[Content Note: Racism, violence, torture, eliminationism, white supremacy.]
Deryl Dedmon, the 19-year-old ringleader in the racist murder of James Craig Anderson in Mississippi last summer, has been sentenced to life in prison.
It's good news, insomuch as Anderson's surviving family and friends have some justice, which is not a small thing. But justice doesn't bring Anderson back to them. My heart hurts for them.
And nearly a year later, this good news, such as it is, comes in a week when another young black man has been cruelly slaughtered by another non-black man motivated by profound racist hatred.
We are not learning the lessons this reprehensible violence begs us to learn.
* * *
I don't have any sympathy for Dedmon, and his pitiful protestations that he's found Jesus inspire within me a rage so vivid and immediate that I feel like flames may shoot straight from the pores of my skin.
And yet I recognize all the same that sending Dedmon to prison for the rest of his life is to sentence him to a life of torture, given the hideous nature of our penal system. Is that a fair exchange? A life of torture in exchange for the taking of another life? I don't know.
It's not like there's another option. We don't believe in rehabilitation. Not really. So fairness isn't even a debatable concept, in any meaningful way.
But I still want the question of fairness to matter. Because a disproportionate number of men and women of color end up where Dedmon is now, convicted of murder, but their cases don't end up on the front page of CNN. And the last one who did was Troy Davis, who was very likely innocent and was executed anyway.
The only other option for Dedmon would have been freedom—a gift frequently granted to white men who murder people of color, while men of color who are wrongly convicted are killed.
So, sure: It's fair. Or what passes for fair in the US justice system.
But there is no real legal justice without social justice.
* * *
Progress shouldn't look like this. It shouldn't look like a devilish exchange of imposed suffering for callously caused suffering, in which the latter is regarded as inevitable.
This sentence, irrespective of its fairness or rightness or justness, is a resignation, a sigh: That's how the world is. Now lock up the latest gross offender of racist violence and throw away the key.
Yes, do it. Do it, because that's all we've got. Do it, because James Craig Anderson's family and friends and colleagues and community deserve that much. Do it, because it will stop Deryl Dedmon from ever taking another (free) person's life again.
But what are we going to do to stop the next Deryl Dedmon? What are we doing about him?
For the love of god, for the love of James Craig Anderson and Trayvon Martin, we've got to figure it the fuck out.
An Update on the Murder of James Craig Anderson
OH YEAHHHHHHHH
Mitt Romney book of quotes to be released in May:
A book of direct quotes from Mitt Romney will be published in May, citing everything from the Republican presidential contender's views on Mormonism to healthcare as well as his corporate background, publisher Threshold Editions said on Wednesday.That sounds AMAZING. My birthday is in May, I'm just saying.
"Mitt Romney In His Own Words" will be released in May and compiled by author Philip Hines. It will be written in the style of "I, Steve," a book which offered quotes by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs that was rushed to the marketplace after Jobs died in October.
The collection of quotes on "hot button-issues" by the former Massachusetts Governor will be published as a paperback by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, the publisher said in a statement.
Alcatraz Open Thread
(Minor spoilers follow.)
Okay, I am only going to say one thing about this episode: I had trouble watching it because, ugh, the violence (although I continue to appreciate how the violence is shown as horrible and not titillating), but I loved—LOVED—the scene in which the prison doctor refers to the "warden's new toy," and Dr. Sangupta tersely says, "Mr. Porter is not a toy," to which the prison doctor responds, "Oh, I agree. I was talking about you." AHHHHHHHHHHH CREEPY! And then—THEN!—the warden turns and looks up at them with his skeevy grin! OMG GOOSEBUMPS! HE IS SUCH A CREEPAZOID! I BET THOSE KEYS HE WEARS AROUND HIS NECK OPEN A DOOR BEHIND WHICH LIES A STASH OF CREEPO PILLS!
I love this show. That is all.
Quote of the Day
"Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again."—Romney Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom, on how Mitt Romney's rightwing garbage views are only temporary, so he can get the GOP nomination, but then he can go back to his moderate garbage views for the general election.
Integrity! Mitt Romney has it!
In other news, if you were waiting to see who Jeb Bush endorsed before picking your garbage nightmare candidate, Mitt Romney's your man! Congratulations to us all, I'm sure.
Their Bootstraps Made Them Do It
[Content Note: Terrorism, violence, disablism.]
Once upon a time, the United States had a president named George W. Bush.
Nowadays, conservatives don't talk much about their man Dubya, as he was affectionately known, but when he was king, boy, how they loved him. He was their Golden Boy, the Platonic Ideal of the Modern Conservative—a man of extreme privilege with the fabricated veneer of a country boy, a corporate shill who gave an insidious wink at the working man, the teetotaler with whom every Real American wanted to have a beer.
Like some kind of malevolent genie pulled out of a bottle in oil-soaked Texas, George Bush tumbled headfirst into unfettered conservative wish fulfillment, and introduced The Ownership Society to America.
It was ostensibly about property ownership: Bush had a vision of getting everyone into their very own homes with their very own shiny mortgages. "We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property," he said—and, well, we all know how that turned out.
But it was also about personal responsibility, that favorite of all favorite conservative mantras. Let them eat bootstraps, and all that.
There are a lot of reasons that George Bush's Ownership Society was and is a garbage disaster for the United States. Among them is the fact that this notion of every bootstrapper for hirself has more deeply entrenched the idea that people's individual actions exist in a fucking void.
Yesterday morning, in my piece about the murder of Trayvon Martin, I noted that the excuse-making for George Zimmerman on the basis that he is "crazy" has already begun. Later in the day, in my piece about Rick Santorum's vile bigotry, I addressed the ubiquitous habit of marginalizing him on the basis that he is "crazy." This morning, I wrote about the firebombing of a pro-choice State Senator's office, and—wouldn't you know it?—the man who has been arrested for the incident is, we are informed, a homeless man who is "crazy," just like the man who firebombed a clinic in Florida, and just like the man who was arrested for threatening to kill Rep. Jim McDermott, and just like the man who tried to kill Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and just like the man who attempted to bomb a Martin Luther King Day parade, and just like the man who killed Dr. George Tiller, and on and on and on until I want to fucking puke.
Each and every one of them are individually and independently "crazy" and their actions exist in a void and there's nothing to see here, move along. Their bootstraps made them do it.
Guess who else is "crazy"? Anyone who sees a pattern of anti-progressive violence—and, very specifically, misogynist and/or homophobic and/or racist violence—and has the unmitigated temerity to suggest that, hey, maybe this shit isn't happening in a void.
Maybe the nakedly misogynist, unapologetically homophobic, and dangerously racist policies of the Republican Party and its even more extreme rightwing have something to do with this homegrown terrorism that everyone in Washington is carefully ignoring because to call it out would be impolitic and partisan and, worse yet, might hurt someone's reelection chances.
That's just "crazy" talk. Their bootstraps made them do it.
Maybe the fact that the Republican Party has been actively courting bigots under the guise of "tradition" and exploiting their bigotry to get elected for four decades, increasingly legitimizing extremist views and demonizing progressives and/or members of marginalized groups in the process, has a little something to do with this homegrown terrorism.
That's just "crazy" talk. Their bootstraps made them do it.
Maybe the toxic combination of demonizing vulnerable populations, lax gun laws, and violent rhetoric—otherwise known as the Republican Platform—has facilitated an environment in which the murder of Trayvon Martin, the legitimacy of Rick Santorum, the assassination attempt on a sitting member of Congress, and the widespread attacks on women's clinics and abortionists are not aberrations, but inevitabilities.
That's just "crazy" talk. Their bootstraps made them do it.
Maybe the failure of ostensibly progressive allies to speak the fuck up and call this homegrown terrorism by name, the failure to be all in, all the time, because it's not politically expedient or because it's "woman's work" or because where ya gonna go? is kind of a goddamned problem, too.
That's just "crazy" talk. Their bootstraps made them do it.
Just a series of lone gunmen and bombers, none of whom are connected by anything. Except for how they are connected by all being men living in the same culture—a culture that is increasingly conservative, increasingly tolerant of violent rhetoric and actual violence, a culture hostile to consent, a culture that asserts state ownership of marginalized bodies, a culture that advocates individual responsibility and sneers at collective responsibility, that treats as a punchline concepts like "universal healthcare," underlining the fact that even if these men are indeed mentally ill, it is nonetheless our shared responsibility for not providing comprehensive services to address that health crisis before other people get hurt.
Conservative ideology scoffs at such hippie nonsense and advocates an Ownership Society. Every person for hirself, and fuck you if you get in the way of an individual who's been failed by this fucked-up culture and makes use of the fact that we treat gun ownership as a right but not access to healthcare.
But a society of disconnected individuals without responsibility for one another isn't a society at all. And no matter how hostile to the notions of a social contract conservatives may be, the fact stubbornly remains that we are all connected to and influenced by a culture—a culture that has been severely weakened and imperiled and made infinitely more dangerous for its oppressed members by a conservative approach that rejects human interdependency and shared accountability.
To imagine that, even (or maybe especially) if an individual is dangerously mentally ill, pervasive cultural memes do not influence in what direction they direct their violent impulses is to fail to understand how culture works.
(Which is to say nothing of the likelihood that mentally ill people are more likely themselves to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it.)
But instead of acknowledging the reality of having created more dangerous spaces for marginalized people, instead of owning it, conservatives dismiss these homegrown terrorists as "crazy" in a void, and double down on the notion of individual responsibility. And there are always plenty of fauxgressives happy to play along, even if just by fastidiously maintaining their silence.
We are in this together. "He's crazy" doesn't fucking cut it.
A dead teenage boy. A wildly radical Christian Supremacist candidate vying for the nomination. A dead doctor. A terrorist campaign against women and other people with uteri, and their doctors and allies, who just want access to a legal medical procedure.
This is your Ownership Society in all its violent grotesquery, Republicans. Own that.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by water.
On the Trayvon Martin murder [content note: racism and violence, for all of the posts in this section]:
Shanelle: The Devaluation of Black Life
Milkee Mountain Mama: White Folks, Please Let Your Grief Build a Bridge to Other Human Beings
Renee: Trayvon Martin and The Fear in a Black Mothers Heart
Jamilah: One Author Tackles Trayvon Martin and the Deadly Legacy of Vigilantism
David: The Republican Base Exposed
Emily: Why Trayvon Martin's Killer Remains Free
Queer Black Feminist: 1 Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin
On reproductive rights [content note: hostility to consent and autonomy, for all of the posts in this section]:
Anonymous Physician: A Doctor on Transvaginal Ultrasounds
Igor: Arizona Lawmaker: Women Should 'Watch an Abortion Being Performed' Prior to Having It
Amadi: STFU Chuck Winder
AKleg: The War on Women Has Come to Alaska
Christine: Supreme Court Ruling on Family & Medical Leave Act "Appalling and Dangerous"
Other recommended reading:
John: Instead of a CEO, How About Electing a Labor Leader?
Andy: Mother Whale Lifts Calf Up to Get a Look at Humans on Boat
Daniela: Man Successfully Flies with Custom-Built Bird Wings
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Today in Anti-Choice Terrorism
[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism.]
There are a lot of things that don't get called terrorism in this country, but chief among them is the anti-choice movement, which is the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaign in the US, its co-ordination and orchestration done right out in the open, where no one in the media or politics will call it what it is. It is an inherently violent ideology, backed by a decades-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and violence directed at abortion providers and abortion seekers, that is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.
And still, every goddamn episode of blatant terrorism against women's clinics is treated like an isolated fucking incident.
Last night, Democratic Texas State Senator Wendy Davis' office was firebombed, ten days after participating in a Planned Parenthood rally.
Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident, as a staff member was able to leap over the flames and put them out with a fire extinguisher. An arrest has been made, and, surprise, it's a dude.
But of course there's nothing to see here, move along, and certainly no reason for our president to address THIS ACT OF TERRORISM, because it's part of a campaign of terrorism against pro-choice women et. al. and we don't fucking matter.
[H/T to @scATX.]
Primarily Endless
Congratulations, Mitt Romney! Republican primary voters in the great state of Illinois have decided that YOU are the least barfiest of all the candidates! GOOD FOR YOU!
In keeping with his tradition of being just a TERRIFIC candidate, Mitt Romney introduced a hot new strategy yesterday of telling women who want access to birth control to "vote for the other guy." Ha ha good advice, Mitt Romney! We will definitely take you up on that! Unless we exercise another voting option! In any case, we will definitely NOT BE VOTING FOR YOU!
In other excellency in presidential candidacy news, Mitt Romney was given a tour of Google's Chicago offices yesterday, during which he actually said these actual words to an actual person: "That's a big lava lamp, congratulations." Which, naturally, has already become a meme.
Also! One of Mitt Romney's top economic advisors, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush and Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw, posted a GREAT joke on his blog yesterday [content note for racism and ageism]: "Budget Cuts: The Immigration Department will start deporting seniors (instead of illegals) in order to lower Social Security and Medicare costs. Older people are easier to catch and less likely to remember how to get home." HA HA TREMENDOUS JOKE! I especially like how it totally alienates two key Republican voting demographics!
What else? Well, Newt Gingrich is a human being who continues to run for president of the United States of America. Ron Paul is a human being who still has not located a jacket that fits him. Rick Santorum is a human being who remains a vile bigot.
I'm sure you are, asshole.
Finally! Here is some fun news: "The Republican presidential candidates are running low on campaign cash as expensive primaries in states like Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania loom, leaving them increasingly reliant on a small group of supporters funneling millions of dollars in unlimited contributions into 'super PACs'." Citizens United has done some really amazing things for our democracy, hasn't it?! Huzzah.
Next Stop: Louisiana!
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
BushQuotes!
Chapter 1, page 6: "I could not be governor if I did not believe in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans. Politics is a fickle business. Polls change. Today's friend is tomorrow's adversary. People lavish praise and attention. Many times it is genuine; sometimes it is not. Yet I build my life on a foundation that will not shift. My faith frees me."
Platitude platitude platitude. Aphorism. Sentence fragment. Platitude. That old chestnut. Aphorism aphorism. Axiom. Hokum. Amen.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite science fiction film that is not part of a film franchise?
(Meaning: It could be a film made from a book which is part of a series, as long as it's only a stand-alone film.)
Number of the Day
94 degrees: The record-breaking temperature in Winner, South Dakota on the second to last day of winter this year—just one of many places all over the country experiencing "impossible weather."
"There's extremes in weather, but seeing something like this is impressive and unprecedented," Chicago NWS meteorologist Richard Castro told the Daily Herald. "It's extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day," the office added in an official statement.Oh well I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.
...It's hard to overstate how impossible this weather is—when you have nearly a century and a half of records, they should be hard to break, much less smash. But this is like Barry Bonds on steroids if his steroids were on steroids, an early season outbreak of heat completely without precedent in its scale and spread.
Welcome to America 2.0
I just don't even know what to say anymore: Job seekers getting asked for Facebook passwords.
When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.And it's not just applicants for new jobs who are being subjected to this brazen violation of privacy:
Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.
Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.
In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person's social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.
"It's akin to requiring someone's house keys," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it "an egregious privacy violation."
Robert Collins was returning to his job as a security guard at the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services after taking a leave following his mother's death. During a reinstatement interview, he was asked for his login and password, purportedly so the agency could check for any gang affiliations. He was stunned by the request but complied.So it was hand over the password to his private account, or lose his job.
"I needed my job to feed my family. I had to," he recalled.
I know I'm a goddamn insufferable broken record, but this is why progressives cannot compromise on reproductive rights, or punt on same-sex marriage, or negotiate on trans* protections, or ignore police harassment of people of color, or abandon migrant workers to radicalized border agents, or cede one fucking centimeter on any issue having to do with bodily autonomy and privacy.
Over and over and over, encroachments on privacy have been treated as an acceptable sacrifice by privileged progressives, because those encroachments were being made on the bodies and lives of people who aren't politically powerful.
And oh noes it would make liberals look HYSTERICAL if they pandered to the needs and concerns of SPECIAL INTERESTS like women or people with disabilities or undocumented immigrants! Just settle down and stop yelling about how your body is being treated like property of the state so Democrats can get elected and keep letting it happen.
Well, here we are. Now your employer wants your password. And who's gonna stop them? This is America 2.0, where if we're not owned by the state, we're owned by a corporation, because negotiating away a principled position on privacy was considered a good political move.
Whoops.
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen.]
National Geographic's Photo of the Day: "Quiver trees stand like eerie sentinels under the stars in the Namib Desert. The flowers of these desert–tough varieties of the aloe plant provide nectar for birds and insects. [Photograph by Frans Lanting, National Geographic.]"
An Observation
There is probably something profound to be said about the the simultaneous increase in anti-choice legislation and the exponentially intense cultural preoccupation with celebrity reproduction—pregnancy rumors! baby bumps! maternity fashion! nursery designs! gender watch! labor vigil! baby names! first pics!—but I don't know what that profound thing is.
All I got is this: It's all part of the same body policing, bodies with uteri are public property, entitled to your private reproduction business. And it's totally fucking gross.
What I'm Listening To
Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" performed on "a Chinese traditional instrument called GuZheng (Chinese Zither)." Sooooo beautiful.
[Via TDW.]
I Write Letters
To Whom It May Concern:
Rick Santorum is not "crazy." He is not insane, nuts, batshit, wacko, delusional, cuckoo, or any other euphemism for mentally ill.
He is a vile bigot.
The two are not, of course, mutually exclusive—but it is not axiomatic that anyone who holds the extremist views that Santorum holds is mentally ill, and it is certainly not accurate that mental illness inexorably or exclusively causes a belief in extremist views.
You probably already know that, though, don't you? Ha ha it's not like you really think Santorum is actually crazy. It's just something you say to demean him and marginalize him! What could be the harm in that, right?
Well, funny you should ask.
Because demeaning and marginalizing people by implying they are mentally ill has the effect of demonizing people with mental illness, many of whom, myself included, do not share in common any political views with the likes of Rick Santorum. The suggestion that mentally ill people are dangerous and unstable makes an already vulnerable population even more so, and creates a toxic environment in which people deemed "crazy" aren't considered reputable advocates for themselves and their needs, and wouldn't need to be listened to even if they were, because crazy don't get a place at the table.
Hey, here's a fun fact! Do you know two groups who have historically been marginalized with accusations of craziness? Women and queer men! And the fact that we have been dismissed as hysterics and lunatics for, literally, centuries is what makes it so easy for Rick Santorum and people just like him to still say we have no right to basic equality with a straight face in the public sphere and yet be considered viable candidates for the highest office in the most prominent democracy in the world!
Think of that, next time you want to call Rick Santorum "crazy," and think hard about whether it's worth it.
I understand the urge; I used to indulge it myself. I don't anymore.
Sincerely,
Liss
