calling a spade a shovel

[rone]

Jym Dyer at meme_machine_go suggests that we call Pat Robertson's actions by their proper name: he has issued a fatwah.

Comments

[nixzusehen.livejournal.com]

<pedantic>
A fatwah is an islamic legal ruling -- not a generic call for a hit.
</pedantic>

I'd love to see Bush condemn this sort of thing and prove he isn't the rankest sort of hypocrite. But I won't hold my breath.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the most famous fatwah was the one on Salman Rushdie, so it comes out to be the same.

The White House has already distanced itself from Robertson's comments; the question asked around me was, why? Why should the White House back off? Has Robertson at any time spoken for Bush? He's just a private citizen, isn't he?

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Robertson was a very prominent and respected part of the Republican Party - he's given key note speeches at their conventions and even run for the nomination. He's also a darling of the American Taliban that's currently in charge of the Republican Party and the White House and both Houses.

But you're right, he doesn't officially represent the Republican Party any more.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

The popularity of the 'Hurr, Bu$hitler is in bed with SCARY PEOPLE who believe in (gasp) GOD, not like us real US citizens, and any minute he'll make us ALL go to Baptist services 4 times a week, even the SIKHS' meme makes such distancing politically savvy.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I think that you overestimate the popularity of people who espouse that idea about as badly as they overestimate the zealotry that runs in the Bush Administration's veins.

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

Another thing that is going on here:

By making that statement, Hugo's support locally among people who don't like the states to begin with is raised.

By denouncing it quickly, the administration is trying to quell that. And also anything from European nations or other nations who notice that, well, we do kinda slam other countries who have that sort of thing happen.

It's all political spin, but right now, the administration is busily doing damage control. This is an administration which likes to say it's Christian, and that's a bigtime visible Christian leader. They know better than to let grass roots hate start building up.

And if you think for one minute Hugo wouldn't try to stir up that grass roots hate?

Hello, politician!

[cheesetruck.livejournal.com]

oh, and yes: while it can be squelched in the US papers -

It was rather prominent on the BBC news.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Add in the overestimation of Roberton's influence in setting policy and we'll have the overestimation trifecta!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I don't see anyone overestimating Robertson's influence in setting policy (which is, at best, negligible). That's the point; if all sane people can agree that Robertson has no influence in White House policy, why did the White House back away? Appearances? Since when does the White House give a fuck about appearances?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

People don't seem to remember just how evil and deranged Robertson is for very long. Wasn't he the other half of that TV conversation with Falwell about how the gays and feminists made Sept. 11 happen?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I thought it was just Falwell, but it could've been both.

But, yeah, people seem to forget stuff like, "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

[merde.livejournal.com]

sure. and as badly as the xtians who claim they're being "oppressed" do, as well. pierce once told me he wanted to put one of those fish things on his car, but he was afraid his car would be vandalized. because yeah, there are roving bands of atheists just walking the parking lots of virginia, looking for xtians to oppress.

i don't think Bush is going to make us all go to Baptist services. i just think he has blurred the line between church and state and would like to see it blurred even more, because he's unable to imagine a world in which Baptists might actually be oppressed and thus doesn't understand the dangers inherent in what he's doing. (i'm not saying that one day Baptists will be oppressed -- just that because he believes he'll never be oppressed, he's unable to grasp what it feels like to those who are.)

as an atheist, i've never felt particularly oppressed. i've been followed down the street by shouting zealots, angrily told i'll burn in hell, and various other things, but since all of that means absolutely nothing to me, i can effortlessly shrug it off. i get pretty pissed off about the pledge of allegiance, but it doesn't affect me personally. and they don't force you to swear on a bible anymore in court, so honestly i'm not sure how religion can ever touch me. i mean, i guess someone might read last rites over me against my will, but i won't be around to care anyway. i'm a lifelong atheist, but a laid-back one. i continued to celebrate xmas for years before i finally gave it up a few years ago in favor of a nice rational non-pagan-thankyouverymuch practice of lighting a lot of candles on the winter solstice, mostly because it's a nice thing to do and i like setting things on fire. i just don't, you know, care about what other people believe.

i respect their beliefs. i don't think everyone should be an atheist. i think everyone should believe whatever the fuck they want, even if it involves the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Noodly Appendage. i even go to the occasional catholic mass because i enjoy the ritual of it. (i highly recommend the 9pm sunday candlelight mass at St. Dominics in SF. it's like going back a thousand years in time.)

my more playful side, on the other hand, finds me wondering if a group of atheists has ever lobbied for the right to equal space to display nothing opposite a municipal nativity scene.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Oh, they care about appearances -- in the right circumstances. You don't want to alienate the base by having any hint of hanging out with the crazier side of things, see.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

So, Robertson's fine as long as he keeps his yap shut. Gotcha.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Fine by me, hell yeah. In terms of Administration (and, more broadly, Repubs in general) strategery, you might want to wave him around on (on a short choke chain) to get the faithful excited, but in general he's an embarrassment to be paid lip service to, not a core mover/shaker. Kind of like Rev. Jackson's opposite number, only more embarrassing, which is saying something.

[dr-strych9.livejournal.com]

Um... Pat Robertson is still an important source of funding and mobilized activists in the Republican Party. The GOP really does have to keep him on a short leash, because if he decides the Party isn't sufficiently servile to his irrational viewpoints, he could put a quick stop to the flow of phat stax of mad bank coming from his followers into the campaign war chests of their loyal representatives in our Chamber of People's Deputies.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

So, the GOP is Anna Nicole Smith and Pat Robertson is the withered geezer she married?

[dr-strych9.livejournal.com]

More like only one of the rich (but stingy), withered geezers among her in-laws, who between them all keep her fat and comfortable.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Or, as Digby points out (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_08_21_digbysblog_archive.html#112483235337943976), the hits he's called down on the Supreme Court and the State Department.

This tactic, incidentally, seems to be helping his show's ratings.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Yeah, I looked it up: Falwell was on Robertson's TV show, and Robertson was busy agreeing with him.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Both Robertson and Pat Buchanan got prime-time slots at the 1992 Republican Convention. They made speeches that scared the crap out of most people, and it was widely agreed to be a terrible tactical error. But I'm not so sure it was; the Republicans lost that election but it may have worked as signaling to the lunatics in the party base that their interests were being kept at heart. Buchanan gets a lot of mileage out of being contrarian, especially when there's a war on, but he always comes back and endorses the Republican presidential candidate in the end.

Same for Robertson; actually, for him it was particularly weird—he'd gone as far as implying that Bush the Elder was part of the Bilderberger/Illuminati/Beast 666/European Community/Elders of ZionInternational Bankers' conspiracy to conquer the world, then turned around and endorsed him. A lovelier example of Crazy People Doublethink you will never find.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

and they don't force you to swear on a bible anymore in court

Maybe not, but some version of this did bother me a little the last time I had jury duty. I didn't get on a jury but I did get into the courtroom and get sworn in. It was a collective thing: the court officer read off an oath that included the words "swear" and "so help you God?" and we were all supposed to say "I do" just like we were getting married.

I figured that as long as I was swearing to the Ceremonial Deist God described in certain Supreme Court opinions about how "In God We Trust" has nothing to do with religion, I was all right, since I fully intended to do everything I was promising to do; but in some part of my mind I was imagining a nightmare situation in which somebody figured out I was an atheist and tried to get a verdict overturned and me thrown in the pokey for contempt because in some bizarre technical sense I had committed perjury by swearing to a God I didn't believe in. And I was wondering if I should have approached the bench and annoyed everybody by asking for a nontheistic affirmation. (I figured probably not, since this was Massachusetts and not Texas.)

All this fretting because of some God-language that didn't legally mean anything anyway.

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

How dare you blasheme against the Flying Spaghetti Monster. His Noodly Appendage will smite you senseless.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The Chavez comment is an almost word-for-word copy of stuff he was saying in 1999 (http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/revpat.htm) about Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. What makes this case seem scarier is that, as far as I know, nobody was remotely talking about invading or bombing Venezuela.

Publicly, that is.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

And of course nobody was three years ago, either.

[pennyhill.livejournal.com]

why did the White House back away?

It's clearly not on the White House agenda to bump off President Chavez. One reason COULD be that he's a legitimately elected president in a democratic country. And you could say "pish" to all that and probably be right.

Better reason: Venezuela a wealthy Latin American democratic country whose main export is oil. In past news stories I've read, the importance of access to Venezuelan oil is always underscored when discussing the instability in the Middle East, and also when discussing the growing competition for fuels, particularly from China, whose enconomy is coming on like gangbusters. (Private ownership of automobiles has skyrocketed in the last 3-5 years.)

And that would my best guess about why the Bush Administration backed away from Pat Roberton's fatwah. Bush himself used very much the same words when talking about Saddam. "We've got to take him out" comes to mind. And you well know that in the past the US has acted directly, fomented rebellion, and/or funded "freedom fighters" to topple Latin American governments.

By the way - I saw news coverage of Robertson's fatwah on television last night. Network news; don't remember the network.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Did he come back to endorse the GOP in 2000? I mean, seein' as how he was running on the Reform ticket...

[pennyhill.livejournal.com]

P.S.
There's an A.P. article in the Mercury this morning about it. Backing up my notion about oil, the article says:

"He [Chavez] has repeatedly accused the United States of backing a plan to assassinate him, which Rice and others have denied. Earlier this year he threatened to cut off oil exports to the United States if it supports any effort to overthrow him.

"That is not an inconsequential threat when gas prices are brushing $3 a gallon. Venezuela exports 1.3 million barrels of oil a day to the United States - 8 percent of the total supply."

By the way, the article says Chavez calls Bush "Mr. Danger" while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is "the imperial lady."
Heh.

Have you seen (and could you recommend) a good analysis of Chavez's regime - accomplishments and/or facts and allegations about his activities within Venezuela and other Latin American countries? I'm ignorant of Latin American current events (except for what you've written about Ecuador) and was not aware of Chavez-Castro fomentation of rebellion in other nations, e.g., Bolivia. The AP article cites allegations, but there are no details.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I haven't followed it very closely. What i've read seems to be biased in either extreme. He seems to be fairly concerned with the plight of the common man in Venezuela, and his opposition is visibly composed of the well-off; at the same time, he's also an asshole with little care for the niceties of diplomacy and is close friends with that noted philanthropist, Fidel Castro. Ecuador's recently deposed president was also close to Chávez. The real problem is that almost every time a populist gains power, he turns around and screws his support base. So it's probably just a matter of time until Hugo takes his turn.

[bramsmits.livejournal.com]

so honestly i'm not sure how religion can ever touch me.

Religiously inspired legislation. To name just a few (I don't know you personally, so I don't know which ones are relevant to you): abortion rights and attempts at the curtailing thereof, same sex marriage or rather the persistent lack thereof in the US (and sorry guys, I'm not counting MA - there's still a void there at the federal level), or more down to earth, your tax money being funneled to religious organizations; some of the middle-east policies have a religious background (and might lead directly or indirectly to trauma, injury or death of people you know, and definitely cost you tax money)... I'm sure this list could be expanded almost indefinitely.

[merde.livejournal.com]

hm, well, if my luck goes as it has been for the last 8 years there's no chance of pregnancy. i wouldn't get married again if the entire republican party stood outside my door and sang a merry little "please merde get married" jingle... but yeah, how they spend my tax money is an issue.

seriously, all those things are important to me. but that wasn't my point. i've forgotten what my point was, and i don't seem to have made it very well either... it's been that kind of year. i think i may have come down with a case of the Democratic Party.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

What we have now is just scratching the surface of laws. Same-sex marriage wasn't around anywhere in the world, what, 30 years ago? The tax money going to faith-based charities is new and barely worth noticing. Our Middle East policy is not at all different from our regular foreign policy over the last 100 or more years, and to call it religiously motivated isn't accurate.

Seriously, i'm aggravated to have empire-building Bible thumpers in charge, but big whoop. This'll blow over soon.