June 15, 2004 by s.z.

Family Circle Drought  I skipped the analysis of yesterday's Family Circus cartoon because I figured you're probably sick of them by now.  However, some brilliant deconstructions of Monday's strip (see the comments under yesterday's item about the Crazy Jesus Ladies) has persuaded me to keep this bit going a while longer. So ... The Cartoon (You can see it here): Billy, sitting in his little blue overstuffed chair, is watching TV with Daddy, who is sitting in a big, teal, overstuffed chair and holding PJ. On the TV screen we see two blonde women and a mop-topped man in a suit; all three TV people are sitting at a table and under a title which reads "What Caused This Drought?" Billy says, "I know what caused it!  Too many kids saying' 'rain, rain, go away ... '" Explication: The blonde bimbos and the vacuous-looking sandy-haired man prove that the TV is tuned to Fox News. The "drought" the anchors are pontificating and theorizing about is the fabled "dearth of media outlets that don't demonstrate liberal bias." Billy says that kids (i.e., people like you and me) caused this "drought" by asking God to make outfits like Townhall and National Review "go away."  However, neither Billy nor Daddy seem that upset about said "drought," meaning that either they don't buy into the "liberal bias" meme, or that they do believe in it, and are glad, GLAD! that it exists. Prediction: Sean Hannity will be fired after being caught in a menage a trois with Rita Cosby and Laurie Dhue. Well, that's one idea.  Let's see what Donna has to say about this strip: The Family Circus for today (6/15)- What caused this drought, indeed? We're talking thirst for knowledge here. The 'kids' are the news media but they are pretending they have nothing to do with the change from news as information to news as vapid entertainment (aren't those the airhead blonde faux news chicks on the tv?). The media kids made the information rain go away and caused the drought. Family Circus predicts that Air America is going to be a huge success! This sounds plausible to me, but maybe you have a different analysis. 7:41:01 AM

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children? From a review/promo for James Dobson's new book about same-sex marriage, Marriage Under Fire: Why We Must Win This Battle: Children will suffer most, he notes, because society will have abandoned the ideal family structure of a mother and a father. "And have you considered what will happen when homosexuals with children become divorced?" he asks. "Instead of two moms and two dads, they will have to contend with four moms or four dads." Ooooh, scary! Anyway, Dobson explains that ever since the 1940s, homosexual activists have been futhering their master plan to destroy marriage and families by trying to join these institutions. "For nearly sixty years, the homosexual activist movement and related entities have been working to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family," he writes. "Now the final battle is at hand: The institution of marriage and the Christian church are all that stand in the way of the movement's achievement of every coveted aspiration." And how can we, as Christians, fight this massive conspiracy? "There is only one way to get the attention of our leaders in Washington," Dobson writes. "... We must overwhelm them with calls, e-mails, visits, letters, and publications, and most importantly, we need to support their opponents. ... When their coveted positions are threatened, they tend to do what is right." So, the ol' "Take us to Duff Gardens, Take us to Duff Gardens" plan.  Sheer brilliance, James! 6:51:24 AM

The Commie Plot to Turn Your Kids Into New World Order Drones and Worse! While she can't compete with Sadly, No!'s new friend Shane Swing, I have, by following a link from TownHall, met one Debbie O'Hara ("Debbie O'Hara is a homemaker, wife and mother of eight children. . .  She is an avid reader, and did the necessary research to provide a comprehensive homeschool curriculum for her children. This led her to closely examine the political direction our country has been following.") In a piece entitled Time is Now For Exodus From Government Schools, Debbie explains why Baptists should pull their kids out of public school, and thus collapse the whole system: (a) Because the secret goal of public school education is to make kids stupid, so they'll be good subjects of the U.N.'s New World Order; and (b) Because public schools teach evolution, which turns kids into lazy, rebellious homosexuals/ divorcees/pornographers/suicide victims.  This is all part of the Communist plan. For a well documented, clear chronology of events in the restructuring of education, read "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Iserbyt. Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Education Research and Improvement, U.S. Dept. of Education, during the first Reagan Administration. Her unimpeachable evidence shows that for decades children have been dumbed down intentionally to prepare them for world government. Her extensive documentation comes from the education community's own sources. International, national, regional, state and local plans for the transformation of American society through the education system is carefully detailed. You will see that a dumbed-down global workforce is the goal. Worse than the dumbing down of academics is the moral side of this equation. Teaching the great lie, evolution, has stripped children of any significance or purpose in life. As creatures of chance with no higher authority than man, should we be surprised when our kids act like the animals we tell them they are? Should we be surprised in the steady increase in rebellion against authority, unwillingness to work, homosexuality, divorce, pornography, suicide, and lawlessness, just to name a few? Well, Darwin wasn't a divorced welfare-leech/pornographer, as far as I know --so yes, we should be surprised to find that the teaching of evolution is responsible for an increase in homosexuality. The teaching of evolution is critical to the "New World Order" crowd because it is the foundation on which our "new world" is being built. The slightest hint of God is directly opposed to the Marxist theology running rampant on school campuses. With God there is an absolute, never- changing morality. Evolution is the foundation of Socialist/Communist ideology where there is nothing outside their code of morality if it is for the good of their cause, which is of course a Socialist/Communist community. When structuring a "new society", stealing, lying, raping, and killing are all moral values when working toward this goal.  But Debbie saved her kids from this fate by home-schooling them.  No Commies in her family! 6:28:03 AM

Conspiracy Theories "The flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundation of our society, the family unit" -- Bob Barr, speaking of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1986. Court Rejects Barr's Suit Against Clinton WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Rep. Bob Barr cannot bring a $30 million defamation suit against former President Clinton, Democratic political adviser James Carville and publisher Larry Flynt, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The Georgia Republican alleged that the three conspired to smear him by publishing information about his private life as retaliation for his outspoken role in the impeachment proceedings against Clinton. Because if Barr's reputation has suffered, it must be because his enemies conspired to defame him -- what else could it be?  And his good name is worth $30 million, easy. Anyway, the judges wouldn't let Barr's suit go forward because he failed to file his conspiracy charges against Clinton and Carville within the three year window the law allows, and failed to show that the information Flynt printed about him was false (and the First Amendment allows people to print true stuff, even if it makes some pro-life, family values-types look like sleazy hypocrites.  Flynt's article included allegations by Barr's former wife that the congressman had an affair in the mid-1980s. It also said that in contrast to his public opposition to abortion, he drove his wife to a clinic to have an abortion performed. Barr alleged Carville gave Flynt Barr's FBI files and other documents as part of a smear campaign, but Flynt denied it, saying his information came from a private investigator and records from Barr's divorce. A lower federal court had dismissed the case in March 2003. Flynt obtained the information on Barr after he ran a full page in The Washington Post offering $1 million to anyone who would acknowledge having had an extramarital affair with a member of Congress. Oh, and speaking of Flynt, it seems that another anti-abortion, family values conservative can rest a little easier now, because Larry isn't naming names. Larry Flynt doesn't reveal Bush tale (Is the Monterey County Herald making a little pun here?) Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has been threatening for months to reveal in his new book that President Bush once arranged for a girlfriend to have an abortion. ''I've got the story nailed,'' he claims. Having gotten an advance look at Flynt's ''Sex, Lies & Politics,'' we can tell you he hasn't. Flynt writes in his polemic/memoir that four years ago, he received a tip that Bush had, in 1971, impregnated a woman who lived in ''the same singles apartment complex in Houston.'' According to the tipster, Bush turned to a family friend, who steered the woman to a doctor who performed the procedure, which was then illegal. Flynt writes that his investigators found the doctor and the woman, who both denied the story. Flynt doesn't name either party, for fear of a libel suit. If Flynt would have paid a million dollars for their story, I wonder what somebody else would have paid them to keep their mouths shut? 5:47:58 AM