It's February 18, 2019 and it's time to review five of the most outrageous, infuriating,
or just plain baffling things that have happened lately.
It's your Facepalm Five.
Let's count 'em up!
1.
Measles rallies.
The states of Washington and Oregon have been experiencing an outbreak of measles over the
last few weeks, which has renewed calls to legally require parents to have their children
vaccinated unless they have a legitimate medical reason not to.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles eliminated as an endemic
disease in the United States in the year 2000.
There are still cases of it reported from time to time, but those are mostly imported
– the result of someone being exposed to measles outside the U.S. and then bringing
it into the country with them.
That's not usually a big deal, but the threat of a measles outbreak is increased by the
presence of unvaccinated people in the population.
The current measles outbreak is centered in Clark County, Oregon, which has one of the
highest rates of vaccine exemptions in the country.
Oregon state law allows parents to forego having their children vaccinated for philosophical
reasons.
Neighboring Washington State, which has also been hit by the recent measles outbreak, has
a similar law.
Week before last in Olympia, hundreds of people rallied to protest a bill being considered
by state legislators that would remove the philosphical vaccine exemption from state
law.
One of the protesters told CBS News that she opposed the bill because she didn't feel
that she was putting her child at risk by not having them vaccinated for measles.
Here's the thing, though: that protester is wrong.
Measles is an extremely contagious and – especially for young children – an extremely dangerous
disease.
The measles vaccine, on the other hand, has repeatedly been shown to be safe and effective.
In 1980 over two and a half million people worldwide died of measles.
In 2014, after decades of vaccination initiatives, the number of global deaths due to measles
was around 73,000.
Most people who die from measles are children under the age of five.
The vaccine prevents measles and is safe for the overwhelming majority of people who receive
it.
It protects them, and it protects everyone else, including those who can't get vaccinated
for legitimate reasons.
That's not a matter of opinion; it's a matter of scientific fact.
Unless you're a scientist or a doctor with the relevant training, you don't even have
standing to argue about this!
So shut up and vaccinate your goddamn kids.
2.
Virginia is for racists (and rapists).
Week before last a city commissioner in Madeira Beach, Florida resigned after being fined
by an ethics commission for licking a man's face at a public event.
I bet a lot of you never even heard about this, or you did hear but soon forgot about
it because you, like the rest of us, were wondering what the hell is going on in Virginia?!
The top three state officials in Virginia, all Democrats, are all facing accusations
of serious misconduct – two of a racist nature, one of a sexual nature.
Let's start with that last one: Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has been accused of
sexual assault by two women.
Democratic United States Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris has called for a thorough
investigation of the accusations against Fairfax, and the president of the National Organization
of Women has called on Fairfax to resign.
Fairfax acknowledges having sex with both women who accuse him, but insists their encounters
were consensual, and characterizes the accusations against him as part of a smear campaign to
keep him from assuming the office of governor if the current governor is forced to resign.
And why would the current governor be forced to resign?
As if you didn't know.
Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, has spent all month at the center of a scandal
that would be comical if it weren't so reminiscent of some of the darkest and deepest sins of
my country's history.
A photo from Northam's 1984 medical school yearbook surfaced depicting two men, one wearing
blackface, the other dressed in a Ku Klux Klan costume.
Northam initially apologized for appearing in the photo, though he didn't say which
one he was, Blackface Guy or Klan Guy.
But then, the next day, Northam held a press conference where he declared that actually,
you know what, he's not in that photo after all!
And furthermore, he knows he's not in the photo, because he knows he'd remember putting
on blackface, because he totally remembers this other time he put on blackface when he
dressed in a Michael Jackson costume.
All right, look, the photo is small, low resolution – it would be difficult if not impossible
to definitively prove who those two people are based only on the photograph itself.
And "it wasn't me" is a pretty good excuse, if it's true.
But it's really difficult to sell "it wasn't me" when you've said "it was
me, sorry," already.
And even if it's not Northam in that yearbook photo, he admitted to wearing blackface another
time anyway!
So either way he's got to go, right?
That's what I think, and pretty much every politician in the Commonwealth of Virginia
agrees with me, including both the state Democratic and Republican parties, plus a whole bunch
of prominent Democrats from outside Virginia.
After the Northam story broke, Virginia's attorney general, Mark Herring, admitted that
he had worn blackface in the 1980s, too!
I think I need to take a step back from this.
At the start of this segment I was like "what the hell is going on in Virginia?" and that's
a fair sentiment, but the truth is, it's not just Virginia.
And it's not just the south.
Anyone honestly think there aren't a lot more racist yearbook pictures and other similar
items out there waiting to be found in all corners of this country?
Anyone honestly think there aren't a lot more public officials out there who have sexually
assaulted people whose victims just haven't come forward yet?
These people and their offenses aren't abberations.
They're the norm.
They're a part of who we are as a nation – embarassing, harmful, ugly, but not unusual.
We need to accept that and start dealing with these issues as systemic problems rather than
isolated scandals.
But while I'm holding my breath waiting for that to happen, Northam, Fairfax and Herring
have all got to go.
Yes, the next person in line for governor after those three is a Republican, which sucks,
but here the fuck we are.
3.
Kansas Republicans propose most bizarre anti-LGBTQ bill yet.
A new bill just introduced in the Kansas state legislature is certainly not the first attempt
to curtail the rights of LGBTQ people, but it might just be the most . . . um, creative?
The bill, HB 2320, seeks to define LGBTQ identities as part of a religion – specifically, the
religion of secular humanism.
"But Steve," I imagine some of you are saying, "secular humanism isn't a religion."
I know!
I know.
The bill declares that the LGBTQ community is a denominational sect of the religion of
secular humanism, with its own symbols (the pride flag), its own belief structure based
on what the bill calls faith-based assumptions about sexuality and gender, and "a code
by which members may guide their daily lives."
Is this gonna be the new disgruntled right-winger talking point?
They noticed people don't really pay attention any more when they rant about the Gay Agenda,
so now it's the LGBTQ code?
Anyway, the point of the bill is that because LGBTQ identities are part of the religion
of secular humanism, and because the government is constitutionally prohibited from enshrining
the rights of one religion over another, therefore the government should not recognize the rights
of LGBTQ people, including the right of same-sex marriage.
Trying to marginalize LGBTQ people by arguing that being forced to recognize their rights
marginalizes those who reject the "religious orthodoxy" of secular humanism – it's
audacious, I'll give 'em that.
Sure, one of the defining aspects of secular humanism is that it's not a religion, and
sure, if having an LGBTQ identity means you're part of a religious denomination, then we
are all part of a religious denomination, because even those of us who aren't LGBTQ
have sexual orientations and gender identities – my orientation is heterosexual and my
gender identity is cis male.
I mean, these are concepts created to describe traits that we all have in one form or another.
To deny that would be like saying "only redheads have hair – the rest of us are
just normal, and if you argue that hair is a common human trait and everybody should
have equal rights under the law no matter what color their hair is or what style in
which they choose to wear it, you're asking the state to endorse the dogma of your religion"
– which is no less preposterous than what the authors of HB 2320 are actually saying.
Wow.
4.
Clergy sex abuse: it's not just for the Vatican any more.
Chin up, Catholics!
Your church is still complicit in centuries of sexual abuse, but at least it's not the
only one!
An article published last week in the Houston Chronicle, the first of a series, describes
the widespread problem of sex abuse in Southern Baptist churches.
According to the article, nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders have been accused of sexual
misconduct since 1998.
The total number of victims is over 700.
The Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the United States,
and the second largest Christian denomination overall, after the Catholic Church.
The investigation by journalists from the Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News
found evidence that dozens of people with histories of sexually predatory behavior,
including some who had been required to register as sex offenders, were able to find work at
Southern Baptist churches, some as pastors.
The reporters interviewed victims who told them about leaders of the Southern Baptist
Convention who knew about the abuse but ignored it and sometimes acted to conceal it.
The parallels to the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal are obvious: a widespread problem,
known to many church leaders who did little or nothing about it, which was finally brought
to light by journalists amplifying the voices of those who survived the abuse.
It's tempting, particularly to many of my fellow atheists, to blame things like this
on religion, but I don't think that's fair.
However, I do think it's fair to blame the deference we show religious institutions,
particularly Christian ones in this country, for allowing things like this to happen so
often and for so long.
Churches and the people who run them are given the benefit of the doubt more frequently and
with less consideration than any other institution in our society with the possible exceptions
of law enforcement and the military.
That lack of oversight, and that reluctance to think the worst of religious leaders even
when the evidence of their crimes has been piling up for decades, are flaws we urgently
need to fix, for the sakes of the survivors of these abusers and for those who will be
victimized in the future if we don't do more to stop it.
And now it's time for the segment devoted to some of the other things Donald Trump has
done recently to disgrace the presidency and embarrass and/or endanger the United States
and the rest of the world:
5.
The Further Misadventures of Lord Dampnut.
Please keep in mind as always: the following is not a complete list.
He delivered a State of the Union address that was full of lies and distortions, like
every other Trump speech, but which also included disingenuous calls for unity, and repeated
demands that investigations into his presidential campaign and administration be abandoned,
some of which bordered on threats.
He renewed his racist attacks against Elizabeth Warren, calling her "Pocahontas" and tweeting
what appeared to be a reference to the Trail of Tears, which is exactly the level of class
I'd expect from someone who proudly declares that Andrew Jackson is his favorite president.
He tweeted, in response to . . . I don't know, something, "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!
It should never be allowed to happen again!"
He mocked senator and newly declared presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar for promising to fight
climate change while delivering a speech during a snow storm, because our dipshit president
still doesn't know what climate change is or why it doesn't mean the end of snow.
And he accepted a deal passed by Congress to keep the federal government from shutting
down again, then went on to announce that he was declaring a national emergency, which
could allow him to begin construction of his border wall without approval from Congress.
Let's not race past the significance of this.
I know everyone's been talking about it all weekend, but it bears repeating: the President
of the United States has declared an emergency in response to a crisis at the U.S./Mexico
border that does not exist.
There is a humanitarian crisis at the border, but it's not the one Trump is responding
to – it's the one he's responsible for.
Two weeks before Trump announced he would declare an emergency, Trump administration
attorneys filed documents as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU where they conceded that
thousands more migrant children were separated from their families as a result of the so-called
"zero tolerance" policy than the official estimates, and that reuniting them all with
their families may be impossible, since the Office of Refugee Resettlement does not have
the resources to track down all those children.
That's a situation that Donald Trump is directly responsible for.
That's an atrocity.
That's the kind of thing they convene tribunals at The Hague to deal with.
But that's not an emergency.
Not to Trump, this abomination of a human being, never mind a president.
But perhaps the most frustrating part of this is, Trump knows his emergency declaration
is bogus.
He said so.
While he was announcing it.
During his remarks in the Rose Garden announcing that he was declaring a national emergency,
Trump said, "I don't need to do this," admitting that he could have continued to
pursue other ways to get the border wall built, but he'd rather get it done faster.
That's not an emergency.
You're saying it's not an emergency.
I know you're not smart enough to realize that's what you're saying, but that's
what you're saying.
You're telling us there is no emergency as you're declaring the – . . . a facepalm's
not gonna do it for this one.
I need something other than a facepalm.
This'll just – Okay.
All right. That'll do it.
That's good.
That's what it needed. I feel better now.
That's five.
Speak out, act out, resist, look after each other.
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