States’ rights proponent Jim DeMint just can’t keep his trap shut about who should teach in schools:
DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.
“(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” he said. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”
And Carl Paladino, who threatened to “take out” a NY Post reporter for sending photographers after his 10 year-old daughter from an extramarital affair, showed his concern for her privacy by displaying her yesterday at a rally in Watkins Glen, NY.
cathyx
Sounds like another Dr. Laura inconsistency moment.
El Cid
It just has to do with what the words “rights,” “freedom,” and “religion” mean. “Rights” means those “freedoms” you are permitted to exercise by the correct religion, and DeMint will tell you which one that is.
Also, we need to come up with reliable tests to determine the sexual activity of our nation’s unmarried women teachers, because we can’t have someone teaching our kids who’s doing something sexually we don’t approve of.
lacp
I do kinda agree with him – an unmarried woman shouldn’t be sleeping with her boyfriend in the classroom. If that’s actually what he meant.
Silver Owl
DeMint’s world is about him being a crazy dictator.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Fix’t for accuracy.
Fuck him and his religion of hate.
Annie
Sorry, sex outside of marriage is reserved for conservative Christian Congressmen. They, of course, can teach and run for Governor as well.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@lacp:
He has a strange view of sex ed?
fasteddie9318
Only in the vestigial wingnut brain is the “right” of bigots to discriminate more important than the rights of the person being discriminated against. Someday biologists will study specimens like DeMint and determine that they were actually a relic of an earlier branch on the evolutionary tree, with a primitive prefrontal cortex causing them to have only a limited sense of self-awareness. I propose that the new species be called Homo douchebaggus.
arguingwithsignposts
@lacp:
Sentence structure fail there. hehehehe.
MattF
He’s easy to make fun of.. but in fact, it’s vile. DeMint wants the ‘right’ to control everyone’s sexual behavior. One can only wonder why that matters so much to him.
Svensker
@Annie:
Fixt for akrasy.
kay
I don’t think it’s inconsistent at all. It’s electoral reality.
Conservatives can’t win elections on fiscal conservatism. Conservatives can’t win elections without fundamentalist religious. It won’t work. They know this. The only people who haven’t figured that out are 1. economic conservatives and 2. libertarians.
I am a little curious how they’re going to find out the unmarried schoolteacher is sleeping with her boyfriend. Do they envision a sort of trial? Who is going to collect evidence?
Notice the language choice here, too:
on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.
This prohibition applies only to women.
Zifnab25
Like hell they can’t. Conservatives go into screaming fits over the size of the deficit and scope up votes tens of thousands of voters. They have no problem winning elections.
It’s just that the moment they get in office, they spend like drunken sailors. Then all the fiscal conservatives stare at them crosswise and abandon them at the polls. And it takes the Conservatives another four years to magically spin back up their majorities.
Alan
Wow, I guess Sharia Law is coming.
arguingwithsignposts
@kay:
If that ain’t a confederate party dog whistle, I don’t know what is.
Linda Featheringill
Isn’t there a lady, a chef, who is running a write-in campaign against DeMint?
She seems like the perfect candidate for people who would like to vote for “none of the above.”
SiubhanDuinne
@lacp #3:
Exactly. They need to stay awake as an example for the students.
kay
@Zifnab25:
I don’t agree. I hear this every year, and every year, when it gets right down the the wire, they bring out their religious fundamentalist base. All the bullshit about balanced budgets and small government goes to the wayside, and we get the predictable religious dog whistle.
DeMint is already hedging his bets here. He slyly inserts 2012 as the year they cut spending, not 2010.
They have a coalition, and it includes religious, and they can’t win without them. Religious conservatives do all the actual grass roots work, not CEO’s, and not economic conservatives. Without them, they’re sunk. Every time. Nobody knocks doors and makes phone calls on the inspiring issue of cutting the budget, particularly in states like South Carolina, where rank and file conservative voters are dependent on federal largesse.
SiubhanDuinne
@Linda Featherengell #17: Yes indeed, the wonderful Nathalie Dupree. She’s hella popular; I hope she gets a respectable number of people to write in her name.
(Although SC election officials would probably toss out anything spelled “Natalie” or “Nathalee” or “Depray” or any slight spelling variant of her name. Just because they can.)
JPL
Was his message approved by Mark Sanford?
quaint irene
Exactly. Hasn’t anybody asked his opinion on swinging bachelor teachers. Oops, shouldn’t have said ‘swinging.’ He’d probably consider that means ‘openly homosexual.’
TaMara (BHF)
I’m out of outrage these days. Not that I’m not outraged, they’ve just worn me down so I have no more energy to express it. I believe that was their plan.
Let’s lighten the mood with just a bit of satire (my boss sent this to me this morning):
Vote Republican
SiubhanDuinne
@Linda F: sorry, in my post about misspelling a write-in candidate’s name I managed to massacre yours. Apologies.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Dupree wants to cook DeMint’s goose. I’d love to see that. lol
In response to last nights question about name change, yes I was the former demo woman but have decided to take a break from remodeling my house.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s amusing that they write “our name is complicated”. To whom? To the religious conservatives they’re trying to fire up, maybe? It doesn’t include “Jesus Christ” right there in the title? In any event, they clear that up right away.
It’s hard for me, because I listened really closely in 2004, and the national media insisted that Bush pulled out his squeaker based on “security moms” or some such nonsense.
From the ground, in Ohio, it was just as clear as day who was doing all the heavy lifting: fundamentalist religious. I didn’t see any “security moms” doing GOTV. They were worried about gay marriage, not terrorism. They get what they can from the general population, but when it’s time to bring it home, they turn to religious.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL: LOL. I’m tempted to send her some money.
Nice to see you under whatever name you post!
Mike in NC
I’m begging the GOP to nominate this insane clown for president in 2016.
Uloborus
@El Cid:
You know, I thought it was because they felt that the lifestyle they had a right to included living in a society where their views were unquestionably dominant, but you’ve changed my mind. That may be a factor, but your description is so perfectly in line with the mindset of tribalists AND narcissists. Their tiniest right to do whatever the Hell they please is more important than anyone else’s right to anything. And they *want* to be mean-spirited busybodies. Ergo any attempt to stop them is the only important infringement of civil rights.
David
I think Senator DimWit is saying that his religion is Discrimination.
Omnes Omnibus
@TaMara (BHF): Nice little tune.
Omnes Omnibus
@TaMara (BHF): Nice little tune.
kay
@quaint irene:
I read and listened to Sanford’s wife’s interviews. There’s a consistent philosophy towards women here that isn’t mainstream.
That must not be a “relevant” issue for media these days, because it was ignored. His wife’s ruminations on “raising sons” were sort of amazing. The language was fascinating, a sort of code, and it stuck out to me. Media completely missed it.
b-psycho
I’m just going to call it right here: Jim DeMint is in the closet.
It’ll be revealed eventually.
jeffreyw
Thread needs more breakfast.
Sly
Fifty bucks says none of his kids so much as set foot inside a public school.
@Mike in NC:
If anything, he’s going for the minority leader spot. DeMint is basically the Mike Pence of the Senate; ego-maniacal enough to think he should be in the big chair, and stupid enough to try to get it.
Remfin
So I can’t find the transcript to verify exactly what was said, but it seems to me DeMint is perfectly OK with an unmarried man sleeping with his girlfriend being a teacher. I wonder if anyone in our Very Serious media will ever think about this, let alone ask?
JPL
@kay:
DeMint probably thinks real men don’t teach, they become Senators. He needs to have a chat with Lindsay.
El Cid
@Uloborus: Good lord, I know. How many times have I heard the same bullshitters lecturing (or warring against) the great evil foreign enemy of the day for their lack of Western values who are doing their best to fight those values at home?
Freedom of thought? Take Jefferson out of the schoolbooks and we’ll god-damned tell you who to put in.
Rational thought? Shut up with that ‘science’ crap and let us tell kids that an invisible magic guy made the universe and people ain’t no monkeys.
Freedom of speech? Don’t you dare talk about who owns our papers and TV networks, but we need to be able to shut down publications and broadcasts who question Our President during wartime and who don’t sound American enough. We need the right to shout down Congressmembers in town meetings and call them Stalin-Hitler-Mao, but, by God, you round those lefty protesters up in pens 5 miles from any event.
Personal liberty? Don’t you god-damned tell me what kind of high explosives I can stock in my cellar. But we ain’t gonna put up with you shackin’ up with that there homo / colored / Muslim / whatever, so we need to either come up with laws against it or run you out of town, or at the very least get you to lose your job. Also, you keep that damned baby, lady, I don’t care how long you been pregnant or who raped you to give it to you. This is about Freedom.
Freedom of religion? Those Muslim barbarians and Stalinist atheists are the most dangerous peoples in the universe, worshiping their false gods and beheading Americans and calling for Death to America. We know exactly which of our fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics have a right to saw what laws we should pass to keep the public more in line with our view of the Bible, because of course the Founding Fathers were all ultra-fundamentalist right wing Christians — heck, didn’t George Washington himself behead several dozen women for dressing too lose?
This wasn’t just a lesson learned from the famous post-9/11 dark joke – the way to keep others from destroying our freedoms is for us to kill them first. It’s the only way to make sure people don’t use the wrong freedoms or use them in the wrong ways.
4jkb4ia
This has been another episode of He Did NOT! with respect to Carl Paladino. (To be slightly fair, being displayed at a campaign event is different from being stalked by photographers at your house)
(I wonder if Team Bibi is perusing today’s NYT travel section for secret messages) (The travel writer visited the areas where his relative, the halutz, lived around the Sea of Galilee–concept of halutzim vs. settlers)
Sly
@JPL:
It likely has more to do with the terrifying prospect of a young girl being instructed, in any subject, by a woman who has a vagina that isn’t owned by a man.
El Cid
@Uloborus: Also, remember always that the tales of our / European history of harsh repression of people by the Church or persecution of heretics which we sane people use as warning lessons of history, they view as a nostalgic golden past and as an instruction manual.
agrippa
I am not surprised that he would say that. The election is in a month and he has to thump the tub.
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
Bruuuuce
I’ll take DeMint and Internet memes for $2,000, Alex:
What is “The lurkers support me in email?”
Funny how it’s not convincing in real life, either.
JPL
@El Cid: Your rants are great. DeMint is a sick person that can’t be ignored. His views of the world are biased towards his own pocketbook.
He’s one of Sarah’s real americans. In the olden days they called them ugly americans.
4jkb4ia
I am sure there are many private Christian schools in South Carolina where these parents can hire whatever teachers they want, but the public schools belong to everybody.
Chad N Freude
@El Cid: Most excellent comment!
HRA
I don’t know much about DeMint and I hope it stays that way. What I have read lately about him, tells me he is pimping himself outrageously for press. Hell if Palin and O’Donnell are getting coverage for being off the wall, then…
Closer to home, is this twisted unrealistic Palladino. Whenever I see his sign on someone’s lawn, I wonder about the occupants in re: to their intelligence. He rakes in the rentals from our government, uses it for his campaign, and yet, he has targeted it in his hate. Now after his public rant over his child, he brings her out in public.
I am at the point of no matter who is on the D line, they have my vote.
Chad N Freude
@JPL: Pedantry alert! The Ugly American was the good guy in Graham Greene’s novel that coined the term.
MikeJ
@JPL:
And now you’re going to launch it into space, hence JPL?
Chad N Freude
Slightly OT but related: Frank Rich’s column today about Christine O’Donnell as Useful Idiot.
4jkb4ia
@kay:
This is where you miss those field reports that Sean Quinn used to do to see if the Tea Party folks are really going out and knocking on doors and making phone calls for a candidate they can take credit for. I would start with Ken Buck.
morzer
Well, there is the problem that someone who is openly Republican is now disqualified from teaching mathematics, economics, physics, biology, history, civics, philosophy, religion.. and presumably they would never be caught teaching foreign languages.
What can the Republicans offer?
SiubhanDuinne
@b-psycho #33:
He’s so deep in the closet, his Zip Code’s in Narnia.
(Not original — I wish it were — but I stole it from someone over at Gin and Tacos commenting on that creepy assistant AG in Michigan.)
numbskull
Having lived down here for over 35 years, as near as I can tell, Southern heritage and culture (as used here), means, as near as I can tell: Starting a fight, getting your ass whipped, and then whining about it for the next 145 years.
I know several native Southerners. The ones who identify with “The Cause” can never explain to me what heritage and culture they’re blathering about unless they start invoking fiction, whether historical or in comparison to fictional others (usually from the Northeast or Cali). I’ve yet to see anything substantive, anything at all, that supports their stance.
El Cid
Holy fucking shit.
Well, with the caveat that “most” cases were post-pubescent is a grim way of saying that “many” cases were about pre-pubescent, and “most” weren’t raped means “plenty” were.
Not to suggest that sexually molesting / assaulting post-pubescents is ordinarily permitted, since as we know it’s only properly performed by Catholic and Protestant church officials.
El Cid
@numbskull:
That’s simply unfair. You are entirely forgetting the even more significant value of hating n****** and basing almost all of the society and economic structure on explaining all class and culture struggles as relating to that hatred.
morzer
@El Cid:
Also too, grossly obese white men explaining why starvation for the poor is morally right.
asiangrrlMN
@lacp: You win. Thread over. Ha!
@TaMara (BHF): That was very cute.
@El Cid: My blood pressure just shot up to ‘my head asploded!’. That fucker needs a very rusty pitchfork buried in his hinterlands.
DeMint is unwell. I think he needs a nice vacation far far far away from the Senate Floor.
Oh, and this:
Does that mean I can have unmarried sex with my girlfriend and still be in the classroom?
morzer
I must admit, I never thought Mintie was quite so gymnastically gifted. But who on earth wants the Jimbo hovering over them in a sexual circumstance, regardless of their marital status?
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: You. Suck. At least my Vikes are off this week so you can lay off the talk about you-know-whom.
Anya
Paladino has learned that the “liberals are attacking my family” worked for the plague from Wasilla; why not make it all about his ten year old daughter. He has nothing else. I hope the NY media is much better than the MSM and focuses on the issues, rather than the silly.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
You were the unmarried woman over whom the Jimbo hovered? And a Vikings fan too? Oh, how tragic it is to see a human being so reduced!
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: GUFFAW! OK, that was just too damn funny for me to even pretend to be offended!
Ash Can
@El Cid: I’m beginning to suspect that Bill Donohue isn’t actually Catholic, but secretly an old Ulster Orangeman. He’s done more to make the Catholic Church look bad than any other single individual on the face of the earth (with the possible exception of the current pope).
Snarla
Gotta wonder if an unmarried woman living with her boyfriend is fit to be in the Senate if she shouldn’t be in the classroom, but something tells me he didn’t have Christine O’Donnell in mind when he was shooting his mouth off.
Annie
I finally get it. Married women CAN have sex with their boyfriends in the classroom. As can married men.
morzer
So if I understand Mintie correctly, a semi-literate, wholly ignorant woman who quit on her job halfway and attended five colleges to finally scrape an undistinguished degree in journalism from Bumfuck State should be allowed into the classroom, where a hard-working, knowledgeable, competent woman with a degree in mathematics from Yale, who has been in a stable relationship for say five years with her boyfriend, should not – simply because the former has a piece of paper with MARRIAGE written on it?
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
That’s called pay-per-view.
morzer
@arguingwithsignposts:
AKA the Nikki Haley principle. Unmarried women having sex with their boyfriends are right out. Married women having sex with their bloggers… totally different!
Ecks
Well, except, obviously, where it’s for educational purposes
Uloborus
@El Cid:
Yes, it explains these inconsistencies. They’re not inconsistencies – they’re the narcissist’s entitlement to do whatever he wants.
And it explains why they don’t seem to hear the ‘you’re infringing on other people’s rights’ argument. That argument makes no sense. Other people can’t have rights by definition. Tribalists merely extend their narcissism to a group they identify as an extension of themselves.
kay
@4jkb4ia:
I think they are doing that. I just think they’re coming from out of state.
I thought the Beck rally was about getting religious out to join with fiscal conservatives.
Because:
1. religious do all the grunt work in GOP campaigns and 2. conservatives do this every two years. They claim they’re reinventing conservatism to focus less on “social issues” until it’s time for an election.
I’ve noticed this pattern. It’s hard to miss, right?
Every. Two. Years.
That’s what their coalition is. It’s not like they formed some new one, composed of fiscal conservatives and the 156 members of the libertarian wing of Republicans.
Religious plus business. Easy!
Uloborus
@kay:
Right. They’re just having a Hell of a time holding that coalition together this year because they’ve told every individual crazy that they’re in the majority and don’t NEED a coalition.
kay
@Uloborus:
I don’t buy the basic tea party line. I listened to a woman on NPR shilling her book on the Tea Party, and she kept repeating that they have no formal organizational structure. She also mentioned that they have a weekly conference call where more than 2000 “people” participate.
This seems to be an article of faith with media, that they have no “formal structure”. The Tea Partiers tell them that, and they dutifully write it down.
I don’t know how you get 2000 people on a national conference call without a formal structure. They all spontaneously sign on? Who signs on? Anyone who happens to be passing by a telephone? Baloney.
They may not have elected leaders who are named and willing to be identified, but they have leaders, and a formal organizational structure. I think that whole “grass roots” theme is useful for selling a book on ‘the movement”.
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: My monies! I demand my monies!
Triassic Sands
Paladino seems like a guy who fits neatly on my list of ten people I would never vote for under any circumstances, but I don’t think the Post should be sending a photographer to take photos of a ten-year-old child. Appearing at a rally is something I see as quite different and it would depend on the individual child whether or not it seemed fair to have the kid appear. Some kids might think events like that are fun; others might be put off by the crowds and noise. That’s an individual decision for a parent to make.
I just hope Paladino didn’t coerce her into appearing by threatening to “take her out.” The guy is a world class ass.
TruthOfAngels
@SiubhanDuinne: On the other hand, it could negate the problem of pupil absenteeism at a stroke.
So to speak.
Ahem.
Uloborus
@kay:
I see it as a ‘herding cats’ situation. They do have national leaders directing them. It’s just very, very difficult. The empirical evidence is in. The movement is made up of Republican voters, funded by Republican monied interests, ‘informed’ and supported by Republican media, and their political leaders are largely Republican. But they’re also throwing the party into panic because they’re forcing through primaries candidates that the official Republican Party absolutely does not want. When Republican leadership disagrees with the Tea Partiers publicly it’s the Republican leader who eats the crow.
It’s an attempt to rouse their base that’s gotten out of control. They’re trying to get it back in control again, but purity-obsessed narcissistic conspiracy theorists are not known for being team players. They’re having a Hell of a time putting the cat back in the bag.
Elie
@Uloborus:
I agree — but what if these folks are elected? Some of them are cra-zee… we could say that well, they will clearly demonstrate their inability to govern, but I am also afraid that they will just continue the chaos around our public policy decisions and muddy up any ability to do anything but watch their eyes roll back in their heads and their mouths spewing green bile vomit. It is clear that some people in this country will gladly destroy it just to prevent “the other” from being involved. Look, it was the Confederacy was willing to destroy the union. Nothing has really changed for them — they continue as though the civil war never happened — they did not lose — they just continued by other means…
Uloborus
@Elie:
If a few of them are elected we have a few more Bachmanns. The occasional deranged lunatic Senator is not a threat, and if they’re SO lunatic they make asses of themselves using Senate rules those rules might even be changed, finally. The only real danger is if there’s enough of them to pass legislation, and that seems unlikely. Actually, until 2012 it seems mathematically impossible. I mean, what difference is a Rand Paul going to make from a Mitch McConnell right now? They’ll both be fanatically obstructionist assholes.
jrg
If someone were to say that they have a right to discriminate against Christians, Demit would go f*ing bananas.
Exact same situation, but different religions… Sometimes I wonder if Republicans have some sort of severe cognitive dysfunction where they cannot understand a basic narrative once the cultural identity of all the people in the narrative is estabilshed.
El Cid
@kay: The 1990s militia leaders emphasized that they had learned from a anarcho-rightist strategy of “leaderless resistance” so as to avoid ‘martial law’.
Uloborus
@jrg:
They understand the narrative. The only part that they care about is the identity of the people involved. That’s pretty much the definition of tribalism. The rest just isn’t important to them.
jrg
@Uloborus: I suspect it’s more complicated than that. It’s tribal, but it’s also authoritarian. They may not understand the basic narrative because they don’t want to burdened with cognitive dissonance.
It’s a lot easier to be dishonest with other people if you’re dishonest with yourself first.
John Bird
I think DeMint has a point. I’ve seen my right to know details about my kid’s teacher’s sex life infringed weekly, sometimes even with handcuffs and court documents. Real liberals would help me fight this injustice.
SCarolina
@Linda Featheringill:
Nathalie Dupree is the write-in candidate. She is better than DeMint and Greene, both of whom don’t seem to be around much here in SC & neither of whom I will vote for.
Uloborus
@jrg:
I really don’t know why you guys are on about this cognitive dissonance stuff. Cognitive dissonance is the process whereby people change their beliefs to match their actions. This bit about people experiencing stress from conflicting beliefs is purely a theory trying to explain it. Not even a theory mainstream psychiatrists/psychologists necessarily know. Holding conflicting beliefs is human SOP.
However, being dishonest to yourself is ALSO human SOP.
lou
You know, back in the day — 1920s — women weren’t allowed to teach if they were married. My grandmother and grandfather eloped and kept their marriage a secret for a year so she could continue to teach.
So if deMint wants to really show his conservative street cred, he should go back to those rules.