An Unspeakable Affront to Personal Autonomy

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Like a horrible nightmare that comes true the morning after, a bill mandating violation of a pregnant woman’s bodily autonomy has been passed by the Virginia legislature and VA Governor McDonnell has indicated he will sign it into law. If carried out as its proponents intend, it will unquestionably infringe on human rights, women’s rights, and doctors’ rights. I hope and imagine Planned Parenthood and other organizations will immediately file suit to prevent its implementation, but meantime it will be on the books, threatening every woman in the state, and every decent-thinking Virginian, female or male. For a political party that purportedly believes in keeping government out of the lives of citizens this legislation by Virginia Republicans is a breathtaking violation of its supposed principles. Dahlia Lithwick’s excellent column in Slate explains what is at stake, as does Michael Tomasky’s Newsweek/Daily Beast piece.

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“A Crass Attempt at Mass Identity Theft from the Deceased”

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Elie Wiesel has plaintively requested that Mitt Romney intervene with the Mormon church to insist that the organization finally end the barbaric and creepy practice of posthumous so-called “conversions” of non-Mormon decedents, including many Holocaust victims. Wiesel was interviewed tonight on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” where he explained that notwithstanding a mid-1990s agreement that was supposed to have ended the practice, a former Mormon researcher–Helen Radkey, who was also interviewed by O’Donnell–had informed Wiesel that the practice has never stopped. Wiesel learned that among those whose have been posthumously ‘claimed’ were the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, and weirdly, breaking with their own practice of claiming the deceased, Wiesel himself, and his wife.

Last October I wrote a blog post, “Hitchens’ Book of Mormon-ism,” after Christopher Hitchens published “Mitt Romney’s Mormon Problem” in Slate. Hitch’s piece, one of his last before he died in December, included a reference to a terrific book that I’d republished in 1995. By Facebook friend Alex Shoumatoff, The Mountain of Names is a superb study of human kinship and genealogy. As I wrote then, the Shoumatoff book’s “title is a direct reference to the bank of names that Mormons, at least until the mid-90s, kept in the rocky innards of a private peak in Utah. . . . In his inimitable way, Hitch tartly dubs this ‘a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased.’” Now we learn that the harvesting of names didn’t end then, and evidently has still not ceased. It’s a pity Hitch isn’t around to inveigh against this all the more.

A theology that envisions its modern day believers accruing some kind of divine credit for baptizing the dead is to me a bizarre and arrogant faith.
Feb. 16 update from a 2007 Newsweek interview with Mitt Romney:

“When asked by NEWSWEEK if he has done baptisms for the dead—in which Mormons find the names of dead people of all faiths and baptize them, as an LDS spokesperson says, to ‘open the door’ to the highest heaven—he looked slightly startled and answered, ‘I have in my life, but I haven’t recently.'”

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#Fridayreads/Feb 10–The Executioners

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#fridayreads Creator of the Travis McGee series, John D. MacDonald’s The Executioners the basis of “Cape Fear,” w/Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck.

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Who’s Mitt?

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Conservative pundits don’t agree among themselves on the question “Who is Mitt Romney? Today, after Mitt’s C-Pac speech, his campaign favored Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, an avid Romney booster all year, with a sit-down with the on-again, off-again frontrunner. She begins her account like a true homer, in unctuous tones:

“Following his very well received CPAC speech, I met with Mitt Romney in a small meeting room in the hotel where thousands of conservatives have gathered.”

She wants readers to believe this privileged access has afforded her deep insight into the pol’s deepest character traits:

“While his critics and much of the media ding him as ‘plastic,’ in person he is warmer and more at ease than the average pol. Most politicians after a big speech will pump you for compliments: ‘How was I? What d’ya think?’ Romney doesn’t do that, perhaps reflective of the fact that he really didn’t live most of his life as a politician and doesn’t crave personal approval as many who’ve spent their lives in public office do.'”

Got that? Mitt “doesn’t crave personal approval.”

But wait, what about David Brooks’s NY Times column this morning? Drawing on The Lonely Crowd, he cites Mitt as a classic example of the “other-directed personality type . . . attuned to what other people want him to be. The other-directed person is a pliable member of a team and yearns for acceptance.”

I favor Brooks’s interpretation, but reading these pieces in succession I chuckled and wondered, “Hey, guys, which Mitt is it?”

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Hyp–Hyp–Hypocrisy!

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From Saturday’s NY Times: “Although Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York has been leading the national fight against requiring Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and charities to cover birth control in their health insurance plans for employees and students, some Catholic institutions in his own diocese and others throughout New York State have for 10 years been complying with state law mandating precisely that coverage. The state began requiring contraception coverage in 2002, and Catholic institutions, after losing a court battle over the issue, have followed the law. . . . ‘We currently follow New York State law,’ Mr. Howe [Fordham’s director of communications] said. ‘For employees and students, we provide insurance coverage that includes contraception. That’s the law.'”

Governor of New York State in 2002? Republican George Pataki.

It’s pretty obvious the Catholic bishops’ opposition to the Obama’s administration’s policy of requiring contraceptive coverage is really all about opportunism, and trying to give President Obama a hard time.

Such hypocrisy.

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Hey, It Is the Twenty-First Century

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Feb. 10 Update: I think the White House’s accommodation on this issue–announced a few hours ago–is smart. Though the right-wing opposition to contraception won’t be quelled, it should accomplish the goal of all American women having equal access to contraceptives, with insurers absorbing the cost rather than employers, if the latter claim a religious objection to providing them. Although the health insurance lobby will object, insurers should accept this because it’s preventative care, always less expensive than the alternative, such as a pregnancy or the cost of an abortion. Politically, this will force the many right-wing politicians who’ve been raising a flurry about the administration’s policy to show their true colors–whether their objection is really one founded on religious freedom, as they’ve claimed, or simply stems from the regressive urge to block women’s access to reproductive choice.

I recognize that progress in human history isn’t inevitable, but we are living in the 21st century–oral contraceptives have been widely able since the 1970s, and we shouldn’t be going backwards. Yet you wouldn’t know it judging by how willing (mostly male) politicians are to take medical advances away from women that have been available for decades. As Irin Carmon wrote in Salon this week,

“Why are we still arguing about contraception in 2012? The Catholic bishops are free to make as many incendiary comments as they want, and they have, but that doesn’t mean that pundits should assume there’s a constituency beyond a bunch of celibate men and likely Republican voters that is actually going to be swayed by this. New polling on the topic shows, for example, that ‘a 53 percent majority of Catholic voters … favor the benefit, including fully 62 percent of Catholics who identify themselves as independents.’” // more. . .

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“Something Fierce” Wins Canada Reads: True Stories

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Congratulations to friends Emiko Morita, Jesse Finkelstein, and Scott McIntyre of Douglas & McIntyre Publishers of Vancouver for their book Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter by Carmen Aguirre being named winner of the “Canada Reads: True Stores” competition on CBC! It was brilliantly championed in this week-long on-air debate by musician Shad. The runner-up was Ken Dryden’s timeless hockey classic The Game. Other finalists during the week were On a Cold Road: Adventures in Canadian Rock by Dave Bidini, longtime member of the great band The Rheostatics; The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Valliant; and Prisoner of Tehran, a memoir by Marina Nemat. Hour-long discussions and debates on the five books have been held each day this week, carried on CBC Radio One, and on the CBC website, with each finalist championed, not by its author, but by an advocate. TV personality Alan Thicke boosted The Game, for instance, and also did a great job.

This was the first year Canada Reads was devoted to nonfiction books. The process began a few months ago with a longlist of fifty books, and through readers and fans voting for their favorite books, the crop was reduced to the shortlist of five. Despite issues I had with the judging at times seeming too much of a reality show, with books being eliminated one by one, and one advocate who I simply came to loathe, I think a months-long national reading fest like this is a great way to raise the awareness of books and reading among the widest possible population. I don’t suggest that the U.S. do this precisely, but initiatives with entire cities reading the same book have been quite successful. As members of the U.S. book community we certainly ought to continue experimenting with ways to heighten the visibility of great books and reading. Winners of Canada Reads invariably become huge national bestsellers. I find time after time that U.S. cultural industries–publishing and music especially–have a lot to learn from the ways that Canada promotes its arts and artists.

Something Fierce will be published in the US in August. I am getting a copy from D&M and will be writing about on this site.

[Feb. 10-This post has been updated with new information from the publisher in Vancouver about the forthcoming edition.]

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