Sunday, March 04, 2007

New Rules

Tonight I happened to catch the last 15 minutes of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher." Funny stuff. I mainly watch it for New Rules, but sometimes the rest of the program is a step above an all-out scream-fest. Like tonight.

Tonight Bill Maher had an author and two other guests. I didn't happen to catch who they were, but the overall gist of it was that one of them was a fairly conservative man, the author was fairly liberal and I couldn't clearly place the third guy. He is possibly in the middle, at least relative to the other two guests. So, the conservative was saying that Christians are being attacked in this country: looking at Amazon's top purchased non-fiction books, a lot of them are pretty offensive and such. Here's a link to the top 100 non-fiction books. He specifically mentioned number 41, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. He said that he is offended when people call him a fascist just because he believes in a different God than you. My response: I don't call you a fascist because you believe in a magic carpenter. I call you a fascist because you are one.

Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology and mass movement that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusive biological, cultural, and historical terms, above all other loyalties, and to create a mobilized national community. Many different characteristics are attributed to fascism by different scholars, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, totalitarianism, collectivism, anti-liberalism, and anti-communism. There are numerous debates between scholars regarding the nature of fascism, and the kinds of political movements and governments that may be called fascist, however most scholars see it as on the political right or allied with right-wing movements. For further elaboration, please see definitions of fascism and fascism and ideology. - "Fascism" article at the Wikipedia

So, lets run a little tally:
  • Nationalism - check
  • Authoritarianism - check
  • Militarism - check
  • Corporatism - check
  • Totalitarianism - check
  • Collectivism - it's not just for the socialist hippies anymore, check
  • Anti-liberalism - check
  • Anti-communism - check

At this point the show fell apart at the seams and anarchy prevailed. Until Bill Maher deemed that it's time for "New Rules" and everyone shut up. A powerful man, that one.

I apologize in advance, I can't put up the script for these "New Rules", in part because HBO is very slow at putting recent "New Rules" on their website and that the people who designed my DVR ought to be whipped for the "great" job they did.

Most of the "New Rules" were curious but nothing extraordinary: today's kids are idiots, George W should stop hanging out with sports stars and concentrate on the FUBAR situation with Iraq, blah blah blah. As usual, Maher saved the best for last, that final stretch of a long "New Rule", gargantuan, all-encompassing and often managing to dredge up the previous "New Rules" to illustrate its point: there is a vaccine that can prevent cancer, but the Christian right is opposed to it because they think it will be seen as a gateway to premarital sex. The vaccine in question is for HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that has been shown to result in cancer. The Christian right is opposed to the vaccine because, from their viewpoint, as soon as the risk of cancer is removed from the equation young people everywhere will go on a mad orgy of Biblical proportions. My phrasing, of course. So, faced with the choice of sex or death, the good-intentioned Christian parent will choose death. Yay!

My opinion? If the thought of eternal damnation isn't keeping young Romeo and Juliet from knocking boots, the threat of cancer in 40 years is a very weak scare-tactic. Are you being kind and compassionate when you make sex that much more risky, dangerous and, now, deadly?

After you're done keeping teens from having sex, please consider converting me to your particular brand of BS. That should be an equally rewarding and successful venture.

Here's an article that covers the HPV issue: Virginity or Death!

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