‘Neck-bearded’…. Heh.

ross douthat doesn’t always masturbate, but when he does, he reads sylvia plath while he works his way into it.

It’s always interesting, when reading the comments to any opinion piece at the NYT, to check out the difference between the ‘readers picks’ and the ‘NYT picks’. Nearly every favorite of the readers is telling Douthat that he’s ‘wrong, wrong, desperately wrong!’, while the paper’s picks maintain a proper balance of pros and cons. I don’t have to think twice about which collection I feel is more representative of the general public.

I find the term neck-bearded incredibly offensive, insensitive and possibly sexist.

I’m telling Jane.

I actually find the thought of Ross climbing into my vagina incredibly offensive.

I think it was mean to put those kitties up there with that awful man.

Is this sort of “liberal eugenics,” in which the agents of reproductive selection are parents rather than the state, entirely different from the eugenics of Fisher’s era, which forced sterilization on unwilling men and women?

Yes.

Take it from a grammar Nazi: the plural of “Nazi” is “Nazis,” not “Nazi’s.”

Cheers, you’re correct, of course. And I really consider myself quite blessed in that I just do not know Ross Do-that….what a name. I seriously doubt that I will ever have the occasion to make his aquaintance, so I can rest in peace. Does he sound like a sexist idiot? Sorry, ‘fraid so. Ba-Bye.

Crap. Fxed.

The only ‘neck-bearded’ chap I ever knew was an Iranian fellow – he could go from extremely close-shaven to full-on bearded between the 8am class I had with him and the departmental seminar at 7pm. Srsly hairy!

Yeah, but now The Artsy Awards page was eaten by the intertubez!

I blame Obama!

Yes, but will we become Nazis like the Nazis of the 3rd Reich, or will we become Nazis like in the movie Iron Sky? Or will we be more like the Nazis that attend Teabagger rallies?

This asshat has it bassackwards

To say nothing of that poor squirrel…

Douchie’s just pulled the timeworn cherry-picking attack on Margaret Sanger (the one where it’s carefully ignored that eugenics was still part of the cultural and even scientific mainstream when Sanger was working) out of the anti-choicers’ deep freeze and heated it up in the microwave.

Call me when he actually spouts an opinion he didn’t crib from Robert Stacy McCain or Bill Buckley’s corpse.

“In 90 percent of cases, a positive test for Down syndrome leads to an abortion.” I tried to follow links to find out where the hell that statistic comes from but no use. I have a feeling it is bullshit and no one called him on it.

Squirrels are discriminating animals with excellent tails. They are also very occasionally omnivores. I’m thinking it’s best not to look closely at exactly what kind of nut it’s chewing on.

The rich will always have their abortions. Republicans and Conservative Democrats (see: Obama/Stupak) have had great success in restricting abortions for the poor and the erstwhile middle class.

In his quest to twist the facts to prove that Liberals are Nazis, Douchehat neglected to point out the obvious.

Conservative or Liberal, Anybody who has the means to pay, has the means to opt for the latest scientific fetal diagnostics.

Obamacare won’t be paying for it.

“This progressive fascination with eugenics largely ended with World War II and the horrors wrought by National Socialism.”…”That scenario is all but unimaginable in today’s political climate.”…”Having left behind pseudoscientific racial theories, it’s easy for us to look back and pass judgment on yesterday’s eugenicists.”

Still, says Ross, those liberal bastards are probably going to evil things anyway, despite the fact that I refute my own argument. (Thanks for the paycheck, New York Times.)

Good Call. I’m 90 percent sure you’re right that Douchehat made that up or got it from Jonah Goldberg.

My understanding, too.

I LOVE Pikachu!

It’s on Wikipedia so it must be true. That’s what I always say. It’s sourced there but I don’t have the inclination to read that stuff right now. I need t’iron clothes for tomorrow an’ shit.

SCIENCE!

Thanks to examples like Irving Fisher, we know what the elites of a bygone era would have done with that kind of information: they would have empowered the state (and the medical establishment) to determine which fetal lives should be carried to term, and which should be culled for the good of the population as a whole.

That scenario is all but unimaginable in today’s political climate.

First of all, Irving Fisher relied on the U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), which was then good law. In that case, Justice Holmes upheld the state’s (Commonwealth of VA)decision to sterilize an individual against her objection in order to prevent the birth of what the Chief Justice callously characterized as “imbeciles.” Neither the Petitioner, Carrie Buck, nor her sister, who was also sterilized against her will, would be considered mentally deficient by today’s standards. (Good lord! They let people of lower intellect write for the Times, now!) The rationale for the Court’s decision was that if the state could use its police powers to enforce compulsory immunization, then it could enforce compulsory sterilization to prevent more than one generation of imbeciles from becoming a burden on the state. Abortion deals with fundamental rights, which are analyzed differently. From a Constitutional standpoint, Dough-butt is comparing apples with oranges.

But let’s get to the meat of Douthat’s assertion, above:

Parents who abort fetuses having genetic deformities are the least of society’s problems. Wait until your health care insurer tells you that the care for you or your children will be limited because of that preexisting “genetic defect.” But I suppose passively “culling the herd” doesn’t offend the morals of the Teatards, regardless of how painful it might be for those affected.

I’ll bet that a lot of people never realized how horrible the Holocaust was until Douthat compared it to ABORTION.

Douchehat just said and/or implied that bc that was the *big deal* vis Snowbilly Snooki & having Trig rather than aborting him. At the time it was made to be this huge deal that made Grifterella into a saint or something. My rightwing family still wax lyrical about Bible Spice having Trig. It was presented by the PTB as if many who found out that their kid had Downs then terminated the pregnancy. I always wondered about the stats to prove this. It’s just another lazy wingnut welfare talking point to say that all liberals are out to terminate their kids who have problems like Downs.

Where’s the stats proving this? And why is it blamed on liberals?? Douthat is lazy & bogus & a tool. Same old different day.

By the by, trisomy 21 AKA Down Syndrome is a birth defect, not a heritable trait, so I’m not sure it’s a subject eugenics would address anyway. Judges?

Unfortunately for Douthat’s bullshit, eugenics wasn’t particular to progressives:

By mid-century, most mainstream Protestant leaders agreed that the nation needed to calibrate carefully the number and type of babies—and immigrants—allowed.

One central means for ensuring the careful calibration of procreation was shame. Indeed, the author of Fewer and Better Babies anticipated that working-class parents who produced more than two children would eventually be considered “anti-social, as criminal members of the community.” The anti-immigration and birth-control movements during the first half of the 20th century were linked by the sense that some people were beneath human dignity and would pollute “native stock American” bloodlines. The growing consensus during this era was summed up by the words of a Methodist clergyman from Missouri, writing for the Methodist Quarterly Review: “We should demand that each child born is worthy of a place in our midst.”

Amy Laura Hall, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/35.40.html

love your thoughtt.

Perhaps the more socially acceptable ‘prison pussy’ would describe Mr. Douthat’s choice of facial grooming.

Also, too, a commenter writes:

“I would add, of course, that if eugenics was practiced in order to ‘weed out’ those with various diseases and physical conditions, Stephen Hawking (among many others) would not have been allowed to live.”

Can ALS be diagnosed in utero? IIRC Mr. Hawking did not begin to show symptoms of the disease until he was at university.

It was not meant to be a factual statement – the 90% figure is a dead giveaway.