September 30th is International Blasphemy Day, a day for acknowledging that free speech is the foundation of liberty. No idea is too sacred to be questioned, critically examined, satirized, or otherwise disrespected. Ideas don’t need rights; people do.
Or, Why I Love the Internet and Also Dan Savage
Action:
“In an interview with the Associated Press (AP) taped on April 7, 2003 and published April 20, 2003, [Senator Rick] Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts. Santorum described the ability to regulate consensual homosexual acts as comparable to the states’ ability to regulate other consensual and non-consensual sexual behaviors, such as adultery, polygamy, child molestation, incest, sodomy and zoophilia (bestiality), whose decriminalization he believed would threaten society and the family, as they are not monogamous and heterosexual.” (from Wikipedia)
Reaction:
Dan Savage, brilliant and hilarious sex columnist with a history of inventing new terminology (see pegging, saddlebacking), along with his readers, coined the term santorum after the senator. To this day, the new definition (that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex), is the top (or near top) Google hit for the word santorum. That strikes me as utterly appropriate.
(Check out the saddlebacking thing, also hilarious)
There is an internet meme called Poe’s Law which roughly states that distinguishing between fundamentalism and a parody of fundamentalism is often difficult, if not impossible. For an excellent example of this phenomenon, look no further than Rich Deem’s absurd article warning that sex with hypothetical future anatomically correct robots would be frowned upon by Jesus and could eventually wipe out the human race. It certainly seems like Rich is a crazy Christian, but if he’s a parodist, then bravo, sir. Bravo.
Some choice excerpts:
“Top programmers and engineers were hired away from the automakers and computer companies with offers of up to ten times their average salaries, similar to what had been done with their movie businesses in the late 2010′s, when they had hired away Hollywood’s best CG programmers to turn out realistic-looking virtual pornography movies.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s way cheaper and more efficient just to pay actual people to be in porn.
“Acceptance among the male population evolved rapidly as men realized they could get an ideal “woman” whose only goal was to serve him.”
“Over time, men who owned FACA [female anatomically correct android] became more and more rude to their human counterparts as the degradation of society accelerated. Men who owned a FACA disdained the company of real women, with all their incessant demands and mood swings.”
What a dim view of humanity this man has. It takes a seriously deluded fundamentalist to be so frightened of human sexuality to believe this particular doomsday scenario is the slightest bit plausible. As with most examples of Poe’s Law, it would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.
For a second there, I thought birthers believed something stupid and crazy. This clears that all up.
Rolling Stone has this really fascinating article about a blind, teenage phone phreaker. I didn’t even know people still did that kind of thing now that there’s the interweb. Awesome:
There seemed to be no limit to what he could do: shut off your phone service, dig up your unlisted cellphone number, even listen in on your home phone — something only a handful of veteran phreaks can pull off. Celebrities were a favorite target. Weigman claims to have hacked and called the cellphones of Lindsay Lohan (“She was drunk, and my friend tried to have phone sex with her”) and Eminem (“He told me to fuck off”). Last year, during the presidential campaign, Weigman heard a YouTube video of Mitt Romney’s son Matt dialing his dad. Weigman listened closely to the touch tones, deciphered the candidate’s cellphone number — and then made a call of his own. “Mitt Romney!” he said. “What’s going on, dude? Running for president?” Weigman says Romney told him to shove the phone up his ass, and hung up.
