When Chickens Trump Babies…Time to Re-Prioritize?

I’ve been around the trivialities of poseur politics for a long time.

I usually avoid the snark response, but every so often somebody comes along and jumps the shark in such a loutish way that it almost demands it. The most recent issue of Mother Jones is a case in point.

Mother Jones is a venerable liberal magazine. It’s named after a labor organizer who was — you guessed it — Mother Jones. Back in the day, liberals were all about things like a living wage, social security and good jobs. I was, and still am, that kind of liberal.

Then, somewhere alone the line, liberalism drifted. Nowadays, “liberalism” is largely the property of the decidedly illiberal world of politically-correct group-think. It is no longer concerned with working people, and in fact, often supports positions that run counter to the deeply-held beliefs and best interests of working class Americans. Today’s liberalism walks right past jobless people who suffer for lack of a hope and a future to focus its energy on comical trivialities.

Today’s “liberal” is not a liberal. They are poseurs who have absconded with an honorable name and appended it to what is in reality a socio-political movement of nihilism.

Enter the latest issue of Mother Jones.

Mother Jones, in direct contrast to the deep working class roots its name evokes, has fallen face-forward into the faux liberalism of espousing trivialities while supporting massive human rights abuses. The human rights abuse I’m referencing is the well-documented practice of Planned Parenthood of killing millions of unborn children, then selling their body parts for profit.

Unlike much of the “legitimate” press, Mother Jones has not ignored the videos in which Planned Parenthood personnel engage in this grisly commerce. In fact, it is not the least bit shy about writing about the videos and the Center for Medical Progress which produced them. But they write in support of what Planned Parenthood is doing. Take a stroll down Mother’s editorial hallways, and you will find articles defending the big pink monolith like this, this and this.

There’s nothing all that surprising about a “liberal” publication defending Big Pink. What makes it interesting in this case is the ugly juxtapositioning of another story almost next to it.

It appears that Mother Jones has a red-hot hatred of McDonalds. Chicken McNuggets, in particular, seem to draw their ire. Mother has a whole page of hit pieces on the home of the golden arches; three of them battling McNuggets.

They ran another of their McDonald’s attack pieces one day after their latest defense of Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts business. Needless to say, the Center for Medical Progress’ video was not part of their defense of Big Pink.

But Mother doesn’t oppose all video stings. They followed their latest salvo against those who are “trying to destroy Planned Parenthood,” with a story highlighting a video sting more to their liking. The topic was not the inhumanity of tearing a human being to pieces and then selling off the pieces. It did not contain visuals of tiny baby body parts. The video Mother Jones used exposed what the magazine called “… the Dark Side of Chicken McNuggets,” including what the magazine terms “savage bird beatings” at a Tennessee poultry farm.

The article does not say if the chickens were informed that they were being filmed, and we have no clue if the film was “highly edited.” All we know is that innocent birds were beaten to death in a cruel fashion and with no regard for their chicken rights.

I am not a fan of animal cruelty. I think there are a lot of abuses in industrial agriculture and not all of them are abuses of animals. But what, exactly, is Mother thinking?

They support tearing babies limb from limb and then selling their mangled corpses to research entities for profit. This, according to them, is not a bad thing at all. Then they turn around and defend chickens from bird beaters.

Mother Jones jumped the shark on this one, specifically because the two stories play against one another to highlight the moral blindness of their editorial positions. It also, for an old-time liberal like me, raises the question of what has happened to liberalism.  I could — and I will — ask the same question about conservatism.

But today’s story is the moral blindness of poseur liberals who just won’t get it that killing innocent people is wrong.