On the early gangster film.

The early gangster film supposedly wanted to demonstrate that a lack of virtue led to ignominious death. But in many of the films, it's actually a surfeit of virtue that does the villain in.

Rico, Rocky, Tom Powers, Duke Mantee. They all of them pass up chances to escape their doom solely for the sake of friendship with an often, though not always, sanctimonious figure.

It makes you wonder if people of the thirties really took away the lessons that the Legion of Decency wanted them to.

I'd like to think they didn't.

Not so much because I applaud a lack of virtue, but because I really despise condescension.

Fighting for the Right to Choose: Down and Dirty Edition.

Lately, there's been a significant flurry of anti-woman initiatives in the new political climate of rabid right-wing-ism.

Perhaps most high profile was the recent inclusion of language that redefines what constitutes rape in an already deplorable house bill to restrict insurance funding for abortions. Most rational people were suitably aghast at the idea of legislatively defining rape as a solely "forcible" act--thereby omitting instances of coercion, drugging, and psychological attack. Hopefully, most rational people will continue to be upset that said "forcible rape" language is still in the goddamn law (which is so incredibly inappropriate anyway that the drafters of it ought to be strung up by their balls).

But today comes news of an equally disgusting and even more revealing move: Republicans in South Dakota are trying to push a personhood law through the backdoor by means of classifying it as a self defense law. This law would allow people to term murder of an abortion provider as "justifiable homicide" on the grounds that they were acting to protect the life of a fetus. (And they can do so even if it is their wife, daughter, sister, or mother who is getting the abortion of her own free will.)

If this doesn't elucidate the incredible over-the-line wrongness of the Christian Right (and before your knee jerk smacks you in the face, let me make it plain that I do not consider the Christian Right to be Christian) then I don't know what does. These people don't care about anything but power and control. They don't care about life. They don't care about freedom. They don't care about civil liberty or human dignity. They only care about their ability to control and punish those people who don't do exactly what they say when they say it. And they hide behind a doctrine that they neither believe in nor follow like a pack of belly-crawling cowardly hypocrites.

On the one hand, this climate makes me feel like I will never have children so long as I remain in this country--because I refuse to hand my political and social autonomy over to parasite. On the other hand, it makes me feel like I ought to get with the birthing. Because these crazy motherfuckers outnumber us, and they are breeding like goddamn rabbits.

[sigh]

South Dakota Moves to Legalize Killing Abortion Providers (Mother Jones).