Whiskey for Breakfast

I'm not a huge fan of some St Patrick's Day traditions. Do not offer me a green beer as I'm as likely to throw it in your face as drink it. Don't try and tell me that boiling is a reasonable way to cook meat. And for fuck's sake, hold your booze or don't grab it in the first place. Despite my distaste for a certain extent of affection for the holiday. My love of whiskey and stout are a matter of public record. I appreciate hearing Irish music on the radio, whether it be old-school folk, Thin Lizzy, the Pogues, the Cranberries, or the Dropkick Murphys, who here in Boston are practically an institution.

There are, of course, plenty of people who'd wish to be rid of the holiday, and aside from a general dislike of drunken and rowdy behavior, there tend to be two main arguments against it. One came from my years at a Catholic School, where they told us that St Patrick would have hated St. Patrick's Day. Which is true. St. Patrick's attitude toward the Irish (he was from Roman Britain) was very similar to current Western attitudes towards Africa. The Irish, to him, were a bestial lot, save for those who had already converted. He was appalled by the drinking and revelry and the matriarchal Druidic spiritualism. Getting up at 8 to go to the pub and not coming back home until the night in his his name is the sort of thing that would really piss him off.

My response to that, you may not be surprised to hear, is fuck that guy

Which brings me around to the other criticism, which is that St. Pat's is a celebration of the banishment of paganism from Ireland. Indeed, that is what the whole "chasing out the snakes" story was a metaphor for. Which is true, when you're talking about the holy day of obligation celebrated in Ireland. From where I'm sitting on this side of the Atlantic, the timeline reads a bit different. The ministry of St Patrick was the first wave of social and religious engineering in Ireland coming out of Britain. The second began in the 17th century, only this time with more plunder and exploitation, and was eventually a significant cause of emigration to America.    I've often found it kind of cool that the Irish wound up being a defining feature of Boston, which was founded by the witch-crazed American counterparts of the Puritans who helped drive them out in the first place.

Here in Boston, St Patrick's Day is also known as Evacuation Day, the day in 1776 that the British were repelled from Boston, thanks to freshly installed cannons on Dorchester Heights. Here in America, the British Invasion was turned back, and instead of celebrating the triumph of Catholicism over paganism, we celebrate the Irish. I won't pretend that all or even any Americans who celebrate St Patrick's Day share my narrative of the day, or are even aware of the history or the fact that they are dancing on the grave of the holiday's namesake as they celebrate it. But as a Bostonian Irish-American, a former Christmas and Easter Catholic turned atheist (after a couple years of fairly rigorous theological scholarship at the previously mentioned Catholic school) who occasionally identifies as a Solstice and Equinox witch, celebrating St. Paddy's is a yearly reminder that here in America, St Patrick lost.

You don't need to go out and puke on a stranger to appreciate the victory of merriment over guilt. If that's not your scene, you can do what I'm doing right now. Pour yourself a glass of whiskey (or any Irish libation of your choosing) and read Grace, by James Joyce. Happy St Patrick's Day, motherfuckers.

*mic drop*

Blogging for Choice: 38 Years Later

Tomorrow marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that held that all women have the right to an abortion, provided that the fetus isn't viable outside the womb.

It wasn't the end of the fight.  It was the beginning.  Thirty eight years later, we're somewhere in the middle.

Despite that crucial guarantee of a right to sovereignty over one's own body, notification laws, limited access, a lack of facilities, and the failure to enforce laws designed to protect the practitioners of abortion from threats and intimidation have deigned to pull those rights out from under those to whom they were guaranteed.

In many ways, the entirety of the struggle can be illustrated by the life of one doctor. George Tiller didn't set out to become an abortion provider.  He graduated from Kansas School of Medicine in 1967. He went on to hold a medical internship with the US Navy, serving his country as a flight surgeon. Upon leaving the Navy, he had intended to become a dermatologist. That same year, tragedy struck his family.  His sister died in a plane crash, along with his parents and his brother-in-law.  He found himself responsible for both his sister's child and his father's family medical practice, which local women sometimes relied upon for abortions. He changed his mind about closing the facility when he learned of a woman who died of complications resulting from an illegal abortion.

From then on, George Tiller found himself in the cross-hairs of a dedicated, relentless, hateful movement deadset on stopping abortions by any means necessary.  For those who believe that violent political rhetoric doesn't lead to violence, I need only say the name Operation Rescue. The rabid picketers, the wanted posters with his picture, the speech by Congressman Robert K Dorman on the floor of the House where he was referred to as "Tiller the Baby Killer"... I defy anyone to say with a straight face that they had nothing to do with the fact that in 1986 his clinic was firebombed. That in 1993 he was shot five times while sitting in his car.  Or that last year he was shot through the eye while serving as an usher at his church.

Even gang bangers respect a Sunday morning.

That is the epitome what it means to stand up for a woman's right to choose. To persevere knowing that people want you dead. To contend alike with misguided protesters and those who fall directly within the realm and sphere of domestic terrorism, and never knowing for sure which are which. After the firebombing, Tiller posted a sign outside his clinic that read "hell no, we won't go." as it was being rebuilt. After he was shot the first time, he went right back to work as soon as he could. He was well aware what he was doing. He was laying his life before women in need because nobody else would do the work. In the midst of all manner of heated rhetoric surrounding the abortion debate, his message was simple.

And Tiller wasn't the only one. Only the most notable.

Today, even after progressives were forced to make a sadistic choice between a woman's right to choose and a step towards universal healthcare, and managed to find a third way around it, the House of Representatives has decided to go after abortion rights.

It never ends.

It never.  fucking.  ends.

And so we can't stop either.  Not until there isn't a single woman in America who needs to carry a pregnancy to term if she doesn't want to.  Not until there isn't a single pharmacy that refuses to dispense contraception-- to anyone.  Not until there isn't a single hospital that will turn away a rape victim seeking EC.

Roe v Wade, as strange as it may seem, wasn't just about women's rights.  The abortion debate as a whole isn't just about women's rights, though obviously that's what's most important. Roe v Wade was the first blow struck for an idea whose time still hasn't fully come.  The notion that every one of us has the right to sovereignty over our own bodies, no matter what that means.  There is a bright line that can be drawn between Roe v Wade and Lawrence v Texas. Who knows?  Maybe one day that same principle will put this senseless, regressive, destructive War on Drugs to an end once and for all. One day soon it will grant us the right to marry whomever we wish.

The moral arc of the Universe is long, and it bends towards Justice.

But we have to bend it.

To All Those Who Have Served, Thank You

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the First World War-- perhaps the single ugliest, most brutal war of the modern era for those who fought it-- was ended.  For years following, that day was remembered as Armistice Day.  The day the horrors of war were over, if only for a decade.

Forty-five years later, a shoe store owner from Emporia, Kansas by the name of Alfred King, whose son fought in the Second World War, decided that it wasn't enough, and he and his local Chamber of Commerce took up the cause of devoting the day to honoring all who had served in the United States Military.  With the help of their representative in the US House, Ed Rees, a resolution was passed by Congress and signed by President Dwight Eisenhower declaring that November the 11th be known as Veterans Day.

Those who serve deserve more than our nominal support, which Aaron Sorkin has articulated quite well today here.  I suggest that you read it, because it's important.

As a country, we haven't earned the sacrifices of our brave men and women in uniform.

We ought to start trying harder to do so.

To anyone who has served our country honorably in peace or in war, you have my thanks.

As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs

I recently re-read Chapter 7 of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States of America, As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs-- a reference to possibly the single most infuriating unfulfilled promise in the history of America. And there are many in the running.

Say to my reel Choctaw children, and my Chickasaw children to listen-my white children of Mississippi have extended their law over their country. .. . Where they now are, say to them, their father cannot prevent them from being subject to the laws of the state of Mississippi. . .. The general government will be obliged to sustain the States in the exercise of their right. Say to the chiefs and warriors that I am their friend, that I wish to act as their friend but they must, by removing from the limits of the States of Mississippi and Alabama and by being settled on the lands I offer them, put it in my power to be such-There, beyond the limits of any State, in possession of land of their own, which they shall possess as long as Grass grows or water runs. I am and will protect them and be their friend and father.

Spoiler Alert: Andrew Jackson was a dick.

Today, there's the promise we collectively made to the great American city of New Orleans. My failure to visit that city before it was ravished by Hurricane Katrina-- with an assist from the Army Corps of Engineers-- is something I will regret for some time. Today, the Lower Ninth Ward still stands in shambles. What relief money wasn't blown on oil subsidies and perks to corporations that weren't hurt by the hurricane was channeled to the tourist areas. And now even the people who owned their own homes can't afford to come back. They've been forced off of their lands, and this time around those who forced them out through a gross misapplication of relief funds have offered nothing in recompense.

There's also the promise from our elected leaders that they would put the success of our country before their own success politically, whether by guile or by gutlessness. And the promise that capitalism would furnish us a better future than that of our parents. Our current President's promise to be a "Fierce Advocate" for the LGBTQ community is as of yet in the same territory. The promise to rebuild Afghanistan was deferred to the point where it may yet be impossible to carry out.in favor of our misadventure in Iraq, where we may never have had the chance to keep the promises we made.

Let alone the promise of freedom of religion. Seriously. What the fuck. Even Jon Stewart doesn't get it. He equates the GOP talking point that the Park51 Islamic Center is a monument of victory for terrorists with the counter-argument that the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan is celebrating opposition to the mosque. He says, in this clip, "How about we not give a fuck about what the terrorists think."

I love Jon Stewart, but sometimes I get pissed off at the false equivalences that he espouses. This one clocks in at eight megatons. Simply put, the War on Terror, for lack of a better phrase, is not solely a military engagement, even where we have boots on the ground. Indeed, General David Petraeus' Counter-Insurgency strategy in Afghanistan explicitly depends on a commitment to dismantling the Taliban/Al-Queda narrative that America is at war with Islam. When 70% of Americans express an intent to force the Cordoba House off of the property that they rightfully own because they don't think it's American enough to be two blocks away from Ground Zero, they are reinforcing that narrative.  They are making it easier for the enemies of freedom to  recruit new blood, raise money, and be accepted by a greater percentage of the Muslim world.

This may not come as a surprise, but this opposition isn't really about Ground Zero being hallowed ground. At least, it isn't only about that. Ever since 9/11, plans for new mosques and Islamic centers across the country have been beleaguered by the opposition of unscrupulous bigots. In 2008, I helped my friend Matt Porter shoot interviews for his documentary about such a conflict in Boston. Today, it's worse. Local politicians have felt completely safe adding their voices to the mix, most likely emboldened because of the public support for those speaking out against Park51 in Manhattan (whose residents, it should be pointed out, don't oppose its construction). In Tennesee, it's gotten violent.

In Gainesville, Florida, a Koran burning is set to take place on the ninth anniversary of the attacks on Manhattan and Washington DC. The pastor whose parish has sponsored the event says that he's aware of General David Petraeus' warning that such a display puts our military and civilian efforts to combat violent extremism in Afghanistan and around the globe at risk. That even rumors about it will boost recruitment and fundraising efforts for the Taliban. His response? He's praying about it. He says that it would be tragical{sic} if anybody gets hurt because of his church's actions. He also says that he thinks Petraeus is wrong, and that it wouldn't be on his fault if the General was right and there is a body count that results from his actions.

The leadership of the Republican Party have as of this writing failed to speak out against the event, despite their former assertion that we listen to our generals on matters of national security. They've also generally failed to speak out against anti-mosque rhetoric and violence in places that aren't near Ground Zero. And yet, they say, Muslims will still enjoy freedom of religion.

As long as grass grows or water runs.