(no subject)
Aug. 24th, 2006 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenPlan B a go!
And this is where I earn my right to be a feminist with a lower case 'f': I actually support the ruling that the prescription should still be needed for girls under eighteen. That means I can't ever be a whacky Femi-nazi ever. Because I'm a pragmatist, you see. I realize that it's safe for girls under eighteen, but I agree with the FDA that there's just no way to monitor effectively who is or is not eighteen without issuing separate ID cards just for girls who might sometime in the future need Plan B. Not everyone has a driver's license by the time they're seventeen (the recommended earliest age to give out Plan B without prescription)--some people don't rush out to get learner's permits or non-driver ID cards the second they're elligible.
I'm encouraged by the promised intention not to police pharmicists about not giving to minors, though. That leaves a window for a desperate case or two that really need Plan B. I realize it can be turned around and policed rigorously, but it would be a waste of police resources to do so, and I bet such a sting wouldn't really garner that much good publicity (after all, it would expose the people having gone to the store for Plan B, and I bet there're plenty of folk not willing to take that chance). I'm otherwise pretty cool with this whole decision.
Good article, nice discussion of the history of trying to get Plan B off of prescription use and the distortion of the facts surrounding Plan B on both sides. I especially liked that last part. It's telling that having or not having Plan B would neither create those "sex-based cults" the right screamed about nor actually prevent all that many abortions that the left promised it would. What's sad is that we live in a culture so messed up about sex and reproduction that even significant steps towards trying to plan pregnancy are about as likely to work as not having them at all (I think the way the guy in the article put it was something on the lines of Plan B doesn't exactly help if you leave it in the drawer, which people tend to do with medicine). If we educated more on the prevention, talked explicitly about sex, sexual urges, and the consequences thereof, I bet we'd come a lot farther.
****
In other news, Tom Cruise is a psycho, and now it's okay (and not again) to say it.
What the F is wrong with a company saying that someone they hired is no longer welcome because of his personal behavior? If you're off the clock, your personal behavior can't be used to fire you unless you drag it into the professional arena (being drunk at work, assaulting your employer, et al). The problem with being a movie star is that you are never being paid attention to where you are not working. That means, if you go on Today or Oprah and act like a moron, you're doing it on company time. They are having you there to promote what you do, even if, being a movie star, what you do is being you (or professionally not being you, it's sort of the same thing in fame). If you promote yourself as a manic desperate asshole when the studio you work for is trying to sell you as an actor with the chops to open movies, they're within their right to fire you. You're misleading the public and giving them one impression of you that will override the one you're being paid to make on film.
Cruise's people have bitched back, saying it's terrible that this guy said these things about his personal behavior being the reason he was axed, and I think the guy saying it has even backpedaled, but I can't imagine why. Not only is Cruise's behavior affecting his draw as a star, but he takes so friggin much of whatever money his movies do make that they have reason to get rid of him just for that reason. The guy walks away with more money from his films than I bet even Steven Spielberg got when they worked together. Those kind of deals amidst this perceived crisis of money hemorrage from the movies aren't going to hold up, not if for every $100 million the studio makes they have to cross off $25 million just for Tom Cruise.
Besides which, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was so awesome in Mission: Impossible III that there was no way Cruise would ever have been able to really be the draw in that film even if he wasn't a raving looney. Hell, anyone in that film was better than he, with the exception of the out-of-nowhere girlfriend (ahhh, where'd you go, Thandi Newton!?). Seriously, Maggie Q was hot, as was PSH's sidekick evil chick, and Dear. God, I finally figured out why![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feiran thought Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was hot (biggest sin of that movie: he and Maggie Q never got it on but I had to be subjected to Tom Cruise marrying Blandy). And you can't not like Ving Rhames, damn it. Not even over the whole Aquaman thing.
And this is where I earn my right to be a feminist with a lower case 'f': I actually support the ruling that the prescription should still be needed for girls under eighteen. That means I can't ever be a whacky Femi-nazi ever. Because I'm a pragmatist, you see. I realize that it's safe for girls under eighteen, but I agree with the FDA that there's just no way to monitor effectively who is or is not eighteen without issuing separate ID cards just for girls who might sometime in the future need Plan B. Not everyone has a driver's license by the time they're seventeen (the recommended earliest age to give out Plan B without prescription)--some people don't rush out to get learner's permits or non-driver ID cards the second they're elligible.
I'm encouraged by the promised intention not to police pharmicists about not giving to minors, though. That leaves a window for a desperate case or two that really need Plan B. I realize it can be turned around and policed rigorously, but it would be a waste of police resources to do so, and I bet such a sting wouldn't really garner that much good publicity (after all, it would expose the people having gone to the store for Plan B, and I bet there're plenty of folk not willing to take that chance). I'm otherwise pretty cool with this whole decision.
Good article, nice discussion of the history of trying to get Plan B off of prescription use and the distortion of the facts surrounding Plan B on both sides. I especially liked that last part. It's telling that having or not having Plan B would neither create those "sex-based cults" the right screamed about nor actually prevent all that many abortions that the left promised it would. What's sad is that we live in a culture so messed up about sex and reproduction that even significant steps towards trying to plan pregnancy are about as likely to work as not having them at all (I think the way the guy in the article put it was something on the lines of Plan B doesn't exactly help if you leave it in the drawer, which people tend to do with medicine). If we educated more on the prevention, talked explicitly about sex, sexual urges, and the consequences thereof, I bet we'd come a lot farther.
****
In other news, Tom Cruise is a psycho, and now it's okay (and not again) to say it.
What the F is wrong with a company saying that someone they hired is no longer welcome because of his personal behavior? If you're off the clock, your personal behavior can't be used to fire you unless you drag it into the professional arena (being drunk at work, assaulting your employer, et al). The problem with being a movie star is that you are never being paid attention to where you are not working. That means, if you go on Today or Oprah and act like a moron, you're doing it on company time. They are having you there to promote what you do, even if, being a movie star, what you do is being you (or professionally not being you, it's sort of the same thing in fame). If you promote yourself as a manic desperate asshole when the studio you work for is trying to sell you as an actor with the chops to open movies, they're within their right to fire you. You're misleading the public and giving them one impression of you that will override the one you're being paid to make on film.
Cruise's people have bitched back, saying it's terrible that this guy said these things about his personal behavior being the reason he was axed, and I think the guy saying it has even backpedaled, but I can't imagine why. Not only is Cruise's behavior affecting his draw as a star, but he takes so friggin much of whatever money his movies do make that they have reason to get rid of him just for that reason. The guy walks away with more money from his films than I bet even Steven Spielberg got when they worked together. Those kind of deals amidst this perceived crisis of money hemorrage from the movies aren't going to hold up, not if for every $100 million the studio makes they have to cross off $25 million just for Tom Cruise.
Besides which, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was so awesome in Mission: Impossible III that there was no way Cruise would ever have been able to really be the draw in that film even if he wasn't a raving looney. Hell, anyone in that film was better than he, with the exception of the out-of-nowhere girlfriend (ahhh, where'd you go, Thandi Newton!?). Seriously, Maggie Q was hot, as was PSH's sidekick evil chick, and Dear. God, I finally figured out why
feiran thought Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was hot (biggest sin of that movie: he and Maggie Q never got it on but I had to be subjected to Tom Cruise marrying Blandy). And you can't not like Ving Rhames, damn it. Not even over the whole Aquaman thing.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 05:31 pm (UTC)Now, all we need to do is give 95% of Americans a good head-thumping until they get over their stupid love-hate relationship with sex. Then all's good.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 01:55 pm (UTC)Of course, pretty much every girl I've dated has been of the enlightened type, and several of them have enjoyed sex very much. And that's all I'll say about that.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 06:32 pm (UTC)As a condition of approval, Barr agreed to track whether pharmacists are enforcing the age restriction, by, among other things, sending anonymous shoppers to buy Plan B. FDA said Barr is to conduct that formal tracking at least twice in the first year of sales and annually thereafter, and report stores that break the rules to their state pharmacy licensing boards.
Granted that it's the company policing things, but to keep in the public's good graces they may be a bit strict on enforcement. That part worries me.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 08:18 pm (UTC)...
I just ruin everything, don't I?
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 10:34 pm (UTC)My personal favorite:
"Richard Doerflinger, deputy director for pro-life activities at the conference of bishops, said the church opposed in vitro fertilization because of the high death rate of embryos in clinics and because divorcing procreation from the act of love made the embryo seem “more a product of manufacture than a gift.”
Asked if he meant that the parents of a child conceived through in vitro fertilization would love it less, Mr. Doerflinger said he was referring to the clinic staff. “The technician does not love this child, has no personal connection with the child, and with every I.V.F. procedure he or she may get more and more used to the idea of the child as manufacture,” he said."
OH NO!!! What a horrible world it is we live in when people who devote their lives to giving people the children they otherwise couldn't have can do this for a living and see it every day! STOP THE RESEARCH. WE MUST SAVE THE TECHNICIANS' SOULS
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 10:54 pm (UTC)And that guy is a bastard. The Christian church is actively in the process of hating on sex whilst enforcing procreation. They don't want anything that divorces the two or raises the question about the one not necessarily having to derive from the other (hey, if I can make babies without sex, they might be able to make the sex without the babies! Oh noes!). That's perhaps a tad brittle of me, but that's what he said minus the sanctimonius bullshit.
It's just convenient to blame the technicians because even he realizes that it sounds as awful as it is to say "Oh, those poor childless people should just get used to being barren."
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 02:34 pm (UTC)