{"id":182937,"date":"2015-05-01T18:10:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/05\/01\/an-article-that-needs-musical-accompaniment\/"},"modified":"2015-05-01T18:10:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T23:10:00","slug":"an-article-that-needs-musical-accompaniment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/05\/01\/an-article-that-needs-musical-accompaniment\/","title":{"rendered":"An Article that Needs Musical Accompaniment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 400px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"293\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ee_uujKuJMI?rel=0\" width=\"390\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Green Day&#8217;s American Idiot<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Amanda Marcotte writes of the  <br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/06\/13\/beyond_the_war_on_science_why_the_right_embraces_ignorance_as_a_virtue_partner\/?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=socialflow\">anti-science bent and the enthusiastic embrace of ignorance by the American right wing<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Spouting off about stuff you know nothing about is traditionally considered unwise. But as the Republican war on science intensifies, ignorance has started to become not only less of a handicap, but a point of pride. In the face of expertise and facts, being belligerently ignorant\u2014and offended that anyone dare suggest ignorance is less desirable than knowledge\u2014has become the go-to position for many conservative politicians and pundits. Sadly, it\u2019s a strategy that\u2019s working, making it harder every day for liberals to argue the value of evidence and reason over wishful thinking and unblinking prejudice.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The strategy of holding out ignorance to be the equivalent of expertise and simply daring your opponents to try to do anything about it was epitomized recently in the Ohio legislature. Republican state legislator John Becker introduced a bill that would ban all insurance plans in the state from covering abortion. It was a horribly misogynist and intrusive bill, but Becker didn\u2019t stop at just trying to outlaw abortion coverage. He also insisted that IUDs, the most effective contraception available, be outlawed from insurance coverage. His reasoning was that he believes IUDs cause abortion, because he believes they work by killing fertilized eggs.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">He is, of course, factually wrong in multiple ways.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">An \u201cabortion\u201d is a procedure that stops a pregnancy, and if a fertilized egg fails to implant\u2014and about half fail to implant, regardless of a woman\u2019s choices\u2014then you were never pregnant in the first place and therefore cannot get an abortion. But it\u2019s also factually wrong that IUDs work by killing fertilized eggs. Like nearly all other forms of contraception, IUDs work by preventing sperm from meeting egg.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">When confronted with the facts, Rep. Becker just blew them off. \u201cThis is just a personal view,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not a medical doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well then, sir, by all means. Let your random \u201cview\u201d pulled directly out of your hiney supersede the actual opinions of people who are considering the evidence before drawing conclusions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is just one problem with the article, no musical accompaniment, so I have posted an appropriate music video.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Green Day is the obvious choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Green Day&#8217;s American Idiot Amanda Marcotte writes of the anti-science bent and the enthusiastic embrace of ignorance by the American right wing: Spouting off about stuff you know nothing about is traditionally considered unwise. But as the Republican war on science intensifies, ignorance has started to become not only less of a handicap, but a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1002,1137,978,982,1027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-writing","category-music","category-politics","category-stupid","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}