May 4th, 2010

woods, Elizabeth, camera, April

Home of the Stupid

I am in the mood to bust some chops.  First off there's whoozit over there in Iran claiming that immodest women cause earthquakes.   They have an oil industry over there.  They have geologists who know perfectly well what causes earthquakes (like, you know, colliding plates that started moving and colliding before there were women.  Or men.  Or ignorant and vicious religious leaders.)  Then there are the idiots in other religions and places who do the bobble-head thing and oh, yes, earthquakes happen because women just aren't modest enough.  (For the Iranian fundamentalists, "modest" means unseen, unheard, perfectly submissive.  Alas, it means that for some other religious nutjobs as well.)  

Then we have Rush Limbaugh, who seriously needs to have his head examined by a qualified person because he's so out of touch with reality...I don't care if it's drugs, like before, or actual organic insanity, but the guy is a menace.   Rush Limbaugh thinks that it was probably eco-terrorists who blew the BP well that's pumping all that crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.   And that all the people going out to try to help keep the gooey mess off the beaches are probably out there to sabotage other wells.    If you're looking for sabotage there are likelier suspects.  But most likely--as in, the cause of corporate disasters is usually the corporation--it's BP's fault.  I grew up on the fringes of the oil bidness, and what usually led to oilfield disasters was cheapskates who wouldn't hire enough crew, so they were always tired (a condition leading to mistakes), wouldn't pay to have the logs run often enough (so the drill punched through into high pressure stuff without warning) etc.  (BTW, the dangers of deep offshore drilling were discussed in the 1950s.  It's not like nobody could've predicted this.)  But of course, Rush and the rest of his ilk believe corporations never do anything wrong...

Rick Perry, Texas governor, thinks maybe it was an Act of God.   That circles right back to the immodest women causing earthquakes kind of thinking.   Sure, God wanted to punish the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Coast for....well, what have women done this time?    Gone crabbing with their jeans rolled to the knee?   I'm sure Rick will find a way to blame the women, children, persons of color, and/or gay and lesbians when he figures out which of these targets will get him the most votes.   (Rick Perry is also the fellow who thought taking a vast swathe of Texas best farmland and turning it into a cross-the-state transportation corridor from Mexico to Oklahoma was a great idea.)

And then there's the much-quoted, much-admired (but not by me) Baptist minister, George Rekers, who for years has railed against the evils of homosexuality, "the gay lifestyle," etc, etc., accepted as an expert on teen sexuality, and so on...let's hear it for him.  (My noise will be a raspberry, but you can cheer if you want to.)  He's opposed letting gays adopt...he himself has had foster children and even adopted a 12 year old boy (now sixteen.)  He really, really cares about children. 

But wait...why is he coming back from a trip to Europe with a "rent-boy?"   A question discussed in a Miami paper.  Oh...OK, he wanted someone to carry his luggage.  How did he find this handsome fellow?   Mmm...through rentboy.com.  Which is basically a catalog of paid sex partners for gay men.    As http://preview.tinyurl.com/33getye relates, to find this particular "rent-boy" our pure-as-driven-snow anti-gay zealot had to find the site, agree to the site's user policies (which made explicit the photos coming up), navigate the site to find someone in his area, and navigate farther to find this particular rent boy.  Where in addition to photos, some physical particulars were detailed (since removed, according to the paper) that you don't generally need to know if you're hiring a luggage-wrangler.   From some emails exchanged by the two, this wasn't the first outing they'd had. 

This isn't the first anti-gay activist who's been found with his closet door swinging open, so to speak.   There's that other Floridian who, arrested for soliciting sex in a public restroom, tried to argue that he'd only gone in there because he was afraid of black men in the park across the street, and only offered money to the (black police officer) in the next stall because he was afraid of him.  So I'm sure Rekers will come up with an equally lame explanation (though the luggage thing, George?  That's just not convincing.  And George?  You need to send those children you've got in your house to someone who's not a lying hypocrite.)

But that's not all that's on my rant-plate today.   The Vatican has decided to investigate three groups of nuns in Washington state, on the grounds that they've had complaints of "feminism and activism" about them.  From what's been reported, the "activism" consists of opposing human trafficking.   Dear God in Heaven...nuns are against forced prostitution and slavery and kidnapping and shipping people around in sealed containers?  What a scandal!  They probably even oppose pimps beating up on their girls.  How can this be?  Got to tighten up on those women.   You know how women are....  Of course the Vatican has a few other little bitty public relations problems it could have decided to work on....like, say, pedophile priests.  The mills of their God grinding very slowly indeed, they're really working, they say, to investigate complaints...and...um...find ways to re-educate the pedophiles.   But the priests are, after all priests.  Male.  Ordained.  Supposed to be in charge of things--parishes, missions, programs, etc.  Priests are...well...in the club.  It's a boys' club.  We don't want to throw away their talents...and anyway, what happened was then, and this is now.   The women--we need them to do the scutwork, but they're not really in the club.  They're below the club...the scullery is their natural habitat. 

So of course, when the clouds of public disapproval gather over the heads of the boys in the club...by all means find some women doing something wrong.   Divert attention to those awful, awful women opposing human trafficking.  It's not that human trafficking is a good thing, exactly, but it's a bad thing that the women are actively opposing it.  

So to get out of Stupid House--Iranian geologists, go sit on your whoozit and make him learn plate tectonics.  Quit blaming women for what you believe Allah created.   Rush...no, I think it's too late for you but maybe a colonic cleansing followed by two years learning some real science would awaken your remaining cognitive neurons.  I'm not hopeful, though.  George...you cause God Almighty to pinch the bridge of His nose and shake his head.  For you to get out of Stupid House, you give up the pretense, open your closet door fully, and start telling the truth.   Vatican... you really do need a new set of priorities.  Guys sodomizing little boys is far worse than women trying to protect girls from vicious pimps.  Dump the pedophiles.  Quit blaming everything on women.  Let the nuns alone until you've got the rest of your house in order.