Feminists Lie: Why @WendyDavisTexas’s Dishonest Personal Narrative Matters
Posted on | January 26, 2014 | 32 Comments
Professor William Jacobson points out that Democrats now claim it is sexist to criticize Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis for her dishonesty, even though “she made her parenting a critical part of her political narrative.” Professor Glenn Reynolds adds:
When women say that Wendy Davis is being treated more harshly than a man, I wonder if they aren’t really reflecting just that it bothers them more when a woman is criticized this way than when it happens to a man?
All Democrats habitually lie — John Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia, anyone? — so Wendy Davis is not really unusual in that regard.
What makes Wendy Davis a special case is that in 2013, as part of the Democrat Party’s plan to continue their 2012 “War on Women” theme in attacking Republicans, she led a filibuster against a bill in the Texas legislature that would limit abortion, from 24 weeks to 20 weeks of gestation. In other words, Davis made her debut as a national figure in support of late-term abortion, and she did so in the immediate aftermath of the Gosnell “house of horrors” revelations.
You can be pro-choice and still agree that late-term abortion — butchering an unborn child that is already at or near the point of being able to survive outside the womb — is a grisly atrocity.
It was in defense of such atrocities that Wendy Davis became a Democrat “star,” and her personal narrative was a crucial factor in her stardom. So when it turned out that she had been dishonest in describing her “single mom” status, this was important.
Many people are mystified by the Democrat strategy of running “Abortion Barbie” as their candidate in Texas — where polls indicate a 2-to-1 pro-life majority — but this was part of a national strategy, and if Davis was doomed to defeat, so what?
Ever wondered why Texas Democrats haven't won a statewide election in 20 years? pic.twitter.com/bCTalqCJfQ | @BeccaJLower @SteveWorks4You #tcot
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) July 12, 2013
What Democrats want is to promote a victimhood narrative to women voters, to portray pro-life Republicans as extremist bullies, and Wendy Davis was happy to volunteer as national poster girl for their partisan propaganda campaign. This much is obvious, but what many people don’t understand is that the feminist crusade for the past half-century, specifically including the embrace of abortion by the so-called “women’s movement,” has been built upon a foundation of deliberate deception.
We need only mention Betty Friedan’s Communist Party connections as a reminder that feminism is a species of Marxism, whose leading advocates in the 1960s and ’70s were all part of the anti-American, pro-Soviet radical Left. In this sense, feminism is merely a stale Cold War leftover, like the “anti-imperialist” views of foreign policy that Barack Obama learned from his Communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis. Yet while feminists today usually conceal the fact that they spent decades cheering for freedom’s deadliest enemies, they meanwhile are mostly ignorant of how their support for abortion was purchased by male capitalist plutocrats with decidedly non-“progressive” objectives.
The effort to legalize abortion wasn’t led by women seeking a “right to choose,” but by neo-Malthusian population control fanatics:
The population control movement . . . was largely the brainchild of John D. Rockefeller III. Rockefeller funded much of the movement himself and through a number of family trusts and foundations, and he encouraged other foundations (Ford, Scaife, Carnegie) to do the same. . . .
[B]etween 1959 and 1964 one organization alone, the Population Council, got more than $5 million from the Rockefellers, $8.4 million from the Ford Foundation and $2.1 million from Scaife. So that’s $15 million in five years, back when a million dollars was a lot of money.
Historian Donald L. Critchlow chronicled this phenomenon in his excellent 2001 book, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Goverment in Modern America:
[T]o raise the public’s consciousness about the threat of overpopulation . . . the population movement undertook a concerted public relations campaign through a steady stream of books, pamphlets, and magazine and newspaper articles. This campaign was aided by the involvement of key publishers and editors who were actively involved in the movement, including George Hecht, editor of Parents Magazine. The drumbeat around the population crisis reached crescendo by the early 1960s. Readers of popular magazines were faced with a barrage of articles warning of an impending population crisis . . . Women readers were inundated with articles like “Are We Overworking the Stork?” (Parents Magazine, 1961), “Why Americans Must Limit Their Families” (Redbook, 1963), “Intelligent Woman’s Guide to the Population Explosion” (McCall’s, February 1965), “Overpopulation: Threat to Survival” (Parents Magazine, 1967) and “Population Increase: A Grave Threat to Every American Family” (Parents Magazine, 1969).
The truth about this is something I’ve mentioned before:
- May 8, 2010: The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday
- Feb. 18, 2013: About Paul Ehrlich and ‘The Most Spectacularly Wrong Book Ever Written’
Like the facts about feminism’s Marxist origins, it is not really difficult to discover the truth about Rockefeller’s funding of this population control campaign — which connected abortion to the feminist cause — once you are aware of its existence. But as with so much else in our culture, liberal hegemony in academia and journalism results in the suppression of this important truth.
Do you remember when feminist Meg Lanker created a hoax at the University of Wyoming by threatening to “hate-f*ck” herself? Her fictional victimhood was typical of the lies that feminists tell routinely, a phenomenon I began to notice about 15 years ago in examining a series of feminist memoirs that were a vogue with publishers in the mid- to late 1990s. What caused that trend? My surmise was that publishers figured out the institutionalization of feminism in university Women’s Studies programs had created a certain baseline level of demand. College libraries would more or less automatically buy any book about feminism, and if an author had a few friends who were professors that would assign her book as required reading for students, even the most tedious and badly-written memoir could sell thousands of copies.
Whatever the inspiration, in the 1990s there issued forth a number of books by middle-aged feminists whose life stories tended to follow a certain narrative arc: They grew up in suburban middle-class homes, got involved with the anti-war movement in the 1960s, endured a series of failed relationships with men, had a feminist “epiphany” at some point, and ended up as radical lesbians.
After reading about a half-dozen of these books, I noticed that their theme was usually at odd with their narrative, and that many elements of their narratives were “just so” stories, i.e., unverifiable anecdotes that — coincidentally! magically! — just happened to prove whatever political point they were trying to make.
When I say there was a conflict between the themes and narratives of these memoirs, what I mean is that the oppression they claimed to have suffered was not generally perpetrated by reactionary right-wing forces. No, these women left behind their bourgeois homes, got involved with the anti-war Left and then were treated abusively by left-wing men in the movement who, if you take these feminist memoirs at face value, were all insensitive monsters with a knack for turning women into angry lesbians.
While I’m willing to believe the worst about hippie peacenik creeps, however, the tendency of feminist memoirists to use unverifiable anecdotes to form their indictment of oppressive patriarchy struck me as inherently suspicious. If “the personal is political,” as feminists insist, why did it seem that the “personal” always involved a male victimizer known only by a pseudonym, so that there was no way to check the facts or learn the other side of the story? Unless you’re an angry lesbian whose confirmation bias predisposes you to believe such tales, at some point you begin to notice how these victimhood anecdotes serve the narrative function of providing male scapegoats whose alleged villainy relieves the author of responsibility for her own choices and decisions.
“The patriarchy made me do it!”
Victimhood tales are to feminism what success stories are to capitalism. Just as no entrepreneur would start an independent business if not for the belief that success was a possibility, so no woman would become a feminist unless she thought she could parlay sympathy for her tales of victimhood into career opportunities. Organized feminism provides a ready-made audience of credulous listeners for these victimhood narratives, and the Democrat Party’s political investment in women’s victimhood provides an incentive for the partisan publicity machinery of left-wing blogs and liberal media to promote such feminist myth-making.
If Wendy Davis’s single-teen-mom-in-a-trailer story is not as complete a fiction as Meg Lanker’s rape-threat hoax, the deception is not really a difference of kind, but merely a difference of degree. And if feminists are crying foul about Wendy Davis’s disgrace, this is only because feminism as a movement is implacably hostile to truth.
Hateful @SarahKSilverman Mocks Christianity in Pro-Abortion Video
Posted on | January 26, 2014 | 73 Comments
The Daily Caller’s Caroline May caught this on Friday: In a 5-minute video for “Lady Parts Justice” — the pro-abortion group she formed last year with Daily Show producer Lizz Winstead — Sarah Silverman pretends that she was visited by Jesus Christ, who told her to spread a pro-abortion message. Also, Jesus gives Silverman an orgasm:
This kind of pro-abortion fanaticism is always difficult for me to comprehend. It’s hard to imagine anyone could have such a bloodthirsty enthusiasm for killing babies, but it is especially hard to believe women could harbor this kind of monomaniacal death fetish.
If Sarah Silverman had any guts she’d take on Hollywood’s only approved faith, the so-called Church of Scientology which is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme disguised as a UFO religion. Do you know why she doesn’t do that? Because like everyone else in Hollywood, Sarah Silverman is always looking for her next job and she doesn’t want to offend anyone who might offer her a part in their next movie, TV show or commercial.
You never know when Tom Cruise or John Travolta might call, right Sarah?
Actually, she has done jokes about Scientology in her stand-up routine, but her career is rapidly going downhill anyway. She was popular for a few years when she was young and dating Jimmy Kimmel, but now she’s in her 40s and resorting to this: Political videos on YouTube, hoping to land an appearance on MSNBC maybe. In a few years, she’ll be like Joan Rivers, doing jokes about facelifts and menopause.
Those Grapes? Totally Sour!
Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 60 Comments
A feminist WORSE than @AmandaMarcotte? Wow! http://t.co/XljuBc56ko via @TwitchyTeam
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 26, 2014
Just a small taste of the feminist rant:
Every time I hear someone say that feminism is about validating every choice a woman makes I have to fight back vomit.
Do people really think that a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself? There’s no way those two things are the same. It’s hard for me to believe it’s not just verbally placating these people so they don’t get in trouble with the mommy bloggers. . . .
You will never have the time, energy, freedom or mobility to be exceptional if you have a husband and kids.
Notice something? There’s no photo of “Amy Glass,” nor is there a Twitter handle for the author. So if she’s a hideous monster with no prospects for marriage, you wouldn’t know it. Neither can you direct your rage directly at her. It’s just mommy-blogger troll bait.
UPDATE: Two Victims Identified in Columbia Mall Shooting Near Baltimore
Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 16 Comments
It is always a mistake to speculate on the motive for mass murder until you know the identity of the murderer, and so we must resist such temptation in regard to today’s incident at the Mall in Columbia, a Howard County suburb of Baltimore, Maryland:
Three people were killed and one was injured by gunfire shortly after 11 a.m. Saturday on the second floor of a crowded Mall in Columbia, according to Howard County police. One of those who died was found near a gun and ammunition and is believed to be the shooter.
Howard County General Hospital officials reported they are treating four people, including one who was shot in the foot. The other three individuals were not being treated for gunshot wounds, but for injuries related to panic at the scene.
Police confirmed shortly before 3 p.m. that the shooting took place at Zumiez, a shoe store, and that the shooter had used a shotgun. . . .
Police reported the area is now secure. “We are confident it was a single shooter,” said Howard County Police Chief William J. McMahon, who spoke at the mall.
McMahon said he could not confirm any motive for the shooting. He said police do not know yet whether the incident was the result of a dispute between people who knew each or a random act of violence.
The fact that the gunman used a shotgun suggests that this wasn’t a case of a local gang-banger deciding to bust a cap on rival thugs; such crimes usually involve pistols. No, this was either robbery, a desperate revenge killing or an act of inexplicable madness.
Uh oh- shooting at MD mall. I predict shooter will be another mentally ill person the ACLU wouldn't let us lock up.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 25, 2014
We’ll see if Ann Coulter’s prediction is correct. By the way, nobody ever got shot while shopping our Amazon links. Just sayin’ . . .
UPDATE: OK, police have now identified the victims as “two employees at the skate shop Zumiez, Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Md., and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City, Md.” A witness told the Baltimore Sun that “the gunman appeared to be between 18 and 21 years old.”
Just based on that, I’d guess this is a personal revenge killing. Either the shooter was a recently fired employee, or else he had a romantic interest in the girl, who spurned him. But I hasten to add, that’s just a guess. The gunman apparently committed suicide afterwards.
Hmmm. Shooter at Maryland mall used a shotgun? Do we know anybody who encouraged people to buy shotguns? pic.twitter.com/LhmyW7jgzC
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 26, 2014
So I Guess @PaulWaldman1’s Basic Message Is: ‘Vote Democrat, You Sluts!’
Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 54 Comments
Before addressing Paul Waldman’s partisan nonsense, let’s first briefly discuss chlamydia. This is one of the lesser-known sexually transmitted diseases, not one of the big-name celebrity STDs like syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes and HIV. Despite its comparative obscurity, however, chlamydia is potentially devastating to women. The disease can lead to infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID):
Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) refers to infection of the uterus (womb), fallopian tubes (tubes that carry eggs from the ovaries to the uterus) and other reproductive organs that causes symptoms such as lower abdominal pain. It is a serious complication of some sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially chlamydia and gonorrhea. PID can damage the fallopian tubes and tissues in and near the uterus and ovaries. PID can lead to serious consequences including infertility, ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy in the fallopian tube or elsewhere outside of the womb), abscess formation, and chronic pelvic pain. . . .
Each year in the United States, it is estimated that more than 750,000 women experience an episode of acute PID. Up to 10-15% of these women may become infertile as a result of PID. A large proportion of the ectopic pregnancies occurring every year are due to the consequences of PID.
That’s from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which, the last time I checked, was not run by right-wing extremists.
Well, why am I bringing up chlamydia, you ask? About 15 years ago, researchers found the disease to be surprisingly prevalent:
Almost one in 10 female U.S. Army recruits are infected with chlamydia . . . Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine tested urine samples from 13,204 recruits at Ft. Jackson, S.C. They found that 9.2% of the recruits — women between the ages of 17 and 25 — tested positive for chlamydia. But among 17-year-olds, the percentage jumped to 12.2%.
In women from five southern states — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — the rate for chlamydia was higher than 15%. Among recruits from states such as Washington, Oregon and Idaho, which have made aggressive efforts to control the disease, the rate of infection dropped to less than 5%. The medical team found that the risk of having the disease was highest among sexually active young recruits and African American women.
Are female Army recruits disproportionately sluttier than other young women? I don’t know, but the Army seems a bit worried:
Results showed that the adjusted incidence of gonorrhea and chlamydia among Fort Bragg soldiers remained higher overall than comparable state and national rates during the period of analyses. The 1996 adjusted chlamydia rates for male and female active duty soldiers were 3-fold to 6-fold higher than rates for males and females in North Carolina and in the United States as a whole.
This problem was brought to my attention in an amusing way recently. My son completed Airborne School at Fort Benning, and then was put on a bus that delivered him to Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne Division and U.S. Special Forces Command. Upon arrival there, he had to attend a mandatory briefing on the risks of chlamydia — evidently the problem is serious enough that every new arrival at Fort Bragg must go through this. But my son was tired after the bus ride and fell asleep during the briefing, and when the instructor saw him nod off, my son was required to stand at attention for the remainder of the session.
Since then, every time my son starts to talk about his girlfriends, my response is automatic: “Chlamydia! Wake up, soldier!”
Promiscuity is not without actual risks, and condoms are not a guarantee of protection. Despite all the idiotic clamor about “safe sex,” condoms are not 100% effective, and it helps to ponder the question, “If you knew for a fact that someone was infected with an STD, would you still have sex with them, even with a condom?”
If your answer is “no,” and you then consider that a significant percentage of sexually active young people are infected with one or another STD, isn’t this a persuasive argument against promiscuity?
Facts and logic are utterly wasted on liberals, however, and so the enthusiastic embrace of sluttishness is the theme of a deliberately insulting column by Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, in which he attributes Republican anti-slut messages to the “ignorance” of “older conservative men who have no idea how ladyparts work, and really don’t want to know.” Really?
The obvious temptation is to go ad hominem here, to raise the question of whether Paul Waldman is so superior in his knowledge of the workings of “ladyparts” that he is fit to issue pronouncements on Republican men’s “ignorance” thereof. But let’s resist that temptation and instead ask: Is it really true that Mike Huckabee’s comments were rooted in “ignorance” and that, by implication, female voters prefer Democrats for their greater gynecological knowledge?
Excuse my skepticism. Exit polls show the “gender gap” advantage for Democrats among women is almost entirely a function of lower marriage rates for Democrat women. Barack Obama got 67% of the vote of unmarried women in 2012, while Mitt Romney got 53% of the vote of married women. If a woman’s romantic experiences are of the “happily ever after” variety, she’s probably a Republican, whereas women who are bitter because they have been used and discarded vote Democrat.
Anyone care to speculate what we might learn if we could correlate women’s votes with the incidence of chlamydia infection?
Democrats advocate and endorse promiscuity, going so far as to distribute “Sluts Vote” pins at their national convention. Knowing the harm to women caused by such behavior, why are Democrats so enthusiastically in favor of it? It’s the Worse-Is-Better logic borrowed from Marxist-Leninist radical theory: The more poverty, crime, disease and unhappiness there is, the more people become alienated from, and hostile toward, mainstream society. This alienation and hostility can then be organized into political support for the kind of radicalism that proposes “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
Happy, successful people aren’t interested in radical transformation, and so Democrats want more people to become miserable failures. And this is what “SlutWalk” is all about:
When I bring up “Marxist-Leninist radical theory” in discussing feminism, I’m not kidding around. Take a look at these photos from the 2012 San Francisco Bay SlutWalk:
The first photo shows a woman whose sign promotes Radical Women, an organization founded by avowed Marxists, including Susan Stern of the Weather Underground/Seattle Liberation Front. The second photo shows a SlutWalk flyer issued by Women Organized to Resist and Defend (WORD) which is actually a front for the Workers World Party, a Marxist group that led anti-Iraq War protests through its International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition.
This connection between Marxism and feminism is neither coincidental nor insignificant. “Taking Feminism Seriously“:
[University of California-Santa Cruz Women’s Studies] Professor Bettina Aptheker is the daughter of a famous American Communist, the late Herbert Aptheker . . .
Professor Bettina Aptheker is by her own proud admission both a Communist and a self-described “lesbian activist.” . . . Aptheker’s course syllabus describes lesbianism as the “highest state of feminism” . . . In other words, change in sexual orientation is an inevitable final stage in the development of the socially conscious individual.
Allison Jaggar is professor of philosophy and a former chair of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder . . . Integrating Marxism and feminist theory, Jaggar describes herself as a “socialist feminist” and “activist,” who seeks to combat “the male-dominant structure of everyday life.” . . .
“The political economy of socialist feminism,” writes Jaggar, “establishes that, in contemporary society, women suffer a special form of exploitation and expression. . . . The distinctive social experience of women generates insights that are incompatible with men’s interpretations of reality . . . The validity of these insights . . . must be tested in political struggle . . .”
Understanding feminism’s Marxist worldview solves what is to many women a mystery: Why are feminists embracing the “slut” label? Don’t they understand that promiscuity is degrading to women? Shouldn’t feminism be upholding women’s dignity?
If you ask questions like that, you haven’t studied Marxism, which has always scorned “bourgeois morality” as an expression of “false consciousness” that Marxists attribute to religion, “the opiate of the masses.” Haven’t you been paying attention?
Popular culture has been so corrupt for so long that many young people are incapable of making any distinction between vice and virtue, categories that sophisticated people are expected to reject as old-fashioned, if not altogether obsolete or, indeed, hatefully oppressive. . . .
“Deviant” is a word we don’t hear much anymore, for the simple reason that its meaning has become invalid or irrelevant or, as any Democrat would say, an expression of hate. America has in recent years gradually lost its vocabulary of moral judgment. “Deviant,” “abnormal,” “perverse,” “immoral” — each of these terms for sexual behavior that is wrong and bad implies the existence of an antonym for what is right and good. . . . Politically correctness forbids us to assert that any form of sexual behavior is more wholesome or more normal than any other.
A synonym for “political correctness” is cultural Marxism, and the elimination of traditional morality is essential to this radical idea, so that advocating promiscuity is now a feminist imperative, even though women will suffer most as a result.
There is no good and bad, no right and wrong, no true and false or — to express Marxist doctrine more accurately — no one should prefer that which is good, right and true, if that which is bad, wrong and false is more conducive to socialism. Anything that assists in subverting the capitalist order is “good” by Marxist standards, no matter how much hardship, suffering and death may result.
Feminists and Democrats want women to be sluts, because the more women are lonely and miserable, the better for Democrats.
Of course, after these sluts become infected with diseases that render them incapable of reproducing, they won’t need birth control.
“Chlamydia! Wake up, soldier!”
On Da Tech Guy’s Radio Show
Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 2 Comments
by Smitty
Check out Da Tech Guy’s radio show. I’m due on in about an hour (1:15PM EST). Pete is a champ, and it’s a privilege to call him friend.
What a blast that was! The liberal guest was Mike Hummell of Stop Brownback, who was articulate and pleasant and I’d debate again with pleasure, and His Badness, Ladd Ehlinger, and I thought that the three of us had excellent chemistry. Good times.
Famous Gay Rights Activist Now Also Famous for Child Pornography Habits
Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 65 Comments
It’s possible to be quite specific about Larry Brinkin’s pornographic preferences, but “forcible sodomy of infant boys” is perhaps about as specific as we need to get. Oh, and also this: Larry Brinkin enjoyed interracial child pornography, and used the “n-word” when expressing his erotic enjoyment of these images and videos.
You stay classy, “veteran gay rights advocate“!
Veteran gay rights advocate and former San Francisco Human Rights Commission staffer Larry Brinkin pleaded guilty Tuesday to possessing child pornography.
Brinkin, 67, changed his plea in a deal with the district attorney’s office that will result in a sentencing recommendation of six months in county jail, six months of home detention, five years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender.
Brinkin, who worked as a senior contract compliance officer with the rights commission until his 2010 retirement, was arrested in June 2012. Authorities said e-mail attachments were found on his America Online subscriber’s account that contained images of toddlers engaged in sex acts with men.
Prosecutors originally charged him with six felony counts of possessing and distributing child pornography, but dropped all but one felony count of possession as part of the plea bargain.
Such is the character of a “Human Rights Commission staffer,” and Zombie points out that the baby-rape enthusiast Larry Brinkin will still be eligible for his taxpayer-funded pension:
A former high-ranking San Francisco government employee convicted of felony possession of child pornography will continue to receive his government pension because, according to city regulations, evidence of “moral turpitude” is required to revoke a pension yet viewing violent kiddie porn does not qualify as moral turpitude. . . .
A recent law defining which type of actions count as “moral turpitude” required to nullify municipal pension benefits does not include sex crimes involving children, and only refers to financial crimes . . .
You can read the whole thing, and remember that under this plea deal, Larry Brinkin will serve only six months in county jail.
Also, in case you have forgotten: A gay couple “sexually molested a boy for six years, providing video of their crimes — and even paid sexual encounters with the boy — to an ‘international syndicate’ of pedophiles called the Boy Lovers Network”:
Mark Newton, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison [in June 2013] . . . Authorities say Newton and his partner, Peter Truong, 36, paid a Russian woman $8,000 to give birth to a boy they said was conceived using artificial insemination with Newton’s sperm. The men began sexually abusing the boy before he was two weeks old, recording the acts on video they shared online with other pedophiles. . . .
Two U.S. men, John R. Powell, 41, of Florida; and Jason Bettuo, 36, of Illinois, also face federal charges in connection with the case. Police say they believe Newton and Truong created the boy “for the sole purpose of exploitation” . . .
A boy created “for the sole purpose of exploitation.” And there is no “moral turpitude” for the San Francisco consumer.
Hard To Remember The Last Time I Was Excited By A Privacy Policy
Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 23 Comments
by Smitty
The colonoscopy went well enough today, which you may not care about too much. After the week of intestinal issues around Thanksgiving time, it seemed prudent. Especially given that you never know where the ObamaCare wrecking ball will swing next.
Typically, reading a software license or a privacy policy is right up there with a colonoscopy on the “Thanks, no thanks” scale. The advent of the word processor seems to have given us the idea of chaining ourselves up, rather than liberating ourselves.
So, when you see something like this, if you’re me, you’re genuinely cheered:
| Your browser also gives us your IP address, which could identify you, but we don’t use it to do that. For real. | When you use the network, we also collect potentially personally identifying information in the form of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. But we don’t use that information to identify you, and we handle and disclose these addresses in the same way we handle other potentially personally identifying information as described below. |
The notion of using communication to reveal, rather than hide, is stunning these days. The idea that all those hellish legal requirements are met in the right column, while something humanly legible is there in the left, is just. . .sane.
It’s like putting C code in the left column, with the bare assembly code in the right. StackExchange is probably violating some law in communicating directly with users like that, rather than burying them in gibberish.
What if the American people were to return to a day when a reasonably educated, non-specialist could read and comprehend our laws? Have I snorted too much Drano, or not enough?
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