Suburban Oblivion

Bill Maher- Applebee’s Nurse-in and Lactivism Are a Waste of Time, Breastfeed in Private

// September 14th, 2007 // Entertainment //

Unbelievable.

Hubby and I are watching Bill Maher on HBO, and I hear him mention ‘breastfeeding’ and ‘Applebees’. He mentioned that the “first ever nurse-in was going to be held the next day”. (If you are not familiar with the story, you can read about it here. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) I like Bill Maher a lot, and I fully expected a joke or two about enjoying seeing boobs, and then something supportive of the move.

The boob joke came right on cue.

The rest went something like this(paraphrasing)- ‘Breastfeeding is an intimate act between a mother and baby, and not an act I personally want to witness. The whole thing could have been avoided had the mother planned better or just stayed home. After all, masturbation is an intimate act, but we certainly don’t do that in public! Did you know there are breastfeeding advocates? They call themselves lactivists, and they consider breastfeeding rights a real cause! No wonder Al Gore can’t get people to pay attention to real issues, people are too busy worrying about silly stuff like this!’

I’ve always considered Bill Maher incredibly progressive, but this type of rhetoric makes me wonder if he isn’t a little more backwards than he’d like us to think.

Mr. Maher, let’s look at a fact or three shall we?

Breastfeeding can in NO way be compared to masturbation. Last I checked, masturbating is not necessary to survive, whereas feeding the infant when they are hungry IS.

How about the fact that by repeatedly asking the woman to cover herself, the Applebee’s employees were breaking the law??? In 2006 Kentucky passed a law specifically protecting the right to breastfeed in public, and specifically exempting breastfeeding from public indecency laws.(Unlike spanking your monkey.)

For someone who professes to be a huge fan of Hugh Hefner and Playboy, you certainly have one ass-backwards view of using the breast for it’s intended function. Boobs for show? Awesome! Boobs for food? Bad! Put those away! Sorry, it doesn’t lend much to your credibility.

So why do people worry themselves with something you deem so unimportant? To those of us who care about the future health of our children, this IS an important issue. Breastfeeding is proven to reduce the risk of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and a multitude of other problems. Given the out-of-control state of these things in the US today, one would think anything we could do to help curb this trend would not only be supported, but embraced.

The declining health of the population may not be as high on your radar as global warming Mr. Maher, but to those of us entrusted to raise the next generation, it’s our number one priority.

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Updates-

Thanks so much to Erin for blogging this over at the Huffington Post!!!

Thanks so much to Daddy Drivel for posting a link to the Youtube video on his blog. If you did not catch the show last night, fast-forward this to where it’s got 2 minutes and 51 seconds left and you’ll hit right on it.

Thanks to the Lactivist for covering this story as well!

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