Month: September 2011

That's the name of Dustin Lance Black's new play, composed of transcripts from California's Prop 8 trial. A snippet:

BOIES: Let me try to make this question as simple as I can. Have any of the scholars that you have said you relied on said, in words or in substance, that permitting same-sex marriage will cause a reduction in heterosexual marriage? That’s “yes,” “no,” or “I don’t know.”
BLANKENHORN: I know the answer. I cannot answer you accurately if the only words I’m allowed to choose from is “yes” or “no.” I can give you my answer very briefly in one sentence.
JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER: If you know the answer, why don’t you share it with us?
BLANKENHORN: I would be happy to, but he is only permitting me to give “yes” and “no,” and I cannot do that and be accurate.
WALKER: He is giving you three choices, “yes,” “no,” “I don’t know.”
BLANKENHORN: But I do know. I do know the answer. . . . One sentence is all I’m asking for.
WALKER: All right. Let’s take a sentence. One sentence.
BLANKENHORN: Can you ask me the question again, please?

Robert Chesney pushes back against Greenwald and co.'s line:

I suspect that their view was that deadly force was only compatible with the 5th Amendment in this setting because al-Awlaki was located, purposefully, in a place where neither the host-state government nor the United States had a plausible opportunity to capture him.

Ben Wittes seconds:

It is not enough to say the words “due process” by way of denouncing the Al Aulaqi strike, as though those words represent a discussion-ending argument. One has to specify what process is due to someone being targeted in a particular circumstance before one concludes that the targeting violates due process. If targeting Al Aulaqi were really an assertion of the power to kill any U.S. citizen anywhere based on his speech, I would find it alarming indeed. But I am, in fact, quite certain that Bobby is correct that it is no such thing.

Photo caption from the "Shit My Kids Ruined" tumblr:

New tub of Desitin + new tub of Vaseline + new container of powder + extra long “nap” = reminder to get a tubal ligation

A reader writes:

No one is telling Ms. Olsen she has to have kids. Her doc is only telling her that, at 24, there is something to be said for sticking with reversible methods. (I wish someone would say the same to young people getting stupid tattoos.) Having been both 24 and 34, I will not say that everyone must or should have children, but I will say that the world can look very different to you ten years later, and closing off options unnecessarily is a darn shame. 

Another offers some great advice:

Olsen can shut concerned people up by telling them that if she does change her mind, she can still have a baby even if she gets her tubes tied.  In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) was developed specifically to help woman whose fallopian tubes were nonfunctional to get pregnant.  It bypasses the tubes entirely and transfers a fertilized egg (or eggs) directly into the uterus.  So if she has her tubes tied, and changes her mind, she can always undergo IVF. A pretty expensive form of birth control, but she can have her cake and eat it too. 

Several other readers share their stories:

I totally understand what the young woman was saying about the difficulty in finding someone to tie her tubes. I had mine tied when I was 22; I'm now 55. I was able to find a doctor through Planned Parenthood.  I was turned down by two doctors due to my age before I called PP. They referred me to a doctor in a large city a couple of hours from my home. Even so, I had a consult with him where I had to vigorously defend my position.  

I was raised by an alcoholic mother and alcoholic stepfather and was terrified of being a bad parent and had no stable, loving parents (except those of my friends).  I married at 19 and had a daughter when I was 20 and was terrified that I would really screw her up and sure didn't want to bring more children in the world.  

As it turns out, I did a pretty good job of parenting and my daughter is currently expecting her first baby.  She was in junior high when I went to college and high school when I went to law school. Despite all the odds, she and I both turned out pretty good.  

Do I regret having my tubes tied in hindsight?  Every once in a while I wonder what if, but I was very well aware of what I was doing, despite my young age.  Would I do it again?  Absolutely!  I've spent most of my reproductive years not having to worry about contraception and side effects or "mistakes". Good luck with your doctor search, young lady.  Young women are certainly capable of making a lifetime decision at that age and I'm sure you will find a doctor eventually.

A female reader writes:

My wife is 27. I am 47. At the time we got together, we both knew that we wouldn't have kids because frankly, I didn''t want school-aged children in my 50s. Three years ago, she got the first of three tumors in her ovaries. When we were discussing options, she wanted to get a hysterectomy but was told over and over again that she was too young and that she'd change her mind. Three operations and a hysterectomy later, she's been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Though it is a pointless exercise, both of us wonder that if the doctors had listened to us three years ago and let her have the hysterectomy then, would she be staring down the long tunnel of chemotherapy treatments now? All I can say is, if young women want to remove their uteruses, let them! There's tons of children in the world waiting to be adopted, if they ever change their minds.

Another:

Like Ms. Olsen, I've known all my life that I did not want kids – well, since the age of eight. My doctor gave me the same "pep talk" about tubal ligation at the age of thirty-three.  So, I've been on the birth control pill for over 23 years; I can't fathom that much estrogen and/or prestogen hasn't hurt my body more than one surgery would have.  I am, after all, the only one in my family with high blood pressure.

I'm married now.  Both my husband and I are too comfortable with our lives (and a little too old at over 40) to have children.  I am very much in love with him; I would have gone through pregnancy and childbirth for us, as an expression of our love.  I never thought that sea-change was possible for me – something I my younger self could never have foreseen.  Thankfully, my husband didn't see offspring as a "required" element for a happy, fulfilling life.

However, I do take comfort that there are "non-breeders" out there.  We are becoming a bit more vocal in our choices, a bit more acceptable to others. (Even Helen Mirren recently was quoted as never having that biological urge.) Perhaps as a true feminism takes deeper root, in which women are seen fully as equals, the need to defend and justify one's "non-breeding" existence will disappear.

On the heels of this week's terrorism scare, Glenn Greenwald takes the FBI to task:

Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out — only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.

Julian Sanchez contemplates the government's strategy:

One possible motive for these elaborate and highly publicized stings is that, whether or not the particular people they indict would have moved from rage to action without prompting, the steady stream of news reports will eventually force any candidate for jihad to assume that an “Al Qaeda recruiter” who approaches them is much more likely to be an FBI informant or undercover agent than a genuine operative. That’s likely to make it much harder for any real recruiters who’ve gone undetected to rope in anyone savvy enough to be truly dangerous.

"The literary critic James Wood once described a certain kind of freshly adopted religious commitment this way: 'It is like entering prison: you must turn out your spiritual pockets and hand over all your inner belongings, even your shoelaces.' Well, [David Mamet] has handed over his shoelaces, voluntarily stripped, and appears eager for a cavity search," – Scott Galupo, on Mamet's conversion to neoconservatism.

Stan Collender defends his anti-dollar coin argument:

To John Bohn and everyone else who said all we have to do is eliminate the dollar bill so retailers and everyone else would have no choice but to use the coin…Are you really suggesting that the federal government mandate that merchants incur an additional cost so that its own deficit would be smaller?  Remember…it costs a great deal more to a retailer to have coins instead of dollar bills delivered because of the additional weight.  The amazing thing to me is that anyone who claims tea party credentials, as the sponsors of the legislation that would create the new dollar coin do, would even consider promoting something that businesses would likely consider the equivalent of a new federal tax.

A reader's proposal here.

Gavin Polone asks:

Whom are we protecting by not allowing fuck on broadcast and basic cable TV? I love the word fuck.

But wouldn't the mainstream use of the word take away the taboo fun? Alyssa Rosenberg reframes the question:

Unlike "fuck," which as Polone points out, can be used in a variety of contexts, and with a variety of intentions, "bitch" has essentially no uses except to degrade people. … "Bitch" is a far more hostile term than "fuck." The fact that the former’s permitted while the latter’s banned says a mouthful.

For your NSFW viewing pleasure, a trove of cinematic F-bombs here.

"There's simply no way [Obama] can be president and be honest with the country about race. The one time he tried it, during Gates-gate, he paid for it," – Ta-Nehisi Coates.