Frontiers of the Obscene
Gail Griffin, a Republican state legislator in Arizona, has proposed a novel funding mechanism for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Her bill would make tech companies install porn-blocking software on electronic devices that access the Internet. Users would have to pay a $20 fee to disable it, with proceeds going for Trump’s wall.
The End of the Rainbow
Mohamed al-Ghiety, an Egyptian television journalist who has often expressed homophobic views, was convicted of “promoting homosexuality” and sentenced to a year of hard labor for interviewing a male sex worker. According to the BBC, gay people were banned from appearing on any Egyptian media outlet “after a rainbow flag was raised at a concert in Cairo in 2017.”
Takes One to Know One
In 2001, Richard Sackler, then president of Purdue Pharma, sent an email instructing underlings about how to respond to concerns that the company’s product, OxyContin, was causing addiction and death, according to a recent court filing: “We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible. . . . They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”
Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children?
The Trump Administration has strongly opposed efforts to reunite migrant children with the parents from whom they were forcibly separated, saying in a court filing that this would “destabilize the permanency” of their placement in new homes and thus “be traumatic.”
Won’t Somebody Please Think of the CO2?
William Happer, a physicist tapped by the Trump Administration to evaluate the national security risks of climate change, is on record as being aggressively pro-carbon emissions. “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” he said in 2009. “Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world—and so were the Jews.”
Ban the B-Word
Former Starbucks chief executive officer and presidential aspirant Howard Schultz wants others to stop referring to folks like him as “billionaires,” suggesting they instead use the term “people of wealth.”
Nobody Here But Us Guys!
The United Arab Emirates recently issued four “Gender Equality Awards” to recognize and honor the government’s “significant progress in achieving gender balance.” All of the awards went to men.