Does the Sun-Sentinel Hate Atheists?

Does the Sun-Sentinel Hate Atheists?

By Brandon K. Thorp Wed., May 4 2011 at 4:21 PM

Will he smite bad bloggers with his noodly appendage?

Could the Sun-Sentinel's corporate overlords at Tribune Co. please explain why Barbara Hijek has a job? Could they please explain why a paper at which honest-to-goodness investigative reporters and serious editorialists were not long ago pressured into accepting a series of increasingly crappy buyouts is still ceding valuable front-page real estate to Hijek's odious blog, "FloriDUH," which exists to trivialize and make unfunny punch lines about serious and/or tragic news stories?

And why the hell is Hijek making snide comments about atheists? To my knowledge, atheists haven't made any snide comments about overemployed, undertalented bloggers. It seems unfair.

Today, the title of Hijek's blog was "Atheist woman charged with simulating sex act." Its target was Lakelander Ellenbeth Wachs. Wachs is legal coordinator of Atheists of Florida, and she was arrested Sunday for, ahem, "simulating sex acts in the presence of a 10-year-old boy." Which sounds bad, right?

Actually: Ellenbeth Wachs was inside her house. The kid was outside. He was playing basketball -- noisily, I assume -- and she wanted him to stop. So she made sex noises.

This is a weird tactic and not the one I'd employ. (I subscribe to the "Keep it down out there or I'll thump you" school of noisy basketball management.) But what if Ellenbeth had been having actual sex and just happened to be a screamer? Have you, dear reader, ever been with a screamer? Before consummating, did you scan the area around your home for errant 10-year-olds?

Probably not. (Most partners are scared off when a prospective lover initiates a precoital scan for prepubescents. It's a mood killer.) And since nobody does so, I assume this charge is almost certain to be dropped, just like the charge on which Wachs was arrested in March.

This twist in the story is one that Barbara Hijek elides -- she's just after a quick larf -- but let's go into it anyway. Ellenbeth Wachs is an attorney. As legal coordinator of Atheists of Florida, she has to write lots of letters. She is apparently in the habit of signing these letters "Esq.," as attorneys are wont to do.

Still, that "Esq." led to Wachs' arrest for impersonating an attorney. Why? Because she's retired.

Now Wachs has been arrested twice in three months -- the first time for appending her correspondence with three particular letters, the second time for having what sounded like sex in her own home. Which would be merely tragic and weird if it weren't for this complicating factor: For over a year, Wachs has been spearheading Atheists of Florida's efforts to moderate the overly cozy relationship between the churches and the governments of Polk County. (You can read about these battles here.) Suffice it to say: Wachs is profoundly unpopular in Lakeland and even less popular with the local fuzz.

So: Presented with a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that a Floridian is being targeted because of her civic activism and lack of religion and presented with a very clear case of law enforcement rudely violating a woman's right to sexual privacy, what does Barbara Hijek write?

FloriDUH's Headquarter's [sic] burning question: Do atheists ever gasp 'Oh God!' during sex?

Yes, Barbara Hijek, we do. Thanks for asking! Since we're on the subject, what do you gasp during sex?

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Tags:

Atheists of Florida, Barbara Hijek, Ellenbeth Wachs, Lakeland, Polk County, The Sun Sentinel

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Stevens

Not to defend the blogger, because the column itself is a "DUH", but if that woman had been a rabbi or head deacon of a church THAT fact would have been jumped on by the media right away. Not really sure why the fact that someone who is a public activist that promotes the absence of any sort of god should be sanitized from articles; other subjects in journalistic pieces (for lack of a better term) do not have their spiritual beliefs sanitized from pieces written about the stupid stuff they do.

Seems a little hypocritical. Either write about spiritual beliefs or don't. You, as an atheist, have a spiritual belief which is there is no god. If she was just average retiree, and the article said, "Ellenbeth, who does not believe in god . . . " that would be different and I would agree with you. But this woman is an "activist" and inserts herself into the public's eye. Just as a preacher, who perhaps gets into a car accident that causes a death, would be identifed as "John Q. Public, a preacher at Wherever Church", she is identifiable by her activism which is her atheist organisation.

While that blog is cringe-inducing, it certainly isn't because the writer decided to identify someone as "atheist".

Intolerance Goes Both Ways

I don't think the point is that is that we should not write about her arrest because she's an atheist or that her atheism should not have been mentioned in the article. The point is that it seems that she is being targeted and arrested on frivolous charges BECAUSE she is an atheist.

To use your style of argument, if it were a rabbi or deacon or priest being arrested on frivolous charges by an atheist police force or local government - if such a thing existed - wouldn't that be news?

This is an issue of religious intolerance, it just happens to be going from religious people to non-religious people. Pretty sure a pack of people - I think they referred to themselves as "pilgrims" - fled their country of birth just to avoid that kind of thing. Where did they go again...?

Dday25

A crappy blogger complaining about a crappy blogger. Gotta love it

Hal I. Tosis

Hey Thorp, blow it out your ass

edwords

Nice comment. Were you an English major?

Chaz Stevens

Barbara gives bloggers a bad name. And speaking on behalf of many bloggers with a bad name (myself at the top of the list), I say Praise Be To God. Who needs NAMBLA when you have the Catholic Church?

Fat Hand

I read that garbage earlier today. Immediately wished I hadn't. That FloriDUH column is so exceedingly stupid that I feel guilty clicking on it because I wish it would go away, but the idiocy with which they cover stories also makes me feel better about myself as a person. Surely the only people dumber than people that appear in the articles linked in their blog are the two people writing the blog.