They just want their patriarchy back

I finished the book The Novel by James Michener. Yeah, it’s a novel about novels. More accurately it is a novel about the people who bring books into existence. I’ve read several of Michener’s novels that explore the history of a place and I enjoy them. I saw this one at a used book fair and was intrigued by it. Much of the story takes place in Pennsylvania Dutch country between Allentown and Philadelphia. In this area “Dutch” doesn’t refer to people whose ancestors came from the Netherlands. This “Dutch” is a simplified spelling of “Dietch” or “Deutch” and refers to Germany. When they came to America (invited by William Penn himself) they were in two groups, the Amish who rejected all modern conveniences and the Mennonite who rejected only a few. Much of this story is in the Mennonite community and is set in 1991. At the start Lukas Yoder is finishing up his eighth novel set in his community. The first four didn’t sell well, the next three were best sellers. So there’s a lot riding on this one. We see what happens when a story is finished. He travels to New York City to talk to his editor and agent. There are comments by the editor about what needs to be fixed and he spends days fixing them. Various media want to write features about him. Movie producers want to talk to him about rights to a previous book. He gets lots of fan mail. The second section is about the editor, Yvonne Marmelle, how she came to love books and how she got to be an editor. I didn’t realize, though it makes sense, there are New York colleges that have classes in how to edit. Marmelle rises through the ranks of editing, from the slush pile (Mound Dreck) to having considerable influence with the bosses. Her duties include guiding the author to making the best book possible. In the background are threats that her company might be sold to a conglomerate. There is a lover who has a great idea for a book but can’t actually finish it. The third and longest section is about the critic, Karl Streibert. He grew up in the area and attended the local Mecklenberg College. He and his mentor discuss the nature of novels, some of which is shared with the reader. Are novels for everyone or are they the means for one elite to communicate to another about how to guide society? Should a novel focus on the state of the society as it is now? They agree a novel isn’t about grand ideas, it should be about how characters interact with grand ideas. Streibert ends up teaching at Mecklenberg and Marmelle wants him to write a book of criticism. He wants to include a review of Yoder, who he considers a hack with little to say, but Marmelle won’t let him savage another of her clients. Streibert’s students include Timothy and Jenny, who are on their way of being novelists. The final section is about Jane Gardner, Timothy’s grandmother and a local. She is a devoted reader, the kind of person authors love. On the walls of Streibert’s classroom he has a genealogy chart of the ancient Greek House of Atreus. He hands students a list of 21 people in the chart and how they interacted with each other (usually murder of some sort). His point is a great deal of Western storytelling descends from the stories of this family. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community wrote about the plot to turn women against birth control. As with many efforts like this it is based on lies. The claim is the pills are harmful, though they’ve been used since 1960 with only a small number experiencing side effects. The pill is also safer than pregnancy. The pill has revolutionized female life – maternal and infant health have improved dramatically and death rates have plummeted. Women are able to fill roles in education, professions, and politics. Those pushing a ban on contraception aren’t as quiet about their real goals as they have been in the past. Part of that is because the current Supreme Court, especially Justice Thomas, have invited cases that could lead to banning contraception. One might think that people who want to ban abortion would welcome contraception as a way to reduce the number of pregnancies and thus the number of abortions. But they’re just as much against contraception as abortion.

But their thorough analysis doesn’t quite capture the element of perverse misogyny at work in this crusade to demonize something that has proved effective—and transformative of women's role in our society—for over 70 years. The very people who brought about Dobbs and eliminated many women’s option to terminate unwanted pregnancies are the same people who are now targeting contraception. Their end goal is to control female sexual behavior so that pregnancy cannot be prevented (except by complete abstinence). Should anyone actually become pregnant, the goal is to provide no recourse, under any circumstances. In reality that’s not a plan at all, but a punishment. This is what [right-wing influencer and podcaster Matt] Walsh and others really mean by “women fully embracing their own womanhood.” It’s what ultimately underlies the right’s unrelenting obsession with women’s bodies and what they do with them. It envisions turning back the clock on all women's progress over the past century and instead reimposing a regime where every person’s potential is irreversibly tied to their sex or gender, with men running things and women in a subservient, childbearing role. In other words: They don’t really care about women’s health. They just want their patriarchy back.

Mark Sumner of Kos discussed oral arguments at the Supreme Court on the challenge to the abortion drug mifepristone. Most of the justices are skeptical of the doctors who brought the case, mostly because the doctors don’t have standing – they couldn’t explain how they were harmed by the availability of the drug. So taking the drug off the market is unlikely.

However, both Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas made sure to leave a trail of legal breadcrumbs hinting at a way for conservatives to not just prevent women from having access to mifepristone, but possibly enact a total national ban on abortion. “This is a prominent provision,” said Alito. “It's not some obscure subsection of a complicated obscure law.” The law he was referring to is the Comstock Act, an 1873 law against obscenity that has rarely been enforced over the past century and is generally remembered in the same breath as Prohibition, a misguided attempt to legislate morality that’s been dead for close to a century. But for conservatives, this porn law from the Victorian Age really isn’t obscure. It’s the foundation for their next big assault on reproductive rights.

The parts of the Comstock Act dealing with contraception have been repealed. The rest has been ignored. The parts on abortion are still on the books, though Roe made them inactive. So if Alito and Thomas are allowed to get their hands on it Republicans in Congress wouldn’t have to enact a national abortion ban. Joan McCarter of Kos also wrote about the mifepristone hearing at the Supremes and that the drug is likely safe for now. She also mentioned the Comstock Act. The big issue she presents is that the effort to get another abortion case before Alito and Thomas is led by “dark-money overlord Leonard Leo, the architect of the conservative court.” So why aren’t Democrats working to stop him? In particular, Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin and his committee have authorized subpoenas for Leo and Court sugar daddy Harlan Crow to testify before them. But months later the subpoenas haven’t been issued. Though Durban still criticizes the lack of ethics on the Court he isn’t doing this one thing to highlight the lack of ethics. Yesterday I wrote about conservatives blaming the Baltimore bridge collapse on DEI programs. John Stoehr, editor of the Editorial Board, discusses that action. Blaming something bad on marginalized people they dislike is highly predictable behavior of those on the far right. Pat Robertson did it when blaming gay people for hurricanes (what, hurricanes will stop if gay people disappear?).

The lyrics are different, but the song is the same. These days, the rightwing fringe is obsessed with something called DEI (or diversity, equity and inclusion programming). You don’t need to know much about DEI except that it’s a good-faith effort to make society fairer. Anyone with a sense of decency wouldn’t blink of an eye at that, but rightwingers don’t see fairness as fairness. They see it as theft. So whenever bad things happen, they are quick to blame Black people.

So why should we care about what they say. Even sounding stupid doesn’t stop them. A fact checker didn’t stop the nasty guy from lying.

All we need to know is how to recognize a malicious pattern – they already hate marginalized people and will exploit accidents, natural disasters, practically any bad thing that has ever happened to justify hating them and disseminating that hate. Don’t get me wrong. DEI, and any good-faith effort to make society fairer, is worth defending. But let’s not confuse defense with offense. Let’s not confuse setting the record straight with political victory.

A couple cartoons just for the fun of it. They’re in the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos. The first is from Nay Cartoons. Jesus is in the barber chair and the barber, trying to make small talk, says, “Any special plans for Easter?” Ellis Rosen posted a cartoon showing a sea captain at the wheel of his ship talking to his first mate, saying, “A storm rages from the East – tell the men to get below and snuggle up for movie night.”

All along the way people handed him the boots and straps

I finished the book I’m Possible, a Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream by Richard Antoine White. This is the autobiography of the first black man to get a doctorate in tuba performance. White begins his story as a four year old living with his alcoholic mother on the streets of Baltimore. Many times his day starts by searching for where his mother is. He has a list of places he checks. The story shifts when he does that search in a blizzard and his various relatives see this isn’t sustainable. He moves in with his grandparents as his mama gives the usual litany of promises of getting her life together that never happen. It takes a while to realize he’ll be in this house tomorrow, these people will still be here tomorrow, I’ll have plenty of food tomorrow. In elementary school he and a buddy start to play the trumpet. He soon realizes why be the 15th trumpeter out of 25 when he can be the only one on sousaphone. He gets into the Baltimore School of the Arts where sousaphone has to give way to tuba. It takes him a while to figure out there really is benefit in practicing. And once he does – and once he hears the tuba player in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – he becomes determined to become a tuba player in an orchestra and willing to put in the work to get there. Part of the book is his education, including learning what is involved in winning the audition for an orchestra job. The rest of the book is dealing with being a black man and learning about black history. And once in the School of the Arts, it is being a black man in places were most people are white. At the end of the book White is encouraging black kids to put in the work to escape poverty and be what they want to be. He wrote:

People often hear by story and comment that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. That’s part of the American myth, after all. But we have to acknowledge that not everyone has boots and straps to pull.

I expected him to add that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps because all along the way people handed him the boots and straps. Though he didn’t say it that way explicitly, he did say it throughout the text: His grandparents took him in, which gave him a family, a secure home, and the chance of better schools. Teachers saw the potential in him and gave him the desire and chance to learn. People helped him buy the next higher quality tuba. People paid for him to go across country to do an audition, though it took several of these before he figured out what he needed to do to get beyond the cattle call. Time and again people gave him the bootstraps, gave him the opportunity to take the next step. Yes, he spent long hours in the practice room and that drive came from within himself. But he wouldn’t have made it as far as he did without the community supporting him. Those who demand we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps also were handed boots and straps at important points in their lives. So let’s make sure people get the bootstraps they need and let’s stop using that myth. I recommend this one. On Wednesday the nasty guy announced a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT was coming. It came on Thursday and Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported on it and the response. What the nasty guy revealed was rather pathetic. It’s a series of trading cards depicting him as various superheroes. They’re sold only as digital images. And only $99! Twitter, of course had a lot of fun with that. My favorite is:

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Myrna Tellingheusen Digital Trading Card collection is here! These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my life & career as executive secretary to Stanley Bogenshoots at Hughes Aircraft! Only $99 each! Would make a Christmas gift.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community added that this grift is so obvious and so silly the nasty guy’s own fan base can see it for what it is. Then Pennyfarthing added:

But another part of the announcement should start all our grift-detection antennae a-tinglin’. It’s the bit where he offers one “lucky” worthless-thing purchaser a chance to have dinner with the Real Trump.

The prize appears to be only dinner. The guy who claims to be worth ten billion dollars won’t be paying for travel and lodging. And, “Selling fake e-cards online for $99 a pop is totally billionaire behavior.” As for the dinner... The nasty guy has offered such a prize a few times before. But journalists are never able to get a photo of the winner actually with the nasty guy, never mind eating dinner. One would think the nasty guy would definitely want to publicize the winner. So it is likely the dinner never happened and the prize is a mirage. Fits with what a grifter would do. In a report from the end of November Joan McCarter of Kos discussed the leak from the Supreme Court before the anti-abortion ruling last spring. There is now news of a leak before the 2014 ruling that says a corporation doesn’t have to include abortion care in the health insurance they offer employees. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson are starting to investigate. Which led to this:

The court’s lawyer refused to answer any of the question posed by the lawmakers regarding ethics inquiries in the court that are ongoing or potential, or whether or which justice might have received gifts from their friends in the forced birth group. Instead, he tersely restated Alito’s denial of the allegations and a conflict of interest. “There is nothing to suggest that Justice Alito’s actions violated ethical standards,” Torrey wrote. That’s technically true. Because there is no code of ethical standards that governs the behavior of SCOTUS justices to violate.

Also from the end of November Laurence Tribe of Slate tweeted a link to an article with this:

“Wealthy religious zealots paid big money to pray and socialize with and extract priceless personal favors from Supreme Court justices.” That some justices undisputedly welcomed such outrageous behavior is a huge problem. The leak is the least of it.

Earlier this week Laura Clawson of Kos reported that after the Supremes overturned the right to abortion there would be an effort to overturn the right to contraception. And the road to that has begun.

Alexander Deanda, the plaintiff in Deanda v. Becerra, is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage,” so he’s arguing that the availability of federally funded family planning services tramples on his rights as a father to control his daughters’ sexuality.

Natthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in Texas appointed by the nasty guy, is open to this argument. He hasn’t ruled in Deanda’s favor, but has asked what they want to happen next.

Vox’s Ian Millhiser lays out a litany of problems with Kacsmaryk’s decision here, starting with standing: Deanda is trying to block funding on the argument that his daughters might someday, maybe, possibly seek out these services, knowing they would never get their father’s permission. But since the Supreme Court just heard a case in which a web designer claimed she was being oppressed because of the possibility that if she ever started designing wedding websites, she might be subject to anti-discrimination policies preventing her from refusing to work with LGBTQ couples, “my daughters might someday do something I disapprove of” no longer looks so far-fetched as a legal argument.

Of course, the losing side will appeal. Pennyfarthing discussed a story from Politico saying Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was spotted at a holiday party hosted by CPAC chair Matt Schlapp and attended by many Republican bigwigs. Yes, partying with conservative activists with a vested interest in his decisions is at least ethically questionable. But this behavior appears to be practiced by more than Kavanaugh. Wealthy volunteers were recruited to dine with and entertain conservative justices while pushing conservative positions on abortion, gay rights, gun rights, and other issues. Not surprising the Court’s approval rating is so low. Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Robin Givhan’s review of the exhibit “Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism and Popular Culture” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture written for the Washington Post. Here’s part of that quote:

Some religious folks move with breathtaking certainty to fight for laws and rules that always seems to involve making someone else feel less welcome in their school, in their community, in this world. They claim to have the answers to impossible questions. They aren’t so much interested in understanding the nuances and contradictions of theology as they are in carving out a how-to guide for a certain kind of life. They are focused on judgment more than mercy and when they talk about loving the sinner but hating the sin, it’s just a way to excuse themselves for doling out punishment and vitriol and calling it Christianity.

But why are they upset? What right of theirs is under attack? There’s a national Christmas tree, lit for the 100th time, and even the Jewish Second Gentleman attended it’s lighting. There is no war on Christianity, though some Christians claim they’re on the losing side.

People turn to religion seeking comfort and guidance. And surely it provides both. It also helps people find common ground, not by agreeing on everything but recognizing the fuzzy, tenuous nature of our existence — that endless search for meaning that everyone is slowly, plodding toward. “Spirit in the Dark” highlights all the tensions, contradictions and questions religion fosters, many of which have led to some of the country’s most provocative and profound creativity and activism.

In honor of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birthday, which was yesterday, here’s a 2012 flashmob version of his Ode to Joy, from the end of his 9th Symphony. The orchestra even wheeled a pair of timpani into the town square. Whoever planned this also planned the camera people quite well. Half the fun is watching the crowd – especially the kids – getting into it.