Sluts Are Not Crazy

Health care reform gets ugly. Also, Yvonne Bynoe talks about diverse models of motherhood, and hooking up demonstrated not to break your sanity.

 

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Michele Bachmann doesn't know what this means

Is Lieberman petulant or not?

Lieberman promotes Medicare buy-in

Lieberman denounces Medicare buy-in, after finding out liberals like the idea

Glenn Beck wants to kill Medicare altogether

Sluts are not crazy

Glenn Beck goes full General Ripper

 

On this episode of Reality Cast, I'll be talking to Yvonne Bynoe about her new anthology chronicling the diverse experiences of motherhood in the U.S.  Also, the health care reform process gets even uglier, and new evidence shows that the hysteria over the so-called hook-up culture is misplaced. 

 

And this week in stupid statements from health care reform opponents comes this one from Michele Bachmann to a group of tea baggers that are organized to fight health care reform. 

 

• light brigade *

 

Okay, well clearly Bachmann and her followers don't know the poem or the history behind it. Because not only did the light brigade not win their battle, but the poem also has the famous line: "Theirs not to reason why;/Theirs but to do and die." True, the tea baggers are opposed to reasoning why, but I don't imagine they'd like to have that pointed out.

 

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Now that the Nelson amendment's been defeated, the health care reform debate in the Senate is only getting uglier and more complicated.  It almost makes you long for the days when it was a simple matter of being outraged at the way that misogynists are hijacking health care reform.  But now they've been shut down for the time being, and the question has emerged: is this health care reform bill going to be reform-y or not? 

 

The obstacle that's emerged this past week was Joe Lieberman, who is clearly enjoying the opportunity to stick it to the liberals that pushed him out of the Democratic party but not out of the Senate. Lieberman has strong-armed his way into this debate by being the crucial vote for a filibuster and using that to get rid of both a public option and a Medicare buy-in.  Liberals such as health care expert Ezra Klein immediately denounced Lieberman for being petty, and then were immediately denounced themselves for slurring Lieberman's good name.  But Lieberman's critics have every reason to believe Lieberman is more about pettiness than sincere concerns.  For instance, here's Lieberman 3 months ago on the Medicare buy-in option. 

 

• health care 1 *

 

Here's Lieberman now.

 

• health care 2 *

 

The so-called Medicare buy-in looks exactly like what Lieberman used to claim he supported.  Of course, he used to support a public option, but now claims that he's against it because it would be owned by the government.  Which means he was either too stupid to realize that's the definition of "public option" before, or he's being disingenuous now. 

 

So why are liberals so hellbent on having a public option or at least a Medicare buy-in?  It all comes down to costs.  Yes, a health care reform bill without these things should lower costs because it will increase the rolls, increase competition, and provide subsidies to help people afford health care.  However, there is still the matter of insurance companies and their desire to drive up profits.  The assumption that the savings in health care will immediately be passed to the consumer is a questionable one, not when insurance companies executives would far prefer to keep that money for themselves and the shareholders.  And as long as every insurance company in the system keeps the savings instead of passing it on, then there's no competition.  But a non-profit public option has no shareholders to pay, and so they can pass the savings right along.  That will mean other insurance companies have to do the same or lose in the free market.  But so-called free market capitalists are doing their hardest to shield insurance companies from free market competition.

 

Meanwhile, the actual right has gone completely off the rails because of all this, probably because the Democrats have given up any hint of wanting a bipartisan bill and are simply spending all their time trying to convince conservative Democrats to stop screwing this up.  The tea party types have moved towards attacking already existing and popular programs.  Check out Glenn Beck.

 

• health care 3 *

 

Good luck with that strategy, tea baggers.  Telling your elderly base that they don't need the health care that they're getting isn't going to really work out for you as well as you'd hope.

 

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insert interview

 

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I know you've heard the hysteria.  If you listen to this podcast, you've heard me cover the hysteria.  But even if you haven't heard my coverage, it's hard to miss the hysteria out there. 

 

• hook up 1 *

 

OMFG! People, okay, young women are choosing to have sex and we can't stop them.  They just keep taking off their pants and doing it and just well, doing it!  All this sex and we're not a part of it!  All these college kids getting laid when we remember wondering if we would ever have a date.  We watch a lot of TV and these kids are hooking up and we're angry!  We're hysterical!  We want them to stop it already, especially the girls. 

 

And so of course, on the heels of the hysteria comes the inevitable mischaracterizing of the beliefs of those of us who think that freedom, education, and safety are important considerations.

 

• hook up 2 *

 

That's Jennifer Roback Morse, who was put on the Glenn Beck show with her title as a PhD, but they didn't note that it is in economics.  Yes, they implied that she has some kind of expertise on society or psychology, when in fact she was brought on the show because she's a very conservative Catholic with an anti-contraception agenda, that she dropped in there, implying that condoms themselves are little harbingers of evil.  Watching that segment, one gets the impression she thinks merely touching latex to your skin might ruin your life permanently.  Remember, the forced birth agenda is usually behind most hysteria about the so-called hook-up culture.  People getting hysterical about it have a model of sexuality that is based around trapping young women in relationships at a young age through pregnancy, with the hopes that those young women will have to give up their ambitions to care for their families as their young husbands are being put through school by their young wives.  Their faith that this can be achieved by getting college kids to quit using condoms is touching in its naivete, but dangerous in its effects. 

 

But of all the silliness that comes from the hysteria over the hook-up culture is the pseudo-scientific claims that because women want love, but men only want sex, women are being permanently damaged by casual sex.

 

• hook up 3 *

 

Actually, that's all a lie.  Both men and women create oxytocin, but the forced birthers deny this because they are invested in the misogynist belief that commitment only happens when a woman uses sexual access as leverage to get a man to pretend to like them.  If men could feel intimacy during sex, or actual attachment or love for women, the whole hysteria about casual sex falls apart.  Their theories are based on the belief that it is impossible for a man to actively choose to be with a woman, which implies that women are just that awful and hateful.  And so they argue that women feel attached after sex, but men don't, and so sex is bad for women.  They usually argue that women are made mentally ill by this, and that sexual women are more suicidal, etc.

 

This oxytocin theory, and the way they lie about men not having the hormone, shows how silly and unscientific the anti-choice crowd is being.  They're not interested in evidence or helping people, but about rationalizing their misogynist belief that women are basically asexual and so unlikeable that being loved for ourselves is impossible.  But when real science weighs in to measure the effects of casual sex, another picture emerges.

 

• hook up 4 *

 

This actual research is getting buried in the mainstream media because it doesn't trip up ratings-raising hysteria over youthful sexuality.  But it's really important research.  For one thing, it demonstrated that for all that hysterics claim hooking up is the norm on campus, only 1/5^th of respondents had casual sex as their last encounter.  Whoops, claims that kids don't date anymore destroyed right there!  But the other finding was that for the  kids who did engage in casual sex, there was no measurable difference in self esteem or mental health. They aren't saying that casual sex is for everyone, of course. But what they found is that people who engage in it usually know themselves better than the anti-choicers would allow, and handle it as well as anything else. Yes, even the women.  Killing that other pet anti-choice theory that women are too stupid to make our own decisions and have to have others do it for us. 

 

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, pants of fire edition.  Politifact has given its pants on fire award to those promoting the lie that White House science and technology adviser John Holdren promoted forced abortions and sterilizations as population control.  Holdren did not; he wrote in his book that other people suggested this but he didn't even come close to endorsing it.  But as you know, there's no lie too outrageous not to be promoted by wingnuts.  Here's Glenn Beck, repeating it.

 

• beck *

 

Of course, this shows that reality has superseded satire. This is a clip from the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, which satirized that era's wingnuts.

 

• beck 2 *

 

It's like Glenn Beck is using it as a model.

 

Follow Amanda Marcotte on Twitter, @amandamarcotte