Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer: "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)"
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by butterflies.
Recommended Reading:
Arturo: The Netroots Nation Files: An Interview with Jose Antonio Vargas
Feminist Aspie: The Illusion of "Neutral"
Daniel: [Content Note: Injuries; death] People Are Filming Accidents Instead of Helping
Kenrya: [CN: Appropriation] Rachel Dolezal in Vanity Fair: 'I Wouldn't Say I'm African American, But I Would Say I'm Black'
Monica: [CN: Transphobia] How a Black Trans Woman Ended up in Jail Because of An Iowa Transphobe
Jamilah: [CN: Racism; misogyny; appropriation] Amandla Stenberg Didn't Attack Kylie; Leave Our Princess Alone!
Maddie: Pluto's Atmosphere Is Billowing away into Space
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Hillary Sexism Watch, Part Wev in an Endless Series
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
Case in point: Clinton's Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri takes the piss out of the dreadful media coverage of her boss with "Hillary Clinton's No Good, (Record-Breaking, Poll-Winning), Very Bad Week."
If you believe the mood and headlines from some of the press, it's been a pretty rough week for Hillary Clinton. While there was widespread and substantive coverage of the rollout of her economic agenda, politically, it's a different story. One poll showed so much trouble for Hillary that she only had a higher favorability number than any other candidate it tested.Basically, this is the ultimate Hillary Sexism Watch entry. And yet, had I any inclination to indulge such protests, it would also be the most disputed—because, despite the fact that it's painfully obvious that the media routinely engages in misogyny against Clinton, both overtly and via subtler means (like the dour tone of the coverage surrounding her very well-received campaign), I can offer no scientific "evidence" that downplaying her successes is underwritten by misogyny.
Even worse, multiple polls released this week show that she leads every candidate running in head-to-head matchups. While it is widely known that the growing Hispanic electorate is critical in deciding the election, new polling shows that Hillary Clinton has a disastrous 68 percent approval rating among Hispanic voters and only leads her closest Republican competition (Bush) by 37 points, 64% to 27%.
Not only that, she raised a record amount of primary money for a candidate in their first quarter, with only $8 million (a sum larger than most Republican campaigns raised in total) in donations of less than $200. Hillary also spent too much money building her organization and was only left with more cash on hand than any other campaign raised and more in the bank than the top three Republican campaigns combined.
It's true. Hillary is left in the terrible position of having the most resources of any candidate and being voters' top choice to be the next President of the United States.
Again: You don't have to like Hillary Clinton or support her candidacy to be concerned about the fact that this is how a female candidate for the United States presidency is treated by the media.
Or to agree that Occam's Big Paisley Tie looks shitty with pantsuits.
Occam's Big Paisley Tie
[Content Note: Privilege; auditing; gaslighting.]
I am rerunning this piece because there is so much Occam's Big Paisley Tie-ing going in defense of the 2016 Democratic presidential candidates' various race-centered failures, and also in defense of the misogyny being unleashed against Hillary Clinton, that I'm going to have cause to reference this concept a lot over the coming months.
Once upon a time, in the comments of Hallelujah_Hippo's post about "not seeing" prejudice, I said:
The correlated urge to ask me, "Well, are you sure [the incident of rank misogyny you just pointed out to me] isn't REALLY [something else]?" makes me ragefrustrated like whoa.This is something men do to women, white people do to people of color, straight people do to queer people, cis people do to trans*/intersex/genderqueer people, able-bodied people do to people with disabilities, thin people do to fat people, religious people do to atheists, etc.
Yeah, I don't actually need to consider every other conceivable possible explanation for something I know is rank misogyny from a lifetime of experience in order to satisfy you, Helpful Ally.
Around every axis of privilege/marginalization, there are marginalized people saying, "I just experienced this heinous bit of hatred because of my marginalized identity," and privileged people saying, "Hang on, now. How can you be sure that it was because of your marginalized identity, and not just a misunderstanding, or a mistake, or a misspeak, or this thing or that thing or this other thing over here, because there's surely a perfectly logical explanation for why this behavior that looks exactly like a million other bits of behavior that you and other people in this marginalized population have experienced is actually something TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Have you considered that maybe it's just that you're too sensitive?"
If Occam's Razor is the principle by which the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, this urge to exhaust every possible explanation—no matter how convoluted, remote, unlikely, or totally fucking absurd—is Occam's Big Paisley Tie.
A swirling vortex of elaborate designs when a simple pinstripe just won't do.
Are you sure that salesperson didn't ignore you because zie just didn't see you? SWIRL! Well, maybe zie was just having a bad day. SWOOP! Are you certain zie heard you? SWIRL! Did you really try to get hir attention? SWOOP! Maybe zie didn't realize you needed help. SWIRL! I'm sure it's not that zie was being purposefully rude. SWOOP! Maybe zie is hard of hearing. SWIRL! Have you considered that maybe you had an unfriendly look on your face? SWOOP! You know how your face gets when you're not smiling. SWIRL! I don't know—there has to be some explanation you just didn't notice. SWOOOOOOOOP!
Certainly, there are people who engage in these critical investigations out of a misguided sense of protectiveness. They don't want their marginalized friend/relation/colleague to have been treated badly because of rank prejudice, and so their instinct is to try to find some other explanation, any other explanation, an explanation that might be more fixable than ancient and deeply entrenched bias.
But, you know, intent ain't magic. So it's just as infuriating, and functions in the same way as intentional gaslighting and emotional policing done by privileged people who put marginalized people's lived experiences through their Validity Prism with an agenda.
That is: Hearing prejudice described as prejudice and then filtering it through one's Validity Prism, because one has mistaken privilege for objectivity; and auditing that lived experience for veracity as measured against one's own personal experience, because one has mistaken privilege for default humanity.
Naturally, people with privilege (who want to defend that privilege) have a vested interest in pretending that evidence of the oppression which is the ugly underbelly of any privilege is attributable to Something Totally Different. It's harder to justify coasting by on your unexamined privilege when faced with evidence of its harm.
And so out comes Occam's Big Paisley Tie, to try to find the Something Totally Different on which to pin the blame for the prejudice that Occam's Razor—and a minimal commitment to integrity and decency—would rightfully identify.
The swirls and swoops on the tie conspire to create a pattern of distraction. But maybe this tie is really a razor! And when all else fails, comes Occam's Big Paisley's Tie Windsor Knot of Bullshit: "Have you considered that maybe you're just looking for things to get mad about?"
Fuck that tie.
The Lasting Legacy of Bea Arthur
As you may recall, after her death in 2009, Bea Arthur's estate made a $300,000 donation to the Ali Forney Center, which is the United States' largest organization supporting homeless LGBT youth.
Today, the center will break ground on "a full service, 18-bed facility to be called the Bea Arthur Residence."
It was 2009, and the Ali Forney Center was struggling. Its donations were way down because of the recession and on a summer day, as executive director Carl Siciliano was heading into the office, he got a call from a staffer that the landlord was threatening eviction because the center was late on the rent.Blub. That was a lady who really knew how to be a friend all right.
"I pulled my car off to the side of the road and said my prayers. I didn't know what else to do," Siciliano told Metro. "I'm an old Catholic boy, I was a monk, and I started praying to all of my saints," he said. And to Bea Arthur.
The famed Broadway and television star, who headlined a huge fundraiser for the center, had died three months earlier. She was a friend and devoted supporter of the center.
When he got to the office, Siciliano got a call: The Golden Girl legend had put the Ali Forney Center, named for a gay teen who was slain on the city's streets, at the top of her list of charities in her will.
The money kept the center's doors open and allowed Siciliano to make payroll for many months.
It was then that he decided that should the center ever own property, he would pay Arthur back for her support by naming the building for her. Today, he makes good on that promise.
At the time of Arthur's December 2005 fundraiser [for the center, which was one of Arthur's final public performances], Ali Forney had about a dozen beds and a drop-in center.
When the renovations at 222 East 13th Street are completed, the center will have 107 beds in all for its drop-in center, emergency shelter needs, and its longer-term full-service program that works to turn teens into independent young adults.
The facility is being developed in partnership with the housing preservation group, the Cooper Square Committee.
Via Kyler, who notes that the Center also "recently added hormone therapy programs and dedicated housing services for homeless transgender teens." Sounds like a very important space. How fortunate Ms. Arthur took an interest in the Center and earmarked such a timely gift for them. ♥
Daily Dose of Cute
Olivia, taking what can only be described as a triangular nap.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today..
[Content Note: Terrorism; bombing; death] Terrible news from Turkey: "A bomb attack in the Turkish town of Suruc has killed at least 30 people during a meeting of young activists to discuss the reconstruction of the neighbouring Syrian town of Kobane. Around 100 others were wounded in the explosion, which may have been caused by a female suicide attacker from the Islamic State group, officials say. Kobane has seen heavy fighting between IS militants and Kurdish fighters. It was retaken by the Kurds from IS forces earlier this year. ...The Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF) is reported to have had at least 300 members staying at the Amara Culture Centre in Suruc, where the explosion happened. The young people had been planning to travel to Kobane to help with rebuilding the town. A photo taken earlier in the day showed members of the group relaxing in the garden." I'm just so goddamn sad and so goddamn angry.
[CN: War on agency] Republican Governor of Wisconsin and presidential candidate Scott Walker has signed legislation banning abortion at or after 20 weeks in the state: "Under the new law, doctors who perform an abortion at or after 20 weeks in non-emergency situations could be charged with a felony punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and three and a half years in prison. Doctors could also be sued for damages. No exception is made for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Doctors would be allowed to perform abortions beyond 20 weeks only if the mother was likely to die or suffer irreversible injuries within 24 hours." This is one of the so-called "fetal pain" bills being introduced and passed in state legislatures across the nation, despite the fact that they're based on garbage propaganda not actual science.
[CN: Flooding; death] More heavy rains in the Midwest has caused flash flooding in several states—among them Ohio, where 32-year-old Victoria Kennard, who was pregnant, "was killed along with two of her children when their mobile home was swept away during a weekend torrential downpour, a coroner said Monday as authorities began assessing damage to homes and roads in southern Ohio. ...Her fiance and two other sons were rescued. Authorities said one of the boys was found in a tree." Devastating. I'm so sorry for her finance and their surviving children. If it seems to you like these sorts of stories are increasingly common, you're not wrong: The more extreme storms intensified by climate change are also more frequent.
[CN: Terrorism] President Obama met today at the White House with newly elected Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari "to shore up relations between the US and the nation with Africa's largest economy and to seek additional assistance in the fight against the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. The group has killed thousands across the country's north."
[CN: Carcerality] Last week, President Obama visited El Reno federal prison, a medium-security facility in Oklahoma, and he said typically smart and sensitive things: "When they describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made. The difference is that they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes." And this is just incredible: President Obama "is the first sitting president to visit a federal prison." Wow. Wow.
[CN: Racism; violence; death] Elizabeth Day for the Guardian: "#BlackLivesMatter: the birth of a new civil rights movement." It's a really excellent profile of the movement, and I love this quote from Alicia Garza, even though I grieve she has to feel this way: "I have to be honest: I feel like I live in a constant state of rage and I think a lot of black people do… It's more than depressing to me. It makes me angry, particularly when people try to deny it's happening."
[CN: Hacking; privacy violations] Whooooooopsfuck: "Adultery website AshleyMadison.com has been hacked, potentially exposing names, addresses, and sexual preferences of millions of would-be cheaters just as the site's owner was preparing to go public. ...A group or individual called The Impact Team has claimed responsibility for the attack, and has already leaked maps of company servers, staff information, and company bank accounts, according to cyber-security blog Krebs on Security. In a message overlaid on the AshleyMadison homepage, the hackers threatened to publish the stolen information unless the site and its peer EstablishedMen.com are taken offline."
[CN: Rape culture; sexual assault] Rapists lie and predators prey: "New details from Bill Cosby's 2005 deposition were published Saturday by the New York Times—among them confessions that Cosby hid his relationships with other women from his wife and details about how he seduced women. The excerpts of Cosby's 2005 deposition, which was obtained by the New York Times, elaborate on, as the Times puts it, Cosby's 'calculated pursuit of young women.'"
[CN: Rape culture; sexual assault] Relatedly, on the subject of sexual assault and celebrity, this piece by Ann Powers on "The Cruel Truth About Rock and Roll" is a must read: "Here's the truth: The history of rock turns on moments in which women and young boys were exploited in myriad financial, emotional and sexual ways. This most sordid secret history lurks in the background, but it's not incidental: from the teen-scream 1950s onward, one of the music's fundamental functions has been to frame and express sexual feelings for and from the very young, and its culture has included real kids, the kind who feel free but remain very vulnerable, relating to older men whose glamour and influence encourages trust, not caution. The worst, weakest and most self-deluded of these men have stepped over moral lines, over and over again."
[CN: Eating; food access] USians don't eat enough fruits and vegetables. There are a whole lot of reasons for this, and a whole complex set of solutions we need to engage to change this system. Suffice it to say: "People are lazy and make bad choices!" is not The Reason for this dynamic.
And finally! Tooooooo cuuuuuuuute: "Came home to my roommate's dog protecting my kitten from the loud thunder and lightning outside." Aww!
Laura Browder and the Criminalization of Need
[Content Note: Misogynoir; class warfare; criminalization of need.]
In a story reminiscent of Shanesha Taylor's, Laura Browder, a black woman who is a single mom was arrested for "abandoning" her children to go on a job interview. The interview was held at a food court at a mall, and Browder "abandoned" her children at another table in the food court 30 feet away.
Laura Browder said she took her 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son with her to a mall for a suddenly scheduled job interview because she didn't have enough time to line up child care. According to Browder, she bought the children lunch at the McDonald's in the food court and sat them at a table approximately 30 feet away and well within sight while she interviewed.What if all the time and attention given to policing mothers (especially black mothers) for leaving their children unattended (or not! 30 FEET AWAY!), policing justfied by an abundance of faulty narratives about strangers who prey on children, was actually dedicated instead toward people who actually harm children, as opposed to the
Browder was taken into custody by police when she went to claim her kids, after someone at the mall called police saying the children had been left there crying.
Browder said she was arrested after accepting the job offer, but now worries if the arrest may cause her to lose it.
The woman appeared before a judge who released her and gave her full custody of her children although Child Protective Services is still investigating.
Browder released a statement saying, "This was very unfortunate this happened. I had a interview with a very great company with lots of career growth. I am a college student and mother of two. I would never put my name, background or children in harms way intentionally. I have a promising future ahead of me regardless of what the media tries to portray me as."
And what if instead of holding up the Myth of Bootstraps—"I never got any help from anyone!"—as the makings of some sort of totally true and definitely amazing success story, we saw it for what it is? Total bullshit. Because not everyone is fortunate enough to have the kind of help that is so reliable it's possible to dismiss it out of hand as not even having been help at all.
I hope that Laura Browder doesn't lose the job she just accepted, and I hope that the investigation into her parenting finds what seems pretty goddamn obvious: That she's a good mom doing the best that she can, and that her best doesn't look too bad at all.
News from Netroots Nation
[Content Note: Racism; war on agency.]
So, this weekend at the Netroots Nation conference, a couple of interesting things happened.
1. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't attend.
2. Senator Elizabeth Warren delivered a keynote speech in which she "detail[ed] all of the ways that progressive values are mainstream American values" but failed to include a single mention of reproductive health and rights, prompting a critical letter from reproductive activists at the Reproaction Blog.
I don't know how many different ways we can tell these politicians that abortion is an economic issue. Controlling our reproduction—having access to contraception, having access to abortion, having the access to reproductive healthcare, having access to the institutional resources needed to support parenting healthy children—is the most important economic issue for many (if not most) women. (And for lots of men, too, even though cis men only tend to talk about it when they are expected to father a child they helped create but don't want.)
If you fancy yourself a progressive economic populist, but you don't talk about reproductive health and rights, you aren't a very good progressive economic populist. Since you're ignoring a major issue right in the heart of economics for half the population.
I deeply admire and respect Senator Warren, but this is absurd. It really is.
3. Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley "stumbled" (as I have seen it routinely and charitably described) when a panel was interrupted by #BlackLivesMatter activists who want race centered in this campaign. O'Malley said, "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter." Oof. Sanders got testy, as he has a wont to do:
After Gov. O'Malley left the stage, Senator Sanders came out. He, too, was shouted down and interrupted repeatedly. Unlike Gov. O'Malley who allowed the protesters to be heard, Sanders was visibly irritated, saying things like, "If you don't want me here, I will leave." He even shushed them at one point.Suddenly a lot of progressives are discovering that Bernie Sanders has the same sort of, uh, "diplomacy problem" for which we (rightly) criticize Chris Christie. It turns out that some of us have raised that concern about Sanders for reasons other than being stupid bitchcunts in the bag for Clinton. Huh!
At times he plunged on, talking over the protesters as if they weren't there. While he is largely a supporter of civil rights and is, in general, right on the issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, he came across as a self-important know-it-all who has better things to do than to listen to uppity black kids who are disrupting HIS speech. In the end, he took off his microphone and left the stage without as much as a wave to the audience.
Anyway.
As you may recall, Clinton said "All lives matter" at an event in Ferguson last month, and was roundly criticized for it, and rightfully so.
I wrote when she announced her candidacy that she's not confident or comfortable talking about racial issues, and she's done better this time around, but the aforementioned is a perfect example of that, and of her evident failure to understand the specific context and need of #BlackLivesMatter.
It's my opinion that it's crucial to call that shit out, whether you intend to vote for Clinton or anyone else, or whether you even have a likely chance of voting in a Democratic primary.
Luckily, lots of people did call her out. (And, yes, I'm aware that there were lots of white people calling it out just to shame Clinton and not because they actually give a shit about racial justice.)
The fact that Sanders and O'Malley just did the same goddamn thing, O'Malley even using the same criticized phrasing, means they're not even paying attention to what's happening with Clinton's campaign and what her critics are saying.
You know. The people who ostensibly might want to support one of them.
But people with principled critiques of Clinton's failures around race tend to be women and specifically women of color and most specifically black women, who are the most important Democratic voter bloc in presidential elections.
And Sanders and O'Malley aren't paying a damn bit of attention to us, even when we're criticizing Clinton, and thus are Sanders and O'Malley replicating the same harm.
That's not just a failure of basic decency; it's a failure of competent and effective politics.
And that should concern everyone, especially their supporters.
Chattanooga Shooting Updates
[Content Note: Shooting; death; Islamophobia; disablism. Video may autoplay at the link.]
The names of the four Marines and one Naval officer killed by Mohammad Abdulazeez have now been released: Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan of Massachusetts, Lance Cpl. Squire "Skip" Wells of Georgia, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt of Arkansas, Sgt. Carson Holmquist of Wisconsin, and Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith of Ohio.
The four Marines were killed at the site of the shootings. Smith was severely injured, and later succumbed to his wounds at the hospital.
There is also more information trickling out about Abdulazeez. His family reports that he suffered from depression and was bipolar. He had sought therapy and treatment for mental illness and drug use. Last year, his family sent him to Jordan for an extended stay "to get him away from Chattanooga friends who they said were bad influences on him, the relatives told investigators. Some of Abdulazeez's relatives and friends told investigators they detected changes in his behavior since he returned from Jordan last year, a law enforcement official said."
We're certainly meant to interpret that as Abdulazeez got radicalized on his trip to Jordan, but I don't know if that's what the observations about changes in his behavior actually mean. Or if they're simply comments about his deteriorating mental state.
Either way, we are certainly meant to blame Abdulazeez's religion and the fact of his mental illness, the latter of which is usually a solid go-to for white male spree killers, but suddenly the media is eminently willing to push back on that idea when it comes to a killer named Mohammad Abdulazeez:
CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes stressed that depression doesn't necessarily make anyone more likely to kill.People with depression don't necessarily become murderers! Thanks for that terrific insight, pal!
"I think mental health professionals would be not happy with what the parents are assessing, in saying, 'Well, he was depressed, and therefore that's why he became a killer like this,'" Fuentes said. "People with depression do not turn, necessarily, into psychopathic killers -- as he did."
I don't imagine it was strictly one thing or the other, but the confluence of a number of internal and external forces that led Abdulazeez to do this heinous thing. What I know is that his thoughts and actions didn't exist in a vacuum. And that all the othering in the world doesn't change the fact that he was raised and lived in the US, as one of its citizens.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by humidity.
Recommended Reading:
Linda: [Content Note: Miscarriage; abortion] Knowing We Had an Option That Could Lead to Scientific Discoveries Was a Gift Back to Us
Teddy: [CN: War on agency; misogynist terrorism] Group Behind Planned Parenthood Attack Founded by Radicals and Woman Once Sought for Child Endangerment
Darnell: [CN: Police brutality; racism] #IfIDieInPoliceCustody Should Break Your Heart and Make You Angry
Sameer: [CN: White supremacy] Two Charlotte Confederate Monuments Latest to Be Vandalized
Valerio: Shipping Containers: More Than Meets the Eye
Kate: [CN: Car crashes] Humans Can't Stop Crashing Into Google's Driverless Cars
Howard: [CN: Misogyny] Elena Delle Donne Is Having the Best Season in Basketball History
Squinky: [CN: Gender essentialism] Don't Do This
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
And Again
[Content Note: Carcerality; misogynoir; reported self-harm.]
On the same day news broke of Sandra Bland's death in a jail cell in Texas, an 18-year-old black girl named Kindra Darnell Chapman reportedly ended her own life in an Alabama jail, according to authorities.
Chapman was arrested on a first-degree-robbery charge for allegedly taking a cellphone and booked at Homewood City Jail Tuesday around 6:22 p.m., AL.com reports. She was last seen alive at 6:30 p.m by jailers and found unresponsive at 7:50 p.m. Officials report that Chapman used a bed sheet to hang herself.So let's just say, for the sake of argument, that it's accurate these two women (and all the other black women and men who have allegedly killed themselves in police custody, often while wearing handcuffs) really did take their own lives. That doesn't mean agents of the state aren't culpable, as so many white people are keen to argue. That means we need to interrogate why it is, exactly, that black people in police custody view taking their own lives as their best possible option.
Chapman was pronounced dead at Brookwood Medical Center. Homewood police are currently investigating this death.
There is no context for these deaths that doesn't demand our attention and concern.
(And just to be abundantly clear: I don't believe for a second that every one of the black women and men said to have killed themselves in police custody did. My point is that even if we set aside all rational skepticism, there is still no excuse to ignore these deaths, or pretend that they're happening in a vacuum.)
My condolences to Kindra's family and friends. I hope they get the answers they deserve.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Heart: "Alone"
This week's TMNS has been brought to you by Ann and Nancy Wilson.
In Which I Substitute an Email Conversation with Eastsidekate for an Actual Post Because I Can Only Say the Same Thing So Many Times
[Content Note: Fat hatred; diet talk. Email exchange shared with Eastsidekate's permission.]
Eastsidekate: [sends picture, along with text below]
I see absolutely nothing new or notable about this BS in the BBC. I do, however, think "Return from Obesity" could be a really awesome movie franchise.
Liss: Return from Obesity—an outer-space Western starring spurs-wearing action star Slim Chance!
Sooooo there's a 'slim chance' (I see what they did there!) of returning to "normal weight" after "obesity." Gee, might that suggest that "obesity" is "normal weight" for some people???
Eastsidekate: Right? It's almost like the message should be that intervention is pointless, not that intervention is crucial.
Liss: Exactly.
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley, just relaxing in a totally normal position.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Shooting; deaths] There isn't a whole lot of new information on the shooting in Chattanooga yesterday. Some information is starting to trickle out about the shooter, 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez. He was Muslim, and he was a naturalized US citizen born in Kuwait, and he had traveled to the Middle East, and he had no obvious links to terrorist groups. We also now know the name of one of the victims: Thomas Sullivan, a Marines gunnery sergeant and Iraq war veteran, who had received a Purple Heart. The names of the other victims will reportedly be released later today or tomorrow.
[CN: Police brutality; racism; death] Care of Breanna Edwards at The Root, here is a good piece about Sandra Bland, who died in police custody on Monday (or possibly before). Edwards also includes some relevant background on Waller County, Texas, where Bland was arrested, and its "bleak history of racial intolerance." Color of Change has a petition urging US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate Bland's death, and not leave it up to the police who may have killed her to investigate themselves.
[CN: Terrorism; death; misogyny] Fucking hell: "[Bombs strapped on to girls] have killed more than 60 people in multiple blasts in the north-eastern towns of Gombe and Damaturu, scaring people into staying home during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr celebration. At least 13 people were killed in Damaturu on Friday in three [redacted] attacks carried out by girls as residents prepared for the Eid festival at the end of Ramadan, police said. ...There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts but a market, bus station and stadium in Gombe, the capital of Gombe state, have all in recent months been targeted by bomb and [redacted] attacks. In February, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for an attack on Gombe during which hundreds of insurgents, armed with heavy weapons, invaded the town for a few hours. Gombe state's neighbours, Borno, Yobo, and Adamawa, have been most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency that has killed more than 15,000 people in Nigeria since 2009." [Note: I refuse to call these "suicide bombs" when it is likely the girls to whom the bombs were strapped were abducted and forced to deliver these attacks.]
[CN: Shooting; deaths; death penalty] James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 70 others when he opened fire in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, has been found guilty "on 24 counts of murder and multiple counts of attempted murder... He had pleaded not guilty due to insanity—his defence said he was controlled by his schizophrenia [but the claim was rejected by the jury]. Prosecutors have said they will now seek the death penalty."
[CN: Climate change; malnutrition] "New research, led by Samuel Myers, a senior research scientist at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, suggests that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere will only make global zinc deficiency worse, putting some 138 million people at risk of malnutrition by the year 2050." Damn.
[CN: Homophobia] Come on, Kentucky legislators! Jesus Jones: "A bill has been introduced in the Kentucky House of Representatives that would allow county clerks in the state to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds." To quote my friend Ana Mardoll: "Epic rage yawn."
[CN: Misogyny] Under the "bury the lede, whydontcha?" headline "Hillary Clinton sounds the alarm on meteorites," there is this amazing anecdote from Clinton's youth: "'When I was a little girl, I guess I was a teenager by then … 14, I think, and the space program was getting started, and I wanted to be an astronaut, and I wrote to NASA,' she recounted. 'And I said, 'What do I have to do to be prepared to be an astronaut?' And they wrote back and said, 'Thank you very much, but we're not taking girls,'' she remembered. 'That, thankfully changed with Sally Ride and a lot of the other great women astronauts,' she said. But 'to be fair,' she added, 'I never could have qualified anyway, so you know, not something I spent a lot of time losing sleep over, but I really, really do support the space program.'"
Ian McKellen calls Superman a "nerd who changes his underpants" and James Bond a "silly, stupid, British twit." LOL!
And finally! Lucy the Golden Retriever is not in the mood for kisses, thankyouverymuch!
Looking For Bernie, Part 4: Turning Right Towards 2016
[Content Note: Heterocentrism and homophobia, transphobia and internalized transphobia, nativism, racism. This is Part Four in a four-part series analyzing Bernie Sanders' political history through an intersectional feminist lens, and considering the role privilege has played within it. You can read the other sections here: Part One: Sanders '72. Part Two: Mr. Sanders Goes to Burlington. Part Three: Sanders '90.]
Part 4: TURNING RIGHT TOWARDS 2016
I ended Part 3 with a promise to evaluate Sanders' time in Congress, focusing on the areas where he's made some compromises with progressive ideals. Let's start with the obvious: Bernie Sanders is an extraordinarily successful politician. He has a largely white electorate, but that doesn't make it homogenous in its priorities. As became obvious in looking at his gun control record, he's done some compromising with progressive principles in order to represent the people who elected him, people who don't all share progressive views.
Let me be clear: I am not shocked that Bernie Sanders turns out to be a politician! But I was a little shocked, for example, to find him supporting sending Vermont's nuclear waste to a poor, Spanish-speaking region in Texas. Bernie Sanders has a lot of great votes in his record. He also has a few awful ones. His record is definitely... complicated.
Take same-sex marriage. As I discussed earlier in part 1 and part 2, some of Sanders' more enthusiastic fans have been passing around his 1972 letter protesting anti-homosexuality laws as advocating for full marriage equality. That doesn't even make sense, considering that same-sex marriage wasn't really a cause until the 1980s. In that decade, Sanders was approving Gay Pride parades, but also explaining that LBG rights weren't necessarily a priority for him. So what happened in the 1990s and 2000s?
To his credit, Sanders voted against DADT in 1993, something his Senate website noted after the repeal of DADT in 2010. It should be stated that this wasn't necessarily the obvious pro-LGB vote at the time. Openly gay Barney Frank, although critical, voted for the law, hoping its "Don't pursue" aspect and provisions prohibiting asking about homosexuality during recruiting would make life easier for young LGB servicemembers. Noted bigots John McCain and Jesse Helms also voted for, probably loving the fact that the law's language confirmed that homosexuality was allegedly incompatible with military service. Both Senators Patrick Leahy (D) and Jim Jeffords (R) of Vermont voted for it. By voting against, Sanders joined both Russ Feingold (D) and Rick Santorum (R-eprehensible) with his "nay."
However, Sanders very clearly voted against the law's regressive nature; he writes supportively in his autobiography that "tens of thousands of gay men and women have served this country with honor and dignity." He also opposed DOMA in 1996. (So did all three openly gay legislators.) DOMA was a genuinely risky vote. It was taken when Gingrich's Republican Revolutionaries were at their greatest strength, and many Democrats, including Bill Clinton, feared conservative backlash if they opposed it. Clinton caved and signed the bill; Sanders, by contrast, stuck his neck out.
Having said that, it's also clear that Sanders evolved (yes, evolved!) in his public support for civil unions versus full equality.
In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state's ban on same-sex unions violated Vermont's constitution. The court ordered the legislature to either allow same sex marriage (i.e., open up marriage to same sex couples on an equal basis) or create an equivalent same-sex union status. In early 2000, the legislature took up the question: marriage or civil unions? In March, the legislature voted for civil unions. As the New York Times reported, the law made civil unions largely identical to marriage, but defined marriage itself as between one man and one woman. The conservative backlash was intense, and "Take Back Vermont" became the rallying cry for homophobes that election year.
When it came to coming down for civil unions or full marriage equality, Sanders was initially committed to non-commitment. Seven Days columnist Peter Freyne tried to pin Sanders' position down in January 2000:
Obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders' position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth...from a rhinoceros. Last month, shortly after the decision of the Amestoy Court was issued, Mr. Sanders publicly tried walking the tightrope — applauding the court's decision and the cause of equal rights without supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples.
This week we were no more successful getting a straight answer. All we did get was a carefully crafted non-statement statement via e-mail from Washington D.C. And Bernie's statement wins him the Vermont congressional delegation's Wishy-Washy Award hands down.
Once more he "applauds" the court decision but won't go anywhere near choosing between same-sex "marriage" and domestic partnership. "By all accounts the legislature is approaching this issue in a considered and appropriate manner and I support the current process."
Supports the current process, does he? What a courageous radical!
That's as far as Ol' Bernardo would go. It's an election year, yet despite the lack of a serious challenger, The Bern's gut-level paranoia is acting up. He's afraid to say something that might alienate his conservative, rebel-loving rural following out in the hills. Something that could be interpreted as "Bernie Loves Queers!"
Two Facts
[Content Note: White male privilege; racism.]
1. David Brooks is still being employed by the New York Times to write a garbage column. I am not going to link to that column, because fuck that, but here is a piece by Scott Eric Kaufman for Salon about that column, and there's a link from there, if you want to read the source.
2. David Brooks is the worst, has always been the worst, will always be the worst. A hostile bigotry machine, cloaked in an aw-shucks demeanor.
