Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 20 "news" article by Joseph Farah ostensibly about employers being sued for discrimination against employees with tattoos and piercing -- of which Farah cites only one example -- quickly devolves into a screed against body modification.
Farah declares, "Children – both boys and girls – are staining their bodies with the permanent ink for no better reason than 'everybody is doing it' or 'I thought the picture was cool.' It's not just an urban thing any more, either," and laments that "[t]he tattoo taboo is definitely breaking down." And in case Farah's rant was somehow too subtle, his article is accompanied by pictures of extreme examples of modification, such as a woman whose face is tattooed and a man who has had demonic horn-like indentations implanted in his forehead.
Farah also makes an inflammatory guilt-by-association claim for which he offers no evidence for: After noting the existence of "children's books like 'Mommy Has a Tattoo' and the 'Tattoo Coloring Book,' " Farah claims:
Just as "Heather Has Two Mommies" is now required reading for kindergartners in some school districts, how long will it be before the tolerance police mandate Phil Padwe's new books. He's the author and illustrator of the two new children's books on tattoos.
So, getting tattoos is the same thing as being homosexual? And, of course, Farah never names the "some" school districts in which "Heather Has Two Mommies" is "required reading." (And how many kindergarteners read, anyway?)
This is a theme with WND: A January 2004 article by David Kupelian -- which also appears in his book "The Marketing of Evil" attacks today's "insane" youth culture by lumping tattoos and "earrings for males" with "[r]itual scarification and 3D-art implants ... genital beading, stretching and cutting, transdermal implants, scrotal implants, tooth art and facial sculpture," not to mention branding, tongue-splitting, non-medical amputations and "bug-chasing," people who purportedly deliberately try to get infected with the HIV virus (citing a Rolling Stone article on the subject that has been mostly debunked).
Of course, no Kupelian rant is complete without blaming the ills he writes about on the Clintons, and here he drops in a reference to "a traumatized, amoral sociopath of a baby-boomer named Bill Clinton," adding: "If you don't think Bill Clinton's escapades with Monica – covered by the media like the Super Bowl – had everything to do with the explosion of middle-school sexual adventures across America, then open your eyes."
