Media Whores

Typically I wouldn't be posting this here, but I think it's important to share - at least that's my opinion. I have another blog which doesn't have many readers, if any, and that is typcially the place I put my rants about sensitive topics.

I've blogged about the polygamist situation a couple of times in the last week. This continues that saga. Before I discuss the reason behind the title, I just want to clarify my position on the situation again...

Arranged marriages to underage girls by old men is sick, perverted and wrong.
Incest is wrong.
Brainwashing is wrong (although I suspect that anyone with kids could be found guilty of this, just by virtue of different belief systems.

My understanding of the polygamous nature of the FLDS Church, is that previous to the current leader (Warren Jeffs - currently serving time as an accessory to rape) they had a strict policy of marriage only to girls who had reached the age of 18. This was changed under Warren Jeffs to include girls as young as 14. I would suspect that even though that change was made, many of the families may not actually practice this. With that said, there are definitely cases where older men have married underage girls, and often where the marriage constitutes an incestuous relationship. Cases like this should be prosecuted, but on a case by case basis, not the way in which they are currently doing this.

So last night I was catching up on some exercise and decided to watch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I like Jay, especially his monologue based on current events. Last night he seemed to have a theme through out the monologue, in which he kept returning to the Polygamist situation. I'll admit I laughed at some of the jokes, as they were pretty clever, but at the same time, every topic seemed to wind back to the FLDS situation.

His first guest was Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil was not there to be interviewed. He was there to discuss the FLDS situation, and by discuss I mean, present a lecture to America about it, under the guise of an interview.

Let's look at Dr. Phil. He lost some credibility a month or two back with a situation where a couple of girls lured another teenage girl into a house and then video taped themselves beating her. The girls involved are currently in jail. Dr. Phil's show tried to bail one of the girls out in order to have her on the show. There was a pretty big outcry over it, and they backed off. Last night he made it sound like they just didn't want to do the story any more. Sorry Phil, I'm not buying that one.... I call him Phil since he is also no longer licensed as a shrink, or whatever it is that he claims to be.

Phil also spoke a lot about Mark Shurtleff. Mark is the Attorney General for Utah. He was the AG who originally went after Warren Jeffs on the rape charges, and rightfully so. Unfortunately I lost most of my respect for him a few months ago, when a local TV station did an Expose on Political Corruption. I don't like the lady who does the expose type reports, but Mark did himself no favors in the interview. He got really defensive when she asked him about some tickets to a sold out Rolling Stones concert that he had been giving by a Mortgage group. He said that he had taken his daughter and they had left after 3 songs. He claimed that there was nothing wrong with accepting the tickets as a gift. The Mortgage group was being investigated at the time, and has since been charged for a bunch of stuff. Mark's defense is that the tickets were a gift and didn't affect his decision to charge the company in Utah as well. He forgot to mention that Utah only did this several months after all the other states involved.

Like I said before Phil wasn't there for an interview. He was there to make a statement. The problem with his statement is that he made broad generalizations that all the polygamists are perverts and despicable creatures. He wholeheartedly supports the government intervention and planned eradication of this religion. About the only thing I actually agreed with was that putting these kids in foster care was a bad idea, but as for the rest of his little speech, it only displayed prejudice towards a very different religious group, and complete disrespect for the rule of law.

Our constitution has been violated on many levels with this illegal action by the state of Texas, unfortunately Jay Leno, Dr. Phil and the majority of the whores in the media seem to have missed that.