Posted on 07/08/2011 8:03:15 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW
Betty Ford said things that first ladies just don't say, even today. And 1970s America loved her for it.
According to Mrs. Ford, her young adult children probably had smoked marijuana - and if she were their age, she'd try it, too. She told "60 Minutes" she wouldn't be surprised to learn that her youngest, 18-year-old Susan, was in a sexual relationship (an embarrassed Susan issued a denial).
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
Tell me what it accomplishes. List for me all the good things that come from being crass on an obituary thread.
I don’t know how many people use the Admin Moderator tag, but I find it no coincidence that I have had threads pulled on Friday night/Sat. mornings (same Admin Mod?)for being “filthy” just because that mod didn’t like the content. I kid you not. “filthy” was the word used, on a perfectly normal article on obesity of all things (correctly posted, BTW) That mod lies about the content of people’s posts/threads that he/she just doesn’t like.
Oh really? And you are proud to call yourself that? That speaks volumes about you and your lame reaction.
And what I said was "IF true, (pro death, pro homo etc) she was a ..." (comment self censored for those who are offended easily)
Are you saying that she was against all that? Please cite your sources disputing what's been presented.
And have you shown such self righteous indignation towards a couple of the other posters on here as well? Or are you just wanting to get on your little "feminist" bandwagon and get post of the minute award?
I like crude, I like down & dirty, BUT there is a place for it & I truly do believe that it is not on someone’s death thread. That seems like the one time that people agree to either say something good or not say anything at all.
Overridden, I believe.
DJ MacWoW made an important point when he posted on Friday, July 08, 2011 10:19:43 PM: “I always thought conservatives were the ones with manners. I guess not.”
Others have said a lot of things criticizing you, American Ranger, but there are things which I think are important but which have not been said.
And frankly, it's a bigger issue than Betty Ford.
I have serious concerns about where some parts of the Tea Party movement are going. If we start adopting the rudeness, obnoxiousness, and other methods of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” we will find that the methods are not neutral. They are part of a dangerous ideology that includes disrespect for order and authority, and will take us as conservatives into places we do not want to go.
As Recovering Ex-hippie posted on Friday, July 08, 2011 10:38:47 PM: “I agree with you...disgusting comments posted. What is freeper coming to? Those comments are the ones you might see on the DailyKos or Moveon.”
Rudeness and obnoxiousness are part-and-parcel of the liberal method of egalitarianism and social leveling. People in public office (and in this case, former First Ladies) do deserve a certain level of respect based on both biblical principles and common sense. We're conservatives; we're not community organizers, and we most certainly are not anarchists.
How, as conservatives, should we deal with a political wife who voluntarily chooses to enter the political arena on her own and who says things which embarrassed not only her children but also her husband (who, BTW, was usually too much of a gentleman to publicly criticize his wife)? Mrs. Ford did voluntarily choose to enter the political fray, and her views are open to criticism — but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.
First off, some background. How did someone like Betty Ford ever end up on the national Republican political scene, anyway?
I grew up in Grand Rapids and lived in West Michigan most of my life until about a decade ago. My father knew Gerald Ford and his family, and knew the Fords well from years in politics, long before Congressman Ford was named vice-president and then became president. Mrs. Ford's blunt tongue was well-known long before it became a public problem — being a Republican feminist supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and a pro-choice view on abortion back in the 1960s and 1970s may not have been a liability on the national political scene, but those issues most emphatically were problems in a very conservative community like Grand Rapids.
Her personal issues with alcohol were not widely known in public, but they were privately known in political circles, back in the day when such things simply were not publicly discussed in polite company. Frankly (and sadly), her hard drinking got excused by a lot of people who thought it was just part-and-parcel of her aggressive personality. There was a time when men's ability to drink lots of alcohol was viewed as a strength and not a weakness, and people thought that Mrs. Ford's drinking was part of her image of being “tough.”
In discussing a pre-women’s rights era, it is impossible to extricate the political careers of women from those of their husbands. Divorce was virtually unheard of when the Fords entered politics (though the Ford family was actually a rare exception with President Ford's own father and Mrs. Ford's own divorce and remarriage), and the modern Congressional “second wives club” with powerful men routinely ditching their hometown wives for a politically powerful inside-the-beltway Washington wife with her own career would have been inconceivable. People back then got married much earlier and usually stayed married, so if a politician had a wife who differed from himself in important ways, people weren't as quick to blame the husband for his wife's views.
Gerald Ford had been elected to Congress as a war hero shortly after World War II as an anti-corruption candidate to help defeat the McKay political machine, which had ruled Grand Rapids Republican politics with methods only slightly less dirty than those which Mayor Daley later used to run Chicago Democratic politics. Unlike many local politicians of his day, Ford was honest, and with Grand Rapids voters that counted a great deal after decades of political corruption, but his political ideology had always been moderate with more ties to the New England Republican bluebloods than the conservative wing of the Republican Party. As Grand Rapids became farther and farther out of step with national liberal trends, it's very unlikely someone with Ford's views could have been elected in Grand Rapids by the 1960s if Ford had not been a powerful incumbent and eventually House Minority Leader.
President Ford had his own issues; I was a supporter of Ronald Reagan in 1980 when virtually everyone else I knew in Grand Rapids politics thought we'd thrown away the election, Goldwater-style, by nominating him. Attacking Ford's policies is fair game, but let's remember that he lived in a different day and a different time when the two political parties were not as different as they are today, when war heroes were respected by most people in both parties, and when a man like Ford with a reputation for strict honesty could be respected as an “honest broker” even by people who didn't agree with him.
While I have no firsthand or even secondhand knowledge about what attracted Gerald Ford to Betty Ford, from what I have been told, Gerald Ford's reputation for honesty and Betty Ford's reputation for unvarnished candor were far from being incompatible. That's the best explanation I've heard for their relationship, and it may explain a great deal. At least it's better than the typical situation today of people getting divorced every time they have what two generations ago would have been considered an important but secondary disagreement.
Now DJ MacWoW wrote this: “I believe FR has been changing along with society in general” on Friday, July 08, 2011 11:16:26 PM.
MacWow is right. And that change is not good.
Again, as STARWISE wrote: “all the others who resort to
sinking to DU levels of coarseness and nastiness ..
don’t grasp is that they’re in a privately owned
and the #1 conservative site online that’s constantly
monitored and targeted by the vocal enemies of
conservatism. Those comments DO reflect badly on the entire site, and hurt the place by giving the nasty left the fodder
they crave.”
In contrast to many of the attacks on here by people who have been described as “haters” of Mrs. Ford, Outlaw Woman has kept her criticisms focused on Ford's support for abortion.
That's legitimate.
Attacking her views on that issue is entirely appropriate. Same for her views on several other issues. But calling her a “classless drunken cow” is a personal attack that is unwarranted.
Why?
It is on that very issue of alcohol that Mrs. Ford did the most good. Before her, the issue of alcohol was framed mostly in religious terms — if you were a conservative Christian (unless you were Lutheran, Catholic or Dutch) you were a teetotaler. Otherwise, in a lot of circles, you were supposed to be a hard drinker to prove you were a man.
By going public with her addiction and the damage it caused, Mrs. Ford was able to show to a non-religious liberal audience how much damage alcohol was doing. I'd argue that providing a secular example of the value of abstinence did tremendous good for our society. Were Mrs. Ford's underlying reasons good? Definitely not; they were part and parcel of her feminism. But regardless of her reasons, just as we can commend a secular Hollywood celebrity who supports the troops, we can commend a “RINO” like Mrs. Ford who did a great deal of good to show the dangers of alcohol abuse.
Mrs. Ford has been out of public life for many years; it's not like she was regularly showing up on FOX News to say that Republicans need to support abortion. Mrs. Ford may have caused a lot of problems in the past, but she's known now mostly for her dual roles destigmatizing breast cancer and fighting alcoholism. At the time of somebody’s death, let's try to focus on good things that the person has done without trying to whitewash the bad, especially when the damage they did was in the distant past.
Betty Ford did not consider her work to promote abortion as an evil, but that it was virtuous. The MSM views it as a virtue, not a sin.
She will be honored at her funeral for her Lifetime Achievement Award from NARAL. By mentioning this fact are we speaking ill of the dead? This was a source of pride to her.
If we are going to sing her praises now, should we not applaud her for her important work in THIS area?
The objection is to crass and crude comments. It is one thing to say she backed abortion and disagree but quite another to call her a POS. Disagreement can be made without being vulgar.
Well said,i agree with you 100%.
This is not a common occurrence on Freerepublis,so we should not dwell on it to much out of 170 or so posts on Betty, one or two negative posts is not much
Attack the message not the messenger.
southern rock posted on Saturday, July 09, 2011 9:54:36 AM: “Actually, I have thought that there is too much emphisis on politeness and “decorum” by many posters on this site. And the Admin Moderator is one of the worst. Politeness and decorum cause Rinoitis. Why can't we be a little crude when standing up for what is true. It is sad and pathetic how conservatives feel they need to hold back, and you see where that gets us. I am happy this thread was restored. No thanks to Admin Mod, no doubt.”
This is **EXACTLY** what is wrong with developments in modern conservative politics.
We are conservatives. We are not revolutionaries. We need to respect the institutions of the state, the family and the church. Granted, if you're an Ayn Rand type of secular conservative, you may want to delete the church from that list and treat it as just another charity that enables dependency, but I trust most Freepers won't object to including all three.
Use of crude, abusive, and generally obnoxious language for people in positions of authority is consistent with radical liberal theories of egalitarianism. If you disrespect the person (who may, in fact, be a really bad guy) it becomes much easier to disrespect the office itself.
As conservatives, we need to uphold the authority of the office even if the person holding it is unworthy. If the person in office is causing problems, focus on those specific problems and prove your point. Do **NOT** heap abuse on the officeholder, especially abuse of a personal nature. The solution to our problems is to vote unqualified people out of office, not to disrespect the God-ordained institutions of government in the state, the family and the church.
Our goal is not to overthrow government. That may be a goal of liberalism, but it is not our goal as conservatives.
Enjoy the country club Republican convention with all the Rinos. I’ll choose those uncouth Tea Party types to associate with.
Her abortion work was a source of pride for her for which she was and will be forever honored by the enemies of the unborn. No amount of good work in other areas will erase that "honor" from her eternal memory.
I know some people in the local Tea Party. I've never heard them refer to someone as a "POS". But liberals do.
Exaggeration at best. Asking for civility while disagreeing on an obituary thread hardly equates to "beautification".
Disagreement can be made WITHOUT crudity.
Laura Bush holds liberal beliefs. Go ahead. Call her a POS.
When she is honored at NARAL with a Lifetime Acievement Award for her work promoting abortion on demand, I will be sorely tempted to do just that. I'm not even sure Nancy Pelosi has been so honored.
I am sure that OW's use of that term was a gut reaction upon learning how involved Betty Ford was in promoting Abortion. Apparently she was not aware of that fact until it was mentioned in the MSM.
Cop out! The objection was that Mrs Ford backed abortion. Laura Bush backs abortion and homosexual "marriage". Call her a POS.
@ DJ MacWOW, Outlaw Woman: I didn't see the “POS” comment by Outlaw Woman, but I do appreciate Outlaw Woman's primary focus on Mrs. Ford's wrong views about abortion.
If we're going to criticize a First Lady who until the modern era almost by definition didn't have a voting record or other governing record, we need to focus on what she chose to use her considerable influence to promote or discourage, and the effects of that influence.
Mrs. Ford's advocacy of abortion was wrong; no doubt about it. However, her views on that issue have mostly been forgotten. She's known today mostly for her role in destigmatizing breast cancer and treatment for alcoholism; those are her continuing contributions. The election of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the modern conservative movement did a pretty good job of marking the beginning of the end of moderate blue-blood conservatism in the Republican Party.
Yes, there are Republicans today who wrongly advocate a pro-choice position on libertarian grounds, and they need to be fought. However, that position is usually rooted in a “get the government out of our lives” approach which shares very little in common with the legacy of Mrs. Ford.
The sins of those in public life become widely known, yet they are no more and no less deadly than any of our own secret sins.
That is one of many reasons why I have come to love this prayer from the Orthodox tradition:
O God of spirits and of all flesh,
You have trampled down death and have abolished the power of the devil,
giving life to Your world.
Give rest to the soul of Your departed servant Betty in a place of light,
in a place of repose,
in a place of refreshment,
where there is no pain, sorrow, and suffering.
As a good and loving God,
forgive every sin she has committed in thought, word or deed,
for there is no one who lives and is sinless.
You alone are without sin.
Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness,
and Your word is truth.
For You are the resurrection,
the life and the repose of Your departed servant Betty
Christ our God,
and to You we give glory,
with Your eternal Father and Your all holy, good and life-giving Spirit,
now and forever and to the ages of ages.
AMEN.
Other posters and I do not believe that posters shouldn't mention her erroneous stand on abortion. What we disagree with is vulgarity on an obituary thread.
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