Macho Nachos

Oh. Well, Great.

I'll admit, I know very little about American Girl products. I don't have any pre-adolescent females living in my house, and haven't since I was about 6 years old myself. Before writing this story, however, I consulted with someone who does who informed me that they a very big deal indeed.

It turns out that they sell dolls and books and gifts and all sorts of stuff that would appeal to girls who are, I would guess, somewhere in the 8-13 years old range. If you clicked on through to that last link, you'll notice on the right hand side of the screen toward the bottom, that they are selling and promoting something called an I can band. Prominently displayed on screen are pictures of young teen and pre-teen girls wearing their I can band. Says the website:

American Girl will give 70 cents for every dollar of "I CAN" band sales, plus a $50,000 donation, to Girls Inc.®, a national organization dedicated to inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold.sm

It all sounds just fine and schmaltzy until you saunter over to the Girls, Inc website and discover what their vision of a strong, smart, and bold girl is:

We recognize the right of all women to choose whether, when, and under what circumstances to bear children. Reproductive freedom and responsibility are essential to other rights and opportunities, including pursuit of education, employment, financial security and a stable and fulfilling family life. Restrictions of reproductive choice are especially burdensome for young women and poor women. Girls Incorporated supports a woman's freedom of choice, a constitutional right established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe vs. Wade.

Girls, Inc. on "sexuality":

To make responsible decisions about sexuality, pregnancy and parenthood, girls need and have a right to sensitive, truthful sexuality education; convenient access to safe, effective methods of contraception and protection from disease; and referral to comprehensive information, counseling, clinical and other services that support their responsible decisions. We recognize that any sizable group of girls includes those who face issues related to their sexual orientation or that of a family member and who face discrimination based on this sexual orientation. Girls have a right to positive, supportive environments and linkages to community resources for dealing with issues of sexual orientation.

They also feature on their website under "resources" a pamphlet for those of lesbian, bisexual and "questioning identities" that advertises such illuminating reads as Annie on my Mind, which is described in the pamphlet as:

A fictional account of the high school experiences of 17 year-old Liza Winthrop, who was a freshman majoring in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time of publication. Her vivid memories of meeting her friend Annie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and their mutual attraction for one another comes back to her as she writes a
letter to her special friend several years later. The subtle sexual awakening in Liza is sensitively portrayed as the two girls become friends with two of their teachers who are lesbians. The reading level is appropriate for older middle school or junior high girls.

Am I the only one who thinks this is an absolutely insane cross-promotion for girls of this age? What about this or this?

I find it absolutely bizarre that a mass marketing company like American Girl, who markets to relatively young women, would knowingly engage in such a cross-promotion with a company whose mission includes pro-abortion indoctrination and orientation advocacy for junior high girls. If there is a sane and rational explanation for this, I would love to hear it.

When Diversity Goes Bad

Remember when parents had some marginal level of control over what their kids were exposed to? John Cole reminds us in a rather forceful way that those days are over:

The conflict began on Jan. 17, when Parker's then-5-year-old son brought home a Diversity Bookbag from kindergarten. Included was Robert Skutch's "Who's In a Family?" that depicts families headed by same-sex couples. Parker had wanted to decide for himself the timing and manner in which his son was introduced to the subject of homosexuality...

By law, Massachusetts requires schools to notify parents when sexuality is scheduled for discussion. Lexington School Committee chairman Thomas B. Griffiths explained, "We don't view telling a child that there is a family out there with two mommies as teaching about homosexuality."

Now, I took the time to click on the link there for the diversity bookbag, and it says this about the book in question:

Shows the various combinations of individuals that can make up a family, emphasizing the positive aspects of different family structures, including grand-parent headed, single-parent, adopted, gay-headed, and mother-father families. Uses examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate how family groupings can differ.

Now, call me crazy, but as a parent, I would view "emphasizing the positive aspects of... gay-headed... families" to be teaching about homosexuality. Keep in mind that the child in question here is 5 (5!) years old, and is being given, without his parents' notification, a book which promotes gay-headed families as "positive." That's absolutely nuts. Also, this statement is nonsense:

(The Bookbag is supposed to be a voluntary program but the Parkers knew nothing about it in advance.)

You're going to give a five year old a bookbag full of books and expect them to refuse to participate? Based on what, advanced moral principles? An aversion to free stuff?

The parent, David Parker, decided to take action:

Parker immediately e-mailed the Estabrook school principal, Joni Jay (search). Parker expressed his belief that gay parents did not constitute "a spiritually healthy family"; he did not wish his son to be taught that a gay family is "a morally equal alternative to other family constructs."

Parker acknowledged the equal rights of gays but objected to "the 'out of the closet' and into the kindergarten classroom mentality." In essence, Parker highlighted the difference between tolerance, which acknowledges someone's right to make a choice, and acceptance, which is the personal validation of that choice.

The conflict moved quickly from the Diversity Bookbag to the more general issue of parental notification. The Parkers wanted to know if sexuality was scheduled to be discussed in class so they could remove their son. They also wanted their son removed from any "spontaneous conversations" about sexuality that involved an adult.

At an April 27 meeting at the school, Parker refused to leave without an assurance that he would receive parental notification. Arrested for criminal trespass, he spent the night in jail.

When asked why he insisted on staying, Parker replied, "I wanted to see how far they [school authorities] would go for [my] asking something simple."

Arrested. For insisting upon assurances that the school would follow Massachusetts State law.

The state now wishes to impose probation upon Parker, along with other restrictions — such as banning him from Lexington school properties without prior written permission from the superintendent of schools. This means he is barred from places to vote, as well as school committee and parent-teacher meetings.

Parker is contesting the charge. Why? After his arraignment, he stated, "I'm just trying to be a good dad." During a May 11 appearance on the FOX News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," Parker expanded on this statement, saying that he wanted his son "to play on the swing set and make mud pies. I don't want him thinking about same-sex unions in kindergarten."

It was not so long ago that I was in school, and I would wager my last dollar that any teacher that attempted to foist this upon me in Kindergarten would have been fired after the ensuing storm of parental uproar. Now, a generation later, the parents are carted off to jail for objecting to having the schools teach their children moral values that run contrary to their own. Nevermind the fact that Parker had the law on his side in making this demand.

Otherwise stated, schools are usurping the parental role of teaching personal values to children. They are not acting as educators but as guardians, "in loco parentis" (in the place of a parent). Some schools clearly consider this function to be their right, even over parental objections. Thus, Estabrook defends its "right" to teach Parker's son to accept same-sex marriages.

File this as reason number 7,143 why vouchers are a good idea, and the oligarchy of the NEA should be forced to compete with competent private education. Otherwise, we stand ready to have the next generation forcibly indoctrinated into liberalism at younger and younger ages.

Which is, of course, why liberals oppose vouchers. Their ideas don't sell too well when faced with competition.

UPDATE (08-10-05 16:28:00 CDT): In an update, John Cole notices this website and concludes that Parker is an activist. In browsing around the site, I don't notice that he works with this group in any official capacity, although they certainly are using his story, and given the amount of records that they have, it seems that he is fully co-operating with their efforts.

However, no one is yet disputing the fact that the school in question attempted to give his five year old child a book advocating the fact that families with two parents of the same sex are positive arrangements. Now, whether you agree or disagree with that sentiment, I would hope that we could all agree that a parent has got a right to not have that value judgment forced upon their kindergartner.

So, whether he is an activist or not, it seems to me to not change the facts of this case at all.

I Dare Not Comment Upon This

I shall only point it out, and humbly wait for some of my fellow female bloggers to do so. From ABC News Online:

Unions say they are negotiating a landmark industrial relations claim to allow women to take extra sick leave for menstrual pain.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) says some women have particularly bad periods and are genuinely forced to call in sick.

As part of negotiations for a new enterprise bargaining agreement at Toyota, the union has asked for women to be allowed 12 paid days menstrual leave a year.

AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron says the leave would be additional to the sick leave they are already entitled to.

The Australian Industry Group (AIG) has condemned the move.

AIG chief executive Heather Ridout says it is a particularly bad time to even propose such a claim.

"I think it will set a dangerous precedent," she said.

"But more worrying it will put pressure on interest rates, the Reserve Bank, the Federal Treasury - they're all looking for higher labour costs to put pressure on our interest rate structure.

Well. Hopefully later I will have some updates on this, with some links to some female bloggers - because I'm not touching this one with a ten-foot pole.

Why I Left Arkansas

I went back to Arkansas to attend the wedding of a friend this weekend. I was reminded why I left when I saw the "vehicle" they drove away in. Sheesh. It's good to be back.

Idiocy Runs Amok

Courtesy of RedState:

The NCAA is a spineless purveyor of PC nonsense. It is not all that surprising given that Myles Brand, its President, is a former liberal college president married to a gender studies professor -- he's more into cultural sensitivity than sports, fans and alumni be damned.

Today the NCAA decided that Indian mascots are bad and insensitive and must be stopped. The Florida State Seminoles are up a creek (no, not the tribe, the figurative body of water).

 

The policy prohibiting colleges or universities with hostile or abusive mascots, nicknames or imagery from hosting any NCAA championship competitions takes effect February 1, 2006.

"The NCAA objects to institutions using racial/ethnic/national origin references in their intercollegiate athletics programs," said NCAA President Myles Brand. "Several institutions have made changes that adhere to the core values of the NCAA Constitution pertaining to cultural diversity, ethical sportsmanship and nondiscrimination. We applaud that, and we will continue to monitor these institutions and others. All institutions are encouraged to promote these core values and take proactive steps at every NCAA event through institutional event management to enhance the integrity of intercollegiate athletics related to these issues."

We hope that the fans of college sports, who want to root for their tradition teams and do not believe in Myles Brand's silly identity politics of victimization will call the NCAA and protest. Their number is (317) 917-6222 or (317) 917-6117. You can email Myles Brand at [email protected], but he has already shown he really does not care what you think.

The NCAA says it wants "cultural diversity," but only the kind that is absolutely guaranteed to be inoffensive to absolutely everyone. Look for lots of animal mascots until Peter Singer cries fowl foul.

Hmm... I wonder, is "Seminole" hostile? I mean, I can understand the case against "Redskin", but isn't Seminole what they are called? I guess, under the second paragraph, any name involving national or ethnic identity is out. ESPN has a list of the targeted teams.

Conspicuously absent from this list, despite utilizing mascots that clearly refer to "racial/ethnic/and national origin", I also humbly submit the following:

The Notre Dame "Fighting Irish."  The San Diego State "Aztecs." What about the "Quakers" from the University of Pennsylvania? Surely that's just as offensive to Quakers as "Seminoles" is to Seminoles. What about the USC Trojans? Surely that is as offensive to some of the people in the Mediterranean as "Sioux" is to some residents of Dakota. And what about sports teams from the Dakotas? After all, The Dakota are a branch of the Sioux, should they be prohibited from tournament play until they move to another state?

More exposure of idiocy will be heartily welcomed in the comments.

 

Screaming Hysteria

Let me just acknowledge something point blank here. I don't see eye to eye with a lot of my fellow conservative bloggers a lot of the time. Most often, I'm not very bothered by that. But on this Intelligent Design thing, I'll confess it, I'm getting a little steamed. I know I really probably shouldn't, as the macroevolutionists are firmly establishing themselves as the most intolerant kind of religious zealots to ever walk the earth, but it gets under my skin nonetheless.

What started all this, of course, was this statement by the President:

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss “intelligent design” alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

“I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” Bush said. “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

This suggestion that schoolchildren should be exposed to more than one theory of the origins of life, is sending a bunch of otherwise reasonable people apoplectic with rage that is, frankly, shameful. You could read this or this or this or this, but I can pretty much save you some time and boil all the screaming hysteria down thusly: "Intelligent Design is faith, not science! You can't teach faith in science class! Anybody who doesn't believe in macroevolution is stupid and deserves our ridicule!"

The most hysterical pronouncements of the Spanish Inquisitors hardly look less reasonable than the stuff I'm seeing flying around the right blogosphere today. Suspiciously absent from any of these rants is any engagement on the facts or merits of Intelligent Design - it's just all ridicule, all the time. Oh, and some profanity thrown in for extra special persuasive value. I challenge any of these macroevolutionists to find a single creationist who reacts with such bile at the questioning of their faith. This kind of rhetoric is not engaged in by people who are truly confident in the factuality of their position. Don't believe me? Go ask Howard Dean.

The reality is that science in and of itself is incapable of answering the ultimae questions of our origins, because the genesis of the human species can be neither tested nor duplicated. All we may do in the end is observe and speculate. The macroevolutionist observes the seemingly endless series of infinitely small probabilites leading to the existence of man in a stable environement, and says, "Random chance produced this." The believer in Intelligent Design views the exact same information and says, "That's impossible for me to believe. Given what I have observed, I conclude some guiding entity had a hand in this." Responds the macroevolutionist, "You're stupid!"

And that is the sum totality of the arguments I have seen today as to why ID should not be taught as an alternate theory. Mixed in with that, we have a deliberate misrepresentation of what Intelligent Design is all about - with the Macroevolutionists shouting, "They're just expecting us to believe in their faith! There's no science involved!"

Hmm. That would certainly explain this and this and this. Clearly, these people are just asking us to take a blind leap of faith into some hocus pocus religion.

Second, the ridiculous notion that ID is not science because it cannot be falsified. Let's ignore, for a moment, the fact that macroevolution involves several assumptions that are disproven by modern science (life rising from non-life, reproduction out of species, etc.) Let us further forsake the fact that the seminal work of Intelligent Design (Natural Theology) was a book that was entirely filled answering the questions of falsification that arise when considering whether an obviously designed object has a designer.

Putting aside all that, I have yet to find a single macroevolutionists who has explained to me how macroevolution is a whit more falsifiable than Intelligent Design. The reason I haven't heard this is because it's not. Presumably, it doesn't have to be, since all the "scientists" believe religiously that it's true.

I expect that two things will happen as a result of this post. One, I will be mocked by people who assume that they are smarter than I am, and have some knowledge that I'm too feeble to grasp. Second, Intelligent Design will not be engaged on the facts. Perhaps I am wrong, but I just don't have a lot of faith in the ability of religious zealots to listen to reason when their faith is under attack.

The religious zealots I'm talking about are, of course, the macroevolutionists.

UPDATE (08/02/05 21:36:00 CDT): Twice now, Mark Coffey has responded to some fairly strident rhetoric gracefully. Which is one of the reasons I like him so much. Cheers.

Words Fail Me

Yes, it's a first. There simply aren't adequate words to describe the horror of this story:

FAIRFAX, Va. -- The mother who allegedly abandoned her toddler on the Capital Beltway then hit him with the car as he tried to get back in was ordered held without bond Friday.

Channoah Alece Green, 22, of Newport News, will stand trial Aug. 26 on felony child endangerment charges. Authorities said that on Tuesday night, Green got angry with her 4-year-old son and left him on the side of the highway near the Lee Highway overpass in Falls Church. She was arrested hours later in Hanover County, about 90 miles south, following a traffic accident there, Virginia State Police said.

Virginia State Police have said her vehicle struck the boy as he attempted to get back into the car before she drove away.

The boy was not seriously hurt and has been placed with a foster family.

I'm gonna go ahead and say it, even though I can hear the screams of outrage through my computer screen already - this story is the logical extension of an abortion-on-demand society. Sick of dealing with the consequences of your decisions in life? Just erase them! It's as though they were never there!

As a father of a four-year-old, this story literally made me sick to my stomach. What makes me even sicker to my stomach is that in the universe liberals inhabit, this child (the story points out that the mother was unemployed, no mention of a father whatsoever) should have been killed about 4 years, 6 months ago, rather than have at least a chance with a foster family.

It is difficult, at times, to credit the monstrous depths of the potential evil of humanity. This is one of those times.

UPDATE: I can imagine that some of you are puzzled about how I could possibly make a post about this tragedy somehow relate to abortion. Again, it all comes back to the devaluation of human life, to the point where the convenience of one individual trumps the right of another to live. Nowhere is that more manifest than in abortion-on-demand. RedState user Just Me found this excellent editorial which makes the point well, I think:

Meanwhile, one can’t help but feel sorry for the infant — Baby C, or Thing Three?

“Thing” is used here neither dismissively nor derisively, but as a term of stunning accuracy. Throughout our culture, children have become objectified, “thingified,” created or acquired for the fulfillment of our selves — decor options, accessories, cute little bundles for our entertainment and amusement.

Unless, of course, we’re not in the mood, in which case we hit the “abort” button, the ultimate expression of “thingification.”

As long as children are viewed as mere extensions of our selves, put here to satisfy some narcissistic need for self-actualization, it is easy to suppose that our needs and their needs are complementary.

Indeed.

Silly Secularists

A hat tip to John Cole for finding this:

A ballot measure to preserve the Mount Soledad cross on public land in La Jolla easily surpassed the two-thirds support it needed for approval Tuesday night. But the voters’ decision on Proposition A won’t be the final word. The controversy heads back to court next month.

Two court dates are scheduled in the next three weeks. A Superior Court judge will examine the ballot measure’s constitutionality Aug. 12, and a federal judge will hear cross-related arguments Aug. 15.

The proposition calls for the San Diego City Council to give the 29-foot cross, a concentric set of granite walls and the land around them to the U.S. Interior Department as a national veterans memorial.

Tuesday night, three dozen Proposition A backers at the Westgate Hotel greeted the early returns with cheers. Among them was Phil Thalheimer, chairman of a group called San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial.

“Holy cow,” Thalheimer said, looking at absentee-voting results that showed three out of four voters backing Proposition A. “It is better than I expected.”

Attorney James McElroy, whose client filed a lawsuit challenging the presence of the cross on city land in 1989, called the vote meaningless.

“It still doesn’t mean a damn thing,” he said. “Voters should have never voted on it. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Yes - goodness knows it's irrelevant what the people think. Next thing you know, someone will be trying to convince McElroy that we live in a Democracy or something.

Listen, I have a lot less skin in this game than a lot of people automatically assume that I do - but this is  a pretty cut and dried case. First, if you observe the picture on John's website, it's manifestly obvious that the cross is intended to signify a grave marker. Second, this particular memorial has been there since 1954, and is a war memorial. Let it go, for goodness' sake.

Do McElroy and his client really expect that people are going to have a lot of sympathy for the notion that they're being "imposed upon" by having to actually LOOK at this cross a few times? No one's making them bow, no one's genuflecting, no one's even proposing a costly construction - the thing is already standing, already on government land.

The disdain that McElroy and his client are showing towards the overwhelming will of the local populace only serves to reinforce the notion that anti-religious fascism is alive and well in America today.

Jessica Simpson, Stripper

Another hat tip goes out to Mrs. Nachos for alerting me to the controversy surrounding the video for the truly awful Jessica Simpson remake of the Nancy Sinatra song "These Boots are Made for Walkin'". If any of you would like to see the video in question (although I'd recommend against it), you may do so here.

Now, I think we all can agree, based especially on the last 30 seconds of the video, that the whole intent of this ridiculous production is to make Jessica Simpson look like a stripper. I mean, seriously, how is that factually distinguishable in any way from a striptease? Is there any point within the context of the video to have Mrs. Simpson suddenly washing a car in a bikini, if not to invoke association with the well-known soft-core porn franchise Bikini Car Wash?

However, showing the intellectual acumen that made her a smash hit on The Newlyweds, Mrs. Simpson is sure that Jesus wouldn't like people pointing out that she looked like a stripper, just because she looked like a stripper. From MSNBC:

Jessica Simpson is telling some Christians to take a walk.

A group called The Resistance has accused Simpson of looking like "a stripper” in her video for “These Boots Were Made for Walking.” In the video, the “Dukes of Hazzard” star washes a car while wearing a barely-there bikini.

But Simpson, a pastor’s daughter, says that sort of attitude is why she didn’t pursue a career as a Christian singer. “It didn’t really surprise me because I grew up with a lot of that backlash,” Simpson said, according to World Entertainment News Network. “That’s why I didn’t end up going into the Christian music industry. I think that if they're really good Christians the judgment wouldn't be there.”

I see that Mrs. Simpson has confused "Judge with righteous judgment" (John 7:24, for those inclined to open their Bibles) with "Don't ever judge anybody at all". Which is perfectly understandable - it's at least as confusing as whether tuna is tuna, or whether tuna is, in fact, chicken.

In any event, I'm personally glad that we have Mrs. Simpson to show us what the "good Christians" do. Following her example, they engage in wanton lasciviousness, immodesty, and public indecency. They don't, however, point out the rather obvious fact that someone who looks like a stripper looks like a stripper. That's just wrong.

Jesus would never call a spade a spade that way.