Yeah I still don’t really get it….  just the same I’m planning on saving up my fur pelts and cowry shells in anticipation for a return to simpler economic times.

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive; and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice; and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands in the way of love.” -MLK Jr.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!!

This is about as dissonant an image as Christiane Amanpour snaking your toilet (sans license).  There’s so much wrong taking place here that the futility of a response is debatable. Alas, Joe Wurzelbacher, well beyond his fifteen minutes of fame as “Joe the Plumber”, covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has the same irresistible absurdity as Sarah Palin defending her foreign policy experience. 

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. (says the aspiring war correspondent with grammatical perfection). I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. (because wars are so not a big deal) I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II (oh good god he’s immortal) when you’d go to the theater (ah yes, the talkies) and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. (there’s no one I’m more down on than the 18 year old Army Private and how he waged an illegitimate war for oil profit undermining the Constitution to usurp Executive power… kids these days.)  You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.(but not the Palestinian ones)

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting (wow!!). You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘Well look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.” 

“now where was I…ah yes reporting on the atrocities of war and opining on an ill-informed fraction of the story.”

Joe, you’ve exhausted my full range of sarcasm. It’s only a matter of time until my head explodes,

-L.Arnell

Time’s Best Inventions of 2008

The Year in Ideas

Top Ten Green Architecture Projects of 2008

The Best Journalism of 2008

Top 10 Underreported News Stories

The Year 2008 in Photos

Time’s Pictures of the  Year 2008

Slate’s Best Viral Political Videos of 2008

and Time’s Top Ten Campaign Video Moments

(Sigh) Good times…..

I thought John Stewart had some debate ending lines in this exchange, managing to elucidate the pro gay marriage stance with the kind of calm, evenhanded logic it deserves. Huckabee, though calm and eloquent himself, did about as good as he could do without plainly confessing “gay people just weird me out.” The whole structure of his argument is based on this fallacy that somehow marriage  has been immutably defined for the last five thousand years. From polygamy, arranged marriages, mail-order brides and “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire” historically marriage has been anything but firmly demarcated. If marriage is the bedrock of our society, as Huckabee has suggested, and we find ourselves with about a 50% divorce rate  and more and more children growing up under the strains of a single parent household  the just conclusion would be to promote the values and stability that marriage promises and not aggressively seek to deny it to huge blocs of people.

Its odd because I think the Conservative mantra is a meritocracy, and I think what you’re suggesting is the fact of being gay parents makes you not as good as others and I would suggest that a loving gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week.”

The contradictory rationale that Huckabee and other like-minded conservatives have employed in this contention bears semblance to the same wanton narrow-mindedness and thinly veiled bigotry that has blotted our nation’s history before. The idea that granting two gay people the right to be legally recognized as a couple will “undo an entire social structure”, force a massive recall of our nation’s dictionaries or reverse the earth’s polarity is ridiculous. Did the earth stand still when interracial marriages were legalized? It’s using fear to frame the debate as an assault on heterosexuality rather than a recognition of equality. If people are concerned that homosexuality will taint the sanctity of marriage,  I think it’s time to take a hard look at the current trends of heterosexual marriages.

L.Arnell