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About the Author
Gina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. Her books include They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted; Perfect Husbands and Other Fairy Tales; Babes in Boyland; and, with Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post, I'm With Stupid. She's written or edited other books on vice, Victorians and sex, American humor, the erotics of instruction, The Sopranos, women's humor, and Italian-American literature. She will blog about teaching, sex, humor, money, publishing, ambition, books, marriage, envy (professional and personal), politics (professional and personal), aging, and cartoons.
About Brainstorm
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John L. Jackson Jr.
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Recent Posts
The One Kind of Woman Who Drives Me Crazy | Comment [20]
Questions Concerning Women and Comedy | Comment [34]
'And I'd Like to Thank My Wife for ...' | Comment [89]
Teaching and Tenure | Comment [25]
'That's Our Mistress!' Follow-Up | Comment [29]
Featured Articles By the Author
Palin, Palin, Over the Bounding McCain
(Opinion crossposted at Campaign U. … contains links to material some readers may find objectionable … )
Turns out that Jo Anne Worley from Laugh-In is Sarah Palin’s body double:
This is Palin’s performance in the McCain campaign so far.
This is my favorite line from Elayne Boosler:
“You ever notice that the same people who are against abortion are for capital punishment? Typical fisherman’s attitude, throw ‘em back when they’re small and kill ‘em when they’re bigger. … Conservatives are against sex education in the schools because they think there is a connection between promiscuity and sex education, meaning that kids do it because they learn about it in class. No way. I had four years of algebra and I never do math. These are the folks who say they’re against abortion because birth is a miracle. Hey, popcorn is a miracle, too, if you don’t know how it’s done.”
And a great bit from George Carlin called “Pro-Life is Anti-Woman” (and if you’re easily, or not even so easily, offended, you already know not to watch Carlin, right? You do have the right just to say no and to abstain):
“These Conservatives are obsessed with the fetus … if you’re preborn, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re …”
More tonight!
Posted at 09:20:48 AM on September 3, 2008 | All postings by Gina BarrecaComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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For those of us who oppose abortion, the two actions are not analogous. Abortion terminates prematurely the life of a potential innocent human being. On the other hand, the death penalty (which can be abused and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis) usually results in the death of an actually guilty (from a legal perspective) volitive and rational agent. But I would never offer my unqualified or unequivocal support for the death penalty or lex talionis.
— Anaximander · Sep 3, 10:00 AM · #
By “two actions” I meant abortion and the execution of criminals.
— Anaximander · Sep 3, 10:01 AM · #
Gina B,
Your logos seemed a bit skewed and dominated by your thoughts dripping w/ pathos. Come on, are you really supporting the Boosler “line” and the partisan pablum that it’s all reduced to “the same people who are against abortion support capital punishment”? The “same people” line sounds a lot like the “those people” line and both are examples of intellectually lazy generalizations. Beside the fact the unborn are innocent and the convicted murder (if truly guilty) is far from it is good enough to hit the pause button on your reasoning. You’d think being a prof of English would have exposed you to argumentation. May I suggest a basic textbook? Read the Rieke, Sillars, and Peterson’s text or anything by S. Toulmin or T. Goodnight. You might find utility in such a primer to protect yourself from your own underdeveloped ideas.
— Rob Patterson · Sep 3, 10:02 AM · #
This Barreca’s post is such as waste of the blogosphere. It does not look at all like a “life of one’s mind,” just a cut and paste of someone else’s mind.
— Tautumeita · Sep 3, 10:17 AM · #
I agree with Rob, mostly—slipshod logic. But take the death penalty off the table. So how about the fact that not only does the anti-choice crowd usually oppose abortions AND sex-ed teaching responsible birth control, but they also cut funding for programs that help teen mothers readjust and reenter education and the workforce:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/02/palin_slashed_funding_to_help.html
Not only this, but they’re USUALLY the ones opposed to funding public education. They want babies to be born, but don’t want to help them grow up in a responsible way. Once they’re out, they’re on their own. Yes, these are generalizations, but they’re not “lazy” nor invalid. Rob—how ‘bout addressing the issue at hand rather than condescending the blogger for not writing a peer-reviewed article on the subject? (BTW, your “if truly guilty” line requires your own comment to be exposed to a logical examination of its own.)
— Bonnie · Sep 3, 10:27 AM · #
Bonnie,
Good points. I may fall prey to responding to a pathos-filled argument w/ more a lot more pathos. One thing I like about Gina, you, and me is that we’re passionate about our ideas. It’s been argued passion was the virtue most prized by the ancient Greeks and I think it’s great we all seem to have a lot of it in our tanks.
Yes, re: the part about the“if truly guilty” does open up a new range of questions about the soul of the murderer and the culture that may condemn the convicted rightly or wrongly. In my experience, the rule of law works, but the American legal system is clearly an Isocratean (i.e., frought w/ chaos and error in a world of human affairs) and not Platonic (i.e., separated from human error, devoid of base motivations, and beyond the world of human affairs) institution. Unfortunately, language is the best tool we have to communicate our interests, which is why we’re using it here. I never said Gina had to write a peer-reviewed article. I’m only pointing out that the reductionism found in the Boosler quote seems shaky at best, or, as I wrote, lazy. I guess I disagree about the laziness. Certainly, most generalizations may have elements of truth (or at least that which is observeable) in them, but using them in forming good arguments doesn’t make them responsible agents in discourse.
— Rob Patterson · Sep 3, 10:59 AM · #
Thanks for something FUNNY about this hilarious series of horrible mishaps by the sanctimonious anti-everything radical convservatives! Go Gina B! More!
— lC · Sep 3, 11:00 AM · #
And the same people who are against capital punishment are also pro-choice…
— humana · Sep 3, 11:03 AM · #
“Not every ejaculation deserves a name” is the BEST line!
— nancy · Sep 3, 11:39 AM · #
I tend to be a fairly liberal person, but Barreca’s stunning shallowness makes me think it’s time to repeal the 19th amendment. I don’t know whether Palin would make a good VP, but I’m certain that someone as empty-headed as Barreca doesn’t deserve a vote.
— reader · Sep 3, 11:48 AM · #
This is ridiculous. What’s next – a bunch of Helen Keller and pollack jokes? I’m not offended – I’m embarassed that this is what passes for dialogue at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
— Mike · Sep 3, 12:35 PM · #
IN refence to the posts above: 10 + 11=0; comments are comments and funny is funny. What parts offend you, the Laugh-In, the model tripping, Boosler’s hysterically persuasive arguments, or Carlin’s cutting of the Gordian religious knot/not?
— another reader · Sep 3, 01:14 PM · #
No, but every zygote deserves a name. Someday when birth control is completely perfected, future generations will shake their heads and wonder at our present-day eagerness to terminate pregnancies for the sake of convenience the same we shake our heads at our ancestors who adopted slavery for the convenience of bringing in a crop.
BTW, I think Gina is an excellent writer and stands as the highest exemplar of feminist thought. Which is kind of sad.
— Doug · Sep 3, 01:14 PM · #
Turns out Palin had a few books in mind to ban: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html
— Luke Warm · Sep 3, 03:20 PM · #
Anaximander, “innocent” fetuses?
By the same religious doctrine that you no doubt use to justify opposing abortion, wouldn’t you have to admit that this life is not at all “innocent?”
Let’s at least be consistent within a philosophical system…though that is, I guess, one of the freedoms allowed by religious dogma…you don’t have to make sense or accept an entire belief system.
I wonder what God thinks of Cafeteria Christians?
— JM · Sep 3, 05:46 PM · #
It gets worse: *Provide health care in the U.S.: Terrible! (The government can’t be trusted to do that.) *Provide health care in Iraq: Fantastic!! (Who shall we make the check out to?)
— michael · Sep 3, 05:46 PM · #
#15 says about #1 and #2: “the same religious doctrine that you no doubt use to justify opposing abortion,” meaning that you don’t know, but nevertheless, you say that you know, which is crude and transparent sophistry. If you wish to discuss the religious doctrine of original sin, I think, given Ms Barreca’s jokey introduction, this is hardly the venue for it.
— Pinkster · Sep 3, 08:23 PM · #
#15:
I will not discuss the doctrine of original sin here. However, it seems that a fetus is innocent on two levels. Innocence and guilt can function as legal categories of positive law. When was the last time that an infant violated positive law? Positive law is one distinction that St. Aquinas uses in his careful analysis of law simpliciter.
An infant is also innocent from the perspective of having breached the divine covenant (as in Judaism) or having transgressed the divine commands of God. In either case, I would say that fetuses are innocent; and when it comes to embryos, this argument carries the same weight a fortiori.
— Anaximander · Sep 4, 01:35 PM · #
Addendum to # 18. I should have written “fetus” in place of infant.
— Anaximander · Sep 4, 01:36 PM · #
Anaximander (18 inter alia), exactly what standing do Thomas Aquinas or “divine covenants” have in the Constitutional and Statutory laws of the United States of America?
— Lex Patriae · Sep 4, 02:01 PM · #
I mean, Sarah Palin didn’t send her boy Track off to Iraq for any reason, except she was told to. Does trailer trash have any enemies outside Alaska? Does she know where Iraq is located, the differences and similarities between Sunnis and Shi’ites, that the language of Iran is Farsi and not Arabic? Does she need to know? No. It does not make any difference what she knows. She is merely a MacGuffin, a Holy Grail to make the story move, a True Cross that sparks the Crusades, King Solomon’s Mines, The Maltese Falcon, Moby Dick, the bean that grows into Jack’s beanstalk, a hula hoop, a frisbee, a mood ring, a Cracker Jack toy. McCain is the Cracker Jack, sweet and salty on the lumpy outside, mostly dead air and grease on the inside.
— Joe Palmer · Sep 8, 10:36 AM · #
Palin looks more like the Karen Walker character from Will and Grace – just instead of booze Palin ODs on a KKK style of religion.
— Michele · Sep 8, 05:24 PM · #
The Connecticut Forum has it’s first event September 27 and it’s all about The Presidency! Featured guests include Elizabeth Edwards, Matthew Dowd, and Joseph Ellis, they will be discussing and debating the 2008 presidential candidates and campaigns. Be prepared for an unscripted, provocative evening at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford…come join us!
— Connecticut Forum · Sep 15, 02:40 PM · #