Can We All Stop Using the Kool-Aid Metaphor Now?

Seriously.

Using the phrase “Drank the Kool-Aid” is facile, dismissive, and utterly offensive.

I am a SF Bay Area denizen old enough to remember the day of the Jonestown Massacre, November 18, 1978, and the horrors that subsequently came to light.

Nine hundred nine people died in the equatorial heat on that day in Guyana. Two hundred eighty-seven of were them children—murdered, many of them by their parents, who were forced to feed them cyanide-laced Kool-Aid (actually Flavor-Aid) and watch as they died in agony.

Whatever our disagreements, none of us deserves to be likened to the perpetrators of that massacre; nor do the murdered children of Jonestown deserve to be used as a cheap metaphor to be hurled at opponents in a debate.

Stupak Amendment Demonstrates the Hypocrisy of Anti-abortion Politicians

“SEC. 265. LIMITATION ON ABORTION FUNDING

a) In General.—No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.”[Emphasis mine]

The text above, from the first paragraph of the so-called Stupak Amendment to the healthcare reform bill that passed the House last Saturday, demonstrates the moral elasticity of the political wing of anti-abortion forces.

If, as anti-abortion activists tell us, life begins at conception, and all human organisms enjoy the inalienable right to life, why do we make exceptions based on the circumstances under which that life came into existence?

For the Flowers of the Fields

Img: oindypoint/Flickr

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark  our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

~ Lt. John McCrae (1915)

In Praise of Sesame Street!

Sesame Street debuted on PBS 40 years ago today.

It broke new ground in children’s television in a number of important ways. It was one of the first shows that didn’t talk down to kids; it presented both educational and cultural topics with age-appropriate humor, that often contained a contemporary social reference or two designed to amuse adults. But it was never snarky. It didn’t assume kids were little adults, but it also never treated them like little morons, either.

Who Are You, Who Are So Wise in the Ways of Science?

Watching one of my favorite movies the other night, I was struck by a mysterious sense of familiarity. I’d seen this scene played out before,  but not in the context of the Monty Python oeuvre.

Then it dawned on me.

What does this classic bit of comedy remind you of?