Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Trial About the Trial

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Well, it’s looking like the George Zimmerman verdict probably will come down to how much racism may lurk in the hearts of the jurors. Much snarking has been aimed at Rachel Jeantel, the young woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin until minutes before he was killed. Her testimony has been called a “train wreck.” Zimmerman supporters made much of her testimony that Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker.” Like that proves something.

This is the only bit of the testimony that I’ve seen. I say it’s purely in the eye of the beholder to determine who comes off worse, Ms. Jeantel or the creepy-ass cracker defense attorney questioning her.

Hey, the question was retarded. The attorney seemed to be insinuating that Trayvon Martin was attacking George Zimmerman while he was on the phone — good trick, that — and lying to Ms. Jeantel about it. Huh?

What we’re not hearing as much about is that the white and properly articulate neighbors have been giving conflicting testimony.

The boy in the dark-colored hooded sweatshirt straddled the man in red, doing a mixed-martial-arts-style “ground-and-pound.”

Or the boy in the hoodie was on the bottom, crying out for help.

I don’t much care who was on top. The central issues of the trail are summed up pretty well here —

The big question hanging over the trial is whether it was an unarmed Martin who claimed his self-defense rights against an armed adult stranger following him in the dark, and whether Zimmerman waived his self-defense rights when he made the decision to pursue Trayvon after noting to a 911 dispatcher that “these [guys] always get away.”

Yes. However,

Yet the potential for Jeantel’s testimony to illuminate that central question appeared to sink beneath a wave of commentary about aesthetics, as Christina Coleman summarizes in a Global Grind article called “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel.”

Fortunately, the jury is sequestered, so they aren’t being influenced by the trial about the trial.

Mansplaining Explained

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I’m glad to see I’m not the only one wondering where Jonathan Chait left his brain yesterday. Kathy Kattenburg writes,

Plainly, being a male liberal (or kinda sorta liberal-libertarian) on abortion rights does not, sad to say, mean that the pro-choice part overpowers the testosterone-induced need to mansplain women’s lives to them.

This is what Chait said, regarding Rick Perry’s comments about Wendy Davis, that pissed me (and Kathy) off:

The immediate liberal reaction is that Perry was “attack[ing] her motives and her experiences,” or “dismissing her as an unwed, teen mother.” But Perry is not attacking Davis here. Perry is pointing to her life as a success. His comments are tantamount to a liberal arguing that Ted Cruz’s family history shows why we need more immigration.

Chait goes on to lecture us pro-reproductive rights folks about how anti-rights people have a right to their opinion too, which I suppose makes it perfectly acceptable for them to force their views on the rest of us by closing abortion clinics.

But it stuns me that Chait and some other generally leftie males are oblivious to the belittling, condescending, patronizing, insult to Davis at the heart of Perry’s remarks. One more time — where does any man get off dictating to any woman what she should have learned from her experiences as a woman and mother? Whether the woman was married or single? Whether she chose an abortion or not? Exactly how does white skin and a penis signify all-pervading wisdom?

In case any of you still don’t see it, here are some resources on “mansplaining.”

A Cultural History of Mansplaining

Mansplaining 101: How to Discuss Politics and Feminism Without Acting Like a Jackass

Mansplaining on Tumblr

Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn’t Get in Their Way

This is such a common experience for a woman — dealing with men who assume they know better than you do about everything, including your own area of expertise, because. And then if you come out and tell them, y’know, I actually know quite a lot about this, and I would prefer you not instruct me unless I ask you a question — you get this oh, isn’t she cute smirk, and then they go on explaining things you already know as if you were six years old. Or — my personal favorite — we are told that maybe people would listen to us more if we were nicer. It’s maddening. And allegedly liberal men do it too sometimes.

Rick Perry Is the Bigger Asshole

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Most of your know my Bigger Asshole theory of effective protesting, but here it is again — in a confrontation between protesters and those being protested, whichever is the bigger asshole loses. That’s because the goal is to sway public opinion, and public opinion will turn against the bigger asshole.

Today Texas Gov. Rick Perry stepped into a big ol’ pile of assholery in a speech to a National Fetus People Conference:

PERRY: In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of a single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters.

Yes, Mr. Oops has taken it on himself to lecture a woman about what she should have learned from her life experiences, experiences that he himself never had. The Patriarchy speaks.
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(I believe I speak for many women when I say that nothing pisses us off more than a man lecturing us about what we should think based on his notions of who we are. It dismisses us as less than persons. It’s the male chauvinist equivalent of the antebellum plantation owner saying his nigras jus’ loves the massah.)

Kay:

Rick Perry is very disappointed that a grown woman doesn’t understand her own life and experiences in exactly the same way he and the attendees of the National Right To Life Convention do. First he defines what her life means, and then sorrowfully recounts how she just hasn’t learned the right lessons from his definition of her life.

Y’know, it’s a wonder that man can walk and talk and dress himself, going through life as he is with his head shoved up his ass. Digby and Shakesis also, um, comment. However, somebody needs to explain a few things to Jonathan Chait. He ain’t gettin’ it.

In the short run, the bill Wendy Davis blocked on Wednesday will almost certainly pass into law eventually. And wingnut state legislators will continue to pass transvaginal ultrasound requirements and defund Planned Parenthood and find ways to close clinics for the wommenfolks’ own good, you know. Because they can’t leave well enough alone (see previous post about GOP crack).

But in the long run — well, I do believe I feel the turning of the tide. And I’m not alone. See:

On Wendy Davis, the Supreme Court, and Speaking Out As Women

Wendy Davis’ abortion law filibuster may be a ‘Texas Spring’

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/06/wendy-davis-scotus-and-speaking-out-as-women.html?test=true

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-is-wendy-davis-abortion-law-filibuster-a-texas-spring-20130627,0,6885101.story

Wendy Davis, Feminist Superhero

Wendy and the Boys

Yes, Rick Perry and the Texas troglodytes will pass their bill. Please proceed, governor. This is just getting started.

GOP Crack — Race and Abortion

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Joshua Green writes at Bloomberg Businessweek that yesterday’s voting rights decision is a poison chalice for the GOP.

Many of the GOP’s current problems stem from the fact that it is overly beholden to its white, Southern base at a time when the country is rapidly becoming more racially diverse. …

… The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a central provision of the Voting Rights Act will make it easier for Republicans to hold and expand their power in those mainly Southern states. That will, in turn, make it easier for them to hold the House. It will also intensify the Southern captivity of the GOP, thereby making it harder for Republicans to broaden their appeal and win back the White House.

Several states are rushing ahead to put voter ID laws in place. Will redistricting be far behind? See also Voter IDers Hit The Ground Running After Supreme Court Ruling.

The first comment to Green’s opinion piece says, “More apt, this decision is a crack pipe for the GOP. They won’t be able to help themselves.” That’s right. Just watch the Republican base push to disenfranchise every person of color south of the Mason-Dixon, wherever that is, and quite a few north of that, as well. I am hoping for a new and energetic voting rights movement to arise from this. I’m also hoping for a big fight in Washington, with clearly drawn lines between the pro- and anti- voting rights crowd.

The other issue they cannot leave alone is abortion. Following Wendy Davis’s heroic filibuster in Austin that blocked an abortion restriction bill, you know that a bunch of old white guys (and a few addled women) will keep trying until they see to it that Texas women will be going to Mexico for abortions. Mexico will have to build its own fence.

But in the long run, I don’t see this as helping the GOP expand its base. It’ll thrill the base it’s already got, but it’s also serving notice to younger women that they’d better get their butts to the polls if they want to keep their reproductive rights.

See also Wendy Davis’s Filibuster By the Numbers

Voting Rights Act Gutted

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This may be the most destructive SCOTUS since Justice Taney et al. decided Dred Scott. First Citizens United; now this.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that Congress had not provided adequate justification for subjecting nine states, mostly in the South, to federal oversight.

“In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were.”

Does Justice Roberts live on the moon? Has Justice Roberts even visited this country?

I linked it in the last post, but a lot of what Chris Hayes says here applies to the SCOTUS and this decision — the nature of the South; the sort of people who rise to prominent positions.

A Trial Begins

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Today attorneys made opening statements in the George Zimmerman trial. CNN says the defense attorney began with a knock knock joke.

Following Guy’s statement, defense attorney Don West came forward to woo the jury. As he began, he told a knock-knock joke. But it failed to win a laugh. “Knock knock. Who’s there? George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman who? Good, you’re on the jury,” he said.

Yeah, I’m sure that made an impression.

I mostly want to call your attention to “The Quote That Should End the Trayvon Trial.” John Richardson writes,

George Zimmerman is going to be found guilty. All the evidence you need — all the evidence the cops needed — is right there in the interrogation they did with him three days after the shooting. The only thing more shocking than what Zimmerman says in the clip, which was released on the internet one year ago, is how little it has impressed the bloviating jerks who dominate the coverage of this trial.

Richardson provides a partial transcript of the tape with his own comments. What comes across is that (a) Zimmerman wasn’t taking the crime all that seriously; and (b) the cops clearly knew Zimmerman’s account didn’t add up, but they let him go, anyway.

Republicans for a Wasteful, Bloated Government Spending Program

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I had heard that the Senate was about to vote on the immigration reform bill, but I’m watching C-Span, and Sen. Jeff Sessions (Neanderthal-Alabama) is speaking against cloture. So I don’t know what’s going on with that. Word is that the bill will pass reasonably easily in the Senate but most likely will die in the House.

Senate Republicans are getting on board because the bill includes $4.5 billion in new border-security technology spending, a provision that Sen. Patrick Leahy calls “a Christmas wish list for Halliburton.” Well, it’s not like we need money for anything else.

Greg Sargent says the bill could pass in the House, but only if speaker Boehner allows it to come to a vote, knowing that more Dems than Republicans will vote for it.