STARTING TOMORROW: How We Got Here!

MONDAY, JUNE 27, 2022

The downfall / defeat of our tribe: Last Friday morning, our blue tribe absorbed a terrible political defeat.

In response, MSNBC scheduled a special two-hour broadcast of its regular weeknight program, The 11th Hour.

The program debuted in September 2016, hosted by Brian Williams. At that time, Williams was emerging from the journalistic wilderness into which he had been consigned after he invented various claims about himself and others.

Last November, Williams announced that he was leaving NBC. In March of this year, he was formally replaced by Stephanie Ruhle, who has spent the past several months building peculiar artifacts around her work as the program's host.

Every night, Ruhle tells us that watching that evening's program is going to "make us smarter." For herself, she has spent the past month or so developing an array of peculiar poses in which she leans her chin on her hands as she listens to her guests, oddly seeming to evoke Rodin's The Thinker.

(The poses predated the slogan.)

We've been disappointed to see Ruhle behave in such peculiar ways. She has always struck us as the MSNBC host most likely to ask the occasional question, or to make the occasional remark, which breaks through the iron curtain of Mandated RightThink which now defines the terrain of the channel's thoroughly segregated political subject matter.

Occasionally, Ruhle still asks such unexpected questions or makes such unexpected remarks. (Almost no one else does.) That said, consider just one of the many inane remarks which littered Friday's two-hour show, in which we saw how this corporate channel is going to respond to what happened on Friday.

Early in Friday's program, Ruhle introduced her initial three-member pundit panel.

"Let's get smarter with the help of our lead-off panel tonight," she said, repeating a form of the branding mantra she now recites every night.

After introducing the panel, Stephanie Ruhle, a good, decent person who isn't a dope, proceeded to offer this performance:

RUHLE (6/24/22): Ladies, thank you so much for being here tonight. I feel like I need to start tonight's program sort of with a collective deep breath, there is so much [PAUSES, EXHALES DEEPLY] to get through.

We don't know what made Ruhle think she was performing a collective deep breath. Still, that's what she said.

Around the country, some young women are almost surely going to die because of the decision Ruhle's panel would be discussing. Other women, and sometimes their husbands or boyfriends, will have their lives transformed.

Despite this fact, Ruhle chose to begin with an absurdly performative deep exhalation. As she did, she assured us rubes, as she does every night, that her program would make us smarter. 

In all honesty, the inanities were many this night. Because MSNBC is slow-walking its production of transcripts—almost surely for obvious reasons—it's hard to record them all.

That said, Ruhle's inane behavior with her first panel reached its zenith at the end of their segment. Somewhere, some young women are going to die, but the multimillionaire star said this as she went to commercial break:

RUHLE: Katie Benner, Melissa Murray, Joyce Vance, it is always a privilege to have you on, but especially tonight. Thank you all for bringing your expertise, but especially for being my friend.

Somewhere, people are going to die. But the main point wasn't the alleged "expertise" of Ruhle's guests. The more important point, on this occasion of vast defeat, was the fact that her guests were (said to be) her friends.

As viewers of this channel know, Ruhle was exercising a standard bit of corporate branding as she performed this script. Over the course of the past several years, the bosses at MSNBC have instructed the program's various seven- and eight-figure hosts that they must repeatedly assure us, the channel's highly gullible viewers, that the likable gang we see on its programs are just a big circle of "friends."

This cheerful branding got its start as the title of a popular network sitcom. It then jumped over to Fox & Friends, the dumbest show in the history of "cable news." 

From there, the cheerful branding technique migrated to modern-day MSNBC. This silly, mandated condescension is reliably enacted, on a daily basis, by the channel's obedient hosts. 

Indeed, at the very start of Friday's program, Ruhle had already referred to Maura Barrett, a much younger NBC reporter who is almost never seen on MSNBC, as "my friend and colleague."

We're prepared to guess that Ruhle and Barrett aren't "friends" in any normal sense of the term. That said, blue tribe voters who watch this channel are condescended to in this dimwitted way night after night after night. If you watch Deadline: White House, you'll even be told, day after day, that you're being joined by some of Nicolle Wallace's "favorite reporters and friends!"

This is part of a branding effort in which we viewers are led to believe that we ourselves are part of a circle of friends. Best of all, we know that our friends will never say anything that doesn't comport with our preconceived viewpoints.

There is nothing this network's bosses won't do to show us how dumb they think we are.  Most of all, they do this:

Just as it's done on the Fox News Channel, they present lineups of "experts" which are completely segregated by viewpoint. 

As on Fox, so too here. The "expert" guests who appear on these shows will never stray from preapproved corporate scripts and Storylines. Complexity is never allowed to enter the picture, which brings us to the sad performances seen on today's Morning Joe.

Good God! In that program's opening hour, the guests all followed the lead of their host, denouncing The Others as "fascists." This morning, the lineup included Beschloss and Gay and Litman oh my.

They all recited the most simple-minded possible views of the Supreme Court's recent decision.

Fascists fascists fascists fascists, the gang of best friends all said. But it fell to Mika, late in the hour, to offer the dumbest performance.

Mika read from a Caitlin Flanagan piece for the Atlantic. According to Mika (and a chyron), the essay carried this headline:

The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate

As Mika read excerpts from the essay, she didn't mention the fact that Flanagan's piece appeared in December 2019. She also failed to mention a more important fact. Neither she nor the chyron mentioned the second part of the dual headline which sits atop the piece:

THE DISHONESTY OF THE ABORTION DEBATE
Why we need to face the best arguments from the other side

The new segregation is like this!

Uh-oh!  In her 2019 essay, Flanagan said that leading spokespeople from both sides of the abortion debate are offering dishonest presentations. She said that people from both political tribes should consider the best arguments concerning abortion and abortion rights made by the other side.

You can agree with that or not, but only Mika would treat it this way—selectively quoting the parts of the piece which criticized the dishonesty of The Others, of those on The Other Side.

In fairness, we'll guess that Mika may not have read Flanagan's piece. She may have simply been reading copy prepared by her program's producers.

That said, you'll rarely see a better example of the spectacular dumbness of the "intellectual leadership" provided to those On Our Side. This spectacular dumbness very much helps explain how we got to this place.

How did our highly self-impressed tribe ever reach this place? We'll examine that question all week, even as experts continue to say that there's no clear way out of this mess.

To watch the tape of Mika's monologue, you can just click here. In the two minutes in which she's plainly reading text, she drops the F-bomb six separate times. For whatever reason, producers didn't post tape of Joe's earlier presentation, in which he lustily introduced this theme for the day.

As she speaks, Mika is never thoroughly clear about who the fascists are. Is she talking about certain Republican leaders? Is she talking about some of your neighbors and friends?

At times like these, it doesn't much matter. The silly Southern boys tell Miss Scarlett that they want to get after the Yankees. Political savvy is thrown to the winds and the joy of the name-calling starts. 

According to experts, some of The Others may be fascists, but our own thought leaders are dumb. They've proven this for a long time. 

Experts say that's not a fair fight. It has finally led us to this deeply unfortunate place.

Tomorrow: Truly, where to begin?


53 comments:

  1. You can't blame Hispanics.

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  2. "Last Friday morning, our blue tribe absorbed a terrible political defeat."

    Someone less biased than Somerby might have phrased this differently:

    "Last Friday morning, our red tribe committed political suicide.

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  3. Tsk. Thanks for documenting these recent liberal-faucist atrocities, dear Bob.

    We do appreciate your suffering through all that liberal-totalitarian bullshit so that we don't have to.

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  4. "after he invented various claims about himself and others."

    Somerby expands a complaint about Williams exaggerating his own experience into "various claims" about "others" not just himself. This is how facts get distorted when a writer hates a pundit.

    "Williams was NBC News' top anchor from 2004 until 2015, when he was suspended for falsely claiming that he had been in a helicopter hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War. A subsequent investigation found that he had made other inaccurate statements about his experiences covering events, and he lost the job." Note -- HIS experiences, not others. And there is no evidence his coverage of news events was inaccurate, only his own participation.

    Somerby has Williams dead-to-rights, but Somerby's own reporting of what Williams did is being exaggerated in the same way as Williams is accused of doing. The main difference is that Somerby is motivated by hate of another person, whereas Williams inflated his role as a reporter as a kind of self-aggrandizement. In fact, I would wager that Somerby's own motive is jealousy of Williams' success as a journalist, not anything specific that Williams has ever done, which is also a form of ego defense.

    But whatever the reason, Somerby is not being fair to Williams.

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  5. "For herself, she has spent the past month or so developing an array of peculiar poses in which she leans her chin on her hands..."

    Others have done this before her, notably Dick Cavett. It seems likely she is emulating them, not a sculpture called "The Thinker." It is also possible Dick Cavett adopted the pose to emulate the statue. In any case, this seems pretty harmless to me.

    It does seem like Somerby is working overtime to hate on Ruhle, who has done nothing worse than take Williams' job when he resigned. This is why Somerby comes across as disliking women, especially women who are successful in a field that Somerby tried to join, but failed.

    He then goes on to blame her for exhaling.

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  6. Ruhle says "Let's get smarter." Somerby derides her "branding."

    According to psychologists, there are two forms of intelligence: fluid and crystallized. Fluid intelligence is what we think of as innate ability, aptitude for doing intellectual tasks. Crystallized intelligence is what you know, the ability to recall stored knowledge and past experiences. Both are important to being smart and both help us live better lives.

    There is no reason to believe that listening to a news show featuring a panel of experts talking about current events will not increase crystallized knowledge. In that sense, Ruhle is making people smarter and her claim is not fatuous branding, but Somerby's complaint certainly is.

    Somerby is allowed to hate whoever he wants. His repetitive hatred for news figures, especially women, is getting pretty tiresome though, even as his criticisms become flimsier. It is time for him to visit a shrink, so that he can return his focus here to something relevant. Ruhle's salary and whether she breathes in or out clearly have nothing to do with Roe v Wade.

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  7. "Somewhere, people are going to die. But the main point wasn't the alleged "expertise" of Ruhle's guests. "

    I object to Somerby USING women's deaths to justify his dislike of Ruhle. The seriousness of the overturning of Roe v Wade doesn't make his criticism of Ruhle any more valid and Somerby himself has said next to nothing about that event, except to beat up liberals and dump on Ruhle. That isn't how this particular event concerns liberals and especially women. We care about it because women will die, and because ALL women in the US have lost rights they held last Thursday and are now second-class citizens again. But the main importance of this for Somerby is to mock Ruhle, who is doing nothing wrong and only presenting a news show.

    And let us not overlook the irony of Somerby pretending to care about women, while attacking a woman who is reporting on women's loss of rights. And she had the nerve to exhale!!!

    And then Somerby encloses the word expertise in quotes, implying that calling it that may be specious, while calling Ruhle's panelists "alleged" experts, and objecting because Ruhle considers them her friends -- as if Somerby has any knowledge whatsoever about who Ruhle's buddies actually are. For Somerby, it appears that not only are women to be second class citizens with respect to choosing their own health care, but they are second class as panelists and their expertise itself is questionable. And Ruhle is not permitted to know anyone important enough to appear on a cable news show as a guest.

    Somerby's bile today is overheated. He needs to take himself in and get looked at. This is over the top hatred, even for him. We liberals are upset over this court decision, so a certain amount of stress is endemic, but Somerby shouldn't use this occasion to put his hatred on the table and make women feel worse, which is what he is doing with today's column. Talk about lack of empathy!

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  8. "Best of all, we know that our friends will never say anything that doesn't comport with our preconceived viewpoints."

    First, Somerby cannot know this. But second, what does this say about Somerby's own viewpoints? He seems to always find what is said on MSNBC objectionable, whether it is defending that black female supreme court appointee, or suggesting that Trump be prosecuted, it appears Somerby dislikes most of what he hears, based on his comments here. And what kind of liberal feels that way about our reliable narratives on our good old blue tribe liberal cable network?

    Somerby cannot have this both ways. More and more he seems to find the narratives over at Fox more pleasing, which suggests he has turned himself into a red tribe member. If he weren't, he wouldn't find the narratives at MSNBC so displeasing.

    Meanwhile, those of us who don't think in those black and white red/blue dichotomies, consider cable news to be a source of information, not "pleasing narratives," and reserve the right to evaluate facts ourselves and to think about what they mean to us and our opinions, on our own. We are not the drones Somerby implies we are, and we can even watch Ruhle without being bothered by her exhales or her putative friends, because we are watching to hear guest opinions about Roe v Wade, not to have a cocktail with a TV host, to help fill the empty hours until we are next told what to think.

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  9. What is Somerby's alleged "expertise" for teaching Misogyny 101 here today?

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  10. "As viewers of this channel know, Ruhle was exercising a standard bit of corporate branding as she performed this script."

    As viewers of this channel cannot possibly know, but Somerby assumes, Ruhle...

    FTFY Somerby

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  11. "Ruhle had already referred to Maura Barrett, a much younger NBC reporter who is almost never seen on MSNBC, as "my friend and colleague."

    Somerby makes this assumption because HE has not seen Barrett on screen much at MSNBC, but Somerby cannot know what Barrett does behind the scenes, where else Ruhle may have encountered her, or anything about their relationship.

    He emphasizes Barrett's age, as if an older woman and a younger one cannot possibly be friends. To my knowledge, there are no age-related boundaries imposed on friendships between older and younger men or older and younger women. In fact, it is not unusual for an older man to see himself in a younger man and become a kind of mentor to him, helping him to climb the business ladder. Why cannot a woman do the same? Or does Somerby subscribe to the stereotype that all women are inherent enemies, especially older women and younger ones who are always out to replace them and thus threats not friends (see All About Eve). It is certainly in men's interests to have women at each other's throats. Cat fights are another movie cliche to the point that men will call "cat fight!" if they hear two women arguing over something, whereas men argue frequently without being considered adversaries.

    Somerby might better consider the relationships among the various women at Fox News when 20 women accused Roger Ailes and others of sexual harrassment (portrayed in the movie Bombshell). Divide and conquer has been a male tactic, especially in business, but women are discovering that business friendships are more to their advantage. And this is not a new development, just one that may not be on Somerby's horizon, given that I doubt he has many women "friends" and thus cannot know much about women's friendships with each other.

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  12. The Somerby pretends to critique Mika's monologue. For the record, Somerby has never said a nice word about Mika and today is no exception. She uses the F-word (which Somerby calls a bomb) for emphasis. It doesn't matter whether it was scripted or not -- it is there to show her strength of feeling on the topic. Beyond that Somerby offers no substantive criticism of her statement, other than the non-specificity of the term "fascist." Does Somerby really not know who the fascists are? The people in our daily lives are not in power and do not have ability to act as fascists, but they can be fascist supporters. The fascists are those who are behaving like fascists and they are obvious to blue tribe members and liberals. They are the people supporting fascist laws and those who enact them. This cannot be the first time Somerby has heard a liberal attack fascism on air -- but he raises this as a complaint against Mika because she is the one saying it and something about women who have prime journalism jobs just sticks in Somerby's craw.

    Somerby may have a point that calling people fascists may be counter-productive, although I think they already know who and what they are -- but today he is making the complaint to bash Mika, not because it has any relevance to Roe v Wade and the arguments for and against the Supreme Court decision. It seems obvious that Somerby hates Mika like real liberals hate this court decision. But which is more important to discuss? How bad Mika is, or how that decision will affect women in our country. Somerby clearly doesn't give a flying fuck about the latter, but he cares a lot that we all know how bad Mika is. What an ugly person Somerby is.

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  13. "You can agree with that or not, but only Mika would treat it this way—selectively quoting the parts of the piece which criticized the dishonesty of The Others, of those on The Other Side."

    Over the past months, I and my and others have posted quite a few examples where Somerby has done exactly the same thing. Is it OK for Somerby to selectively present quotes that support his own narrative, while leaving out the parts (and other essays elsewhere) that do not support him, while blaming Mika for doing the same thing (according to Somerby's account). I am not going to look up Flanagan's essay, but I wouldn't trust Somerby's version of what it contains, because Somerby has been dishonest about such things too many times in the past and cannot be trusted and what quotes and videos not in evidence might contain.

    It is almost as if Somerby assumes his readers will not look things up (and no, I don't care about Mika enough to look this one up) to be careful in his attributions. He may be right about that, but the bottom line is that I will no longer believe him when he says such things.

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  14. Just for the record, Trump is a fascist who attempted a coup against our government and those who support him are supporting fascism. Being against fascism is not a bad thing, whether it is Mika or any other liberal or blue tribe member.

    Definition: "Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism,[1] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy[2] that rose to prominence in early 20th-century Europe." Wikipedia

    This decision falls under the "strong regimentation of society" because it makes women second-class citizens by taking away rights they had, conflicts with the constitution, and restricts women's health care choices interfering with rights of individuals in our society.

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    1. https://coloradonewsline.com/2022/06/24/trumpism-is-fascism-american-style/

      Pretty good discussion of why the US was fascist under Trump.

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  15. "According to experts, some of The Others may be fascists, but our own thought leaders are dumb."

    None of the pundits and cable news hosts discussed today are "our own thought leaders," nor are they dumb because of anything Somerby describes. He makes this blanket assertion, as always, without any evidence. What does Somerby gain by calling liberals dumb? You tell me. I don't see any political benefit to the left when Somerby criticizes cable news and then calls all liberals dumb. At least we aren't the ones banning abortion. That's about the dumbest political move I've seen in my long life. Right up there with Trump's attempt to stay in office after losing his election, supported by the bulk of the Republican party. If Republican voters go along with that, they are the ones who should be called dumb, dumb, dumb. But Somerby isn't saying that, is he?

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  16. A "Democrats in Disarray" message might motivate Democrats to work harder at getting out the vote. A "Democrats are Dumb" message seems counter-productive and discouraging. How does Somerby think his essay today is going to help Democrats win midterms?

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  17. Friday's Supreme Court decision was bad for men and for families, but especially for women. So Somerby decides today to kick the women while they're down. On what planet does this make sense? Planet red, and I don't mean Mars.

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  18. The TV show "Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey" on Netflix shows what happens when men have unfettered God-given power over women. It is about FLDS polygamy and the abuses that grew out of it under Warren Jeffs. Unlike The Handmaid's Tale, this is history. It really happened, Jeffs is now in jail, and the show tells how it happened using interviews and footage from the days of Rulon Jeffs.

    This is where the slippery slope leads. Women need to be given the right to information about sex and their bodies, the right to say "no" to men when they don't want to have sex with them, the right to make their own decisions about reproductive health care, and the right to terminate a pregnancy as a health care procedure, without interference by men. Women need to be free from coercion, fear and domestic or partner violence.

    Reproductive choice is closely related to ability to participate in life outside the home. It is essential to the ability to work and engage in other productive activities beyond motherhood and childcare. It gives women autonomy in choosing whether to stay in a marriage or not. Having an independent income allows women to make a variety of other choices about their lives. Some men don't want that.

    There may be women who don't think they will every have need of an abortion and wouldn't want to have one in any case, and that is their choice. Such women need to see that the society around them is structured around the ability of women to make such choices. If women are required by law to have children and also expected to have unprotected sex, then there is no way to participate in the workforce, or in wider activities. Choice in other aspects of society depends on reproductive choice.

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  19. That so-called branding by Ruhle is apparently not her invention, but seems to be coming from the top of the network, Rashida Jones. See the last paragraph of this quote, where Jones explains that her vision for the network is that people come away knowing more:

    "MSNBC has named Alex Wagner to succeed Rachel Maddow as the weekday host of its 9 p.m. hour four days a week, turning to a political news veteran to fill one of the network’s most important time slots.

    Ms. Wagner, 44, is a fixture of Washington journalism with roots in progressive news and opinion outlets. She worked for MSNBC as a host of a daytime show for several years, and rejoined the channel in February as a senior political analyst and guest-anchor during prime time, filling in for Ms. Maddow and Chris Hayes.

    In an interview, Rashida Jones, the channel’s president, said that Ms. Wagner’s experience covering politics would be crucial as the network prepares to cover this fall’s midterm elections.

    “This is not a show where our hair is on fire and we’re yelling past each other, and we’re creating these manufactured moments of tension,” Ms. Jones said. “I really want the takeaway from this show to be a better understanding of what’s happening in the world.”

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    1. Don't anyone tell Somerby that Alex Wagner is female.

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  20. Whoa, 18 word-salads in 2 hours? Impressive.

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    1. How much would that be worth at your rate of pay?

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    2. Mao's quota is spread around different liberal blogs.

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    3. You sound like you're admitting to having a quota, dear government scientist in Colorado.

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    4. Yes, and your quota is not spread around different liberal blogs. It's all in this unfortunate one.

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    5. I picked up what Mao was indicating right away.

      "Mao's quota" (whereas my quota...)

      Whoops

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  21. During his final years at MSNBC, Brian
    Williams repeatedly berated Hillary Clinton
    for not delivering jobs She had supposedly
    promised to West Virginia. As Clinton had
    not been elected and therefore was in
    no position to deliver on any campaign
    promise, this was particularly weird,
    incompetent strange nonsense coming
    from Williams.
    Yet Bob either didn’t pay close enough
    to MSNBC or didn’t care Clinton was being
    abused in such an odd fashion ( no one
    else did either). Either of these seem
    credible explanations given Bob’s own
    bizarre performance on this blog, it
    also puts into context Bob’s freakish
    ranting today.

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  22. "Uh-oh! In her 2019 essay, Flanagan said that leading spokespeople from both sides of the abortion debate are offering dishonest presentations. She said that people from both political tribes should consider the best arguments concerning abortion and abortion rights made by the other side."

    This makes it seem like Flanagan is evaluating arguments. She isn't. She is saying that the power of imaging a fetus as a child makes it hard to imagine aborting it. She says that a sonogram is a baby picture, that scientific approaches to seeing a fetus as a clump of cells only concern early months in a pregnancy. But she also says that despite the ability to see a fetus as a child, women will go on having abortions. Then she briefly says that the strongest advocates for and against abortion are both dishonest because they don't take these competing realities into account. And that is all she says about it. She doesn't say that one side should listen to the other.

    She says this:

    "This is not an argument anyone is going to win. The loudest advocates on both sides are terrible representatives for their cause. When women are urged to “shout your abortion,” and when abortion becomes the subject of stand-up comedy routines, the attitude toward abortion seems ghoulish. Who could possibly be proud that they see no humanity at all in the images that science has made so painfully clear? When anti-abortion advocates speak in the most graphic terms about women “sucking babies out of the womb,” they show themselves without mercy. They are not considering the extremely human, complex, and often heartbreaking reasons behind women’s private decisions. The truth is that the best argument on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowledge that fact, you aren’t speaking or even thinking honestly about the issue. You certainly aren’t going to convince anybody. Only the truth has the power to move."

    Somerby could have quoted this, as easily as I have. He didn't because it doesn't say what he wants us to hear -- that he thinks liberals should listen to conservatives. In this way, Somerby is being dishonest too. The bulk of Flanagan's article describes the realities and difficulties on both sides of the abortion debate, not the logic. Flanagan says the anti-abortion side can convice with just a picture. I disagree with that.

    My daughter had a pregnancy in which the baby was three days from its due date when it had an umbilical cord accident. The cord wrapped around its neck and it strangled to death, before birth. She then had to give birth to a dead baby, a stillbirth. This is more common than one hears, and it is tragic because the baby has by that time become a family member, a room has been furnished, toys and clothing bought, family expectant along with the mother. And then there is death, because nature is cruel and arbitrary. My daughter did nothing wrong to cause this accident, nor did her doctors or anyone else. It just happened and it was very sad.

    There are no good outcomes when a woman chooses an abortion. The sadness involves other aspects of life than the physical process of birth -- such as rape, incest, deformity, a violent relationship, poverty and want. These circumstances are as sad as an umbilical cord accident, but Flanagan says, not as compelling as a sonogram. I disagree. They only require that someone focus their attention on a different part of the situation besides that in the picture. Because life can be cruel in many ways and women should have the ability to deal with their circumstances as best they can. As my daughter learned to do, despite her tragic loss.

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    1. "They only require that someone focus their attention on a different part of the situation besides that in the picture"

      I could look at photo of my child for ten seconds and then spend ten years conjuring every hardship or tragedy that could befall me as a consequence of her existence, and would not once conclude any were worth killing her to avoid.

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    2. What if your child were in a brain-dead state in an expensive hospital bed with no prospect whatsoever of waking up? Life deals people circumstances like that, through unexpected accidents such as being hit by a car or a schoolyard tetherball. It is sad. Would you condemn your child to that vegetative state for the rest of her life, even if it consumed all of your financial resources, making it so that you couldn't send any other kids to college or afford your house any more, or to have an occasional meal out, and would you cling to the belief that she might against the odds wake up, even though the doctors have determined that it isn't going to happen, so you would be holding out faith in an unrealistic hope? How many decades would you put her and yourself through?

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    3. It has been 20 years of waiting and now your other daughter wants to get married. You can't pay for your daughter's wedding, even a modest one, and also for your vegetative daughter breathing on a machine in that same hospital bed for the past 20 years without a sign of waking up. You might continue your vigil for religious reasons, but do you really think it is the best outcome for you, your daughter, and the rest of your family, who have needs too?

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    4. It is easy to talk about what you would do in a situation that you are not currently in. Realities have a way of changing people's minds about difficult choices.

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    5. Oh, if the commenter was talking about a brain dead fetus or one who was known to be destined for a short and painful life as "deformed" then that would require a modified analysis. I was talking about a photo or ultrasound image of my child born or not yet born and evidently uremarkable in those respects, which describes 98% of the humans whose lives are taken before birth.

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    6. Please cite a source for that statistic 98%.

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    7. Millions of women have chosen abortion over the years, and they are just fine. They have moved on and think nothing of it. Certainly, a miscarriage can very traumatic, as well as other unforeseen complications that force ones hand. Just choosing an abortion, however, is not a tragedy of any kind.

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  23. How was Friday our "terrible political defeat"? It seems to me that was in 2016, when Russia and Comey enabled Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton and put Trump into office. Once Trump appointed three conservative justices to the court, the overturning of Roe v Wade and all of their other atrocities were a foregone conclusion.

    It should be noted by Somerby and everyone else that the Democrats were not responsible for what Comey did, not responsible for Russia either, and certainly not responsible for the way the electoral college enables a person who win a minority of the popular book to be put into office. The left is only responsible for its less than enthusiastic support of Hillary (when they knew Trump would be a disaster). Alone, that would not have put Trump into office.

    Setting aside the harm that wll be done to women in states with abortion bans, Friday's decision was likely the greatest political gift Democrats could have received, short of Trump deciding not to run again. (Notice that Somerby doesn't acknowledge the harm done to women, just the political loss -- which he oddly considers a liberal defeat.)

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    1. The court decision would only be a liberal defeat if the three liberalish justices had voted with the majority. It is something of a victory that Roberts didn't join the majority, although it has little practical consequence.

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    2. Every time I take Somerby’s advice, and listen to “the Others “, I find them to be more bigoted than I did the time before.

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    3. You're really getting your formula down now as a propagandist. Did you know you can get paid to write greeting cards? It might suit you well as an alternative income.

      Delete
    4. Today is your Birthday, and Republican voters are still bigots.
      Love,
      Hallmark

      Delete
  24. The struggle is real, you all.

    pic.twitter.com/1cqZ6cPzfy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. this link leads to a bunch of right wing tweets. Which one were you referring to specifically? The one were someone says something mean about a fat woman, our the one where Nancy Pelosi's elbow does something conservatives find meaningful in a random moment of photo taking?

      Or do you think that giving birth v abortion is a man-woman thing and not a fundamentalist conservative v everyone else thing. Most of the people in this country, male and female, want abortion to be legal and it is a religious minority that has foisted this opinion onto everyone else. 6 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are Catholic, whereas 22% of the nation is Catholic. Was that what you were pointing us toward?

      Delete
    2. Squirrels should have more say in how this country is run than the dim -witted ignoramuses who believe in God.

      Delete
    3. 3:10,
      Get ready for the Right-wing cancel culture to come after you for not being PC enough.

      All of them, Katie.
      All of them.

      Delete
    4. What does squirrel mean? Is it a right-wing slam at someone?

      Delete
    5. I don't know, but I can tell you "squirrel" in scientology is someone using the tech outside the church's oversight. So like a renegade preacher or something.

      Delete
  25. Faith of our Fathers! Mary's prayers
    Shall win our country back to thee:
    And through the truth that comes from God
    Our land shall then indeed be free.

    Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
    We will be true to thee till death.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Somerby thinks you Catholics need to go have a talk with the Pentecostals.

      Delete
  26. You are not required to be here.

    ReplyDelete