"We have to pass voting rights no matter what. How are you going to insist on protecting minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society?" -Sen. Raphael Warnock
FOMO ON WISDOM • FOMO ON JUSTICE • FOMO ON MODERATION
If “Wisdom, Justice, Moderation” sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because the words form the three pillars of Georgia’s State Motto. (I had to memorize State Motto’s in elementary school; didn’t you?)
These days, they feel more of a troll than an exaltation. While the U.S. Senate stands poised to take up S. 1 -- the most expansive voting rights legislation in a generation — Georgia’s State Legislature just passed the most egregious contraction of voting rights since Jim Crow. State Rep. Park Cannon, above — standing beside the Georgia flag, emblazoned with said three pillars — is seen here being arrested and charged for two felonies by a State Trooper as she attempts to enter Governor Kemp’s chambers, as he signs S.B. 202. Black, female, and queer, law enforcement attempted to humiliate Rep. Cannon. But as The 19th reminds this, women of color lawmakers are frequently singled out for such attention.
This week’s FOMO examines the tension between America’s tradition of the rugged individual v. communitarianism – and its unintended consequences for the first anti-vaxxer case before SCOTUS a century ago; looks at the bad faith of anti-trans legislation and its direct link to thwarting the pending Equality Act; eavesdrops on the Koch’s horrible, no good, bad day leaked audio re: For The People Act; and cannot but help evangelize for cultural drops that auger the start of spring.
An Anti-Vaxx Origin Story
This February, New York’s WNYC Studios and The Atlantic came together to launch The Experiment. The inquiry in question is our Republic, following on the show’s subtitle: “Stories of an Unfinished Country.” I’m just catching up and decided to binge most recent first. The Crime of Refusing Vaccination refers to the curious case of Massachusetts Pastor Henning Jacobson and his principled stand – in 1901 – to not accept the smallpox vaccine: “Nobody can tell me what to put in my body.”
His case ultimately became Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which SCOTUS decided that the government could mandate vaccination, arguing that collective good sometimes outweighs individual rights. (Which is interesting, given SCOTUS’ recent Covid decisions in Pennsylvania and California. But I digress.) The story doesn’t end there. A generation on, Jacobson is successfully used as precedent when – at the height of the eugenics movement – Virginia passes a law making it legal to force sterilization upon those it deems “unfit.” In this case, it sterilizes an institutionalized Carrie Buck. Justice Oliver Holmes – in one of the most egregious statements in the history of the Court -- opined, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Somehow we get from Jacobson and Buck, to today’s vaccine denial. And this announcement:
Evolution is…. Not Linear. At least not in Florida.
With the House’s passage of H.R. 1 earlier this month, it’s scheduled to be taken up by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer very shortly. With dozens of states – Georgia leading the pack -- passing legislation designed to make voting onerous for People of Color, as well as college students, and generally all working people, the “For the People Act” is an end run around voter suppression. As I’ve written in prior FOMO’s, passage would require not a simple majority, but 60 Senators to vote for the Act. Good luck with that! To reform the filibuster requires 50 votes, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Colorado’s Kyrsten Sinema continue to feign fidelity to a tradition which has historically upheld segregation and oppression. That said, there are signs that they might be willing to show some filibuster flexibility – if for just this legislation. Without it, there will never be a Democratic state-wide majority again.
Money For Nothing
If you think that sounds histrionic, don’t take my word. Listen to Billionaires. The legendary Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money, just published an exposé of a recent Koch Brothers’ Stand Together briefing to emissaries from the Senate Minority Leader’s office. Held just two days after the January 6th Insurrection, this leaked ten-minute audio is the sad share of a research director unable to disguise just how popular H.R. 1 is across America – even Republicans support it. Have a listen, and think back to late November, just after the election, when Charles Koch went on book tour for Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World (not gonna link) pledging that he had renounced his partisan ways and would heretofore be a bridge builder.
I guess that didn’t take. Right, Axios? One of the codicils that strikes terror in the hearts of the political gentry is sunlight ending dark money; which this bill does.
Who else has Charles Koch’s number? The good people at the Behind The Bastards podcast. Two years ago, they assayed a two-parter Kochs’ origin story, and, let me tell you, it makes Charles Foster Kane’s upbringing look pastoral.
The Republican War On Trans Youth
While I have some confidence that H.R. 1 will become law – there is no one more eloquent in the U.S. Senate than newcomer Rev. Senator Raphael Warnock -- I worry deeply that the Equality Act has no such advocate in its corner and that it will go up in flames. Why? Because Republicans are putting in the work. While I’ve lived through plenty of anti-gay legislation (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; Defense of Marriage Act) there has never been this much coordinated anti-LGBT work product in a single legislative cycle. And… a big piece of this is demonizing trans youth, who already have one of the highest suicide rates of any demographic in the country. State legislators in more than 20 states are working on banning transgender youth from accessing healthcare or participating in athletics. Bathroom bans now look quaint.
It was with a Cheshire smile that Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed HB 1570, the ironically named "Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act," into law this week, permitting physicians to deny care to transgender youth on the basis of… “conscience.” Mississippi’s man baby governor Tate Reeves quickly followed, signing into law a ban against transgender athletes from competing. Apart from the inevitable lawsuits, I would HOPE that the American Medical Association does more than express “concern,” and that it revokes the medical license of any doctor who literally DOES HARM.
This is an interactive legislative tracker of all anti-LGBTQ legislation making its way through State legislatures. Here’s Masha Gesson in the New Yorker on how this legislation has no basis in science. The Guardian actually reaches out to trans kids to tell their own stories.
Depending on the force of the arguments – not necessarily their urgency – Joe Machin is likely to support the number of the Equality Act. My worry beads are twisting over Kyrsten Sinema --- only our second ever openly queer Senator – and first bi legislator in the upper chamber – that she is, as Josh Marshall said the other day, “a poseur.”
I didn’t mean to bury the lede, but we can and should celebrate Dr. Rachel Levine, our new Assistant Secretary of Health, who becomes the highest-ranking openly transgender government official in US history. I hope she wades into this fight as an EXPERT on trans health - Rand Paul be damned. #TransRightsAreHumanRights
Extremities
I really tried watching Q: Into The Storm, the HBO Q-Anon documentary, but it lost me. There was something so detached about its treatment of dangerous purveyors of disinfo, as if this were a National Geographic special about apex predators. This bummed me out because one the reasons I tuned in was journalist Will Sommer – who’s been on the far-right conspiracy beat for years. He’s just launched Fever Dreams with his Daily Beast colleague, Asawin (Swin) Suebsaeng, and… it’s actually really good. Stripped of being a cog in the mind palace of producer Adam McKay, Fever captures the cray without raising the profiles of the players. And it was Happy Happy Joy Joy that they had on Ike Barinholtz to discuss two political satires he’s been a part of: The Hunt and The Oath (an anti-Trump Thanksgiving romp he wrote, starred and directed, which makes Bad Santa look like a Hallmark movie.)
The Play’s The Thing
•The Actors Fund needs to replenish its… funds, given that actors, musicians, dancers, experienced an unemployment rate hovering around 50% over the course of Covid-19. As both a fundraiser and gift to all theater lovers, it is in the middle of offering seven plays by such authors as Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, and Sarah Ruhl — as low as $10 a show — with starry casts (Keanu Reeves! Mary-Louise Parker! Debby Allen!)
•The Williamstown Theater Festival (WTF, aptly) has decided to present its season as radio plays, with sponsorship by Audible. In total, seven shows will be released by April 8th. I’m excited to listen to Photograph 51, whose subject is scientist Rosalind Franklin — a key figure in the discovery of DNA, who was erased by her colleagues Watson & Crick.
•Youngblood Monday Lunch is a new weekly pod of short plays presented by the Ensemble Studio Theater’s Youngblood playwrights, its artists-in-residence under thirty. Its first four plays are part of its just-completed First Light Festival — all STEM plays.
•With its Restart Stages program beginning in April, Lincoln Center intends to be an anchor to NYC’s re-opening, using its 16 acres of outdoor space as a host to shuttered performing arts venues including the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Harlem Arts Alliance, the Korean Cultural Center New York, featuring evening concerts by Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and film screenings by Film at Lincoln Center.
You've Gotta Be Cruel to Be Kind, in The Right Measure
As Republicans push back across the country wherever equality and equity are on the move, it’s tempting to lose hope, and to become bitter. Despite the darkness of my most recent work collaboration – learning about the criminal justice space and how a proposed jail in NYC’s Chinatown might affect the community– the project was seamless and reminded me of the importance of kindness.
This animated video of a two-minute George Saunders commencement speech will convince you, if I haven’t.