Intl Women's Day. Jon Stewart on guns. Liberated owl. Florida leads--backwards. Jews go missing. Why men control reproduction. 98-year old sets 5K record. Baby reads!
Newsletter #135 March 8, 2023
WOMEN
*Today is International Women’s Day. The UN Commission on the Status of Women is commemorating it with DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality, an urgent call to increase female representation in STEM education; promote full participation in technology, governance and leadership; and create a safe digital environment for women and girls worldwide.
* A Texas federal judge recently ruled that abortion funds can no longer “be criminally charged for helping people travel out of state to terminate their pregnancies. Every prochoice victory is worth celebrating. But don’t jump for joy: terminating a pregnancy in Texas can get you life in prison and a minimum penalty of $100,000. Yesterday, five Texas women sued the state over its abortion ban having been denied the procedure despite the life-threatening health risks posed by their pregnancies. Only after one of them got sepsis (blood poisoning) was she given the necessary procedure. The other four had to leave the state for their abortions.
*Gender wage gap hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years. Why do so many men think women are equal? Or is it, equal enough?
POLITICS
* Jon Stewart’s masterful interrogation of a 2nd Amendment absolutist made me wish he’d tutor Democratic politicians on how to argue with apologists who defend the disgraceful rate of U.S. gun violence. Subscribe to his fabulous podcast here
* GOP-sponsored bills that ban African-American studies, gender studies, transgender pronouns, tenure for teachers, books that “indoctrinate” kids, etc. are sure to become law in Florida where Republicans are turning cartwheels to burnish Governor DeSantis’ conservative credentials. If he takes the White House in ‘24, don’t be surprised when he covers up Obama’s portrait.
JEWS
*While neoNazi pigs keep squealing, “Jews will not replace us!,” a Tablet writer maintains the opposite is happening in American life: Jews are being systematically erased. Among the chattering class in the Jewish world, the must-read article last week was Jacob Savage’s “The Vanishing. in which he ends up blaming the purported erasure on the proliferation of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in academia, politics, corporate and cultural institutions. A hot-button charge, to say the least, his premise strikes me as hyperbolic, his conclusion facile, if not gratuitously adversarial. Assuming the accuracy of his data, they may quantify his claim about Jews’ numerical decline without necessarily proving its cause or intent. Rather than target DEI in a tone that implies societal forces are conspiring to replace us with people of other races and ethnicities, I wonder if our statistical slippage is simply a corollary of the upward mobility of other deserving groups whose time has finally come.
*In her oped for The Forward, Ruth Messinger, former Manhattan Borough President, now social justice consultant to several Jewish organizations, bravely calls out the revered ADL for its attack on the NY Times’ coverage of the educational deficits and financial hanky-panky in some Hasidic villages and yeshivas. Too often, when well-sourced investigative reporting unmasks Orthodox leaders who’ve blatantly diverted public funds to benefit their own children or communities, some in our tribe try to kill the messenger, for instance by accusing the “paper of record” of bias, Orthodox bashing, and antisemitism. Instead of trying to cover up a shanda fir di goyim (an act that shames Jews in front of gentiles), we should flatly condemn the debased ethical behavior of our supposedly Torah-true brethren. The criminal justice system should conduct a fair trial and mete out appropriate punishment to any person or group found guilty of violating the public trust. And the miscreants and their defenders should perform cheshbon hanefesh (a rigorous accounting of the soul).
BOOKS
*The jacket copy on Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History by Robert S. McElvaine, pegs it as a “provocative reinterpretation of the human experience.” The author had me in Chapter 1, when he explained the origin of male supremacy as succinctly as anyone ever has: “In order to compensate for what they cannot do, men tell women what they may not do.” What men cannot do is give birth. What they insist we may not do is refuse to give birth. Bingo: male control of female reproduction
*Amy Bloom’s In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, a heart-hurting chronicle of spousal devotion and sacrifice, recounts in devastating detail what happened after the author’s beloved husband, Brian, was diagnosed with Alzheimers and made the decision to end his life while he was still himself. But it was Amy who jumped every hurdle to qualify him for Dignitas, Switzerland’s renowned assisted suicide program; Amy who made it possible for him to live with brio, pride and authenticity until his last day; Amy who, despite her grief, found the strength to let him go.
PURE PLEASURE
*If 98-year-old Betty Lindberg can run the 5K in under an hour, the rest of us ought to be able to \walk to work.
*Amazing! At 19-months, Carter could read more than 300 words and count to 50. That he knew to turn a card around when it was upside down blew my mind.
*On his always captivating podcast, “Clear and Vivid,” Alan Alda conducts an animated conversation with ChatGPT then pulls the plug on the robot with nary a moral pang. Bonus: Mike Farrell & Alan perform the first new M*A*S*H scene in 40 years – from a script written by a chatbot.
*Learn why people love Flaco, the owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo.