Okay, I just can’t add anything too this, because it’s already perfect. It was written by Baratunde, whom I henceforth adore.
Michelle Bachmann is running for president on a pro-slavery, anti-porn platform?
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:37 | baratunde | tagged Election 2012, Marriage, Michelle Bachmann, Slavery, Stupidness
I saw this headline about Bachmann signing some pledge calling for the ban of pornography. I thought, “Well, she just lost half her base.” Then I read the complete pledge and found that it is full of far more disturbing amazing language than just the porn reference.
For example, it binds the signer to oppose Sharia Law, because you know, that’s a huge threat in America right now. I recalled that I stopped buying hot dogs from the halal food cart outside my office because it always came with a side of Sharia Law, and don’t you just hate when Sharia Law spills all over your shoes? It’s so irritating!
The pledge also refers to something it calls “the intimate innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy.” This is the pledge-writers’ way of saying “children.” The “intimate fruit of conjugal intimacy” sounds like something an alien race studying humanity might say because where they come from, there is no such thing as sex. Here on planet Earth, we do have sex, and lots of it. Sometimes sex results in “children,” which is a word we have, also here on Earth.
The pledge was drafted by a group calling itself, “THE FAMiLY LEADER.” Yes, they purposefully do not capitalize the “i” in the name, which is infuriating on a whole different level.
For the moment, let’s set aside the absurdity of having presidential candidates sign any pledge other than upholding the Constitution and get to my favorite part.
This pledge (PDF) is titled, “THE MARRIAGE VOW: A Declaration of Dependence Upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY.” See, they did the thing with the “i” again. These are extraordinarily annoying people. To their partial credit, their pledge opens by acknowledging that one cannot claim to defend marriage without focusing on the high divorce rate, broken families, infidelity and other challenges (besides THE GAYS) “threatening” traditional marriage. Not everything they write is batshit crazy, just most of it. To their discredit, the first bullet point is:
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
Good googly moogly! Read it again.
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.
Now, Cheryl Contee, my co-founder at JJP, has already ripped this group for the slavery reference and rather efficiently and effectively, but I can’t let it sit. It’s as if these people held a Focus Group Of The Sheltered asking “List everything you know that’s black” and came back with “slavery” and “the president.”
Let me be clear. The opinions and analysis of this all-white, moralistic, American Taliban have no purchase in the land of black folk. It’s not like the Official Committee Of Black Folk (I’m a rotating co-chair for the Northeast Directorate) sits around wondering what THE FAMiLY LEADER thinks about our family situation, but still, to invoke slavery in “defense” of marriage exposes a complete lack of historical understanding and common sense, much less sensitivity.
Who in the world thinks bringing up slavery to defend family is a good idea?
To the extent that the black family was even allowed to exist, it was under constant attack by state-supported and sanctioned terrorism. “A child born into slavery was more likely to be raised by his mother and father…” Really? A child born into slavery was the property of its master. The operative word was slavery. Period. Any relationship to its biological parents was far less respected than its commercial relationship to the American economy.
Why stop at two-parent households? Let’s celebrate the free housing, healthcare and meal plan offered to every black slave! You know what else slavery did for black people? Exercise! Oh it was just great! We even got to work outside. Speaking of work, today, African-American unemployment is over 16 percent. In Milwauke, Wisc., over one-third of black men are unemployed. But during slavery times, every black man had a job! See? Things were better in the past, and now things are bad. Ah, the good old days…
This is a pledge that vilifies porn and glorifies slavery, written by a group that has something against the letter “i” and the word “children.” At this point, the only pledge I want a presidential candidate to sign is one pledging not to sign offensive, dumb and unenforceable bullshit like this.
Baratunde Thurston is a politically active, technology-loving comedian from the future. He is currently writing a book called How To Be Black, which will be published by Harper Collins in 2012. By day, he works for The Onion. He spends the rest of his time as the rotating co-chair of the Northeast Directorate for the Official Committee Of Black Folk. You can connect with him on e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Foursquare
I actually read three paragraphs before I realized you HADN’T written it. Maybe you should go write for The Onion! But then you might have to limit your swears, and that would take away that special something I feel when I read your posts.
Or she could just have her own paper, and it would come in a plain brown wrapper, protecting non-swearing folks from her eloquent and glorious swears (which I actually look forward to).
But yeah, writing for The Onion would be good too. Or… better yet, we need someone LIKE that paper to just pick this blog up as an auto-feed! Ah ha ha, we are on our way now!
Julie
I only have 5 words to say about, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter…………….STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES!!!! These women drive me INSANE!!!
I’m looking forward to the Republican nomination, to distract me from the spookiness that is my current government in Canada.
It was a stupid pledge, especially the part about slavery, because it was predictable that it would be so attacked. The problem with the pledge’s line on slavery is that, while it may be factually true, it is not the most morally relevant point one could make: A father running off on his own, after impregnating a woman in a short-lived relationship, is not the same evil as a father forced to leave despite the desires of himself and his wife. Also, the current dearth of two-parent black families has nothing to do with the election of Obama, as the pledge seems to imply. But the pledge did not praise slavery, and I have yet to see the slavery line factually refuted. Slave families had no rights, and yet many stayed together either because of their masters’ sentimentality or because it was in their masters’ interest to do so. For example, Washington, who may of course be criticized for keeping slaves at all, was obsessed with the moral requirement that he not separate slave families, even though doing so would have been strongly to his economic advantage, as he owned many more slaves than his farms needed. Other slave masters could use all or most of their slaves, and so had little need to sell any off. It is true that the growth of cotton growing to the West did result in many sales of slaves from the East, and often the splitting of families, but I have seen no evidence that the majority of black children were separated from either or both parents, as they are today. It is true that slaves had no right to keep their children, and no right to marry, but that does not necessarily mean that fewer slaves actually kept their children, or actually lived as couples, than is the case today.