May 31, 2019
Ideas have consequences, bad ideas have victims. So what happens when words no longer have meaning? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg claims that women who are pregnant and want an abortion are not mothers. Justice Thomas disagrees (as should all rational human beings). Or take the case of a woman who identifies as a man going into a hospital with stomach pains. Turns out he--rather she--was pregnant. The baby died, and a major newspaper blames the nurse for misdiagnosing says the episode "raises larger issues about assigning labels or making assumptions." As opposed to the episode raising the question of people--and society--denying biological reality and the meaning of "man" and "woman."
John Stonestreet and Warren Smith talk about "entertaining ourselves to death," as was on display when social media types blasted a Dayton weatherman for daring to preempt "The Bachelorette," just because he wanted to warn people that deadly tornadoes were on the way.
Also on today's program: The Maine legislature votes for death; new study confirms that religious, married people enjoy greater satisfaction in their sex lives than secular and non-married folk.
Resources
Forget the Tornadoes--the Bachelorette Is on
John Stonestreet and David Carlson, The Point, May 30, 2019
Meteorologist Jamie Simpson Goes off
YouTube
Foreword from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman
John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris, BreakPoint, May 29, 2019
Nurse mistakes pregnant transgender man as obese. Then, the man births a stillborn baby
Marilynne Marchione, USA Today, May 16, 2019
Neil Postman, Penguin, 2005 (20th Anniv. Edition)