Wednesday, April 02, 2008

I have a bone to pick with La Vanguardia. Yesterday, in their daily back-page interview, they talked to some poor confused person named Beatriz Preciado, who is billed as a "pansexual and transgender philosopher." Seems to me more like she's a lesbian who likes to take testosterone and dress up as a man. That's fine, we have a diverse society, and there's room for all sorts of weirdos as long as they don't frighten the horses.

However, Ms. Preciado said, "The birth control pill was invented to reduce the birth rate of blacks in the United States."

I have no problem with Ms. Preciado's harmless silliness about "pharmacopornographic biocapitalism" and "biotechnopolitical constructions." But I have a major problem with her making up false history, and I have an even larger problem with La Vanguardia's failure to point out that her statement about the racist origins of the birth control pill is a straight-out lie.

(The only connection between the birth control pill and racism is that the notorious Margaret Sanger was in favor of both of them. Sanger, of course, had nothing to do with developing the Pill.)

This is why Europeans believe so much crazy stuff about the United States. Their media lets tinfoil hat jobs like Ms. Preciado spout off, and then fails to correct their numerous errors, both intentional and unintentional.

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