Women
You Say ASBO, I Say Eugenics
The Dutch Labour party have placed a bill before parliament that would force women judged ‘unfit mothers’ to take court-ordered contraception:
Women in the Netherlands deemed “unfit mothers” may soon be forced to take contraception, if a draft bill currently before the Dutch parliament is passed. The bill “targets women who have been the subject of judicial intervention due to their bad parenting,” says its author, a member of the Netherlands’ socialist Labour Party.
Under the proposed legislation, a woman judged unfit who refuses to take contraception and becomes pregnant would have her child taken away at birth. The infant then would be placed in a foster home.
[…]
Disabled mothers already face a worldwide uphill battle for the right to bear children. Earlier this year, “K.E.J.,” a woman with developmental disabilities, was taken to court by her own aunt, who wanted K.E.J. to be sterilized against her will. K.E.J. won her court battle. But would a woman with similar disabilities be judged unfit under the proposed Dutch system? What about a woman who could not care for a child due to a mental illness like post-partum depression, but who has entered a treatment program and wants to try again?
The bill does not appear to include any prohibitions against discrimination based on disability, except that parents who have not yet raised a child and been judged unfit based on the way in which they parented that child would not be affected. Therefore, women would not be put on court-ordered contraception before having their first child.
If Clarkson’s Comedy Then I’m A Banana*
I do like a bit of close to the edge humour, but even I was shocked at the truck-driving segment of last night’s first episode of the new Top Gear series.
During a truck-driving challenge segment one Mr J Clarkson made repeated referrals to lorry drivers murdering prostitutes; presumably it was an allusion to Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper and the recent murders of sex workers committed by an Ipswich lorry driver.
Haha, how very droll I thought; no doubt HGV drivers watching are equally underwhelmed.
Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has prompted more than 500 people to complain to the BBC about a joke he made on Sunday’s motoring show.
Clarkson, 48, was taking part in a lorry-driving task, when he joked about lorry drivers killing sex workers.
“Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That’s a lot of effort in a day,”
he said.
The BBC said the joke had made “ridiculous an unfair urban myth”.
Lorry driver Steve Wright was jailed in February for killing five prostitutes in Ipswich.
Clarkson’s joke, made before the watershed, has now sparked 517 complaints.
But a BBC spokesman said that by Monday morning – before the incident had been reported on by newspapers and websites – there had been 188 complaints.
Sunday’s programme, which aired on BBC Two at 2000 GMT, was watched by around seven million viewers.
In a statement, the BBC said: “The vast majority of Top Gear viewers have clear expectations of Jeremy Clarkson’s long-established and frequently provocative on-screen persona. I think it’s a sacking offence to make light of the murder of anybody, never mind prostitute women who are vulnerable and criminalised .
“This particular reference was used to comically exaggerate and make ridiculous an unfair urban myth about the world of lorry driving, and was not intended to cause offence.”
No, it never is, is it?
This will no doubt be spun as another Ross/Brand-type media-manufactured attack on the BBC, but while not denying there was an increase in volume of complaints following media interest, nevertheless the complaints are entirely justified; Clarkson’s ‘joke’ was crass, puerile and just not funny. Making a joke of murder is bad enough but why pick on lorry-drivers? John Wayne Gacy was a part-time clown; does that make all clowns potential monsters?
Oh. Maybe better not to answer that one.
Nevertheless to traduce women, sex workers and lorry drivers in one brief, dumbass sentence takes a special type of Clarksonian insensitivity – the boorish, classic car driving, act like it’s still 1953 and your kind still rule the empire type of insensitivity. He’s not got very good antennae for modernity or shifts in the zetgeist, has he? Yes, we do expect that of him and it is part of his well-established persona: but that doesn’t mean he gets to be a complete arse on the public’s penny without somebody objecting.
Prostitutes and lorry drivers pay the license fee (and his grossly overinflated 2million in annual wages) too.
[*Why a banana?]
And While We’re On The Subject…
..of shit Murdoch journos; however did Daniel Finkelstein, the Times’ supposedly premier political commentator, get away with a blogpost like this?
Lavishly illustrated, of course, with photos of said bunnies in costumes ranging from bits of strategically placed pink fur to a corset and vertiginous heels.
Why? I can only suppose it’s because Finkelstein thinks politics is serious, man’s business. Ladies, know your place!
I Know You’re Sick Of Her But…
… even if you don’t read anything about her ever again, do read Matt Taibbi’s acid Rolling Stone essay to really understand exactly why it is Sarah Palin’s so dangerous.
[…]
…watching Palin’s speech, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker — and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be the innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly-sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later,” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American: the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and to whom injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set of drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.
Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban-American supermom. It’s the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.
UPDATE: If you want just the Palin lols go to Under The Lobsterscope’s excerpts from this weekend’s David Letterman show. Wahaha. Hilarious, if only it weren’t so scary.