Facebook Bans Breastfeeding Photos

From the New York Daily News:

A minirevolt is underway at Facebook after photos of mothers nursing their babies were removed from their personal pages.

More than 58,000 people have joined a Facebook group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” to complain about the censorship.

Organizers will conduct a cyberprotest Saturday, asking every supporter to change his or her profile picture to an image of breast-feeding.

“We need to take our bodies back,” said mom Stephanie Muir, one of the group’s administrators.

Facebook is very concerned about *The Children.*

A Facebook spokesman said it removes photos only if the entire breast is exposed.

“These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children [over the age of 13] who use the site,” said Barry Schnitt.

I share the outrage these women feel, but where was the mass protest when Jon Favreau and friend groped a lifesize cutout of Senator Hillary Clinton and posted it on Facebook? In fact, the disgusting Jon Favreau group grope photo is still posted on Obama’s favorite speechwriter’s fan site. Why no *concern* from Barry Schnitt about that?

So, according to Facebook, children must be protected from seeing women nursing their infants, but the President’s speechwriter groping the future Secretary of State is just fine?

By the way, why hasn’t Jon Favreau been fired yet? And even more outrageous, why has Jon Favreau been named one of the six “Bostonians of the Year?”

Is Dick Morris Psychic?

Or did he get a memo from the Obama campaign?

I was over at Cannonfire, clarifying something I said in my post about Sister Souljah, when I saw something I missed.  Joseph Cannon thought I was referring to a recent column by Dick Morris when I quoted him, but the comment was made back in January.  When I went back to my source for the quote (a post by Logan Murphy at Crooks & Liars) to check the date, I realized that Morris made the statement before the New Hampshire primary.

The reason this is important is that I left out part of the quote.  Here’s the entire quote:

“I think what she’s going to do is take a page from Bill’s playbook in 1992 when he was facing Jesse Jackson going into the New York primary. From out of nowhere, he seized on an episode with Sistah Souljah, who is a black rapper who apparently had dissed the National Anthem. And he attacked her, and the whole point was to use race as an issue against Jesse Jackson — which succeeded and he carried New York by a very large margin. And I think that what she’s going to do is she’s going to say, Obama’s unelectable, Americans won’t elect him, he can’t beat the Republican party, America’s not ready for Obama and what – he doesn’t have the experience to win. And what she’s going to mean is that they won’t vote for an African American, but she won’t say it. She’ll say everything but, but that’s what she means. And we’ll see if that works, I hope it doesn’t.” (emphasis in the original)

As Logan points out, Morris was predicting that Hillary would make a “dirty comeback” by using veiled racial comments in order to win.  He made that statement on the evening of January 5th, three days before the primary on January 8th, when Hillary won an unexpected victory.

Hillary’s victory triggered weeks of allegations that her campaign was making racial comments.  The Obama campaign also pushed the idea that she won New Hampshire due to the “Bradley Effect” and JJJ (Obama’s national campaign co-chair) criticized Hillary for not crying for the victims of Katrina. 

Just before the South Carolina primary an internal memo from the Obama campaign surfaced, showing that they were pushing the racism meme.  We know that the allegations in the memo were bogus, so it raises the question:

Was Morris’ “prediction” based on foreknowledge of Obama’s plans?

IOW – Did he get the memo?

The Farce Is Strong In This One

Most PUMA bloggers are familiar with angry/happy/hopeful black guy.  Yesterday he provided us with this gem at Tennessee Guerrilla Women:

Attempts to pretend that Obama (even after the selection of Warren) doesn’t have the highest approval rating of any president-elect: FAIL

Sister Souljah – The Zombie Lie

Yesterday Riverdaughter did an excellent job with the main point of Friday’s column by Glenn Greenwald but I want to address one small part of his post:

In 1996, Clinton signed into law the single most pernicious piece of anti-gay federal legislation ever passed — the Defense of Marriage Act — with overwhelming Democratic support in the Congress.  Scorning the “Far Left,” especially on social issues, was a Clinton favorite.  He is the inventor, after all, of the Sister Souljah technique.  Bill Clinton was the ultimate non-ideological pragmatist.  He was driven by the overriding desire to win over his opponents. (emphasis added)

Even if you had never heard of Sister Souljah before you would infer from that paragraph that she has something to do with “scorning the ‘Far Left.'”  In fact, “Sister Souljah” is shorthand for a zombie lie that ahistorical types use to bash Bill Clinton for supposedly exploiting racism in his 1992 campaign.  While some who use the reference are merely ignorant of the facts, others are willfully dishonest.  From Dick Morris:

“I think what she’s going to do is take a page from Bill’s playbook in 1992 when he was facing Jesse Jackson going into the New York primary. From out of nowhere, he seized on an episode with Sistah Souljah, who is a black rapper who apparently had dissed the National Anthem. And he attacked her, and the whole point was to use race as an issue against Jesse Jackson — which succeeded and he carried New York by a very large margin.”

First of all, Jesse Jackson didn’t run for President in 1992, so the Big Dawg didn’t face him in the New York primary.  Nor did he “attack” Sister Souljah for having “dissed” the National Anthem.  What Bill Clinton criticized were these two statements by Sister Souljah:

“If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”

“If there are any good white people, I haven’t met them”

In June 1992 (after the primaries) both Clinton and Sister Souljah were invited to speak at a conference of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, and during his speech Clinton said:

“If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black,’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”

If it had been anyone but Bill (or Hillary) those words would probably have been taken at face value.  But by 1992 the “Clinton Rules” were already in effect:

“Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

Under the Clinton Rules, Bill wasn’t just condemning a couple of racist statements, he was intentionally and cynically exploiting racial fears in order to distance himself from Jackson and the African American community.  In the mind of Gwen Ifill, he was only condemning “reverse racism” (not racism) but in the mind of one self-appointed expert at finding racism he was putting black people “in their place.”

The key to understanding the zombie lie aspect of the term “Sister Souljah moment” is that it implies duplicity and calculation.  The politician involved isn’t taking a principled stand, he or she is pandering to moderates by repudiating his or her own supporters.  In the bizarro world of Scamelot, repudiating your base is a brilliant strategy.

But only if Obama does it.

Yes, Presidents are held to higher standards or, why Rahm Emanuel’s dealings with Rod Blogojevich matter

I have just one question about this. Did Rahm Emanuel mention all of his connections to Rod Blagojevich on the famous vetting questionnaire that the Obama team supposedly required all prospective staff to answer? Given the broad wording of the questionnaire and the fact that Blagojevich has been under investigation for years for all sorts of crimes and shenanigans, I would have thought the Obama administration would want to know the full extent of overlapping ties, even if Emanuel has not done one improper or illegal thing in connection with the Senate vacancy created by President-Elect Obama’s resignation.

The issue that President-Elect Obama seems to have is one that cost him some people’s trust back in the primary season. The change many of us have been waiting for is not us. It is a change from the hypocrisy, corruption, and absurdity that have riddled the last eight years of this country’s political leadership.

If the Obama questionnaire was meant to do more than provide protection for President Obama, that is, if the questions it asked were asked in good faith, seeking full disclosure up front in the name of creating a culture of transparency and truthfulness, then Mr. Emanuel should have revealed all of his overlaps and ties to Gov. Blagojevich. If you deal with dirty politicians, however much out of necessity, disclose your dealings; and, if need be, put them in context so as to show why you should not be seen to be cut from the same cloth. If Mr. Emanuel only now  explains himself – or rather if an explanation is supplied only on December 22, when the Obama-Biden transition team releases its “internal investigation (the one that it has already told us clears its members of any wrongdoing), that is a post-hoc effort at rationalization, which is not going to cut it with people who thought that President-elect Obama was coming to the Presidency to stop that sort of thing.

Since the inception of the office  the President of the United States of America has merited a great deal of public scrutiny. No, this did not just start with Bill Clinton. In his own time, President Ulysses S. Grant’s drinking habits were subject of much speculation; whether he was or was not an alcoholic and how that affected his ability to serve his country remains a topic of historical study and debate. The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemmings came up during his first term as president. I have no particular view as to whether Grant’s drinking or Jefferson’s relationship with Hemmings mattered during their own eras or whether and how they should matter know. But I do have a view about Presidents who expect not to come under scrutiny. In anything like an egalitarian democracy, it is the right of citizens to question their public servants, especially those who enjoy great public power. It is their right to care about the precise relationship and connections between  their President’s chief of staff and an apparently crooked Governor from the President’s home state. It is their right to care about who their President chooses to write the words he speaks; or who he chooses to bless his inauguration.

It is not only unrealistic to bleat about how unfair it is for the public to care about these things. It is to forget that the American public has always cared about these sort of things, even if at times the press has been selective and inconsistent in its reporting on different Presidents and  presidential candidates.

Certainly, part of why people care is that they care about sensationalistic matters or matters that may have nothing to with a person’s actual qualifications or ability to be a good President. But people also care because they want to decide for themselves whether what a President reads or who she or he puts into a kitchen cabinet relates to a President’s qualifications and abilities.

So, people care about how Rahm Emanuel answered question 63: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.” They care whether he had to answer the question; they care whether he discusses any of his dealings with Gov. Blagojevich. And they care not only because they voted for a change in our nation’s political culture; they care because many of them voted for the candidate they did because they took his discussions of change to mean a change from low standards when it comes to corruption or even questionable dealings. People want to trust Barack Obama. Many react badly to people who criticize his integrity or trustworthiness. But again, to expect any President to be forever unscrutinized by the public is naive. And if a a candidate makes people believe he offers more integrity and truthfulness than any of his rivals, it is naive to suppose that President will not be watched closely to see if that President lives up to the standards he himself set.

Jimmy Boyd

For those of you who hate the classics:

Bobbie Gentry

Ode to Billy Joe