“South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker tell The Telegraph that they got a signed picture of Saddam Hussein from some Iraq Marines.

During his captivity, US marines forced Saddam, who was executed in 2006, to repeatedly watch the move South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, which shows him as gay, as well as the boyfriend of Satan. He was also regularly depicted in a similar manner during the TV series.

Question: Does this constitute torture?

Quite a few reports came out yesterday buttressing rumors that there were tensions between John McCain and Sarah Palin which caused a feud within the campaign team.   It’s only fitting, I suppose, since the selection of Palin has highlighted and exacerbated a growing fissure within the Republican Party itself.

Fox New’s Carl Cameron dished last night about rumors that Palin was even more unprepared than we thought, like not knowing that Africa was a continent rather than a country or being clueless about which countries were in NAFTA:

Cameron continued the assault on Bill O’Reilly’s show, continuing to use the word “knowledgability” to describe what she lacked:

In “Internal Battles Divided McCain and Palin Camps,” NYT corespondent Elisabeth Bumiller details some of the petty squabbles and disputes over such things as the prank Sarkozy call and the wardrobe brouhaha but this section puts it all into perspective:

Finger-pointing at the end of a losing campaign is traditional and to a large degree predictable, as Mr. McCain himself acknowledged in a prescient interview in July.

“Every book I’ve read about a campaign is that the one that won, it was a perfect and beautifully run campaign with geniuses running it and incredible messaging, etcetera,” Mr. McCain said then. “And always the one that lost, ‘Oh, completely screwed up, too much infighting, bad people, etcetera.’ So if I win, I believe that historians will say, ‘Way to go, he fine-tuned that campaign, and he got the right people in the right place and as the campaign grew, he gave them more responsibility.’ If I lose,” people will say, “ ‘That campaign, always in disarray.’ ”

Quite right.  Had McCain somehow managed to win, we’d be hearing about all the Obama staffers who couldn’t believe Joe Biden was so boneheaded as to promise a grave national security crisis if his guy won and Biden staffers complaining about Obama’s ill-considered remarks to Joe the Plumber or Obama’s diva qualities being demonstrated by his penchant for giant outdoor rallies with Greek columns.  Since they won, however, the mistakes are minimized.

Regardless, these revelations about Palin are embarrassing, if true, and seem petty at this juncture.   Michelle Malkin and Ace are absolutely right that it’s cowardly for these rumormongers to be dishing anonymously.

Palin, for her part, is being extraordinarily gracious, at least in public, saying all the right things about McCain and about letting president-elect Obama have his moment.

RedState honcho Erick Erickson says his team is “tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others.” Fair enough. He then goes on:

We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.

It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.

[...]

Don’t make us add you to our list. Do you really want to be next to Kathleen Parker in the leper colony?

I was about halfway through a draft of this post which decried a New McCarthyism and a witch hunt against those Republicans who dared speak out against Palin when it occurred to me that I’ve had more than one adult beverage with Erick and that he couldn’t possibly mean that.  Either this was a late night rant that he’d walk back in the morning or I was reading too much into the whole thing.

So I emailed him asking, “Is it your intention to sabotage candidates you’d otherwise support for hiring staffers who say mean things about Sarah Palin?  And perhaps anyone else who says anything mean about Palin?   Not sure how else to take Don’t make us add you to our list.”  He assured me that, “We’re just trying to rattle cages.  It’s pretty clear there are four staffers and one former staffer in the McCain camp who are out to save their own reputations by throwing Palin under the bus.  Just trying to get them to back off.  I’m positive, because i have my own campaign sources, that the vast majority of what they are saying is B.S.”

Fair enough.

The whole Palin thing, though, worries me.  I take people like George Will and Christopher Buckley and Colin Powell at their word when they say the selection of Palin was very troubling to them.   And, to the extent Palin did lack “knowledgability,” it’s not her fault that she was jumped directly from Rookie League ball to the World Series.   Michelle Malkin is absolutely right here:

Let’s assume the rumor-mongers are telling the truth for a moment. Who does it damn more: Sarah Palin or McCain and his vetters who green-lighted her for the vice presidential nomination? Don’t need an Ivy League degree to figure that one out.

Indeed not.

But here’s the thing: As Stacy McCain has argued eloquently for some time, the grassroots of the party love Sarah Palin.  His sentiment that, “We need more grass-roots activists and fewer intellectual elites” is surely widespread.   It’s also a path to permanent minority party status.

My political awakening occured in late 1979, with the Iran Hostage Crisis, and grew steadily over the next year as Ronald Reagan battled Jimmy Carter for the presidency.  At that point in time, the Republican Party was said to have an “Electoral College lock” on the White House — California was a solid GOP state at the time — and it took extraordinary things like the combination of Watergate, an energy crisis, and runaway stagflation to get a Democrat elected.  At the same time, though, the Democrats were overwhelmingly the dominant party.  They had majorities in most state legislatures, held most of the governorships, had been in control of the House of Representatives for decades, and were ensconsed as the majority party in the Senate.

Reagan changed all that.  He managed to build a coalition of anti-communists, fiscal conservatives, and social conservativesthat swept Carter off to build houses for the poor, brought in a wave of Republicans on his coattails, and started a national realignment that culminated in the 1994 Republican revolution.

The social conservatives, mostly Southern evangelicals, took over the party, starting with the school boards and county commissions and eventually the state legislatures, the breeding ground for future Congressmen and governors.   The result, for a time, was a majority party or, at least, one on par with the Democrats in party ID and more easily mobilized on election day.

The coalition has long been an uneasy one, with the social conservatives disdained by the Rockefeller Republicans and vice versa.  The demise of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War made it harder to keep the coalition together but it has more-or-less held together.   All the while, though, moderate and liberal Republicans have gradually been driven from power.  Olympia Snowe is all that’s left of them in the New England states, now a one-party region.

The frontrunners for the 2012 nomination are Palin and Mike Huckabee.  I don’t see how either gets beyond 40 percent of the national popular vote, let alone takes back any state that Obama won this go-round.   Not only will they not appeal to independent voters, they’d both alienate the Crunchy Cons, South Park Republicans, Goldwater Republicans, Rockefeller Republicans, and essentially everyone else outside the hard core evangelical base.

There’s got to be a better way.

UPDATE: Along these same lines, Steve Benen reminds us of Jim Nuzzo’s recent remarks that,

There’s going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?

Matt Yglesias‘ response at the time is apt:

I’m actually one who thinks that the occasional ideological purge can strengthen a movement, but this would be a seriously odd basis for conducting such a cleansing exercise. Nuzzo is talking about a blind test of loyalty, not any kind of substantive demarcation of conservatism.

A GOP where the likes of Brooks and Noonan aren’t welcome would be a fringe party, indeed.

UPDATE II:   George Will makes similar arguments in his column today, although his view of what’s happening is a bit more, well, conservative.

As this is being written, Republicans seem to have lost a total of 55 House and 11 Senate seats in the past two elections. These are the worst Republican results in consecutive elections since the Depression-era elections of 1930 and 1932 (153 and 22), which presaged exile from the presidency until 1953. If, as seems likely at this writing, in January congressional Republicans have 177 representatives and 44 senators, they will be weaker than at any time since after the 1976 elections, when they were outnumbered in the House 292 to 143 and the Senate 61 to 38.

After the 1936 election, when the Republican nominee against FDR, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, carried only two states, both in New England (hence the jest, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont”), there were 29 congressional seats in New England and Republicans still held 15. With Tuesday’s defeat of Connecticut Republican Chris Shays, Democrats hold all 22 New England seats. As recently as 1996, when New York had 31 House seats, Republicans held 14; after Tuesday, they have just three of 29. With the loss of the seat on Staten Island, Republicans will hold at most one urban seat.

Since John Kennedy was elected from Massachusetts in 1960, all of the elected presidents (leaving aside Gerald Ford), before Tuesday, came from Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Southern California. In 1960, there were no Republican senators from the South. (In 1961, John Tower of Texas became the first since Reconstruction.) But when the next Congress convenes, 19 of the probable 44 Republican senators — 43 percent of them — will be from the South, understood as including Oklahoma and Kentucky. The South is beginning to look less like the firm foundation of a national party than the embattled redoubt of a regional one.

Still, the Republican Party retains a remarkably strong pulse, considering that McCain’s often chaotic campaign earned 46 percent of the popular vote while tacking into terrible winds. Conservatives can take some solace from the fact that four years after Goldwater won just 38.5 percent of the popular vote, a Republican president was elected.

True that.  But it took some extraordinarily bad governing and an unpopular war to do it.  And it would be another three decades before the GOP won a majority in the House of Representatives.

It’s a bad weekend for famous black men I’m fond of, after Bernie Mac’s passing. The legendary Isaac Hayes has also passed away:

Soul singer and arranger Isaac Hayes, who won Grammy awards and an Oscar for the theme from the 1971 action film “Shaft,” has died, sheriff’s officials in Memphis, Tennessee, reported Sunday.

Hayes was found dead Sunday at age 65.

Relatives found Hayes, 65, unconscious in his home next to a still-running treadmill, said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.

Paramedics attempted to revive him and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 2 p.m., the sheriff’s department said.

No foul play is suspected, the agency said in a written statement.

Hayes was a longtime songwriter and arranger for Stax Records in Memphis, playing in the studio’s backup band and crafting tunes for artists such as Otis Redding and Sam and Dave in the 1960s.

After reading a couple of stories about Hayes’s passing, I guess my only complaint about him would be that he helped pave the way for disco.

R.I.P.

Photo: Jo Hale/Getty Images via E Online

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has been threatened with censure by the Senate Ethics Committee for delivering babies for free:

Coburn has come under new pressure from the Ethics panel for delivering babies at the Muskogee Regional Medical Center, which changed from a public to a private institution in April last year after it was acquired by Capella Healthcare. … In May, Coburn received a strongly worded “final determination” memo threatening him with a Senate censure if he did not stop delivering babies for free.

Coburn notes that there appears to be no issue with Sen. Leahy being paid for his cameo in “The Dark Night” (a minimal sum he donates to charity), a profit-making enterprise, so there should be no problem with his delivering babies for free (actually at his own cost, since he still has to pay for malpractice insurance and the like).

What’s really going on, of course, is that Harry Reid is using this trumped up charge to pressure Coburn to remove the holds he’s placed on some 35 pork-barrel spending bills. I’m with McQ on this one:

With Feinstein’s husband cashing in on government business over which she had oversight and Dodd getting sweetheart mortgage loans, this is the ethics fight the committee picks?

Andrew Sullivan, who successfully coined the term “South Park Republicans,” is trying out a new one: “Judge Judy Republicans.”  He does so in a persuasive response to a new book by his Atlantic colleagues Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam.

I think that moniker is a little more fitting – if a little less marketable – for Ross’ and Reihan’s hoped-for constituency than “Sam’s Club” Republicans. After all, the problem with the working poor, as [their book, Grand New Party] GNP has it, is not that they’re capable of finding shopping bargains and living within their means. It’s that they’re sinking in a welter of family dysfunction and economic distress – and end up like the plaintiffs on Judge Judy. Why are they sinking? GNP blames the elites for getting jiggy with it in the 1960s and 1970s and setting a bad example for those without the resources to cope adequately with extra- and pre-marital sex, contracepted intercourse, divorce, re-marriage, and so on.

A good point.  “Sam’s Club Republicans,” though, is better branding than “Judy Judy Republicans” and therefore more likely to catch on.  While both are enormously successful enterprises, there’s no stigma in Sam’s Club.  Judge Judy, let’s face it, has a certain lowbrow association.

Further, as I understand it based on their November 2005 Weekly Standard rollout article “The Party of Sam’s Club,” Douthan and Salam are simply talking about people with blue collar jobs struggling to get by.

This is the Republican party of today–an increasingly working-class party, dependent for its power on supermajorities of the white working class vote, and a party whose constituents are surprisingly comfortable with bad-but-popular liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage, expanding clumsy environmental regulations, or hiking taxes on the wealthy to fund a health care entitlement. To borrow a phrase from Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Republicans are now “the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.”

Therein lies a great political danger for Republicans, because on domestic policy, the party isn’t just out of touch with the country as a whole, it’s out of touch with its own base.

These people aren’t necessarily Judge Judy defendants.  Most of them likely graduated high school, show up for work on a regular basis, and refrain from siring children out of wedlock and stealing the automobiles of the woman they left pregnant while owing three months’ back rent and the $5300 she loaned him to go to bounty hunter school from which he never graduated because he kept showing up to class drunk.  After all, you have to have money (or at least good credit) to shop at Sam’s Club.

I do, however, fully agree with Andrew’s implied conclusion:  Sam’s Club Republicans sound a hell of a lot like plain old Democrats.   A “conservatism” where the government takes money from the successful to redistribute it to the working poor in hopes that they’ll somehow become more productive is not “conservatism” at all.

That the GOP was ever the country club party is an absurd myth.  One simply doesn’t win elective office appealing only to the top half of one percent.  But a populism that allows the many to vote themselves the wealth of the few was one of the principal fears of founders like John Adams.  Certainly, we don’t need both our major parties championing that notion.

Drew Carey asks, “How are we supposed to compete against something that doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get health insurance, and never goes on breaks?”

No, not illegal aliens, silly. They get paid (a little) and take the occasional break. No, he’s talking about robots.

Today, we don’t need human workers to book our travel, do our banking, or file our taxes. From factory workers to symphony conductors, countless workers are locked in battle with soulless job stealers known as computers, websites, and robots.

Carey says nobody’s complaining about this, although I’m not sure it’s true. Certainly, labor unions oppose the mechanization of labor without commensurate featherbedding to protect human jobs. But he’s right that the outcry seems to be small compared to the raging against migrant human workers.

The post title, of course, refers to the classic South Park episode “Goobacks.”

via Glenn Reynolds

The Danish Muslim cartoons that sparked worldwide rioting, mayhem, and murder two years ago are back.

Newspapers across Europe Wednesday reprinted the controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked worldwide protests two years ago.

The move came one day after Danish authorities arrested three people allegedly plotting a “terror-related assassination” of Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the drawing.

Berlingske Tidende, was one of the newspapers involved in the republication by newspapers in Denmark. It said: “We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper always will defend,” in comments reported by The Associated Press.

Newspapers in Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands also republished the drawing Wednesday as part of their coverage of Tuesday’s arrests.

The image, by Morgenavisen Jullands-Posten cartoonist Westergaard, was one of 12 cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed originally published in September 2005. Westergaard’s cartoon depicted the prophet wearing a bomb as a turban with a lit fuse.

Count me in:

Others: Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrissey, Howie@The Jawa Report, Fullosseous Flap, Y.A.C.R.W.B., PoliGazette, Andy Aplikowski, Pam@Right Voices, Laura@Pursuing Holiness, Kim Zigfeld, Susan Duclos, The World According To Carl

________

See these cartoons in full size here.

Related posts below the fold.

Al Qaeda Video: Sea of Blood in Denmark, Norway, France
Comedy Central Censored Mohammed “South Park”
Manifesto Against Islamist Totalitarianism
Jyllands-Posten Wins Prize for Defense of Free Expression
D.C. Denmark Rally Photos
D.C. Rally for Denmark at Noon (Updated)
D.C. Rally for Denmark on Friday
Cartoon Violence Pits Muslim Against Muslim
Censorship by the Muslim Mob
Nigerian Christians Riot, Kill Muslims in Retaliation
Iran Supports End to Cartoon Violence
Muslim Cartoon Rage Latest Example of Religious Virus
Why He Published Those Cartoons
Nigeria Cartoon Riot Kills at Least 15
Cleric Offers Million Dollar Bounty for Murder of Cartoonist
Bama Riots Over Bear Bryant Cartoons
The Islamists’ War on the Internet
Pakistan Rioters Burn KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s
Cartoons as Emotional Torture and Intellectual Terrorism (Leopold Stotch)
Moderate Muslims Speak Out (Leopold Stotch)
Danish Muslim Cartoons: Blogger Hypocrisy?
Egypt Published Danish Cartoons During Ramadan
Danish Cartoons & Abu Ghraib Photos (Leopold Stotch)
Hypocrites? (Steve Verdon)
Danish Muslim Cartoons: What Would Mohammad Do?
Iranian Paper Launches Holocaust Cartoon Competition
Danish Muslim Cartoon Protests Kill Six
Dutch Muslim Cartoon: Anne Frank and Hitler in Bed
Danish Muslim Cartoon Controversy in Context
Danish Embassy in Syria Torched over Muslim Cartoons
Danish Muslim Cartoons ‘Offensive,’ Says U.S. Government
Muslim Day of Anger to Respond to Cartoons
French Editor Fired Over Muhammad Drawings
French and German Papers Republish Danish Cartoons
Danish Newspaper Apologizes for Muslim Cartoons

Mitt Romney’s efforts to have it both ways on his Mormonism continue to spark rather bizarre theological discussions, such as the most recent kerfuffle over LDS teaching that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. Or the rantings of Lawrence O’Donnell that were so over-the-top as to have Eleanor Clift calling them shrill.

Regardless, though, Duncan Black is right: “If belief has meaning, then surely the substance of those beliefs matter. Otherwise why do people keep yammering on about them?”

Quite.

As Julian Sanchez (who wins Headline of the Day honors for “Family Reunions Must Be Awkward”) observes, “I don’t think you get to say: ‘It’s vital, and crucially relevant to my qualifications for office, that I have a powerful set of guiding convictions… but never mind the actual contents of those beliefs.’”

Mormonism theology is sufficiently outside the American mainstream that many consider it a cult. That’s problematic for Romney. At the same time, however, I’m not sure he has to defend every jot and tittle of his church’s doctrine.

The classic South Park episode “All About Mormons” is often cited in these discussions because of its dead-on skewering of the logic of the Joseph Smith story. “Dum dum dum dum dum” and all that. (See videos here.) But while this provided plenty of grist for the humor mill, the lesson of the story was in the closing comments of Gary, the Mormon kid:

Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life. and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that’s stupid, I still choose to believe in it. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you’re so high and mighty you couldn’t look past my religion and just be my friend back.

In essence, Romney is trying to sell that message without acknowledging the oddness of his faith. Then again, as Clift pointed out to O’Donnell (and Dave Schuler noted on OTB Radio last night) “every religion has some crazy beliefs.”

The problem is that Romney is trying to simultaneously deny that his faith is significantly different than other Christian denominations, proclaim the necessity of faith for national leadership, and portray himself as religiously devout. That’s going to be a tough combination to sell.

Image: Tito Times via Google Images

Mitt Romney has now delivered has much anticipated speech defending his Mormon religion. Some key excerpts:

When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.

There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.

This is rather obviously modeled on John Kennedy’s 1960 speech defending himself from the charge that he would be a pawn of the pope. The problem, however, is that no one is making a parallel charge against Romney.

Instead, Romney needs to persuade evangelical Christians, a significant part of the Republican nominating electorate, that his religion is not a cult and that he shares their basic tenets. He essentially ignores the first concern but does a reasonably good job with the second:

It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it’s usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

[...]

These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. I saw my parents provide compassionate care to others, in personal ways to people nearby, and in just as consequential ways in leading national volunteer movements.

[...]

My faith is grounded on these truths. You can witness them in Ann and my marriage and in our family. We are a long way from perfect and we have surely stumbled along the way, but our aspirations, our values, are the self -same as those from the other faiths that stand upon this common foundation. And these convictions will indeed inform my presidency.

We’ll see if it works. My guess, though, is that it won’t.

Erick Erickson is “cynical,” believing Romney is both whining about religious bigotry and trying to mute Mike Huckabee’s advantage with evangelicals. Bob Novak agrees and contends it’s “risky” for Romney to be doing this before winning a primary because it smacks of desperation. Jonah Goldberg goes further, saying it “would have been a great speech had he already won the nomination. But there wasn’t a whole lot in there about why he should get the nomination in the first place.”

A Mormon correspondent to Andrew Sullivan makes a more interesting argument: That Romney is downplaying his commitment to that faith — as well as its distinct nature.

Unlike orthodox Christianity, Mormon theology is polytheistic, teaching that the Gods organized the universe from pre-existing, eternal, uncreated chaotic elements. It rejects Original Sin. It rejects Salvation by Grace, teaching that individuals must “work out their own salvation” and “learn to become Gods [themselves] the same as all Gods before have done.” At its inception, with the publication of “The Book of Mormon” in 1830, Mormonism rejected the doctrines of Biblical infallibility and Biblical literalism.

As a Mormon, I was put-off by Romney’s disingenuousness when he was asked on a TV interview to explain how Mormonism differs from other Christian denominations. Romney tried to give the impression that he was unqualified to speak for the LDS Church, referring people to the Church’s website. When confronted with the fact that he has been an LDS Bishop, he tried to give the impression that, in a “lay church,” the calling of a Bishop isn’t important.

This is untrue.

Bishops interview, and must approve every person in their Ward boundaries (aka Parish) who wishes to convert to Mormonism and be baptized. The process by which they do this (the Bishop’s Interview) is the means by which the Bishop finds out if the would-be-convert understands the LDS Church’s theology. If the would-be-convert is ignorant of certain doctrines, it is the Bishop’s job to instruct them in the theology before approving that person’s baptism.

If the opposition takes to calling him “Bishop Romney,” he’s going to have to explain where he stands. Simply saying that he’s a family guy is unlikely to cut it. But Jim Geraghty may be right: There may not be much more that Romney can really say here.

Ed Morrissey gives the speech strong reviews for delivery but doubts it will do much good.

A few, though, gave the speech incredibly high marks. Mona Charen pronounced it “perhaps the best political speech of the year.” Chris Matthews gushes, “I heard greatness this morning!”

But Matthews isn’t the target audience. Will religious voters in Iowa be more likely to vote for him as a result of the speech? I doubt it.

Photo credit: eCanadaNow

UPDATE: ComedyCentral rounds up some classic clips from the classic South Park episode “All About the Mormons.” Here’s one:

More at the link.

“Sex Ed for Kindergarteners ‘Right Thing to Do,’ Says Obama,” the headline at ABC News’ Political Radar blog, had the desired effect: It got me to click through.

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”

Shocking, right? Well . . . not so much.

When Obama’s campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers “age appropriate” for kindergarteners, the Obama campaign pointed to an Oct. 6, 2004 story from the Daily Herald in which Obama had “moved to clarify” in his Senate campaign that he “does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten. . . The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois’ sex education standards with ‘medically accurate’ information . . . ‘Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,’ Obama said. ‘If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.’”

In addition to local schools informing kindergarteners that babies do not come from the stork, the state legislation Obama supported in Illinois, which contained an “opt out” provision for parents, also envisioned teaching kindergarteners about “inappropriate touching,” according to Obama’s presidential campaign. Despite Obama’s support, the legislation was not enacted.

It’s a touchy subject, to be sure. Many parents would prefer to shelter their young children from any information about sexuality. On the other hand, given the ubiquity of sexual innuendo even on family friendly television shows and PG movies, kids are going to have questions. Do we want teachers lying to them? And, unfortunately, there are indeed perverts out there sexually abusing children.

Figuring out what’s “age appropriate” and incorporating that into the curriculum — or, at least, teacher training — strikes me as perfectly reasonable.

Big Tent Democrat rightly excoriates Frank Rich for hypocrisy in denouncing Don Imus only after he could no longer benefit from using his show for self-promotion. His conclusion, however, is troubling:

And to call this a free speech issue is a joke. We’re supposed to worry about the freedom to tell racist and sexist jokes?

Hell yes.

Indeed, if “free speech” means anything, it must protect the expression of unpopular ideas.

Now, obviously, that doesn’t mean that others don’t have the free speech right to condemn racist and sexist jokes. Or even that advertisers and employers don’t have the right to not associate themselves with those who tell them.

It is, however, a slippery slope toward tyranny of the majority. Alexis de Tocqueville warned in his 1835 classic Democracy in America:

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe’, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed forever, since he has offended the only authority that is able to open it. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused to him. Before making public his opinions he thought he had sympathizers; now it seems to him that he has none any more since he has revealed himself to everyone; then those who blame him criticize loudly and those who think as he does keep quiet and move away without courage. He yields at length, overcome by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides into silence, as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.

[...]

The master no longer says: “You shall think as I do or you shall die”; but he says: “You are free to think differently from me and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you will never be chosen by your fellow citizens if you solicit their votes; and they will affect to scorn you if you ask for their esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived of the rights of mankind. Your fellow creatures will shun you like an impure being; and even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an existence worse than death.”

In his 1859 essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill issued a similar warning:

Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism.

The value of an old white man being able to refer to black women he finds unattractive as “nappy headed hos” over the airwaves is minimal at best. Still, where do we draw the line? Surely, if Don Imus must go, Michael Savage must. And what of Rush Limbaugh? Bill Maher? Keith Olbermann? They all repeatedly say outrageous things on the air. What of “South Park”?

Many of us have noted the use of similar language in rap lyrics and stand-up routines. The point is not that they, too, are offensive and must be regulated. Just the opposite.

Last night, my wife and I watched a Carlos Mencia DVD and the language was frequently vulgar and, certainly, racial. As the liner notes say, “Carlos Mencia covers taboo topics including ethnic stereotypes, race relations, immigration, war, patriotism, capitalism and family with brutal honesty and unrelenting provocativeness. Mencia represents the internal voice inside us and demands we admit to thinking what he says out loud.”

Because he’s a “beaner” (his word), he’s given wider leeway than a white man, which is understandable if ultimately misguided. Yet, while his primary intention is to entertain–that’s how he makes his living, after all–it was unabashedly social and political commentary as well. Ultimately, I would argue, his provocative language is a more effective way of communicating that message to a wide audience than a politically correct op-ed in the New York Times.

Like Mencia, Imus was using humor to express ideas that many people have but are afraid to verbalize. Imus’ humor fell flat, though, because the joke was so incongruous with reality and was aimed at innocents. But, surely, even unfunny jokes should be permissible.

UPDATE: I’ve been mulling this over a bit and it occurs to me that I should contrast my views here with those on two comparable recent controversies: The Dixie Chicks “I’m ashamed to be an American” “we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas” flap and Ann Coulter’s referring to John Edwards as a “faggot” at CPAC.

In important ways, the Dixie Chicks are a very different case. Most significantly, their careers were built on singing largely non-controversial pop-country songs. When they shifted into political commentary, they quite naturally changed their relationship with their fans and the country music establishment. Furthermore, their record label did not fire them. Instead, a lot of people quit buying their records and radio stations started receiving fewer requests to hear their songs.

If Don Imus’ listeners had decided that this latest incident was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and quit listening, I would have no problem with it. Similarly, if the ratings dropped to the point where keeping the show on the air was no longer economically justified, I wouldn’t be writing this. Instead, however, CBS and MSNBC bowed to a swarm of protests and the clammorings of Al Sharpton and company. That strikes me as fundamentally different.

The Ann Coulter case is much more similar. Both she and Imus built careers on outrageous commentary. After the Edwards incident, I joined others in calling for CPAC to stop inviting her to speak at future conferences, since having her at the premier conservative gathering legitimated her as a major voice of the movement. I did not call for her syndicate or anyone else to stop publishing her column, on the networks to stop inviting her on to express her views, or otherwise censuring her. I merely called on organizations which claim to speak for me to make it clear that Coulter did not.

What I would have preferred happen as a result of the Imus remarks is a discussion about racial and gender stereotypes–which did happen–and a better understanding of how the context of the usage of words expressing them matters. Far better than sending the message that the use of phrases like “nappy headed hos” will get you into trouble would be an understanding of why those words are so offensive in most contexts but perfectly acceptable in others.

It would be desirable to see a diminished use of that sort of language, not because uttering it will result in bad consequences for those who dare express themselves in that way because of increased social awareness. That, rather than mob rule, is the way to a more civil society.

UPDATE: The original update above misquoted the Dixie Chicks.

Hillary Clinton will make her first “appearance” on Comedy Central’s “South Park” on Wednesday.

The episode, which is still in production, will have the town at the heart of “South Park” preparing for the arrival of Clinton for a big campaign rally. At the same time, the character Cartman suspects a new Muslim student is behind a terrorist threat – one that includes Clinton as a target.

Comedy Central insiders wouldn’t reveal more of the story line – and also suggested it’s not unusual for content to change several times until the point where the producers deliver the show to the network for airing at 10 p.m.

The episode, “The Snuke,” marks the first time Clinton will be animated on the series, which has made references to her before.

Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker insist on creating each episode in a week, ensuring that the ideas are fresh and not over-worked. It’s quite possible, indeed, that the show is not yet finished and even they don’t know how it’ll turn out.

Gone Hollywood

Radley Balko has an interesting post sparked by CBS’ forcing YouTube to take down a short cllip from a 40-odd-year-old episode of the “Andy Griffith Show” wherein “Sheriff Taylor explains to Opie that it’s illegal to eavesdrop on conversations between criminal defendants and their lawyers, and how in a free society any conviction resulting from such tactics does more harm than good.”

The Mayberry video wasn’t posted so users could “steal” clips from the Andy Griffith Show that they otherwise would have purchased. Its presence on YouTube wasn’t going to prevent anyone who would have otherwise bought the DVD of the show from doing so. Rather, it was posted to make a political point; either to allude to a time when civil liberties were more than mere formalities, or to poke fun of those naive enough to actually believe what Andy Taylor was lecturing Opie about.

Quite so. And it seems quite reasonable that use of short excerpts for such a purpose would constitute “fair use.” The problem, of course, is that YouTube allows doing so on mass scale and is a commercial enterprise.

I’m less convinced by Radley’s assertion that “a pretty substantial portion of the copyrighted material uploaded to YouTube serves the same or a similar purpose.” My guess is that most of it is for entertainment purposes. Even things with political speech implications, say the recent “Nigger Guy” episode of “South Park” or a political satire on “Saturday Night Live,” are mostly for entertainment purposes and, presumably, makes it harder for Comedy Central or NBC to profit from selling DVDs, downloadable clips, showing re-runs, and the like.

Not all that long ago, if you missed a show, you had to wait until the re-runs. Then the VCR came along, followed by TiVo and other DVRs, which allowed people to not only time shift and fast forward through commercials but archive shows for watching again at their leisure. Soon, people figured out that they could pass these tapes around to friends or mail them to people they knew.

Now, though, an episode can be shared with the world almost instantly. That’s great for end users but not so great for copyright holders. If some segment on a moribund show like SNL generates a buzz, NBC used to be able to promote that and then re-run it as a “classic edition” or some such, selling commercial time again. Now, though, it’ll go viral in a day or two and within a couple weeks, everyone will have seen it on their computer screens. NBC clearly takes a revenue loss on the re-sale side.

Then again, if enough clips from SNL get a second life on YouTube, people might start watching (or at least TiVo’ing) the show again. Still, that’s a business decision NBC has a right to make.

Regardless, the Internet generally and YouTube in particular clearly demand a major re-write of copyright laws to take into account the public’s expectation and demand for immediate information accessibility. There has to be a way to balance a content producer’s right to maximize profits from his creation while allowing people to share snippets of it.

It’s not clear, for example, what “Fair Use” means on blogs. How much of the text can one excerpt? How much commentary is required for it to be “transformative”? Can photographs be used? If so, what are the limitations?

The “Sarah Silverman Program” has the title character having sex with God.

Comic Sarah Silverman not happy that God is cuddling with her after sex on Comedy Central’s ‘Sarah Silverman Program’ Comedy Central consummated its season of “the Sarah Silverman Program” last night by featuring the title character having sex with God, and then trying to brush him off after a night of lovemaking. Silverman was shown in bed with an amorous Almighty, whom she referred to as “Black God,” portrayed by actor Tucker Smallwood, a former NBC television director who also served in the Army in Vietnam.

We’ve certainly come a long way from the days when Lucy and Desi, who were married not only on the show but in real life, had to be shown in separate beds. I’m no prude, and this is certainly no less raunchy than a typical episode of “South Park.” Still, it seems to me that comedy was simply funnier before writers could fall back on shock value for humorous effect.

TNR has a cover story by Damon Linker which takes a detailed look at Mormonism and how that may affect the candidacy of Mitt Romney for president.

Within days of stepping down as governor of Massachusetts on January 4, Mitt Romney is expected to announce his candidacy for president. Shortly after that, Romney will almost certainly need to deliver a major speech about his Mormon faith–a speech in the mold of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 address to the Baptist ministers of Houston, Texas, in which the candidate attempted to reassure voters that they had no reason to fear his Catholicism. Yet Romney’s task will be much more complicated. Whereas Kennedy set voters’ minds at ease by declaring in unambiguous terms that he considered the separation of church and state to be “absolute,” Romney intends to run for president as the candidate of the religious right, which believes in blurring the distinction between politics and religion. Romney thus needs to convince voters that they have nothing to fear from his Mormonism while simultaneously placing that faith at the core of his identity and his quest for the White House.

This is a task that may very well prove impossible. Romney’s strategy relies on the assumption that public suspicion of his Mormonism–a recent poll showed that 43 percent of Americans would never vote for a Mormon–is rooted in ignorance and that this suspicion will therefore diminish as voters learn more about his faith. It is far more likely, however, that as citizens educate themselves about the political implications of Mormon theology, concerns about the possibility of a Mormon president will actually increase. And these apprehensions will be extremely difficult to dispel–because they will be thoroughly justified.

[...]

Radicalizing traditional Protestant worries about corruption in the historic church, the religion founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith in upstate New York has understood itself from the beginning to be a “great restoration” of authentic Christianity after an 1,800-year “apostasy” that began with the death of the original apostles. That this restoration took place in the United States was no accident, according to Mormon theology. Smith produced a 500-page document, The Book of Mormon, containing the record of an ancient civilization, descended from the biblical Israelites, that supposedly lived, flourished, and collapsed in the Americas 1,000 years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Jesus Christ visited these people after his resurrection in Jerusalem, spreading his gospel in the New World and planting the seeds of its rebirth many centuries later by Smith himself.

In later revelations, Smith went even further in placing the United States–both geographically and politically–at the focal point of sacred history. The Garden of Eden, he claimed, was located in Jackson County, Missouri. The American Founders were “raised up” by God in order to establish a free government that would allow the restoration to occur and the LDS Church to spread the restored gospel throughout the nation and the world. (Accordingly, all 30,000 undergraduates at LDS-owned Brigham Young University (BYU) are required to take “American Heritage”–a course that teaches the “American system of government and institutions in the context of the Restored Gospel.”)

The centrality of the United States to Mormon theology extends beyond the past and present to encompass the end times as well. Like many of the religious groups to emerge from the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, Mormons are millennialists who believe themselves to be living in the years just prior to the second coming of Christ; hence the words “latter day” in the church’s official title. Where the LDS differs from other communities gripped by eschatology, however, is in the vital role it envisions the United States playing in the end times. The Mormon “Articles of Faith” teach that, when Christ returns, he will reign “personally upon the earth” for 1,000 years, and LDS interpretations of a passage in Isaiah have led some to conclude that this rule will be directed from two locations–one in Jerusalem and the other in “Zion” (the United States). This belief has caused Mormons to view U.S. politics as a stage on which the ultimate divine drama is likely to play itself out, with a Mormon in the leading role. Joseph Smith certainly thought so, which at least partially explains why he spent the final months of his life–he was gunned down by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844–running for president of the United States.

Mormons differ from mainstream Christians in another respect as well: their emphasis on the centrality of prophecy. Christianity in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions holds that direct revelation ended many centuries ago, before the scriptural canon was closed in the late fourth century. Numerous heterodox movements have made contrary claims, of course, but Mormonism is unique in the emphasis it places on prophetic utterances. Not only was the religion founded by a self-proclaimed prophet who brought forth new works of scripture (The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price) and even rewrote (”retranslated”) passages of the canonical Old and New Testaments in light of his personal revelations; but the man who holds the office of the president of the LDS Church is also considered to be a prophet–”the mouthpiece of God on Earth,” in the words of Mormon theologian and Apostle Bruce McConkie–whose statements override both scripture and tradition.

Now, Romney has had a long public career, including a stint as a state governor, without raising questions about his sanity or grip on reality. Still, I agree with Linker that it is perfectly fair to ask Romney to explain where he stands in relation to the teachings of his church.

The concluding scene of the classic “South Park” episode, “The Truth About Mormons,” which lampoons the doctrines of that sect, has Gary (the new Mormon kid in town) telling the gang, “The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice, and helping people, and even though people in this town might think that’s stupid, I still choose to believe in it.”

If that’s Romney’s interpretation–that he’s a “cafeteria Mormon,” if such a thing can be said to exist–then he’ll get a pass from me on his theology. If he actually believes in the literal truth of LDS teachings, though, I’ll dismiss him as a nut.

Whether the 43 percent who say they’ll never vote for a Mormon are similarly persuadable, I can’t say. My guess is that Romney is too much of a dark horse, that other candidates have a much easier path to victory, and that Mormonism is likely the least of his problems. As Jonathan Cohn argues persuasively in another TNR piece, though, too much emphasis is given to the “electability” issue. While the primary system is front loaded, it’s still awfully early to write off anyone above Dennis Kucinich in the food chain.

UPDATE: Errick Errickson supports Romney while admitting that “I am one of those southern evangelicals who has deep qualms with Mitt Romney being a Mormon. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. And while everyone is talking about whether it will matter or not, I think I should chime in and say that yes it will, but no it shouldn’t”

________

Related:

Romney’s Contradictory Positions on Gay Rights
Mitt Romney and the Politics of Mormonism
Mitt Romney Declares Self Conservative Republican
Romney Signs Universal Health Care Bill
Mitt Romney Parts Ways with Consultant Mike Murphy
President Mitt Romney?
Mitt Romney Trailing in Massachusetts poll
Mitt Romney: Why I Vetoed Contraception Bill
Romney’s Gay Marriage Hypocrisy?

Elsewhere:

South Park Libertarians: Trey Parker and Matt Stone on liberals, conservatives, censorship, and religion (Jesse Walker and Nick Gillespie, Reason, December 2006)

On Romney and the Politics of Mormonism (Steven Taylor, PoliBlog)