You’d think there would be little to criticize about Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Mix It Up at Lunch Day” project, designed to teach children tolerance and prevent bullying in schools by asking students to “connect with someone new” during lunch on October 30. But American Family Association found a way! The nonprofit association, which SPLC designated as an anti-gay hate group in 2010, declared that the decade-old lunchtime campaign pushed a “pro-homosexual” agenda, should be boycotted, and that concerned parents should pull their children out of school on October 30, lest they be forced to sit next to a gay classmate.
And the association’s cry for media attention worked. The New York Times covered the boycott two days ago, and earlier today, CNN Newsroom had spokesman Bryan Fischer call in to explain the group’s logic. Unsurprisingly, considering Fischer’s track record on gay issues (see Jane Mayer’s New Yorker profile of Fischer from last June), or just his Twitter account (where he called the SPLC a “pro-bullying hate group” and extolled the health benefits of white bread, making me check several times to make sure this wasn’t actually a clever parody), Fischer spent four minutes making ridiculous and hateful statements about homosexuality over B-roll footage of schoolchildren eating lunch.
When anchor Carol Costello managed to get a word in edgewise, she tried to challenge his assertions, including claims that both Hitler and his soldiers were gay. Then she gave up and said the interview was over and Fischer’s statements were “just not true.”
Good for Costello for cutting Fischer off before he could espouse more of his group’s rhetoric to a national audience. But it would have been better if she hadn’t given him any time at all; his claims are clearly and obviously false. If CNN Newsroom had to report on the story (at the very least to clear up the lies that may have caused some schools to drop out of Mix It Up at Lunch this year), it could have easily done so without including Fischer. Not every pundit deserves a platform.
The CNN anchor was frustrated because everything she tried to throw at him came right back into her face, and Fischer would not let her cut him off. Like it or not, he provided more evidence for the healthfulness of white bread than CNN provided on the alleged benefits of forced integration. His Hitler/gay assertions seem highly implausible; but even there, he cited a scholarly source on the topic. Anyway, easily marginalized figures such as Fischer are the fringe minority among parents who do not wish to have their children bullied by forced association or other means. Oh, and the SPLC is a racket.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 16 Oct 2012 at 08:06 PM
Headline: "CNN didn’t need to give anti-gay activist Bryan Fischer airtime"
Another: CJR didn't need to publish leftist apologia that hides truth about SPLC
#2 Posted by newspaperman, CJR on Wed 17 Oct 2012 at 11:37 AM
Ya know what? If you guys want to be in the corner of the prejudiced pricks with the lifetime Godwin achievement awards, you go on ahead.
And I'll avoid mentioning the group who seems to have a lot of homosexuals roaming around behind closed doors.
'Cause don't want to make pro-family republicans upset. They're a bunch of nazis.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 17 Oct 2012 at 12:30 PM
The Southern Povety Law Center is a joke. It speaks volumes about the ideological zeal of CJR and others that so much publicity is given to it. The SPLC has admitted explicity that it does not explore hate crimes if the victim is politicallly-incorrect. Its mission is left-wing politics, not crusading against 'hate' or violence - otherwise it would have the courage to admit that there are far greater threats of violence to its identity-politics constituencies than those right-wingers of the fevered urban/leftist imagination.
Who could oppose the KKK sponsoring a highway clean-up program? (Which it has tried to do.) Some skepticism of the hate-mongering by opponents of 'hate', especially after the shooting at the Family Research Council office last month, would be in order from journalist who put their skepticism and professionalism before their paralyzingly predictable political attitudes.
#4 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 17 Oct 2012 at 12:34 PM
"Who could oppose the KKK sponsoring a highway clean-up program?"
Who could oppose Hezbollah sponsoring a highway clean-up program?
My god, there's some dumb on display here today.
"Some skepticism of the hate-mongering by opponents of 'hate', especially after the shooting at the Family Research Council office last month, would be in order from journalist who put their skepticism and professionalism before their paralyzingly predictable political attitudes."
So what you're saying is that if we oppose hate, we shouldn't follow the violent models of haters?
Agreed. Now go and convince the haters, Marky.
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 17 Oct 2012 at 01:34 PM
To Dan A.
"Anyway, easily marginalized figures such as Fischer are the fringe minority among parents who do not wish to have their children bullied by forced association or other means". That is exactly what the KKK and other southern bigots said and still say about blacks. You are in good company with the KKK and Hitler.
#6 Posted by sergio , CJR on Thu 18 Oct 2012 at 12:43 AM
Thimbles, I've been trying to convince the haters, why do you think I post on this thread?
To Sergio, first person to compare their opponent to Hitler and the KKK loses - maybe you haven't heard. There's no freedom of association in North Korea, so by your standard I guess you line up with the political structure of the Hermit Kingdom, by your own standards.
#7 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 18 Oct 2012 at 12:36 PM
@"sergio": Right, because only "the KKK and other southern bigots" wish that their children not be bullied into social groups.
@Thimbles: Right, because defending freedom of association and other liberties means that I endorse the ideals of those who'd exercise them.
#8 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 18 Oct 2012 at 02:09 PM
Meanwhile, on these pages, the most prolifically divisive agent of all — the U.S. govt — gets a free pass for its violations of civil liberties etc.
#9 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 18 Oct 2012 at 02:21 PM
"Thimbles, I've been trying to convince the haters, why do you think I post on this thread?"
Har har, Cause we're as bad as stormfront. /har Har.
"To Sergio, first person to compare their opponent to Hitler and the KKK loses - maybe you haven't heard. There's no freedom of association in North Korea, so WTF am I talking about?"
So yeah. Lemme get this straight. Integration is forced association and freedom of association is about political expression and therefore the people who are anti-segregation are politically repressive. Am I following your argument correctly? Because, if I am, it sounds really stupid.
"Apartheid was about the freedom to assemble in your designated Bantustan. It was awesome until that totalitarian, Mandela, ruined it. Orwellian? Moi?!"
"Right, because defending freedom of association and other liberties means that I endorse the ideals of those who'd exercise them."
Dude, see above.
"[T]he alleged benefits of forced integration" were equality under the law and equality within the marketplace. If you believe in a citizen's autonomy, then you would be opposed to systems within a society which accord privileges and punishments based on a criteria other than a citizen's individual composition. Religion, race, place of origin, and gender have no place in a just society as discriminatory standards.
If you want to think Martin Luther King was a totalitarian for daring to dream he and his people would be seen as american first and black last, that they could get a bowl of soup at the same counters as white people, that their money - their legal tender - would be as accepted from them in return for services as any white person's, then I guess to you Martin Luther King was a totalitarian.
But it was George Wallace segregationist republican who shot him for speaking. It was a segregationist who murdered him for exercising his freedom to assemble in Memphis.
These were the people who were lynching and bombing and beating people for exercising their freedom of speech and expression. That's hate.
Stop being such bloody morons about it.
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 18 Oct 2012 at 06:27 PM
Just a reminder re: CJR's comments policy (which can be found here):
"CJR reserves the right to edit or delete your comment posting if you, or anyone using your account, violates one of these rules:
Comments that are abusive, that threaten or harass another individual, are overly antagonistic, deliberately inflammatory, or ad hominem in nature.
Comments which CJR and parties contracted by CJR deem to be otherwise objectionable, inappropriate, off-topic, or offensive."
#11 Posted by Sara Morrison, CJR on Fri 19 Oct 2012 at 12:32 PM
Are you kidding me?!
My comment got deleted because I:
1. Quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
2. Quoted a comment already published on this website, and
3. Noted the distinction between them?....
Are you freaking kidding me?!
This is the new censorship policy of CJR?
It's OK to call commenters "morons", "wingnuts", and even "pedophiles". That's not "harassment".
It's OK to misidentify commenters by name while defaming them No problem, as long as it's a leftie doing it to a rightie.
But if you simply quote another published comment and compare it to a famous speech... THAT is "harassment"?...
For real?!
I'm about done with this silliness. If you "watchdogs" want to turn these comments into a leftist cheerleader forum... So be it. Have at it...
But just do it with the knowledge that you're eschewing journalism for activism and that your ideology trumps everything else in your narrow-minded world.
The fact that you have the right to censor ideology doesn't mean that it's right to do so.
#12 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 19 Oct 2012 at 01:16 PM
Thimbles, your dissertations usually agree with my point - you just disagree about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. Of course, 'integration' policies are encroachments of freedom of association. You can think that is a good thing, depending on how it is done, or a bad thing, but it is an encroachment on individual freedom. Let the debate be over whether it is a good or bad thing. I notice 'personals' ads for romantic partners almost always specify the race/ethnicity of the poster. Are you integrationist enough to call that 'racist' and demand that searchers for intimate partners be forbidden to discriminate racially in their selection process?
One thing about certain kinds of liberals, they sure do live in a black/white moral universe, no pun intended - at least for the purposes of rhetoric. (It talks better than it lives, based on my experience of outspoken liberal/Left people and the distance between how they vote and how they live.) There is no gray. In this regard, as well as others, they strongly resemble the people they detest.
#13 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 19 Oct 2012 at 01:32 PM
It's not censorship to ask that you keep your comments on topic and refrain from personal attacks and accusations, especially when those attacks and accusations have nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Thanks!
#14 Posted by Sara Morrison, CJR on Fri 19 Oct 2012 at 02:12 PM
The key distinction is if the integration is entirely voluntary or forced (or accompanied with the threat of punishment for non-compliance). Repealing oppressive laws will foster equality etc.; making more laws will not. Interventionist intentions are good; the outcomes are mixed, at best.
#15 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Fri 19 Oct 2012 at 05:49 PM
"The key distinction is if the integration is entirely voluntary or forced (or accompanied with the threat of punishment for non-compliance). Repealing oppressive laws will foster equality etc.; making more laws will not."
Such BS... You see it's stuff like this that makes libertarianism into a morons' playground. The south had near a century from 1876 to 1965 to voluntarily integrate. They didn't. They violently repressed the minority population from participating in the political process and made prejudice the law of their state land the moment federal troops left, a mere 16 years after the bloody civil war they lost.
People don't change their core voluntarily. The ideas, values, and motivations entwined with their identity do not alter unless they are confronted, condemned, exposed, and rejected. We have seen what people will do voluntarily when given the right mold. They will apply lethal shocks of electricity, humiliate, sexually abuse, and torture - trading evidence of their acts like they were collector's cards. It may only be a small minority at first, but in a voluntary world where actions have no consequence nor rejection, it only takes a small minority to mold the majority. And, in America, that sick mold lasted a century.
And libertarians stand impotent, tapping their foot and shaking their finger at the agents who righted a century long injustice, not at the people who normalized it:
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/our_god_is_marching_on/
"Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.
Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come tog
#16 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 20 Oct 2012 at 02:29 AM
They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century."
"It is normalcy all over our country which leaves the Negro perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of vast ocean of material prosperity. It is normalcy all over Alabama that prevents the Negro from becoming a registered voter. No, we will not allow Alabama to return to normalcy.
The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity and worth of all of God’s children. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that allows judgment to run down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy of brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice."
I guess the great sin of the federal government was the enforcement of normal - the new normal in the south - as defined by law. If that is not the job of the government, what is? Do you believe in the ideas that the country was founded upon, that all men are created equal?
Then why condemn the government for enforcing that idea, for protecting the rights of people to congregate within public spaces and participate in public life? Why do libertarians stand on the sidelines while modern day bourbons attempt to restrict the voting franchise to blunt the populist movement of today?
The answer is simple - libertarians don't believe that concentrations of private power can ever do evil. They believe in a heightened state of man which can only flourish in the absence of government, a place of honest men motivated solely by their noble pursuit of profits. Libertarians don't live in the gutters where every apartment bears a 'Whites Only' sign on their doors.
They believe in the knights of the round table, Arthur and his feudal system where every land owner is king. Problem being, feudalism cannot reign very long without a 'feud' to sustain it. In the absence of anyone else to get angry at, people will get angry with the owners.
The purpose of libertarianism is to make our feud with the government because the owners are libertarian heroes and the government is the evil entity holding them back. It doesn't matter how bad the owners act or how good the government intervention came to be. Everything will be inverted.
See? I told you, it's a morons' playground.
#17 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 20 Oct 2012 at 03:05 AM
Oh, how cute:
http://m.gawker.com/5953357/missouri-pastors-fiery-speech-against-equal-rights-for-homosexuals-has-stunning-twist-ending
#18 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 20 Oct 2012 at 10:49 AM
The same people who lionize the forced integration of the South, become remarkably silent when it comes to using force to take on the Muslim Brotherhood's misogynistic oppression and racist oppression of others. Or similar such oppressive regimes that oppress on the basis of sex, race, religion, etc...
There's enough hypocrisy on the left of this issue to balance the hypocrisy on the right.
Let's see if this one makes it past the CJR censors...
#19 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sat 20 Oct 2012 at 02:38 PM
"Thimbles, your dissertations usually agree with my point - you just disagree about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing... Let the debate be over whether it is a good or bad thing. I notice 'personals' ads for romantic partners almost always specify the race/ethnicity of the poster. Are you integrationist enough to call that 'racist' and demand that searchers for intimate partners be forbidden to discriminate racially in their selection process?"
No, I think leaving it to matters of schools, drinking fountains, and sandwich counters is interventionist enough for my totalitarian integrationalist heart.
Personal ads. That's your counter? *facepalm*
So if you think it is bad interventionalist to interfere with personal choices such as mating what is your judgement of the segrationalist system which prevented mixed race marriages then and same sex marriages now?
Do we really want to open the floor up to who's been more "bad interventionalist" when it comes to issues of sex and individual choices?
#20 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 21 Oct 2012 at 03:21 AM
A followup on the Godwin champ:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/22/cnn-carol-costello-bryan-fischer-gay-gestapo_n_2002689.html
"Fischer called Costello "the gay gestapo" for "cutting [his] water off just as soon as [he] started to talk about the health risks of homosexual behavior.""
Sigh...
#21 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 22 Oct 2012 at 05:40 PM
Oh boy. Another wheels-off, reality-inverting, guilt-transferring rant by Thimbles: quick to label and assign collective guilt, but slow to ascertain individual facts or irony.
Reconstruction: military occupation and dictatorial rule, by GOVT.
Jim Crow: racist legislation passed and enforced by GOVT.
MLK, Jr.: not a fan of violence to achieve political change; favored the repeal of laws; enemy of the state (Feds et al.).
Political Puritans/Authoritarians/"Progressives"/et al.: always support the use of violence (govt) to achieve political change and make others act the way the Political Puritans believe they should; tame "the savages" to make the world "safe for democracy."
Libertarians: do NOT support monopoly, racism, feudalism, slavery, or any other tyrannical collectivism; not synonymous with anarchists.
Now, whether I'm a libertarian, or you're a political puritan, is up to each of us to decide. I wouldn't claim the authority or wisdom to divine a label for you that you wouldn't choose for yourself. Good day.
#22 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 22 Oct 2012 at 05:56 PM
Good point, Padi.
#23 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 22 Oct 2012 at 06:15 PM
"Reconstruction: military occupation and dictatorial rule, by GOVT.
Jim Crow: racist legislation passed and enforced by GOVT."
Sandwich counters banned from African American use by GOV...
Oh wait. That wasn't government. That was the people in the society being bigots. The bigots would then call the government to defend their property, though it was a public area for the purpose of business, and the people inside that area did nothing wrong to merit their treatment.
The bigots had the right to call upon the government to defend their property against those who had not violated law.
But the African Americans didn't have the right to call upon the government to protect their right to public accommodation under the Civil Rights act of 1875. That's interventionist.
The government protecting a girl's passage to school from a rancorous crowd? That's interventionist.
Libertarians object when government intercedes on anyone's behalf, with the exception of property rights and the enforcement of contracts, but they especially despise when government intercedes on behalf of the vulnerable.
To them it seems like an unworthy thing to interfere with social darwin's plan. Let market forces or deus ex machina take care of the race problem. It's only been a century, it will fix itself. To that Martin Luther King wrote in a Birmingham Jail:
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights...
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."”
cont..
#24 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 22 Oct 2012 at 10:08 PM
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season...
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress...
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
And, to you, that's interventionist. That's forced integration, association, whatever. To MLK, the purpose of democratic government is to guarantee equal protection and to remedy evil. To you, the government is the evil.
In most cases that's just foolish. In the case of Ruby Bridges, Emmett Till, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, and hundred's of others - including Martin Luther King Jr. - it's just shameful.
"Good point, Padi."
Yeah, and Ms. Morrison already took a hatchet to my first reply so I won't bother again.
I will say this.. That you think his is a good point really shows how shallow you really are on this stuff. (Are you going to demand America extend its laws beyond American borders? Are you going to insist that the government handles conflicts beyond its jurisdiction the same way it handles them within? Hasn't enough of that been done under Bush? What kind of Ron Paully Libertarian are you Danny?)
#25 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 22 Oct 2012 at 10:22 PM
"MLK, Jr.: not a fan of violence to achieve political change; favored the repeal of laws; enemy of the state (Feds et al.)."
This is infinitely misleading and obtuse rewriting of history. Yes, MLK favored the repeal of Jim Crow laws. He also favored the passage of many other (federal/national) laws: the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, laws (and federal intervention) to protect peaceful protesters from mob violence and unjust imprisonment.
He was no "enemy" of the national government. He criticized the federal government passionately for the Vietnam war, but he also believed that the national government had an important role in protecting citizens' rights -- especially keeping them safe from violence perpetrated by citizen mobs and corrupt/racist local/state officials.
By your definition, ANY act of policing would be acts of violence -- even sending in law enforcement personnel or troops to protect citizens from lynchings, beatings, firebombings, local police beatings, unjust imprisonment and other acts of terrorism/oppression that were commonplace in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.
#26 Posted by whm, CJR on Tue 30 Oct 2012 at 04:51 AM