The abolitionist wing of the pro-life movement is showing its true colors. They won't stop at abortion. Their next target as outlined by Students for Life is to outlaw "artificial" methods of contraception. Some are calling for ending no-fault divorce and for criminalizing adultery and so forth. As a pro-lifer and evangelical Christian (but not one who has pretensions to sainthood), it's obvious to me that a good chunk of the pro-life movement has lied about their plans because the end justifies the means. Of course, that reasoning is rebuked several times in the New Testament but they've sold out the power of God to get a pittance of political power and they're running wild with it. They are going to end up doing for abortion what the good ladies of the WCTU did last century for alcohol. They are truly true believers. Like those referenced in Psalms 146:3, they've put their trust in human leaders instead of God.
This is why I (pro-choice) have long supported a a no limits position on abortion. Pro-lifers will constantly try to chip away at whatever limits are agreed to. It's easier to just say no to compromise.
Another target of the abolitionist wing of the “pro-life” movement is to outlaw health care for people who suffer from gender dysphoria, forcing them to live as their birth gender, notwithstanding that doing so has a devastating impact on their daily lives and leads to an increase in suicide. It seems to me that “pro-lifers” are desperately trying to hold onto and enforce on others the gender roles and expectations of the U.S. the 1950s.
Hi Joanie - I'd like to respond and clarify exactly where the line is for many if not the majority of people. If you decide one day that you are a kangaroo and want to attempt to live life as a kangaroo, I will respect your decision to live life as you wish and also respect you as a human being created in the image of God.
But to the extent that parents, even in consultation with doctors, want to administer puberty blockers, or especially, conduct surgery to remove breasts or penises from young adolescents, I am adamantly opposed to that. While I'm a strong supporter of parental rights, we as a society also do not allow parental child abuse, and I view this as indeed abuse of a child. This type of irreversible life-changing treatment must wait until an individual is old enough to make a fully informed decision on this for themselves, at least age 18.
It doesn’t surprise me, David Leitschuh, to see you compare gender dysphoria to being out of touch with reality, to see you compare gender dysphoria to a a person’s belief that they are a kangaroo. You have mocked transgender people previously on this site. The fact of the matter is that transgender people are not out of touch with reality. I knew I was born with a penis; I knew my assigned sex at birth was male. I did not believe I was a woman; I just knew that I had always wished that I was female and was miserable as a male. I also know that I have been much happier and healthier post hormone therapy that altered my body, and gender confirmation surgery which gave me a vulva, clitoris and vagina. So no, despite your childish rhetoric, being transgender is not like believing you are a kangaroo. Nor does it surprise me to see that you are ill informed about health care for people suffering from gender dysphoria. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) does not recommend surgery for minors. And puberty blockers, if administered properly, are not irreversible life changing treatments. Finally, you don’t speak for a majority of people. You speak only for your bigoted self.
Again, I respect the decisions made by you and all people to live their lives the way they wish. But I remain opposed to irreversible physical treatments being made on children until they can make that life-changing decision for themselves.
No, David Leitschuh, you don’t respect me or my decisions, or you would not have compared being transgender with a belief that one is a kangaroo. Your “respect” is a lot like Christian “love,” in the phrase “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” People who believe that it is sinful to be LGBTQ+, often say they hate that I am transgender but they “love” me. Which is absurd. Because there is no me who is not transgender. They love a non-existent idealized form of me, but they hate the actual me. Reality is where the rubber meets the road. Your “respect” is a lot like that form of Christian “love.”
Joanie - I do respect the right of every person to make their own decisions how to live their lives so long as they do not harm any other person in doing so. But, it is unrealistic and wrong to expect or demand me to agree with everyone's decisions or to think a certain way. That is then telling me how to live my life and I will not accept that. So live your life the way you wish, and I will continue to live mine the way that I wish. I wish you a good day!
Well, it may be too late to stop this from turning into another ad hominem battle between Joanie and David. But maybe we can hit reset and engage with the question of the timing and circumstances in which we feel minors -- hopefully in coordination with their parents -- can receive certain forms of gender confirming or gender reassigning therapies and surgeries. I do know that there is conflicting research and conflicting scientific opinion about puberty blockers, detransitioning and so forth. I hope we can agree that it would be grossly irresponsible and cruel to surgically remove the penis of a toddler boy who liked to play with dolls, and similarly iirresponsible and cruel to deny a 17 year old natal female who has identified and lived as a male for 10 or more years the right and opportunity to have gender confirming therapies, perhaps even surgeries. And there may be no middle ground where the two of you can find agreement, but is there a compromise position when it comes to minors that you both might find acceptable?
Unless it is your child, you have no standing in this decision. - YOU don't feel like people can possibly know their gender identity until they are 18... YOU don't question that little kids of all ages KNOW they are heterosexual. They can KNOW that they are not heterosexual at any age.
And I don't know why you think this posting is relevant to the real cruelty and pain of the Forced Birth brigade.
Thanks for your reply. If you will follow the thread back up you will see that Joanie injected the issue of treatment for transgender children into the discussion about abortion. I appreciate that you hold a very different view and we will simply agree to disagree.
i beg to differ with your claim that 'unless it is your child, you have no standing in this decision.' if i were to beat my child, or engage in severe emotional abuse of the child, society would assuredly have an interest in that, and be justified in sanctioning my behavior. similarly, if i knowingly permitted my child to engage in dangerous behavior, that could result in morbid or mortal outcomes, i would be failing my duties as a parent, and society could rightfully intervene.
thus, society has an interest in who will decide whether a minor be allowed to undertake medical intervention that can leave them infertile, allong with other, more severe disabilties, for the balance of their life.
and your comparison of 'transgender' and 'heterosexual' is troubling. indeed a child can know that they are heterosexual [or homosexual], and a parent can protect a child in developing to become a physically, mentally and emotionally healthy homosexual adult - however, this does not involve life changing pharmaceuticals and/or surgery.
It was never "pro-life"! It has always been and will continue to be "Forced Birth". Because if they were really 'pro-life' the life of the mother would be important. The 'forced birth' people view women as a uterus with legs.
I compare it to the Chinese regime's Forced Abortion campaign.
Eric, your call for journalists to report the more accurate sentencing of convicted criminals is a good one and with that the public might come to understand how little time the perpetrators (even if caught and convicted) actually spend in jail before they are released. The CWB Chicago site does report that. But, what is even more concerning is that I think they get the "good behavior credit" when they are only on electronic monitoring, and not even incarcerated. Correct me if I am wrong about this, but that negates the reason that the law was passed to begin with and we don't even know what all kinds of bad behavior or crimes they committed when on electronic monitoring. That is why the criminals fear the federal charges the most as they have to serve their full sentence.
1. Dobbs is unconstitutional as Article III provides no power to the SCOTUS to nullify any right and abortion is an unenumerated, innate right of women.
2. Antiabortion laws that restrict abortion prior to week 20-23 are unconstitutional as they promote an object, a nonsentient fetus, to the level of being, that which possesses the capacity for mind.
3. Antiabortion laws are unconstitutional as they are purely religious in nature and religious doctrine cannot be used as law.
4. Antiabortion laws are not concerned with "protecting life", but with controlling women, forcing them to deal with the consequences of daring to have sex outside of marriage and not for bearing children as they argue god wants.
Conservatives are THE problem and must be marginalized. They do not believe in rights by definition and they want to destroy our inclusive, liberal society and replace it with a theocracy. They are the American Taliban. Vote Blue.
Eric, I am not concerned about how journalists report what the sentence served may be. Why do we find it acceptable that regardless of how many convictions a person has, they continue to be rewarded for good behavior behind bars, ignoring their criminal behavior once released from prison? I think the 50% time off for good behavior should not be available at sentencing for those who are re-committing crimes. We need to find the balance in keeping people safer while treating inmates more humanely. The current system does not favor the public safety.
Does anyone besides me remember the Robert Heinlein novels that envisioned American society dominated by a Puritan militant religious right? It wasn’t a pretty picture. Heinlein was himself something of a radical libertarian, also unattractive, but not as unattractive as the world he envisioned.
My mind is reeling with your "we came to watch the Bulls player swear at the refs so how dare you ruin our fun by punishing bad behavior and kicking him out?" How about he control himself?
The "future of AI" discussion is, I believe, also the best argument against the death penalty. The capital punishment debate is still most often a moral one, which can never be resolved. Instead, the debate should be an evidentiary one, and the truth is that already - and increasingly! - there is almost no evidence that is so foolproof as to risk taking an innocent person’s life. Admissions of guilt, eyewitness testimony, and now even video evidence are far from being 100% reliable.
While I am not against the death penalty in theory, it has been evident for quite some time that we have executed innocent people even before AI. Just say no to the death penalty.
I feel the same way. An interesting example of someone who changed his mind on the subject is George Ryan when he was governor. When he saw death row inmates get exonerated, he decided he was morally compelled to use his power as Governor to put a moratorium on executions and then later commute all of the death sentences.
..and George Ryan had voted to reinstate the death penalty when he was a legislator. Say what you will about George Ryan, but you have to respect that when facts became available he re-evaluated his position.
If I remember correctly (and I have to run, so I can't do the googling to find out the time line), but there are many that would assert that George Ryan had a convenient change of position on the death penalty when he was under criminal investigation, and altered his position out of a craven desire to lessen the chances for conviction and/or lessen potential punishment for himself.
George Ryan was under investigation the entire time he was Governor, so one could say that about anything he did. Also, a politician does not have to be under federal investigation to be motivated to do something popular. At the time there was much more support for capital punishment than there is today, and I doubt George Ryan would think that federal investigators would be influenced by his decisions on capital punishment.
No need to find a source that there existed people who said that about George Ryan at the time. People say lots of things. Is there any evidence that influencing the investigation into him was his motivation?
Or is he hoping to drum up more business if jailed people can easily call him? If you commit a crime, you are already getting free room and board and medical care. NOTHING else should be free.
What a cruel and ghoulish parental take on comet phenomenon (“I’ll be dead — think of me” to a 4-year-old?! Yikes!) Check out this loving, poignant lyric on the subject from Mary Chapin Carpenter. Oh, and parents, start your hankies!
The comments on Jokic being ejected were just plain wrong. Don't blame the refs for the infantile behavior of a player. The fans did not pay to see him curse out the ref and he brought it on himself. No, Eric, it's not about hurt feelings. The ref did his job. And yes, I'll add the disclaimer that I am a long time ref that has heard much and doesn't get his feelings hurt any more.
You T him up, for sure. Ejection was over the top. That needs to be reserved for violent behavior or repeated and profane harassment of a ref. Even Bulls fans didn't like it, and they pay the bills for this entertainment.
I've long felt that the anti-choice people cared about controlling other people, namely women, rather than caring about preserving life. They usually support capital punishment, thinking killing doctors and nurses are a way to "save" life and are not so enthused about adopting the fetuses that are born. Reminds me of the Nazis.
Eric - thanks for another entertaining and informative issue of the PS. A few thoughts in response...
1. It's unfortunate that the abortion debate has become hyperpolarized between two extreme camps that demand either no access to abortion for anyone in any case, and the other camp that refuses to consider any restrictions whatsoever. I think the best way to guard against draconian restrictions is to consider restriction against later term abortions unless the health and safety of the mother becomes involved. But unfortunately, there are many people who will not consider even restriction of abortion even right up until the time of delivery. And so we are left with the two camps both set in their extreme corners and no middle ground that would avoid either of the extremes.
2. I completely share your frustration with incarceration ending up being a fraction of what the announced sentence was set to be. While I recognize that reduction of time served for good behavior may be an important safeguard to reduce assaults on prison staff, it should work the other way around. For example, an intended 30-year sentence should start out at 60 years with the ability to reduce it to 30 years with good time instead of a 30-year sentence ending up being 15 years or in some cases even less due to state sentencing peculiarities.
3. While I am not at all a fan of vulgar language in the public arena, I completely agree that the Jokic ejection was an overreaction to something that should have been a technical foul with a warning. At the other end of the spectrum is the thug Raymond Green who is now facing indefinite suspension by the league for the second time this season for committing an actual physical assault on the basketball court. He previously was suspended five games for putting a Minnesota player in a headlock during a skirmish, and this current suspension resulted from a very blatant full-out swing to the head of the opposing player. Green has a reputation as a physically dirty player with a long history of ejections and previous suspensions for physical assault. He is like the repeat offender on the streets of Chicago that demonstrates over and over that they will never change their ways and needs to be removed from the streets for the safety of society. It is long past time that Green be thrown out of what is supposed to be a sport and sportsmanship.
4. While I share the consternation over fellow alderpersons condemning alderman Danny Solis for wearing a wire to obtain incrimidating information in the federal against investigation against alderman Burke, my only surprise is that people who seemingly are familiar with Chicago and Illinois are at all surprised by this. Politics in Illinois, and particularly in Chicago and Cook county are an elite club of self-serving people who do favors back and forth and cover up for each other. Does anyone not realize that virtually every indictment and prosecution against crooked politicians occurs from the federal prosecutor and not from state prosecutors even though this is taking place on an ongoing basis right under their nose? Chicago and Cook County are very crooked places run by crooked politicians, but the people have only themselves to blame for continuing to elect these people that in many cases they know are crooked.
Thanks for a thoughtful comment. It's Draymond Green and I will caution you about using the word "thug." Here is an entire column I wrote about the word
‘Thug’ is a problem word — even if it didn’t used to be
Mar 02, 2021
The recent dust-up on social media over WGN-TV sports anchor Dan Roan’s use of the word “thug” to describe a Black basketball player is yet another cautionary tale illustrating that what you intend to say isn’t always what others hear.
“Bad news from Champaign on Ayo Donsunmu,” Roan tweeted after the University of Illinois’ Feb. 23 loss to Michigan State University. The now-deleted tweet, first reported on Robert Feder’s media blog, went on: “Nose broken by Spartan thug on Tuesday ... no word on how long he’ll be out.”
The reference was to a collision between Illini superstar Donsunmu and MSU center Mady Sissoko as Donsunmu was driving to the basket. After Donsunmu lost control of the ball, Sissoko administered a hard blow to Donsunmu’s face for which he was ejected from the game.
It was a violent, unsportsmanlike act, the sort of cheap shot you’d expect in hockey. There was a time when describing Sissoko in that moment as a “thug” — from a Hindi word for bandit that became an all-purpose English synonym for hooligan — would have gone unnoticed.
That time has passed. The word now “carries a coded, alternate meaning of ‘Black person behaving badly,’” as Columbia University linguist John McWhorter has written. It’s become a “salty but suitable way of saying, ‘There one of them goes again.’” McWhorter, who is Black, told NPR that he considers “thug” to be “a nominally polite way of using the N-word.”
In the news archives I find the term applied to Rod Blagojevich, Michael Madigan, Saddam Hussein, supporters of Mussolini, Hitler’s brownshirts, the Republicans who protested the vote recount in Florida in 2000, brutal police officers, white schoolyard bullies in rural Iowa, Donald Trump and the leaders of modern-day China. And that’s just under my byline.
Elsewhere, President Joe Biden was referring to a nearly all-white crowd when he recently blasted “the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol.”
So when Roan deleted the offending post and served up an apology tweet that in part said he was “not aware in any way that the word had any racial connotation to it,” I believed him, especially given his long-standing reputation as a class act.
And also given the number of “since when is ‘thug’ a problem?” responses from Roan’s supporters on social media, whose bafflement seemed sincere.
Further, there’s my own track record. Along with all the references above in my clip file are numerous examples up until 2015 of me deploying the word to refer directly or indirectly to Black or presumptively Black criminals. I began to change my ways only after the controversy over President Barack Obama’s unapologetic but controversial use of “thugs” to describe those who destroyed property in Baltimore after the funeral of Freddie Gray, an African American man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody. I even slipped up a few months later in writing about an old murder case.
The Twitter language police wasn’t yet on duty to slam me as a racist and call for my head as some word vigilantes did in Roan’s case last week, but my mea culpa would have echoed his: “That’s not me, never has been.”
You can complain that “thug” has evolved without your consent from a race-neutral equivalent to “ruffian” into a potentially toxic term. You can note that this evolution is due in part to its embrace by such Black rappers as Tupac Shakur, who glamorized the term “thug life” and gave it a layered meaning depending on who is using it.
But you can no longer say you didn’t know “thug” has entered the linguistic realm of “problematic,” still short of “impermissible” but a word to use at your own risk.
And you can’t now say you haven’t been put on notice.
Eric - Yes, I do confess to prior knowledge that the word thug is now being pushed to become a racial reference and a forbidden word by the thought police.
In researching it's origins online, I was surprised to find that it originated in the 1830s to refer to a gang of robbers in India which were finally suppressed by the British. Here is the primary definition of the word when I just looked it up..."a violent, aggressive person, especially one who is a criminal.
"he was attacked by a gang of thugs".
My reference to Green's repeated actions on the basketball court were a reference to his ongoing tendency to act as an aggressive, violent person. His actions are irrespective of race and ethnicity, and I would have no hesitation to describe a white or other person who acts the same way as a thug.
So bad on me for not being politically correct, but as you probably know, that is certainly not my strong suit. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other noteworthy greetings of the season!
This is the first I have heard that "t---" is considered a racist term. When I think of the word the image of Vladimir Putin comes into my mind.
I question whether or not its designation is here to stay or a passing fad for those who engage in recreational outrage. But no would should give weight to my opinion on this. I thought the same thing when "Oriental" became a forbidden word.
For anyone who thinks this post is offensive, then to you I say, "___ ______ _ ____!"
Yo Skeptic, I gotta agree with you. And did you notice the initial change in interpretation comes from John McWhorter some linguist from Columbia University.
And isn’t Columbia University having trouble defining the use of various terms in its student manual and related policies?
I think that John should be working on the language issues at his school and hold off being a language policeman for the general public.
I can’t think of a better word than thug for Putin either.
McWhorter probably doesn’t concern himself much with Columbia’s specific policies these days, as he has built a more lucrative career of being the anti-anti-racist expert on Bill Maher.
My inference regarding McWhorter's comments were that the status of "the th word" was based on his observation, not necessarily how he thought we all ought to use language. I base this on the fact that he called BS on UIC law students who complained about Jason Kilbourn's use of an expurgated racial slur (is it okay to describe a term that refers to a way of expressing an overtly offensive and dehumanizing term? how many levels do we have to step away from the original word before it becomes acceptable?)
So McWhorter's comment caused me to think that there could be some credibility to this thing. But I am going to see of the th word disappears from major publications before I believe it.
In a more recent column, McWhorter adds clarity (or maybe backtracks a bit) that both meanings are acceptable, but a new race-specific meaning has evolved in recent years, "thug 2.0".
"Many years ago I noted that the word “thug” has acquired an implication of Blackness and can sometimes almost be heard as a genteel way of using the N-word. The pushback was furious: Legions of people thought I was saying that anyone who uses the word “thug” in any way must be hurling a kind of slur.
"It was the 2.0 problem, as always. Of course, “thug” can still be used as a race-neutral word referring to a miscreant. We can call federal law enforcement “jackbooted thugs” or use the term to refer to Islamic State terrorists. But American discussion has also developed a sense of a “thug” persona, propagated partly by hip-hop iconography, which is specifically Black and even embraced by many Black people as a kind of proud self-expression. The phrase “thug life,” credited to Tupac Shakur, gets at this final meaning, which is racial but not pejorative. In any case, the days when “thug” meant only a ruffian or rascal are long past us; there is a newer meaning, more specific than the older one: thug 2.0."
The questions for us, and especially those in the media, are:
1. when it is okay to use the term? I suppose a white sports reporter can refer to an enforcer on a hockey team a thug, but using the term to refer to a black basketball player risks outrage
2. If there is a backlash, like what happened to Dan Roan, how should we react? This is a multiple choice question.
(a) with empathy and validation of "their reality", or
So the "thug" persona was "propagated by hip-hop" and "embraced by Black people as a kind of proud self-expression" that Blacks can use with other Blacks. White people can use the word to describe federal law enforcement or Islamic State miscreants, but not Black federal law enforcement miscreants. Got it!
Still not quite sure what the rule is for Asian or Hispanic miscreants. Can't understand how this could have confused Dan Roan?
I did some checking. I find him to be an ivory tower academic, but not shallow. Maybe this is unfair, but I take him to task for not helping Columbia defend its language policies. Columbia has accepted the Chicago Statement, an excellent summary of how faculty and students should behave in regards to the First Amendment.
I would expect this guy would be well versed on this statement. Why didn’t he advise Columbia’s President and offer to help in its defense when going to Congress?
He seems to be all talk, but no action. Is this unfair? Columbia’s President seemed rather at sea and could have used the help.
i'm all in favor of the UChicago Statement both in priciple and in practice.
when was the Columbia president 'at sea', such that McWhorter failed him? you're not referring to the recent congressional hearing, right? the presidents of harvard, penn & mit were testifying - i don't believe the columbia prez was there.
Abortion: Agree - this Texas ruling is outrageous. There are simply too many extremists positions these days. You'd think the extremist would pull so much that we could get middle view action - instead we are stuck with an 'all or nothing' approach to decision making. Back to article - Texas is even crazier than we thought. Look out Florida! Sentencing Truths. There are sources that do well to explain actual sentencing lengths and why - but you have to search for it. The rest has been for a long time - feeding the masses and stirring controversy - even conspiracy talk. Haley's comet - has lost its appeal when almost weekly there are news notes of asteroids heading toward earth (Spoiler alert: click link to learn that it is not expected to hit earth, even if it is passing within 'half the distance between the earth and the moon) NBA: Which is worse - ref ejecting star from a game or coach resting star on road game? AI: Skynet Dead Stars: Interesting photos - but did they have to add in "When asked if he was homosexual, Dean replied,..." What does that have to do with showing aging?
Couldn’t disagree with you more on whether NBA refs need to develop thicker skins—they are professional and athletic rules keepers in a fairly rough sport. I’m not expecting a LOT of decorum, but a modicum of respect and profanity-free speech in an indoor environment are not taxing demands. Watch your mouth, pro athlete—them’s the rules.
The abolitionist wing of the pro-life movement is showing its true colors. They won't stop at abortion. Their next target as outlined by Students for Life is to outlaw "artificial" methods of contraception. Some are calling for ending no-fault divorce and for criminalizing adultery and so forth. As a pro-lifer and evangelical Christian (but not one who has pretensions to sainthood), it's obvious to me that a good chunk of the pro-life movement has lied about their plans because the end justifies the means. Of course, that reasoning is rebuked several times in the New Testament but they've sold out the power of God to get a pittance of political power and they're running wild with it. They are going to end up doing for abortion what the good ladies of the WCTU did last century for alcohol. They are truly true believers. Like those referenced in Psalms 146:3, they've put their trust in human leaders instead of God.
This is why I (pro-choice) have long supported a a no limits position on abortion. Pro-lifers will constantly try to chip away at whatever limits are agreed to. It's easier to just say no to compromise.
Another target of the abolitionist wing of the “pro-life” movement is to outlaw health care for people who suffer from gender dysphoria, forcing them to live as their birth gender, notwithstanding that doing so has a devastating impact on their daily lives and leads to an increase in suicide. It seems to me that “pro-lifers” are desperately trying to hold onto and enforce on others the gender roles and expectations of the U.S. the 1950s.
Hi Joanie - I'd like to respond and clarify exactly where the line is for many if not the majority of people. If you decide one day that you are a kangaroo and want to attempt to live life as a kangaroo, I will respect your decision to live life as you wish and also respect you as a human being created in the image of God.
But to the extent that parents, even in consultation with doctors, want to administer puberty blockers, or especially, conduct surgery to remove breasts or penises from young adolescents, I am adamantly opposed to that. While I'm a strong supporter of parental rights, we as a society also do not allow parental child abuse, and I view this as indeed abuse of a child. This type of irreversible life-changing treatment must wait until an individual is old enough to make a fully informed decision on this for themselves, at least age 18.
It doesn’t surprise me, David Leitschuh, to see you compare gender dysphoria to being out of touch with reality, to see you compare gender dysphoria to a a person’s belief that they are a kangaroo. You have mocked transgender people previously on this site. The fact of the matter is that transgender people are not out of touch with reality. I knew I was born with a penis; I knew my assigned sex at birth was male. I did not believe I was a woman; I just knew that I had always wished that I was female and was miserable as a male. I also know that I have been much happier and healthier post hormone therapy that altered my body, and gender confirmation surgery which gave me a vulva, clitoris and vagina. So no, despite your childish rhetoric, being transgender is not like believing you are a kangaroo. Nor does it surprise me to see that you are ill informed about health care for people suffering from gender dysphoria. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) does not recommend surgery for minors. And puberty blockers, if administered properly, are not irreversible life changing treatments. Finally, you don’t speak for a majority of people. You speak only for your bigoted self.
Again, I respect the decisions made by you and all people to live their lives the way they wish. But I remain opposed to irreversible physical treatments being made on children until they can make that life-changing decision for themselves.
No, David Leitschuh, you don’t respect me or my decisions, or you would not have compared being transgender with a belief that one is a kangaroo. Your “respect” is a lot like Christian “love,” in the phrase “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” People who believe that it is sinful to be LGBTQ+, often say they hate that I am transgender but they “love” me. Which is absurd. Because there is no me who is not transgender. They love a non-existent idealized form of me, but they hate the actual me. Reality is where the rubber meets the road. Your “respect” is a lot like that form of Christian “love.”
Joanie - I do respect the right of every person to make their own decisions how to live their lives so long as they do not harm any other person in doing so. But, it is unrealistic and wrong to expect or demand me to agree with everyone's decisions or to think a certain way. That is then telling me how to live my life and I will not accept that. So live your life the way you wish, and I will continue to live mine the way that I wish. I wish you a good day!
Well, it may be too late to stop this from turning into another ad hominem battle between Joanie and David. But maybe we can hit reset and engage with the question of the timing and circumstances in which we feel minors -- hopefully in coordination with their parents -- can receive certain forms of gender confirming or gender reassigning therapies and surgeries. I do know that there is conflicting research and conflicting scientific opinion about puberty blockers, detransitioning and so forth. I hope we can agree that it would be grossly irresponsible and cruel to surgically remove the penis of a toddler boy who liked to play with dolls, and similarly iirresponsible and cruel to deny a 17 year old natal female who has identified and lived as a male for 10 or more years the right and opportunity to have gender confirming therapies, perhaps even surgeries. And there may be no middle ground where the two of you can find agreement, but is there a compromise position when it comes to minors that you both might find acceptable?
Unless it is your child, you have no standing in this decision. - YOU don't feel like people can possibly know their gender identity until they are 18... YOU don't question that little kids of all ages KNOW they are heterosexual. They can KNOW that they are not heterosexual at any age.
And I don't know why you think this posting is relevant to the real cruelty and pain of the Forced Birth brigade.
Thanks for your reply. If you will follow the thread back up you will see that Joanie injected the issue of treatment for transgender children into the discussion about abortion. I appreciate that you hold a very different view and we will simply agree to disagree.
I didn’t mention children, David. You did. Children and kangaroos.
i beg to differ with your claim that 'unless it is your child, you have no standing in this decision.' if i were to beat my child, or engage in severe emotional abuse of the child, society would assuredly have an interest in that, and be justified in sanctioning my behavior. similarly, if i knowingly permitted my child to engage in dangerous behavior, that could result in morbid or mortal outcomes, i would be failing my duties as a parent, and society could rightfully intervene.
thus, society has an interest in who will decide whether a minor be allowed to undertake medical intervention that can leave them infertile, allong with other, more severe disabilties, for the balance of their life.
and your comparison of 'transgender' and 'heterosexual' is troubling. indeed a child can know that they are heterosexual [or homosexual], and a parent can protect a child in developing to become a physically, mentally and emotionally healthy homosexual adult - however, this does not involve life changing pharmaceuticals and/or surgery.
It was never "pro-life"! It has always been and will continue to be "Forced Birth". Because if they were really 'pro-life' the life of the mother would be important. The 'forced birth' people view women as a uterus with legs.
I compare it to the Chinese regime's Forced Abortion campaign.
If they were really pro-life, they would care about the child after it was born.
It was never "pro-life" -- it has always been "anti-sex."
Eric, your call for journalists to report the more accurate sentencing of convicted criminals is a good one and with that the public might come to understand how little time the perpetrators (even if caught and convicted) actually spend in jail before they are released. The CWB Chicago site does report that. But, what is even more concerning is that I think they get the "good behavior credit" when they are only on electronic monitoring, and not even incarcerated. Correct me if I am wrong about this, but that negates the reason that the law was passed to begin with and we don't even know what all kinds of bad behavior or crimes they committed when on electronic monitoring. That is why the criminals fear the federal charges the most as they have to serve their full sentence.
1. Dobbs is unconstitutional as Article III provides no power to the SCOTUS to nullify any right and abortion is an unenumerated, innate right of women.
2. Antiabortion laws that restrict abortion prior to week 20-23 are unconstitutional as they promote an object, a nonsentient fetus, to the level of being, that which possesses the capacity for mind.
3. Antiabortion laws are unconstitutional as they are purely religious in nature and religious doctrine cannot be used as law.
4. Antiabortion laws are not concerned with "protecting life", but with controlling women, forcing them to deal with the consequences of daring to have sex outside of marriage and not for bearing children as they argue god wants.
Conservatives are THE problem and must be marginalized. They do not believe in rights by definition and they want to destroy our inclusive, liberal society and replace it with a theocracy. They are the American Taliban. Vote Blue.
So, it appears that two of the lesser items in today’s PS were about Halley’s Comet and Haley’s Comment.
Dammit I wish I'd thought of that!!!
Eric, I am not concerned about how journalists report what the sentence served may be. Why do we find it acceptable that regardless of how many convictions a person has, they continue to be rewarded for good behavior behind bars, ignoring their criminal behavior once released from prison? I think the 50% time off for good behavior should not be available at sentencing for those who are re-committing crimes. We need to find the balance in keeping people safer while treating inmates more humanely. The current system does not favor the public safety.
Does anyone besides me remember the Robert Heinlein novels that envisioned American society dominated by a Puritan militant religious right? It wasn’t a pretty picture. Heinlein was himself something of a radical libertarian, also unattractive, but not as unattractive as the world he envisioned.
My mind is reeling with your "we came to watch the Bulls player swear at the refs so how dare you ruin our fun by punishing bad behavior and kicking him out?" How about he control himself?
It’s a matter of “does the punishment fit the crime?”. A technical seems adequate. If he does it again, then a second technical and ejection.
The "future of AI" discussion is, I believe, also the best argument against the death penalty. The capital punishment debate is still most often a moral one, which can never be resolved. Instead, the debate should be an evidentiary one, and the truth is that already - and increasingly! - there is almost no evidence that is so foolproof as to risk taking an innocent person’s life. Admissions of guilt, eyewitness testimony, and now even video evidence are far from being 100% reliable.
While I am not against the death penalty in theory, it has been evident for quite some time that we have executed innocent people even before AI. Just say no to the death penalty.
I feel the same way. An interesting example of someone who changed his mind on the subject is George Ryan when he was governor. When he saw death row inmates get exonerated, he decided he was morally compelled to use his power as Governor to put a moratorium on executions and then later commute all of the death sentences.
..and George Ryan had voted to reinstate the death penalty when he was a legislator. Say what you will about George Ryan, but you have to respect that when facts became available he re-evaluated his position.
If I remember correctly (and I have to run, so I can't do the googling to find out the time line), but there are many that would assert that George Ryan had a convenient change of position on the death penalty when he was under criminal investigation, and altered his position out of a craven desire to lessen the chances for conviction and/or lessen potential punishment for himself.
George Ryan was under investigation the entire time he was Governor, so one could say that about anything he did. Also, a politician does not have to be under federal investigation to be motivated to do something popular. At the time there was much more support for capital punishment than there is today, and I doubt George Ryan would think that federal investigators would be influenced by his decisions on capital punishment.
No need to find a source that there existed people who said that about George Ryan at the time. People say lots of things. Is there any evidence that influencing the investigation into him was his motivation?
I am shocked...shocked that Jeffrey Leving has written a sensible op-ed.
Or is he hoping to drum up more business if jailed people can easily call him? If you commit a crime, you are already getting free room and board and medical care. NOTHING else should be free.
What a cruel and ghoulish parental take on comet phenomenon (“I’ll be dead — think of me” to a 4-year-old?! Yikes!) Check out this loving, poignant lyric on the subject from Mary Chapin Carpenter. Oh, and parents, start your hankies!
https://youtu.be/6xsYWlSImrc?si=gLAhLU8zVyJ-6Png
The comments on Jokic being ejected were just plain wrong. Don't blame the refs for the infantile behavior of a player. The fans did not pay to see him curse out the ref and he brought it on himself. No, Eric, it's not about hurt feelings. The ref did his job. And yes, I'll add the disclaimer that I am a long time ref that has heard much and doesn't get his feelings hurt any more.
You T him up, for sure. Ejection was over the top. That needs to be reserved for violent behavior or repeated and profane harassment of a ref. Even Bulls fans didn't like it, and they pay the bills for this entertainment.
I found Haley’s remarks to be outrageous.
I've long felt that the anti-choice people cared about controlling other people, namely women, rather than caring about preserving life. They usually support capital punishment, thinking killing doctors and nurses are a way to "save" life and are not so enthused about adopting the fetuses that are born. Reminds me of the Nazis.
Eric - thanks for another entertaining and informative issue of the PS. A few thoughts in response...
1. It's unfortunate that the abortion debate has become hyperpolarized between two extreme camps that demand either no access to abortion for anyone in any case, and the other camp that refuses to consider any restrictions whatsoever. I think the best way to guard against draconian restrictions is to consider restriction against later term abortions unless the health and safety of the mother becomes involved. But unfortunately, there are many people who will not consider even restriction of abortion even right up until the time of delivery. And so we are left with the two camps both set in their extreme corners and no middle ground that would avoid either of the extremes.
2. I completely share your frustration with incarceration ending up being a fraction of what the announced sentence was set to be. While I recognize that reduction of time served for good behavior may be an important safeguard to reduce assaults on prison staff, it should work the other way around. For example, an intended 30-year sentence should start out at 60 years with the ability to reduce it to 30 years with good time instead of a 30-year sentence ending up being 15 years or in some cases even less due to state sentencing peculiarities.
3. While I am not at all a fan of vulgar language in the public arena, I completely agree that the Jokic ejection was an overreaction to something that should have been a technical foul with a warning. At the other end of the spectrum is the thug Raymond Green who is now facing indefinite suspension by the league for the second time this season for committing an actual physical assault on the basketball court. He previously was suspended five games for putting a Minnesota player in a headlock during a skirmish, and this current suspension resulted from a very blatant full-out swing to the head of the opposing player. Green has a reputation as a physically dirty player with a long history of ejections and previous suspensions for physical assault. He is like the repeat offender on the streets of Chicago that demonstrates over and over that they will never change their ways and needs to be removed from the streets for the safety of society. It is long past time that Green be thrown out of what is supposed to be a sport and sportsmanship.
4. While I share the consternation over fellow alderpersons condemning alderman Danny Solis for wearing a wire to obtain incrimidating information in the federal against investigation against alderman Burke, my only surprise is that people who seemingly are familiar with Chicago and Illinois are at all surprised by this. Politics in Illinois, and particularly in Chicago and Cook county are an elite club of self-serving people who do favors back and forth and cover up for each other. Does anyone not realize that virtually every indictment and prosecution against crooked politicians occurs from the federal prosecutor and not from state prosecutors even though this is taking place on an ongoing basis right under their nose? Chicago and Cook County are very crooked places run by crooked politicians, but the people have only themselves to blame for continuing to elect these people that in many cases they know are crooked.
Greetings of the season to all!
Thanks for a thoughtful comment. It's Draymond Green and I will caution you about using the word "thug." Here is an entire column I wrote about the word
‘Thug’ is a problem word — even if it didn’t used to be
Mar 02, 2021
The recent dust-up on social media over WGN-TV sports anchor Dan Roan’s use of the word “thug” to describe a Black basketball player is yet another cautionary tale illustrating that what you intend to say isn’t always what others hear.
“Bad news from Champaign on Ayo Donsunmu,” Roan tweeted after the University of Illinois’ Feb. 23 loss to Michigan State University. The now-deleted tweet, first reported on Robert Feder’s media blog, went on: “Nose broken by Spartan thug on Tuesday ... no word on how long he’ll be out.”
The reference was to a collision between Illini superstar Donsunmu and MSU center Mady Sissoko as Donsunmu was driving to the basket. After Donsunmu lost control of the ball, Sissoko administered a hard blow to Donsunmu’s face for which he was ejected from the game.
It was a violent, unsportsmanlike act, the sort of cheap shot you’d expect in hockey. There was a time when describing Sissoko in that moment as a “thug” — from a Hindi word for bandit that became an all-purpose English synonym for hooligan — would have gone unnoticed.
That time has passed. The word now “carries a coded, alternate meaning of ‘Black person behaving badly,’” as Columbia University linguist John McWhorter has written. It’s become a “salty but suitable way of saying, ‘There one of them goes again.’” McWhorter, who is Black, told NPR that he considers “thug” to be “a nominally polite way of using the N-word.”
In the news archives I find the term applied to Rod Blagojevich, Michael Madigan, Saddam Hussein, supporters of Mussolini, Hitler’s brownshirts, the Republicans who protested the vote recount in Florida in 2000, brutal police officers, white schoolyard bullies in rural Iowa, Donald Trump and the leaders of modern-day China. And that’s just under my byline.
Elsewhere, President Joe Biden was referring to a nearly all-white crowd when he recently blasted “the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol.”
So when Roan deleted the offending post and served up an apology tweet that in part said he was “not aware in any way that the word had any racial connotation to it,” I believed him, especially given his long-standing reputation as a class act.
And also given the number of “since when is ‘thug’ a problem?” responses from Roan’s supporters on social media, whose bafflement seemed sincere.
Further, there’s my own track record. Along with all the references above in my clip file are numerous examples up until 2015 of me deploying the word to refer directly or indirectly to Black or presumptively Black criminals. I began to change my ways only after the controversy over President Barack Obama’s unapologetic but controversial use of “thugs” to describe those who destroyed property in Baltimore after the funeral of Freddie Gray, an African American man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody. I even slipped up a few months later in writing about an old murder case.
The Twitter language police wasn’t yet on duty to slam me as a racist and call for my head as some word vigilantes did in Roan’s case last week, but my mea culpa would have echoed his: “That’s not me, never has been.”
You can complain that “thug” has evolved without your consent from a race-neutral equivalent to “ruffian” into a potentially toxic term. You can note that this evolution is due in part to its embrace by such Black rappers as Tupac Shakur, who glamorized the term “thug life” and gave it a layered meaning depending on who is using it.
But you can no longer say you didn’t know “thug” has entered the linguistic realm of “problematic,” still short of “impermissible” but a word to use at your own risk.
And you can’t now say you haven’t been put on notice.
Eric - Yes, I do confess to prior knowledge that the word thug is now being pushed to become a racial reference and a forbidden word by the thought police.
In researching it's origins online, I was surprised to find that it originated in the 1830s to refer to a gang of robbers in India which were finally suppressed by the British. Here is the primary definition of the word when I just looked it up..."a violent, aggressive person, especially one who is a criminal.
"he was attacked by a gang of thugs".
My reference to Green's repeated actions on the basketball court were a reference to his ongoing tendency to act as an aggressive, violent person. His actions are irrespective of race and ethnicity, and I would have no hesitation to describe a white or other person who acts the same way as a thug.
So bad on me for not being politically correct, but as you probably know, that is certainly not my strong suit. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other noteworthy greetings of the season!
This is the first I have heard that "t---" is considered a racist term. When I think of the word the image of Vladimir Putin comes into my mind.
I question whether or not its designation is here to stay or a passing fad for those who engage in recreational outrage. But no would should give weight to my opinion on this. I thought the same thing when "Oriental" became a forbidden word.
For anyone who thinks this post is offensive, then to you I say, "___ ______ _ ____!"
Yo Skeptic, I gotta agree with you. And did you notice the initial change in interpretation comes from John McWhorter some linguist from Columbia University.
And isn’t Columbia University having trouble defining the use of various terms in its student manual and related policies?
I think that John should be working on the language issues at his school and hold off being a language policeman for the general public.
I can’t think of a better word than thug for Putin either.
Keep up your skeptic ways Skeptic!
McWhorter probably doesn’t concern himself much with Columbia’s specific policies these days, as he has built a more lucrative career of being the anti-anti-racist expert on Bill Maher.
My inference regarding McWhorter's comments were that the status of "the th word" was based on his observation, not necessarily how he thought we all ought to use language. I base this on the fact that he called BS on UIC law students who complained about Jason Kilbourn's use of an expurgated racial slur (is it okay to describe a term that refers to a way of expressing an overtly offensive and dehumanizing term? how many levels do we have to step away from the original word before it becomes acceptable?)
So McWhorter's comment caused me to think that there could be some credibility to this thing. But I am going to see of the th word disappears from major publications before I believe it.
In a more recent column, McWhorter adds clarity (or maybe backtracks a bit) that both meanings are acceptable, but a new race-specific meaning has evolved in recent years, "thug 2.0".
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/opinion/it-is-what-it-is.html
Here's the quote from that:
"Many years ago I noted that the word “thug” has acquired an implication of Blackness and can sometimes almost be heard as a genteel way of using the N-word. The pushback was furious: Legions of people thought I was saying that anyone who uses the word “thug” in any way must be hurling a kind of slur.
"It was the 2.0 problem, as always. Of course, “thug” can still be used as a race-neutral word referring to a miscreant. We can call federal law enforcement “jackbooted thugs” or use the term to refer to Islamic State terrorists. But American discussion has also developed a sense of a “thug” persona, propagated partly by hip-hop iconography, which is specifically Black and even embraced by many Black people as a kind of proud self-expression. The phrase “thug life,” credited to Tupac Shakur, gets at this final meaning, which is racial but not pejorative. In any case, the days when “thug” meant only a ruffian or rascal are long past us; there is a newer meaning, more specific than the older one: thug 2.0."
Makes sense to me.
The questions for us, and especially those in the media, are:
1. when it is okay to use the term? I suppose a white sports reporter can refer to an enforcer on a hockey team a thug, but using the term to refer to a black basketball player risks outrage
2. If there is a backlash, like what happened to Dan Roan, how should we react? This is a multiple choice question.
(a) with empathy and validation of "their reality", or
(b) with ridicule and scorn
So the "thug" persona was "propagated by hip-hop" and "embraced by Black people as a kind of proud self-expression" that Blacks can use with other Blacks. White people can use the word to describe federal law enforcement or Islamic State miscreants, but not Black federal law enforcement miscreants. Got it!
Still not quite sure what the rule is for Asian or Hispanic miscreants. Can't understand how this could have confused Dan Roan?
i suggest you do a little more homework on mcwhorter - he's not the shallow, ivory tower academic, which you seem to think he is. https://reason.com/podcast/2021/05/05/john-mcwhorter-the-idea-that-america-is-all-about-despising-black-people-thats-fantasy/
I did some checking. I find him to be an ivory tower academic, but not shallow. Maybe this is unfair, but I take him to task for not helping Columbia defend its language policies. Columbia has accepted the Chicago Statement, an excellent summary of how faculty and students should behave in regards to the First Amendment.
I would expect this guy would be well versed on this statement. Why didn’t he advise Columbia’s President and offer to help in its defense when going to Congress?
He seems to be all talk, but no action. Is this unfair? Columbia’s President seemed rather at sea and could have used the help.
i'm all in favor of the UChicago Statement both in priciple and in practice.
when was the Columbia president 'at sea', such that McWhorter failed him? you're not referring to the recent congressional hearing, right? the presidents of harvard, penn & mit were testifying - i don't believe the columbia prez was there.
Abortion: Agree - this Texas ruling is outrageous. There are simply too many extremists positions these days. You'd think the extremist would pull so much that we could get middle view action - instead we are stuck with an 'all or nothing' approach to decision making. Back to article - Texas is even crazier than we thought. Look out Florida! Sentencing Truths. There are sources that do well to explain actual sentencing lengths and why - but you have to search for it. The rest has been for a long time - feeding the masses and stirring controversy - even conspiracy talk. Haley's comet - has lost its appeal when almost weekly there are news notes of asteroids heading toward earth (Spoiler alert: click link to learn that it is not expected to hit earth, even if it is passing within 'half the distance between the earth and the moon) NBA: Which is worse - ref ejecting star from a game or coach resting star on road game? AI: Skynet Dead Stars: Interesting photos - but did they have to add in "When asked if he was homosexual, Dean replied,..." What does that have to do with showing aging?
Couldn’t disagree with you more on whether NBA refs need to develop thicker skins—they are professional and athletic rules keepers in a fairly rough sport. I’m not expecting a LOT of decorum, but a modicum of respect and profanity-free speech in an indoor environment are not taxing demands. Watch your mouth, pro athlete—them’s the rules.