From "the War against the Normal" files - the left hates babies...

...because babies are inconvenient for narcissists.

I just finished off this article in Grist which is chock-a-block full of graphs showing the polarization of American public life - and which concludes - surprise! - that it is all the conservatives fault based on quotes harvested from the Washington Post - when I ran into this other Grist article celebrating some cheeky, transgressive, feminist Brit comedienne who has an "amusing" bit that says women shouldn't have babies because babies will KILL THE PLANET!!!!

Particularly First World babies, with their ferocious consumption of oil and forest and water, and endless burping-out of carbon emissions and landfill. First World babies are eating this planet like termites. If we had any real perspective on fertile Western women, we’d be jumping on them in the streets, screaming, “JESUS! CORK UP YOUR NETHERS! IMMUNIZE YOURSELF AGAINST SPERM!” …

Because it’s not simply that a baby puts a whole person-ful of problems into the world. It takes a useful person out of the world as well. Minimum. Often two. When you have young children, you are useless to the forces of revolution and righteousness for years. Before I had my kids I may have mooched about a lot but I was politically informed, signing petitions, and recycling everything down to watch batteries. It was compost heap here, dinner from scratch there, public transport everywhere. … I was smugly, bustingly, low-level good.

Six weeks into being poleaxed by a newborn colicky baby, however, and I would have happily shot the world’s last panda in the face if it made the baby cry for 60 seconds less. The cloth diapers … were dumped for disposables; we lived on ready meals. Nothing got recycled … Union dues and widow’s mites were cancelled — we needed the money for the disposables and the ready meals. …

Let’s face it, most women will continue to have babies, the planet isn’t going to run out of new people, so it’s of no real use to the world for you to have a child. Quite the opposite, in fact. That shouldn’t stop you having one if you want one, of course …

But it’s also worth remembering it’s not of vital use to you as a woman, either. … I don’t think there’s a single lesson that motherhood has to offer that couldn’t be learned elsewhere. …

Every woman who chooses — joyfully, thoughtfully, calmly, of her own free will and desire — not to have a child does womankind a massive favor in the long term. We need more women who are allowed to prove their worth as people, rather than being assessed merely for their potential to create new people. …

Humor, it seems to me, arises from our shared experience with the absurdities of human existence. We do things because we have to, because they are convenient, because they are necessary, and, then, we look back and realize that - from a certain angle - the things we are so solemn about are really absurd, from that angle. We all share the experience; we all have that moment of realization; we all laugh.

This is the opposite of humor. We don't all share the experience of feeling bitter about giving up our "potential" to raise children. We all don't see that experience as "absurd." We probably see as absurd the childish idea that we are so special that the world is just waiting for us to bestow our special gifts on it. We all probably see as absurd the idea that signing petitions was more important than taking care of a crying child - our crying child.

That seems to be the shared human experience - growing up by taking care of our helpless children.

People like this feminist comic are absurd.

They are the joke.