that dreadful woman

Now of course, other than thinking it sucks that there's one more person out there telling feeble-minded people stuff that will make the world more miserable rather than less, I could give a rat's ass about Dr. Laura, but I just clicked through this on Atrios and I just had to share a piece of it.

...You wrote, "By honoring our parents, we learn to honor God. By honoring God we become decent human beings."

You obviously failed that test. "Even bad parents deserve to be honored if only at a minimal level," you wrote. Thus surely "honor thy father and thy mother" intends something more than letting a septuagenarian woman go months at a time without even a drive-by visit from her daughter.

You also wrote: "There is often a profound unwillingness to give anything to a parent perceived as being unloving or undeserving.... That avoidance is part of the mentality that says, 'If it doesn't obviously serve me, I won't do it and I shouldn't have to!' " Apparently, that is your mentality.

But you, whose shallow perceptions are laced with bursts of meanness and contempt for others, will no doubt continue as a hot media product and a darling of the religious conservatives. "A positive voice for positive values without equal in our time," gushed the Rev. Robert Schuller.

What can we draw from all this? That family relationships are exceedingly complicated and often painful. That maintaining true "family values" is not a matter simply of attending church, being heterosexual and mouthing platitudes, but demands humility, resiliency and deep compassion. That religious texts like the Bible can provide inspiring lessons in the hands of sincere teachers and also can be used as clubs by the cynical and ambitious.

And finally, that the "Dr. Laura" show typifies the dangerous hypocrisy of those who build profitable and politically potent empires on the basis of claiming a monopoly on simplistic answers to complex problems. The guilt and shame they induce in those who might resist their nostrums is loathsome, made more so when they themselves so casually ignore them.

so deserving of wider application, don't you think?

Department of Socioeconomic Assumptions

Remember, it's just not trash until it hits page six.

Reader, have you been betrayed in love? Injustice poisons the soul and, worse, the memory of love. The betrayer lives and owns a future; you, the forgotten, die the slow death of abandonment and humiliation, with just the inheritance of empty days. Out of powerlessness, you dream murderous thoughts. You have been demeaned and discarded; you want to plant pain in the other's heart, and watch it grow. Razor blades in the bed? A dousing with hot oil? Headlights punched out? Clothes cut to shreds? Children abducted? These are not tabloid sidebars but actual matrimonial paybacks that I've witnessed among the comparatively reserved and well-educated burghers of my acquaintance over the years.

Emphasis, of course, mine, although my conclusions differ somewhat.

to the tune of Stormy Weather

ask me why
there is lipstick on my thigh...

President's Compassionate Agenda Lags
Bush's Legislative Record For Disadvantaged Wanting
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 26, 2002; Page A01

Two years after winning the White House on a platform of "compassionate conservatism," President Bush so far has achieved few of the items on his legislative agenda to help the disadvantaged, even as he has notched a string of victories on foreign, security and fiscal policy.

Earlier this month, as Bush announced that the AmeriCorps volunteer program was "expanding mightily," the program disclosed that it had halted enrollment; his proposed expansion of national service has not cleared Congress. That same week, the White House acknowledged that it was unlikely to free from congressional gridlock Bush's "faith-based initiative" to help charities, instead enforcing a limited version of it through executive orders.

Meanwhile, action on major welfare, prescription drug and disabilities legislation was postponed. Proposals to liberalize immigration were dropped, a plan for health-care tax credits was not pursued, and efforts to expand low-income housing are yet to see the funding Bush sought.

The one major success on the compassion list -- education legislation -- has become the subject of a budget fight, with Bush proposing only $22 billion of the $28 billion the new law authorized for the current year.

Many reasons for the delays are outside the administration's control. Last year's terrorist attacks put on hold much of the domestic agenda, and Senate Democrats have blocked pieces of Bush's compassion agenda. But several lawmakers and current and former advisers say the Bush White House has not pushed its compassion agenda with the energy and determination that it put behind tax cuts, defense spending and other priorities.

"He has always been rhetorically on the right side of the issue," said Harvard University's Robert Putnam, who has been consulted often by Bush aides. "They have not yet done nearly enough in practical terms to match the rhetoric." Putnam said right-wing conservatives trumped compassion-minded aides. "The compassionates win a lot of rhetorical battles," he said, "but when you look where the budget is, it shows hardly a hint of the compassionate."

Marvin Olasky, a conservative academic whose writings helped Bush form his views, said the president has expertly used his appearances to stir public compassion, but without victory in Congress. "I give them an 'A' in terms of President Bush's personal effort in setting the message, and an 'F' in terms of legislation at this point," he said, adding that he gives Bush top marks for regulatory changes.

I hope that I am not too late to preempt even one blogger from mentioning this article in a context which suggests that Dana Milbank takes time to rinse his mouth out between hagiographic tributes to Bush.

[dana] See, I have to admit that Bush hasn't done a thing about his "number one priority" while Congress was giving him everything he asked for, but I used a lot of passive verbs... so it clearly wasn't his fault.

As such. [/dana]

For more about what our fearless leader hasn't done and who he hasn't done it for, see Molly.

snapu

This, from Mike Finley, delighted me completely.

a snippet:

...Now it happens that Worthington, in the years before I moved there, was the turkey capital of Minnesota -- possibly of the world. There was enough dispute in the matter that the city fathers of Cuero, Texas challenged the city fathers of Worthington to an annual race, between their fastest turkey, always named Ruby Begonia, and our turkey, always called Paycheck. The two birds would run down the street, and whichever one of them managed to run in the straightest line would be declared the winner, and disgrace and ignominy was the loser's lot.

Much of the festivity of this race devolved from the common perception that turkeys are none too bright, even for birds -- particularly the big whites that farmers in Worthington and Texas raised, an overbred, meat-heavy gene pool known more for their affinity with sage dressing than any other kind of sagacity.

The big whites are so front heavy with breast meat that they are unable to have ordinary sexual intercourse. To breed, they must be deseminated, a task which has filled many a dreamy farmboy's workday afternoon, and strengthened many a yeoman's wrist.

But this story is older than that, and goes to the first implementation of electrical lights in the long sheds that the turkeys wintered in.

A bare light bulb was placed in the middle of each shed. The idea was that the radiant heat of the bulb would keep the temperature of the shed from dropping below 25 degrees below zero, when all turkey life ceases.

During the early weeks of winter, the bulb worked fine, creating a warm aura that the turkeys clustered around to keep off the cold. It also allowed the turkeys to see one another at night, which was a social plus, although one which we cannot do into much detail about, as it is an area shrouded in mystery, and better that way.

But with the deepening of winter's grip on the prairie, temperatures began to drop. The winds shrieked, and the ice formed on the length of the pump handle. Every window in the farmer's house was crystalled and etched, and out in the turkey sheds, a terrible clatter arose as the turkeys scrambled to huddle closer to the glowing bulb...

Special guest appearance by Nelson Rockefeller.

then grasp the nickel firmly between your knees, and

In Barbie-land, Midge married boy-doll Alan in 1991 and the happy couple then had a son.

The pregnant Midge, who wears a tiny white wedding ring, has a detachable magnetic stomach that allows easy "delivery" of the baby.

An article on Mattel's Barbie.com Web site says the Happy Family dolls are designed to satisfy the desire for nurturing play by girls age five to eight and can be "a wonderful prop for parents to use with their children to role-play family situations - especially in families anticipating the arrival of a new sibling."

Manager Bill Boehmer of the KB Toys store in Northeast Philadelphia's Roosevelt Mall said the doll was selling well, and he had heard no negative responses from customers.

"I've had people laugh, but I haven't had anyone say this was ridiculous or 'What are we trying to tell these kids?' or anything like that," Boehmer said.

But at KB Toys in the Gallery mall in downtown Philadelphia, reaction from last-minute Christmas shoppers was negative.

"It's a bad idea. It promotes teenage pregnancy. What would an eight-year-old or 12-year-old get out of that doll baby?" asked Sabrina Fagan, 29, of Philadelphia.

-----

Mothers across Philadelphia are undoubtedly grabbing their daytimers to make a note never to allow their children to date Ms. Fagan's first child (assuming she chooses to expose the little dear to moral risk by having sex after it arrives).