You Go, Girl!
Via The Top Ten Conservative Idiots over at DU, I just learned about Alysha Cosby, my new hero:

Pregnant student banned from graduation walks stage anyway
By Erica Pippins
Montgomery Advertiser

Alysha Cosby waited four years to hear her name called at her high school graduation.

When it wasn't, she took matters into her own hands.

After the last graduate was asked to come forward to receive his degree at St. Jude Educational Institute's commencement Tuesday night, Cosby announced her own name and walked across the stage.

Cosby, who is pregnant, was told in March that she could no longer attend school, due to safety concerns. School officials also told her to complete her class work at home and said she could not participate in graduation.

Cosby, her mother, Sheila Cosby and aunt, Debra Blackwell , were escorted out of St. Jude Church by police after she headed back to her seat.

"I really came to support my classmates. Doing this was really a last-minute thing," said Cosby, after her family left the building.

The school's guidance counselor delivered Cosby's degree to her house early Tuesday afternoon, but she still wanted to participate. Her name was not listed on the graduation program.

"I worked hard throughout high school and I wanted to walk with my class," Cosby said .

Her decision to do so prompted cheers and applause from many of her fellow seniors and dozens of people in the church. Some, however, murmured that her act was in poor taste and that it took away from the ceremony.

"For those who may not have been happy with what I did, consider this: If you had someone close to you who was about to graduate and met all the requirements, wouldn't you want them to walk?," Cosby said. "Just because I am pregnant doesn't mean that I am any different."

School policy states that the administration can decide if and when a student needs to be homeschooled based on a number of factors, including medical safety, physiological well-being and social issues.

The father of Cosby's child also is a senior at the school. He was allowed to participate in graduation.

"I can't believe something like this is happening in 2005. I feel like we have regressed instead of progressed," Sheila Cosby said. "My daughter has been through a lot and I am proud of her. She deserved to walk, and she did."

I'd be proud of her too, if I were that mother. Wow. This girl rocks.
- posted by TJ @ 4:01 PM |

 
Gilead News Network
Via Think Progress, I just stumbled on this article from the Columbia Journalism Review:

Stations Of The Cross:
How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news
By Mariah Blake

[snip] CBN’s flagship program, the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, is familiar to many Americans. But few outside the evangelical community know how large the network is — it employs more than 1,000 people and has facilities in three U.S. cities as well as Ukraine, the Philippines, India, and Israel — or how diverse its programming. And CBN, or Christian Broadcasting Network, is just one star in a vast and growing Christian media universe, which has sprung up largely under the mainstream’s radar. Conservative evangelicals control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes, and virtually all of the nation’s more than 2,000 religious radio stations. Thanks to Christian radio’s rapid growth, religious stations now outnumber every other format except country music and news-talk. If they want to dwell solely in this alternative universe, believers can now choose to have only Christian programs piped into their homes. Sky Angel, one of the nation’s three direct-broadcast satellite networks, carries thirty-six channels of Christian radio and television — and nothing else.

[snip]

Evangelical news looks and sounds much like its secular counterpart, but it homes in on issues of concern to believers and filters events through a conservative lens. In some cases this simply means giving greater weight to the conservative side of the ledger than most media do. In other instances, it amounts to disguising a partisan agenda as news. Likewise, most guests on Christian political talk shows are drawn from a fixed pool of culture warriors and Republican politicians. Even those shows that focus on non-political topics — such as finance, health, or family issues — often weave in political messages. Many evangelical programs and networks are, in fact, linked to conservative Christian political or legal organizations, which use broadcasts to help generate funding and mobilize their base supporters, who are tuning in en masse. Ninety-six percent of evangelicals consume some form of Christian media each month, according to the Barna Research Group.

[snip]

The turmoil gripping the Middle East has proven to be a particularly appealing topic for shows like the International Intelligence Briefing and Prophecy in the News, which interpret world events — be it the rise of the European Union or the Asian tsunami — in light of biblical prophecy. This approach tends to cast events that flow from controversial human choices as the natural and inevitable march of destiny. Prophecy-focused shows suggest that the war in Iraq was foretold in the Bible, for instance.

Some political talk shows go even further out on the apocalyptic edge. Among them is the 700 Club, which airs on numerous mainstream stations and reaches about a million U.S. viewers each day. Its February 25 edition featured an interview with a man named Glenn Miller, touted on the 700 Club Web site as a "proven prophet." A scholarly looking man, Miller sat nestled in an armchair, a faux-urban skyline glittering in the background, and explained why God had sent America to war with Iraq. "It has nothing to do with terrorism," he told Pat Robertson’s son, Gordon. "It has nothing to do with oil. It has everything to do with that there’s 1.2 million Muslims that have been deceived by the false God Allah, and that the God of heaven, Jehovah, is now in the process of doing war if you will against that spirit to . . . break the power of deception so those people can be exposed to the gospel." As Miller spoke, Robertson nodded in sympathy. At one point, Robertson chimed in with the tale of a CBN reporter who was embedded with one of the first infantry divisions to march into Baghdad: "He said there was a sense among the troops — and he had this personal sense as well — that this was a spiritual victory, that this was a movement in the heavenlies."

Well, that explains why General Jerry Boykin thinks we're involved in the next phase of the Crusades.

As Avedon (guesting over at Eschaton this week) notes, "if only the moneyed Democrats could show a little faith in liberalism, we might really get somewhere." Why the hell is it that the freaking religious zealots have funding for propaganda stations but we can't get a decent liberal or progressive television station going? This fight needs money, and it is well past time for the liberals with money to step up to the plate.
- posted by TJ @ 4:46 PM |

 
The Cognitive Dissonance Corner
The Cornerites are simply amazing. They must not read each other's posts. Let's take today, for example:

First Post:
MADNESS [Andrew Stuttaford]
I would have thought that everyone would be in favour of vaccination against the virus mainly responsible for a certain type of cancer. Apparently not. Posted at 02:16

uh, not in the United States of Jebus, Andrew. (He is linking to this article, which discusses the fact that religious conservatives are gearing up to oppose the soon-to-be-approved vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV) that causes most cases of cervical cancer.) OK, great, right? At least one conservative realizes the insanity of this position.

Second Post:
IAN REIFOWITZ [Ramesh Ponnuru]
has written an unintentionally hilarious piece for the New Republic comparing today's Christian conservatives to the "radical multiculturalists" of the 1990s. [snip]

Odder is this passage: "[C]onservative nominees to the bench are not under attack from liberals for holding Christian beliefs; they are under attack for advocating a judicial philosophy that would impose those religious beliefs--on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on stem-cell research--on other Americans" (emphasis his). What world is Reifowitz living in? Where is the judge who has said that he would ban abortion or stem-cell research or same-sex marriage even if the public wanted to allow these things? Justice Scalia hasn't said anything like this. Nor have the mainstream opponents of judicial nominees such as Bill Pryor and Priscilla Owen--until, that is, this weekend, when Mario Cuomo made the same bizarre claims in the Democratic response to the president's radio address. Maybe Reifowitz is getting his information from Cuomo?
Posted at 04:23 PM

Or maybe he gets it from the Corner, where Mr. Stuttaford is pointing out that religious conservatives plan to try and prevent young girls from receiving a life-saving vaccine because "abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV." Not to mention the fact that I may not be able to get birth control next time I head over to the pharmacy because of these same harmless religious conservatives. Or the fact that partisan legislation and intimidation tactics from religious conservatives have made it extremely difficult for poor, underage or rural women to get an abortion. Or the fact that at a United States military academy (paid for with our tax dollars, mind you), proselytizing evangelists have run roughshod over the religious and privacy rights of non-Christian students. Or the fact that Senator Jesus Frist recently spoke (via satellite) at a rally that included a speaker who implied that members of the judiciary should be required to be Christian. Or...well, you get the drift. I hope. We are slouching towards Gilead, one slow step at a time, every day.
- posted by TJ @ 3:57 PM |

 
Attack of the Womb Worshippers
We had to put our cat to sleep this weekend, and thus no posting for a while. If I feel up to it, there will be memorial kitty blogging on Friday.

Anyway, check out this post over at World O'Crap, dissecting a scary yet unintentionally hilarious fundie advice column for women on protecting the womb. It has to be read to be believed. Have fun.
- posted by TJ @ 12:44 PM |