City Snitchers

I’d call this real “pro-family” and “pro-life” advocacy, from Leonard Pitts today:

African Americans have never been a weak and cowardly people.

And Now the Label “Married” Is In for Further Moral Meddling

I knew it. I knew it wasn’t just the gays that these patriarchal oh-so-moral Identity Definers and Compulsory Crusading Life Coaches were after.

Now they are after me. MY marriage. Taking away not only my choice to be a parent or not, and when and with whom, but now my choice to stay married or not. Now because of their own private religious beliefs, “they” want to protect marriage not just from being entered into by homosexuals but from being ended by heterosexuals — they are after my perfectly legal in Florida but damned wrong to them, no-fault D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Old Question Rears Its Head AGAIN: What’s in a Name?

Or in a title.

Poor Doctor Jill Biden.
Stupid editorialists.

More posturing about “respect” from people who clearly just don’t get it. Words matter, and more than clothes make the man, words make his meaning.

This is the dawning of the Age of Intelligence, hopefully replacing the ages of class warfare, male dominion and blind faith doctoring up freedom. Surely working journalists noticed the presidential campaign and the election results? The literate, thoughtful professor types won and the tacky, simplistic-minded, drivel-spouting, action-craving, fighter-pilot, shotgun-shooting, megalomaniacal good-versus-evil ol’ boys (including Sarah Palin) lost.

And the title “doctor” applies to ALL fields and types of minds; even the best students aren’t all alike.

I’ve always lived in college towns where the title “doctor” conveyed

The “Diversity” Steele Really Brings Republicans

From Jeff Sharlet’s Revealer site for religious journalism (and he’s right — I haven’t heard this interesting fact anywhere else):

RNC Religion
02 February 2009
Michael Steele, new Republican National Committee chairman, is African-American; he’s also a serious Roman Catholic who spent three years studying for the priesthood. The former fact is front and center in mainstream coverage of Steele and his new job; the latter is mostly missing. . .

Is R-E-S-P-E-C-T in Dress or Success?

The importance of wearing a uniform played into this week’s “Burn Notice” but the tv show plot point was effecting intimidation, not showing respect. (And both sides were criminals trying to psych each other out in their audaciously illegal semitropical enterprises.)

That dress for success uniform was an open-collared white shirt, no tie, black slacks and black jacket. And shades. Like this:

Barack Obama May 2008 by Doug Mills, New York Times

I was thinking about conservatives and how they love dress codes, even at school which they usually DON’T love, and even in Christian homeschooling which they do, while reading this —

. . .The other thing to consider here is exactly how one “respects” the presidency. For Card and others who served with Bush, it’s about choice of clothing. For those who serve with Obama, it’s about honoring institutional limits and the rule of law.

. . . Did George W. Bush always wear a coat and tie? Sure. Good for him. But while he was wearing nice clothes and demanding that his staff do the same, he also oversaw a scandal-plagued White House that trashed constitutional norms and routinely ignored the laws that the president twice swore to faithfully execute.

One respects the office by honoring its place in a constitutional system, not by wearing a suit.