F THE COURT

Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and the four other Supreme Court judges who voted to take away a woman’s right to choose on Friday can go f-ck themselves.

And kiss my gay ass.

So can anyone who wouldn’t vote for Hillary in 2016 because she wasn’t progressive enough or who just didn’t like or trust her.

As for those who cast their vote for Trump, I hope hell does exist so you can spend eternity there with him.   You will see what an immoral, lying prick he always was up close as you both burn in perpetuity/forever. 

This x 1000

Yeah, I’m pissed off.

In overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that allowed women the freedom of choice over whether to terminate their own pregnancies, the Supreme Court has ruled the majority of the population does not have equal protection under the law.

That right is guaranteed under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The amendment was enacted in 1868 and is credited in great part for ending slavery.  Its primary text is pretty simple.  It states:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

well… except women

Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe based on his view as a constitutional originalist.  What this means is that he strictly wants to adhere to the literal text of 150 years ago AND what HE interprets as its intent.

In this case, Alito reasons the amendment only protects rights that he claims were already understood to exist in 1868Since numerous states banned abortion 150 years ago, Alito claims the reasoning behind the 1973 Roe case encompassing the right to an abortion is wrong.

He neglects to also mention that in 1868 no woman had the right to vote in the U.S.  Anywhere.  And certainly not one to serve on any court in charge of making laws.

Time to buy winter coats

Or that in citing logic from 17th century judge Sir Matthew Hale in his Roe ripping decision, he is quoting a man who sentenced women to death as witches; and a man who originated the legal notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives.

Go f-k yourself, Sam.  Again.

Here’s an interesting fact amid this insanity.

Judge Alito is a 1972 graduate of Princeton University.  Princeton was an all male school until 1969, when its board finally agreed to admit women for the first time in its 150-year history.  This was a few months after Yale University did the same and was the beginning of a nationwide trend giving women equal opportunities under the law.

But this evolution of social mores made a small but very vocal minority of Princeton graduates real angry.  So they formed an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) in 1972 in opposition to that and other evolving…um…changes.

Can you guess who was among that small group of concerned men in CAP?  If you guessed Alito, that doctrinaire originalist, you would be correct.

Look who’s at it again

This, of course, is not the most interesting part of the story.  More fascinating is that there have since been many female graduates of Princeton University.  Among them is a brilliant African American activist.  Her name is Alexis McGill Johnson. 

Ms. McGill Johnson graduated Princeton in 1993 with a degree in political science, 20 some years after Alito did with a similar major, despite his best efforts to thwart any female’s attempts to do so.  She also went on to receive her M.A. from Yale in 1995 in that same subject. 

And this was exactly 20 years to the date after what happened?  Anyone?  Well, Judge Alito also graduating from Yale with a Juris Doctor, of course!

Thankfully, that is where the similarity ends.  While Judge Alito became a lifelong originalist, refusing to bend his views towards anyone or anything happening around him, Ms. McGill Johnson has used her education to help poor and minority communities.  This culminated with her becoming president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in 2019. 

Worth a follow!

So let’s hear her take on how to fight her fellow Princeton and Yale alum’s decision to dump Roe v. Wade and take away a woman’s right to choose:

…We are not going back and we are not going to back down.  We are going to take this fight STATE to STATE.  Every single person who is running for anything is going to EAT. THIS.  DECISION. FOR. BREAKFAST. 

And you wonder why I like her?

I happened to hear this quote on a segment Katy Tur was hosting on MSNBC and it intrigued me to see that Katy was a bit taken aback by the colorfully blunt imagery Ms. McGill Johnson used to categorize the path going forward.  It was unlike the forceful  but more politely intellectual jargon most guests on news programs use these days and it took Katy everything she had to restrain herself from asking if this was her best course of action. 

This is the vibe we need

But, well, how else DO you react on the DAY of this decision?  Do you bring a knife to a gunfight, to quote Chicago cop Jim Malone (as played Sean Connery) as he tried to take down organized crime mobster Al Capone and his gang in the 1987 film The Untouchables?  (Note: A reference I hesitate to make as it was thought up by The Untouchables screenwriter David Mamet, a very talented guy I once admired who has since become a right wing crazy).

Well, I say you can’t.  Bring a knife to a gunfight, that is. 

Not when the concurrent nauseating opinion striking down Roe this week was written by the even more conservative and much more morally questionable Judge Clarence Thomas, wife of conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier Ginni Thomas.

In his support for Judge Alito’s POV, Judge Thomas writes:

In future cases, we should reconsider ALL of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, specifically citing Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception), Lawrence (same-sex marriage), and Obergefell  (same-sex marriage). Because any substantive due process decision is ‘DEMONSTRABLY ERRONEOUS, “’ we have a duty to ‘CORRECT THE ERROR’ established in those precedents.”

This is only the start

In simpler language this means he is itching to repeal laws that allow you to obtain birth control, enter into a same sex marriage or to have whatever kind of sex you like with another consenting adult behind closed doors.  Aside from, I assume, the missionary position (Note: No offense to that well worn sexual preference but I’m not sure there was much more you could do, at least legally, back in 1868).

Curiously enough, Judge Thomas made zero mention mention of the landmark 1967 Loving vs. Virginia decision, which banned laws against interracial marriage.  That decision was won by citing the same due process/equal protection precedents that enabled the passage of Roe, same sex marriage, et al.

Or course, it is up to you to decide if the marriage between Judge Thomas, a Black man, and his wife Ginni, a white woman, had anything to do with that, um, omission.  But here’s 2022’s honorary Oscar winning Black actor Samuel L. Jackson on the subject the day Thomas’ viewpoint was released:

The gang of right wing activist hypocrites now sitting on the Court might feel, to some of us, unrepresentative of a representative democracy that overwhelmingly believes in a women’s right to choose.

Until you think about our  representatives and we, the people, who voted them in.

Maine senator Susan Collins is very concerned that Roe repealing judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied to her in their confirmation hearings when they privately told her Roe was precedent and that they would not be inclined to repeal it.

Really???  Or did she choose to believe a word dodge for her own political survival, or at least expediency.  I, for one, don’t think Collins was dumb enough to believe them.  Despite my disdain for her morally.

What say you, Senator Collins?

It is also worth noting that justice Thomas was appointed by George HW Bush, Justice Alito was anointed by George W. Bush, and Judges Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett were Trump appointees.

Those of you who voted for those presidents because of your pocketbooks, or sat out those races because you didn’t like or wanna hang out with Hillary, Gore or Dukakis, what the f-ck did you think was going to happen????

It bears repeating!!!!

Democracy is a very imperfect form of government but unfortunately just about every other form of government pales in comparison.   As they say.  Or someone once said.

You never get everything you want.  But if you choose not to enthusiastically participate for some of the things you prefer, you run the risk of receiving everything you hate, and then some.

We can only rag on these mother f-ckng judges and Trump for so long.

If we don’t learn from our mistakes and adjust accordingly, f-ck us.  Because we will be f-cked.   For good.  In a very bad way.

Olivia Rodrigo – “F*** You” (feat. Lily Allen)

Sorry, No, Not quite

My dear friend, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, and who is also a Jewish lesbian married to a blonde, native-born German woman both she and I and my husband adore, told me to write about this.

Not that I wouldn’t have.

The this is one of thousands of takeaways I had the day after watching the hours-long live stream of what now looks like approximately 5000 (mostly) White domestic terrorists storming the doors of Capitol Hill more than a week ago.

But first a Quick Recap of Their Mission:

To HANG MIKE PENCE!, kidnap and/or murder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and stop the count of the Electoral College votes that were about to ratify Joe Biden as our new president.

All so they could ultimately… keep Donald J. Trump in the White House?

Still… trying… to… understand

Yeah, as crazy, unlikely and run-on-of-a-sentence-and-scheme all of the above would seem, especially to friends of mine who died in the eighties and nineties, every bit of it is true.  

What is also true is the cornucopia of crazy among the crowd.  A veritable live basket of the very same metaphorical deplorables that Hillary Clinton got castigated for calling out, say, some 1000 years ago at this point.

She won’t say “I told you so” but we know… we know.

You had the conspiracy theorists and the racists.  The amateur militia men and women playing dress-up, as well as the real-life former, present or retired men and women of the military and/or law enforcement who decided, well, enough is enough with the rule of law they’d spent most of their lives defending. There are some things that are simply worth dying and defacing for.

There were also the tourists there for a good time taking selfies, the scatological freaks who wanted to relieve themselves somewhere in the Capitol Rotunda so they’d have a story to tell their grandchildren (Note: What other reason COULD there be???), as well as any number of regular people that like to blow off steam at massive Trump rallies, especially ones where he says he’s going to fight along with them but fails to deliver on his promise (Note:  Are there any other kind?)

Easy to identify because they have a uniform

And then, somewhere in this very large and very motley group, because why wouldn’t they be, were the Jew haters.

Now I’m not saying there weren’t haters of many other stripes and colors worth noting.  But with so much hate boiling over so many in the US citizenry these days it’s surprising that I, Jew that I am, wouldn’t take this for granted. 

For when it comes to attempted executions and hate-filled rhetoric in a White nationalist revolution, we Jewish people have a permanent place on the menu.

No need… we know how this goes.

It’s like I know it, and yet, I sometimes forget, what with all my other offensive identities during the Trump years.  These include:

  1. A gay man from New York
  2. Who lives in Hollywood
  3. And alternately works as both a screenwriter AND as a college professor
  4. After being trained as a journalist and starting out as a reporter, nee member of the fake media
  5. A person who is and always will be a liberal Democrat, NEVER hesitates to share that with anyone and is ALWAYS up for an argument
My own version of a Golden Ticket!

Any one of these could probably get me trampled, pummeled, kidnapped or killed at any Trump event.  But add Jew to the mix at an insurrection and, well… it’s practically overkill.

So when I got a glimpse at the photo now seen round the world of the Jew-hating Trump supporter wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words CAMP AUSCHWITZ (Note: the renowned Nazi concentration camp) along with the sub-heading, WORK BRINGS FREEDOM, the English translation of the expression tacked right above the gate of the camp that tens of thousands of Jews entered but never exited from, is it any wonder all I could think of to do was roll my eyes and sigh,

Really, is THAT the best you can do?????

Full Miranda moment

It’s not that the man and his outerwear are not disgusting and outrageous but the truth is that just felt soooooo 1950s, standing there in a sweatshirt that was just that plain dumb and that plain uninspired. 

Where did you buy that, at the Third Reich outlet store in Boise?  Or Alexandria?  Is it poly cotton or all polyester?  Like we don’t know what you’re trying to do.

Sure there’s an element (well more than an element) of danger about it, but there’s not as much safety to be had these days as there used to be.  The key is to speak out to the imminent threat but to do so in a way, and with the folks and at the time, it will be the most effective… and most worth it.

It made me think of the incident writer-humorist Fran Lebowitz recently recounted in the great seven-episode limited Netflix documentary series her friend Martin Scorsese just directed about her, Pretend It’s A City.

Maybe the only person they’d hate more than me

Sometime in the eighties or nineties there became renewed interest in Nazi propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose fetishized images of the Third Reich and Hitler in such technically innovative films like Triumph of the Will and Olympia, began to be rediscovered and re-examined in light of her talents as a female filmmaking pioneer.

So much so that Ms. Riefenstahl had traveled to New York City, where a member of the artist crowd Fran knew invited her to a small dinner party he was planning to have with, um Leni, in attendance.

I have no interest in having dinner with her, Fran (LEBOWITZ) cuttingly replied.  And when he tried to get her to admit Leni was a great artist and how could she blah, blah, blah, she reiterated –

I. HAVE. NO. INTEREST. IN. HAVING. DINNER. WITH. HER.

It needed to be repeated #icant

It’s like arguing Hitler was a brilliant politician and for that reason alone he’d be worth a chat.

Or if Trump manages to avoid jail in his post-presidency and somewhere down-the-line he tries to get re-examined and re-invited back into mainstream acceptance, well maybe we can learn something from being in his presence again that we couldn’t discern on our own.

Can you even imagine?

Though one can’t help but wonder what would that inevitable dinner party look like?  Who would attend?  It certainly wouldn’t be any of the types just seen barnstorming Capitol Hill.  They are not how you rehabilitate an image.  They are simply an inconvenient truth.

Speaking of which, Trump’s alternative fact master, the very nimble though not a smidge more sincere Kellyanne Conway, proved this as a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night,the first stop on her mainstream rehabilitation tour.

Revealing it has been 8-9 months since she’s done a TV interview, to which Mr. Maher politely thanked her for choosing him because she had soooo many choices, the two paired for a cutesy old friends fest of polite jabs, fun times (Note: Remember that red, white and blue suit KCon wore to Trump’s inauguration – Bill loved it!) and gentle political banter.

Nope… no thank you… please go now.

Not only was it off-brand for the usually prickly Mr. Maher, it felt like the first step towards another type of revisionist history.  This would be a 21st century version of rehabilitation for yet another woman who, for reasons only truly known to herself, chose to employ her talent to promote a white male sociopathic political leader intent on bending the world to His Will and taking down anyone, and any country, including his own, in his way.

There should be no dinner parties, no Dancing with the Stars appearances and certainly no intellectual reexamination of anyone from those patently obvious end times we’ve just barely managed to live through.

Never forget this shanda

Instead we might consider justice through a series of trials for all those culpable like they did in Ms. Riefenstahl’s days, as well as the re-adoption of that age old, timeless slogan Never Again as we all attempt to pick up the pieces of our country and truly soldier on.

I know that’s this Jew’s plan.

The Chicks – “Not Ready to Make Nice”

Check out the Chair’s newest project, Pod From a Chair , now available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!