Surprise! A Person’s Intelligence is Not so Closely Linked to Genetics After All.

Writing in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell argues that IQ is not fixed, and it has nothing to do with race but everything to do with the environment in which a person is raised. And also on the type of IQ test administered. Apparently, the standard IQ test, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), has been modified four times over the last century or so, because it gets easier for each generation that takes it.

Gladwell’s a much better writer than I am, and he’s done a lot more research on the subject, so I urge you to read the entire article.

Here’s an excerpt:

[I]t shouldn’t make much of a difference where a mixed-race child is born. But, again, it does: the children fathered by black American G.I.s in postwar Germany and brought up by their German mothers have the same I.Q.s as the children of white American G.I.s and German mothers. The difference, in that case, was not the fact of the children’s blackness, as a fundamentalist would say. It was the fact of their Germanness—of their being brought up in a different culture, under different circumstances. ‘The mind is much more like a muscle than we’ve ever realized. It needs to get cognitive exercise. It’s not some piece of clay on which you put an indelible mark.’ The lesson to be drawn from black and white differences was the same as the lesson from the Netherlands years ago: I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person’s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in.”

Read the full article here.

I don’t imagine the people who’ve been arguing on this blog that Black people are genetically less intelligent will read Gladwell’s article in its entirety. It’s got too many big words.

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Is it Possible That Progressives are Finally Growing a Pair?

I don’t know what I’m more excited about, the fact that I’ve yet again been vindicated or the fact that it appears progressives in the US are finally stepping up to the plate. Back in May, I wrote a post entitled “Conservatism has failed wherever it has been tried,” in which I basically called the right wing out on some of its bullsh*t rhetoric.

Then today, I got a video from a friend of mine who lives out on the West Coast. The video was put out by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank based in Washington, DC. It starts off with a couple of White dudes, one wearing a tag that says “Con” and the other a tag that says “Pro.” The “Pro” guy identifies himself as a progressive and then lists all the great stuff progressive thinkers and movements have accomplished for society. The “Con” guy, identifies himself as conservative concedes that the only thing he’s for is tax cuts for the rich.

Wow! I need to pinch myself. Am I dreaming? Is it possible that, after decades of silence in the face of conservatives’ outrageous claims and acts, the left is finally waking up? Can it be true that progressives, after 30 years of being on the losing side of the culture war, have again found their voice? Dare I hope that liberals will quit trying to remove the differences between themselves and conservatives, and put an end to the ridiculous righward shift in modern American politics?

One can only hope.

In the meantime, enjoy the video.

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Does that Dildo Come in Black?

After spending the past week chest-deep in the James Watson racism brouhaha, it’s nice to get back to my standard fare of sleazy blog posts. And what could be sleazier than a dead Baptist minister? A dead Baptist minister in conservative Alabama clad head-to-toe in a rubber outfit and hogtied, that’s what! Oh, I forgot to mention he had a dildo in his . . . um . . . let’s just say he put it where the sun don’t shine. And by that, I mean his anus.

That’s right, folks, another conservative, anti-sex, anti-abortion, anti-gay, family-values Christian fundamentalist has been outed for being a total hypocrite. It is tragic that the Rev. Gary M. Aldridge’s outing coincided with his death, but the point remains that he was privately indulging in activities that he publicly denounced. Aldridge, an associate of the late Jerry Falwell, had ministered for 16 years at the Thorington Road Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

The autopsy report—which had been suppressed by the medical examiner’s office since June—was just this month published by The Smoking Gun. It seems the late Reverend Aldridge was found dead in his home and there were no signs of foul play. Here’s an excerpt from the autopsy report:

The decedent is clothed in a wet diving suit, a face mask which has a single vent for breathing, a rubberized head mask having an opening for the mouth and eyes, a second rubberized suit with suspenders, rubberized male underwear, hands and feet have diving gloves and slippers. There are numerous straps and cords restraining the decedent. There is a leather belt around the midriff. There is a series of ligatures extending from the hands to the feet. The hands are bound behind the back. The feet are tied to the hands. There are nylon ligatures holding these in place with leather straps about the wrists and ankles. There are plastic cords also tied about the hands and feet with a single plastic cord extending up to the head and surrounding the lower neck. There is a dildo in the anus covered with a condom.”

In case you have trouble conjuring up a mental image, just visualize “the gimp” from Pulp Fiction, only hogtied. The best part is the personal effects, listed on the bottom of page 4 of the autopsy report: “One yellow metal ring intact on left ring finger, one dildo.” Talk about having something embarrassing on your permanent record!

On a more serious note, at least one other blogger has raised the possibility that the reverend was not alone when he died; I too have to wonder if it’s possible for someone to tie himself up that completely without some help. After all, his hands were tied behind his back, with his feet tied to his hands. If someone else had been with the reverend when he asphyxiated, how sad is it that this person—probably out of shame—chose to escape and protect his or her own identity rather than get the help that may have saved Aldridge’s life?!

And what’s up with the wetsuits? I’m assuming the reverend would have had a really hard time finding a proper latex fetish suit in a state that had just banned the sale of dildos—he probably supported the ban too! Fortunately for Reverend Aldridge, diving gear was apparently still legal. Unfortunately for him, indulging in bondage in an open and safe way is not widely accepted in his circles. Otherwise, he might still be alive.

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For Dr. Watson and Other Racists, Racism’s Beauty Lies In Its Simplicity: Part I

I never expected blogging would pay off but on Monday, Oct. 22, it did. Because of a post I had written last week about Dr. James Watson’s statements (see this posting and the associated comments), I was invited to be a guest on the BBC’s “World Have Your Say” program. Unfortunately, rather than adress the substance and merit of Dr. Watson’s words, the show’s presenters chose to focus on his right to free speech; I tried, during my 60 or so seconds of airtime, to argue that the issue was not one of free speech. However, because we had been allowed to speak only in the last five minutes of the show, I and another African blogger (both based in the US) couldn’t go into any detail or address the real substance of what Dr. Watson had said. That’s why I’ve decided to use this space to say what I would have said, had I been given more time and had the show been more focused on racism, which I believe lies at the heart of Dr. Watson’s words.

But first, a recap. Last week the renowned scientist and Nobel Prize winner brought down a firestorm of criticism on his own head after he told the Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” He also said that although he hoped everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” Since then, the good doctor has been suspended by his employer, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and removed from its board of directors. The London Science Museum, which had invited Dr. Watson to give a talk on his latest book canceled his appearance, and the mayor of London, Ken Livingston, issued a statement condemning Dr. Watson’s remarks as “racist propaganda masquerading as scientific fact.” All this negative press forced the famous geneticist to hastily recant and issue a statement of apology in which he says “there is no scientific basis” for anyone to infer from his words that Africans are genetically inferior.

Despite the backtracking, I think the mayor of London is absolutely right to say that Dr. Watson’s words were nothing more than a pathetic attempt to use modern science to justify old racism, a clear case of trying to put new wine into an old wineskin. Why do I say Watson’s words were racist? Ask yourself this question: How many people who didn’t already believe that Black people are less intelligent actually read those words and thought, “Hmmm . . . I guess I was wrong about this! Now that I’m hearing it from a scientist, I believe that Black people are, in fact, less intelligent”? Not many, I would assume, and of the ones who might have, how many would have been Black? Conversely, many people did try to use those same words to justify what they already thought about Black people’s intellectual inferiority—some of them even posted comments on this blog. It seems Dr. Watson’s words had only two consequences, depending on the person reading them:

1. They failed to change the mind of someone who didn’t already believe Black people are not as intelligent or

2. They were unquestioningly accepted by someone who already thought Black people were less intelligent and then used to justify pre-existing beliefs.

Without any scientific backing for those remarks, Dr. Watson was simply and simplistically alluding to a widely held belief that Black people are lazy and less intelligence than White people. The simplicity of thinking behind those statements leaves me feeling that they were nothing more than the expression of a racist opinion.

After all, simplicity is at the heart of racism, an ideology which maintains that the greatest determiner of a person’s character is ”race” (i.e., skin color, hair texture, physical stature, etc.). This simple and simplistic—yet disappointingly widesperead—mindset maintains that if a person is intelligent, hard-working, or kind, it must be because of his/her “race.” In other words, “race” is all there is to a person. To the racist, the essence of the “nigger” shown in the caricature above lies in his physical attributes. A “nigger” has black skin, bulging eyes, buck teeth, big, red lips, etc. To become a “nigger,” simply change your appearance by blackening your face and reddening your lips or, better yet, buy Nigger Make-Up and hey presto! Instant “nigger!” (Go here or here for an intelligent and academic look at the origins, uses, and meanings of the word “nigger.”) To the racist, the “nigger” has no personality, no emotions, and no history. In fact, the “nigger” has nothing but his physical appearance.

Herein lies the beauty of racism and racist thinking. Once the physical attributes have been identified and deemed to be the “nigger’s” defining characteristics, the next step is simply to attach social meaning to them.

For the racist, skin color is infused with all of a person’s qualities—always negative if the person is not White. Once this social meaning has been “encoded” into a person’s “race,” the next step is to lump everyone who belongs to that “race” into the predefined categories. Pretty soon, everyone who looks like a “nigger” (i.e., has black skin, curly hair, etc.) is a “nigger.” Even worse, everyone who fits that physical description must, by definition be everything that a “nigger” is: lazy, violent, unintelligent, dishonest (or any number of other negative qualities). The human being is thus robbed of individuality—even worse, humanity—and denied the chance to prove her/his own merit as an individual person. Rather, by being stripped of identity, of ”personhood,” the “nigger” is lumped into an undifferentiated mass of people all of whom have the same qualities forced onto them. Here’s a simple formula I devised to illustrate my point. Follow it and soon, you too will be thinking like a racist:

1. Identify the “defining” physical characteristics of the object of your hatred (in the case of the “nigger” above, they’re black skin, curly hair, buck teeth, and bulging eyes)

2. Attach social meaning to those physical characteristics (e.g., the “nigger” is lazy, violent, dishonest, unintelligent, or any number of other negatives)

3. Broadly apply that social meaning to every person who shares the same physical characteristics as the person in Step 1 (e.g., anybody who has black skin, curly hair, buck  teeth, or bulging eyes is lazy, violent, dishonest, unintelligent, or any number of other negatives)

Such racist thinking recognizes no geographical or national boundary and ignores environmental, cultural, religious, and other differences, choosing instead to see “race” (skin color/hair texture) as the defining and unifying attribute of the “other.” This is why British racists use “wog” for Black Americans, Africans, Black people from the Caribbean, Australian Aborigines, and even dark-skinned Indians. And, although “race” in the American context has no biological basis, skin color and hair texture have been infused with so much social meaning that ”nigger” is equally used against Black Africans, Black Americans, and Black people from the Caribbean, despite DNA studies showing that  ”30 percent of African-American males [who participated in a Howard University study] have a white male ancestor.” But more on genetics later.

For now, it’s enough to only point out that lumping people into an undifferentiated mass is a form of dehumanization. Such dehumanization through undifferentiation was the reason Nazis shaved their victims’ heads, dressed them in the same clothes, and took away their names and replaced them with numbers. Members of an undifferentiated mass of people lack individuality, lack identity, lack personhood, and consequently, lack humanity. This practice serves the primary functions of simplifying and justifying the exploitation, brutalization, and general dehumanization of an entire population in order to put that population’s land, labor, wealth, and natural or other resources at the disposal of someone else. This was as true of colonialism in Africa as it was of North American slavery and the Jewish Holocaust.

Secondly, racism is inherently a simplistic and apolitical ideology, laying the responsibility for an individual’s success or failure in life squarely at the feet of that individual. By looking only at skin color or other physical attributes, the racist need not look at that person’s interaction with other persons through, say, colonialism or enslavement, and how that interaction might also impact who, and where in life, that person is today. Rather, racism enables the racist to bypass the hard work of thinking, allows the racist to look solely at a person’s “race,” and to attribute that person’s situation in life to his/her skin color and/or hair texture. Racism and racist thought, in sum, are artificially and deliberately created ideologies that serve  the social, economic, or political purpose of devaluing and dehumanizing people in order to marginalize and disenfranchise them. Once that has been done, the victims of racism cannot fully or equally participate in their societies, which in turn makes them vulnerable to exploitation and further marginalization.

Read Part II here.

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For Dr. Watson and Other Racists, Racism’s Beauty Lies In Its Simplicity: Part II

Read Part I here. 

So, back to Dr. Watson’s racist statements. The racism lies not just in what he said but why he said it. Dr. Watson ignored social, environmental, political, and cultural factors, instead trying to to use “race” to explain why Africa was doing so poorly, and why he was not optimistic about the continent’s future. He also argued that the races were not equal (presumably he also meant other “races” besides Black and White). But in reality, he was not proposing anything new. Rather, he fell back on simplistic racist assumptions—Africans are not intelligent and the races are not equal—and later, after he had come under fire, tried to use his position as a scientist to couch his original remark in scientific terms. The jury is still out on whether intelligence is or isn’t genetically predetermined but what we do know indicates that genetic difference, or similarity, is not so neatly tied to “race.”

More importantly, Dr. Watson’s statements rested on a common and essential element of racist thinking, the belief that people who share the same physical characteristics (skin color, hair texture, etc.) also share personality traits (intelligence, industriousness, etc.) regardless of environment, culture, religion, or any of the other factors that may affect a person’s personality. In the interview, Dr. Watson says that Africans are less intelligent, according to ”studies” he had seen (he does not elaborate on how these were conducted or who the subjects were, but that’s a lesser point). He then goes on to add that anyone who has ever had Black employees knows that people of different races are not equal. In other words, Dr. Watson—who ought to know better—is conflating Africans with Black Americans (I assume Dr. Watson has had only Black American, not African, employees), completely overlooking differences in culture, environment, language, religion, etc. In a classic racist display, he observes that Black Africans and Black Americans face similar economic and social challenges, but he concludes this must be because they have similar skin color and/or hair texture.

Dr. Watson should know that because of the widespread rape of slaves in North America, very few Black Americans would be genetically identical to Black Africans, but he ignores this obvious fact in favor of making a blanket statement based on skin color and hair texture. Of course, I’m not implying that Africans are all genetically identical. Quite the opposite. Dr. Sarah Tishkoff, now an assistant professor in the Biology department at the University of Maryland, wrote as far back as 1999 that genetic studies have revealed

an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations. Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians.”

Put simply, there is more genetic diversity among the human populations on the African continent than there is in all the rest of the non-African populations combined. Someone with Dr. Watson’s background in DNA research should know that this diversity would mean that, even if Black Americans and Africans were really less intelligent, it would be very unlikely that their “lack of intelligence” came from the same genetic source. To clarify, Black Americans share a genetic predisposition to Sickle Cell Anemia with their West African ancestors because most of them are descended from slaves taken from West Africa. However, the large genetic diversity among African peoples means that Black Americans cannot be genetically identical to East or South Africans because even their West African ancestors are not genetically identical to those other African peoples. Dr. Watson, in making his inference about Africans’ and Black Americans’ intelligence cannot, then, have been basing his statement on genetics because that would have precluded a common genetic root. Rather, he was—in true racist fashion—ignoring the social, political, and economic realities of Black Americans’ and Africans’ lives, focusing instead on the most superficial things both peoples share: dark skin and curly hair.

The other thing that struck me as racist was his focus on the question of lower intelligence while talking about Africans and Black Americans. Why did he pick that particular issue? To me, that would be like a modern scientist being interested in proving “scientifically” whether or not Black men have a gene for large penises, or whether brown-skinned people have higher sex drives (an argument Dr. Watson himself has made before). How ridiculous would Dr. Watson have sounded if he had suggested that Jews possess a gene that predisposes them towards avarice?! But because he chose to discuss Africans’ intelligence, people actually defended him, arguing that, as a scientist, he should be allowed to propose new scientific possibilities!

I’m not a geneticist and I generally oppose attempts to explain individuals’ behavior through racial or genetic arguments but, where there’s scientific evidence, let it speak for itself. But Dr. Watson’s statements were not based on scientific evidence, which makes me strongly suspect his motives. Nor was he proposing a new direction for genetic science. He was absolutely not talking about using modern science to break new ground? I mean, there are many differences among individuals of different “races” that could be studied at the genetic level, but why did he have to start from an old racist “truism” (Africans are less intelligent/the races are not equal)? The fact that he then tried to back it up with unscientific anecdotal evidence (if you’ve ever had Black employees, you know the races are not equal) makes me even more suspicious. After all, the question of difference in intelligence between the races is as old as racism itself. It predates genetics. Why would he be so concerned about using genetic science to prove or disprove a viewpoint that has existed and even thrived in the total absence of the science that could have proved or disproved it?

Furthermore, if Dr. Watson were so intent on using genetics to explain certain qualities in Black American or African people, he could easily have started out with something positive. For instance, statistics show that elderly White men have the highest suicide rates in the US. Dr. Watson could have expressed his interest in finding a gene to explain this (we know there is one because suicidal tendencies seem to run in families). Better yet, he could have talked about an “optimism” or “resilience” gene that might explain why, despite their widespread social, political, and economic marginalization, Black Americans tend to have much lower suicide rates than White Americans. Instead, he chose to focus on something negative, the racist idea that Black people are less intelligent than White people. 

At the end of the day, the beauty of racism lies in its simplicity and Dr. Watson’s remarks demonstrate this simplistic thinking. For people who can’t be bothered to study social sciences, economics, and politics, race “theory,” racist thinking, and outright racism are ideal. Everything about an individual or group can be explained simply by looking at skin color, hair texture, or any of the other signifiers of “race.” The underlying social, political, and economic order is never examined and challenged, so power relations remain intact. The racist in turn remains assured of his or her own superiority, itself the product of nothing more than an accident of birth that resulted in his or her having been born with the “correct” skin color. The racist never needs to compose a concerto, write a great novel, or even read one for that matter. She or he is more than content to know that other people who share his or her skin color have done so. This also absolves the racist of the need to prove his or her own intelligence, because that burden of proof is shifted onto people who were not fortunate enough to have been born with the right skin color or hair texture. Dr. Watson—in lending his voice to the question of Black and African people’s intelligence and industriousness—has joined a long and disgraceful line of pseudo-scientists who have, for centuries, attempted to argue that non-White people, be they from Africa, Australia, Asia, North America, the Caribbean, or the Middle East share one unifying characteristic: Their dark skin means they are not equal to Europeans. Even worse, Dr. Watson has thrown a bone to modern racists who—without considering science, economics, or politics—have always believed Black people are less intelligent than White people.

In making those utterly prejudiced and unscientific statements, Dr. Watson has shown the world that, despite his cutting-edge research, when it comes to social and political issues, he is living two centuries in the past. I am very sorry that the “World Have Your Say” team allowed him to escape the scrutiny, analysis, and eventual denunciation that his words so richly deserve.

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When in Doubt, Blame Jews.

What is it with anti-Semites blaming Jews for everything bad? I mean, I don’t have very high expectations of the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, but his most recent pronouncement defies logic. In a nationally broadcast radio press conference, Lukashenko Lukashenko caused a stir after he accused Jews of turning the Belarussian city of Bobruisk into a pigsty.

[Bobruisk] is a Jewish city, and the Jews are not concerned for the place they live in. They have turned Bobruisk into a pigsty. Look at Israel—I was there.”

Lukashenko’s ignorant remarks drew rightful criticism from the state of Israel, which recalled its ambassador to Belarus and harshly rebuked Belarus’s ambassador to Israel. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had this to say in response to Lukashenko’s statement:

The role of leaders is to fight anti-Semitism, which is raising its ugly head in various parts of the world, not encourage it. The anti-Semitism reflects first and foremost on the society in which it appears and on its leaders.”

I guess as Lukashenko sees it, it’s easier to blame Jews for the state of one of his cities than it is to hold city authorities accountable for keeping the city clean.

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“Unreservedly” Apologetic Dr. Watson Takes His Words Back.

I know there were certainly people out there who jumped up and down in glee when Dr. James Watson said Africans are less intelligent than Europeans. Well, I hope you got all your celebrating out because Dr. Watson has now recanted, issuing the following statement:

I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

I guess the reknowned geneticist realizes how ignorant his own statements were. It’s a pity that he gave momentary vindication to all those racists out there who really believe that a person’s skin color has any effect on his/her intelligence.

I wonder if his suspension by both his lab and its board of trustees motivated him to recant.

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Black People are Less Intelligent, Says Dr. James Watson, Nobel Prize Winner and DNA Pioneer.

Well, there you have it folks, irrefutable scientific proof of what we’ve secretly known all along. Black people are less intelligent than White people. This latest confirmation comes from no less an intellectual giant than Dr. James Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1962 for his role in discovering the molecular structure of DNA. It looks like the guy who said stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured should be his own first guinea pig.

Apparently, Dr. Watson said in an interview with the Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really.” CNN online also reports:

In the newspaper interview, he said there was no reason to think that races which had grown up in separate geographical locations should have evolved identically. He went on to say that although he hoped everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

Dr. Watson, it seems, has a history of making insensitive and inflammatory comments. The online edition of Scientific American has compiled a list of Watson’s other foot-in-mouth utterances.

• After showing images of women in bikinis and veiled muslim women, he suggested that there is a link between exposure to sunlight and libido. Then he said, “That’s why you have Latin lovers. You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.”
• After showing a picture of Kate Moss, he asserted that thin people are unhappy and therefore ambitious. “Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them.”
• Fat people may also be more sexual, Watson asserted, because their bloodstreams contain higher levels of leptin.
• “If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease. The lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what’s the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, ‘Well, poverty, things like that.’ It probably isn’t. So I’d like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent.”

Like all prejudiced people, Dr. Watson tends to be well-rounded in his bigotry, as shown by a trail of sexist remarks. According to Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, who worked for Watson in the late ’90s, he often found himself the target of feminists’ ire for insensitive statements he made about women’s appearance and personality. Hunt-Grubbe also writes that Watson was accused of using data gathered by Rosalind Frankin, a colleague and fellow researcher, without her knowledge and without sufficiently acknowledging the contribution of her data to his own discovery. By the time Watson and his male colleagues won the Nobel Prize, Franklin had already passed away from ovarian cancer. Lest this be passed off as a one-off incident, New Scientist publishes this Watson gem on their website: ”People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.”

For a guy who is so critical of others, Dr. Watson sure has a lot of work to do on his own personality and attitudes. I would write more but being from Africa, I’m clearly not intelligent enough to do so. Instead, I’ll just agree with my man Scooter when he says, “Less work on the DNA double helix and more work on the common sense gene.”

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Ann Coulter Says Jews, Unlike Christians, are Not “Perfected.”

 

During a recent appearance on CNBC’s “Big Ideas,” right-wing media darling Ann Coulter said a bunch of really ignorant stuff to host Donny Deutsch. But perhaps, none of her utterances was worse than this one:

“We [Christians] just want Jews to be perfected.”

A stunned Donny Deutch, himself a Jew, tried to give Coulter a way out by saying “Wow, you don’t really believe that, do you?” But the Aryan ice queen would not relent, stating that where getting to heaven is concerned, Christianity is “more like Federal Express.”

Well thank you, Ann, for pointing out the futility of my existence. I mean, since I’m not Christian, I guess I might as well come to terms with the fact that there’s no guarantee I’ll wind up in heaven. After all, if Christianity is like FedEx, non-Christianity must be like the regular postal service. Man, it looks like I’m doomed to take the long and circuitous route to heaven—assuming I don’t end up in an altogether different place. Everyone knows how unreliable the regular postal service is.

Boy, Christians are so lucky! I mean, they know they’re going to end up in heaven, unlike the rest of us poor souls who have no idea where we’ll end up. I guess because Christians like Ann Coulter are so certain they’re going to heaven, they don’t even need to be decent people here on earth. That probably explains why she recently had this to say about four women whose husbands had died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: ”I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” Come to think of it, this knowledge that Christians are ensured a place in heaven explains why so many of them don’t even bother living by the ”Christian” principles they themselves so loudly proclaim. Take, for example, the virulently anti-gay Rev. Ted Haggard, who enjoyed performing oral sex on a male escort. And let’s not forget the pro–family values Senator from Idaho, Larry Craig, who was arrested in a men’s bathroom in the Minneapolis airport for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer.

Ann Coulter has really earned my gratitude for showing me the light. I generally wouldn’t trust a woman whose adam’s apple is bigger than mine but, since she makes such a compelling argument, I have to make an exception for her. I will run, not walk, to the nearest house of Christian worship to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior.

Then again, if that means ending up in the same afterlife as Ann Coulter, I think I’ll take my chances with the other place.

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Rush Limbaugh Puts Big, Fat Foot Into Big, Fat Mouth. Again!

Sorry, I don’t normally resort to ad hominem attacks but the bullshit that spews out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth just pushes me beyond the bounds of decency. In his most recent outrage, he referred to American troops—including returning veterans—who oppose or openly criticize the Iraq war as “phony soldiers.” Naturally, the right wing’s most vociferous minions are coalescing in a cacophonous show of support (of Limbaugh) and denunciation (of his detractors). But regardless of what Limbaugh meant by his “phony soldiers” comment, one thing is clear: No statement is too inflammatory, too insensitive, or too hypocritical for this man when it comes to pushing the conservative line.

This isn’t, after all, the first time Rush Limbaugh has gotten in trouble for callously pandering to conservative elements in our society. In fact, extreme insensitivity has been the hallmark of his career. In 2003, as one of the hosts of ESPN’s NFL Sunday Countdown, he was forced to resign after making a racially insensitive remark about Donovan McNabb, star quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Limbaugh—who will never be as good at anything in his entire life as McNabb is at quarterbacking—had the nerve to say, on the air, that McNabb had recieved more credit than he deserved for his team’s successes because sympathetic media outlets were “very desirous that a black quarterback do well.” I guess in Rush’s fat eyes, it’s not actually possible for a black quarterback to be good enough to merit McNabb’s accolades.

Racial insensitivity is par for the course for Rush Limbaugh so his remarks on ESPN should have come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his show. But Limbaugh deserves accolades of his own when it comes to brazen hypocrisy. As a longtime advocate of the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key school of anti-drug law enforcement, Limbaugh’s own arrest and conviction on prescription drug abuse charges did come as a shock to many. It also gave yours truly a great deal of schadenfreude. Of course, it would have been too good to be true for the courts to lock him up and throw away the key, but I nonetheless let my imagination wander to a blissful fantasy world in which justice was actually done. In the real world, however, Limbaugh was out in no time and, after a stint in rehab, back on the air.

Not in the least humbled by his arrest—and exposure as a hypocrite of the first order—Limbaugh immediately went back to his trademark brand of inflammatory and biased broadcasting. During the 2004 presidential elections, Limbaugh was in the forefront of the campaign to cast a shadow over John Kerry’s military service, parrotting the exaggerated and outrightly false claims of groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This episode shows the size of Rush’s cojones (hint: cojones is not Spanish for gut) because he himself had never served in the military. When his nation needed him to put his life on the line, Rush Limbaugh managed to get a deferment because of a pilonidal cyst, a minor condition that can be easily repaired with an out-patient surgical procedure.

The “phony soldiers” remark is rightly generating a strong negative reaction precisely because Limbaugh, himself a draft-dodger (a term he liberally used when lambasting President Bill Clinton), now has the gall to refer to soldiers who oppose the war as “phony.” This man has never answered the call to serve his country and has never worn a military uniform. In fact, the only uniform Limbaugh has ever worn is that of a “a wiener salesman for the KC Royals baseball franchise.” Yet he now has the audacity to disparage these soldiers who have put their lives on the line and now have the courage—after having personally witnessed the fiasco in Iraq—to call for an end to the war. Only in a media climate totally dominated by right-wing pundits can someone like Rush Limbaugh actually believe he can get away with this sort of thing. Hopefully this will be the last time he does.

Because of this man’s track record, I don’t understand why there is so much argument about what he meant? We can pick apart his words and try to psychoanalyze him ’til we’re blue in the face but one thing is clear: He fully intended to disparage those soldiers who are critical of the war. Limbaugh has been a supporter of this war from the start, and has staunchly supported whatever line the Bush Administration has taken. When the Abu Ghraib scandal blew up, Limbaugh defended the soldiers who tortured and humiliated their Iraqi prisoners, saying on his show that they were just “blowing off steam.” After an active-duty soldier questioned then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about their lack of body armor, Rush Limbaugh called for that soldier to be busted for “borderline insubordination.” From day one, Limbaugh has done whatever he can to support the continuation of this war, and he will continue to do so.

It should therefore come as no surprise that he has now taken to insulting soldiers who have lost faith in this war. The man is a conservative ideologue, pure and simple. I can only hope that something good comes of this scandal. I hope that those Americans who continue to support this war will begin to question the sincerity of conservatives’ support-the-troops rhetoric. Maybe they will finally begin to understand that continuing to send American soldiers to die in Iraq while opposing the speedy return to their homes and families of those troops already there is not a show of support. It’s actually the opposite.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Long, long ago, I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh regularly and I actually thought this fat piece of excrement made some good points. God, how blind I was back then! It must have been the OxyContin.

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