When Your Little Boy Needs A Life-Saving Experimental Drug, What Do You Do? Turn To Facebook.

Yesterday:

7-year-old Josh Hardy was dying.

Today, however, that headline has changed to:

7-year-old Josh Hardy might live.


With the help of thousands of friends - via facebook and change.org - Josh may be given a new lease on life through an experimental drug previously denied to him.

A Durham drug maker announced Tuesday evening that it will provide critical drugs for a dying 7-year-old boy after his family put pressure on the company to do so, largely through social media.

Supporters of a dying 7-year-old had planned to travel to Durham Thursday to convince drug maker Chimerix to release an experimental drug that could save the boy.

"Josh's Army", numbering in the tens of thousands, responded to his dilemma last week with angry tweets and notes on Facebook, and Chimerix's executives have gotten death threats. They screamed for "compassionate use."

CNN

Here's the way it [compassionate use] works: According to the Food and Drug Administration, if someone has a serious or immediately life-threatening disease and has tried and failed other available treatments, they can ask a drug company for an experimental drug, one that they're still studying and has not yet been approved by the FDA.

The All Or Nothing Dillemma

Chimerix, the producer of the experimental drug brincidofovir, at first denied the drug because it was not yet approved by the FDA for Josh's kind of virus. That's when people started screaming "compassionate use" at Chimerix. But the company said that if they gave it to Josh, they would have to give it to the hundreds of others waiting for it - at $50,000 each - a sum that would significantly halt the research on the drug. Chimerix is not a large company - it employs only about 50 people.

For the Chimerix/FDA solution, read HERE.

Let's hope that the combined efforts of Josh, his parents, Facebook, change.org, the FDA and, yes, Chimerix produce the results everyone is hoping for. 

CPAC For Laughs: It's The Only Way To Take It.

Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan walk into a bar...

Except the "bar" was last week's CPAC, and the unintended hilarity proved that Conservatives (read: anybody not a commie-pinko-leftist) can't take a joke - because they ARE a joke.

In terms of intelligent dialogue, CPAC was almost painful: yes, Bachmann actually said that about the Tea Party, setting the tone for the whole affair. Rand Paul got the most applause, actually, because quoting Pink Floyd was, well, cool:

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

To hell with the fact that most of Pink Floyd's lyrics railed against capitalism and the establishment that Paul's form of Libertarianism is trying to bring back. Yeah, it was real cool, man. Obama-bashing at it best!

Of course, while paling in comparison to Rand Paul's eloquent and oh-so-timely address, others did their best to regale the politico-culture war troops with their bravado: Mitch McConnell, for example, entered waving a rifle and Sarah Palin read her own version of Green Eggs and Ham:

I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like his health care scam;
I do not like these dirty crooks or how they lie and cook the books;
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their crony deals;
I do not like this buy-in man, I do not like ‘oh yes we can’;
I do not like this spending spree, we’re smart, we know there’s nothing free;
I do not like reporters’ smug replies when I complain about their lies;
I do not like this kind of hope and we won’t take it ‘nope, nope, nope’

The crowd didn''t seem to care that Palin might be mocking Ted Cruz as well. Of course, SHE didn't know she was mocking Ted Cruz. Using one of the iconic political buffooneries of the last decade to lambaste the current administration only seemed to prove that conservatives are stuck in one gear: stupid. 

Speaking of stupid, Paul Ryan told a fake story about a little boy and his love of lunches in paper bags. "The left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul." Unfortunately, while the totally untrue story had wings among CPAC attendants, Ryan had to admit to his fakery. They don't call him Lyin' Ryan for nothing!

And on the environment ...

Alex Epstein of the Ayn-Rand worshipping Center For Industrial Progress... said that it was silly to ask if humans are behind climate change, because that assumes that "if man did change climate, it would be a bad thing.”
Epstein added that if you are worried about man-made climate change, you are displaying “a prejudice against the man-made” or as he likes to put it, “human racism.”

CPAC: Working hard to make conservatism cool with the video, ‘N*gga, please’ Yes, you read that right. Real Story's full story about Raymmar Tirado's attendance at CPAC can be reader in the title, and the offending video is here. (I didn't want to dignify it by embedding it - see for yourself). It's all about "reverse racism" and how blacks are just as racist as whites. It purports to show how divisive reverse racism is by being divisive itself. So for a political group that's striving to "reach out to minorities," the video was the most counterproductive thing imaginable. 

And speaking about minority outreach, the "diversity" panel was a bit sparse.



CPAC's hilarity overflowed out into the streets and down the road to other PACs:

SPLC:

The Family Research Council’s executive vice president, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (retired), was caught on a “hot mic” following a panel yesterday at the National Security Action Summit, which was held just down the street from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Boykin could be heard, in an awkward attempt at humor, telling a reporter from Israel that “Jews are the problem” and the “cause of all the problems in the world.” Boykin told another reporter that President Obama identifies with and supports Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood and uses subliminal messages to express this support.

Even laugh-fests must come to an end, and Ann Coulter brought everyone back to reality and declared:

“Amnesty is forever and you got to vote for the Republicans one more time and just make it clear; but if you pass amnesty, that’s it, it’s over and then we organize the death squads for the people who wrecked America.”

Of course, Ann Coulter(geist) can put a damper on anything.

The Coming War: Arizona Was Only A Skirmish

It's My RELIGION, Stupid!

Religion has held a place in America's political and emotional landscape far greater than in most countries in recent history: the reverence paid to all things religious has been so resolute, so fierce, that whenever religion enters an arena, it is taken for granted that religion will gain the upper hand.* 

Religion in America has always gotten special privileges. Tax exemption is one, of course, but it has always been given the privilege to discriminate: it rarely has to "put up with" anything. After all, telling religion that it MUST do something is akin to ordering around God. Religion may be God's representative, but Americans have a tendency to equate the two instead. 

Perhaps that's why the relatively small fracas in Arizona caught the attention of the American public: in an article titled Arizona on Steriods, Think Progress wonders if the Supreme Court will make the ultimate decision on discrimination:

Unfortunately, Arizona is far from the only state where lawmakers are contemplating bills that would give the government, private businesses, and others the a license to discriminate under the guise of “religious liberty.” As Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote yesterday, “this didn’t start with Arizona, and it won’t end with Arizona.”
Freedom To Discriminate

For years, the gay rights movement has described itself as one of civil rights, with a great many people (especially African Americans) aghast at the idea that the two were ever alike. The situation in Arizona, however, gave more credence to the gay-rights-as-civil-rights meme than the Christian Right imagined: in other words, while crying for "religious freedom", it had to admit to another freedom it already had - the freedom to discriminate. Rich Lowry of the National Review stated as much (see below): Arizona SB 1062 was simply attempting to define a form of discrimination that was already on the books, and it was clearly aimed at discrimination against gays. It's undoing was it's broad terminology - so broad that it could be used to discriminate against anyone else for any number of reasons as long as providing the service or goods to someone was "against my religion." Gays were not only grouped in with unwed mothers and prostitutes, they were lost in a vast sea of people one's religion might not abide: discrimination is limited only to the thousands of doctrinal variants. 

The Coming War

The weapons used in any war depend upon who you are attacking, and the weapons of choice by the Christian Right will be the Bible and the Constitution, both used in the legislatures and the courts. To some, this might seem an unfair advantage, given America's reverence for religion: the enemy seems only to have the Constitution. But there is another weapon - totally ethical - which now eludes the Christian Right: America's conscience, it's sense of fairness. 

The strategy of the Christian Right in terms of it's newly found cry of  "religious freedom" will be to pitch each battle individually in each state, just as it has in its front on abortion. The battles will be won easily in states like Alabama and Mississippi, but expect blood to be shed in other states.

Bloodshed

The coming war may seem to some to be bloodless, a battle for the rights of bakers to refuse to make wedding cakes for gay couples. Indeed, this is how the Right is portraying the whole confrontation: "We insist on our religious freedom to discriminate. Just go to another bakery!" This, however, is but a pretense: the implications and ramifications are far reaching and the Right can see victory on other fronts: discrimination can seep into the very fabric of America while under the guise of religion. 

And the Christian Right is still a formidable adversary - formidable to inflict wounds into gay rights, pro choice and other progressive movements. Spurred on by its own wounds from federal court reversals, the Christian Right feels that it is fighting for its life. 

... and it's "freedom."






*Case in point: the title "Reverend". The title is legal in over 28 states, giving the title holder the authority to perform marriages and conduct funerals regardless of which institution (if any) bestowed it on the holder. Yes, it's the reason I am able to call myself (legally), "Rev. Dan". To me, it is not only a statement of faith and commitment to the basic truths of Christianity, but also an acknowledgement of my studies in today's  theologies. But while I consider my right to it as legitimate as anyone else's, there are others who take umbrage and consider it an offense to the clergy. 

On The Good Ship Neverland: Shirley Temple As Icon For A Nation Of Make Believe

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was 6,” she once wrote. “Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”
From Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (but don't have sex or take the car) by Dickie Moore:

"I had to have my lunch in the bungalow because I wasn't supposed to mix with adults. I was supposed to be kept a child. They figured that if I had lunch in the commissary I would learn jokes and would become a little adult, which they didn't want. So I ate alone."

Shirley Temple lived in a bubble made by Hollywood so that she could present a skewed, happy-go-lucky world unaffected by great the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt often stated that she was the best antidote for the era and kept everyone's spirits up during dark times. 

But Shirley didn't know that. She didn't know that her's was the 7th biggest salary in the U.S. She didn't know that she was doing anything particularly special. She was the little queen of escapism, but didn't know it. In fact, later on in life, she always listed her greatest achievements as ambassador (to Ghana first, under Nixon then to Czechoslovakia under George H.W. Bush). 

Isolation

In a very real sense, Shirley Temple was an isolated little girl in a nation that wanted to be isolated from the terrors of a broken economy. The nation needed Hollywood: it pressed studios for foreign adventures (Gunga Din), great romances (Wuthering Heights), fairy tales (Wizard of Oz) and ended the decade in a melodramatic fever, Scarlett fever, to be exact (Gone With The Wind). It didn't want to concern itself with the machinations of a maniac in Germany. It didn't want to see anything but a perky little girl who melted hearts with a smile and a song. 

When asked about that isolation, Shirley often remarked, "Well, I still turned out OK, didn't I?" So many child stars didn't fare as well: dazzled with stardom and transitioning to adulthood we saw the likes of Jackie Coogan and McCauley Culkin.

Perhaps it was the isolation that saved Shirley Temple: people didn't throng her like they do today's Justin Bieber. 

First The Boy Scouts, Then Coke, Now General Motors and Chevy: The Gayification Of America?

The gay rights front in the culture war certainly stepped up in the last year with key brands: the the Boy Scouts, the Girls Scouts, Chick fil-A, Duck Dynasty, the Olympics, Coke.

And now Chevy.



OMG! But look at the subsequent commercial:



OMG! OMG! OMG!

Both aired at the opening of the Sochi Olympics. Both have already spurred the ubiquitous sounds of "boycott."

So? With each new revelation of acceptance, the Right - especially the Christian Right - reacts as if it never saw it coming. Oh, some predict the general downfall of civilization and America, but not in terms of the icons of the American landscape.

Duh! Didn't Chevy point the big CR to a trend with this one?

The Trend Of Inclusion and Its Proportion

The trend of inclusion: drawing people into a widening circle for today's marketplace is certainly not new: it's why we have striven to place African-Americans in television and in advertising (hopefully) proportionate to the overall population.

Proportionate to the local/regional population is another matter.

"Restaurateur brags about refusing to serve “freaks,” and “f****ts,” also Muslims, blacks and people with metal in their face."

The above "restauranteur" is in Enid, Oklahoma, a city of 50,000 with only 3% African-American population. The population is predominantly white and Christian (90 churches!). Enid's distinction: having the most grain storage capacity in the U.S. Running into a "freak", "f****t, Muslim, people "with metal on their face" or even blacks would be rare indeed.



Communities like Enid, however, are not rare, and they are the reason many Americans fear what they do not know: if gays were depicted over 5% of the time in the public life, that would be enough for these communities to scream about "gayification." Communities like Enid embody the last stronghold of the Christian Right who claim that "liberalism" and "gay acceptance" is being shoved down the nation's throats. Even in communities with large minority populations, inclusion/acceptance of another minority is threatening, so the Christian Right gathers them together under a common banner of intolerance.

Republicans also have a hand in the intolerance as well: Enid is overwhelmingly Republican and embodies many Republican ideals. Notice that "restauranteur" Gary James refused to serve people "on welfare" and accommodate people with disabilities. 

A Matter of Rhetoric

Gary James may seem extreme in his blanket bigotry and insular view, but the fact remains that elements of his bigotry are still present throughout the country, especially in parts dominated by the Christian Right. If James, in fact, had simply stated that he wouldn't serve gays on religious grounds, for example, he would have gotten a pass. His biggest enemy is his own inclusive rhetoric: he hates everyone who isn't straight, white, able-bodied, without metal on the face ... and working. He has no problem with this because he sees himself in his customers and in Enid all the time. He thinks he knows how to spot a "f****t". 

"F****ts" as family members isn't in James' lexicon. He might not drive a Chevy from now on. 

Family

Probably the most daring strike against the Christian Right the recent ad have are the "redefinition" of  family. We will no doubt hear that Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has "the sadz" over them and that companies like General Motors and Coca Cola have given in to the powerful "homosexual lobby." 

Sorry, Tony, inclusion by American icons of a portion of the populace does not mean that the country is turning "gay." It merely means that more and more Americans are trying to be inclusive in what it means to be American.

Who's Harming Marriage? Gays ... Or Southern Baptists? Another Christian Right Meme Bites The Dust.

The Christian Right's chief meme against same-sex marriage is that it will "harm" traditional marriage. Exactly HOW it will harm traditional marriage, however, they don't seem to know ... or care. Is it possible that they're shielding their own harmful attitudes on marriage? A new study put out by the University of Texas at Austin points to a higher rate of divorce among social conservatives with a few new perspectives (surprises).

     "Divorce is higher among religiously conservative Protestants – and even drives up divorce rates for other people living around them, a new study finds.
Researchers discovered that higher divorce rates among conservative Protestants were tied to earlier marriages and childbearing – factors known to ramp up divorce. Starting families earlier tends to stop young adults from pursuing more education and depresses their wages, putting more strain on marriages, University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Glass said."

And now a segue to the Christian Right's latest icon, Phil Robertson:

CNN:

"They got to where they're getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting 'til they get to be about 20 years old before they marry 'em," Robertson says in a video clip that resurfaced Monday. "Look, you wait 'til they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that's going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They'll pick your ducks."

Second-Hand Divorce

"But the study went a step further: Glass and another researcher also discovered that people living in areas with lots of conservative Protestants were at higher risk of getting divorced, even if they weren’t conservative Protestants themselves."

Kinda like second-hand smoke and cancer. Unfortunately, there is still no data to show that when gays move into the neighborhood, the divorce rates rise. Wonder why? Interestingly, the state with the greatest number of years of same-sex marriage has the LOWEST divorce rate in the country: Massachusetts. Iowa and New York were also low. And states like Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Mississippi? Clustered around the top of the divorce rate charts.

The UTA study may be on to something.

From The American Psychological Association:

"Scientists have found that the psychological and social aspects of committed relationships between same-sex partners largely resemble those of heterosexual partnerships. Like heterosexual couples, same-sex couples form deep emotional attachments and commitments. Same-sex and heterosexual couples alike face similar issues concerning intimacy, love, loyalty and stability, and they go through similar processes to address those issues. Empirical research also shows that lesbian and gay couples have levels of relationship satisfaction similar to or higher than those of heterosexual couples."  

"...or higher." Very interesting.

This author's personal take on the "harming traditional marriage" idea: I could see that some Fundamentalist wives might find out marriage can be more equitable than they had thought and become disgusted with their situation: in the extreme, they could see two handsome, considerate, loving men, then turn to look at the inconsiderate, misogynistic slobs on the couches and say to themselves "what was I thinking?" On the distaff side, those same slobs might feel threatened, thinking that they might be forced to spruce up those qualities the wife thought were once (but no longer) attractive.

One disheartened woman put it this way: "I long for the good old days when the good men were either married or gay. Now they're both."

Superbowl Diversity Fallout: Coke Ad Gets The Right Screaming "BOYCOTT!!"

BTW: Katherine Lee Bates was a lesbian.

Joe.My.God
Michael Patrick Leahy, Breitbart:

"Executives at Coca Cola thought it was a good idea to run a 60 second Super Bowl ad featuring children singing America The Beautiful – a deeply Christian patriotic anthem whose theme is unity – in several foreign languages. The ad also prominently features a gay couple. Conservatives instantly lit up social media with objections, with many vowing to boycott the soda company's products. The lyrics of the song, written in 1893 by Wellesley College Professor Katherine Lee Bates, ask God to grant America 'brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.' As far as the executives at Coca Cola are concerned, however, the United States of America is no longer a nation ruled by the Constitution and American traditions in which English is the language of government. It is not a nation governed in the Anglo-American tradition of liberty. It is instead a nation governed by some all inclusive multi-cultural synthesis of the various forms of government in the world, as expressed by the multiple languages used in the Super Bowl ad to sing a uniquely American hymn that celebrates our heritage." (emphasis mine)

Yes, the tweets of outrage came fast and furious:

- #BoycottCoke everything in that @CocaCola commercial was un-American.
- Too bad there were no Americans in the coke commercial about America.. Goodbye Diet Coke never again! #BoycottCoke
- Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border. #americaisbeautiful
- @CocaCola American Patriotic songs should be sung in English only #communist #boycottcoke

Tweets of outrage at Coca Cola for airing a commercial featuring the diversity of America while singing America The Beautiful have actually spawned a "Boycott Coke" movement. Total assimilation, it seems, MUST be honored, especially during that most American of events, the Super Bowl. The "English-only" crowd screamed "BLASPHEMY!"* The commercial could have have been more reprehensible had it featured (gasp!) different religions. David Barton would have been furious, but he would have been appeased by the Budwieser commercial which did not have one truly "un-American" person in it. 

Budweiser, of course, played it safe with Right-wingers and "true" patriots by featuring a totally white homecoming of a soldier. Nothing wrong with that. But Budweiser has never been true to its original roots: Budwies (aka Budvar in Czech) originated in  České Budějovice, in the lower part of Bohemia (now Czech Republic). It distanced itself with Milwaukee and Clydesdales (from Scotland, btw) and never looked back after being eclipsed by Pilsner Urquell of the original Pilsner beers. 

Assimilation: it's how you look at it.

The only foreigners not forced to assimilate when they came to America were the Puritans who were all too eager to assimilate Native Americans into their culture.** After the Puritans, a certain form of "Americanism" was born - and everyone was forced to assimilate into America and it's Puritan ethic. Money and prestige followed. People who assimilated slowly (or not at all), collected in remote sections of the country, but the expansion (Manifest Destiny) demanded that assimilation be the virtual law of the land. 

What "Truly American" Right wingers don't understand about assimilation is that it comes in different degrees and forms: first, second and even third generation Americans are loathe to give up their roots altogether: the concept of America as a "melting pot" is rather terrifying, melting away, watering down actually, everything about your old culture to homogenize yourself with everyone and form a mass of people, molded by the dictates of one particular group that just so happens to be there slightly longer. So many Americans have opted to keep part of their lengthier heritage while blending into the "mainstream" with things like ... Coke. 


Face it, Right-wingers, America is as diverse as your own ancestry: English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and on ... and on ... and on.

The world embraced Coke. Coke Embraced the world. The world embraced America. America embraced the world. Get over it.

*Of course, the Tea Party crowd spells it "BLASFAMIE"
**The first Bible to be translated was translated by the Puritans into the language of the Massachusetts tribe - just before the good Puritans wiped them out.