Entitled

There's a post I've been wanting to write all week, but I just couldn't get it to gel. Sometimes I have no trouble articulating what I think about something, and sometimes I know that if I tried to write about X, all that would come out is a bunch of gibberish. A lot of the time, I just want to keep from writing three identical posts in a row, so I wait until I've figured out some way to unify a couple of different ideas. Basically, this week I almost wrote about a 40-something pro-lifer in Alabama and some BS Mitt Romney pulled back when he was a Mormon bishop, but it took a letter to Slate's "Dear Prudence" for me to bring it all together.

This week, a woman wrote Prudie asking how she could persuade her 21-year-old pregnant sister not to place her upcoming baby in adoption, and instead "impress upon her that she can, and should, take more responsibility for her actions." Prudie (rightly) responded that the woman needs to mind her own business and respect that her sister IS making a responsible choice, and in the process making a dream come true for the couple who will adopt the baby.

But what really jumped out at me is this: the letter-writing sister reports that the pregnant sister, a college student, could have plenty of financial and baby-sitting support from her parents and others while she goes to class (because, as everyone knows, children don't require any care or expense once they're out of diapers). And then she writes this:

"I simply cannot understand why she is choosing adoption when she has support, both financial and otherwise. I think she is being a bit entitled. After all, she got herself into this mess, and it doesn't seem fair that she just gets to put the child up for adoption and resume her life."

DING DING DING! There it is!

Now, Mitt... When he was a Mormon lay leader in the Boston area, Romney (as reported in a 1990 story in Exponent II, a magazine published by Mormon feminists, and this week in the New York Times) barged into the hospital room of a woman whose sixth pregnancy had produced a blood clot that threatened her life. The treatment for the blood clot would terminate her pregnancy, and so the church ok'd an abortion (for, again, a pregnancy that she planned and wanted).

"Her bishop got wind of the situation, she wrote, and showed up unannounced at the hospital, warning her sternly not to go forward," says the Times. According to Judith Dushku, publisher of Exponent II, the exchange went like this:

He said – What do you think you're doing?

She said – Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.

And he said something to the effect of – Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?

And she said – What are you talking about? This is a life threatening situation.

And he said – Well what about the life of the baby?

And she said – I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.

DING DING DING! There it is!

(By the way, if I'd been that woman and Mitt Romney - hell, if a member of my own family - had said this to me, they'd have left that hospital room with some teeth missing. Seriously, where the frak does he get off? "Easy"???")

I respect the people who genuinely don't want abortion to happen, and who therefore support better family planning and birth control access, and who support funding for those programs that help low-income families feed, clothe and educate their children. (For instance, the Mormon Church does an excellent job helping member families.) My problem is this undercurrent in every single conversation with an anti-choicer I've ever had, which in the above quoted passages spills right out into the open.

Sooner or later, once you've gotten through the debate about when life begins and the ethics of privileging one life above another, eventually it comes out. "Well, you had sex, so you deserve what you get." (Note: only if you're a woman.) Or, as Letter-Writing Big Sister put it, "it doesn't seem fair that she just gets to put the child up for adoption and resume her life." Or, Bishop Mitt: "Well, why do you get off easy?"

Perhaps it's the juxtaposition of "Mitt Romney" and "getting off easy," but this just occurred to me... When progressives talk about race or class privilege - the consequences of which cost actual, walking-around-human lives - we're shouted down as "class warriors" who want to overthrow America and outlaw apple pie or something. But when a woman exercises her natural and (at least for the moment) legal right not to have a kid, she's a selfish, cake-having AND -eating harpy slut who's dodging her scarlet letter and thereby callously subverting the entire human system of right and wrong.

And don't tell me this is about saving fetuses (fetii? I really don't know...). Letter-Writing Big Sister's pregnant sister is, on paper, doing everything that the social conservatives would want her to do: carrying the pregnancy to term and placing the baby for adoption. But still, she's "entitled." Mitt Romney had the gall to tell a married mother of four that she's selfish for having life-saving surgery that would keep her around to mother her real-life children. That was "getting off easy," apparently.

What this is about is shaming women who have the temerity to do what's best for themselves and their families. It's never an easy choice, and for that reason it's a highly personal choice. If the Letter-Writing Big Sisters, the Mitt Romneys and the other scarlet letter-assigners of the world really and truly cared about justice, or saving lives, or anything to do with making it easier for families to have and raise children, then the woman in that hospital room (or adoption agency) is the last person they'd be going after.

Instead, they'll tell you all about how much they cherish life, up until the moment that life emerges from the womb and needs food stamps, health care, after-school care and public school. Then that little rug-rat needs to start pulling herself up by the bootie-straps, 'cause with that slut single mother, you never know, amirite?

So, who's really the entitled one here? The person facing the most profound decision there is, who frankly assesses her life situation and ability to care for a child, and who seeks out the advice of her doctors and spiritual advisers, and who makes a choice? Or the person who's never met that woman, and who will lecture her about the wrongness of her choices without doing anything to actually help?

Hank Williams Jr. is mad, y'all

Can I be on Hank Williams Jr.'s side while completely disagreeing with him?

Nutshell: last week while appearing on "Fox & Friends," Williams made some comments that appeared to compare President Obama with Adolf Hitler, saying that Rep. John Boehner shouldn't have played golf with him. ESPN then removed Williams' singing intro from its "Monday Night Football" broadcast. Williams has now responded by re-recording his song "Keep the Change" (which he first wrote following Obama's inauguration), adding a verse specifically calling out "Fox & Friends" and ESPN.

The original song, while being unapologetic conservative propaganda that described some socialist hell that doesn't resemble actual reality, was at least kind of catchy. The extra verse could be more artful, but that's what happens when you write angry.

For the record, I thought Williams' statement was kind of naive and uninformed - regardless of what you think of either of them, if the president and the Speaker of the House aren't on speaking terms, not a lot gets done. Yes, there was a tinge of "let them eat cake" to that golf game when our country was on the verge of default, but that's politics. And comparing Obama to the guy who murdered six million people is just dumb.

That said, I am not a fan of this recent trend where some public figure says something boneheaded, and the only way his/her employer can think to distance themselves is to fire that person. (Because what our country needs right now is more unemployed people.) When I first read about what Williams said, I didn't think to myself "OMG, I'm never watching 'Monday Night Football" again!!!" because frankly, the presence of Jon Gruden's voice is way more off-putting than the political opinions of the guy who sings the intro song.

It's a free country. There's a big difference between actual government censorship and a private company trying to get rid of a potential PR headache, so I'm not saying Williams is some 1st Amendment martyr... but I don't think what happened to him is fair.

Corporations like ESPN need to either take the step of restricting what their employees can say on external programs, or build a thicker skin and a more nimble PR strategy.

The Ides of Zzzzzzzzz…

Oh, dear.

First let me say that I always enjoy the films that George Clooney directs, and I usually always find them interesting (with the exception of “Leatherheads,” which was pretty much an “I know where that was shot” exercise for me). But… Clooney has kind of a pacing issue. I remember being a little surprised when I read the screenplay for “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and found that the CIA recruitment scene does not, in fact, occur an hour in, which is what it felt like when actually slogging through the movie. It’s wonderful that Clooney gives the actors in his films so much space to work, but I feel like his respect for their work makes him reluctant to actually cut any of it.

You’ve probably read a lot about “The Ides of March,” and it’s really worth seeing, so I don’t want you to think that I hated it. It’s based on a play, “Farragut North,” which is remarkable because the film didn’t seem at all stagy to me. That’s hard to do, so, kudos. The story takes place in the final days before a Democratic primary election in Ohio, which (shades of Obama v. Clinton) is going down to the wire. It focuses on Pennsylvania’s Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney) and his campaign staff, mainly Steve (Ryan Gosling), who’s a communication consultant of some kind, and campaign head Paul (my boyfriend, Phillip Seymour Hoffman).

Tthis is a hard movie to discuss without spoiling it for people who haven’t seen it. So, if you haven’t seen it, you’re just going to have to take my word for it that, while the actors are all wonderful, their characters are a liiiiiii-ttle too stock: Cynical Reporter! Hot-to-trot Intern! If you’ve ever worked on a campaign at any level, there are definitely moments that are enjoyable because they’re so true – “I have TOTALLY been there.” Except… I have totally been there. And so have you. And so has anyone else who’s ever seen an episode of “The West Wing.” Original – nah. Subtle – not as much as it thinks it is. If this movie had come out 30 or 40 years ago, it would rock.

Oh, dear, I haven’t talked about the giant plot issues yet.

***HERE BE SPOILERS***

Ok, so for the first 45 minutes or so, I was so flabbergasted that I almost walked out of the theatre and demanded my money back. It was just that frakking laughable. I kept thinking to myself, is this supposed to be a parody of a political thriller? Does it perhaps take place in an alternate universe where making a national service program mandatory for 18-year-olds will actually win widespread voter support? I mean, this is a country where large numbers of people think that buying health insurance is on par with exile to a Soviet gulag, but they’ll be ok with making their kids plant trees on the side of a highway for two years. Nothing at all implausible about THAT.

Also, and I can tell you this from experience, primary voters do not care in the slightest who’s employed to run the campaign, or with whom these people meet to chitchat in a bar. I can buy that a paranoid campaign manager would care about this, but not really anyone else. Seriously, me to that NY Times reporter who’s trying to blackmail me: “Go the f*** ahead. Who gives a sh*t?” If you think I’m being nitpicky, I’ll remind you that this is like 75 percent of the conflict of the entire movie.

But my main issue – once the big Evan Rachel Wood twist comes out, the movie becomes roughly 87,000 times more interesting. (No, I’m not going to completely spoil it for you.) All kinds of character problems (for me anyway) suddenly made sense. Two things, though: petty cash? Why petty cash? Ryan still needed to use some of his own money anyway. Moreover, I absolutely jumped off the logic train when Ryan, playing supposedly “the best media mind in the country,” walks you-know-who into you-know-where. Absolutely no way, no how, never FAIL FAIL FAIL. This simply would never happen, and if it did, someone would notice. The only way this would be remotely redeemable is, later on, when Ryan could really use some concrete documentation for a certain incident, either the petty cash thing or the public appearance thing had even slightly come up again. (And was nothing written on those prescription bottles?)

***END SPOILERS***

My overwhelming takeaway was that “The Ides of March” needed to percolate just a little while longer before being released to the masses. Individual scenes are engrossing, but the parts just don’t add up to a cohesive whole. The “cut to the lounge singer” thing is directly ripped from “Goodnight, and Good Luck,” where it worked far better, and the “lap sound from the next scene before the visual cut from the scene you’re watching” thing just got annoying after the 47^th time.

But… for real, it’s a movie worth seeing. I didn’t hate it, I promise. I just felt that it could’ve been so, so much better.

Also – points for casting Jeffrey Wright and Gregory Itzin, but demerits for criminal wasting of Jennifer Ehle. She makes everything better. (Ehle worked with Clooney in “Michael Clayton,” but her role was cut from the film. High-five to Clooney for casting her here, though I would’ve loved for her to have had more to do.)

R.J. Reynolds and Occupy Wall Street

On Saturday, I stopped by the first public meeting of Occupy Winston-Salem, one of reportedly 200 groups across the country looking to expand the Occupy Wall Street protest that’s been taking place in New York City’s financial district since mid-September.

I was equal parts curious and dubious. Occupy Wall Street prides itself on being a leaderless grassroots movement that isn’t affiliated with any political party or group, and they’ve been criticized by some in the media as not having clear demands other than “greed is bad.” That isn’t entirely fair… but I’ll say more about that in a moment. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the meeting – I had a vague expectation that it would be a handful of college students who just wanted to be able to tell people they were involved, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was far from true.

For starters, in the crowd of 150+, there appeared to be as many people over 60 as under 30. I counted exactly two other people that I know from volunteering with the local Democratic Party. In its coverage, the Winston-Salem Journal even quotes one attendee saying he hopes Occupy W-S doesn’t get wrapped up with local Dems or labor unions. Second, the people facilitating the discussion were clear that Occupy W-S is a non-violent movement, but in terms of other specific actions, the group would be what the members of the group wanted it to be. Everyone is heard. It’s not enough to say “OMG, we have to DO SOMETHING!!!” – you need to think about exactly what you want to do and why.

While I still think that the Occupy movement needs to define its aims a little better – because if you don’t define yourself others will be happy to do it for you – I think there’s tremendous value in building a coalition where people don’t have to agree 100 percent with one another to participate.

So let me tell you what I think:

For some time, I’ve been thinking about R.J. Reynolds. Apologies to my Moravian ancestors who literally built this city, but Reynolds is arguably the person who made Winston-Salem what it is today. It wasn’t just his business (and note: this is not the place to make judgments about that business’s products), it was the way he ran that business.

Reynolds chose Winston-Salem for his tobacco company’s HQ because of its railroad hub (HELLO, infrastructure!), and employed a hell of a lot of locals in his factories and, later, at his private home, Reynolda. Reynolda Village was originally meant to house the estate’s workers, and the family provided basic services, a school and a church for that staff (and today the Village is a high-end shopping center/ office space, still generating revenue). Reynolds offered his employees short working hours and relatively high pay, and housing for some. Moreover, his wife Katherine started a literacy tutoring program for employees and their families. And here’s the best part – in the late 19^th century, Reynolds was a city commissioner in Winston (this was before the merger with Salem), and he pushed for creation of property taxes and income taxes.

In other words, one of the wealthiest men in North Carolina, who after his marriage would build his own fiefdom, and who could’ve at any time pulled up stakes for anywhere else in the country, essentially volunteered to fork over part of his personal wealth to the public. At one point, Reynolds was the single-largest taxpayer in North Carolina. And this isn’t even taking into account the millions that Reynolds and his family donated to area schools, social service groups, museums, arts organizations and more – philanthropy that his descendants continue even today.

Why do all that? It’s possible that Reynolds was moved out of pure altruism. But I have to believe that the businessman who was savvy enough to add sugar to chewing tobacco and invent pre-rolled cigarettes understood – like Henry Ford would later – that taking care of the other 99 percent is ultimately good for business.

And that’s why I’m attracted to Occupy Wall Street. I’m not remotely anti-business or socialist; I like getting paid, and owning my own home for the past six years has made me understand even more than I already did the importance of having an incentive to keep improving what you have. The problem is that too many corporations don’t have that incentive, because their models are driven by the quarter, as opposed to the quarter-century. Plenty of businesses contribute to building their communities, and they’re wonderful neighbors. I don’t have any interest in tearing them down; the opposite, in fact.

It just seems to me that, for the last half-century or so, a handful of corporations have been working hand-in-glove with a permanent federal government establishment to rig public incentives in their favor. In doing so, they’re making it harder and harder for smaller businesses to operate. They’re the ones who are anti-business, not me.

Meanwhile, this establishment has been successful in keeping us, that other 99 percent, divided against one another by exploiting differences on social issues or just outright creating fictions like the Welfare Queen or the Evil Big Brother Regulator That’s Cramping My Invisible Hand. I’ve got news for you: in terms of regulations, it isn’t the ones about how much lead you can leave in your tuna fish that are driving companies out of business. (If so, I’m kind of glad you’re out of business, because… um, LEAD IN MY FOOD.) Dealing with building codes in both of the counties that your distribution hub straddles is a far bigger headache for a business.

There was a time in this country when businesses and the public (either through a government or just as individuals) were willing to cooperate with one another for their mutual benefit. It wasn’t the public that changed. For me, Occupy Wall Street isn’t about bringing down “the man.” It’s about stripping away this plutocracy that simultaneously strangles small businesses, frees governments from real accountability and locks the very largest corporations together in an ever-downward-spiraling suicide pact.

I don’t want to eliminate capitalism; I want to return to it in its most functional form. There is no better system for stabilizing a society and incentivizing growth. But capitalism can’t work in a country where a small business can’t get a loan or a customer can’t finance a major purchase, or where entire industries exist only because you and I subsidize them, or where our elected officials happily cut public services so we can keep those subsidies coming to companies that couldn’t hack it on a truly free market.

It’s time to hit the “reboot” button.

Is this man worth your angst? I don't know either.

I usually try to avoid writing about things until I've thought through what I think and why I think it, but a few days after Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen, I'm still thinking. I'm not ready to write something and put a "DONE" stamp on it.

Here's the thing... I don't have a problem with the U.S. military going after someone who committed acts of war against this country. As I wrote when Osama bin Laden was finally killed back in May, the world has changed to the point where our enemies aren't capable of signing treaties, so what other recourse do we have? But I also generally favor treating terrorism as a criminal matter than a military one. And in this case, both of the men killed were U.S. citizens.

I hear the people who don't like the idea of unilateral action against U.S. citizens without due process, and I respect where they're coming from. I understand the slippery slope argument. And I'm fine with drawing a line to make sure that, in the future, the U.S. military isn't used against Americans who honestly dissent from the current government. No one wants that... which is why there is already a law against using the military for law enforcement on U.S. soil.

Despite the rhetoric of people on the political extremes, this is still a country where our legal processes work most of the time.

So, where do we draw that line? How about this? When an natural-born American citizen living in a foreign country that's a haven for terrorists, who publicly admits that he's recruiting for a terrorist organization whose stated mission is overthrowing modern Western society, and/or self-labels as a "traitor to America," I think it's ok to take him out.

Yes, I understand the legal issues, and I look forward to reading about them when Constitutional scholars get around to arguing them. But I'm going to sleep alright tonight.

I heart Margaret Schroeder

For the last week, since the second season premiere of "Boardwalk Empire," I've been reading all over the 'net other people's opinions of the show, which seem to vary from "it's slow and boring" to "it's slow and boring, but really well made." Well, I think "Boardwalk Empire" is riveting. It's true that it's more character-driven than plot-driven, but when the characters are this well-written and illustrated, I'd watch them sit around and do crossword puzzles for an hour.

Case in point: Margaret Schroeder, played by Scottish actor Kelly MacDonald, whose story in tonight's episode may have put the character on my all-time favorites list. I already liked Margaret; her season one arc took her from impoverished, abused wife of a baker's apprentice (what the hell, by the way... aren't apprentices usually like 15 years old? Hans was the biggest deadbeat ever) to the "kept woman" of the most powerful man in Atlantic City - a move she owes almost entirely to her own street smarts.

Last season, we saw Margaret struggle with the idea of selling out some of her principles if it meant providing a stable life for her children. I loved how the show gave Margaret some agency, some say in her choices. She wasn't just some naif being dragged along by forces larger than her; she was a shrewd, intelligent woman who, by the end of the season, was able to admit to herself that, as Nucky told her, "a good person wouldn't be here right now." She dropped the Temperance Society pretense and started owning her choices.

Starting with tonight's episode, Nucky's beginning to appreciate the woman at his side. It's Margaret who retrieves Nucky's "Here's All the Illegal Stuff I Did Today" ledger from under the noses of the state investigators, and it's Margaret who suggests that maybe going forward he shouldn't keep a written record of his various illegal activities. But what I really loved is that this Margaret-as-Consigliere seemed like a perfectly natural progression of her character, not just something that the writers needed to happen. That last scene in the episode has been coming since the first time Margaret went to see Nucky in the pilot, and that's awesome writing.