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Coming to Kindle and Smashwords
November 2013

Apr 11, 2013

Ben Carson Withdraws As Johns Hopkins Commencement Speaker After Gay Marriage Outcry

  Dr. Ben Carson said Wednesday he is withdrawing as Johns Hopkins School of Medicine commencement speaker after speaking to the national media about gay marriage. (Photo By Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call) 0001Get Politics Alerts:

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Dr. Ben Carson, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, said Wednesday evening that he would step down as commencement speaker for the School of Medicine after his incendiary comments opposing gay marriage drew outrage from students and faculty.



"Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would be in the best interest of the students for me to voluntarily withdraw as your commencement speaker this year," he wrote in an email to Dean Paul Rothman shared with the school.



Carson compared gay marriage to bestiality and pedophilia in a recent Fox News appearance. "My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman," he said. "It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society, and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality -- it doesn’t matter what they are -- they don’t get to change the definition."



After Carson made his comments, a majority of graduating students signed a petition stating that he was an inappropriate choice for speaker.



Carson apologized last week for the fallout from his comments in an email sent to the Hopkins community. "As you know, I have been in the national news quite a bit recently and my 36-year association with Johns Hopkins has unfortunately dragged our institution into the spotlight as well," he wrote. "I am sorry for any embarrassment this has caused." Rothman sent an email affirming Carson's right to speak as a private citizen but noting that his recent comments were inconsistent with school values.



A celebrated neurosurgeon and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Carson recently became a conservative hero for criticizing President Barack Obama to his face at the National Prayer Breakfast in February

more hitch ....


Margaret Thatcher obit

Russell Brand's obituary for Margaret Thatcher is a beautiful and incisive piece of writing, and a good example of why he's not just another actor:
When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring – I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. She remained in power till I was 15. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?
I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. My dad, I suspect, did. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility – but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant.
As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. And the miners. And the single mums. The dockers. The poll-tax rioters. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually.



Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman.