In some parts of the US (mainly the Northeast), temperatures reached up to 100 degrees and with the humidity it felt like 110. The heat forced me to stay inside and I got a chance to watch some quality news on the 24-hour networks. And while I was watching, I realized no one was saying anything about how the heat proved climate change or global warming. Of course, this statement has no scientific merit at all but, in the same token, it didn't stop anyone from saying the blizzard earlier in the year debunked the theory.
If you remember there were countless comments and reports, from Fox News in particular, about how global warming and/or climate change is not a legitimate theory because it snowed in January. Now that it's July and it's hot out, you'd think there would be some report about how it proves global warming and/or climate change. I'm assuming that the people at Fox News are praying no other news outlet will pick up on this. But they won't because other news outlets know better than to make outrageous and uninformed claims about things they know nothing about.
By the logic of Fox News, today's 100 degree weather proves global warming. And by normal logic, it proves that Fox News is an embarrassment to journalism.
01 July 2010
Bonehead Op-Ed of the Week: Kathleen Parker
Kathleen Parker from the Washington Post just published an articled explaining why Obama is our nation's "first female president" much like how Clinton was our "first black president" according to Toni Morrison. But there lies a vast gulf in meaning in both articles. Morrison's sets out to show similarities in the social experience of Clinton and a typical black person in America (i.e. single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas). Parker's article, in inexplicable boneheadedness, just reaffirms gender stereotypes and illuminates her own internalized oppression in regard to the position females should take in America.
She writes, "Our enlightened human selves may want to eliminate gender norms, but our lizard brains have a different agenda." She's saying that gender norms are biologically grafted into our brains. A delusion that was practiced with much fervor by misogynists and racists during most of the 20th century. This is the kind of thinking that gave way to phrenology and other psuedosciences that attempted to disprove the aptitude of women and people of color.
Almost everything Parker says about the way women do things is choked with an air of inferiority. She goes on to describe the president's actions during the oil spill as "passive" and his "lack of immediate, commanding action". So this is why he is our first female president? Because he's passive and lacks action? From the way she describes women in authority, you'd think she never wants to see a real female president in office.
For attempting to erase 40+ years of women's lib and social progress, the Bonehead Op-Ed of the Week goes to Kathleen Parker. Kudos.
She writes, "Our enlightened human selves may want to eliminate gender norms, but our lizard brains have a different agenda." She's saying that gender norms are biologically grafted into our brains. A delusion that was practiced with much fervor by misogynists and racists during most of the 20th century. This is the kind of thinking that gave way to phrenology and other psuedosciences that attempted to disprove the aptitude of women and people of color.
Almost everything Parker says about the way women do things is choked with an air of inferiority. She goes on to describe the president's actions during the oil spill as "passive" and his "lack of immediate, commanding action". So this is why he is our first female president? Because he's passive and lacks action? From the way she describes women in authority, you'd think she never wants to see a real female president in office.
For attempting to erase 40+ years of women's lib and social progress, the Bonehead Op-Ed of the Week goes to Kathleen Parker. Kudos.
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