Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 1026
August 8, 2015
I didn’t realize I was being trafficked
“Stop, you’re hurting me,” I wailed.
“If you can’t take this, then how can you take a penis?” the doctor said, glaring at me while she shoved the massive, ice-cold, metal speculum deeper inside my vagina.
I winced. My face scrunched, eyes shut tight, I cried as the she forced it in. As it scraped along the narrow walls, I tried to pull away, but only made it worse.
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“Doctor, please! Stop!” I bawled, writhing in pain.
“Stop,” she yelled. “Stay still or I can’t do this.”
I was 16. It was my first time ever seeing a gynecologist.
I had been a healthy child, so I’d rarely ever even seen a pediatrician, except for a few extreme situations: when I was rendered unable to walk from a urinary tract infection at age 8; when I’d sprained a palm and thumb at 9; and when I’d hemorrhaged, a few months prior to this, during my first-ever period. It was brought on by miscarriage, after I’d lost my virginity on my 16th birthday. I’d thought that because this doctor was a woman she would be nice. I was wrong.
The U.S.-Russia “phony war”: How Washington warmongers could bring us from stalemate to catastrophe
The Ukraine crisis and the attendant confrontation with Russia assume a “phony war” feel these days. As in the perversely calm months between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the Blitzkrieg into the Low Countries the following spring, nothing much seems to be happening.
No one took comfort then—a fog of anxiety suffused everything—and no one should now. One almost prefers it when Washington politicians and other temporarily important people are out there grandstanding and warmongering. At least part of what is occurring is visible, even as the whole never is. Now one sees almost nothing, and we get an idea of what the historians mean when they describe the queasiness abroad during the phony war period.
A formidable file of political, diplomatic and military reports has accumulated by drips and drops of late, and it strongly suggests one of two things: Either we are on the near side of open conflict between two great powers, accidental or purposeful and probably but not necessarily on Ukrainian soil, or we are in for a re-rendering of the Cold War that will endure as long as the original.
The Mark Twain of hip-hop: How Iceberg Slim’s “Pimp” changed pop culture
Iceberg Slim is an influential cult writer who many readers have never read. His vivid and relentless autobiography, “Pimp: The Story of My Life,” from 1967, tells of the quarter century the author (born Robert Lee Maupin; he later became Robert Beck) spent running women, both black and white, in several Midwestern cities and often with very little apparent empathy or outward emotion. He also published several novels, including “Trick Baby,” made into a 1972 blaxploitation movie. Slim died in 1992, as the Los Angeles riots raged near his home, at the age of 73.
Scottish writer Irvine Welsh has written that Slim “massively influenced popular culture through music and film. In terms of that influence he’s probably the most dominant writer since Shakespeare.”
Justin Gifford’s “Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim,” has just been released. “Mr. Gifford’s taut biography is important and overdue,” Dwight Garner wrote in the New York Times, calling the biographer “a dogged researcher who arrives at a somewhat unexpected conclusion: The stories in ‘Pimp’ are mostly true.”
August 7, 2015
Requiem for a club: What we lose when intimate music venues close
Recently, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, live rock institution T.T. the Bear's Place held its final shows: After more than 40 years in business, the cozy Central Square club is calling it a day. Although I moved away from Boston over a decade ago, and plenty of my old music haunts in the city have closed, this news has hit me much harder than I expected. Located right on the same block as the venerable restaurant/concert club the Middle East--and, back when I lived there, just down the block from the subculture haven ManRay--T.T.'s was a place I started going to once I moved to the city for college in the late '90s. Because the club's capacity was 300 (give or take, depending on the night), it drew a healthy mix of up-and-coming bands and underplays alike.
Watch “Broad City’s” Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer in the best “Lip Sync Battle” yet
"Lip Sync Battle," the Spike show where famous people invite their famous friends to move their lips to various songs while Chrissy Teigen cheers them on, was actually worth tuning into this week! In a much-anticipated appearance from the "Broad City" brain-parents, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, we were reminded of how fun the show can be when two genuinely fun people are at the helm of it. In the Thursday performance, Jacobson and Glazer took a quick break from shooting "Broad City's" third season to go head-to-head in two lip-sync rounds. First: performing "The Humpty Dance" and "Hey Ya." Then, for the final round: "And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and "It's Raining Men," respectively.
Watch all four full performances courtesy of Spike below:
Jeb Bush goes full Donald Trump on Obamacare: He’s just as nonsensical as the GOP’s carnival barker
If you’re the type of person who digs it when candidates for president engage in substantive discussions about their policy positions, last night’s Republican primary debate was a disappointing spectacle. Well, truthfully, if you’re that type of person then pretty much all of modern politics is a barren wasteland. But the wildly hyped first GOP debate of the 2016 cycle was especially disappointing, and not just because so much of the back-and-forth was dominated by questions about Donald Trump’s tweets and bankruptcies.
There are plenty of offenders to choose from, but I want to focus on Jeb Bush because, absent Trump, he’s the leading candidate for the nomination and the person who should be under the most pressure to actually spell out what he’d do as president. The core of Jeb’s economic message is that he will create 19 million jobs, and jack up economic growth to four percent annually and keep it there. That’s an aspiration that economists regard as wildly overoptimistic, and no president in the past 35 years has achieved it (the one who came closest was Bill Clinton).
Your “sincerely held religious beliefs” don’t matter: County clerks must uphold the law and issue same-sex marriage licenses
When you have a public service job, the way it generally works is that you do what the job duties require of you — the job doesn't conform to your ideal description of it. Yet in the aftermath of marriage equality's recent decisive victory, a few people are having a hard time with that concept. People like Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who this week filed suit against Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear for not allowing local officials to deny issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Davis herself is currently being sued over her refusal to do what, if I am not very much mistaken, is her job. In her suit, she alleges, "The Commonwealth of Kentucky, acting through Governor Beshear, has deprived Davis of her religious-conscience rights guaranteed by the United States and Kentucky constitutions and laws, by insisting that Davis issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples contrary to her conscience, based on her sincerely held religious beliefs." She also is also demanding the governor pay any damages that result from the lawsuits against her.
The sound & fury of the GOP debate: A candidate-by-candidate breakdown of its weirdest & most idiotic moments
Last night I poured myself a generous cocktail and watched the Fox News debate. It was, as expected, an orgy of stupidity. Almost nothing of substance was said by any of the candidates. The whole spectacle was a cringe-inducing snapshot of American politics today.
Everyone involved in the broadcast was complicit in the idiocy. The moderators set the tone with their inane questions and refusal to demand intelligible answers. As best I could tell, their job was to smile and nod affirmatively. (Except when it came to Donald Trump.) The candidates offered no policies, no plans, no ideas – only platitudes and awkwardly delivered snipes. The audience did their part, too. Every fatuous remark was applauded rapturously and without thought. No one, it seems, was bothered by the non-answers. Perhaps the most depressing part was the makeup of the crowd, which was about as diverse as a U2 concert. The shimmering sea of whiteness was, if nothing else, a reminder of what diversity looks like in the Republican Party.
At any rate, if you were fortunate enough to miss the debate, here are my takeaways for each candidate. No attempt was made to organize or make sense of these observations. They were recorded in real time and are as incoherent as the sources.
Rubbernecking the “True Detective” wreck: Can HBO salvage the season in Sunday’s finale?
Chances are, the team behind “True Detective” is not in the position it was hoping to be at this point in the season. With the finale to season two airing Sunday, and viewership dropping, a sense of disappointment and embarrassment has spread around the show despite the many good things in it. If you are HBO or showrunner Nic Pizzolatto, you probably want millions of curious viewers to be pondering just how its numerous strands of plot will resolve.
The finale of the first season hit 3.5 million viewers, a high for the series and up about 50 percent from the first episode. Season two, by contrast, has been slumping as the season goes on: Viewership is down to 2.18 million. (Okay, it’s holding its audience better than “I Am Cait” is.)
Fox News’ vicious Republican power grab: Why Megyn Kelly vs. Donald Trump was just the beginning
Donald Trump may, in most respects, be a pestilential blight on our world, but there is one undeniably helpful service that he provides: his Twitter feed. Anyone looking for a real-time bulletin of Trump's insecurities, ill-considered opinions and ever-shifting roster of arch-nemeses need do nothing more than head to @realDonaldTrump.
The best part of the feed is when Trump decides that he has a new enemy who needs to be taken down. He is refreshingly forthright about who has gotten under his skin lately, even though the targets change constantly. So it was easy to figure out who Trump felt had wronged him on Thursday night, when he headlined the first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 campaign.
