Does a society that produces female CIA agents (and reelects a black president) gain the right to commit atrocities in its own defense? Is torture justified if the torturer is a university-educated woman, and the tortured a bigoted Muslim fundamentalist?The "predictable left-libertarian response," O'hehir writes, is to say absolutely not, that such acts are "immoral and unjustifiable in almost every instance." Oh, but how boring! Morality is relative: isn't that something we lefties go on about? And once you throw in all the "shades of gray" of right and wrong, who's to say a liberal, multi-cultural society with strong, empowered women shouldn't be allowed to attach electrodes to the testicles of some savage who hasn't even read any Betty Friedan?
Or, put more succintly: liberal apologists for mass murder can't be satirized.
(via Oh Tarzie)
This reminds me of an absurd moment on Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show a few weeks ago. She hosted a panel discussion about the drone program. One of the panelists (Chris Hayes, who I noticed you attacked on Twitter recently) pointed out that a 16-year-old American kid was assassinated under this program's auspices.
ReplyDeleteDunno if you saw Harris-Perry take down Gloria Steinem, who elevated the sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton's candidacy over and above the racism Obama was dealing with during the '08 primary, in a Democracy Now! debate. But it was an epic demolition of an older white "feminist" who completely erased black women and their agency with her comments.
Skip back to this panel discussion a few weeks ago. Harris-Perry's response to Hayes was, "Why do I keep hearing about Al-Awalaki and drones? 16-year-old black boys die in Chicago every week! Why don't we know their names?"
My jaw dropped. Hayes swatted that aside and pressed on. I thought that maybe, just maybe, Harris-Perry seemed to realize how inane that comment was as the discussion wore on. But I don't know.