Hagar

Well, here's a shock.

Hagar -- the Bush appointee to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration -- you remember him? The one who wouldn't hire gay folk and who wouldn't prescribe birth control for unmarried women, and who thought women with PMS should just read the Bible to fix their problem? The one opposed to letting the FDA approve Plan B, the emergency contraception pill, because he believes it causes abortions? (It prevents a fertilized egg, if one is present, from implanting. If that's abortion, then so are all methods of birth control except barrier methods -- oh, yes, and abstinence.)

Well. Color me surprised. Dr. Hagar, who has issues with letting women control their own bodies, has all sorts of other control issues -- he apparently raped and sodomized his wife for years, sometimes in her sleep; sometimes he paid her for sex. He also made her account, each evening, for every penny she spent, berating her if she spent money he thought she shouldn't have. (This, from a man who is paying this same wife $2000 for a blow job.)

And then he stands in front of good, Godly people -- like Concerned Women for America -- and talks about how God has led him to his position of power.

And they suck it up with a straw.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050530&c=1&s=mcgarvey

(Via Tbogg: http://tbogg.blogspot.com/)

As Infinite Stitch points out, it's past incredible these days.

http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/2005/05/_should_any_pol.html

Ai

This was sent to me by one of my reporters in the field -- one of my students who is back from Iraq.

Army to stand down all recruiting for one day

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer

The Army plans to stand down all of its recruiters for one day on May 20 amid several allegations of misconduct by some of them trying to fill the ranks, according to Army Recruiting Command.

The active duty Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard have each missed their monthly recruiting goals for three consecutive months.

As of the end of April, the three components combined had shipped some 16,500 fewer recruits to basic training than their goals had called for.

Recent reports have hinted that a few recruiters are getting desperate.

In Colorado, a 17-year-old high school student claims to have audio tapes of two recruiters telling him how to forge a high school diploma and cheat on a drug test so that he could enlist.

A recent article in The New York Times detailed claims that recruiters in Ohio knowingly pushed a mentally ill man through the enlistment process.

The television newsmagazine Inside Edition aired a report May 6 apparently showing recruiters on a hidden camera telling someone posing as a potential enlistee how to lie about possibly disqualifying background information. The show said that nine of the 13 recruiters it visited told the "enlistee" how to lie or cheat to get into the Army.

Recruiting Command is expected to issue a formal announcement of the stand down as early as later today.

Pious Pope

Interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about that new Pope.

You'll recollect how the Winger blogs were saying we should all hush calling him the Nazi Pope since that was such a long time back, and plus he was drafted, he never wanted to join the Hitler Youth, and anyway we liberals, we just like calling people Nazis, Good Lord, can't we give it a rest?

Well, examine your sources, that's what the tell us in the Academy. (This isn't something those folk over on the Right like to hear, because then they'd have to look at Rush's source, and Ann Coulter's sources, and Bushco's sources, and oh my, we never would have gotten into Iraq then, would we?)

Do you know the source for the claim that this new Pope was drafted into the Hilter Youth? The source for pretty much all the data we have about his, ah, activities during WWII?

Hmm. Two books. Written by this new Pope himself.

And those two books? Oddly? They contradict themselves, as well as external chronology in, well, some key areas.

And further, as the Chronicle article notes, they have some truly interesting omissions:

...Ratzinger doesn't mention Catholic student dissidents of his era. He says nothing about the heroic White Rose group led by Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, which operated in his Bavarian backyard. That group's principled bravery -- it denounced Nazism's slaughter of innocents through fliers distributed at both the University of Munich and towns around Munich -- resulted in the Nazis' beheading both Scholls after a fast trial in the dreaded People's Court. Such silence from a German Catholic turned high Vatican official disturbs.
But perhaps it should not surprise. Despite Ratzinger's reveries in his memoirs about academic Catholic theologians and the merits of Augustine and Bonaventure versus Aquinas, he denies a nod even to the mixed tactics of Bishop Clemens von Galen of Munster, who preached against Hitler's plan to euthanize sick, old, disabled, and mentally retarded Germans while keeping silent about Jews -- a selective dissidence also chosen by other officials of the German Catholic Church. Ratzinger never speaks of the slave-labor camp 12 kilometers outside of Traunstein. He never talks about Dachau, some 100 kilometers away, though contemporaries of Ratzinger have told reporters that townspeople knew of the camp, and even used "Watch out or you'll end up in Dachau" as a warning.

Instead, we hear from Ratzinger that Pope Pius XII -- best known in recent years as protagonist of such embarrassing exposés as Hitler's Pope, by John Cornwell (Viking, 1999); The Popes Against the Jews by David I. Kertzer (Knopf, 2001); and A Moral Reckoning, by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (Knopf, 2002) -- was a "great figure." Coming from a theologian who remarked that "the Cross recapitulates in advance the horror of Auschwitz" -- raising questions about Ratzinger's economies of scale -- such autobiographical choices do not permit one-word exonerations, even if they don't implicate Ratzinger as an overt Nazi sympathizer. Lack of indignation, rather than complicity, is the sin of omission in his reminiscences.
Further scholarly context raises more questions. According to Ratzinger's brother, it was Cardinal Michael Faulhaber of Munich who originally stirred the future pope's childhood desire to rise in the Church. At age 5, after he saw Cardinal Faulhaber getting out of a great big black car in Traunstein, young Joseph immediately told his father, "I want to be a Cardinal too."

After the war, Faulhaber became Ratzinger's mentor and also ordained him.
As a role model for a future pope, though, Faulhaber falls short. He lunched with Hitler at Obersalzburg in 1936, voiced support for the Führer, and denounced "atheistic" Jews. In his much-praised book, Hitler's Willing Executioners (Knopf, 1996), Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, after observing that in Nazi Germany "the Catholic Church as an institution remained thoroughly and publicly anti-Semitic," immediately adds, "Cardinal Michael Faulhaber of Munich expressed this in his Advent sermons at the end of 1933." As late as October 1943, Goldhagen writes, Faulhaber asserted that "nobody in his heart can possibly wish an unsuccessful outcome of the war."

http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=536mekgbhfzjywtm6w91psg9e41rr1r6

Of course, this is old news -- except for his efforts to sweep it under the rug and his refusal to deal with it.

No, it's the new Pope's more recent behavior -- his late membership on the CDF (which, the uninitiate will be interested to know, descends directly from the Inquisition), his position on gays (a source of evil) and on women's rights -- and the fact that he seems less moved, as the Chronicle article points out, by Christ's message of moral behavior than by an overriding need to demand utter obedience from all: these are the things that might alarm those of us who worry about the role of a man who has been chosen to run one of the most powerful religions in the world.

Far-Right Christians and Obedience

Here's a sample of what I was talking about with Levitian Christians and their obsession with blind and unquestioning obedience -- this is from an advice column in which a mother wonders whether or not she should beat her child for because her child obeyed her, but obeyed her without complete submission:

My suggestion to these parents is that they become more diligent to recognize passive rebellion. I can remember my own experience with our young children. When I suspected that the child was giving half-hearted obedience, I instinctively went after it as if it were overt rebellion. You must cause the child to let go of all expressions of defiance. Demand that the little one surrender her very body language and every gesture to authority. Go after the attitude. In the “light switch” situation, I would say, “Leave the light switch alone.” If there is a moment’s hesitation, any sign of delayed compliance, rise immediately and give her hand (the offending hand) two or three licks with a small switch. Don’t delay even fifteen seconds. No more discussion or rebuke. No removal to a more secluded location. No “bend over on the couch.” Before she can move away from the area of the switch, administer the rod of truth. After such an episode, to confirm that she has yielded completely, give her several other commands not related to the immediate situation. Put her through a brief “drill” to certify your authority and her submission. For example, you might tell her to move the chair to a new location, “Put the socks in the laundry, “ “Sit down—Stand up,” etc.

http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=25&backPID=24&tt_news=218

(It's from No Greater Joy Ministries Online.)
(Via Infinite Stitch: http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/)

Talking Back

So I spent part of the weekend reading Kosher Living, by Ron Isaacs, another of our haul from the Fayetteville library last weekend.

(The other parts of the weekend were spent celebrating the kid’s birthday and grading final portfolios for my freshman essay class – the kid had a cake from Creative Kitchen, an excellent local bakery, one of the few excellent things in Fort Smith. It had flowers and bugs on it. This bakery will do things like that. The kid looked around at all the cakes and said, “I want a cake with flowers on it. And bugs.” And the woman behind the counter said, “We can do that.” And they did. And it was perfect: sunny yellow flowers on white icing with ladybugs, blue caterpillars, green inchworms, and butterflies. Lovely. Adorable. And tasty.)

Anyway.

I’m grading portfolios, and in between grading portfolios I am reading Kosher Living: It’s Not Just the Food, which I highly recommend, not just for Jews. It’s a book on how to live right in the universe (which is what Kosher means – living right – right livelihood). Isaacs has answers (not just rules, but explanations) for how to do things in this world. I’m really liking this book, even if he does, at one point, quote Dennis Prager approvingly. (Prager apparently at some point in his career spoke approvingly of not allowing the TV to be turned on during the Sabbath. Well, I can’t argue with that. Even a blockhead is right twice a year.)

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Isaacs has a section on Arguing. My favorite!

It has this question: Is it kosher to argue with God?

What’s the answer? Huh? Huh? What do you think the answer is?

Isaacs says not only is it okay to argue with God, Jews are commanded to argue with God.

Of course long-time readers of this blog already knew this*, but I just love this answer so much.

Because this is the problem with (a) American Far-Right Levitican Christian culture and (b) Christian culture in general: this idea that God should not be questioned; that God should be obeyed blindly; that God is omniscient and omnipotent and that humanity, his creation, is, in relation to God, a powerless, useless, pointless worm.

This is not humanity’s role in the Torah. We are Israel: we are created to contend with God: and we do not lose.

Furthermore, we are commanded to contend with God. That’s why we exist. We’re here to argue with him when he gets things wrong, as Abraham did when God set out to destroy Sodom.

We’re here to point out his mistakes. Who else but us? It’s why he made us. It’s our job. If we don’t do it, how will he know?

Christians, on the other hand, define humanity’s job as to praise and to worship.

In their theology, God can’t make a mistake. It’s blasphemy, in their theology, to suggest that he might.

And it’s blasphemy, in their theology, to suggest that God might need anything from us – we’re useless, crawly, pathetic critters, filthy sinners, and it’s hard to imagine why God created such nasty things, except that he wants constant praise – and I can’t imagine why they’d want to worship a God like that, who created filthy nasty sinners like them so he can be praised non-stop by such disgusting beings. But apparently they do.

This theology explains a lot about the current government, of course, but also a lot about the child-rearing practices of Levitican Christians.

Dobson’s child-rearing practices, for instance: children are not allowed to disobey, ever. Disobedience is called defiance, and is punished by the child being, literally, beaten into submission (“until the child cries with true submission,” as he says in one of his books).

Or, as one of my students explained to me, when she was doing a paper on the proper way to raise children, “Any time my child disobeys, she gets the paddle.”

Bear in mind, her child was under two at the time.

This was a freshman comp class, so we were still working on basic things. So I hid my wince, and just said, “Define your terms. What do you mean by disobey? What do you mean by paddle?”

“Well, I paddle her good. Seven or eight good hard whacks.”

“With your hand? Or an actual paddle?”

She smirked at my liberal silliness. “An actual paddle.”

“And what do you mean by disobey? Disobeys you?”

“Me or any other adult. She’s not allowed to tell an adult no.”

I had just been working on automatic, though it was appalled automatic, up until this point. At this point I looked at her. She was looking smugly back.

“Never?” I said. “She’s never allowed to tell an adult no.”

“That’s right. Or she gets paddled.”

I kept looking at her. “You don’t want to rethink that position?” I asked.

She just looked at me.

“You don’t want your child to ever be able to say no to any adult?” I asked. “What about the uncle who tells her to hold still in the dark bedroom?”

She looked at me. “She doesn’t,” she started.

“What about the adult in the park who says, come on sweetie, come get in my car?”

She stared at me.

“I’m thinking you want to rethink your position,” I said. “Maybe just a little bit.”

After a moment, she said, “I never thought of that.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I shut up at that point, though I wanted to argue further.

Our kid, on the other hand, argues all the time. Our kid would argue with a stump, as the saying goes.

“She’s making me nuts, this kid,” I told mr. delagar the other day. “I told her I was going to buy her birthday present after school, she went into instant negotiation mode. A toy present or a book present? And I said, maybe a book present and a toy present. And she says, One present toy present and one book present from you and daddy, or one each from you and one each from daddy?”

He laughed.

“And the night before last,” I pointed out, “a half hour debate on whether she had to have her hair washed in a bath she had volunteered for, or whether we only had to wash her hair in baths that were my idea!”

“I heard that one. That one was pretty funny.”

“Oh, hilarious. She argues about everything!”

“Yiddisher kop,” he said. “What do you want?”


*http://delagar.blogspot.com/2004/09/okay-i-already-ranted-about-this-over.html

Walgreens Causes Abortions

So this pharmacist, Michelle Long, who works at Walgreens, decides its against her religion to dispense birth control measures -- she's a Catholic -- and refuses -- over and over again -- to dispense emergency contraceptive to women in need of it. (WISN 12 News has her on camera refusing to do so.)

At least one woman, a mother of six who could not afford anymore children, became pregnant as a result of being refused emergency contraception by Ms. Long, and, as a result of getting pregnant, got an abortion.

This is one we know of.

And what did Ms. Long think, exactly, was going to result from her refusing to dispense birth control?

http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/news/4454234/detail.html

(Via DEDspace: http://www.dedspace.blogspot.com/)

Queasiness

Here's one of the reasons listening to NPR makes me uneasy lately:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505050004

(Via Atrios: http://atrios.blogspot.com/)

Times 1500 Now And Counting

Go see this

http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2005/05/funeral-blues-stop-all-clocks-cut-off.html

Ugly Kids

Here's an interesting study that shows parents don't care for their ugly kids as well as they care for their good-looking kids.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/health/03ugly.html?incamp=article_popular

They also don't take as much care with good-looking girls as they do with good-looking boys.

Although the researchers were unsure why, good-looking boys were usually kept in closer proximity to the adults taking care of them than were pretty girls. The researchers speculated that girls might be considered more competent and better able to act independently than boys of the same age. The researchers made more than 400 observations of child-parent interactions in 14 supermarkets.

Dr. W. Andrew Harrell, executive director of the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta and the leader of the research team, sees an evolutionary reason for the findings: pretty children, he says, represent the best genetic legacy, and therefore they get more care.

I put forth an alternative for the researchers: (many) parents value boys more than they value girls, and they value pretty kids more than they value ugly kids, and Q.E.D.

And that does, as Harrell postulates, make a sort of evolutionary sense -- if you accept that parents think pretty=good genetic legacy and male=better genetic value (I guess because guys can defend the cave and girls hang around and gather carrots?).

I don't know -- all this environment-of-evolutionary-adaptedness thinking is still new to me.

Freedom of the Press

Well, yes, we have a free press -- much good it does us, though, when reporters don't do their jobs, for whatever reason.

Bob Herbert's column in the NYTimes today is about what those of us who have been following the Iraqi War on the blogs -- and no, not on the 101 Fighting Keyboarders' Blogs, either -- have known for some time now: the abuse of Iraqi soldiers and citizens by some of our soldiers is out of hand: this is documented, among other things, in photographs, and those photographs have not been given play by the mainstream media. That is to say, mainstream reporters have ignored them: deliberately.

Aidan Delgado is working to get the truth out.


His goal, he said, is to convince his listeners that the abuse of innocent Iraqis by the American military is not limited to "a few bad apples," as the military would like the public to believe. "At what point," he asked, "does a series of 'isolated incidents' become a pattern of intolerable behavior?"

The public at large and especially the many soldiers who have behaved honorably in Iraq deserve an honest answer to that question. It took many long years for the military to repair its reputation after Vietnam. Mr. Delgado's complaints and the entire conduct of this wretched war should be thoroughly investigated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/opinion/05herbert.html?

Oppressing them Christians again

Amanda at Pandagon has an update on the prayer issue --

You'll remember back here

http://delagar.blogspot.com/2005/04/we-need-that-prayer.html

The Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors decided they should open with a prayer, to remind everyone they were living in a nice, moral country, not a godless heathen country like Europe or Iraq or any of them other heathen places.

And, even though the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors was clearly acting in its capacity as an agent of the state, this would not, they claimed, be a violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment because they would let people from different religions give the prayer.

Dandy.

So a Wiccan woman petitions to give the prayer.

They refuse.

She sues, with the help of the Virginia ACLU.

And she has lost the case -- at least this round:

http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/05/you_have_the_fr.html

Why?

The 4th Circuit ruled Chesterfield County’s Board of Supervisors did not show impermissible motive in refusing to permit a pantheistic invocation by a Wiccan because its list of clergy who registered to conduct invocations covers a wide spectrum of Judeo-Christian denominations.

As Amanda points out, this is bogus.

Nothing in the First Amendment says anything about the protecting the right to practice only Judeo-Christian religions; nothing in the First-Amendment says the state will only be responsible for endorsing or not endorsing (if it gets into the business of endorsing, which, Good Heavens, it ought not to be in the first place) only Judeo-Christian religions.

And, Chesterfield County guys? This is exactly why you don't go putting prayers into your meetings, your classrooms, your state-sponsered events of any kind. What do you think we liberals have been telling you all this time?

Not to protect the atheists and agnostics and Wiccans.

To protect you, and your delicate little Christian sensibilities, which can't bear up to sitting still and listening to a prayer to some God or Goddess who is not your own.

(Hey. How do you think some of us have felt all this time, by the way?

In Jesus Christ's name we pray. Amen.)

I'm not a racist, but...

Yikes-o-rama.

That this guy -- and some other folks, too, if you'll read the comments -- don't get what's wrong with saying, about one of your black players, "He's a good one -- there's no nigger in him!" -- it makes me choke on my coffee.

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2005/05/question-of-day.html

But keep reading in the comments until you get to Patrick's comment.

Cause we got hope, people. Oh, yeah. Some of us know what's up.

Feminists & Men

Amanda over at Pandagon has an excellent post on Feminists and man-hating.

http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/05/man-hating.html#more

It's a standard strawman slander of those "traditional women" Wingers: you hear it from Rush and Dr. Laura and on the Far-Right Christian blogs all the time. (Have a look at this one for a typical strawman picture of how good Christian women paint feminists:

http://www.beverlylahayeinstitute.org/articledisplay.asp?id=3350&department=BLI&categoryid=femfacts)

I certainly heard it from my Winger students: Feminists hate men. Liberal women hate men. Lesbians hate men. Once I came out as a feminist to my Mormon students, back in Idaho, it was the talk of the campus -- not because of anything I had said, but just because of my admitting to feminism. "Dr. Jennings? Yeah, she hates men." All my women students used to defend me: "She does not! She's married!"

Because if I was married, then obviously...hell, I don't know.

But Dr. Laura claims feminists hate men? When she publishes that book on the Care and Feeding of Husbands that tells women men are "simple" and need only two things: sex and sandwiches, and that women should use sex and food to manipulate men into giving them everything they need?

Compare that to how the women over at Pandagon see the men in their lives, and tell me who actually disdains and belittles men.

Or, better yet, go borrow a copy of Amanda Bright@Home -- don't buy it, don't given Danielle Crittenden the money -- and have a look at the men in her book.

She hates her husband because he can't earn enough money for her to have a big house like her rich friends.

(He's also a loser because he can't start a fire as well as the rich Texas guy. Who she hates because he's committing adultery. So he's a sinner. But he does have good manners. Unlike her loser husband.)

She hates the stay-at-home dad because only a wimp and a loser would stay at home with his kids, unless he's a woman, because all women should stay home with their kids, because it's the right thing to do. And all males should be out earning $400,000 a year so their wives can have huge houses on 40 acres and face-lifts whenever they wants them, and still plot behind hubby's back to squirrel away money for the inevitable day when he will have an affair with a 25 year old, because that's what men are, they're only interested in fucking and sandwiches, so better plan ahead.

(May I mention here that I know, personally, two fathers who have stayed home with their kids, and one of them is, in fact, mr. delagar and both of them think it's hilarious that anyone would think a wimp could handle staying home with a kid, also mr. delagar would like me to add he has medical proof that he has the highest sperm count in the tristate area*, so Ms. Crittenden can wank the hell off.)

Of course, she hates all the woman too. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe conservatives are just hateful. I was reading a conservative blog the other night that was arguing that South Park was actually a conservative TV show, and its main argument was that SP must be conservative because it hated liberals.

So apparently conservatives define themselves wholly and entirely through the things they hate.

Which explains a lot about them, I guess.

*discovered when we were undergoing fertility counseling to find out why I wasn't getting pregnant, after the miscarriage and previous to the kid. (Endometriosis, as it turned out.) mr delagar was very impressed with his numbers, and still finds ways to work them into conversations. "Oh, by the way..." He's much more impressed with these numbers than with his (equally impressive) SAT scores.

I read an article in the Chronicle today, BTW, that claims we always remember our SAT scores, no matter how long ago we took the SAT. I asked mr. delagar what his were and he rattled the number right off. I, of course, didn't take the SAT (Jefferson Parish public school system again -- no one bothered to tell us we ought to, no one mentioned such things as the SATs existed, it was a charming school system) so I don't have my own reference point, but is this so?

I did take the ACT, and the GRE, later, both the regular and the Lit GRE, and I couldn't tell you what I made any of those tests with a gun to my head.

FOF Dittoheads Say What?

So I’m watching Supernanny with the kid, as is our wont of a Monday evening – the kid loves Supernanny, mainly because the kids that the Supernanny shows up to reform are just so appalling, and I like hanging out with the kid, so it’s become our weekly thing to do, watch Supernanny together (mr. delagar doesn’t get it, I’m afraid).

Anyway, we’re watching Supernanny, and the kids this week are not so bad, it’s the parents who are appalling, a prime example of people who really ought not to have had children – Mom obviously isn’t exactly interested in children, and he, while he is, isn’t really sharp enough to figure out how to handle her obduracy.

My advice would have been for them to invest in a good all-day pre-school, or, barring that, an excellent full-time baby-sitter, but Supernanny always visits the sort of people who have bought into Dr. Laura’s manta that it’s e-e-e-evil to send your kids to preschool or use daycare. When Supernanny suggested a few weeks ago to the control-freak mama with the two sets of twins under the age of four that, ah, she might want to bring in some sort of mother’s helper, mama had a quietly rigid fit. They were her kids and she was going to raise them—or if she couldn’t, because she was at work, then by God her husband was. Never mind what her strictures were doing to those kids, nope, that was the rule and her family was going to follow it.

Oddly enough, it’s always this sort of family, with these sorts of strictures, that ends up needing Supernanny’s help.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. So we’re watching Supernanny nearly get defeated by Mom’s utter lack of interest in Supernanny’s methods, and I’m thinking, hmm, clinical depression or just low IQ? and suddenly this commercial appears – a well-done, very cute commercial – the kid loved it – these adorable kids telling their parents to watch out, they’re going to be hard to handle, the parents need to get some help, learn how to handle them, pronto! There’s the inevitable line about throwing a tantrum in the supermarket. At the end? It’s an advertisement for Focus on the Family.

Yep, James Dobson’s organization.

Needless to say, I’m bemused. A little appalled.

“I like that commercial,” the kid says with delight.

“You wouldn’t like the organization,” I say.

“Why? Why not? Why wouldn’t I?”

“Never mind,” I said, which of course never works.

“No! Tell me! Why?”

Obviously I should have beaten her for disobeying me, beaten her until she cried with true submission and then thanked me for the beating and then apologized for challenging my authority, as Mr. Dobson advises, because otherwise she will grow up with the seeds of rebellion in her heart.

Instead, I explained briefly that Focus on the Family was an Far-Right Christian organization that believed in beating children to make them act right, and that it was a mystery to me why they were advertising during a show like Supernanny.

Back to the show, where there was one scene with Dad smack his kid on the hand, and Jo looking shocked at this action, and this action, BTW, having no good effect on the kid. Jo, in the end, managed to teach the parents something about effective discipline (which of course does not involve smacking or beating your children) and about effective parenting (which is as important as effective discipline) and things got somewhat better in this particular dysfunctional household – but I still say Mom needs to put that three year old in a nice Montessori pre-school. The three-year-old would be happier, she would be happier, and what exactly would be wrong with it?

Then the next day, I went to the FOF website, to see if I could get a clue about what James Dobson was up to, and found a few mentions of the ads, and, interestingly, a disclaimer, saying that “just because” FOF was advertising on the show Supernanny did not mean that FOF “endorsed” the Supernanny’s methods.

Heh. You can see what this means. FOF Dittoheads are writing James anxious and/or pissy emails about the ads.

And why? Because not only does Supernanny go against everything they believe, she disproves their favorite false dilemma.

Go read the reviews of Dobson’s hideous book on Amazon.com, Dare to Discipline. The negative ones are revealing, but the positive ones even more so – nearly every positive one says the same thing: “You can choose between out-of-control children or spanking – it’s up to you!”

Right. Because those are our only two options.

Oh, wait. They aren’t. And every single Monday night, at 10 Eastern time, Supernanny demonstrates otherwise.

She takes hideously out-of-control children, and without one single smack, without even raising her voice (in fact, that is her point, that one should not raise one’s voice, that one should not behave violently toward children in any way) she turns those children into well-behaved, happy kids, mainly by (hey, imagine this) working on their parents.

Not to mention Supernanny inhabits a secular universe. No praying. No church. No invoking Jesus as we whip the daylights out of six-year-olds for the high crime of looking moody as they obey their father. And yet – cheerful, happy, well-behaved kids by the time Jo Frost walks out the door.

This must disturb FOF dittoheads to no end.

(See DEDspace and Digby for more on this:

http://dedspace.blogspot.com/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/)