All about the cirucs that is the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. Also: Heather Busby talks about running an abortion fund.

 

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Links in this episode:

Jessica Valenti talks up "The Purity Myth"

Anti-choicers disrupt the hearings

And again

The sad story of Norma McCorvey

Limbaugh raises the BS level

WMC on Sonia Sotomayor

Senator Sessions exposes his own prejudices

Marcy Wheeler’s potty mouth

 

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On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be chatting with
Heather Busby of the Lilith Fund about what it takes to run an abortion
fund.  Also, a segment on the
Sotomayor hearings and another segment on the Sotomayor hearings.  All full of wingnutty goodness.

 

Jessica Valenti is still out there promoting her new book
"The Purity Myth" and kicking some butt. 
Planned Parenthood interviewed her about the book.

 

• purity
  myth *

 

It’s worth remembering at this time that this obsession with
virginity and purity is the single biggest reason that Supreme Court
confirmation hearings have turned into such a dog and pony show.

 

**********

With the Sotomayor hearings, you’re beginning to see a real
split with conservatives.  Some of
them have decided that they’re going all out on the race-baiting, but a lot of
conservatives are really unwilling to let the abortion issue get second place
billing this time out.  This, even
though Obama will probably be appointing more pro-choice justices to the
Supreme Court, giving the anti-choice nuts plenty of opportunities to make it
all about them.  But many aren’t
happy about the fact that this is not all about abortion, and we’re seeing the
inevitable hissy fits.  Including
one from anti-choice nut Robert James on the first day of the hearings. 

 

• abortion
  1 *

 

The self-dramatic anti-choice nuttery didn’t stop
there.  Norma McCorvey, who was the
Roe in Roe v. Wade, also got arrested for disturbing the peace.  She got into the chambers to scream at
Al Franken. 

 

• abortion
  2 *

 

Norma McCorvey didn’t actually get an abortion during Roe,
because she gave birth before the case was settled.  This hasn’t dissuaded the anti-choice nuts from using her as
a poster child for abortion regret. 
Unfortunately, McCorvey doesn’t seem like a very stable person at all,
and a lot of her anger stems back to the fact that the feminist lawyers who
argued Roe wouldn’t help her get an illegal abortion. She also claims to be
ex-gay.  

 

But it’s not just the clinic-blockading fetus worshippers
that are trying to keep the issue of abortion front and center during these
hearings. Despite the fact that one of their own just assassinated a doctor for
having the nerve to help women in some of the most dire abortion situations,
the shamelessness of anti-choice protesters and media types continues
unabated.  If anything, I think
they’re swimming in even more putrid hate.  Laura Inagraham trotted out another story about anti-choice
agitprop where they titillate themselves with sexual fantasies involving
minors.

 

• abortion
  3 *

 

This is nothing new, but what is new and a little shocking
is that the entire segment, there was a graphic with the Planned Parenthood
logo inside the crosshairs of the sort you find on a rifle scope.  Not very subtle from Fox News, who went
ahead with this violent imagery despite the role they played in using inciting
language against Dr. Tiller before he was assassinated.

 

And this right after Ann Coulter, on the same show, came
very close to praising the assassin who murdered Dr. Tiller. (http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/eliminationism-parade-coulter-joe-pl)

 

• abortion
  4 *

 

I suspect that the hearings for Sotomayor would escalate the
nuttiness anyway, but in this particular case, it’s getting even uglier,
because anti-choicers probably expected these hearings to be all about them and
their ginormous egos, and it’s not. 
Needless to say, with all this nuttiness flying around, Rush Limbaugh
felt left out and decided he needed to escalate. 

 

• abortion
  5 *

 

Of course, this is a blatant lie, but it’s also interesting
to me how many conservatives conveniently forget that legal abortion is a
choice, not a mandate.  Limbaugh
compares legal abortion to gas chambers, which is weird, because it makes you
wonder if he thinks that victims of the Holocaust were asking to be
murdered.  No, I think he just
forgot that women who get abortions actually seek out providers and are not forced
at gunpoint.

 

The genocide smear against Planned Parenthood is anti-choice
intellectual dishonesty at its height. 
Planned Parenthood was formed, as its name suggests, with the intent of
giving women the ability to plan their parenthood.  Sanger’s origin stories aren’t hard to find—she lost her
mother due to excessive childbirth and she worked with women whose bodies and
souls were broken from relentless childbirth.  She also saw a number of women mutilated by abortion and set
out to increase access to birth control to reduce the number of abortions.
Indeed, Planned Parenthood didn’t do abortions in Sanger’s time.

 

Fundamentally, the problem here is argument from authority.
Sanger is a historical figure, not a religious one, and the argument for reproductive
rights should be judged on its merits, not on the prejudices of a now-dead
advocate.  Limbaugh, it turns out,
can’t even bring himself to really get angry about real racism, and instead
implies that modern pro-choicers are out to commit genocide against white dude
gonads.

 

• abortion
  6 *

 

Of course Ginsburg didn’t say anything like that.  But Limbaugh is obviously trying to get
his listeners to believe that female judges are trying to take over the court
as part of a larger feminazi effort to use abortion to wipe white males from
the planet. That, and I’m sure he also believes that unicorns keep bothering
him when he’s trying to use the toilet.

 

********

insert interview

 

********

 

Since this podcast only runs about 25 minutes long, I’m not
done with the Sotomayor coverage yet. 
The panic attack over abortion is only a small part of the larger story,
though of course Sotomayor’s views on abortion rights, which are mostly
pro-choice, are extremely relevant to this podcast and the country at
large.  But there’s also another
aspect that’s cropping up, which is the widespread anxiety over Sotomayor that
stems just from her identity as a woman of Puerto Rican descent. 

 

The Women’s Media Center put together a devastating video
showing how outlandish the sexism and racism against Sotomayor is.

 

• sotomayor
  1 *

 

The argument, if you can call it that, against Sotomayor is
that because she’s experienced racism, she can’t be an objective judge because
experiencing racism is actually racism in double judo B.S. rhetorical
move.  Which is all a way for
conservatives to say, albeit in coded, confusing language, that they think that
not being white or not being male makes you stupid, and if you have the double
whammy, then you should be ashamed of yourself for taking a white man’s
job. 

 

Well, we expect the right wing media and the pundits to be
this stupid and mean-spirited, but even I was mildly surprised to see Senator
Sessions use the same coded language about white male superiority.

 

• sotomayor
  2 *

 

That’s a TV pundit move from a CNN anchor called the, "If I
keep talking maybe no one will notice that I don’t make sense" maneuver.  I can’t tell if she’s trying to agree
with or disagree with Senator Sessions’ weird belief that white men don’t have
race, gender, or preconceptions.

 

Jeffrey Toobin had no problem articulating what actually is
going on, thank god.

 

• sotomayor
  3 *

 

What’s interesting to me is how much so many people are
still invested in this crude belief in identity politics, that all these white
men reject Sotomayor because she’s Latina right off the bat.  Policy, judicial rulings, philosophy,
all this seems like it’s meaningless in the face of a panic attack from men who
can’t stand to see this happen.  I
know that’s probably just an illusion on the leadership’s part and they
actually do oppose her policy.  But
that they are willing to blatantly race-bait like this tells you a lot about
right wing base they’re pandering to.

 

*********

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, but blow and job are not
dirty words edition.  Marcy Wheeler
went on MSNBC to make a statement that was apparently way too reasonable for a
cable news station.

 

• blow
  job *

 

There was immediately more offense at that than mere smaller
offenses like starting illegal wars or committing war crimes.

 

• blow
  job 2 *

 

Howard Kurtz and others also whined about this. It’s the
worst "for the children" excuse I’ve possibly ever heard.  Do small children usually spend their
time intently watching MSNBC discussions about complex legal issues involving
our executive branch, or are the children a cover story to use sex as a
bludgeon to dismiss everything intelligent Marcy Wheeler said?