Sunday, April 27, 2008

My Life As A Blog by Anthony McCarthy

For Suzie

Well, having begun to rebel against the coercive bullying coursing out of the ScienceBlogs, maybe it would be a good time to follow up on that comment posted on Suzie’s piece Friday about near-Monty football.

We can disapprove of anything we happen to. Pornography, commercial exploitation of workers - including those who work at Hooters or it’s junk sports equivalent - whatever the trashy, commercial culture and corporate oppressors present us with. We can condemn the activities, we can condemn those who exploit the people who work for them, we can even condemn the workers if that seems fair to do in any individual case. We can point out that they are dragging down the gender, race, ethnic group, gender preference minority, etc. and costing us in the process. We can pressure them to stop bringing us down.

We, my friends, are not the federal, state or local governments, we are not bound by the restrictions of legal impartiality (yeah, right), we do not have to be even handed, we don’t even have to be fair. Who the hell feels they have to be fair to us? Scott Simon? Who ever gets called on lying about us or giving us the shaft?

The left is pressured into disarming itself at every turn, we are coerced into silence or acquiescence. Well, when it is an issue of justice, and so of morality, we don’t have any right to be silent, certainly not if we would rather not be silent. We have a duty to speak out and a right to exercise our full blown disapproval of a practice that degrades or injures or hurts humans, animals, plants eco-systems or just the quality of life.

I posted my first blog piece one Saturday morning in full blood rage over a Weekend Edition piece in which one of the most aggravating and disabling parts of the Code of Liberal Ethics was paraded with no one happening to notice it was not applied to the right. That is the assumption that we are never, ever allowed to get it less than 150% right. You can read that piece here, if you would like to. It was followed up by one of my best posts posted elsewhere as I Won’t Be Fair To Fascists, I won’t Be Nice To Nazis, words I still live by. Call this one

Hey, I’m Not The Jamping Government, I Don’t Have To Be Impartial.

By the way, that movie. I couldn’t stand those brats. That mother should have given their hides a tanning.