"I'm pro life, but sweet Jesus you're an idiot. For your next post, how about a passionate speech on the need to immediately free Prince Albert from the can?"
Lovely.
I like the commenter who referred to "Christ on a cracker." That sounds delicious.
Holy shit. We must immediately establish a military presence in Jessica Linden's uterus. Apostropher, you get the Distinguished Cervix Cross.
Apostropher needs help distinguishing cervices?
Fave: he still thinks that the by-line of the onion article names a real person.
Anyone who starts a response like that with the words, "I wrote a blog" deserves all the comments he gets.
The only thing worse would be if he had said, "I made a blog..."
I am now convinced that the whole thing is a joke.
It wouls take some impressive dedication for it to be a joke.
I am now convinced that 8 gets it exactly wrong.
Yeah, wow. My vote is that the whole thing is a put-on. I mean... it has to be, right? No one can really be that dumb.
Good Lord.
Then again there was the time China's state-run media fell for the Onion story about Congress threatening to move to a new location unless they got a new Capitol building.
I'm enjoying his commenters flailing about, too. There's this gem:
Dude, are you for fucking real? You read the Onion and didn't immediately pick up that it was satire? That most of the stories in it are COMPLETELY made up?
Yes, most of the stories are indeed made up. Smoove B is totally real, though.
#2: I like the commenter who referred to "Christ on a cracker."
As a Jew, I may not have the facts right on this, but I thought Christ is the cracker.
At the end of the follow-up:
Either way, I think I did a good job of turning the “satire” right back at them, don’t you?
This is unbearably delicious.
I think "not getting it" here is an obvious rhetorical strategy. In his mind, it ought not to be possible to joke about this, to grant humanity or self-awareness to the other side.
When you think about it, how much humor do we associate with the movements on which pro-life is explicitly modeled? Holocaust educators/justice seekers? Abolitionists? He puts himself in their company.
14: OK, the A&V club is real. And this isn't completely made up. Also, I'm convinced this happened.
The Bush inauguration speech was covered well by The Onion.
The Onion is probably the only place to go, for Sept. 11th coverage as well. Which isn't to say that 18 doesn't get it exactly right... 'cause it does.
You know, when I read the original article and the comment thread, I felt kinda bad for the guy, who basically got 264 comments consisting of "you are stupid" and "look how dumb the pro-lifers are!" (which, by the way, I find really, really annoying; writing them off as stupid just dooms us to a lack of understanding as to why they hold so much political power in this country) and other nonsense. But after reading his update, well, I just can't feel bad for the guy. He's probably just insane.
What I don't understand is the shock he expresses at the "woman on the lawn" who says she disagrees with abortion, but she won't tell a woman what to do with her body.
Is that really such a shocking statement? Come on. I guess I am occasionally guilty of the "I can't believe someone would actually think that" line, but I try to reserve it for truly absurd claims.
I wonder how much further we would get if we all just stipulated that we do, indeed, understand eachother, and move on toward consensus. As someone vehemently pro-choice, I still understand where the pro-lifers are coming from. They're wrong, but I understand them.
[/tangent]
"Holy Shit! Man walks on fucking moon!"
The parallel universes of Satire and Reality have merged. There is no longer any distinction between the two.
Look, this is a joke to you people, but these homosexuals really won't stop sucking my cock.
Also, I have met many real-life incarnations of Jim Anchower.
Thank you god for this much-needed antidote to the Jeff Goldstein nonsense.
I love the lumberjack-looking photo that goes along with that article (from 26). It must be some kinda clip-art -- I've actually seen it used (in all seriousness) on a lawyer's website (personal injury lawyer?), and I couldn't stop laughing.
"Homosexuals won't stop suing my cock," etc etc.
What I don't understand is the shock he expresses at the "woman on the lawn" who says she disagrees with abortion, but she won't tell a woman what to do with her body.
That I kind of got -- to get there he had to interpret some responses that I'm pretty sure were actually 'Whatever' as actual agreement, but after that it makes sense. From his reading of the conversation, the woman agreed with him that abortion was infanticide, but didn't see a problem with it anyway, which would be pretty weird.
Homosexuals won't stop suing my cock
You know he was really happy when he got to pull out the "what if someone rapes and murders you" hypothetical, though. I wish she'd've maced him.
Any chance they can get to fantasize about twelve year old virgins being brutally raped and sodomized is a good chance.
Well, that's about it for this thread...
Did you ever get that fruit basket?
I have an idea: instead of giving de-lurkers fruit baskets, which is so suburban welcome-wagon, we should all start commenting -- in unison -- "one of us! We accept her [or him]! One of us! Gooble gobble!"
(How do you make Safari-compatible links again?)
From his reading of the conversation, the woman agreed with him that abortion was infanticide, but didn't see a problem with it anyway, which would be pretty weird.
Why is this weird? The stronger argument for abortion is a women's rights, not redifining what constitutes a person or a living human because all that is so wishy washy.
Wouldn't you guess that most pro-choice people rely on a belief that an embryo or fetus is not the moral equivalent of a baby? While the sick violinist argument provides some support for the idea that abortion might be permissible even if abortion was equivalent to infanticide, I'm going to say that the number of people who will cheerfully say and mean "Yes, abortion is killing a baby, and that doesn't bother mie in the slightest," is pretty small.
(I'm not dead sure I understood you -- I may be responding to something you didn't say.)
(And I misspelled 'me' to make you feel better. Because I never make typos of my own accord.)
I'm going to say that the number of people who will cheerfully say "Yes, abortion is killing a baby, and that doesn't bother mie in the slightest," is pretty small.
Okay, in that sense, yes, I'd agree. But there are lots of us who sould say abortion is killing a devloping baby and it's really unpleasant and it bothers me, but there are overriding reasons.
No kidding. And I'm a 5'5" clump of cells.
Hey, I wanna be supercilious and probably wrong.
The word everyone is looking for is 'person'; when the clump of cells/embryo/fetus/baby/toddler/etc counts as something with the ability (even a limited one) to be a) self-aware b) due respect as a agent or object of moral concern. Thomson aside (I hate the dead violinist argument), usually, one we acknowledge that 'personhood' attaches to the cluster of cells, the game is up. This is why we talk of whether consciousness is bright-line or not, or the pro-lifer argues that 'it's not just a clump of cells.'
So there's a bit of sleight of hand going on here with 'babies' and 'developing babies.' 'Babies' could be a neutral term implying nothing about personhood; but usually we mean babies to mean 'those cute newly born things that are human persons.' When you say 'abortion kills developing babies', it's imprecise whether you mean it counts the same morally as infanticide, or whether you mean the stress to fall on 'developing' and deny the developing baby personhood.
When you say 'abortion kills developing babies', it's imprecise whether you mean it counts the same morally as infanticide, or whether you mean the stress to fall on 'developing' and deny the developing baby personhood.
I see development as a continuum, and the demarcations such age, consciousness or birth, or whatever, are simply defined and do not hold the same moral or emotional significance for everybody, and are necessary for social or legal reasons. I'm comfortable with abortion in the early months, less so in the later months for what are probably emotional reasons. So, I don't find it strange at all that someone else's emotional or moral bright line happens somewhere after birth and that they are comfortable saying that abortion is infanticide and that they're "okay with it".
Someone else might place their moral bright line "somewhere after birth" are you appear to be okay with that??
Surely there was a typo in your comment, somewhere.
I'm not okay with that - but it's not significantly different from last trimester abortions to be "weird" or unusual. Infanticide has been a common practice around the world for a long time.
Funny, I agree with you that it's not significantly different from late trimester abortions, but we seem to draw radically different conclusions from that fact...
Of course it's significantly different than late term abortions. I can hand you a baby and walk away. I can't do that with a fetus in utero.
...we seem to draw radically different conclusions from that fact...
Oh? Tell me more.
55: And, and. If the baby suddenly gets very sick or has some kind of fatal deformation or condition, or if I get very sick, then that is very sad. But the baby's sickness doesn't directly threaten my own life, nor does my having the baby threaten to make my own illness more dangerous.
I guess I don't really understand your point, bphd.
I mean, I mentioned to LB, above, that the women's rights arguments are the stronger argument. Are you agreeing with me?
I'm just saying that infanticide is clearly different from third-tri abortion for fairly obvious reasons.
I'm quite understanding of people saying they feel squicked out by late-term abortion, but yeah, I'm saying that people feeling squicked out isn't a decent reason to force someone to sacrifice their health for someone else. I'm all over the sick violinist argument, which I think is the right way to go on this question, and I think that getting into questions of whether or not a fetus is a baby is basically irrelevant: even if one feels certain it is, that doesn't make it right to compel someone to literally compromise their own health and safety for it. We don't require people to do that under any other circumstance.
I'm just saying that infanticide is clearly different from third-tri abortion for fairly obvious reasons.
For the mother, there is a significant difference. For the fetus/baby/clump-of-cells/infant/favorite-loaded-term there is just another stage of development.
I didn't notice anyone mentioning the followup.
"Either way, I think I did a good job of turning the 'satire' right back at them, don’t you?"
We will end abortion through our unity and the Monthly Call for Life
I see they phased out the Quarterly Showing of Resolve.