The anti-choice people had a large anti-abortion display set up on Red Square at the University of Washington today, including real live babies as well as photographs of aborted fetuses. Presumably the display has been there all week. This is a bold frontal assault for them, right in the thick of a liberal citadel at the very beginning of the school year. If this had happened somewhere else, I might have felt compelled to engage, but as a matter of principle I make special dispensation for the UW (and presumably for other universities). Because of the UW's sterling integrity and positive atmosphere, we can afford to have any conversation. This is a very good thing, since, if we as a society can't have debates in our universities, where can we? Still, it's frustrating that this is a conversation that American continues to want to have.
Anyhow, my enormous trust in the UW was immediately reaffirmed when, near the anti-abortion carnival, I spotted a two-sided "Free Speech Board" that had been set up, where students, faculty, and others had written thousands of messages in support of women's rights.
Unrelated: I am frustrated when people say "there is no word" to describe what they are feeling. How pompous and ignorant. I've been railing against that for ten years. Your experiences, no matter how profound they are to you, are not so special that they cannot be put to a word. Maybe it'll need to be a capitalized word, but, either way, words make our species what it is. Deny that, and you deny your own potential.
Also unrelated: I get frustrated by overused political catchphrases. If I had a dollar for every time that somebody got "thrown under the bus," not only would I be stupidly rich, but America would have to be a land of wild roving misanthropic buses where very few people remain alive.
