Silent Yawn: When the Outrageous meets the Boring

Over at The Curvature Cara has a story about a middle-school biology teacher who apparently got a wild hair and decided to show the old anti-abortion standard The Silent Scream to his class one day after a test. No notice to parents; students just told to look away if it bothered them. This led to a predictable outcry, and lots of bureaucratic dodging of responsibility, but the most interesting aspect of the whole post (at least to me) came from Cara when she visited You-Tube to view the film herself:

Has anyone out there ever actually seen The Silent Scream? I found it on YouTube once and tried to watch it. It’s only a half hour long, and I assumed that it would be either so ridiculous as to be amusing or so infuriating as to pop a vein in my forehead. Instead, it was just really fucking boring. I’ll admit that I have the attention span of a flea, but I couldn’t make it past more than 10 minutes of the 30 minute film. Yeah, it was outrageous. Yeah, it was ridiculous. It was also not even remotely engaging, so I’m kind of confused about why the antis would want to use the damn thing. But I didn’t get as far as to see the truly graphic stuff. I sure as hell don’t remember watching the dismembering of a fetus, or even the actual “silent scream” scene. If these did appear within the first 10 minutes of the film and I somehow don’t remember, it truly must deserve an award for Excellence in The Field of Boring.

I guess one generation's controversy might just become the next generation's ho-hum.

But please, if Reefer Madness is equally bad, don't tell me.

Comments

tom said…

> But please, if Reefer Madness is equally bad, don't tell me.

The original is pretty lame, but the 2005 musical remake is a lot of fun.

February 14, 2008 at 8:51 PM

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba

Search This Blog