Facts Fixed Around Policies
Once again, speculation about a remarkable tragedy confirms everything that everybody has been saying all along about whatever hot-button socio-political issues interest them. This time, the slaying of a pregnant Ohio woman by her married boyfriend reminds Michael Medved that the wage of out-of-wedlock pregnancies is death:
Above: A Club Medved vacation: the antidote to civilization
[T]his horrifying story conveys some significant messages and should help to refocus attention on the nation’s most significant and menacing social problem: the unchecked epidemic and unquestioning acceptance of out of wedlock birth […]
Numerous commentators worry over the future of [her] devastated little boy but fail to make the obvious observation about his pre-murder situation: that it’s a shame whenever any child is left alone with an unmarried mother in an obviously dysfunctional situation.
So Medved, you’ve diagnosed the problem, but where’s your solution?
We’ve become so reluctant to issue “judgmental” comments that we refuse to discuss the way this case highlights the individual tragedies and gigantic social cost when one-third of all new babies in America are born to unmarried women.
More yelling at people? That’s your solution? I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting anything especially innovative, but. . .Oh, pardon me. Yes, I’ll let you finish.
Rather than normalizing situations like that of Jessie Davis (who hoped to raise two children with no chance of marrying their father) as just another “family option” or “lifestyle choice,” we need to re-establish healthy norms – advancing the undeniable premise that most children will benefit from growing up in a stable, two parent, two gender household.
Ahem. This is still just yelling at people.
Rather than removing the stigma against unwed motherhood, and encouraging single moms to keep and raise their babies, society should do everything possible to urge single, pregnant girls to give their babies the ultimate gift of love by arranging their adoption into loving, functional, two parent homes.
Since you never say anything about your readers volunteering to adopt any babies, I’ll hazard some guesses as to what you mean by ‘urge’: Plenty of yelling? Scarlet letters? Homes for unwed mothers? Stonings? Commissioning a remake of the 1968 Supremes hit, ‘Love Child?’ I’ll bet Beyoncé could tear that shit up. Amy Winehouse? Hm, an unorthodox choice, Medved, but I like your thinking. Who should we get to do ‘Papa Don’t Preach?’ Ha-ha, I kid, Michael, I kid.
No one would argue that government should seize control of babies to remove them forcibly from their unwed mothers (except in the most dangerous and irresponsible circumstances). But by the same token, the authorities should do nothing to validate single parent households or to make it easier for unmarried women to keep their babies.
Indeed, no one would argue such a repulsive, Draconian scheme. But what if they argued that the Government, vis-a-vis certain economic policies and child custody law, should offer negative incentives to unmarried women which would encourage them to turn over their bastard progeny to government-sanctioned families lest they suffer unending shame and abject misery?
It’d be like Diff’rent Strokes, except Willis and Arnold’s mom wouldn’t be dead.
Above: A very special episode of ‘See? This Only Proves
My Point: The Jessie Davis Story.’
Shorter Implied Michael Medved: No one would argue that government should seize control of babies to remove them forcibly from their unwed mothers unless this column is generally well-received, in which case I will argue just that sometime in the near future.
But by the same token, the authorities should do nothing to validate single parent households or to make it easier for unmarried women to keep their babies.
Right! Because those unmarried women have NO RIGHT to bring children into the world without a father. Our society should everything in it’s power to make life miserable for unwed mothers…and if that happens to encourage more women to get abortions, well, that’s just the price we have to pay.
I think he got his talking points mixed up. Don’t folks like Medved usually claim to all about “saving the babies”? Or is he actually just dropping the facade completely?
And does Medved suggest what happens when a woman is married when she has the kids but later gets divorced? Are the kids taken away from her and assigned to a government-approved home? Or is a the slut just reassigned to a government-approved husband?
(“Geez, Travis left his wife out overnight again. If he’s not careful, someone’s gonna steal it one of these days.”)
And after the murder by a professional wrestler of his wife and son, in which the wrestler left a Bible prominently displayed at the scene of the crime, no one would argue that the government should forcibly remove the wives and children of Christians and Jews from the households of these prospective killers (the husbands). But by the same token, the authorities should do nothing to validate Christian or Jewish marriages or make it easier for Christian and Jewish men to threaten women and children in this way.
See, Medved? Anyone can spout idiocy based on recent crimes. And I didn’t even bring up the BTK Killer as an example of why some might suggest that members of church councils should be put into immediate custody!
Imagine being raised with no hope of marrying your father!
Since Medved could not possibly be displaying misogyny here, I presume he feels single fathers deserve the same treatment. His fellow Townhall content producer was raised by her widowed father. I can’t wait to see their debate over the merits of…. who am I kidding.
It’s so awesome how getting married immediately makes everything wonderful.
(Incidentally although maybe rather coincidentally after all, there’s a lot of abstinence-only “education” curricula which literally teaches that relationships outside of marriage are necessarily doomed, while getting married is all you need to make the relationship great. Assuming there are kids who fall for that message, it can only lead to wonderful things when it collides with reality, I’m sure.)
Wait, I meant to say it’s not coincidental. Doh.
out of wedlock birth is really the nation’s most significant social problem?
but I thought it was our public schools
or illegal immigrants
or (limited) access to abortion
or terrorist sleeper cells
or social security funding
or Janet jackson’s boob flash
or Hollywood hating on conservatives
oh, who can keep it straight?
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”
Is Michael Medved the world’s stupidest pundit?
If medved read this story he’d say the girl would still have her nose if she’d been married to the man who bit it off.
Is Michael Medved the world’s stupidest pundit?
Good lord no. Roll your mouse over “More” under the columnists tab at Townhall. All are racing to tilt at the weekly windmill, although to be fair only some are the delusional knights and the rest are the horsies trying to get them there.
Hmmmm, yes.
Ok, waitaminute. This is not lining up for me. He’s using that whole Cutts/Davis thing as his example that kids should not be raised by a single parent. Or, I guess, they always will get murdered.
Cutts was married, just to a different woman. Making it illegal for Davis to marry him. So just don’t boink? Ahhh, of course. Abstinence. The conservative’s solution to all problems. When all you have is a penis, everything looks like a…Ahh, never mind.
But isn’t it infinitly more common for a spouse, a husband more accurately, to kill his wife, the mother of his children? You know, death by domestic violence? The second most common cause of death in young women in America?
So in this example, how does marriage change anything.? If Cutts had been married to Davis, and then killed her, it would have been alright, except he would have had to hurry up and marry some more canon fodder so the kids had two “loving” parents?
It’s just really unclear what Medved’s reaching for here with the marriage would have prevented this murder thing, which is not surpising because I find even his Movie reviews impenatrable. I guess I’m not even certain that’s what he’s saying.
So let’s review. Marriage would have solved nothing, prevented nothing and protected no one. And yet, this is all Jessie Davis’ fault for not committing bigamy. Way t’go, Medved. I’m actually dizzy…
mikey
Society should stop applauding Jesse Davis’s selfish “deathstyle” choice, if only for the poor bastard’s sake.
No one would argue that government should seize control of babies to remove them forcibly from their unwed mothers (except in the most dangerous and irresponsible circumstances). But by the same token, the authorities should do nothing to validate single parent households or to make it easier for unmarried women to keep their babies.
And if they persist in having babies out of wedlock, even after the government cuts them off from any social safety net, then we send a cop to kill them, preferably in front of their children (so the kids will see how their mothers’ bad choices resulted in tragedy).
Of course. It’s all so obvious. If the government tries to ensure a woman left high and dry by some upstanding American male doesn’t have to face third-world conditions, then naturally women will be enticed and pampered into facing single motherhood.
I can actually agree that two-*PARENT* households have a stronger correlation with happiness for the child than single-parent households. But if you can’t have that it might be a good idea to keep the mother and the child from living under conditions that produce individuals that cannot contribute to society, and more probably will cause larger costs later.
Society should stop applauding
Quotes please.
So Medved is opposed to out-of-wedlock children?
That means he fully supports sex-education in schools, public access to contraception, and government subsidized/funded birth control, right? I mean, all those things lead to substantially fewer unplanned pregnancies, which would mean fewer out-of-wedlock children. So he’s obviously in favor of that, right?
Right? Right?
He certainly wouldn’t support a multiple-divorcee who lived with his mistress while in office as a Presidential candidate and role model for America, would he? There’s no way he’d consider an admitted adulterer who asked for a divorce while his wife was in a hospital bed to be a good leader, suitable to be Speaker of the House, would he? I mean, if he thinks out-of-wedlock children are bad, he’d never support men who engaged in promiscous behavior, would he?
Right?
Right?
How about a quiet golf clap?
Better picture of Medved please. I can’t see his trademark soulless pisshole eyes and horrifying mechanical imitation of a smile.
The wingnuts have been all a-twitter about this for a couple of days now.
Of course, their obsession with it has nothing to do with race.
Of course.
On a separate note, can I just say that Sweet Chocolate Jesus, Medved is a useless biped?
Dorothy, trying, like us all, to see if there’s any reasoning at all in Medved’s brain, said:
Right! Because those unmarried women have NO RIGHT to bring children into the world without a father. Our society should everything in it’s power to make life miserable for unwed mothers…and if that happens to encourage more women to get abortions, well, that’s just the price we have to pay.
I think he got his talking points mixed up. Don’t folks like Medved usually claim to all about “saving the babies”? Or is he actually just dropping the facade completely?
You may not have read the entire article. He argues that abortion encourages unwed mothers.
Yes, it’s, uh, ‘obvious’, isn’t it? There’s also a clear correlation with the availability of video games: before the 1970s, there weren’t any, now, they’re all over the place. Obviously, the chance to play Grand Theft Auto has stopped young men and women doing the decent thing and getting married (because they’d fight over what colours they want the car, obviously) . Or it’s scrambled their brains so much that they make a rational, calculated decision before sex of “screw the contraception, I can get an abortion”, but when they find out they are pregnant, they have completely forgotten about the very existence of abortion. Because that’s the only way I can see Medved believes people are now thinking.
Scott Peterson, Chris Benoit. Enough said, but the list of refutation is oh so very long.
-Temple
Ok, a baby is a gift from God, but not if you are not married. I am a hobbyist in genealogy and you would be shocked and surprised at how may babies were born EARLY, especially at 6 months, compared to the wedding date. Amazing without the neo natal medicine of today that so may survived.
With reference to the Davis/Cutts case, does anyone know if she knew he was married when she got involved with him? Does anyone know what he may have promised her? Since he has had 3 almost 4 children by 3 different women, who is the irresponsible one, Him or Her? But it’s okay if you are a man, since you are proving your manhood?
Men often bemoan the fact that women are sick of them. Gee, can you tell why?
You may not have read the entire article. He argues that abortion encourages unwed mothers.
Yes, it’s, uh, ‘obvious’, isn’t it? There’s also a clear correlation with the availability of video games: before the 1970s, there weren’t any, now, they’re all over the place.
And pirates! Don’t forget the pirates!
If a “stable, two-parent, two-gender” (can’t forget that, can’t be having those homos parenting) household is so damn important, shouldn’t we all move into communes so there may be as many parents as can fit into the house/compound?
The best way to insure “stability” in a household is to be sure the household has some financial stability, but G-d forbid any governmental programs should provide any help. How ’bout a DHS (Dep’t. of Household Stability) where a few thugs can come by the house & check for “stabiliity” every so often. And if it’s not “stable,” well, shouting might help. Or a good old right-wing ass whuppin’ to teach the unstable a lesson.
moistened bink
That’s “bint”.
Jessie Davis (who hoped to raise two children with no chance of marrying their father)
Yeah, okay. Because the world would be a better place if she’d just married the man who later killed her. How dare women not marry men who, however violent they may turn out to be, are the fathers of their children! And while we’re on the subject, we need to outlaw divorce, so women can stop leaving the abusive fathers of their children.
You made your bed*, honey, now lie in it.
*Or your coffin. Whatever.
Since single motherhood is such a blight upon society, and since Medved (and the GOP) frown upon such and think that a better society would result if there were less single mothers out there, I think he should be encouraging all those college Republicans to marry any currently single mother. And after the honeymoon, they can then go off and fight to defend freedom, democracy and the American Way from the Great Islamic Menace, you know the other scourge of Western Society. Which would be great because all these young men would be fighting for their women, and you know how the GOP loves chivalry,
“Sure, a lot of people are sad that this kid had to see his mother murdered in front of him, but how many have made the obvious point that his life was no picnic when she was alive, thanks to her being shamefully unmarried?”
Do these guys ever read the things they write, or do they just spill out like when they get hold of some bad bologna? By this argument, any kid raised by a single parent is only going to be marginally worse off if their only parent gets killed.
Mr. Pierce. We need to start a neopunk/folk band called Bad Bologna….
mikey
As a single mother, I can’t even snark about this. I wouldn’t be answerable for my actions if I got within eye clawing distance of him. What a disgusting, soulless, prick. Jesus that pisses me off.
I’d like to start a fund with the goal of arming Candy with advanced weapons. We’re talking Barret fifties and AT-4s. I think the outcome would be beneficial to society. Y’know?
mikey
Candy, the Nation State! I dig it, mikey. Maybe I could get Elizabeth Edwards to be my Minister of Defense. I think we could isolate some targets.
For all his talk about shame, why isn’t he ashamed to talk such spiteful drivel? Interestingly, none of them ever are.
” the undeniable premise that most children will benefit from growing up in a stable, two parent, two gender household. ”
He left out white, rich. christian and american. And english speaking. Anything else? So we can now start sterilizing the rest of the world? Should we start the camps up now Michael?
Who tucks in an Aloha shirt -into a pair of blue jeans for that matter?
Medved!
Retard pundit AND fashion retard.
So Medved thinks that being married will protect a woman with children from getting marries? Has he heard of Chris Benoit?
UM, let’s try that again, okay? Does he think that getting married will protect a woman with kids from getting killed?
If there’s a lesson in the murder of Jessie Davis – lesson being, Don’t Fuck Married [Black] men – What lesson does the murder of Pastor Matthew Winkler by his wife Mary, just a little while back tell us?
Don’t engage in risky behavior like making your wife dress up in kinkly platform shoes and wigs? Sounds to me like he deserved it.
Why are the wingnuts not writing about this story? Has any wingnut touched this story?
Or are they all out surfing the internet here:
http://www.glitterzlingerie.com/7platforms1.html
that it’s a shame whenever any child is left alone with an unmarried mother in an obviously dysfunctional situation.
The only thing obviously dysfunctional about her situation was that she was…dead…you know.
OK, I confess I have not been all over Nancy Grace and shit about this story, but WHAT THE FUCK does anyone know about this woman’s home “situation”? Yeah, she had a boyfriend, yeah, she had one child with him and another child on the way, but who are they to fucking say she didn’t provide a good home for her kids? What do they fucking know?
I don;t know jack shit about this lady, but I’m sure as hell not going to jump to conclusions she was dysfunctional based on nothing but my own close-minded little prejudices.
Actually, I know a lot of people who were raised in unconventional families who have turned out to be pretty great people, so giving someone the benefit of the doubt, I imagine this lady probably made a good home for her kids.
As a single mother, I can’t even snark about this. I wouldn’t be answerable for my actions if I got within eye clawing distance of him. What a disgusting, soulless, prick. Jesus that pisses me off.
Candy, one of my “enlightenment moments” was when my sister, afraid that her husband (aka “the asshole who beat the shit out of her regularly”) would hurt their kids, finally gathered enough ovarian fortitude to pack up her babies and run. She was still hiding out in the shelter during the time that Dan Quayle announced to the world that single mothers were Teh Reason that America had problems: crime, drugs, unemployment, etc. could all be traced back to single mothers, you see.
All I could think was, “So this asshole is telling me that my niece and nephew would be ‘much better off’ with a man who threatened to beat them? And my sister is a bad person and the cause of all of society’s ills because she put her kids first and basically risked her life to protect them? Fuck him, and his whole party!”
So, yeah, if you need a second on the whole eye-scratching thing, I have a manicure kit, and I can travel.
Right on, Dorothy!
I remember the whole Dan Quayle/Murphy Brown thing. That was right after my son was born. I wasn’t in as bad a situation as your sister, but if I had married my kid’s biological dad, I sure would have been. I remain convinced that I did the absolute right thing. It wasn’t easy, but it was the best choice, and that Medved or Quayle or any other asshole presumes to judge all single mothers as worthless sluts hatchin’ babies right ‘n left and sleeping with everyone who comes down the turnpike….
(wipes spittle off screen…)
I hope things went well for your sis after she got away.
Hmmmmm, no
Michael Medved is speaking for the Resentful Tribe, that sullen “base” of Americans who vote not for the best candidate or even for the one most like them, but for the candidate who most loudly vocalizes all their cherished prejudices, carefully nursed grudges, and eternal grievances. Jessie Davis’ sad fate intersects a whole bunch of the Resentful Tribe’s prejudices:
*If you “let” women go out and have sex without getting married, how are all the sub-median white guys who don’t have good looks, good prospects, good social skills, or much self-esteem going to “hook” someone into marrying them?
*If you “let” the Big Scary Black Cop Figures have sex with white women, how are all the sub-median white guys going to, uhh, “measure up”?
*If you “let” unmarried women keep their bastards and/or have abortions, where are the nice white childless couples who can’t afford to buy a couple of Irish babies (like Justice Roberts did) going to pick up a healthy white newborn or two for themselves?
Sure, Medved’s simultaneous condemnation of abortion and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, with a side trip into the perils of gay parenthood, seems schizophrenic to the rational reader. But that’s because we’re all concerned about the “happiness” or “freedom” or “social utility” of the women, children, and men involved in situations that don’t meet Medved’s stern Ozzie-and-Harriet standards. You need to re-adjust your worldview to understand that Medved is talking about improper resource allocation leading to a shortage of compliant wives and healthy white adoptable newborns.
And he’s preaching this skewed viewpoint to a crowd eager to believe that, if they’re unhappy with their personal lives, scared about their economic future, and estranged from their own children, it’s because “They” — the liberals, the dirty hippies, the gheys, the Democrats, the secularists, the Islamoterrorists, any boogeyman will do — has deliberately stolen their precious resources. People who think they have nothing left but their grievances will happily vote against their own self-interest, as long as someone convinces them that he’ll punish this campaign cycle’s public enemies.
Nice work, Anne Laurie, and here’s another on that some thread:
Why do powerful, connected white guys oppose legal abortion? Because they’re the ones who could have procured illegal abortions. That gave them a copulative advantage over their less-powerful competitors: “Don’t worry, honey, I can fix it.” Once she can get an abortion *all by herself*, she can hop in the sack with any guy she wants. That “improper resource allocation” (GREAT phrase!) really, really drove guys like Henry Hyde nuts. (Note the first thing he did was to make abortions more expensive for poor women.)
It’s ALWAYS about power and control with these guys. (And cut Mr. 1970’s Porn Star Moustache a break: his views come right from his Old Testament, untarnished by 3,500 years of progress.)
Mike, the construction worker from The Village People called me.
He wants his mustache back, and he wants it NOW!
You just can’t get good (white, cowed, submissive) help anymore. These folks want to go back to the day when you could get a live-in maid for the cost of room and board, a few dollars a week. Now that working class white families are no longer having eight, ten, fifteen children, there is no way to get Alice from the Brady Bunch to do all your dirty work, raise your kids, and smile through it all, worshiping you for your shiny middle class wonderfulness. When the help does not face starvation if you turn them out, they just do not have the right damn attitude.
They think abortion and single motherhood have robbed them of this. They may be right.
As Anne Laurie notes above, the cognitive dissonance in Medved’s screech is what caught my attention. Anyone who works in the field knows that white couples (except, in large part white gay couples) will not adopt babies of mixed race or non-white infants unless they are Asian. The nations foster homes are full of thousands of children like this woman’s little boy who are considered un-adoptable because they aren’t white and newborn. So is Medved saying his state-run birth licensing program only applies to white women? No one is fooled by this spew and no one can miss Medved et al and the real subtext: that’s what the white woman gets for betraying her race and sleeping with a black man. These conservative, racist, holier-than-thou, hate-filled, cretinous people really need to all move to North Carolina, start their christianist hate-state, and secede from the union once and for all.
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”
Excellent way of putting it, Mr. Gently! Are you quoting from someone? If so, who?
In light of the recent “we’re not racist, it’s just fact” commentary on the Jesse Davis sitch, allow me to introduce this lovely scenario. I live down the street from a hospital. Every morning, a group of white, middle class, retirement-age guys drives in from the ‘burbs to march around with super gory posters. Did I mention there’s an elementary school across the street? Once in a while they bring their pre-school aged grandchildren. Anyhoo, I just noticed a brand! new! sign! I think you’re gonna like it —
STOP BLACK GENOCIDE
Ummmmmmmmm…these guys don’t strike me as losing lotsa sleep over the plight of African-Americans. In another city, my relative is one of ’em, and I KNOW he doesn’t, as he regularly tosses the “jungle” word around, etc.
Medved’s stern Ozzie-and-Harriet standards.
And I would bet, that if someone were to rustle around in Medved’s closet, you’d find some extra-martial frolicking, some inter-racial dating, some out of wedlock progeny, and just exactly the things he condemns in others.
Because, frankly, Jessie Davis’s situation is common today in many families )not being murdered – being a single mother of interracial children). At my place of employment there are at least 4 people I can think of right off the top of my head who have similar situations in their family. All perfectly respectable members of society.
People like Medved are truly hypocrites.
Huh. Interesting. I’m a single mother. I adopted my daughter. The conservatives I know seem to think that makes me some sort of saint – I guess because of enjoying “sex without the consequences,” my motherhood is actually “consequences without the sex.” In any case, I’m regularly told what a wonderful person I am because of the adoption – as if I’d brought home a particularly troublesome puppy that nobody else could be bothered to housebreak. Oh, I know what it is – it’s because she belongs to a minority group…I may be violating the single parent code, but I’m shouldering the white man’s burden, so that makes it a-okay.
Medved – what a despicable fucking jam-rag…I can NEVER see this push-faced porn-mustachioed cretin without thinking of how his presence could have been avoided at the git-go, if ONLY people hadn’t taken to the Medveds’ stupid ass “Golden Turkey Awards” bullshit the way they did (in the manner, say, of consumer adulation for the Pet Rock)…
15 test submit
32 test submit
This is why it is so hard for single mothers to collect child support. Seriously, I now understand the federal cuts to IV-D programs (state child support collection agencies).
Have sex in your are tonight!…
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