{"id":1002,"date":"2009-05-12T14:59:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T18:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2009-05-12T14:59:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T18:59:58","slug":"the-dreaded-e-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/2009\/05\/12\/the-dreaded-e-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dreaded E-Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama recently used the e-word in connection with his yet-to-be-named U.S. Supreme Court nominee, and the Republicans were (or pretended to be) horrified. Senator Orrin Hatch <a href=\"http:\/\/videocafe.crooksandliars.com\/heather\/orrin-hatch-empathy-code-word-activist-judge\">claimed empathy was a &#8220;code word for an activist judge&#8221;<\/a>, while the ever-entertaining Michael Steele said in his inimitable, classy fashion, <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2009\/05\/08\/steele-empathize-behin\/\">\u201cI\u2019ll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But while many Democrats were outraged by Republican reaction, I&#8217;m empathetic enough to appreciate where they&#8217;re coming from:<\/p>\n<p>Empathy is such an ugly word:<br \/>\nInjudicious moral flaw.<br \/>\nEmpathy is totally absurd<br \/>\nAnd violates the rule of law.<\/p>\n<p>(With my apologies to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/rainforest\/vines\/1153\/honesty.mid\">Billy Joel<\/a>) <\/p>\n<p>(My previous (and full length) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/2007\/06\/07\/gop-piety-song-parody-sing-to-billy-joels-honesty\/\">song parody to this song is here.<\/a>) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama recently used the e-word in connection with his yet-to-be-named U.S. Supreme Court nominee, and the Republicans were (or pretended to be) horrified. Senator Orrin Hatch claimed empathy was a &#8220;code word for an activist judge&#8221;, while the ever-entertaining Michael Steele said in his inimitable, classy fashion, \u201cI\u2019ll give you empathy. Empathize right on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,25,20,10,2,526,55,154,3,9,4,13],"tags":[693,691,215,692,2748,2838,200,2787,2757],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-constitution-humor","category-gop-humor","category-judiciary","category-law","category-michael-steele","category-music-humor","category-political-commentary","category-politics","category-republicans","category-song-parodies","category-supreme-court","tag-activist-judge","tag-empathy-republicans","tag-gop","tag-judges","tag-law","tag-michael-steele","tag-obama","tag-orrin-hatch","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}