#WendyDavis discusses her abortion — political fallout vs #GregAbbott?

Wendy Davis speaks to supporters. Lisa Krantz/AP via Houston Chronnicle

Wendy Davis, in her new memoir, openly discusses an abortion she had for medical reasons:

Davis, in a copy of the book obtained by the Express-News, wrote that her unborn, already loved third daughter had an acute brain abnormality. She said doctors told her the syndrome would cause the baby to suffer and was likely incompatible with life. 

After getting several medical opinions and feeling the baby they had named Tate Elise “tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her” in the womb, she said the decision was clear. “She was suffering,” Davis wrote.

She has discussed more  a previous termination of an ectopic pregnancy that would have threatened her own life, but talked little about this.

That said, on the political front, since officially announcing her run for governor last December, Davis has been pretty gun-shy to talk about issues of reproductive choice in general, even though it was a filibuster over a draconian new law — a law that would have prevented the abortion she had — that propelled her to the statewide limelight just over a year ago.

So, is she prepared to take the bit in the teeth more? Or, is she going to continue to think she can successfully chase after GOP-leaning suburban white women by continuing to soft-pedal this issue?

Given that she hadn't talked that much about this abortion before now, I don't see how she can continue to soft-pedal the issue. Greg Abbott's minions are going to double down on the "Abortion Barbie" slurs.

Yes, Abbott himself is playing it polite for public consumption:

"The unspeakable pain of losing a child is beyond tragic for any parent. As a father, I grieve for the Davis family and for the loss of life."

Call me back when the wingnuts go on the attack, to see if he disavows them.

And will those wingnuts try to claim she's not that religious, despite saying she baptized the ... fetus? dead baby? What do we call it? Again, those suburban GOP-leaning white women aren't going to be any more likely to vote for her today than they were yesterday.

As for "what do we call it"? I'm with Ted Rall on this, and have been ever since I read his take, which is in this blog post about the "Gordian knot" of the issue:

Abortion is murder. In my view women have — and ought to continue to have — the right to murder their unborn babies. Each abortion is a tragedy, some necessary and others not, and all of them are murder.

I can't say it any differently, although I might want to put it less bluntly. And, Wendy Davis couldn't either. 

And, Rall's bluntness shows how this is indeed a "Gordian knot," and why outsiders, especially pre-viability, have no business judging the women cutting the knot, nor any business restricting their ability to do so.

At the same time, as I've blogged before, if you believe in an invisible man upstairs, especially an omnipotent one whose allegedly an Intelligent Designer, then you have to believe this guy is also the Great Abortionist, because as many as 1/3 of human pregnancies abort, for genetic abnormalities and other severe medical reasons.

Therefore, wingnuts? If you accuse the modern world of "playing God" with abortion, you're exactly right.

The book goes on public sale on Tuesday. Stay tuned for more takes on it.

As a secularist, and one with a European-type semi-cynical take on life, I'm not on board with this from the book:

I’ve long believed in angels on earth, in a higher power, in moments when someone or something comes into your life out of the blue and saves you from the dangerous path you’re on.

Not me.

Because, elementary logic, Wendy Davis.

Why didn't that higher power prevent this fetus/baby from having the brain defects in the first place? Why didn't it prevent the ectopic pregnancy before that?

Columbia Journalism Review officially shark-jumps on #IFLS

First, CJR senior writer Alexis Sobel Fitts writes a five-webpage cover story about "I Fucking Love Science" and its founder, Elise Andrew.

In doing so, she commits these cardinal errors:
1. Writing the story about herself as much as Andrew.
2. Ignoring Andrew's seeming very deliberate violation of not just journalistic ethics, but ethics in general through not honoring copyright of NUMEROUS science-related photos, including a number by Google+ friend of mine Alex Wild.
3. Not talking to anybody who could and would have told her about this. (Wild is among those commenting on the page.)

In other words, it's shoddy journalism for being:
1. Self-centered
2. Lazy
3. One-sided

And, other trade publications and blogs are weighing in, too. Here's Knight Science Journalism Tracker:

For starters, the profile appeared in a journalistic publication, written in an unjournalistic way, about a person whose work is not journalism. Go ahead and debate what that J-word actually means in the comments, but I’d argue that several of the fundamental tenets of journalism – such as accuracy and unbiased reporting – are missing from the CJR piece (which also happens to be this issue’s cover story).

 Instead of taking a measured, balanced look at the person behind a media phenomenon, the profile came off as an overly sunny PR puff piece. After all, Andrew is not journalism’s first self-made brand. And, oh, by the way, the profile mentions almost as an aside, there is a history of copyright infringement and plagiarism accusations being directed at IFLS.

That's about right. 

Meanwhile, doesn't CJR have a managing editor? Who let this crap be printed? Let alone, who decided this was the magazine version's cover story?

Well, these people let this crap be published:

Editor in Chief & Publisher
Elizabeth Spayd

Deputy Editor in Chief
Brent Cunningham

Associate Editor/Production Editor
Christie Chisholm

Associate Editor Kira Goldenberg

Click here to email them. Or here to suggest this, their own piece as a "dart" under the mag's "Darts and Laurels."

Worse, who made the decision to let Fitts double down on her indefensible writing with a follow-up that's even worse in some ways?

As for the claims that Andrew's not gotten any "boosts" or "helps," one of Fitts' new, additional claims? Uhh, wrong!

From a March announcement by former national late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson:

Science Channel greenlit new series “I F-ing Love Science,” executive produced by CBS’ “Late Late Show” host Craig Ferguson. Ferguson made the announcement via a videotaped message at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas on Saturday.

So, please, that's not even close to being true.

Just stop it.

Fitts is doubling down on being:

1. Self-centered
2. Lazy (couldn't do a teh Google for the Ferguson bit?)
3. One-sided

Hence my comment on the follow-up piece:

I'm a journalist who didn't study journalism in college, and I didn't train inside one of "legacy media's great institutions," but I still know ethics, including of attribution. So, Alexis, does Ms. Andrew deserve a "free pass" on ethics? Copyright issues apply across all streams of journalism, and communications beyond journalism, including public relations, non-journalistic book writing and more.

And, if Fitts likes the snarkiness of "new journalism," I added:

Can I copy your mugshot for for-profit use without attribution? How much of your original piece can I copy without attribution? 

So, in addition to that comment, I asked CJR on those pages to fire Fitts. 

Oh, and you can consider firing David Uberti, too, or whoever above his head had the idea of now tripling down on the craptacular and putting both Fitts original story and her "apologia" follow-up under this week's must-reads of the week.

#Philosophy — too broadly defined today, or too narrow? Vs. #scientism, #religion, #metaphysics

Massimo Pigliucci has another interesting, somewhat thought-provoking, guest column at Scientia Salon. (Seeing as I'm the only person who has submitted anything directly connected to aesthetics there, although Massimo's defense of the humanities is somewhat connected, I need to finish up work on my own follow-up piece.)

Speaking of follow-ups, in his first piece, Mark English decried philosophy for, among other things, being "parasitic" on religion. He used that exact word after I, among others, challenged his original claim that philosophy was too dependent on religion. Unfortunately, I didn't do a follow-up to his response, noting that the likes of Hume were writing about religion-based metaphysics specifically in order to purge it from philosophy.

Well, in his current piece, English claims that philosophy is defined too broadly.

It's not a flat-out paean to scientism, but could certainly be seen as broadly supportive of that attempt at greedy reductionism, to claim that everything is reducible to the natural sciences. (Or, if you're more greedy yet, I suppose one could propose #mathematicism, the idea that everything is reducible to mathematical formulae, the more of them that are a priori, the better.) Given that the title of his first piece was, "Does Philosophy Have a Future," I don't think it's at all unfair to say that English has one foot, at least, in the scientism camp.

But, let's get beyond that.

In the current piece, among other things, English says philosophy is "thinking about thinking."

To me, the issue, if we're getting into definitions, maybe Mark is defining philosophy too narrowly, even while lamenting it operates too broadly.. First, is political science philosophy? Arguably yes. Second, under the "thinking about thinking," the "philosophy of X" idea has room to grow.

Related to that, is "thinking about thinking" the best way to describe philosophy? I think not. If, like me, people accept at least some validity to the idea of "subselves" and the idea of consciousness not being fully unitary, and related issues, along with accepting the idea that we're just not quite so rational as we might want to believe about ourselves, calling philosophy "thinking about ***," let alone "thinking about thinking," is probably too limiting.

In short, to counter Mark, who thinks philosophy is too broad, I'd say it's too narrow. I'll add, per the "political science" issue, that Kung Fu Tzu, for example, arguably philosophized about politics more than anything else. So did Hobbes. And, I bring Master Kung into the issue to note that English has limited himself to Western philosophy only.

Wittgenstein gets brought into the discussion there, too. To the degree language is limited, and philosophy of language has made limited investigation of non-verbal communication, and its emotional content vs its rational thinking content, this is all the more reason to state that philosophy is probably too narrowly defined in too many people's minds.

Green Party disorder

Per friend Perry, the Green Party USA's list of Texas Green Party candidates is sadly and highly incorrect, as this spreadsheet list he created shows.

I sent the national party Perry’s list of Texas Green Party candidates on Tuesday. I wonder if anybody from the Texas Green Party has done so. Per the amount of snark I’ve director toward the absentee candidate for governor, Brandon Parmer, probably not.

And, it's Thursday, and that GP list still ain't updated. Wonder if the state party knows it's wrong, too. Probably not.

As Perry said:

I love the Greens and what they stand for, but sometimes their level of competence really tries my patience. 

Couldn't say it much better myself. 

At some point, if you are both serious and idealistic about wanting to be more than just a protest vote, you have to build organization and recruit better candidates to make that happen.

Also, to riff on the link inside the pull quote from Perry?

Reality-based applies to more than just climate change and opposing wars. It includes not being anti-vaxxer or things like that.

New #TigerWoods still the old Tiger? #RyderCup realities

I had blogged recently about how Tiger Woods' decision to sit out a couple of months, and his decision to withdraw himself from Ryder Cup team consideration.

Well, hold off on that.

First, we know that the reason Tiger is sitting out until December is not just injury, but also the search for a new swing coach, or else the search for how to recraft his swing without outside help.

Second, TW didn't call Tom Watson to scratch himself from Ryder Cup competition; Tom called him.

That said, Tiger was the one who bit the bullet when Tom called it seems. Of course, with Tom calling, he probably realized that he was going to have to bite the bullet because Tom had gun in hand and trigger finger ready. The way Woods' team (Mark Steinberg and "the kid") phrased their press release, it seems clear they were trying to fog things up, but not so much to get too harshly called out if Watson was asked to comment later on, like he was.

I'm shocked, I tell you.

Do you have your proper Texas voter ID? #Snark alert

The federal lawsuit over Texas' draconian new voter identification laws is unlikely to be done before Election Day. Even if it were, the appeals process would start, meaning that the current law would stay in place, even if AG Greg Abbott continues his losing streak in federal court.

The Trib has an intro to the trial, which started yesterday. Of course, the GOP are only trying to filter out poor, brownish people, the kind that Lite Guv candidate Dan Patrick, aka The Stinking Anglo Formerly Known as Danny Goeb™, think smell up our voting process.

And, it's not just Danny Boy.

Our beloved gubernatorial candidate, AG Strangeabbbott, per fellow blogger P.Diddle, has a history of outright voter suppression. I agree with him; the News story is great and deserves a full read.

Of course, the GOP doesn't care about what we know is the No. 1 source of actual vote fraud — other people filling out absentee ballots by mail just to "help out" a senior citizen who's homebound or in a nursing home. Of course, those large white seniors, and even more the 80-plus "super seniors," are likely to tilt GOP. Allegedly. Since we're not even sure how much of this vote fraud exists, we don't even know their voting preferences for sure.

That is, if you're not a rich, white Republican.

This here photo shows you all the voter ID you need in that case. Just a nice donation to the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, or CPRIT.

Per an old TV commercial of my youth days: "CPRIT — too strong for a man running for governor? Made for a woman opposing him?" We shall see.

That said, I know that's John Sharp who's third from left in this photo. People who have read my blog for years may know what I think of him; people who aren't can click his tag below and find out. I deliberately picked this picture because he's in it.

I didn't have a lot of love for Sharp with the 2002 "Dream Team" flop. Various actions and stances of his since then have only decreased my fond regards.