The freaks’ll stay together, They’re a tight old crew
You look at them, And they look at you…. Devil Baby, by Mark Knopfler
This is a song about a freak show. And why not?
Today I turned on the TV and found not one, but two “active shooter” situations going on in California. UPDATE: One hour after I wrote this, a news conference in San Bernardino, scene of the first of these shooting events, reported 14 people dead and 14 wounded, by “as many as three gunmen.”
Before that was Colorado and the viciousness and cruelty of targeting Planned Parenthood — and women. Before that was Paris. And the Russian plane. And always — Isis/Isil/DAESH/BokoHaram. And of course, Donald Trump. SO.
This is a song about a freak show. And that’s why.
ALSO we all know I love Mark Knopfler so there’s that.
Interesting how the media is characterizing this premeditated act of terror against Planned Parenthood as committed by a “calm and crazy” person whereas the attacks in Paris, including Charlie Hebdo (another workplace targeted for political reasons), were carried out by terrorists who were only characterized as “calm”. The media’s attempt to make the string of fatal attacks against clinics isolated attacks by insane individuals, whereas the string of fatal vigilante attacks by Muslim extremists are considered political acts of terror, is because the media fears being seen as taking sides in the abortion debate.
Then read this:
Here’s the first post I read about this topic – also from Christina Page. Thank you Christina for reminding us all of the importance of words!
The media needs to change this language immediately. They are referring to him as a shooter. He is a terrorist. This language needs to be corrected from the inception (I think behind the scenes so as to not make that the issue). If they start naturally referring to him that way, that’s what we want and that’s what it will be. All of the messengers should just not sway from this language. Terror was understood right from the start in Paris, this is the very same. One officer killed, four officers shot and 4 civilians.
It’s gratifying to hear so many establishment pundits, right and left, advocating the conscious use of the word “terrorist” but if it weren’t for the advocacy from women like Christina and others, who knows how much longer it would have taken to get them to do it?
Meet the Forward 50 – fifty Jewish Americans designated worthy of special attention as 2015 draws to a close. That “Forward” in “The Forward 50?” It’s The Jewish Daily Forward. A newspaper founded in 1897 as a Yiddish language publication, it has also published in English for the past 25 years, won a ton of awards, and at one time in the 1920’s had a larger circulation than the New York Times!
Every year, most likely as circulation-building clickbait, the paper publishes a list of fifty Jews who are “deeply, loudly and passionately embedded in some of the most pressing political and social issues in the nation.”
Not so unusual, but I was pleased to see that nearly half (21) were women so I decided see who they are, and they’re pretty interesting and modern.
Two of their “Top 5” are women, one an academic, one a star: Princeton professor and newly minted MacArthur “genius” Marina Rustow – who is also the first Jewish Studies person to receive a MacArthur — and our own beloved Amy Schumer.
Four of the six “Activists” are women: Rachel Sklar and her daughter Ruby, Emma Sulkowitcz who carried a mattress – everywhere – through her last years at Columbia University to protest the school’s inaction in her rape allegations. Ruth Messinger, long-time crusader and organizer, who in the 17 years she spent running the United Jewish Word Service, “created a uniquely Jewish way to promote economic and gender equality in the developed world” and street harassment activist Shoshana Roberts .
In general, this is a varied, original and exciting list. Twenty-one of 50 isn’t perfect but what’s kind of cool is how many of these women are closer to the edge not just of Jewish culture but the culture of the US generally. Which is nice, given the battles going on in some other Jewish institutions.
This showed up in my Facebook feed Thursday night and blew me away. It may have been funny to many, but it left me breathless.
I don’t know if it’s possible for younger people today to know how terrible that time before Roe was for so many young women like Penny, who faced the terror and hopelessness of an unwanted pregnancy, or what a real miracle it was that she was rescued.
Dirty Dancing is set in the summer of 1963, just before Francis “Baby” Houseman is about to leave for Mt Holyoke. I left only a year later, for Smith. So she and I are cousins, if not sisters. Each wanting to change the world, each with a wonderful, trusting father, each falling for a bad boy with such a different history from our own … and each inexperienced in realities such as those faced by a pregnant dancer with no money whose illegal abortion goes terribly wrong.
She nearly dies — saved only by the skill of Francis’ doctor father. The film is a fairy tale – in the love story for sure, but also in the story of the damsel in distress rescued by a fatherly wizard who brings her back from the brink. Most women in those pre-Roe days – and many again now, in states where abortion rights are savaged every day — faced real back alleys and unskilled procedures on kitchen tables with no wizard, or anyone else, to save them. Penny’s story was as real as they come, and it’s no joke to remind us that her fairy tale is in real danger of once again becoming the dark horror story it used to be.
So yes – it’s always fun when cultural references inform reality. But it’s hard to enjoy even this clever comparison when the lives of so many Pennys and her sisters are in such terrible jeopardy.
