Good, thoughtful read by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Awesome
You’ve got to listen to this. You’ll love it. Via this guy:
Michael D. Higgins (who was elected president of Ireland last year) is fed up with over-the-top Tea Party rhetoric, and he isn’t afraid to show it. Listen to him call out radio host Michael Graham on everything from health care to foreign policy.
Elsewhere — more proof that rightie men are Neanderthals who know nothing about genuine masculinity. I swear, bagger men should wear bells so that normal women know not to date them.
God’s Judgment and the GOP
Today Dana Milbank asks if God has forsaken the Republican Party. He cites the representative caught skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee, Todd Akin, and reports that a hurricane might wipe out the Tampa convention next week.
“Coincidence?” he asks, tongue somewhat in cheek. “Or part of some Intelligent Design?” Conservatives are awfully quick to pronounce other peoples’ misfortune as God’s Judgment, including the drowning of New Orleans and September 11. Why wouldn’t unfortunate events be God’s wrath against them?
CNN reminds us that “Four years ago Hurricane Gustav brought the first night of the Republican National Convention in land-locked St. Paul, Minnesota to a halt.” I had forgotten that, although as I remember Gustav turned out to be something of a bust. At least the GOP was able to use it to keep George W. Bush from turning up in St. Paul.
Weather Underground says that the odds are Tampa will be hurricane-free next week. Even so, a Category 4 storm could immerse the Tampa Convention Center in 20 feet of water. If that happens, I want trapped conventioneers to have to wait a few days to be rescued, and cops should be stationed around town only to keep desperate people wearing Romney-Ryan buttons from looting, not to actually rescue anyone. It would be justice for New Orleans. I don’t want anyone to be hurt, mind you, just to be taught a lesson.
See also Joan Walsh, “The GOP reaps what it sowed.”
Ezra studies the Romney-Ryan budget so you don’t have to.
I really enjoyed this clip:
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The Hits Keep Coming
Dennis “women should just have sex with me whether they want to or not because it’s their duty to make me happy” (and here’s part 2) Prager has weighed in on the Akin controversy. He says Akin’s comments should be condemned, but …
While he should not have used the term “legitimate rape,” he could have explained later that, given the expanded definitions of rape, not all claims of “rape” are truly rape. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for Feminist Perspectives on Rape states, for example, that “we must recognize that, in some cases, ‘yes’ also means no … The man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. …
For Dennis Prager, the paragraph above describes “foreplay.”
Then he says that saying women can’t conceive from rape is stupid, and all good Fetus People should condemn such an idea. Except …
I have spent a good part of my life showing what an intellectual bubble the left lives in.
You may take a few minutes to clean the coffee off your monitor.
Bubbles tend to produce nonsense. When the only people you talk to, read, and socialize with agree with you, it is easy to abandon critical thinking.
And when you are morally right — and those who argue for a right to life of unborn human beings (or human fetuses, if you prefer) are morally and even scientifically right — a bubble can make critical thought even more difficult.
I wonder if that is not the case with Rep. Akin’s comment.
Ya think?
This country is on the verge of an inexorable moral, social and economic decline. The left is doing to America what it has done to almost everything it has deeply influenced — the arts, the university, religion, culture, minorities, Europe: ruining it. It is therefore morally incumbent on conservatives to do everything in their power not to give the left legitimate targets.
And save America by cutting off funding to the National Endowment for the Arts!
And then we’ve got Rep. Steve King, who has revealed his own peculiar notions of human reproduction —
King supports the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” It would ban Federal funding of abortions except in cases of forcible rape. Right now, Medicaid also covers abortions for victims of statutory rape or incest – for example, a 12 year old who gets pregnant.
Congressman King says he’s not aware of any young victims like that.
“Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way, and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter,” he said.
I’m willing to believe that he’s never heard of a pregnant 12-year-old. Considering where he keeps his head, he probably hears very little beside digestion and gas.
GOP: Blast From the Past
Last night Rachel Maddow explained that the “real rape victims don’t get pregnant” theory for years has been pushed by people who want to criminalize abortions without exception for rape. And that’s absolutely true. That way they can claim that if a woman conceived, she wasn’t really raped, and the exception isn’t necessary.
But when men start to talk about “forcible” rape or “legitimate” rape, I think it speaks to something buried even deeper in their lizard brains. Once upon a time conventional wisdom was that rapists couldn’t be convicted unless the victim was a nun who was killed defending herself. Otherwise, if the woman was wearing a short skirt, had ever been spotted in a bar, was sexually active, or didn’t fight back, it was assumed “she wanted it” and the perpetrator was excused.
One of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960s was to shine a light on how unfair that was and get some protections for rape victims written into law. I understand rape charges often are still dismissed by sexist judges sometimes, however.
When men talk about “forcible” or “legitimate” rape, I suspect in their minds “rape” is something that can only happen to virtuous and modestly dressed women who were on their way to church when a total stranger abducted and assaulted them, and they fought back to the point of needing either hospitalization or burial. Otherwise, it wasn’t really a rape. Perhaps such men only relate to rape as a kind of violent physical assault, like a really bad mugging. Women who are slipped a roofie at a frat party and raped while they were unconscious, for example, don’t count, and “date rape” is an oxymoron. They cannot perceive of rape as a violation of one’s personhood, of one’s humanity, as women perceive it. (See Dear Mr. Akin, I Want You to Imagine…)
And I say this is only a few degrees different from the thinking that (1) a virtuous woman must stay covered by a burqua and (2) rape is always the woman’s fault, if she survives. In this view, a woman is merely a multipurpose major appliance whose value is determined by how much she has been used.
Republicans who are busily denouncing Akin today are crafting a convention platform containing a “human life amendment.” This would ban all abortions without explicitly excluding rape and incest victims. They’ve been doing this for the past several conventions, but I don’t know that the general public is aware of it. But now they’re going to hear about it loudly and clearly from the Obama campaign.
The point is that the GOP doesn’t really disagree with what Todd Akin said. They’re just pissed at him that he said it in public.
Republicans are frantically trying to get Representative Todd Akin to drop out of the United States Senate race in Missouri after his remark about abortion and rape, but not because it was offensive and ignorant. They’re afraid he might lose and cost them a chance at a Senate majority next year. He would surely be replaced by a Republican who sounds more reasonable but holds similarly extreme views on abortion, immigration, gay rights and the role of government because those are the kinds of candidates the party nominates these days in state after state.
CNN:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan sharply condemned Akin’s remarks and pledged that under a Romney administration, abortion would be allowed in the case of rape.
An exemption for rape, though, is not included in the platform set to be adopted by the party Romney will officially lead when he accepts the Republican nomination next week.
And Ryan, his vice presidential pick, has opposed exceptions for rape and voted alongside Akin in the House, though Ryan now says he defers to Romney’s position on the matter.
Debate over the abortion plank flared four years ago when John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee at the time, said he wanted to add language to the platform to recognize exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
That prompted angry finger-wagging from top social conservatives.
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, chided McCain and said it would be “political suicide” for him to add language about exceptions for rape or incest in the abortion platform.
The Family Research Council has issued a statement of support for Todd Akin.
Reproductive Rights
GOP Dumps Support for Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin
What a hoot. I started to write a post about Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, last week, when he announced he wanted to end federal support for school lunch programs because they are unconstitutional. But now that he’s stepped in the rapes-don’t-cause-pregnancy doo doo he’s even more fun. Why haven’t we noticed this guy before?
The national Republican Party has withdrawn funding from the Missouri Senate race in the wake of his development.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Tex.) informed Rep. Todd Akin on Monday that the national GOP will not spend money to help elect him to the Senate after Akin’s controversial comments about “legitimate rape,†according to an NRSC aide.
Cornyn also told Akin that, by staying in the race, he is endangering Republicans’ hopes of retaking the majority in the Senate, the aide said.
And now I’m seeing that Karl Rove’s Crossroads PAC is pulling funding from the Missouri Senate race. This is serious.
Several elements of the Republican Party are pressuring Akin to drop out of his Senate race against Claire McCaskill. Nate Silver says Akin may have just handed to election to McCaskill.
This incident could serve to make the public aware of Romney-Ryan’s extremist views on abortion, which hasn’t come up that much so far.
The Romney-Ryan campaign has tried to distance itself from Akin, but the Obama campaign released this statement this morning:
“While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are working overtime to distance themselves from Rep. Todd Akin’s comments on rape, they are contradicting their own records. Mr. Romney supports the Human Life Amendment, which would ban abortion in all instances, even in the case of rape and incest. In fact, that amendment is a central part of the Republican Party’s platform that is being voted on tomorrow. And, as a Republican leader in the House, Mr. Ryan worked with Mr. Akin to try to pass laws that would ban abortion in all cases, and even narrow the definition of ‘rape.’ Every day, women across America grapple with difficult and intensely personal health decisions—decisions that should ultimately be between a woman and her doctor. These decisions are not made any easier when Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan treat women’s health as a matter of partisan politics.â€
So, you know Obama is going to hang Todd Akin around RR’s lying little necks.
Ryan and Akin largely agree when it comes to abortion rights. Both believe abortion should be illegal even in the case of rape and incest. Both were co-sponsors of H.R. 3, the 2011 bill that would have limited the federal abortion coverage exemption only to victims of “forcible rape†and women whose physical health was in danger from her pregnancy, closing a supposed loophole in health-of-the-mother exemptions conservatives have been crowing about for years.
After massive vocal protest from women’s rights advocates, the sponsors dropped the “forcible rape†language from the bill, giving up their quest to redefine rape in the federal code with little explanation.
But while the Republicans are running from Akin and his “legitimate rape” comments as fast as they can, the Fetus People are standing firm with Akin. So seems to me RR is in a tough position — run too far from Akin, and they may leave a chunk of their base behind.
For the record, Sarah Kliff writes,
Research published in the Journal of American Obstetrics and Gynecology suggests over 30,000 pregnancies result from rape annually. “Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency,†the trio of researchers from the University of South Carolina concluded. “It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies.â€
A separate 2001 study – which used a sample of 405 rape victims between ages 12 and 45 – found that 6.4 percent became pregnant.
Good Morning
As a kind of follow up to the last post, please enjoy the first movement of Bach’s 2nd Brandenburg concerto:
As mentioned in the last post, Bach submitted his Brandenburg concertos as a kind of job application to a Prussian prince of some sort named Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt, who is chiefly remembered today as the guy who didn’t give Bach a job. At the time, Bach was employed as Kapellmeister for Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Köthen and, apparently, Bach was not happy with his boss. However, Christian Ludwig stuffed the compositions in a drawer and didn’t have them performed. The manuscript went undiscovered for 99 years after Bach had died, and the Brandenburg concertos were performed in public for the first time the following year, a full century after Bach had died.
This second concerto has the particular honor of being included on recordings sent into space with the two Voyager probes.
Political Animals
Something Mittens said to an interviewer at Forbes —
“[F]irst there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to stand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf. …”
Overlooking the “borrowed from other countries” part — it’s hardly the fault of Amtrack or PBS or the NEA that money has to be borrowed — the issue here is not whether government should pay for these things, or not, but whether we’re going to have them at all. Because, whether conservatives can admit it or not, not everything worthwhile and valuable can be supported through free enterprise.
The Right hates Amtrack because it hates all public transportation; what cannot be privatized must die. IMO a rail transportation system is one of those things, like the electric grid, that the private sector cannot be depended on to maintain. But for now I want to talk about the arts.
It so happens I’m on the board of directors of a local arts organization, which is a chorale. It’s a volunteer position; I take no money for it. I also typeset programs and fliers for the concerts so that we don’t have to pay a typesetter. Chorale members, who have to audition to be accepted, pay dues to the chorale to remain members. We enjoy the patronage of a large church that gives us a big break on renting rehearsal space and a concert venue. Our concerts usually are well attended, at $25 a ticket. We hold fundraisers such as auctions and spaghetti dinners to raise money. We grovel for donations pretty much perpetually.
And it’s still a struggle to stay afloat, because the fact is that it costs a whole lot of money to put on a live performance of a major choral work. Directors, rehearsal accompanists, vocal soloists, concert accompanists, orchestras, the insurance company, etc., all have to be paid, and the costs are way too high to cover with ticket sales, even when ticket sales are robust. In the past, this chorale has had SRO crowds of paying customers and still lost money on the concert. If we priced tickets at what we really needed to recoup cost, we wouldn’t be able to sell them.
It’s a fact of history that the fine arts always have depended on patronage, whether from the Church or the nobility or a government. Although you can find examples of great artists who managed to live on the sale of their works, you can find a lot more — even among the great masters of world art — who would have starved without the patronage of some wealthy individual or the church. And some of them did suffer real poverty at times.
In December the Chorale will be performing Bach’s Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, plus the Saint-Saëns Christmas Oratorio, with a small orchestra. In recent years we’ve been keeping costs down by performing works that didn’t require orchestral accompaniment, but now that part of the choral repertoire has been pretty much mined. And choruses tend to dry up if they don’t get to sing masterpieces like Wachet auf now and then. So, fingers crossed we don’t fall into too big a hole.
(BTW, Bach’s compositions didn’t earn him any royalties when he was alive. He depended on the patronage of Austrian royalty, who gave him music director and court composer positions. He was also widely admired as a keyboard performer. The Brandenburg Concertos were written for a Prussian prince as a kind of job application. He didn’t get the job. Bach’s compositions were not much performed in public until about a century after his death.)
It so happens we’re not eligible for state arts funding because we perform only two concerts a year. Any more than that would be pushing our members into more rehearsals and music-learning than most have time for. But there are many genuinely excellent vocal ensembles, orchestras, and even small opera companies I know of that depend on state arts council grants to keep going, and the state arts councils depend on money from the NEA to keep going. And I suspect if that money were to dry up, some of the donations given to our chorale probably would begin to flow to more prestigious groups. Also, many of our musicians and solo performers depend on getting gigs from arts council-funded organizations to pay their own bills, or they’d have to find new careers. So I believe we do benefit indirectly from the state arts council money in circulation.
If the NEA were to disappear, probably only the biggest and best-endowed performing arts organizations would survive. Even some big-city orchestras and opera companies probably would be endangered. And those performing arts organizations really do provide jobs to a lot of people, including sheet music printers and instrument makers. Plus they draw customers to restaurants and other businesses in the concert venue neighborhood. And people really do turn out to hear live performances of masterpieces; I have seen it with my own tired eyes.
So, basically, what we’re talking about is not whether taxpayers should help fund the arts, but whether we have fine arts available to the general public at all. I know less about the economics of visual arts, such as galleries and museums, so I don’t know how much they depend on NEA money. But it would be devastating to performing arts.
And, y’know, it’s going to be a lovely concert, in a beautiful church decorated with Christmas greenery, and people can come into a church to listen to masterpieces of sacred music at Christmastime. You’d think that would be the sort of thing conservatives would want to, you know, conserve. But I guess not.