Tag / supreme court

by Edward Champion

A Federal Erection Ban

I have found God and I now have the answer to all of America’s problems.

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — effectively overturning the constitutional right that has allowed women to have reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for nearly fifty years. The message from the high court could not be any plainer: women have no agency over their bodies. Even though this decision openly contradicts any number of civil rights laws that have been designed — in theory, at least — to protect women from discrimination, the Supreme Court Justices have decided that past precedents were not settled, despite claiming so during their confirmation hearings.

But if women are not guaranteed a constitutional right to do what they want with their bodies, then the time has come to level the playing field and deny men any and all constitutional rights too. It seems only fair. And it neatly aligns with some recent personal developments that I feel an overwhelming need to shove down your unenlightened throats.

Before I introduce my ideas, I should note that, after many years of being an atheist, I have finally found religion. The Church of Gelding may be a little-practiced faith, but it is, as far as I’m concerned, the only one that matters. It is far more important than all strains of Christianity. Last week, I cut off my own penis with a hacksaw to find a new life of inner peace. There was a bloody mess in my apartment, but the holy ritual of severing my member has secured my position in the afterlife. In addition, my singing range on the high notes has dramatically improved. The Church of Gelding’s priests and archdioceses — operating out of a storage facility in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as we raise funds to build a proper church so that we may properly and hygienically castrate all members of our loyal congregation — have reviewed this essay. They have declared me a visionary for a faith that will soon be sweeping the nation. It’s all part of the new theocracy you haven’t yet heard about.

I propose a national ban on erections at the federal level. And if we’re fated to pull the RU-486 abortion poll from pharmacies, then there also needs to be an FDA ban on Viagra. After all, isn’t it unnatural for older men to have an artificially created erection? Since the pro-lifers insist that it’s “unnatural” for women to have abortions, then we need to ensure that all other unnatural male enhancements are also prohibited. Hair transplants, Botox, and, most importantly, septuagenarian men who foolishly believe that they are still twenty-five years old and who have cultivated the mistaken impression that they have the God-given right to fuck any twentysomething into the middle of next week. This rampant immorality must end today!

Let us establish a Federal Erection Bureau office in every city, giving every American male thirty days to undergo a surgical procedure that will block the corpora cavernosa — the twin chambers running along the length of the penis that are responsible for the bloodflow that causes the penis to grow. Those men who wish to have children with their partners can fill out a detailed 564 page questionnaire, submit this to the FEB (along with a credit report and a list of references), undergo a hearing supervised by a Propagation Consideration Panel, and, upon approval, have a temporary reversal of this surgical procedure. If they copulate with their partners without written consent, then let their treacherous corpses hang from the traffic lights as a warning for all men who do not abide by the new way.

If men were deprived of the testosterone that turns them into abusive and boneheaded idiots, then much of this behavior would stop. We would have fewer conflicts and wars. Women would not be bombarded with unsolicited dick pics. Because men would be too humiliated to photograph their shriveled and useless chorizos, thus finally understanding that the penis is a wildly overrated and fundamentally silly-looking anatomical appendage. I have learned this myself by finding God.

Men who insist on having erections — or who have erections in a speakeasy or through any underground network established to give men an illegal venue with which to have an erection — should be chemically castrated for the greater good. And the most egregious erection offenders should be castrated with a sharp axe. Imagine the diminished problems! Think of the great culture that America will create when more castratos enter opera halls and recording studios! You may not have been able to control yourself when you had a penis. But your new life (and your new voice) will set you on a new path!

If the five paleoconservatives on the Supreme Court seriously believe that women cannot be trusted to do what they deem right for their bodies, then it can be equally argued that men are just as incapable. Hitting any bar on a Saturday night will reveal quite swiftly that men are probably more incapable of not knowing how to control themselves in public. Men are especially clueless when it comes to reading a woman’s intentions, much less actually listening to what a woman has to say. Even when told “no” by a woman, this feeble and wildly overrated gender is hopped up on too much testosterone and has proven time and time again that it cannot comprehend a simple two-letter word.

Remove erections from the equation of life and we would see sexual harassment rates significantly drop. Unwanted advances and catcalls from men would disappear overnight. One source of an unwanted pregnancy would be nipped in the bud. And we would have far stabler families. Children who aren’t forced to live in poverty. And without their precious penises, men would at long last get in touch with their feelings and not be as afraid to cry.

So let the Republicans lead by example. Let Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh drop their pants and proffer their schlongs for castration. Let Justice Amy Coney Barrett be the one holding the knife and carving away at her colleagues’s dicks with the same gusto that she uses to hack away at the Constitution. Let every Republican who truly believes in life step forward and proudly announce that they will no longer be erect. After all, only the permanently wilted can grow a true garden.

by Edward Champion

How NPR “Covers” Our Obscene Dystopia

One big reason why a Roe v. Wade overturn is likely to happen isn’t just an extremist Supreme Court. It’s also the apolitical fools who try to distract the American public from big issues with celebrity “news.”

Last night, Politico leaked a draft opinion from the Supreme Court — the first time that any early ruling had ever escaped the sacrosanct chambers in the high court’s entire history — that called for the unthinkable: a complete and total overturn of Roe v. Wade (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey). One would think that such an astonishing calumny against women’s rights, the precedents upheld by all justices in the past, and the ostensibly noble practice of jurisprudence would be front-page news for every outlet. One would think that such a significant sign that patriarchal fascism can become a real possibility in the United States would take up every column-inch and every second of airtime. But don’t tell that to the gutless onanistic “minds” at NPR, who took to Facebook with a piece on the Met Gala! Because, as far as NPR is concerned, rich people and what they wear is real news. And women are merely ornamental animals to fuel the next several rounds of vacuous social media speculation. Never mind their rights. Never mind their lives. Never mind their agency. And never mind the fact that all that they bravely fought for in the last several decades is now being rolled back faster than the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket.

Let us be clear about why and how NPR is a dumpster fire. It is a radio organization run by toothless conformists with a long history of looking the other way while catering to an increasingly invented audience of “upper middle-class” listeners with oodles of spare time to devour every celebrity offering (when these privileged mouth breathers aren’t busy sucking up air) and, as any audio producer learns from the whisper circles of mailing lists and DMs, regularly in the habit of stifling and “correcting” any original or unique voice to suit its despicably vanilla and anodyne “coverage” of events, which challenges no one and reveals nothing.

It’s no surprise to see that this bullshit outlet — now a pathetic parody of itself — would rather prioritize an obscene display of vacuous spectacle and empty wealth over far more pressing issues such as the erosion of women’s rights, the rise of American authoritarianism, the growing disparity in income inequality, escalating international conflict, and political corruption — all of which are allocated mere snippets. In short, NPR is a fucking embarrassment to journalism and a significant part of the problem. It “serves” the public much as I participate in triathlons — which is to say not at all. These feckless dimwits lunge for the safe and sane. They never take chances. They never rock boats.

NPR’s superficiality is perhaps best represented by the smug and vapid talking heads on Pop Culture Happy Hour, who bray regularly about the most inconsequential offerings on television with a mildly snarky style that feels as antediluvian as the Tamagotchi. As of Tuesday afternoon, Pop Culture Happy Hour “star” Linda Holmes has said precisely fuck all about Roe v. Wade to her 139,000 followers on Twitter. You see, Linda Holmes is living a comfortable life and she’s eked out such a hollow and cozy existence that she’ll never take a real stand on anything. But she does have plenty to say about the Ozark finale, which nobody will give a shit about in twenty years. You see, for myopic mercenaries like Holmes, Ozark counts as real news! Apparently, Holmes’s biggest problem in life is breaking some superficial rule in which she continued to watch a show that she “did not think was actually good because I just wanted to know the ending.” Someone bust out the smelling salts and the fainting couch for poor beleaguered Linda, folks! Meanwhile, the life, liberty, and health of women have become significantly imperiled thanks to extremist justices who were anointed by an orange tyrant and his fawning sociopathic acolytes.

The reason why we have reached this barbaric nadir in our history is not just because highly gullible and treacherous dolts like Susan Collins actually believed (or, more likely, claimed to believe) that Brett Kavanaugh would honor Roe v. Wade, but because frivolous and completely useless lightweights like Holmes, who have never taken a real chance in their sad and miserable lives, continue to uphold the apolitical status quo. I can genuinely imagine Linda Holmes ratting out liberals as they’re sent to the concentration camps in a few years, not long after telling a reptilian autocrat, “Well, officer, she brought up politics at the dinner table!” By remaining silent about the Roe v. Wade overturn, Holmes — much like all NPR employees who say nothing — is among what Goldhagen called “willing executioners.” And these unprincipled cowards are as much of a menace to our culture as the people who take our hard-won rights away. For hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.

[5/9/2022 UPDATE: In fairness to Holmes, she did finally say something in a thread involving Danielle Kurtzleben on May 6th, 2022 — a good four days after the Supreme Court draft opinion was leaked. But she largely complained about how exhausting it was to say anything — as if anyone presently on the involved front lines isn’t exhausted! Exhaustion doesn’t mean that you stop fighting. And when human rights are on the line, you don’t show up four days late to the debate.]

by Edward Champion

The Feeble and Completely Pointless Thought Experiment of Roger Simon

Roger Simon’s “thought experiment” reveals that even a veteran journalist who should know better succumbs to the same attention-seeking asininity as anyone else.

It is a well-documented fact that Twitter turns the finest minds of our planet into simpering and sophist children flicking inconsequential 280 character bagatelles into the digital ether and that these portentous pronouncements are often misconstrued as High Thought, if not The Truth, about The Way Things Are in Today’s World. And even though I accept the deplorable trolling and the gormless groupthink, and the fact that nobody seems to offer pushback or nuance or a charitable consideration of another viewpoint, nothing could quite prepare me this morning for the lethal combination of hubris and stupidity that I discovered in this tweet from Roger Simon:

Now Roger Simon is not some doddering dude yelling some crazy lager-fueled bullshit at the top of his lungs in a bar. He is the bestselling author of Show Time. He was a long-running columnist at Politico. He has a history of legitimately provoking thought, such as this subtly trenchant piece on how the right-wing media caused a repulsive furor after exposing private messages sent through Ezra Klein’s Journolist.

But here, Simon has clearly lost his marbles, capitulating to the worst “hot take” tendencies that desperate self-appointed pundits retreat to when they’re trying to file six thoughtless blog posts each day that get people outraged and thus tweeting about it in high histrionics. It stands against the kind of journalism that Simon purports to stand for.

I certainly want Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg to live as long as possible. But what rankles me about this tweet is how it epitomizes everything that I detest about a certain strain of magical thinking that has increasingly come to replace reason: (a) the guilt-laden plea to donate one day of your life for the greater good (and thus the “better” person), which in and of itself implies that the 10,000 people sacrificed their day weren’t going to live a meaningful day in the first place, thus mitigating the selflessness, (b) the refusal to accept that something as grief-enabling as death is a process of life and thus an existential reality that we all have to accept, which causes us to become stronger and more empathetic to our fellow humans, and (c) the warped “solution” to the troubling Supreme Court situation, cemented by the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh swinging the high court into a 5-4 tilt to the far right, involves Ginsberg hanging on for dear life and that this is the only apparent idea to preserve a politically balanced high court for the next few decades.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment. Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment. Hell, even The Man in the High Castle is a thought experiment. In all of these cases, the speculative proposition causes us to think about something tangible in our thoughts and our everyday lives. In the case of the trolley problem, we have to come to terms with the morality of whether killing one person to save multiple lives makes us complicit in the singular death. In the case of Plutarch, we are asked to consider whether constantly replacing the rotting parts of a ship ad infinitum means that the ship can indeed be the same as it was when it first started out. In the Amazon television series, we see how 20th century American life under a hypothetical Nazi victory reveals dark quotidian parallels to the world we live in today, causing us to reexamine whether our tacit acceptance of consumerism and comfort might share some qualities with the same vile impulses behind death camps and slaughtering the weak.

But Simon’s proposition has no such larger moral philosophy, much less any realist allegory, in mind. His proposition was so condescending and badly considered that it provoked anger and befuddlement from the left and right. And this sort of nonsense disheartens me. Once again, we have someone who should know better trafficking and even reveling in stupidity (just read his replies on his Twitter feed). And it serves to uphold my thesis that everyone on Twitter — even a seemingly distinguished veteran journalist — inevitably succumbs to the cloying attention-seeking asininity that is systematically tearing this nation apart and preventing us from finding real solutions to very serious problems.