tuesday that Obama’s recent decision to federally fund embryonic stem cell research “has now placed in public policy … his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life sacred.”
“While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life,” D’Arcy said.
Obama has said the decision was aimed at easing human suffering.
Archive for March, 2009
Still classy…
Lulz…
Former evangelical pastor Ted Haggard and his wife are planning another TV appearance, this time to talk about their marriage.
The two are in Los Angeles taping an appearance on the syndicated Twentieth Television show “Divorce Court,” to be broadcast nationally April 1.
The show’s presiding judge, Lynn Toler, is interviewing the couple about how their marriage survived after a male prostitute from Denver alleged a cash-for-sex relationship with Ted Haggard in November 2006, executive producer Mark Koberg said.
The scandal prompted Haggard to resign as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and New Life Church in Colorado Springs.
The Haggards say their marriage and Christian faith are stronger than ever, and they want people to know that divorce is not the answer.
“This is part of Ted’s journey,” Gayle Haggard said. “It’s made him a better man. I see what has happened as a divine rescue.”
She said she was helped through her darkest hours by the biblical principles of forgiveness, compassion and steadfastness, along with her husband’s genuine repentance.
The couple will be paid an undisclosed amount for the interview
Stay classy, Lou…
From Lou Dobbs & submitted without comment:
“And by the way, I’ve got to wish to you, each and every one, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! I do that, and I have to be honest with you, despite my fervent anti-ethnic holiday position. That’s right! I’m against St. Patrick’s Day. I’m against St. Columbus Day. Saint Joseph’s Day. I’m against all of those things. Is there, by the way, is there a Jewish, a Jewish ethnic holiday? Is there one? No? Okay. The Jews have disappointed me. I mean, is there a St. Mauritius? No? A Belize? I don’t know. We gotta have — there’s gotta be something else going on here! How about an Asian ethnic holiday? Is there one? You know, a Saint Jin Tao Wow? Chinese New Year? All right, we can do that … I mean, what is with all of these ethnic holidays? I mean how about an American Day? How about were all the same kind of day?”
Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.
Benedict had never directly addressed condom use. He has said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.
“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”
About 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS. In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were there, as well as two-thirds of all people living with HIV.
Rebecca Hodes with the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said if the pope is serious about preventing new HIV infections, he will focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how best to use them.
“Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans,” said Hodes, director of policy, communication and research for the action campaign.
While she said the pope is correct that condoms are not the sole solution to Africa’s AIDS epidemic, she said they are one of the very few HIV prevention mechanisms proven to work.
Even some priests and nuns working with those living with HIV/AIDS question the church’s opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa.
Fracking lame…
Plans call for Sci Fi and its companion Web site (scifi.com) to morph into the oddly spelled Syfy — pronounced the same as “Sci Fi” — on July 7. The new name will be accompanied by the slogan “Imagine Greater,” which replaces a logo featuring a stylized version of Saturn.
A channel called Syfy will, presumably, not be confused with SyFi Global, an information technology company; S.Y.F.I., the Summer Youth Forestry Institute; or Syfo seltzer, sold by Universal Beverages.
The tweaking of the Sci Fi name, introduced in 1992, is part of a rebranding campaign that seeks to distinguish the channel and its programming from cable competitors — 75 of which are also measured by the Nielsen ratings service.
…
One big advantage of the name change, the executives say, is that Sci Fi is vague — so generic, in fact, that it could not be trademarked. Syfy, with its unusual spelling, can be, which is also why diapers are called Luvs, an online video Web site is called Joost and a toothpaste is called Gleem.
“We couldn’t own Sci Fi; it’s a genre,” said Bonnie Hammer, the former president of Sci Fi who became the president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. “But we can own Syfy.”
Another benefit of the new name is that it is not “throwing the baby away with the bath water,” she added, because it is similar enough to the Sci Fi brand to convey continuity to “the fan-boys and -girls who love the genre.”
Ms. Hammer and her successor as Sci Fi president, Dave Howe, said they had sat through many meetings over the years at which a name change was debated.
The principal reason the idea kept coming up, Mr. Howe said, was a belief “the Sci Fi name is limiting.”
“If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future,” he added. “That didn’t capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes.”
That became more important as Sci Fi expanded its program offerings into those realms, Mr. Howe said, with series like “Destination Truth” and “Ghost Hunters.”
And a shorter, more memorable name is more readily “attached to new businesses,” he added, like movies, video games, mobile content and additional channels overseas.
“Everybody is”…
Classy…
HANNITY: I’m on the Fox Plan and the AFTRA Plan. I have no clue what insurance I have. I don’t have a special health care plan! I have the same plan that you do.
BECKEL: No you don’t. I don’t have a health insurance plan.
HANNITY: You work for FOX, you’re on the FOX plan.
BECKEL: I don’t qualify for the Fox plan, because I have a pre-existing condition.
Ok, so I wanted to write something quick and dirty about Watchmen, the book, before I go out and watch Watchmen, the movie.
I first read this comic as a 21-year-old, after being re-introduced to superhero comics in college. As a kid I read mostly Marvel stuff, so I was anxious to read some of the famous stories that DC had published in the mid-80s, which I knew changed the world of comics but did not read as a 13-year-old.
I was immediately blown away by the quality of the dialogue, characters and artwork.
There were no Chris Claremont-esque exclamations of “By the White Wolf!” or other nonsense, and Dave Gibbon’s art is a darn sight better than John Byrne’s or Jim Lee’s, in my view.
But, I was also intrigued by the idea of a superhero murder mystery. As the plot unfolded, I was engaged by the multiple layers of story, thrilled by the idea of a superheroic political assassination, amused by the references to pop-culture and U.S. history, and appalled at the level of misogyny and violence against women.
But I still loved the book. I read it very quickly, in the manner I was accustomed to reading comics when I was a child. I did not pick up on the politics of the book, although my friend John Cooper maintained that it was an inherently fascist work, and that may have colored my reading somewhat.
I just thought it was a good, realistic (read: depressing) story about superheroes.
If Zack Snyder can capture the dystopian, Republican-dominated, noire-esque feel of the book, without making Rorschach sound like a Frank Miller character, then I’ll be satisfied. Not thrilled, but satisfied.
The politics of Watching…
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be discussing several of my personal readings of Watchmen – perhaps the best (and worst?) quality of the book is multifaceted nature. First things first, I’d like to discuss the meta-politics of Watchmen.
Anyone who has read any bit of biographical material on Alan Moore knows that his politics are “non-traditional”. My take on him – after reading a large bit of the corpus of Moore’s work – is he’s a leftist anarchist. It is, of course, important to remember the context in which Moore wrote Watchmen. It was during the “dark ages” of Thatcher England – a time that has left scars on the work of a lot of British writers (Moore, Ennis, Ellis, Delano). To many leftist Britians the world had pretty much fallen to shit – the right controled both America and Britian, Cold War tensions were hitting a new high, social intolerance was on the rise. It is important to note that the traditional left and liberalism failed in his period. It helped create the conditions for the rise of Thatcher/Reagan and failed to stop them. For Moore and those like him it was not a heroic time – for the left or the right.
So Moore writes a work where all of the heroes are failures or – worse – sucesses that leave destruction in their wake. If you look at the heroes of Watchmen from a certain place you can see them as standins for political and social ideologies of the mid-1980s.
Rorschach is the easiest to identify: he’s the right-wing crime obsessed nut who sees things completely in black and white and reviews any social change from the days of Leave it to Beaver as an abomination. And as much as Rorschach is “pure” in his moral vision he’s just a fucked as what he seeks to fight. The Comedian is also easy to pigeon hole as a stand in fascist militarism – violent, nihilistic, and misogynistic. It is interesting that Rorschach’s and the Comedian’s relations with women are a parody of the rights traditional attitudes towards women: for Rorschach women are either whores or Deborah Reed; for the Comedian women are as after thoughts and objects for release of his frustrations.
Good old Ozymandias is a parody of an extreme meritocratic technocrat – who’s so smart that he knows what’s good for everyone. Only someone as smart has he can see the “real” big picture and make the “right” choices for the human race – no matter the cost. Of course, as brilliant as Ozy is, he’s intelligence is still human – and deeply flawed. Doctor Manhattan is science as an ideology – obsessed with the broader scope of the universe and able to see beyond human foibles but at the loss of being able to understand or see the majesties of humanity.
The Nite Owls stand in for liberalism. Nite Owl I is the liberalism of the 1940s and 1950s – well meaning but oblvious. Unable to see beyond itself and its times (racism bad, but homophobia ok!). Nite Owl II is a bit better – less oblvious but more impotent to do anything about the problems he sees. The Silk Spectres stand in for feminism. The elder Spectre attempts to use her sexuality for empowerment but ends up just used and abused. The younger is a sexually liberated woman who still ends up defined by her relationship to men (her father and her lovers).
Viewing things this way shows that Moore is arguing that all ideologies are deeply flawed – even the ones he’s sympathetic to – the liberal and the feminist end up fucking as the world burns. The politics of Watchmen are negative – Moore doesn’t have a positive ideology here beyond a deep humanism. He is warning us that the ideologies embodied by the heroes of Watchmen are useless to humanity – they are either twisted, destructive, or useless.
The fundamental message of the politics of Watchmen is – I think – that if we stopped this ideological struggle and focus on our relationship to our fellow human beings the world would be a much better place.
