I think the "veto virgin" jokes have a point; that Bush in part vetoed the stem cell research just to prove he wasn't a wimp. Anyway, we all know he did; and I was about to forget all about that when, in my daily perusing of the blogosphere, I noticed
this brand new bit over at "Evangelical Outpost."
Evangelical Outpost is a blog run by an extremist right-wing fundamentalist Christian who goes by the name Joe Carter, who, is a former Marine recruiter Bush supporter who just happened to decide he didn't like Marinin' just about the time the Iraq war settled in...continued below the fold...
Joe Carter then got a job at the Orwellian named "
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity," [sic] as the ...wait for it...
"Manager of Internet Development and Information Technology" at this "Center" which seems to exist only to be another cog in the noise machine generating bilge on "life" issues, such as why a brain dead woman like Terri Schiavo is the same as people who are not brain dead.
Now if you've gone to the link at the top of the post, you'll note that Carter said:
On Tuesday, NPR's "All Things Considered" aired an essay on embryonic stem cells by commentator Terry Smith. Smith, a former correspondent for Newshour, was recently diagnosed with diabetes and expressed his hope that President Bush wouldn't veto the bill that had made it through the Congress.
Today they ran a rebuttal essay, though they wanted to stack the deck in Smith's favor by choosing a completely unqualified candidate to present the opposing view. That is the only explanation I can think of for why they would have asked me.
Instead of having you read one of my standard laborious essay-posts, I'll ask that you listen to one instead: Applauding Bush's Veto on Stem Cells (The byline still says "Terry Smith" but this is the link to mine.) The piece has a more narrative, touchy-feely quality than most of what I write (it is, after all, NPR). But it also contains large chunks of things I've said--and re-said--in past posts. I confess to be an irredeemable self-plagiarizer.
Carter self-effacingly admits to being a self-plagiarizer, but one wonders why this ex-Marine recruiter-internet-manager-whatever got on NPR in the first place.
What are his qualifications?
Is he a great theologian? Nah. Ask Darksyde. He's a fundamentalist Christian with all the intellectual vacuity therein.
Is he a well known pundit? Well, sort of, in the blogosphere, but as Carter himself as linked and shown, there's others in the blogosphere that are more well known.
But does he have any special expertise on "life" issues? He's an ex-Marine, dammit, and his training was therefore to kill. Other than that, he lacks any particular experience on "life" issues. Don't get me wrong for a microcsecond here: I think Marines do heroic things, are needed, and I have nothing but respect for people who do their job, but if there's any Marines out there, can you tell me that's not what they're trained to do? And can you tell me if that gives you any special insight into whether embryonic stem-cell research should be federally funded?
Carter's "audio essay" is "balanced" by a former Newshour staff member Terry Smith.
This appears to be another Ben Domenech (in that Domenech was put on the Washington Post website with no special qualifications, and with no balance), this time via NPR: "balance" a mainstream media personality who is making his case with a right winger with no special experience.
Here is the URL for the NPR story (hit the "Listen" button).
Does NPR ever list Carter as anything other than "commentator" who "is with The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity?" Carter seems to be going along with the charade: but again why does NPR give Carter the privilege to parade around as being able to "comment" on "ethics" issues when a Pastor Dan or a liberall blogger is denied the same thing? Why is NPR enabling him?
Looking at their website, it appears that before the Illinois General Assembly Carter said he was a "research analyst" at said "center." Yet at at another page in this "Center", one "Joe Carter" is listed as a "Director of Communications."
So I have to ask, why is NPR fooling their readers into thinking that Carter has any special expertise on ethics?
Is this not um...unethical?