Tag Archives: fresh-air

Liberal Talk Show Host Thom Hartmann Says It’s Time for Gay ‘Reparations’

It’s one thing to have liberal guilt, but this is taking it way too far.  In a video posted to YouTube on Aug. 5 , popular liberal talk host Thom Hartmann, identified what he considered was the appropriate way to cope with this guilt type, specifically that of which came with the issue of LGBT rights. Hartmann hails himself as “the 10th most important talk show host in America, and the No. 1 most important progressive host, in their ‘Heavy Hundred’ ranking” according to Talkers Magazine . Hartmann laid out the reasoning chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker used in an Aug. 4 ruling that overturn California’s Proposition 8 gay marriage ban, a ballot initiative approved by over 7 million voters in 2008 . Then he added his own unique solution. “Well yesterday, Judge Vaughn Walker, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, ruled that California’s Proposition 8, which said that it was illegal for gays to get married in that state, was unconstitutional,” Hartmann said. “He said that he based his ruling, although the right-wing is all over him for being gay himself – he said he based his ruling on the preponderance of scientific evidence that was presented to him in court, which indicated that the children of families of gay couples grew up every bit as normal, and in fact in some studies more normal and healthy, psychologically healthy, as the children of straight families and that gay couples and their relationships are every bit as psychologically, and socially, and economically significant and legitimate as are straight couples.” Hartmann, with his psychological expertise in hand, alluded to the reasoning in Walker’s ruling, added that the only basis for such a ban, despite the approval of those people, were “moral and religious views.” “He said that the evidence conclusively shows that moral and religious views form the only basis for the belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples,” Hartmann said. “Very, very interesting.” To rectify this situation – Hartmann made the incredible call for reparations, singling out the Mormon Church to pay for gay weddings in the California for the next years. “You know, I – gay people in this country have a long history of discrimination, of hatred, of murder,” he continued. “Matthew Shepard, you know – tortured, dragged, dragged you know dragged at the end of a truck, tied to a fence post left to die in the desert sun for example. I think that we should have reparations for gays. I think that the Mormon Church, which contributed a large chunk, maybe as much half of the money or maybe members of the Mormon church, as much as half of the money from out-of-state to fund Prop 8 for the next 10 years should have to pay for every gay wedding in the state of California.” The next step of this case is for it to be heard by the left-leaning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then would likely be heard by the Supreme Court to determine whether it violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection” and “due process.”

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Liberal Talk Show Host Thom Hartmann Says It’s Time for Gay ‘Reparations’

NPR Sneers Palin’s Fractured Lingo Shows She Avoids ‘Books and Periodicals That Have Semicolons’

From his usual perch on the NPR show Fresh Air, liberal linguist and Berkeley professor Geoffrey Nunberg  predictably sneered on Tuesday at Sarah Palin’s use of “refudiate,” and then her refusal to correct herself. He suggested she obviously doesn’t read enough. “You have to frequent the places the word hangs out in, the kinds of books and periodicals that have semicolons in them.” But he also tried to cover his tracks a little bit by suggesting eloquence is overrated in politicians: Palin could have picked up refudiate from someone else or come up with it on her own. The question is why she didn’t correct it along the way, before she got called on it and felt the need to defend it. After all, the course of our lives is strewn with abandoned misconceptions about words. I’m always struck by how tenacious these are. A word will go right past me five or 10 times before I suddenly have this duh moment. As in, duh, it has a ‘c’ in it. Or duh, compendious doesn’t mean comprehensive at all. But Palin apparently never had a duh moment with repudiate, probably because she hasn’t encountered it often enough. People don’t use it a lot in ordinary conversation – as in, I used to think Peter Frampton was cool, but I totally repudiate that now. You have to frequent the places the word hangs out in, the kinds of books and periodicals that have semicolons in them. [Note he places the emphasis on the second syllable of fre-QUENT. Thank you, Henry Higgins.] But not even Palin’s most ardent supporters would claim that she’s been a great reader. They prize her for her attitude and authenticity, not her erudition. Of course, there are other people who blanch at the thought of a head of state whose speech flows so far from the stream of literate English prose. Fair enough. But inarticulateness doesn’t preclude political competence – think of Dwight Eisenhower. As the linguist Mark Liberman put it in the LanguageLog blog, politics is not a vocabulary contest. And it’s a mistake to read too much significance into these slips and solecisms. Take the way the logotariat reacted to Palin’s use of verbage in place of verbiage during the 2008 campaign. It’s a very common error, and in its way a logical one. The i in verbiage doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think, as most people do, that the word is related to verb and verbal. It actually comes from the same root as warble. But in The New Yorker, James Wood took verbage as Palin’s own invention and called it a perfect example of the Republicans’ disdain for words. Verbage – so close to garbage, so far from language . That’s a pretty clever way for Nunberg to dull his Berkeley barbs and then stick Palin with another one. Nunberg realized there’s some political danger in smugness, even as he betrayed it: Where do you begin with that? With the remarkable condescension of garbage — so close to trash? Or with the insolence of imagining that faulty usage betrays stupidity and turpitude? One way or the other, it’s a form of smugness that transcends partisan lines. People on the right are just as quick to ridicule Obama and Biden for their mistakes. Yet the well-spoken aren’t necessarily wiser or better than the rest of us. Most of the horrors that the human race has had to endure in modern times were inflicted at the bidding of men who spoke in shapely grammatical sentences. Unfortunately, eloquence doesn’t come next to godliness. A devotion to language will have to be its own reward. Could we just celebrate that?

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NPR Sneers Palin’s Fractured Lingo Shows She Avoids ‘Books and Periodicals That Have Semicolons’

Sharon Osbourne Applauds Ellen Pick for Idol

The America’s Got Talent judge calls DeGeneres a needed “breath of fresh air”

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Sharon Osbourne Applauds Ellen Pick for Idol