Credo challenged me to a photoshop duel on Australian Senator Kerry Nettle wearing of a T-Shirt. Well I can honestly say I have never photoshopped anything since photoshop is out of my price range – but I will make due with what I have.
Australian Greens senator Kerry Nettle says she is sorry if her rosaries/ovaries T-shirt offended anyone, but pledged to wear it again.
It is always such a brave act when you know there are no consequences. Offend Catholics – ho hum, because as Kathy Shaidle says we don’t issue fatwas. Credo’s T-Shirt response is here and I will follow along with an anti-Muslim shirt also.
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30 comments
Check out this article for some more info on the whole issue:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18135630%255E7583,00.html
Good opinion piece (though I’m kinda biased on that).
Bec
I just now read the fine print on the shirt–it’s the YWCA. Sheesh. Girl Scouts, YWCA. Every pro-women’s organization thinks it has to be pro-choice.
Well, who joins these organizations? Not mothers of large families.
She’s young, ignorant and grossly misinformed. I pray that she be granted the gift of humility and wisdom so that someday, down the road, she looks at this picture and cringes as much as the rest of us are cringing at it now.
An interesting fact about the pro-abortion slogan, “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries” is that it’s used by women who should know that a while before a woman conceives a child her ovaries have completed their job and left on a month’s vacation. (When she does conceive the vacation is extended.) Therefore, when she is considering an abortion her ovaries have no more to do with the procedure than do her toenails. The slogan just combines anti-Catholic bigotry with an unsuccessful attempt to be clever.
I probably shouldn’t say this, but I can’t help but think that this girl could be quite pretty – not just with the assistance of a little make-up -but more so if her countenance didn’t reflect the really sad, sinful state of her soul.
How certain are you that this is a woman? It kind of looks more like “The American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. If it is indeed a woman, I suspect she has little need of contraceptives, let alone abortions. Maybe she would be better off with a shirt that said “keep your rosaries/off my gland-disease”.
Now I am ashamed of myself for thinking such things.
With a face and body like that, what makes her think she should worry? Blah!
Um… what’s an IED?
Theresa: IED: Improvised Explosive Device
Yes, Jack, we all know that the only thing men – some men, anyway – take any account of is appearance. I’d be more put off by her bad manners and her obnoxious opinions than by her face or figure. But then, I’m not a man. Nor, for that matter, am I a stupid, shallow jerk.
What Jack said.
(And I’m a woman.)
It’ll be great to see your anti-Muslim shirt. I can’t wait. Maybe we could get an anti-latino one, or an anti-gay one too. Ooooh, what fun!! [all intended ironically…you people are so weird, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves]
Hey Tim… keep your irony off my joie de vie!
She’s young, ignorant and grossly misinformed.
But on the other hand, she’s a babe and a half!
To whoever responded, two points: first, the expression is actually “joie de vivre” but is commonly misspelled as you have done; and second, the expression (even your incorrect version) connotes a joy of life, which is obviously incompatible with racism (i.e., singling out a group of humans for attack on the basis of their origin or religion, as you have done). You say you’re Catholic, so I assume you know all this; you were likely just being sloppy, but your irreverance is offensive. There is, I believe, some moral responsibility entailed in posting a blog on the internet. Racism falls far short of that standard.
Not that I’m advocating making fun of anyone, but
who else, either as a race, or a religion, generally speaking, flies planes into buildings full of innocent civilians or straps bombs on women and children, dopes them up and sends them out to blow up civilians (and sometimes soliders) ~ all in the name of their religion and b/c the infidels won’t convert to it?
Did I miss something here?
Cecilia, you, and the blog host, may be suggesting that racism is ok in this case because “they’re soooo bad that we can justify being racist.” Here are some reasons why that is wrong. First, the obvious one: there have been far too many suicide attacks perpetrated (in almost all cases) by Muslims in recent years, but that hardly justifies our attacking all Muslims. It’s undoubtedly easier to do so, but it’s lazy because we succumb to conflating the whole with its nastiest parts. Which leads me to a second point: would it not be justified, under your logic, for Muslims to be disgusted with our ilk, and to dismiss us as potential partners in peace, on account of the widespread availability of abortion in the US and Europe? There are far more abortions committed by Christians and Americans than by Muslims. Certainly there are precious few abortions in the Muslim world, and certainly many thousands more (literally) fetuses are aborted per year than Christians are killed by Muslims. My point being, both societies have problems, but the challenge is to bridge gaps, recognizing all along one’s own faults. There are many challenges coming from the Islamic world (not the least of which is this Iranian nuclear problem), but it is harmful to the cause of peace on Earth to justify haughty and racist superiority complexes, or to assume that one form of hatred is less evil than another. Oh, and “making fun of people” isn’t the point. Nothing good, in the history of the world, has come from racism. Everywhere it has existed, it was a black mark on generations past. Racists are insensitive and stupid, sure, but more importantly, they make the world a dangerous place. Out.
Howz about “Get your Koran off my gland”
Or however you spell it. Who really cares when you are insulting religious people. These pukes have no shame, so I won’t either.
Tim,
Are Muslims a race? If not, then how can it be racism?
If they are, then what race are Sudanese, Turkish, Chinese, and Indonesian Muslims?
Jeff,
Shouldn’t it be Keep YOUR IEDs… rather then Keep YOU IEDs…
(The English teacher in me can7t be turned off)
=-)
Elinor,
I am a devout, Catholic mother of 3. I am also a Girl Scout Leader.
Our brood is small because we married and started a family late. Lots of the Leaders I’ve met through the Girl Scout program have 4+ children.
You need to check your assumptions.
Okay, let’s call it an “anti-Islam” T-shirt. Surely we Catholics can be opposed to Islam, right?
(I bet that won’t make him happy,either.)
Silly Catholics! TIM is right! Don’t you know that if even the slightest whiff of what may be perceived as racism/sexism/what the hell ever-ism, has reared it’s ugly head, that’s all that’s needed for brain dead liberals to jump up on their high horse and look down upon you!!??
Don’t you silly Catholics GET IT!!!??? Moslems can fly aircraft into buildings, shoot little kids in the back as they run out of a school that the same moslems have stormed, carve peoples heads off, etc, etc, that’s all OK… but don’t you Catholics even DARE give the impression that you may be “against” something or someone.
Sheesh…. get with the PC already!
PS, Bishop Gumbleton for Pope!
“Racists are insensitive and stupid, sure, but more importantly, they make the world a dangerous place.”
So do idiots with bombs strapped to their wastes, but you don’t seem to have a problem with it.
Oh, and Islam isn’t a “race”.
I have seen this woman behaving badly before, and have seen her escorted out of parlaiment when George Bush visited Australia, she got up and started yelling like a baby, so was thrown out, hehehee
Wow! What an active comments section! First off, “Keep your irony off my joie de vivre” is a slight poetic stretch – I prefer the rhyme of “joie de vie”. Desole, mon francais est tres mal – je suis americain. Awfully intolerant of you to go around telling people what their joy of life can and can’t be. I presume from this and your veneer of knowledge of Islam that you’re a Unitarian, but I forgive you anyway.
Secondly, you have thoroughly missed the point of this parody. Please re-read the Curt Jester’s entire text, rather than just the last line. The explicit context here is a contrast between the ease and acceptance of offending Catholics against the effect of offending muslims. It takes absolutely no courage to offend Christian sensibilities – indeed, it wins street cred amongst the left wing types. On the other hand, this is only true due to the Christian gift of tolerance to western civilization – a gift that is not shared by the Islamic world (and don’t go bringing up the golden age of moorish spain as a counterargument). The secular western culture, built upon an edifice of Christianity, abhors its own history to the extent that it saps its own philosophical and cultural underpinnings. The West can (and does) insult itself with impunity, and makes a practice of tearing down anything that has the air of certainty or sanctity. The current muslim outrage against western cartoons serves as a marvelous reminder that cultural relativism is as logically and practically bankrupt a philosophy as has ever had the misfortune to be posited.
Consequently, the blogger’s reference to “an anti-muslim” shirt is in fact a slight against the self-congratulatory secular humanist neoeugenicists (like the unfortunate Mr. Kerry Nettle), rather than a slight against muslims. I presume this is obvious to most readers of this blog.
She looks beyond the age of concieving out of passion. Most likely “it” happened many years ago and now she is trying to justify her past abortion and at the same time be a foot soldier to protect younger women making the same mistake she did.
In her mind she is a crusader and hero for all women. For the greatest good according to her ilk is for women to kill their little children in utero.
Interesting and thoughtful retort. In reply, I’ll start by observing that you greatly overestimate the sophistication of your readers if you believe they understood your comment as anything but a cheap anti-Muslim quib (see their responses to my post, passim). And second, I agree with your assessment of the West’s penchant for tearing down its certain and sanctified idols. Of course, Enlightenment philosophy contributed in part to this, so I disagree inasmuch as you describe that development as a gift derived purely from Church teaching, but that’s not controversial, I assume. The only real substantive issue I have with your post is your ultimate conclusion, to which I don’t think your premises lead. I don’t see the connection with the anti-Muslim comment and your broad (and largely correct) point about what you call “cultural relativism.”
This goofy backlash by Muslim extremists shows you what happens in societies where tolerance of repugnancy is not an accepted norm. It demonstrates in no uncertain terms what happens when mobs of people believe they are certain about, e.g., blasphemy. It would appear to me that one foil of Western postmodern “relativism,” then, is Muslim society. It is not true that the “cartoon controversy” in the Muslim world shows the bankruptcy of Western values; to the contrary, it shows that tolerance for Ms. Nettle is better than storming the Australian Embassy in Washington with molatov cocktails. Your arguments lead to a different conclusion: that a little relativism (or at least a little tolerance for relativism) is a good thing, and woe to the West should we ever abandon it.
I don’t think you stick it to Ms. Nettle by pointing out that she couldn’t get away with such offense in, say, Saudi Arabia.
A look at Australian Senator Nettle website has listed under her portfolio the following: “women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex”
I suppose the comment of her looking like John Walker L. isnt too far off the mark.
This also supports the link between homosexuality and abortion.
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