Yo! Fetus Fetishists! Breivik Is One of Yours!

Joining the furious back-pedalling from Anders Behring Breivik is LifeShite.

First, they get in the mandatory 'No True Christian/Scotsman' dealie: Not a Christian. Not atall atall.

While the mainstream media attempts to paint Anders Behring Breivik, the terrorist bomber and shooter who killed over 76 people in Oslo last week, as a “fundamentalist Christian,” a 1,500 page document he wrote reveals not only that he did not consider himself a Christian believer, but that he was a mason, held such anti-Christian views as supporting abortion for disabled babies, and that he also hired a prostitute prior to his killing rampage.

Eeeeek! No true Christian would ever hire a prostitute!

Then there's this:

Relevant to pro-life supporters, Breivik says that he supports abortion in cases of rape, and “if the baby has mental or physical disabilities.” (pg 1179)

Man, they had to wade through a lot of crackpottery (as P.Z. Myers styles it) to get to something fetus fetishists could disagree with.

Because even more relevant to 'pro-life' supporters, Breivik is like, totally, absolutely on board with the fetus fetishists.

No contraception. No sex education. No abortion. No education or careers for women.

Yo! 'Prolifers'! He's one of yours. Deal with it.

Surprise, Surprise . . .

P.Z. Myers has a quick look at the manifesto attributed to Anders Behring Breivik and finds it wanting (to say the least) in sanity.

DAMMIT JANET! readers will probably not be surprised that a man who could hate so comprehensively includes women in his plans.

Here's P.Z. with a quote from the document.

Oh, and one more thing I stumbled across (I have not read this 1500 page mess, obviously! I jumped through it and every page I leapt to contained outrageous crackpottery). He identifies three main enemies of Western civilization: Islam, Marxism, and feminism. But don't you worry about feminism! He has a plan to cure it!

1. Limit the distribution of birth-control pills (contraceptive pills): Discourage the use of and prevent liberal distribution of contraceptive pills or equivalent prevention methods. The goal should be to make it considerably more difficult to obtain. This alone should increase the fertility rate by 0,1 points but would degrade women's rights.

2. Reform sex education: Reform the current sex education in our school institutions. This may involve limiting it or at least delaying sex education to a later age and discourage casual sex. Sex should only be encouraged within the boundaries of marriage. This alone should increase the fertility rate by 0,1 points.

3. Making abortion illegal: A re-introduction of the ban on abortion should result in an increased fertility rate of approximately 0,1-0,2 points but would strip women of basic rights.

4. Women and education: Discourage women in general to strive for full time careers. This will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate by up to 0,1-0,2 points.

Women should not be encouraged by society/media to take anything above a bachelor's degree but should not be prevented from taking a master or PhD. Males on the other hand should obviously continue to be encouraged to take higher education - bachelor, master and PhD.

It's all about fertility, ladies, and if only we keep you ignorant and trapped in the home, you'll start pooping out babies for us. Isn't that sweet?

(Note to P.Z.: It's always about fertility and control.)

Presumably these policies would NOT apply to the dusky women, just the 'preferred' women.

I doubt that exemption would bode anything good though.

ADDED: Michelle Goldberg:

Rarely has the connection between sexual anxiety and right-wing nationalism been made quite so clear. Indeed, Breivik’s hatred of women rivals his hatred of Islam, and is intimately linked to it. Some reports have suggested that during his rampage on Utoya, he targeted the most beautiful girl first. This was about sex even more than religion.

Go read the whole thing.

Mawkishness on the March

When did it begin? Apparently in 1702. 'Mawkish' comes from 'mawke' meaning maggot and first meant 'sick', then 'bad tasting'. In 1702, it had its first recorded figurative use meaning 'sickly sentimental'.

But it took the mass media to really get it rolling as a cultural phenom.

Personally, it started for me with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Shocking, of course. Scary, yes. But something for strangers to cry about? Huh?

Mawkishnes's next grand display, I suppose, was the murder of John Lennon. Again, shocking. Scary, not so much. But not a case for tears.

Mawkishness really bloomed (sorry) with the death of Princess Diana (emphasis mine).

Members of the public were invited to sign a book of condolence at St James Palace. Throughout the night, members of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service and the Salvation Army combined to provide support for people queuing along the Mall. More than one million bouquets were left at her London home, Kensington Palace, while at her family's estate of Althorp the public was asked to stop bringing flowers, as the volume of people and flowers in the surrounding roads was said to be causing a threat to public safety.

By 10 September, the pile of flowers outside Kensington Gardens was 1.5 metres deep in places and the bottom layer had started to compost. The people were quiet, waiting patiently in line to sign the book and leave their gifts. There were a few minor incidents. Fabio Piras, a Sardinian tourist, was given a one-week prison sentence on 10 September for having taken a teddy bear from the pile. When the sentence was later reduced to a £100 fine, Piras was punched in the face by a member of the public when he left the court. The next day, Maria Rigociova, a 54-year-old secondary school teacher, and Agnesa Sihelska, a 50-year-old communications technician, were each given a 28-day prison sentence for having taken eleven teddy bears and a number of flowers from the pile outside St. James' Palace. This too was later reduced to a fine (of £200 each) after they had spent two nights in prison.

OK, flowers are traditional symbols of sympathy. But fucking teddy bears??!

Some criticised the reaction to Diana's death at the time as being "hysterical" and "irrational". As early as 1998 philosopher Anthony O'Hear identified the mourning as a defining point in the "sentimentalisation of Britain", a media-fuelled phenomenon where image and reality become blurred. These criticisms that were repeated on the 10th anniversary, where journalist Jonathan Freedland expressed the opinion that "It has become an embarrassing memory, like a mawkish, self-pitying teenage entry in a diary,... we cringe to think about it." In 2010, Theodore Dalrymple wrote "sentimentality, both spontaneous and generated by the exaggerated attention of the media, that was necessary to turn the death of the princess into an event of such magnitude thus served a political purpose, one that was inherently dishonest in a way that parallels the dishonesty that lies behind much sentimentality itself".

Some saw it as a cause for bleeding heart liberals to hang their angst on.

Some cultural analysts disagreed. Sociologist Deborah Steinberg pointed out that many Britons associated Diana not with the Royal Family but with social change and a more liberal society: "I don't think it was hysteria, the loss of a public figure can be a touchstone for other issues."

Ah, but then there was 9/11 and mawkishness became manly for hawks, too.

So, now mawkishness is for everyone and any sort of sad or shocking event. (Oooh, look at the company I'm keeping in that piece.)

And, of course, a certain Faux News personality lowered raised mawkishness to a (weird and fake) art form. (Bonus tracks: Five Great Moments in Glenn Beck Crying on Air.)

More recently, the Right Wing Noise Machine went into overdrive over the so-called Ground-Zero Mosque.

And I could go on and on with examples of other professional and semi-professional weepers, but you get the point.

Now technological advance has made mawkishness viral. Witness the virtual mound of flowers and teddy bears.

Yes. I'm a bad person.

ADDED: Ooh, am I prescient or what? 'Mawkishness' is now Word of the Day.

Image source