33 posts tagged “news”

I've not so far written about the Tiger Woods story because I viewed it as yet another story about a straying celebrity and that it would quickly become yesterday's news.  Reports such as these are now rather commonplace and are hardly worth reporting on, let alone commenting on.

But this story outlived its fifteen minutes a long time ago and, personally, I'm getting tired of hearing about it.  I don't see what all the shock and fascination is with this story.  It's not as if he's the first, nor will he be the last celebrity (or non-celebrity, for that matter) to fall off the monogamy wagon.

I also don't see why Woods is off the golf tour.  I don't see what one thing has to do with the other.  The state of his marriage should be a private matter between him and his wife and it in no way impedes his ability to play golf.  It's not as if being monogamous would make him a better golf  player. 

And it's not as if he beat his wife and had done something criminal.  Indeed, if anything, the shoe is on the other foot in this instance.  It seems the only reason he had an accident was because his wife bashed in the back window of his SUV, thus distracting him, as he tried to drive away.

I've read comments from people cheering her on for this; taking the opinion that he got what he deserved for his infidelity. The sexism of such statements boggles my mind, as I'm quite certain there would be no cheering if their roles were reversed in this drama.  People would be calling to have him locked up and the key thrown away if it had been him bashing a window in with a golf club while she drove away.  It seems when it comes to domestic violence and infidelity, the double standard is alive and well.

Other people are shocked, asking how could he do such a thing.  Again, with the ubiquity of stories about celebrity infidelity and its corresponding prevalence in the lives of ordinary people as well, I think that people are asking the wrong questions.  They take the view that people are failing marriage, but in reality, it would seem that our idea of what marriage should be is failing people.

Instead of asking why so many people are unfaithful, we need to be asking such questions as, why are all marriages expected to be monogamous, why was monogamy originally instituted in the first place, are the original reasons for monogamy still relevant in our society today, what is the exact nature of "fidelity" -- is it summed up by sexual exclusivity or can it refer to other aspects of a marriage and, if so, must sexual exclusivity always be a part of it. and so on.

Perhaps we need to be re-examining and re-evaluating the structure of marriage and the purpose it serves in our society and be willing to make some changes, instead of trying harder to cram people down into the same old, ill-fitting boxes.

Thoughts?

Reading the webpage of one of my local TV stations, I came upon a story about a man who had been arrested for bigamy.  He'd married his first wife in 2005, and had married a second woman this past October.

Neither wife had been the wiser until the first wife intercepted a text message for their husband from the second wife.  After texting back to the second wife and determining who she was, the first wife called the police to report him for bigamy.

After an investigation, police arrested him and charged him with bigamy.  The man is now out on bond awaiting trial.

Arresting someone for bigamy boggles my mind.  First of all, I don't think the government has any business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults, except for cases of domestic violence.  If it were up to me, I'd abolish marriage as a legal category altogether.

Knowing that this isn't likely to happen any time soon, I think that as long as legal marriage exists, it should not be limited to monogamous couples.

That being said, with the law as it stands now, bigamy should not be a criminal offense.  At the most, it should be a civil matter.  In fact, I'd thought it was something that had been decriminalized -- that when discovered, the second marriage would merely be annulled and the offender given a fine.

The police have much more important things to do than being in the business of enforcing monogamy.  They should not be involved in the personal relationships of private citizens if there is an absence of domestic violence.  In my opinion, the first wife should have handled the situation herself, perhaps by contacting a divorce lawyer, rather than calling the police and keeping them from doing more important things.  Sue the guy for breach of contract or some such thing, but don't put him in jail.

Thoughts.

Most people by now have heard of the justice of the peace in Louisiana who recently refused to marry an interracial couple.  When I first heard the news, it boggled my mind, as I could not imagine such a thing happening anywhere in the United States in 2009.  I'm not at all surprised that such racism still exists now, but it was a shock to see such an overt expression of it.  One would think that he would be well aware of the Supreme Court decision of 1967 which made interracial marriage legal in all fifty states.

The judge, Keith Bardwell, said, "I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves.  In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."  Yeah, they might grow up to be, oh, President of the United States or something.

He added that he came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, Bardwell is also of the opinion that that most interracial marriages do not last long.

My disgust for his racist attitudes aside, what business of his is it to speculate on how long any individual marriage will last, regardless of race or any other characteristics, or to predict how any children born of that union will fare?  He's a justice of the peace, not a social critic or a psychiatrist/psychologist, and it's his job to conduct marriage ceremonies for anyone who requests it who meet the legal requirements, regardless of his personal opinions.   If he will not perform a legal function of his office, then he needs to find another line of work.

Thoughts?

I woke up this morning to find that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Prize, which left me scratching my head.

Don't get me wrong, I voted for the guy and think he shows a lot of promise.   But I think it's premature, to say the least, to award him such a prize so early in his administration.   I am sure there are others who deserve it more at this particular point in time.   I'd been under the impression that the prize was awarded on the basis of actual accomplishments, rather than on the hope of promise.

It's quite possible that in a few years, Obama would rightly deserve the prize on the basis of accomplishment, but awarding it now makes me wonder if he's being given the award mainly because he's not George Bush.

Nevertheless, it's going to be amusing watching the indignant reactions from the far right wingnuts, as they get their collective boxers/panties in a wad while they froth at the mouth.

This morning while idly surfing the net, I read one woman's rant about the latest sexual brouhaha du jour; that of David Letterman being blackmailed over the many sexual dalliances he's had over the years with women he'd worked with.  In complete indignation, she ripped Letterman up one side and down the other.

She reviled him for his inability to be monogamous; that he'd been repeatedly unfaithful to his partner of 23 years.  Calling him a "creepy, perverted old man", she jeered at him for his apparent inability to "keep in in his pants".  And then she wrapped up with hand-wringing about the increasingly so-called "dying breed" of men who remain absolutely sexually faithful to their female partners who, unlike Letterman, in her opinion, were "upright, righteous, strong, moral men with integrity".

I won't take the time to address all her points here, because that isn't the main point of this post, save to say that infidelity wasn't something invented in the 1960s.   People have been struggling to adhere to monogamy ever since it was imposed on us by religion countless generations ago.

What mainly struck me as absurd and short sighted about her post was the fact that the Letterman "sextortion" news has followed directly on the heels of the latest news about Roman Polanski's arrest.

If she wanted to vent her spleen on a "creepy, perverted old man", then she need not have looked any further than Polanski, who drugged and forcibly raped a 13 year old kid, then evaded justice for over thirty years.  Polanski is the real deal when it comes to creepy, perverted old men and it's completely ludicrous to even attempt to put Letterman into the same category.

Unlike Polanski and his misguided defenders, (such as Whoopi Goldberg, who has said that Polanski did not commit "rape-rape", but "something else"), who have tried to minimize the seriousness of what he did,  Letterman has stepped up to the plate like a man and openly admitted the dalliances without trying to explain them away.  Unlike many other celebrity men who have been outed for adultery in recent years, was honest about his behavior. 

Letterman was also involved with adult women in consensual encounters; hardly the crime of the century that will lead to the end of civilization as we know it.  Polanski and his defenders, who somehow think he's special and not subject to the same laws as the rest of us, on the other hand, say something very sad about our society.

Thoughts?

While talking with a coworker recently, he stated that he was against health care reform because Nazi Germany had a nationalized, or "socialized", health care system.

Oh, where to begin with this blockheaded black and white thinking?

First of all, Hitler made the trains run on time in Nazi Germany and it was his idea to invent a cheap, well-made car so that all German workers could have their own automobile.  That car survives today by the name he gave it -- Volkswagen -- which translates from German as "People's car".

So -- should we abolish punctual public transportation and scrap every VW beetle on the planet because these good ideas happened to come from an evil man?  Will the retention of such things inevitably lead us to fascism?  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Another point to make is that the Nazi party was not "socialist" in the way that modern Scandinavian states are.  Yes, the Nazis called themselves "socialists", as the word "Nazi" is a derivative of the acronym NSDAP (National Sozialistische Arbeiter's Partei -- National Socialist Worker's Party).  Make no mistake about it, Nazi Germany was not socialist but, rather, it was a far right fascist totalitarian regime.  And like all dictatorships, the Nazis were masters of misleading euphemism; for example, a number of concentration camps had signs at their entrances with the slogan "Arbeit Macht FreI' on them, which translates as "work brings freedom".

In other words, the Nazis were no more "socialist" any more than the former East Germany was "democratic" or that modern China is run by "the people".

Many right wingers also confuse socialism with statism (control by workers vs control by state) and believe that anything other than laissez-faire capitalism is "socialist".  If this were actually true, then every government would be "socialist" under such a definition.

Thoughts?

Recently, I read about a pre-op transsexual prisoner in the UK, convicted of murder and attempted rape, who has won the right to be transferred from a male prison to a female one.  The prisoner, who still has a penis, scrotum, and testicles, had not yet, at the time of incarceration, had surgery to remove male organs and construct a simulated vulva/vagina.  This prisoner has had breast implants, laser hair removal, and is taking female hormones to maintain a believable female appearance when clothed.

The decision to move this prisoner was based largely on the fact that in 2006  the prisoner was granted a certificate under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act which required that this person be recognized as a woman "for all purposes".  In simpler terms, this prisoner is considered "legally female", despite the presence of a penis, scrotum, and testicles.  In other words, it's a legal fiction.

I'm sorry, but no "female" of my acquaintance has a dick, nutsack, and balls.  My dictionary calls such an individual a "man", regardless of the fake boobs and electrolysis.  Socially, this person can call themselves whatever they want, but biologically, this individual is a male.  And there is the matter that this prisoner has been convicted of attempted rape -- to let loose such a predator into a prison full of genuine women, while still having the "tools" to rape again, is completely ludicrous in my opinion.

This absurd legal fiction reminded me of another common legal fiction; that a woman's husband is legally considered to be the father of her children, even when there is DNA evidence to the contrary.  Some time ago, I posted an entry about a man who'd fathered a child during an affair with a married woman, who was denied visitation rights with his child.  The woman was still married and the husband was upheld as the legal father, rather than the step/adoptive father, thus the biological father was considered an "unrelated" person with no valid interest in the child.

I'm also reminded of men who are legally forced to pay child support for children that aren't theirs and whom they've never raised or had any sort of relationship with.

I don't know about you, but I take a dim view of such legal fictions that try to mandate what some people think "should" be, rather than acknowledging the truth of what really is.  The law should deal objectively with facts, not contrived social engineering.

Thoughts?

Listening to the Neal Boortz show the other night, I heard him ragging on liberals who have decided to boycott Whole Foods because of an editorial Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote in the Wall Street Journal where he stated that "universal healthcare is no more a right than food or shelter."

Boortz believes the boycott is misguided because Whole Foods pays 100% of employees' premiums, but no deductibles, for everyone who clocks in 30 hours or more per week. Then it gives these workers $1,800 a year in "health care dollars" to use for health and wellness expenses.

Whether or not the boycott is justified isn't the point of this blog entry.  My point is to call attention to Boortz' hypocrisy in light of a broadcast he'd made about a week earlier than this one.

In the earlier broadcast, Boortz talked about a stationery shop he'd patronized for several years.  One day while shopping at this store, he noticed the owner leaving his car, which has pro-Obama stickers on them.  At that moment, Boortz decided to never shop there again, despite the fact that he'd always been given good service there and had nothing to complain about.  He chose to boycott this store only because the owner had voted for Barack Obama.

He went on to say that voting with one's wallet is a time-honored way of expressing one's opinion in a free market society, blah, blah, blah.

Pot, meet kettle.

I'm guessing Boortz won't be trotting out that old voting with one's wallet theme when it comes to the 36 sponsors who have chosen to withdraw their sponsorship from Glenn Beck's show, either..