Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Cassy saw fit to showcase a story that we tossed out there…angry breastfeeding women doing their breastfeeding in protest, seeking their social justice.
Our position on this is, we think, the essence of logic, moderation, and cool-headed reason:
It’s up to the restaurant manager. If you disagree you’re a Nazi — period, end of story. I know that sounds a little bit unreasonable at first blush; but if you think on it a minute or two, you’ll see we’re a hundred percent in the right about that. After all…what’s the alternative?
Anyway, breastfeeding-protests represent a rather wrenching separation from the plane of reality. I mean, c’mon. You’re breastfeeding your child in a restaurant where you know damn good and well they don’t want that stuff going on…out of consideration for the other patrons…in solidarity? To protest your “rights”? You’re being kept in some kind of involuntary servitude, but thanks to your civil disobedience you can flop your pink puppies around and this somehow makes you more free? Good God woman. It must be exhausting living out your entire life on a turning point. Is life all just perfect and wonderful for you when the restaurant manager is subjugated to your will? Hmmmm? Nothing to complain about at all anymore? Every li’l thing on Creation, just exactly the way it should be? Didn’t think so.
On with the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award. It goes to Cassy’s commenter #13, Mat:
It seems to me that the more technologically-modern we become, the more people revert to an animal-like behavior.
Yeah, pretty much.
Except — Mark Twain’s famous quote comes to mind…and this somewhat contradicts the above, but it does so in service of honor and truth:
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
So no, not quite animal-like. Not quite. Something a few notches beneath that. It does not gladden the heart to realize this thing about us, but it is true.
Don’t you wish you could just go to one of these breastfeeding protests, and just walk up and down the aisles yelling “Bitches and Hoes, Hoes and Bitches! Bitches, Cunts, Cuntnozzles, Bitches, Bull-Dykes, Bitches Bitches Bitches!” Of course this would be awful, loutish behavior of yours. Of course you should be thrown out on your ear. For engaging in such churlish, not-family-appropriate, over-the-line behavior…behavior that makes the people around you…er…uncomfortable…
Hmmm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s where I’m going with it; kind of a “Jesus said whoever is without sin should cast the first stone.” Who’d be able to step up to the plate — in that crowd?
It’s not a civil-rights issue, it shouldn’t be treated as one, and it shouldn’t even be tolerated. Not unless the restaurant manager says it should be. If the law says different, the law is wrong. This issue has nothing to do with whether breast milk or formula is better for a baby; it has to do with whether we should care, when we do things that make other people uncomfortable. And if the answer is toward the negative, we have become something very, very ugly, and we have surrendered our rights, privileges, freedoms and responsibility to call foul on the things others do that make people uncomfortable. We have, in essence, pulled the plug on every little thing we have ever connected with the word “civilization.”
And Mat‘s right — we do this because, with the mature state of our technological doo-dads and gizmos, life is sufficiently comfy we figure we can afford to do it. Climb up your family tree, to the years when baby formula was a distant dream, and your great-great-grandma never would have dreamed of imposing this way. If it didn’t show proper discretion it wasn’t considered, and that was the end of it. Here we are all these years later, we have far more options, and somehow this means we have to behave like louts. Our response to the gentleman in the next booth who is uncomfortable, for whatever reason, is that he needs to shape up because there’s something wrong with him. Great-grandma had much more of a need to impose, and yet this would have been beyond her thinking.
It really sums up everything that’s wrong with the world, when you think about it.
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No different than me claiming I can whip my dick out and pee in a jar in the middle of that same restaurant; it’s not a sexual act, it’s a biological necessity, and it’s not unsanitary.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with women breastfeeding in public. But private property is private property- if the restaurant’s policy says no, then go do it somewhere else.
- thebastidge | 08/18/2009 @ 10:17