A Surprising Number Of Celebrities Have Worked As Spies! Tabs, Tues., Oct. 24, 2023
Come and get your Tabs!
Hamas released two more hostages Monday. That’s good news. (CNN)
Go read Charles Blow’s well-reasoned column about the Israel-Gaza war. (New York Times)
When our empathies have boundaries — when they stop at borders, races, ethnicities — when one group is freely granted them while another is wholly deprived, then our empathies are false. They have been weaponized. They are instruments in an argument.
Oliver Willis warns against Americans returning to freedom fry zealotry. His thoughts are in line with my own. (Substack)
Tim Scott’s presidential campaign is performing as though Tim Scott were the candidate. (Politico)
New Yorkers must feel so proud of their slam poet mayor: “Some people go out and see rain, I feel rain, and I know it’s all part of the beauty of life,” Eric Adams said recently. “But I think rain also increases our population. People stay home and they reignite their love affair.” (Jezebel)
Maybe with some Jimi Hendrix?
The Detroit News fired Pulitzer Prize-winner and rightwing outrage peddler Charlie LeDuff for telling Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a tweet, “See you next Tuesday.” Such clever wordsmithing is probably how he snagged that Pulitzer. (Detroit Metro Times)
Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Ayanna Pressley re-introduce the MOMMIES Act, which would expand Medicaid coverage for postpartum folks. (The Root)
Pressley’s also teaming up with Rep. Shontel Brown and going after the harmful chemicals in hair relaxers. (Essence)
Democrats have long defended renters’ rights, but Republicans no longer need to actually win elections to advance their agenda. They can appeal to the MAGA Supreme Court, which could very well shred its own precedents regarding rent control, rent stabilization, and eviction protections. Elie Mystal details what’s at stake. (The Nation)
After she was elected in 1992 to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Althea Garrison was outed as trans against her will. Now 83, she’s ready to tell her story. It’s a compelling read. (The19th)
Certain people love to remind journalist Garrison Hayes about Irish indentured servants, who were not in fact enslaved for life. He finds that annoying. (Mother Jones)
Natalie Moore thinks Black folks should tone down the anti-immigrant rhetoric. I agree. Republicans are using classic divide and conquer politics, which only succeeds in separating you from your humanity if buy into it. (Chicago Sun-Times)
Neighbors feel that reversing the legacy of racist policies and disinvestment in Black neighborhoods should be the immediate priority, not tending to the flow of Venezuelans who left their politically unstable country in a harrowing trek across continents for a better life here. Some Black City Council members are even calling for a repeal of the 1985 sanctuary city status issued by Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor.
I’ve heard takes like “Immigration harms Black Chicago” or “The migrants are getting more benefits than the rest of us.” Living in a closed school, or perhaps in a so-called “winterized base camp” hardly sounds like living in the lap of luxury. Nor does sleeping on cold floors at O’Hare Airport or in tents outside police stations.
Gendered theories about how men and women evolved might not have been entirely on the up and up. (Scientific American)
Hollywood should probably get around to making the Josephine Baker, Secret Agent film series — based on a true story! (Washington Post)
Architect Valery Augustin explains why villains live in the coolest houses.
Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.
Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.
Catch SER on his podcast, The Play Typer Guy.
Buster Keaton in “The Haunted House” for your header gif today. Links to the archived film short and other info here: https://open.substack.com/pub/martiniambassador/p/ghosts-busterin-out-all-over-the
TW assault content. Uggh on Man the Mighty Hunter garbage. I remember taking Biosocial Anthropology in the 90s, when the supertoxic version of Sperm Competition prevailed (the idea that men rape and are violent because “the best sperm win.”) Rape is great for natural selection was the message. I unconsciously stopped going to class, weird because it was only my 2nd female anthro prof as a major--and I really needed a mentor. Now I realize that I may have stopped going because the academic theory (proto Jordan Peterson faulty analogies with other primates) was so offensive, traumatizing, and wrong in a way that I could not argue back. It was almost like a justification of patriarchy based on patriarchal assumptions of nature. Learned helplessness response. I took an incomplete, then withdrew, made a year of misery, which I somehow always blamed on myself for missing class and being a bad student. Tales from pre-feminism, I guess.