extremists

Planned Parenthood sent me an email today about Harriet Miers' 'extremist views' being exposed, and it made me giggle, in a gallowsy way.

Was anyone really suprised [sure we're not happy about it, but were you really shocked?] to find out she's adamantly anti-abortion? I mean, hello - evangelical Christian! I'm sure there are evangelicals who are pro-choice, but it's not exactly the norm.

I'm a bit bothered by the disrespect that movements exhibit towards each other. Being strongly anti-abortion isn't any more extremist than my staunch pro-abortion position. Calling someone "extremist" is just a means of discrediting them, and it shouldn't be. Extremists make change happen; they're visionaries and activists if you agree with them, after all.

cool book!

I just finished Neil Gaiman's latest, Anansi Boys, and, hey, cool.

He actually went a good 50 pages or so into the book without making any kind of hey, everyone in this book is black statement (he never really did it that obviously, either). It made for an interesting counterpoint to even the stuff that like Suzan-Lori Parks writes; seeing black characters' race be not talked about the same way white characters' race usually isn't.

It's uncommon, in my experience. And I liked it. I want to read more books like that; it highlights how that's so not true in life.

That said, the book was quite good all around - it wasn't as surprising as American Gods, in that it didn't so much build a world as illustrate a family. But I feel the love, as I pretty much always do for Gaiman. Oh, yeah, the women weren't overwroughtly stereotyped, either, but I've come to expect slightly better from Gaiman on that front than from other popular fantastical fiction writers.

We could talk about it in the bookclub that I haven't started.