"The fuck?"
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to reporters at the State Department in Washington May 17, 2012. [Reuters Pictures]
Photo of the Day
"The fuck?"
OH NOES
Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik in the Washington Post—Census: Minority babies are now majority in United States.
For the first time in U.S. history, most of the nation's babies are members of minority groups, according to new census figures that signal the dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority.Underlying white people's alarmism about this statistic is the fear that people of color will "get into power" and treat whites as badly as whites have been treating people of color. (Whoooooops!)
Population estimates show that 50.4 percent of children younger than 1 last year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups. That's almost a full percentage point higher than the 49.5 percent of minority babies counted when the decennial census was taken in April 2010. Census Bureau demographers said the tipping point came three months later, in July.
...The census has forecast that non-Hispanic whites will be outnumbered in the United States by 2042, and social scientists consider that current status among infants a harbinger of the change.
Which is: 1. Why so many white people fiercely defend white privilege, in order that whites may remain a dominant minority; and 2. Reflective of a profound ignorance rooted in the assumption that people of color are monolithic and/or united in a hatred of white people, with no issues of racial animus creating divisions among non-white racial groups. (Which white supremacists help foment.) It's just one big wave of brown and black people with locked arms intent on destroying white people!
I'll leave you to deconstruct the many layers of fuckery embedded in white fear of non-white babies in comments.
I will first, however, just quickly note that the "darkening of America" reaching this apocalyptic tipping point and the simultaneous enactment of a record number of anti-choice restrictions in state houses across the country is not a coincidence. The white male Republican legislators primarily responsible for these restrictions are trying to force white women to have more white babies. (Never mind women of color will be forced to have more babies, too.) Conservative legislation, conservative Christian reproductive movements like Quiverfull, conservative broadcasting showcasing huge white broods like the Duggars, conservative anti-immigration policies, border walls—it's all been a response to this moment.
And yet the world spins on.
Look at What Joshua Ledet Did This Week
Have I mentioned I love Joshua Ledet? I love Joshua Ledet. Last night, the three remaining American Idol contestants sang three songs: One the judges chose for them, one producer Jimmy Iovine chose for them, and one they chose themselves. This is the song Joshua Ledet chose for himself:
Joshua Ledet, "Imagine"
Okay, so the thing about "Imagine" is that it's Iain's favorite song. And I already had tears streaming down my face watching Joshua Ledet sing this, immediately after a video showing him visiting his hometown in Louisiana, a place that clearly knows poverty—but then Iain said something about the song connecting John Lennon growing up poor in Liverpool, and Iain growing up poor in Edinburgh in the next generation, and Joshua Ledet growing up poor (or close to it) in Louisiana in the generation after that, and all the people still imagining, and it was at that point I could barely even see the Very Important Texts I was sending to Jessica aka scATX, because my eyeballs had exploded.
For his final performance, Joshua Ledet did the song chosen for him by Jimmy Iovine:
Joshua Ledet, "No More Drama"
Do you even remember Mary J. Blige doing this song at the Grammys? I didn't think anyone could touch that, ever, but hello let me introduce you to Joshua Ledet.
I WILL BUY ALL THE ALBUMS! ALL OF THEM!
Btw, I loved the cuts to his BFF Hollie in the audience, looking so mightily proud of him. Tres adorbz.
His third performance of the night, the song chosen by the judges, is here, which is the Etta James song "I'd Rather Be Blind." The imagery in the song is super problematic, but he sings it well. It's an old-fashioned kind of song, but it doesn't sound old-fashioned to me when he sings it. That's partly a testament to his skill, and his ability to update something just enough, while staying true to what makes it special, to make it sound modern, but it's also partly a testament to performers like Adele and other "throwback artists," who have made a space for that sound on the radio again.
Film Corner!
[Content Note: Misogyny; violence; infanticide; xenophobia; fat hatred.]
Just for the record, if I have to see this advert for Sacha Baron Cohen's new film The Dictator one more time, I am going to lose my shit.
Male voiceover, over the scene of a parade from the film: Time magazine raves The Dictator is "infernally funny." [Quoted text appears onscreen.]I agree that narratives, attitudes, and beliefs resulting in widespread female infanticide need to be challenged. I don't think that ironic "jokes" at which murderers of female babies could laugh without a moment's discomfort is the way to do it.
Cut to a scene of Sacha Baron Cohen as The Dictator working in a deli. A fat white boy tells him, "Shut up, loser." SBC kicks him into a stack of boxes; the kid yells and SBC laughs.
Voiceover, over scene of crowd cheering for The Dictator: Roger Ebert says Sacha Baron Cohen is today's "best comic filmmaker." [Quoted text appears onscreen.]
Cut to a scene of SBC as The Dictator delivering a white woman's baby. "Bad news—it's a girl," he says. "Where's the trashcan?"
"No!" cried the father. "That's the one we wanted!"
Voiceover: The Dictator. Rated R.
And not to get all What About the Menz? about it, but SBC's characters function as stand-ins for entire classes of people, and the men of Arabic extraction who love and value their daughters are being disappeared under the weight of this outsized stereotype—which, you know, doesn't actually help the cause of valuing daughters.
It's not that I don't get the joke, even though I am the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington. I get it. I just don't think it's funny.
Generally Dreadful
The BIG NEWS today is that there is a Republican Super PAC with major plans to make this election EVEN MORE TERRIBLE and EVEN LESS SUBSTANTIVE. You can read their megacool plan to "[run] commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr." here. I recommend printing it out and then folding it up to use as a barf bag afterwards!
Leaving aside the twenty million or so words I could write on the unethical nature of this line of attack, and the forty million more I could write on garbage campaign finance laws that give undue influence to small but powerful (rich) groups of unprincipled dirtbags for whom policy obfuscation is not a bug but a feature of their slimeball ad hominem politics, I will just express my mystification at pursuing a strategy that didn't even work the last time around, when Barack Obama was a virtually unknown quantity.
Well. I don't profess to understand the mind of the profoundly indecisive centrist cover. Maybe four years of birtherism, dog whistling, and explicit racist attacks on the President will make his connection to Reverend Wright somehow more appealing than it was four years ago. In which case: Whooooops your bigotry!
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney "repudiates" the efforts of this super racist Super PAC. What a man of principle! Ha ha just kidding. It's not like he supports comprehensive finance reform to prevent this shit from influencing elections. Hells no! He supports letting Super PACs run amok and then sternly repudiating their tactics, even as he stands to benefit from them.
Welp, maybe he'll support sweeping reforms once he loses. Like John McCain.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Number of the Day
Eight: The number of years the state of Massachusetts has had marriage equality:
On May 17, 2004, the first legal same-sex marriages in the United States began taking place in Massachusetts. In the eight years since then, 18,462 same-sex couples have wed in the state, according to MassEquality. As of 2009, 28 percent of Massachusetts married same-sex couples were raising children, and 93 percent of them reported that their children were happier and better off as a result of their marriage.And the world hasn't even ended or anything!
Happy anniversary, Massachusetts!
Reproductive Rights Updates: DC, LA, NH, MO, VT
Today the House Subcommittee on the Constitution will hold a congressional hearing regarding a bill (HR 3803) that Rep. Franks (R-Arizona) introduced. There is a companion bill in the Senate intro'd by Utah senator Mike Lee (R-idiculous). These bills ban abortion past twenty weeks gestation under the pretense of "fetal pain". If you are just tuning in, the "fetal pain" idea has been debunked. But who cares about science!
Washington DC delegate Eleanor Norton was refused by the committee to testify. Del. Norton has chosen to speak up whenever legislation that specifically affects DC is under consideration. Franks, as co-chair of the committee discussing his legislation, could have accepted her request. He did not. Norton released a statement saying:
“The post-20-week D.C. abortion ban bill targets an entire group of individuals, women who live in the District of Columbia, and their constitutional rights. Using the women of one congressional district to reach for extreme encroachments on women’s reproductive rights has become a pattern of the House Republican majority, but also reflected nationwide. We will vigorously fight the bullying tactics of the Republican majority against the District’s women, and in standing up for ourselves, we recognize that we are also in the larger fight to protect the reproductive rights of women everywhere."Del. Norton has said she will be participating in a press conference before the hearing.
Here are the men (of course!) on the subcommittee:
Mr. Franks, Chairman (R-AZ)
Mr. Pence, Vice-Chairman (R-IN)
Mr. Chabot (R-OH)
Mr. Nadler (D-NY)
Mr. Forbes (R-VA)
Mr. Quigley (D-IL)
Mr. King (R-IA)
Mr. Conyers (D-MI)
Mr. Jordan (R-OH)
Mr. Scott (D-VA)
The hearing will be at 4pm EST.
***
In Louisiana, a few different bills were advanced from committees. One is yet another "pain capable" act that bans abortions past 20 weeks, the other defunds Planned Parenthood, and yet another has to do with a person hearing a fetal heartbeat before an abortion.
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee approved two measures: Senate Bill 593, which would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, and House Concurrent Resolution 11, which asks Congress not to fund Planned Parenthood."They provide health care to many low income, uninsured & under-insured citizens but they also provide a health care service I don't like! Sorry citizens who need Planned Parenthood, you're S.O.L.!" -- Rep. Hoffman's so-called moral logic.
At the same time, the House Health and Welfare committee backed Senate Bill 708, which would give women the option to listen to their unborn baby’s heartbeat before receiving an abortion.
State Rep. Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe, said Wednesday would be remembered as a great day in the fight against the procedure that terminates pregnancy. He noted that a “right-to-life” group hosted a breakfast for legislators that was followed by simultaneous hearings on two anti-abortion bills on both sides of the State Capitol.
[...]
On a 3-2 vote, the Senate health committee approved another anti-abortion measure aimed at stopping federal funds going to Planned Parenthood. HCR11, which has passed the House and now goes to the full Senate, would ask the U.S. Congress to defund activities of the group that deals with women’s health issues and family planning.
“I’m sure they do many good things but they lead the nation in abortions,” said Rep. Frank Hoffmann, the resolution’s sponsor.
***
The Tyranny of OH HELL IT BURNS: Introduction
[Content note: I'm reviewing a book by Jonah Goldberg, so it's safe to say I'll be discussing some pretty awful shit. This particular post includes mentions of eliminationism, homophobia and antisemitism.]
A number of you (zero is a number) have written me to ask about my Goodreads bookshelves. "Kate," you ask, "I see that you're currently reading Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica and Jonah Goldberg's The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. Should I assume you're working on some sort of awesome slash fiction?"
YES. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM WORKING ON. No.
Liss hooked me up with a pre-release copy of two-time Pultizer Prize nominee entrant (WHOOPS!) Jonah Goldberg's latest book. I wasn't sure I wanted it, but two things were clear:
1. It comes recommended by Marco Rubio, Mitch Daniels, and the guy from Wedding Crashers.
2. The good people at Penguin were really excited for me to have a free copy. Who wouldn't be? Yay!
I plan on reviewing a chapter a week until I either finish the book or find something more amusing to do with my time. There are twenty-four chapters, plus an introduction. Think of it as an advent calendar, only instead of getting shitty candy in honor of Jesus' birth, you'll be getting nothing in honor of Jonah Goldberg's career.
BTW, the book's been available to the public since the start of May. I sincerely apologize to the people at Penguin for not getting on this sooner. I was mesmerized by the amazing centerfold of Grover Cleveland.
IT BEGINS:
"According to legend, when George Will signed up to become a syndicated columnist in the 1970s, he asked his friend William F. Buckley...."
Two random thoughts:
1. On the subject of slash fiction, I am now terrified.
2. Let's flip ahead to the last sentence, to see if this gets better. Hmmm..... "It is the man-- or woman [as if!]-- who stands up to the mob and says: You will not lynch this man today." HELL ASS DAMN FUCK IT DOES NOT GET BETTER DAN SAVAGE YOU ARE A LYING ASSHOLE.
As for the 277 pages in between, Goldberg's basic premise is that libruls are losers. More intellectually stated, I think he's saying that liberals like to use strawmen (or women!) as a stand in for legitimate intellectual discourse. According to Goldberg, in addition to being intellectually dishonest, this is a BFD because
"Some incredibly ideological ideas simply ride into your head like the dream spelunkers in the movie Inception-- setting up, working their way through your programming-- all because they're wrapped in the protective coating of cliches."Wait, was Inception a prerequisite for this bullshit? I'm so in over my head.
Anyhow, to get the juices flowing (NOBODY SAID THAT. THAT IS NOT WHAT HE SAID.), Goldberg throws out a few examples.
EXAMPLE 1: "One Man's [Or Woman's! Ladies?] Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter"
Goldberg thinks this saying is "pithy hogwash." He also implies, on the basis of HE IS JONAH GOLDBERG, that liberals are saying this all the time.
He quotes
EXAMPLE 2: "The Center"
Goldberg thinks that there are issues for which siding with "the center" is not at all reasonable. There are things that aren't up for compromise. I'm sure he can come up with a good example of this....
"[T]he [presumably fictional?] Wahhabis want to kill all the gays and the Jews. The Sufis don't want to kill any gays or Jews. So the moderate, sensible position must be to kill just the gays, but not the Jews. Or maybe the other way around? Or half of all the gays and Jews? Or maybe all the gay Jews? Or maybe we can have a very complicated compromise along the lines of last year's debt-ceiling negotiations [remember all that compromise?], where a small percentage of Jews are killed now and we kill a large number of gays in the out years?"YES. THAT IS AN ACTUAL METAPHOR THAT TOTALLY DOES NOT GET A RISE OUT OF ME.
Goldberg goes on to talk about how moderates want to build a bridge halfway across a river (I HEAR LIBRULS SAY THIS ALL THE TIME.) Then, he makes with the humor:
Undecided centerists are "a**holes who think they must be at the center of the universe."Yes, Goldberg did write an entire paragraph about a hypothetical situation in which a group of people sought to exterminate Jews and gay people, and then redacted the second and third "s" from "assholes", lest people become offended. He continues:
"Now, hold on, I mean that in a fairly literal way."By "literal", he means that he's going to go on for a few pages about Galileo and "the anal aperature of the universe, literally." THAT IS LITERALLY WHAT HE DID, BY WHICH I MEAN LITERALLY AND NOT FIGURATIVELY.
This is all proof the liberals are wrong.
I actually have tons (literally) of disagreements with many lines of liberal reasoning, so I feel like I'm in a good position to evaluate Goldberg's blanket claim that liberals are smelly. Alas, he's not even trying (not that he needs to with two Pulitzer Prize entries under his belt) to link liberals (which liberals?) to his
Example 3: Hindsight is 20/20
I hear liberals use this cliche (IM NOT USING ANY
"We shouldn't have sought out a**hole undecided centrists during that electoral campaign"
"There was no way to know that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs."
(Just kidding. I have not recently heard liberals say the former.)
Liberals believe silly things about history:
"The Marxists believed that history was predictable and unidirectional..."
There are a lot of typographical errors in the introduction, but that one was definitely my favorite. I remember when the last Marxist died in captivity, shortly after endorsing Jimmy Carter....
The rest of the chapter (or introduction) is basically just red baiting. Goldberg talks about how "pop gurus like Thomas Friedman" (
Soooooo.... that's the introduction. Only 260 more pages about how liberals are cheating in the "war of ideas." I don't really see what anything thus far has to do with liberals, but wev. Goldberg also points out that he "does not claim that the conservative mind isn't bound by cliches from time to time", so clearly he's being something here.
Next Week: Ideology
(Yay!!!!!!)
The Academy in the Era of Austerity and Fundamentalism
[Content note: classism, homophobia]
Two higher education-related stories caught my eye this morning.
One concerns the growing crisis in Quebec, where the Jean Charest-led provincial government has announced it is suspending classes in response to continued student protests over proposed hikes to student tuition that will send the price of education skyrocketing. There is no sign that the government is backing away from the fee increases, and it will use force to keep classes open in the fall if it has to:
But Mr. Charest made it clear he was not backing away from the planned tuition fee hike for this fall and promised a tougher approach to ensure classes can resume in August, with stronger police intervention to guarantee access.
Students show no signs of meekly going home and accepting austerity measures which will seriously change the accessibility of higher education:
The more militant student and union coalition known as CLASSE promised to keep mobilizing its 75,000 members and continue demonstrating against the tuition-fee hikes. “The bill that the government is proposing to table is an anti-union law, it is authoritarian, repressive and breaks the students’ right to strike,” said CLASSE spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. “This is a government that prefers to hit on its youth, ridicule its youth rather than listen to them.”The other story concerns Michael Wilson, a librarian at Shorter University in Georgia, who refuses to sign on to the school's new homophobic "lifestyle statement." Wilson, who is gay, is one of many faculty and staff who are prepared to leave their jobs rather than comply with the increasingly oppressive requirements of the Georgia Baptist Convention, with which the University is affiliated. The University lost a legal battle to break away from the Convention in 2005, and the climate has been increasingly hostile for non-fundamentalists ever since:
The first president chosen by the new board took office last year, and the lifestyle statements were introduced in October. Wilson said he knew right away he could not sign: “It’s a matter of conscience,” he said. Since the statements were first proposed, controversy has raged. An anonymous survey in April found only 12 percent of faculty and staff plan to stay. Save Our Shorter, a group opposing the changes, has a list on its website of more than 50 faculty members who are leaving as a result of the new policies. Several departments, including science and the fine arts, have been “eviscerated,” Wilson said.
It's no joke to walk away from a tenured or even tenure-track job. For that many faculty to leave (or be forced out) is mind-boggling in the extreme.
I don't have much commentary on these stories, save to add: the common thread here is access. Whether the limits are being placed by Christian fundamentalist bigots who want to make sure that faculty aren't teaching anything good about TEH GAYZ! Or whether it's austerity-loving governments who expect students to either borrow their way into lives of debt (or alternatively, forgo higher education altogether), there's a clear message here for the not-powerful: get out. And stay out.
Quote of the Day
"I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American."—Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado), at a recent fundraiser. Coffman has since apologized(ish).
I always love the suggestion by conservatives that there is only one way to "be an American." By their singular definition, I am not an American in my heart, either.
And I frankly don't think that's anything to be ashamed of.
Adventures in Blogging, Part Wev
[Content Note: Racism; fat hatred.]
So, in March, someone posted a fake OKCupid profile using my picture (one from the hat series), then linked to it on Reddit. The profile was, of course, full of fat jokes, but it was also deeply racist: The entire premise of the "hilarious" profile was that I desperately want to have sex with black men, and there were all kinds of plays on the stereotype of fat white women and black men, and the objectification of black men as sexual studs.
Stealing my picture to make fat jokes is so routine that I don't even give a shit anymore. Stealing my picture to set up a fake dating profile is an issue: I don't want people who might recognize me thinking I'm cheating on Iain. But stealing my picture in order to perpetuate racism is a serious fucking concern.
I contacted OKCupid, who evidently have no quality control that prevents people using their property to promote rank racism and fat hatred, and they eventually removed the profile. I did, however, have to sign up to OKCupid in order to confirm that, because, despite requesting confirmation of removal, I received none, and, once the profile was taken down, the message served indicated the profile was merely "private" and visible only to OKCupid members. Only once I signed up could I confirm it was actually gone (and it was), but OKCupid essentially used the exploitation of my image and complaint about bigotry to oblige me to sign up to their service. Gross.
That was not the end of the story. Now the image, tagged with text from the profile, is going around Tumblr:
I'm getting emails about it from people who recognize me, so part of the reason for this post is just to publicly say: Yes, I know about it.
Another part is to acknowledge that my image is being used in a racist meme, which is upsetting.
I'm pissed to have been put in a position where some people will misconstrue my objection to the meme as embarrassment (or some other negative reaction) to the suggestion I'd be sexually intimate with a black man, as opposed to being angry my image is being used to perpetuate oppressive stereotypes of black men as: 1. A Mandingo monolith; and 2. Consolation prizes for white women considered undesirable by white men.
That is not how I think of black men, and I am unthrilled, to put it mildly, to see those narratives being promulgated in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and twelve, no less that my image is being used in the process.
Finally, I'm writing about this to underscore, once again, the cost of being a fat woman who has the unmitigated temerity to put her picture on the internet. My picture has been used in all sorts of violent and pornographic imagery; it's been used to mock me specifically, and to mock fat women generally; it's been appropriated as "the face of morbid obesity"; and now it's been used in a racist meme. I'm sure pictures of me have been used in ways of which I'm not even aware.
The only option is to not post pictures of myself. But the reason I post pictures of myself in the first place is because there is a dearth of imagery of fat women, especially fat happy women enjoying their lives. That's partly because of media that disappears fat people unless it's to shame us, and partly because fat women know that their images will be abused. Oh the irony, etc.
I'm not going to stop posting my picture. That's a calculated risk. Pictures of me are going to be stolen, appropriated, exploited, abused. When they're used in a way that demeans other people, I will have to write posts like this one.
Hi!
Question of the Day
What's for dinner?
I haven't decided what I'm making yet tonight, so here's last night's menu from Shakes Manor: Chicken breast, black beans, corn, garlic, and scallions sauteed in olive oil infused with habanero, with a homemade fire-roasted red pepper sauce, wrapped in butterhead lettuce leaves.
Healthy, easy, and delicious!
What Does a US Olympian Look Like?
[Gabrielle Douglas, gymnast. Joe Klamar/Getty Images]
[Howard Bach, badminton player. Lucas Jackson/Reuters]
[Holley Mangold, weightlifter. Lucas Jackson/Reuters]
[Jerome Singleton, sprinter. Lucas Jackson/Reuters]
[Brittney Reese, long jumper. Joe Klamar/Getty Images]
[Julie Zetlin, gymnast. Joe Klamar/Getty Images]
[Jennifer Nichols, archer. Joe Klamar/Getty Images]
[Joseph Diaz, Jr., boxer. Joe Klamar/Getty Images]
[Wallace Spearmon, sprinter. Victoria Will/AP]
[Brendan Hansen, swimmer. Joe Klamar/Getty Images]
There are so many more beautiful images at the link.
Number of the Day
Two: The number of months you're going to have to wait to buy George W. Bush's book detailing his strategies for economic growth.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL FOREVER.
At Think Progress, Pat writes:
That Bush believes the country needs his thoughts on how to create economic growth is laughable. After all, under his watch, "growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion," while "overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967."Whooooooooooooops!
...As the New York Times' David Leonhardt noted, "the competition for slowest growth is not even close, either. Growth from 2001 to 2007 averaged 2.39 percent a year..." Bush also presided over the formulation of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
If Mr. Bush's new career as author of smart things doesn't pan out, he could always give motivational speaker another go. I'm pretty sure that worked out great.
Trayvon Martin Updates
[Content Note: Violence; stalking; victim-blaming.]
There are two pieces of news today, which are widely being cited by his supporters as proof that killer George Zimmerman did not commit second-degree murder:
1. Autopsy results show Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles. This information is being axiomatically construed to prove that Zimmerman's claim he acted in self-defense is true. Except that the injuries cannot be definitively stated to be offensive wounds: Legal analyst Bill Sheaffer notes they "could be consistent with Trayvon either trying to get away or defend himself."
And, again, even if Martin attacked Zimmerman, to pretend that happened unprovoked is absurd in the extreme, given the available recording of Zimmerman talking to police from inside his vehicle and being advised against following Martin, who was not engaging with Zimmerman in any way. From Trayvon Martin's perspective, he was being stalked by a man unknown to him. If at some point he felt obliged to defend himself, that ought to be eminently understandable.
2. Medical report says Zimmerman had broken nose, other injuries after fight. This CNN piece on the medical report buries an important piece of information 11 paragraphs in, but at least CNN reports it: The medical report which says Zimmerman had a "closed fracture" of his nose, two black eyes, and two head lacerations was done the day after the shooting, by a family physician.
The Martin family has questions about the medical report, said Benjamin Crump, the family attorney.There certainly seems to be a disparity between what emergency personnel thought of Zimmerman's injuries and what a family physician thought of his injuries. That doesn't mean the family physician was wrong, but it is a troubling discrepancy when medical staff without a prior relation to Zimmerman and/or his family found his injuries to be less severe and thus not consistent with a battering that required taking another person's life to save his own.
"The family has very strong positions about this family physician's report that was done the next day," Crump said. "What we do know is on February 26, the ER personnel did not believe his injuries were significant enough for him to go to the hospital. They didn't even put a Band-Aid on his head. That's important."
The headlines on most of these reports today suggest that there's no other possible explanation than Zimmerman has been honest all along. That's not the case. This is just more victim-blaming, more storytelling about a young man who isn't available to tell his side of events. Which is pretty damn convenient for George Zimmerman.
Seen
[Content Note: misogynist language/slur]
On Sunday I found myself at a red light behind a Kia Sorento, whose owner had decided to have words scrawled (professionally!) across the entire back window.
The image is below the break since it may be NSFW.
More Anti-Choice Garbage in Kansas
[Content Note: Reproductive rights; Christian Supremacy.]
Because it is more important to indulge the presumed right of conservative Christians to force everyone else to bend to their beliefs than actually promote meaningful tolerance of a diversity of religious and irreligious traditions, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who was a garbage nightmare as a senator and is now a garbage nightmare as a governor, has signed into law "a new expanded conscience clause bill in Kansas," which is breathtaking in its scope.
Brownback has now legally blessed a virtually open-ended number of situations in which "religious" workers can refuse to assist women under the guise that they believe they "may be" terminating a pregnancy.Science has left the building. Now as long as someone "believes," even if wrongly, they "may" be "assisting in terminating a pregnancy," they are allowed to refuse to do their fucking jobs.
Advocates of the law argue that it "updates existing law." But by changing the law to include refusal to administer any drug that they believe may terminate a pregnancy, it opens the door to refusal of birth control and emergency contraception -- both of which many anti-choice medical workers and pharmacists erroneously charge end very early pregnancies rather than preventing conception. The law could also allow refusal of even more medically-necessary drugs simply because they may relate to abortions.
Idaho already had a case of a pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for a woman who needed drugs to stop bleeding, believing that the woman may have had an abortion which caused her blood loss, and the pharmacist received no punishment for the action. How long will it take for that to become the rule, rather than the exception, as the Kansas law goes into effect?
"Assisting in terminating a pregnancy" has already become an overly expansive phrase that many anti-choice activists are applying to even more unrelated situations -- from the nurses who refuse to do intake of women in the hospital for a termination to the bus driver who won't drive a route to Planned Parenthood.
And if you're a patient who doesn't share those beliefs, well, you're shit outta luck. I guess you should have been born in a country that prioritizes healthcare over the childish indulgence of individual faith beliefs on the job.
Now, if you are a pregnant person living in Kansas, in addition to the concern that your health insurance (if you're privileged enough to have it) might limit your coverage to religiously-affiliated healthcare facilities that will deny you a life-saving abortion if they deem it a faith-based inconvenience, you also get to wonder if every individual doctor, nurse, and care provider whom you cannot personally choose will be willing to provide additional types of care, or decline to provide it on the basis that they erroneously believe it to be potentially harmful to your fetus.
I don't know how else to say this: We live in a country with legal abortion. If you are not willing to participate in healthcare procedures that you perceive, rightly or wrongly, to be associated with abortion, then find another profession.
It should be no one's obligation to sacrifice their health to indulge another person's faith belief.
That this is a controversial notion in the United States is truly contemptible.
