Maddow on the manufacturing of abortion outrage on the right

Originally published at: Maddow on the manufacturing of abortion outrage on the right | Boing Boing

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Grace Hale did a great break down of how conservatives came to see themselves as cultural outsiders in America, and how the pro-life movement weaponized that feeling in this book:

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Talk about someone who was treated horrifically as a grad student, and yet managed to succeed. Bertram Wyatt-Brown should have been thrown out of the academy for his treatment of her. And he wasn’t the only one.

What a brilliant historian.

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I don’t know this story… what happened?

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Never forget that the majority of justices on this court were nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote and were confirmed by Senators who represented a minority of the American population.

This decision never would have been possible if the system wasn’t rigged against representative democracy.

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Brown and a few other old white graybeards used to make a point of asking her loaded and shitty questions when she presented at the SHA. She was a grad student at Rutgers at that point, and the rest of us grad students from other schools could tell she was leagues ahead of us.

But they’d pick on her. I remember one session where brown stood to ask a question, but walked up to the front of the room to do it. Her asked her something snotty about her sources and interpretations. Then he turned his back and walked out while she answered. Her answer in that case was “well, I tend to delve in to sources that a lot of older historians ignore.” You could hear this “ooooh.” As a grad student she had the spine to bite back! But he kept walking. That was typical stuff. She threatened them, intellectually. And she was sweet as Georgia tea at the same time. From Atlanta, so she knew how to deal out the biting charm.

Then there was a lawsuit at one point, which is probably best not repeated on a public BBS. But I working was at the AHA by that point and it was ugly. She won though.

Total rock star.

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Oh wow - I didn’t know all that. It makes her work all that more impressive. I am not surprised she had to go through that, but it’s still upsetting and disappointing. Some men just can’t handle being challenged in any way.

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The American white evangelical right used misogyny and homophobia to sell their actual core issue, racism. They don’t ever get to pretend to have the moral high ground.

Feeds into their whole notion of being “persecuted” too, drawing parallels with early Christians (or at least self-serving myths about them). Which in turn provides justification for extreme acts.

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Fred Clark (a liberal evangelical Christian who blogs at Patheos as “Slacktivist”) has been chronicling this story for twenty-plus years. His classic piece from 2012 is titled “The ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy Meal.”

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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

The Real Origins of the Religious Right

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.
By RANDALL BALMER
May 27, 2014

eta: The reason that it took them so long after Roe v. Wade is that the real starting gun was segregated Bob Jones University losing its tax exemption in 1976.

The IRS was not placated. On January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption.

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Democrats need to make it THE issue in the mid-terms. A Lot of Republicans are trying to downplay the importance of the law being overturned, some are trying to distance themselves from it, they don’t want to lose potential votes in a country where the majority still wants abortion legal. No. Don’t let them play both sides of the field on this. They either lose votes in the middle or lose votes on the right when they admit abortion should be protected by legislation.

It may not matter in every state, but it will in some districts.

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sooooo… Atwood’s book is in the non-fiction section in the usa.

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