Bigotry is bad for business

I finished the book The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis and translated from the original French by Michael Lucey. Don’t worry, Eddy doesn’t come to a tragic demise. Eddy ends because he grows up to become Édouard. Yes, this is a fictional story of the author’s youth. Eddy was born in a small unnamed village close to the coast in the region north of Paris. The first part of the book is about growing up desperately poor. There is a factory in town and most of the men start work there at age 16 because they’re already tired of school. But it is hard work so most turn to drink. And to violence – men are just assumed to be violent. The only options for the women are as clerk or cashier at one of the local shops or motherhood. A girl who wants to be a teacher is strongly discouraged. Eddy’s mother had her first child at 17. She talked about the mistakes in her life, one being getting pregnant so young. But Eddy later realizes what she thinks is a mistake is simply the way life worked in the village. The second part of the book is Eddy dealing with being described as effeminate – which doesn’t work well in such a macho culture. Eddy eventually understands he is attracted to man and not women, though he seems to be initiated into sex at a very young age (also the way the village works). He realizes the only way to survive is to get out, which isn’t easy for one so poor. I’m writing about this book only a few days after the previous one. This one is a bit less than 200 pages and a quick read. I was back at the Detroit Institute of Arts last evening for a dance program. I don’t go to many programs by dance companies. I went to this one because of the music. Eisenhower Dance Detroit did the dancing and musicians from Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings accompanied them. The music that drew me was The Soldier’s Tale, better known by the French title, L’Histoire du Soldat. It is a story of a soldier on leave being tricked by the devil. Early in the 1910s Stravinsky wrote big ballet scores – Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring – that used big orchestras. But in 1917 because of WWI he had much smaller resources available. So there are only seven musicians for The Soldier’s Tale, though it also has three narrators and a dance company. I went because this music is fascinating for me. The dancers, of course, danced to the music. They also danced to spoken narration with the soldier and the devil acting out the words in a dance-like manner. The DIA’s webpage describing the event describes the soldier as male. The previous performance I had seen (many years ago) also had a male soldier. But last night featured a female soldier (and female devil). The narration was changed accordingly and I’m sure the character of the prince was originally a princess. A brief summary of the plot: Having stuff, even if it makes one rich, can’t replace love. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that there is a state government charting a course for national Democrats – and it isn’t California. It’s Michigan, now with Democrats in control of the legislature and governor’s office. Some of the things Democrats are doing: Standing up against conservative talking points. Standing up for women able to control their own bodies. Vowing to protect LGBTQ people. Keeping the economy humming. Adding clean energy jobs. Helping the poor. Taking advantage of all the goodies in the Inflation Reduction Act. Eleveld explained how this is an example for the national party:

No more Clinton triangulation of the '90s on issues like reproductive freedom and the rights of LGBTQ Americans. The path to winning suburban voters has smashed right through the very wedge issues that once favored Republicans, and [Governor] Whitmer undoubtedly benefitted from her high-profile efforts to keep abortion legal in the state. According to exit polls, Whitmer won over 80% of pro-choice voters—a data point that all but made her untouchable. At the same time, forget about being slammed as a “liberal elite” while working to empower unions, boost working families, and help seniors stretch their retirement income. As The Washington Post's Greg Sargent noted, "by fusing an attack on right-wing culture-warring with a focus on economic fairness," Whitmer "could undercut GOP efforts to cast social liberalism as contrary to 'working-class values.'”

Aysha Qamar of Kos reviewed Whitmer’s recent State of the State speech, given live in the state House chamber for the first time in three years. One of her good lines was “Bigotry is bad for business.” The state Republicans sniped that it was way too political (a common refrain when they want to dismiss something) and short on details (of course it is – that would make the speech too long and the details will show up in the budget to be released soon). Remember back last summer when the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision to overturn the right to an abortion and Clarence Thomas included comments that he’d also like to revisit the right to same-sex marriage? Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Idaho, Alabama, and Oklahoma are moving to take up Thomas’ invitation. McCarter also discussed the report from the investigation into who leaked the Dobbs decision before the ruling became final. Summary: the leaker wasn’t found. A lot of people quickly noted one big hole in the investigation. The marshal of the court talked to the justices, but did not ask them to sign sworn affidavits. That is notably different from the employees of the court who were warned they could face disciplinary action if they didn’t cooperate, they had to hand over phone, email, and print records as well as their court-issued laptops, and they had to sign that affidavit. Hunter of Kos explained the whole thing in more detail, adding that the court doesn’t keep certain types of records, such as who printed how many pages. He also noted...

the report largely ignores the theories that the leak resulted from an intentional delivery of the draft opinion from a sitting justice to an invested outside party or from, for example, the draft opinion being brought home to a justice's home office where it would be shared with an arch-conservative gadfly spouse who sells consulting services based on her personal, up-close access to the court.

Back in early December railroad workers threatened a strike over working conditions. The strike, which would have been disastrous to the national economy, was averted by quick action by Congress and Biden, who banned the strike but did nothing about the working conditions. Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the recently released Union Pacific earnings report. The railroad made another year of record earnings and billions of that money went to stock buybacks. The company could have spent money to alleviate the problems in the working conditions, which don’t give workers sick leave or days off. Instead, the money went to investors.

As a freight rail policy expert for the unions told Freight Waves back in 2021, “They want to run the leanest railroad they could possibly run to produce historic operating revenues to entice investors. The railroads are running themselves so lean that they are only capable of the railroad of today. They are not capable of running railroads when there are economic shocks or changes in shipping patterns.” Hurting labor hurts us all, because it degrades the things we actually depend on most: people and the integrity of their work.

McCarter reported that the far right Freedom Caucus in the House demanded a rule change. Amendments to bills no longer have to go through the Rules Committee. Caucus members only had to get the proposed amendment to the Congressional Record by a certain deadline. Delightfully, Democrats can do that too. There’s a bill before the House to having something to do with the president and the strategic oil reserves. About 100 amendments made the deadline. Each amendment gets five minutes and a vote (for some just a voice vote). And in this case some of the votes will embarrass Republicans. I had written before that bills, such as to raise the debt limit, must go through the Rules Committee, now with a strong maniac presence. McCarter doesn’t say, but I wonder whether this new amendment system will allow a clean limit raising bill to get through the House. Gabe Ortiz of Kos says the far right is attempting to smear everyone with the “groomer” slur. An example (of several) of how ridiculous this has become is that one of those targeted is Elmo, a muppet on Sesame Street. Their evidence is Elmo was on a public health announcement in which he got a COVID vaccine (not sure how this turns straight kids gay, but whatever). One can hope they so overuse the term that everyone, perhaps even their base, decides it is meaningless. Hunter discussed the M&M spokescandies and what Tucker Carlson of Fox News has been saying about them. A couple of the female candies changed from sexy to sensible footwear and Carlson had a fit. Hunter wonders if Carlson wanted to pick up a drunk candy at a bar and take it home for sexual pleasure. Why is he focusing on the sex appeal of candy? Then the sexy footwear was back but two supposedly female candies were seen holding hands. And Carlson had another meltdown. So the M&M company issued a statement saying the spokescandies will take a break for a while. Hunter looked at the sly nature of the text and declared Carlson was being trolled. Besides, the Super Bowl ads have already been created. And Carlson having a snit over whether a candy is lesbian is advertising gold.