On Gutlessness and Epic Meetings of Pots and Kettles

Apparently the newest nugget of antichoice wingnut wisdom is that prochoice bloggers are — wait for it — “gutless cowards” because some of us use pseudonyms.

Before you start yelling “Amanda Marcotte! Jessica Valenti! Jill Filipovic!” or point out that plenty of antichoice bloggers do the same, or protest that there’s a king-hell shitload of good reasons for not using your real name online that have nothing to do with the sick obsessiveness and twitchy trigger fingers of the antichoice lunatic fringe, let’s ask ourselves what this woebegone little whine might really be about. Because it can’t really be about anonymity/pseudonyms, since these practices cut across both sides of the abortion rights blogosphere.

From where I sit it looks more like one or two particular pseudonymous prochoice bloggers somehow annoyed some antichoice bloggers who “blog naked” so to speak. And this was the best they could do: a peevish gripe about prochoice bloggers blogging “anonymously”.

But why not?  Baiting a hook and reeling in some predictably goofy comments about “gutlessness” and “hiding behind pseudonyms” to “spew libelous smears”… that kind of post puts a little Fun into a boring mid-week afternoon.  And after all, no matter what the bible-banging doomer goons tell you, Fun is what it’s all about.

Unfortunately, over at BIG BLUE WAVE (copy-paste for obvious reasons: http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2012/07/prolifeprowoman-asks-why-are-so-many.html), SUZANNE spiraled into paroxysms of stupid rage and beclowned herself with this brainless commentary:

Oh, SUZANNE.  “Libel”?  You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It only got worse in the comments, when a few people with their heads screwed on explained that there are a lot of good reasons for blogging pseudonymously. When I saw real-world stories of threats, harassment and stalking brushed off as “cowardly” and “BOGUS”, along with accusations of “Libelous Smears”, I could stand it no longer.  I left a comment, and that was where the Pot and Kettle didn’t just meet but careened into each other at top speed and burst into flames in an epic head-on collision.  My comment, not surprisingly, was

…not published.

 And just because I had the nerve to ask for examples of the “Libelous Smears” and the steel-belted, gold-plated brass BALLS to suggest that said smears might exist only in SUZANNE’s frenzied imagination.  Oh well…

Anyone who makes false accusations of “gutlessness” and especially “libel” should be prepared to back them up.  Making an accusation and then deleting comments that call you on it takes gutlessness to a whole new level.

But so what? Her house, her rules.  She’s a Propagandist and that’s how Propaganda is done. But let the record stand that SUZANNE’s brainless blather about “Libelous Smears” is manufactured from whole rotten maggot-infested cloth, with nothing to back it up but the summer breeze.

And after all, they all do it: longtime readers might recall when false accusations were made against The General at Stanek’s Psych Ward & Fetus Fetishizing Cafe, and when he called her on it in her comments section, she responded by deleting his comment.  These people are nothing if not predictable.

Won’t someone think of the toy soldiers??

We all know fetus fetishists have a marked tendency towards over-the-top anthropormorphism which manifests in such odd concepts as…

<———-this      =      this———>

…but this is getting silly.

How anti-choice propaganda works

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts, right?  Tell that to anti-abortion bloggers, notorious for conflating opinion and fact in their ongoing pursuit of the perfect propaganda.  And here’s how it works:

Dammit Janet has a story today about a ‘crisis pregnancy center’ that was vandalized and torched recently, and fetus fetishists’ brain-damaged attempts to point the finger at pro-choicers.   The original story is on the website of the local newspaper, the White Mountain Independent:

President of the Living Hope Women’s Center governing board and former executive director Dinah Monahan said not much is known yet about the fire, but that it looks as though whoever may have set it first vandalized the Fatherhood Store and threw televisions, VCR’s and other items onto the ground outside before setting fire to the clinic in the back of the building in the Mommy Store. She said the fire did not burn the building to the ground, but it did cause enough fire and smoke damage to gut it and make it at least temporarily useless as a clinic.

Anti-abortion ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ are often little more than compelled pregnancy/adoption agencies that disguise themselves as womens’ clinics.  But this one seems to have had a good relationship with the local community and  given no reason for someone to want to torch it.

The arson appears to be a dumb and brainless act perpetrated by rotten little delinquents with too much time on their hands, and the original story gives no reason to believe otherwise.  The only brief mention of the politics of abortion was in a question investigators asked the center’s president:

“The agent very gingerly asked if we were involved in ‘anything controversial’ in our ministry,” she said. “You can imagine what they hear about Crisis Pregnancy Centers, abortion clinic bombings and the like. I assured him that even though we are a CPC (Certified Professional Consultant), our work was mostly pre-natal and parenting and that the culture in Whiteriver is very pro-life.”

So even the CPC’s president is quite sure the fire wasn’t politically-motivated.  Scrolling through the comments with the article, most seem to agree… except for:

Both “Ceecee” (the same ‘Ceecee’ who posts at Big Blue Fetus?) and “anonymous” are from hundreds of miles away, yet they know better than commenters who live in the community: it’s not kids, it’s “pro-choice violence”. Even when LifeNews reported the story, they didn’t go there — and if LifeNews doesn’t go there, you know there’s no “there” there.

But right-wingnutter Melissa Clouthier doesn’t let reality get in the way of a good SHRIEEEEK! in her article at Right Wing News (and her blog), quoting LifeNews at length and topping it off with this whopper:

Scrolling to the comments and trackbacks, it’s obvious that the screechosphere has picked up Clouthier’s foul ball and is running with it:

So now we have blogs reporting this as something they’re calling “Domestic Pro-choice Terrorism”, which (1) doesn’t exist, and (2) isn’t what the story actually said.   Two! Two! Two lies in one! Not only has this particular story been reinvented, reinterpreted and puked out through a filter of anti-choice batshittery, but something called “Pro-choice terrorism” (which doesn’t even exist — did I mention that?) has entered the news realm, if only at the basest blogospheric level.

As Clouthier concludes, “It will be interesting to find out who committed this attack”.  Indeed it will, though I don’t expect to find out from her.  As an anti-abortion propagandist, her work here is done.

Two men shot dead in Michigan

UPDATED (2:10pm)

There were two weird and seemingly senseless murders in the Owosso area of Michigan early today.

One was an anti-abortion activist known around town as “The Abortion Sign Guy”, who was shot in front of a school (yes, that’s where they parade their idiotic signs these days, in front of schools), true name James Pouillon:

An anti-abortionist has been shot dead in front of horrified teenagers as they arrived for school.

The man, identified locally as Jim Pouillon, was shot and killed outside the Owosso High School in Owosso, Michigan, at about 7.30am local time today as schoolbuses dropped youngsters off for class.

…and the other is being reported as Mike Fouss, who was shot in his office not long after Pouillon:

Owosso Police Chief Michael Compeau said it appears the Shiawassee County Sheriff’s Department is investigating a second homicide this morning that may be related to the shooting that occurred in front of Owosso High School.

The police have a suspect in custody and say the murders are related, but haven’t enlarged upon that.  Although it remains to be seen if Pouillon’s killing had anything to do with his anti-choice activism, that’s not stopping the usual suspects from implying otherwise and even analogizing it to the murder of Dr. George Tiller:

In the wake of the tragedy, Fr. Pavone of Priests for Life told LifeSiteNews.com that he hoped to see “a strong expression of indignation from the pro-abortion community, just like there was a strong expression of indignation form the pro-life community at the killing of Dr. Tiller.”

Nice try, but thanks to an extremely public social networking platform, we got to see the real “indignation”.

Unless Mr. Pouillon was subjected to decades of harassment and was the target of an escalating and unrelenting pro-choice hate campaign that culminated in his summary execution, there’s no basis for analogy.  And not that Father Douche would give a flying fuck, but it’s an insult to Dr.Tiller’s memory that his death, nothing less than a political assassination, would be compared to this tragic but sadly not atypical act of violence.  But hey, might as well strike while the iron’s hot and the body’s still warm, eh?

Because that’s the real goal, isn’t it?  To minimize one murder  (not to mention the ongoing threats to abortion providers) by playing up another.  They’ve been humping this one for months, with phony and fabricated “threat” claims (some so obviously false it’s ridiculous), and now they have a corpse to parade around.

Sorry fetus fetishists.  It’s too bad that both of these guys were killed — and if Pouillon was targeted by some batshit crazy pro-choicer expressly because of his anti-choice activism, other pro-choicers will join me in *strongly denouncing* it.  As much as I disagree with moronic fetus porn displays, I’ve been vocal in my support for the right to be a “moran” (to the chagrin of some of my readers, who are Anti-Moranitarian Extremists).

But that’s where it ends for me:  I’m not playing the false equivalence game with the memory of a pro-choice hero.

UPDATE: According to the NYT, it appears that Pouillon may indeed have been targeted because of his anti-choice activism.  (Link via Lindsay Beyerstein, via Pogge.)  Primarily it seems to be because the shooter didn’t like Pouillon displaying graphic pictures in front of a school…?  And shooting someone in front of a school is so much better?

Although I obviously denounce this brutality, I stand by my remarks about  false equivalence.  This was done by someone clearly unhinged who acted in complete solitude.  It was not the culmination of a decades-long campaign of hate, harrassment and circular reinforcement of the same, directed against the victim.  Out of respect for all the dead, people should avoid making such analogies.

UPDATE 2 (2:30pm):  The shooter apparently had a third target that he never got to, a realtor.  Three targets, motives totally unrelated.  So this was not a politically-motivated crime — rather, some nutcase went off the deep and decided to go around shooting people who’ve pissed him off for various reasons.

My condolences go out to the loved ones of both victims, and particularly to Mrs. Fouss, who is going through treatment for brain cancer.  Stay strong.

UPDATE 3 (2:47pm):  JAB brings up an interesting point.  I’ve read a lot on this story today, but I have yet to see anyone claim that Mr.Pouillon reaped what he sowed by being out there protesting: only that, agree or disagree, it was his right to do so.  As it was Dr.Tiller’s right to perform a legal medical procedure.

So I suppose in that way there is an analogy to be made.

YouTube pulls fetus fetishist vid

By now everyone’s heard about anti-choice scumbag “Lila Rose“, who slimes her way into Planned Parenthood offices pretending to be a minor and covertly films the interviews she has with clinic staff.  Lila Rose, Lila Pose.  It’s a sad, scummy tale that starts in a Planned Parenthood office and, after heavy heavy editing, ends on YouTube:

Since 2006, Rose and a friend have been approaching Planned Parenthood clinics pretending to be underage girls, pregnant by older men, seeking an abortion. Their aim: to catch a Planned Parenthood staffer or volunteer violating the law by counseling the young girls to lie about the ages of their adult boyfriends. The videos, according to the Los Angeles Times are then “boiled down to five minutes, with portentous music and fast cuts to heighten the drama,” and posted both to Rose’s LiveAction.org Web site and YouTube.

“There is this stereotype of who we pro-life leaders are, and for the most part it would be white middle-aged religious men trying to impose their will on women,” said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition. “So now with Lila, you bring this young, fresh college student that completely blows any stereotypes away. No one is going to accuse Lila of being mean, vindictive, and harsh.”

I beg to differ:  devoting all one’s time and energy to skulking around clinics for the express purpose of denying other women their rights is not only mean, vindictive and harsh, but sleazy douchebaggery of the highest order.   But the worm may finally be turning for this vicious little Nazi shrew and her loathesome, spittle-flecked propaganda — YouTube has apparently pulled one of her videos.  Predictably, the whining and yammering is rising to an ululating crescendo as the denizens of Nurse Stanek’s Psych Ward & Basketweaving Workshop stroke themselves into a persecution-driven ragegasm:

I AM SO MAD. The media understands the importance of visuals only for causes or movements it supports. The pro-life movement is certainly not one.

Stanek is, as usual, playing “fast and loose” with the truth, suggesting that the video is being “censored” because it features dead fetus images.   Unfortunately, YouTube hosts thousands of such videos with the same kind of graphic imagery, identical images in fact — they all use and re-use, renew and recycle the same pictures posted at the Operation Shithead and Army of God websites.  The difference is, Lila Rose’s videos are borderline defamatory. 

One of Stanek’s commenters (no doubt soon to be deleted for Apostasy) responds:

So there.  Lila Hose’s “citizen entrapment” tactics push the bounds of legality to begin with, and hosting her videos is risky.   But not for long.  Her routine seems to have run its course — the video YouTube pulled, that of a clinic worker disputing the veracity of  fetus pron, isn’t exactly pants-pissingly huge breaking news.  But it has impacted Planned Parenthood to some degree by focusing the government’s disapproving gaze on its funding.

The real crime is that although 97% of PP’s services are not abortion-related, thanks to outrage generated by Lila Hosebag’s propaganda, PP’s funding has been  threatened in some states — and that’s bad news not just for women seeking abortions, but for those needing other services like cancer screening.  In some areas, Planned Parenthood is the only convenient place to get mammography screening, and funding cuts mean less access to this essential service.  Why does Lila Rose want women to get cancer?

And one other point of interest, if you please:  I wonder if any underage girls have been denied abortion care lately, thanks to Lila Rose’s tireless efforts?  And I further wonder if Lila Rose will be there to help these unwilling mothers when they give birth,  maybe by donating some of the money she gets from the Leadership Institute?  When porcine ungulates aviate.

No difference at all

We all know how anti-choicers twist the truth to promote their agenda, but occasionally they come up with propaganda of such brain-damaged magnitude that it stands alone in its douchebaggery.  Such was the case with something posted yesterday at Jill Stanek’s fetusblog, where they’ve gone into a full-metal pearl-clutching frenzy over a story headlined:

Well, that alone is enough to start a stampede for the fainting couch.  A killer abortionist, and no coverage!  So Unfair and pro-abortionally biased, because after all, the circumstances between this woman’s tragic death and Dr. Tiller’s assassination are exactly the same.  Except that they’re not.

Dr. Tiller was stalked, harassed and shot dead in cold blood in a pre-meditated murder by an anti-abortion lunatic.  The woman in Stanek’s story died because her doctor was negligent, improperly (and one would strongly suspect, inadvertently) administering  the wrong kind of anaesthetic… before the procedure even got started.  That’s right, this story is about anaesthetic, and only tangentially-related to abortion.

As always, in order to cut through the bullshit you have to read right to the bottom of the article to find that:

The District Attorney found the abortionist’s conduct to be “willful, wanton, and reckless” because he sedated Laura with level three drugs without any means of cardiac monitoring or blood pressure cuff; had no assistant who could administer sedation, monitor the patient, or assist in resuscitating her; and, “failed to timely initiate a call to 911.” The board also alleged that the abortionist made false statements.

Tragic story?  Definitely.  Asshole doctor?  For sure.  Death by abortion?  Nope.  Pre-meditated, cold-blooded, sensational murder?  Please.

With fetus fetishists and their “stories”, it’s a good rule of thumb to start off with the assumption that they’re lying, or at least stretching the truth beyond all known parameters, and work your way up from there.

(h/t – Big Blue Fetus, who also hopes everyone buys this horseshit)