Daily Show 12/9/08

[vejiicakes]

OH DAMN Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee just had a smackdown about gay marriage!

It was a very polite, calm discourse as smackdowns go, but I'm still calling it one.

Huckabee: There's a difference between someone living a particular lifestyle choice..
Stewart: Religion is FAR more a choice than homosexuality. And we defend people's right to

Comments

[shuraiya]

Oh, Jon. ♥

Also, Natalie needs to know if you would like to commission her to style you a wig for your Mai costume-- 'cause she wants to be able to get it done now. :)

[vejiicakes]

My answer is a super enthusiastic but tentative YES. Tentative because I'm, right now, looking at a very pinched account. Of course I would still pay for the full cost of materials and her time, but I couldn't pay anything close to what I'm paying for the beautiful costume you're making me T_T

[shuraiya]

Okay, take your time! :) I'll find out how much she thinks it may cost and I'll get back to you. *u* ♥

[veronica_rich]

Well, the same people who automatically default to heterosexual preference being biological to all humans are probably (most) of the same ones who believe maternal and paternal instincts and the desire to procreate are endemic to all humans. And, it's simply not. Being female does not mean one wants to bear or raise children - I certainly don't - any more than it always means one wants dick (well, that part I do like. But still, see? Just because I like dick doesn't mean I want anything out of it growing in me).

Maybe this is why some people simply cannot accept the childfree - it threatens them the same way that gay people do?

[vejiicakes]

And it's just like, THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY UNWANTED CHILDREN SITTING IN FOSTER CARE AS IT IS and they want us to MAKE MORE??

Moreover, they'd rather DECREASE THE POOL OF AVAILABLE, LOVING, FINANCIALLY VIABLE HOMES for those kids than let a "non-ideal/non-traditional family" take them in?

They'd rather make sure those "non-ideal families" are even MORE ILL-SUITED to take those children in by DENYING THEM THE STABILITY OF MARRIAGE RIGHTS?

It's a vicious cycle of the worst kind, supported by nothing but, "Well, that's the way it's been done thousands of years for decades," or even, "Well, it grosses me out/makes me uncomfortable," at its core. Cripes, these people get threatened so easily by shit that won't actually affect how their lives play out. It must be SO HARD to be in the majority.

[veronica_rich]

What makes it worse is that the have-not hoi polloi who drink the Kool-Aid don't even understand the real reason the "haves" at the top support this anti-abortion, anti-birth-control, pro-war, anti-gay, anti-healthcare sentiment (because yes, many of those DO go together all in the same package): They look at medieval Europe with the serfdoms and they think the aristocracy had the right idea. You didn't have to pay anyone a fair wage, you didn't have to let them own property, you didn't have to provide for them if they fell into poor health or were injured fighting YOUR wars. And if they were poorly educated and bred like rabbits, why, when one died, there'd be three others to eventually take his or her place!

[vejiicakes]

I feel, in my heart, that that must be an overstatement, or an exaggeration. Because for all the disappointment it's taken, just over the last couple of years, my heart is still a place of enduring hope and love.

For exactly that reason, I know you've got to be telling the simple, plain as day truth. Because reality is always about a frillion times worse than my imagination can devise.

And also you live in a part of the US where you'd know way more about the particular political/social/cultural climate that you're describing than I would (even though I no longer, starry eyed, look upon my state as a haven of progressiveness. ..well, I needed something over the last eight years!)

[metalkatt]

Oh gods, wasn't he a DREAM last night? *hearts in eyes* He's surpassed Colbert as my late-night boyfriend for this (unless I get forearms, and in that case, I call sandwich). He just kept hammering on it, and I was purring my head off.

[vejiicakes]

For a moment, I thought you literally didn't have forearms and started wondering if you were holding a typing wand between your teeth or something.

YES I was flailing and squeeing under my breath so I could hear what he was saying. Politely and intelligently laying the smackdown on misguided conservative talking points: it's like dirty talk to me :3

[pirateneko]

MAJOR props to Jon Stewart!

And I can't believe Huckabee said that! That guy is nuts! O_O So glad he is not our president...

[vejiicakes]

Yeah. I lost the link, but he was being interviewed and gave his thoughts on the recent protests to the gay marriage ban/s and was like, "They're complaining about being oppressed. They're not oppressed at all! Now blacks being lynched and hosed in the streets, THAT was oppression* They can't complain unless that's happening to them."

*I would not argue with that. I would not argue with that at all and I will totally agree that the levels of oppression their civil rights movement faced was far more severe than the current gay civil rights movement. He's still crazy though.

And really, it's not like gays/transpeople aren't beaten and killed--I mean, just there was a case of a transperson being shot and killed just last month. Of course, that's not the point. The point is still you're a jackass if you think the definition of oppression is limited to public, physical beatings, HUCKABEE.