Dumb All Over

Has anyone else, over the last couple weeks, been having to remind themselves what year it is, that the notion of any debate over contraception seems as inconceivable (cue Inigo Montoya) at this point as any basic civil rights issue from the past six or seven decades? Seriously, a couple months ago most people would have rightly assumed that there was no argument to be had over birth control pills, and yet our Crusaders o' Infinite Regression went and found one.

Thank the Flyin' Spaghetti Monster that Fatboy Limbaugh just could not resist waddling into this, pendulous belly sloshing heedlessly against, you know, a pretty easy majority of the population. Limpballs' hasty apology/retraction indicates that he and his sponsors found out real quick what the pinkwashers at Komen found out last month -- women put up with a lot as it is, but when you start fucking with their ability to manage their own lives, you're just asking for it.

Maybe Darrell Issa could convene another claque of middle-aged men to dictate to the little ladies what's best for them, hilarity would be guaranteed to ensue.

But hey, while they're giving Limpballs et al what for, perhaps the boycotters might also consider going after the bigger institutions that persist in this medieval nonsense. I do not understand how or why a woman who disagrees with this guff could in good conscience continue to vote Republican, or stay Catholic. You want it to stop, take the money out of it, that is really the only way.

But more practically, this cafeteria philosophy only tends to empower the mossbacks in the long run, if said cafeterios won't actually take a stand on any of it. One question is why institutions continue with unconscionably outmoded doctrine, but an equally legitimate question is why members of those institutions who have individually passed them by continue to stay and put up with it.

It's like watching Tina Turner keep on trying to convince herself she can bring Ike around. But that never did happen, did it? So Republican and Catholic women can continue to contribute to organizations that, on a very fundamental level, treat them with contempt and disdain, or they can tell them once and for all to get bent already, that they ain't puttin' up with that shit anymore.

That is not an endorsement per se, tacit or otherwise, of another political party or religious denomination. Indeed, people (not just women in particular, but people in general) may find that extricating themselves from all of that -- from power structures who, in the age of instant contact and social agglomeration, are as outdated as their medieval positions -- could be an actual liberating movement.