If the law can’t get him on his crime, get him on his taxes

My Sunday movie was more a combination of concert and documentary. It was Identity: A Song Cycle presented by Against the Grain Theatre. Shortly after George Floyd was murdered, baritone Elliot Madore of Toronto realized he needed to come to grips with being biracial. He posted his thoughts to Instagram. With composer Dinuk Wijeratne and poet Shauntay Grant they created this song cycle. Madore’s singing seems somewhat classical, but the accompaniment is a jazz trio – piano, bass, and percussion. Wijeratne is one of the instrumentalists, I think piano. It was filmed in a studio with a relaxed atmosphere. In between the songs are pictures of Madore as a boy as he discusses his identity. He grew up in a loving family with a single mother and doting grandparents. He was eight before his mother said anything about his father. On being shown a picture of the man his reaction was hey wait, this guy has dark skin! He heard from his father briefly when he was 16 and has yet to meet him. Is he white? Culturally yes. Is he black? His skin is dark enough that some think he might be Italian or Spanish. But he doesn’t have any of the culture. For a long time he didn’t want to talk about his identity. He had imposter syndrome. One of the songs talks about being half this, half that, and I’m tired of the boxes and categories and tags. He is tired of friends and colleagues insisting the he is white (as in why would you want to give up your cultural superiority?). He is thankful for the black colleague who said, “Welcome home.” This video has been available for about six months. I finally saw it on the last day before it is set aside for a while. Sorry, you can’t find it and view it right now. I’ve now seen a couple things by Against the Grain Theatre. Both have been impressive and quite different. The earlier piece was Handel’s Messiah with each of the solos done by a different singer, most of them indigenous and singing in their own language and many with stunning Canadian scenery as backdrop. They’ve also done a new interpretation of Bluebeard’s Castle by Bela Bartok. Instead of Judith playing mind games with Bluebeard about what happened to his previous wives, this one imagines Judith sinking into dementia. It’s an intriguing concept, but it was done live and not recorded, so I haven’t seen it. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated today. The peaks in the number of new cases per day over the last several weeks are looking pretty good! They are 1022, 847, 774, 584, 427, and 349. In the same week that the peak was over 1000 there was one day with 16 deaths and one with 14. Since then the deaths per day have been 14 and under, mostly in the single digits. The big news of the week has been Fox News firing Tucker Carlson. There are lots of media stories about it such as this one by Hunter of Daily Kos. There is speculation of why the network booted its most popular host. The most obvious reason is the $787 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting, which happened just last week. Joan McCarter of Kos also discusses the reasons for the firing. Was it about Carlson’s lies over the ongoing coverage of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack? That was two years ago. But... Ray Epps, an insurrectionist, was accused by Carlson of being an FBI plant. Epps’ harassment has gotten so bad he’s on the run and now he’s suing Fox. Leah McElrath tweeted that perhaps Carlson’s ouster is to give the network respectability during these lawsuits and in advance of the 2024 election. Or it was because the discovery process for the Dominion case uncovered skeletons in his closets. Keeping those from coming to light might be a reason why Fox settled. Those skeletons may be related to how Carlson harassed female staff. Now that he’s gone McElrath said a thought that has crossed her mind is the nasty guy asking Carlson to be vice nasty. Others have suggested he might run for the top job. Hunter looked again at the idea that Carlson was booted because of the lies that made up his show. Why would Fox News put up with his lies for all these years only to dump him now? Hunter cataloged those lies: Promotion of “Great Replacement” claims. Promotion of election hoaxes. Of anti-vaccine hoaxes. Of violent far-right figures. Of conspiracy theories against conservatism’s enemies. Of Russia over Ukraine. He demanded retaliation against Fox reporters who discredited the Big Lie. He defended the Capitol attack. And he attacked the gender of M&Ms. One voice I read during the week warned us that though Carlson is gone from Fox that does not mean his voice will go silent. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the Russia propaganda machine is quite disappointed that Carlson has been booted. Clips from his show had been a regular feature of Russian broadcasts because they could say, “See! A prominent American broadcaster agrees with us!” So Tucker, need a job? Russia would gladly hire you. Or maybe you cold put on a Russian uniform and fight in Ukraine? Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that the abortion pill ruling puts the Supreme Court in a bind. The case asks the justices whether restrictions can be placed on a drug the FDA approved decades ago. It’s a bind because the case is between Big Pharma (big corporations in general) and religious rights. Siding with corporations is why the Federalist Society nominated the conservative justices to the court. Their conservative corporate values also came with conservative religious values, which were on display when Roe was overturned. But those religious values will be in conflict with the corporate values. As for the abortion pill, an Associated Press story posted on Kos reported late Friday, just before their extended deadline, the justices ruled it can remain available without restrictions while the case is being litigated. It is still before the conservative 5th Circuit Court and will likely be back before the Supremes next year or the year after. Joan McCarter of Kos reported another Supreme corruption scandal. This one involved Justice Neil Gorsuch. He had a Colorado property he wanted to sell, but had no takers. Nine days after his confirmation it sold. He properly disclosed the sale but carefully did not disclose the seller was Brian Duffey, CEO of Greenberg Taurig, a powerhouse law firm with regular business before the court. The legacy of Chief Justice John Roberts: Corruption. The old saying, I think applied to Al Capone, is that if the law can’t get him on his crime, get him on his taxes. Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee may be trying to make that also true for Justice Clarence Thomas. If those gifts from Harlan Crow were as expensive as they appear to be then they were way above the annual gift tax exclusion. With the House in Republican hands doing something about the corruption in the Supremes is likely not possible. And Wyden’s attempts likely won’t cause Thomas to behave or respond to invitations or subpoenas to appear before a Senate Committee. But Wyden sure can create a big public relations mess going into the 2024 election year. Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon of Thomas in an alley doorway saying, “Pssst, hey you... wanna buy a ruling?" In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Filipovic on Substack discussing why conservatives are obsessed with gender identity.

Conservatives who push and support these bills claim to be concerned about “gender ideology” perverting young minds — telling boys they can be girls and vice versa, allowing men to compete in women’s sports, giving children hormones and genital surgeries. This is all pretty dishonest. Members of the conservative movement aren’t concerned about women’s sports (otherwise they’d be funding them), children’s health (otherwise they’d be fighting the number-one killer of children), or women’s rights (otherwise they wouldn’t be virulent misogynists attacking women’s rights at every turn, banning abortion, and electing rapists to office). They care about liberal “gender ideology” for one reason: Because they want to impose and enforce their own right-wing gender ideology on the public.

Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tweeted a cartoon of a grumpy man saying, “I don’t want big gov’t coming in and taking away my freedom! I just want it to take away hers.” McElrath linked to an article in Tech Crunch that reported the Missouri government set up a website to allow citizens to report on “transgender concerns” – otherwise known as a snitch site. The response: citizens spammed it until it crashed.