Why don’t we get rid of the word ‘war’ while we’re at it. It’s got this awful connotation, so let’s start calling it, ‘fluffy bunnies.’
“The fluffy bunnies in Afghanistan took a turn for the worse today as naughty boomers [formerly ‘suicide bombers’] killed dozens in several cities.”
Now doesn’t that make you feel better?
If you’re like most people, you talk about the abortion debate using a couple of simple, concise terms whose meaning we can all pretty much agree on (no matter how bitterly we disagree about the underlying politics): pro-choice versus pro-life.
At NPR, however, that doesn’t fly anymore. As of this week, journalists at the radio network are under orders to refrain from using those two phrases. Instead, they’ve been instructed to say “in favor of abortion rights” and “opposed to abortion rights.” “This updated policy is aimed at ensuring the words we speak and write are as clear, consistent and neutral as possible,” explained managing editor David Sweeney in a memo alerting staffers to the change. While the two verboten terms can still make it into copy if they’re part of an organization’s name or a direct quote, the preferred locutions are to be used in all other instances.
The motive behind this move is solid enough. “Pro-choice” and “pro-life” both began, essentially, as propaganda — expressions conceived to curry maximum sympathy for the positions they represent. How can anyone be against choice? Or against life? Why, you’d have to be downright evil!
But, over time, through sheer repetition, both phrases have lost their connotative crackle. When I call someone pro-choice, I’m not praising his dedication to the exercise of free will any more than I’m describing someone as generous and open-minded when I call him a liberal. They’re words. They mean what they mean because we all agree that’s what they mean.
Pretty funny, since it is also NPR’s policy not to designate US torture of detainees — which killed at least 10 people, by the military’s own admission — by the word “torture.” Their explanation is that the term has loaded legal implications. Yet by every legal standard in the world — with the lone exception of a handful of right-wingers in the justice department — those activities are defined as torture.
#26
You should read the Supreme Court decision before claiming that they “established the right” of corporations. The US Supreme Court struck down a major portion of a 2002 campaign-finance reform law, saying it violates the free-speech right of corporations to engage in public debate of political issues. The court said that corporations already had the right and the campaign bill violated those rights.
Bobbo… what? …. you can’t take a little backtalk eh?… and with all the criticism you dish out?
Hah! Figures. You’ll be alright. And don’t suck your thumb, it’s bad for your teeth.
Skeptic–rather than address the merits of what I posted ((that your first post was excellent and did not need the dithering of the second post)) you devolved and continue now with no analysis, just personal attack.
I don’t care, its just boring.
So—suck it up. Take constructive criticism as a great favor. Learn from it by seeing the point and agreeing, or thinking something else is more important. Continuing to learn is how you will become a more powerful skeptic instead of a reflection of all you project.
# 16 brm said, “Why don’t we use the terms: “anti-abortion” or “opposed to abortion,” and “not opposed to abortion?” ”
Still too many words and letters. Why don’t we just call them Republicans and Democrats?
N.B. Respecting Bobbo’s advice above, I will not explain the humor.
bobbo, OK, OK, OK…I shouldn’t have even mentioned the first post in my second post. I should have left it alone. My mistake as I wanted to join he conversation with some substance… you know points that can be discussed? The OTHER points I made in my 2nd post have long since gone down the toilet chased by a big turd and a double roll of Cottonelle.
Geeeesh.
Fine, I’ll just stick with the puns and wise cracks then.
re: #35, Animby, “N.B. Respecting Bobbo’s advice above, I will not explain the humor.”
… yeah… rub it in.
Skeptic==well done. We are all strangers to one another on this blog, knowing each other only by the words we write. OF COURSE we all have deeper understandings than what a twitter with a burp can express ((unless you ever happen to catch Soundwash at 300AM recounting his electromagnetic plasma theory of everything!))
Roe v Wade really is worth the read. Easy to google.
PS–I personally don’t know what the hey Animby was referring to. I do often use humor that goes unrecognized but not this time. Problem is Animby is Very Sarcastic. Just today a few hours before that comment he thanked soundwash for making him laugh, and soundwash wasn’t being funny at all===dead serious. Or maybe just dead?
In that context, every compliment from Animby is suspect.
Bobbo: I just love your insights.
Durp Durp Durp!
19 bobbo
“…and criminalizing what goes on between two consenting adults.”
Bobbo. Your liberal foaming has caused you to miss the point. Forget sodomy. (Even the type with women.) Because whether you support or not support it is irrelevant. My example could just as well have been about illegal piano playing. (Except it’s not as emotionally charged… as you well-demonstrate.)
The point is that just because there is a law in support of something doesn’t mean that people who are against such laws can be defined in a strictly negative sense. “Anti-decency” for sodomy supporters. “Anti-abortion rights” (emphasis on “rights”) for pro-life. I dunno, “Those opposed to peace and quiet rights” for those supporting piano playing if laws prohibited such.
But I’ll give you some intellectual credit by saying you knew this all along.
“…and that is leaving other people the f*ck alone.”
Agreed. You see… “other people” according to science… and other people… but not necessarily artificial and convenient laws… includes unborn people. At the very least when they are viable enough to be supported outside the womb.
“Human beings are killed every day for all kinds of reasons. Silly to think the unborn and undeveloped are any different.”
What a beautifully revealing statement in support of final solutions for easily ridding our society of inconvenient human trash.
RBG
#42–RBG==gee, thats about the best post I have ever seen you make. I can’t quite put my finger on, put a name to, label, exactly what it is about you. Frustrating mix of good analysis and then right wing stupidity. Somehow here you have the analysis and hit just shy of the stupidity.
First—do you know that we think with words? And how you define those words is MOST important.
Take “human being.” There is a word. Read Roe v Wade==it has a section on that word, that it has been defined in various ways by various groups throughout history. The SC, the law of the land, the supreme word definer sidestepped the issue and declined to define human being for us. As I stated, instead they went with the question: at what stage of development do certain rights apply?
Here is the “proof” that your position has a hole anyone can drive a truck through: fertilized eggs are not human beings. If they were, then it would be morally correct to shoot a woman and a doctor who are trying to abort that fetus/product of conception/embryo/life. NO ONE agrees killing the mother is appropriate. Only .0001 think it is ok to kill the doc===and truthfully they aren’t even thinking, just single issue psychobots.
So, arguments based on the human beingness/the personhood/the peopleness of fetuses are only unthinking propaganda to grow that .0001 percent. Bad thinking.
“Viable outside the womb” is the line the Supreme Court drew as well. I disagree seeing fetuses more as property==just like our hallowed founding fathers but I submit to the reality of SC definitions. You should too.
Finally, its rare that any abortion decision is “easily made.” But to turn your argument against yourself==the POSITIVE thing about easy,safe,cheap and available abortions is that individual women get to control their lives.
If adoption agencies would Advert on TV, then they would PROBABLY change a few minds..
They dont.
Adoption is generally good for those children at Birth to about 4 years old.
After that, many arent not adopted, because of AGE.
Another point is that a handicapped child is almost NEVER adopted.
Until you ADOPT every child that is ‘IN THE SYSTEM’, WHY should we create MORE that wont be adopted?
The original idea of ADOPTION, was when a family had to many kids, or couldnt afford Care, or the family died, and Farmers would gather them to help on the farms.. Even companies would gather them in cities to use as CHILD LABOR..
After all the child work laws were put into place, and Farms became Incorporated and TO BIG for a family to care for..This all ended.
What started the Adoption agencies AFTER, were the Rich Old ladies that couldnt have kids, but would ADOPT. AS poor people Dont want/need another child.
43 bobbo
I’ll try to get back when I have more time, but for now: Here’s the problem with your legal argument, illustrating how a court imposes laws that are superseded by nature’s laws:
Small example. In Canada you are not a person – a human being – until you pass through the birth canal. Moments before: a nothing. Part of the mother, maybe like a liver or such. One moment human, literally seconds before: nothing. Nothing, then – poof – human.
Literally no different than magic. For those who buy into it. But that is the law. So it must be true.
Of course that “Beam-me-up-Scotty” appearance is scientifically ridiculous. It’s common sense ridiculous. It’s as ridiculous as making it legal that the sun revolves around the Earth. “But it’s right there in the law. Here, I can show you.”
It’s as ridiculous as stating, henceforth it shall be the law that men shall be women. Ok, bad example. All blind people shall be legally considered to be sighted. Legally there shall be no poor people. “It says it right here…” Women shall not be considered to be people. Heard that before.
Surprise: Law does not make it so. Other than in one’s imagination. Especially imagination when backed by force. Especially imagination designed to assuage guilt while granting a supreme wish as abortion does.
King Canute discovered the difference when he thought he had the legal power and right to stop the tide from coming in. That is at the crux of your legal argument.
RBG
@45 I was born caesarian so I guess that means had I been born in Canada I would not be human as I have yet to pass through the birth canal.
Essentially there are two camps: one that believes that at conception or somewhere there after there is a human life worthy of protection; the other doesn’t.
Throw in some mitigating circumstances such as health of the mother and rape/incest and it gets murky.
Nonetheless as science advances perhaps artificial incubation will become a reality.
#45–RBG==you argue ((and probably think as well)) just like a Rovian Repuglican Spinmeister.
Whatever line or 5 words you want to take out of context==I did not argue the law. I argued “holistically” out of common human experience.
I challenged you, and CONTINUE TO CHALLENGE YOU, to say that killing a woman is justified to prevent her from killing her innocent unborn human being. Until you honestly believe that, you HAVE TO come to terms with the reality, by whatever morality you are using, that unborn fetuses are not yet quite human beings with all rights attendant therefrom.
Until you recognize that truth, and stop going back to the well of falsifiable dogma==you are just a troll.
Stop it. Learn. Grow Up. Stop being Evil. Become a liberal.
This is good. I never could figure out which side of what superstition anyone was on.
They could make it even more understandable by using SA, for superstitious asshole who wants to tell other how to live their lives, and SS for smart shit who doesn’t want kids he cant support.
Gee, who would _ever_ have thought it could happen: a business-oriented website, dailyfinance.com dumping on National Public Radio? Isn’t that amazing?
Exactly, NPR is no longer allowing political parties free rein to shape their messages, but establishing themselves as the 4th Estate, to serve as relatively objective reporters of the news. Just because political parties want to use one phrase does not mean that that phrase ought to be the one that is generally used.
47 bobbo
“I challenged you, and CONTINUE TO CHALLENGE YOU, to say that killing a woman is justified to prevent her from killing her innocent unborn human being.”
Granted. Moving on… Now let’s just stop killing the unborn children where “killing a woman” is not at issue. In fact, in addition, let’s try just stopping the killing of the unborn where they would be viable outside the womb. Supported by technology much like they were supported by the mother’s systems.
That such a scenario – even up to the moment of birth in Canada – is anathema to some reveals the issue to be simply pure liberal sexual politics. And certainly a lot worse to the extreme.
193,000 abortions in 1990; 1,186,000 in 1997; 820,151 in 2005. In the US alone. I’ll let your obviously supreme lefty intellect figure out how many of those abortions were actually needed to desperately prevent “killing a woman.”
Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/643a8e
RBG
46. cliouser
Birth canal birth meant to illustrate one example. Ditto caesarian: In Canada, the person suddenly & magically appears next to the mother.
RBG
RBG—spin, spin, spin.
Moving on==you want the government to enforce a minority morality view on the opposing minority. You do this based on the idea that fetuses are “people” yet you admit they are not.
Move on === come to grips with the fallacy of your own position. QUIT BEING SO SIMPLE MINDED.
My mother cried every year at the anniversary of the child she aborted. But she said she would do it again.
LEAVE OTHER PEOPLE THE FUCK ALONE.
Just close your eyes, put your hands over your ears, shaking your head no, take a pill & enact another feel-good abortion law.
RBG
RBG==you are babbling incoherently. Making the best sense out of what you post at #54–what you say applies more to you than to me.
I haven’t closed my eyes and ears–you have.
Proof: you have agreed you would not kill the mother to save the life of the unborn child. Now==stop feeling good by not thinking about your position and explain why you would not kill the mother?
WHY NOT??????
You would if this person were about to kill your child, why not her fetus?
and since you won’t be honest==because you do recognize the unborn fetus is not quite yet a human being with all the legal protections.
You are just too stuck in your dogma to get the stick out of your ass.
Easy. Because saving most viable unborn children is no-grey-area obvious and thus a less difficult sell-job on the population than non-viable. That in itself would be a major human-rights victory and thus my only practical interest for now.
Something like Obama needing to sign a ~no federally-funded abortion law.
But how did we get full gay rights in the military or most of all our other rights? Compromise, one step at a time.
RBG
RGB==you have not answered the question after 3 goes now. Either you “don’t get it” or you are spinning. You are too intelligent not to get it absent some kind of organic brain damage that must be quite rare, so===troll it is.
Stick to bumper stickers and limbaugh.
That’s easy too. I would kill the unborn to save the life of the mother because the unborn baby can’t complain about it. As for most abortions. It’s the classic, which-person-do-I-save conundrum.
The difference is that I don’t artificially pretend that the unborn baby isn’t human to make myself feel better about it. As for most abortions.
Puzzles are fun, huh? Just don’t throw out the rest of the babies with your bathwater.
RBG
I’m FAT because it’s my wrong doing. Every time I read discussions like this it inspires me to slim down even more.
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