The Jeff Booth Show

Internet Radio with Pictures

Show Transcripts

June 7th , 2009

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Jeff@eroticuniversity.com

(818) 613-9248

Geez, I take a couple of weeks vacation and all hell breaks loose. So much so that we had to have two Sexvestigations this week. One to cover the Republican surprisingly racist and sexist strategy to defeat Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The other to cover the execution-style slaying of Dr. Robert Tiller. Both are actually pretty grim stories. Next week we’ll come in on a lighter note. We do have some sex in politics news that is amusing. Some of it anyway. This is just kind of a heavy show.

Next week though is going to be more on the light side. We are celebrating our 100th show. It isn’t exactly our 100th show, we’ve actually done more than 100, but it depends on how you count them. Its close enough, though, and worth celebrating.

I hear the theme of the Odd Couple playing over this story. On November 15th, Theodore B. Olson was asked to help determine George W. Bush’s next place of residence. That request came from Bush. David Boies was also asked to determine George W. Bush’s next place of residence. That request came from Al Gore. Now the two lawyers are teaming up to once again to potentially return to the U.S. Supreme Court, this time on the same side. The issue? Proposition 8. They are representing gay couples who want to overturn it. Can two adult men from opposite sides of the political spectrum share a lawsuit without driving each other crazy? Cue theme music.

On a local Fox News channel, the reporter was talking about the president: “We also need to be affectionate, and you can see that with Barack and Michelle as well. They do a lot of touching, kissing, even fisting with one another…” That is a modern marriage when you fist each other. Very equal.

The entertaining part of the anti-gay marriage crowd is their attempts to explain logically why they oppose gay marriage when the only reason that have is that gays scare them and they believe the bible tells them so. Representative John Culberson (R-TX) had this mind numbing explanation: “Well under the 10th amendment, the states have a first responsibility for providing for public safety, public health, public morality. All issues that just affect the people within that state. It’s up to the states. And you either follow the constitution or you don’t. Federal law cannot permit — if one state, Vermont, wants to do that, you can’t let that cross state lines. You’ve got to let — frankly, a lot of these issues have got to be left up to the states. But the federal government cannot permit for example — The federal government has a legitimate role in interstate commerce. And that’s where the federal government comes in. I think the federal government can’t recognize — shouldn’t recognize it, it’s just a bad idea. And uh — But fundamentally, the right of privacy’s fundamental. I’m not interested — what people do at home’s their own business.” I apologize if your head exploded after hearing that.

I think a lot of people were surprised when Obama decided to withhold pictures from Abu Ghraib. But now that we know a little more about the contents, we know that if he had, he could have gone to prison for years. The pictures depict rape and other explicit sexual acts. According to reports, at least one picture shows an American soldier raping a female prisoner while another shows a male translator raping a male detainee. And remember, only the receiver of anal sex is gay, so the translator wasn’t kicked out under don’t ask don’t tell. Other photos reportedly depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects such as a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Here is the problem. We have a law in this country called USC 2257. It requires extensive documentation and signed releases for any explicit pornographic images. Unfortunately, while we were torturing detainees we forgot to get them to sign the releases. And the law makes it difficult for sexually explicit materials using foreign nationals because the producers have to have the proper identification on record- such as a U.S. driver’s license. Something none of the prisoners had. Even minor and unintentional failures in keeping the proper records can result in years in prison per count. Beyond that, Max Hardcore and Rob Black were sentenced to prison recently for distributing porn with simulated violence. Juries will have even less sympathy for porn with actual violence. Obama does not want to be the first president to go to prison on an obscenity conviction. SO, he won’t release the photos. I can’t blame him. Sure, the violence is disturbing. But in this country- it is obscenity that we get upset about and send people to jail for. Distributing depictions of violence, even real violence- you don’t go to prison for that.

I love conservative Republican family values. I may not completely understand it though- although it seems to have something to do with condemning everyone else while having a personally fucked up family life. And one of the best examples lately is the Palin family. Your daughter is pregnant. Your wife lost the election so you don’t have to pretend you want you daughter properly married to a boy you don’t like. SO what do you do? Offer your daughter a new car to break up with him, according to an interview in GQ. After they break up, you send your daughter on a media tour with her baby to promote abstinence, and put her on the cover of People magazine smiling in her graduation gown while holding her adorable baby showing how it is possible to have it all. Again, I apologize if your head exploded.

If you are a Catholic priest and you get caught on the beach with your girlfriend, they force you to resign. That is what happened to the enormously popular Miami priest Father Alberto Cutie. He had a huge following in this country and in Mexico- so popular that they dubbed him Father Oprah. It turned out okay for him, though. He switched over and is now an Episcopalian priest where they allow men to marry women. I guess that explains why the Catholic Church just moved pedophile priests around from parish to parish. Where else could they go?

The Uniting American Families Act would allow gay nationals to bring their foreign partners into the United States on the same basis as straight couples. At a congressional hearing on the bill, a woman testified about how she faces deportation back to the Philippines, even though her partner of 23 years and her children are American citizens. That’s longer than most straight marriages. Her child was there, and when her mom started talking about being sent away, he started crying. But don’t expect Republicans, who oppose the bill, to be moved. Senator Jeff Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, “Enough with the histrionics.” SO much for the illusion of compassionate conservatism.

Sexvestigation

The Brown Vagina Menace

Maybe Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s skin color does not look all that brown- but she is from Puerto Rico, so that makes her brown. And she has a vagina.  And for white male conservatives in the Republican party, this combination is absolutely terrifying.

I thought we saw an amazing amount of sexism when Hillary Clinton was running for President, but add the race issue and it just goes through the roof. There are Republicans who know they should not be saying these things but they just can’t help themselves. It is as if they have a racist/sexist version of Turret’s Syndrome. Sure, some of the decision makers are taking a more nuanced stance, but reports are that the attacks are being encouraged from the top.

She’s a woman and Hispanic, so despite all evidence that shows she exceeded academically and in her career as a lawyer and judge, she could not possibly have been actually smart and a hard worker. It had to be affirmative action. The notion that minorities and women have to work harder just to be equal is alien to them. Pat Buchanan called her an “affirmative action candidate.” It did not help Buchanan’s cause when Marcus Epstein, the executive director of his organization American Cause just pled guilty to an unprovoked racist attack on a black woman. This is the same guy who said that Republicans should focus on Dr. Martin Luther King’s infidelity and plagiarism.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb said “Does anyone dispute that Sotomayor has been the recipient of preferential treatment for most of her life?” In the strange world of white male conservatives, being born a poor Hispanic woman means you have hit the jackpot and you get to sail through life- Poverty, lack of opportunity, racism- those things just make your life a breeze compared to someone who has had to struggle through a life of wealth and privilege.

On Bill Bennet’s show, the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes suggested she got into Princeton through affirmative action. Of course, it is just a suggestion- he has not bothered to check it out. She has a vagina and she is less white than the women Barnes actually dated, as opposed to the much larger number he had to pay for sex (I’m just suggesting), so it had to be affirmative action. But why stop there? If we are in the just suggesting fact free zone, maybe she graduated summa cum laude, meaning with highest honors, because she made her professor’s come loudly? Maybe she earned her degree on her knees. I mean, she is just a woman. It couldn’t have been because of her brains. Cause they got female stuff going on up there.

Scary female stuff. As ex-con and now Republican pundit G. Gordon Liddy pointed out, “Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.” I don’t know what the or something means, but its female, so it has to be bad. Wow. I mean, what if you put a woman in a hugely powerful position like Secretary of State and she got her monthly visitor? Ireland, Finland, Argentina, India, Chile, Liberia, the Phillipines, -they all have women presidents. Maybe we need to declare preemeptive wars against them before those crazy bitches get their periods and attack us.

And vaginas are all alike. That is why a number of Republican pundits are calling her Obama’s Harriet Meiers. Meiers, the undistinguished personal lawyer of president Bush with limited legal experience and none as a judge with an intense loyalty to the president and even criticized by members of her own party as a hack is the same as a top ranking jurist, with a long history of accomplishment and no personal connection to the president. They both have vaginas- so they are equivalent.

The racism is equally undisguised. With a twist. They are calling her a racist. Its not the pot calling the kettle black. It’s the deepest darkest black hole in the universe calling a supernova black.

Liddy said “I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, the race. And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.” Apparently, Liddy does not speak illegal alien very well, because in Spanish La Raza actually means the people.  White Republican conservatives seem to be really bad at translating Spanish.

Republican politician and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke used the same mistranslation, then added that she was part of a vast Jewish conspiracy. She doesn’t look Jewish. And I know that last bit sounds like a punch line, but he really did make the Jewish remark. And to stay on theme, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo called La Raza a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. Even David Duke, who should know, didn’t go that far.  

The most appropriately named politician in history, Newt Gingrich, called on Sotomayor to withdraw because she is a Latina Woman Racist. As opposed to a Latina male racist?

Since former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s experience with Hispanics seems to be limited to having seen West Side Story, he called her a girl named Maria Sotomayor in a press release.  He was one of the first to attack her, saying that putting her on the court as someone from the far left would turn it into the extreme court- despite the fact that no matter what her views (and they closely match the person she is replacing), it still would not change the far right tilt of the Supreme Court. But Mike does not deal well with nuance. And as he has publicly noted, he is no fan of uppity women. He believes that the Bible has a role for women, and that role is under him and all men. And I am pretty sure he means that literally. He is also not a man whose conscious is going to bother him for intentionally distorting facts. I don’t think his conscience bothers to even phone in. He repeatedly lied about his involvement in letting a rapist go free despite pleas and warnings from his victims. The rapist had become a darling of the far right, and they put a lot of political pressure on Mike to let him go. Why? He raped a relative of their hated foe, President Bill Clinton. Governor Mike got him his clemency by putting pressure on the parole board, and he raped and then killed two more women.

I am not sure I get the Republican strategy here. They don’t have the votes to stop Sotomayor from joining the Supreme Court, so instead they are going to take a valiant stand that alienates both the women vote and the Hispanic vote. Hispanics- about 15%. Women- about 51%. So in order to win a pyrrhic victory you are willing to alienate 66% of the population. Plus everyone else who finds such blatant sexism and racism offensive. I just don’t get it.

Sexvestigation

The Terrorists Among Us

The two cases are almost identical. Affiliated with radical religious and political extremist groups, they both committed murder in an attempt to terrorize those who opposed them and force political change with bullets instead of the ballot box. One was charged with multiple counts of terrorism and murder, and his murderous attack was futile. Nothing will change because of it. He’ll most certainly get the death penalty. The other is part of the most successful terrorist movement in the United States, a movement that has resulted in achieving many of their goals, not through politics, but through terror. And he doesn’t even face the death penalty, let alone terrorist charges. And it is possible he might not even be convicted.

The first was a Muslim extremist, who shot a military recruiter. He gets no sympathy from anyone in this country. The other was a Christian extremist, who has fan web sites, and lot of people who believe that what he did was perfectly justified.

The murder of Dr. Robert Tiller is part of a long terrorist campaign by radical Christian fundamentalists that has resulted in over six thousand documented acts of violence, harassment, property destruction, and multiple murders. Even though Dr. Tiller’s assassin may have acted alone, he was certainly encouraged by the violent rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement.

And it has been remarkably successful. Despite the fact that Roe v Wade is still the law of the land, women have few options for abortions in this country. D. Tiller was one of just three doctors still willing to publicly do late term abortions- typically to save the life and health of the mother. In order to do their jobs, these doctors require tremendous security and face constant death threats. No wonder there are so few of them. Anti-abortion terrorism works. They are violent, ruthless, and time and time again have shown their willingness to disregard the law and assault and even kill doctors and those working with them.

Eighty-seven percent of the counties in this country offer no access to abortion services. Abortion, although legal, has become very difficult to get. And a significant part of the reason is because of the threats and intimidation of the anti-abortion movement make running a clinic a scary and dangerous thing to do. In some conservative areas, it can be just too dangerous.

Just because they call themselves Christians does not mean they are any different from the radical Muslim extremists. It’s the same mindset, the same certainty that no matter what they do, it can be justified in the name of God. And perhaps even more so than Muslim extremists, a hatred of women and a desire to control them is at the heart of their movement.

An excellent example is Randall Terry, who claims to have founded Operation Rescue. In fact, his wife founded it. As it started to get successful and she got some attention, he took over and told her to essentially back off and shut up. Being the good Christian wife, she did. He disowned his daughter when she got pregnant outside of marriage. He disowned his son when he came out as gay. He dumped his wife of 19 years to marry a woman nearly half his age. He was the spokesperson for the family members wanting to keep the brain dead Terri Schiavo alive. And this is a man who stands up as a spokesperson for family values.

Of the Tiller murder, Randall Terry said “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.” Then he called Obama a murderer. Getting it? Using rhetoric that encourages people to kill is effective, and then he used that rhetoric against Obama. See guys? Killing works. And something needs to be done about this Obama guy. You don’t have to be a murderer to be a terrorist. Sometimes threatening rhetoric can be just as effective.

Terry is not alone in blaming the doctor for his own murder. “He dies the way he lived. His was a bloody death”, said Reverend Rusty Thomas of Operation Save America. And while Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly condemned the murder, he refused to take responsibility for his years of vilifying Dr. Tiller, calling him a murderer, using incendiary lies against him, and urging that something be done. Something was done. He can’t expect to be surprised now. In a remarkable bid for a lack of journalistic ethics award, The Atlantic Monthly online posted an editorial condoning the murder as something that makes sense if you really believe abortion is murder. Sure, Dr.Tiller may have done a lot of good things in his life, but many murderers can claim the same thing- so who cares what his patients have to say?  He was, after all, a baby murderer. Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park and former Southern Baptist Convention officer called the murder of Dr. George Tiller an answer to a prayer and also said that he was praying for the death of Obama. This is not a man of God- he is a violent religious fanatic with the same mindset as the Taliban. And he is dangerous- inciting people to commit murder in the name of god. And the top radio hosts in Iowa, Jan Mickelson, and Steve Deace, compared the murder to slave rebellion, saying “babies in Kansas are safer today than they were yesterday while George Tiller was still taking in oxygen.” Anne Coulter wrote: As long as we’re deciding who does and doesn’t have an “absolute right to be born,” who’s to say late-term abortionists have an “absolute right” to live? I wouldn’t kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn’t want to impose my moral values on others. Unless, of course, they disagree with Anne Coulter

And at this point I have to stop or this will keep going on and on. The anti-abortion extremists who support this murder are not small in number.

And yes, this kind of hate speech, even when it advocates violence, is perfectly legal in the United States. Make a porn film like Max Hardcore or Rob Black and you go to prison. Advocate murder that your followers carry out and that is perfectly fine. As long as you are Christian and not Muslim.

The so-called pro-life movement is a sham. It should be called the pro-birth movement. And they are pro-birth because it is a way to control women. Sure, they have followers who may buy into the saving the little babies agenda, but the real agenda of the movement leaders is control. The control of women and putting them in their biblical place. Anti-abortion groups generally oppose sex education other than teaching abstinence- the one form of sex education guaranteed to produce unwanted pregnancy and more abortions. They oppose family planning clinics, even when they don’t provide abortions.

I am unaware of a single anti-abortion group that believes in promoting the use of contraception. Not even the so-called Feminists for Life group that Sarah Palin was involved with. If a safe and simple shot could be given to every teenager that would prevent them from getting pregnant ever until they decided they wanted to, the anti-abortion groups would oppose it as immoral. Given the opportunity to end abortion forever, they would reject it absolutely. Because it really is not about abortion. It is about imposing a religious doctrine that says women are sinful and should be punished for having sex by getting pregnant.

If they were really pro-life, they would focus on more than just abortion. They would focus on capital punishment, where innocent people have been executed. They would focus on war- where mass killing actually does take place. Instead they use that rhetoric against women seeking abortions and the doctors who provide them. 

They know absolutely that their violent rhetoric encourages people to commit violent acts. As much as they deny it, they have no intention of abandoning, as Terry Randall called it, “Their most effective rhetoric”. Because the people committing the violence, the terrorists, have achieved tremendous successes for the anti-abortion movement that they could not achieve politically. And that is terrorism. It works until you get serious and stop them.

Can the killer of Dr. Tiller get a fair trial in Kansas? I am not sure. The KKK was a radical terrorist group that murdered black people. In states that sympathized with them in the South, the killers did not get fair trials. They often went free. And Kansas is a hotbed of radical fundamentalist Christianity. The state has fought bitterly against the teaching of evolution in public schools. The former Attorney General basically worked for Operation Rescue, spending much of his time trying to prosecute Dr. Tiller. The current Attorney General actually did prosecute Dr. Tiller, although Tiller was acquitted because the case was incredibly weak. Can we trust this man to be the chief law enforcement officer in the state prosecuting the killer of the man he tried to prosecute?

Operation Rescue is a powerful politically connected Kansas based organization. And while Operation Rescue publicly denounced the violence, it seems disingenuous, since violence seems to be exactly what they had been calling for for a long time. Their second in command is Cheryl Sullenger, who was convicted in 1988 of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic. She is a terrorist. And the killer had her phone number in his car. She has now admitted that she gave the killer information on how to find Tiller. Did she know he was committing crimes against abortion clinics? If she did, giving him such information makes her a co-conspirator. Can we trust Kansas to honestly investigate this link?

The DHS Report decried by conservatives about the threat of domestic terrorism which specifically mention the threat of anti-abortion extremists was right. The federal government needs to move in aggressively. Investigations of anti-abortion extremists have been lax. The FBI knew that Dr. Tiller’s murderer had already violated federal law when he vandalized several other clinics, yet they did nothing. Local law enforcement did nothing- as they typically do in religiously conservative areas like this. The Department of Justice after Bush was elected basically ignored the FACE act designed to stop abortion extremists from infringing on people’s rights.

After thousands of acts of terrorism, we need to call the radical anti-abortion groups what they are- terrorist organizations. And we need to treat them as such- no less a danger to the United States than Muslim terrorists. Both kill, both maim, both intimidate, and both try to use force to change our country when politics does not get them their way. And both need to be stopped. Otherwise- the terrorists win.