Guys, I apologise for being off-radar. This is a week in which I have two freelance deadlines on top of a house move, which I've just completed, and I'm sitting here in a pile of boxes in no mood to blog about anything. So instead, here are some links to interesting and/or important things I've been reading this week in the mainstream press - I know, I know, but they're great sometimes - and in the blogosphere.
- The Guardian's moving interview with Warren Hern, the last late-term abortion doctor in the United States, may well make your skin crawl with horror if you're a British feminist. Think it couldn't happen here? Take a look at the Tories' abortion rights policies, why dontcha.
- In other angry practical feminist news, Tanya Gold has very good reasons for hating fashion.
- Sam Leith takes classic horror to Prospect magazine, arguing that Vampires are creatures of the Right, and Zombies are monsters of the Left.
- At Liberal Conspiracy, Zarathustra reminds us why NHS employees are not the same thing as Nazis.
- Johann Hari, who I want to be in every single way, has a beautiful piece celebrating older women, and another extremely wise offering on the British culture of overwork.
- The Samosa has an exclusive story about the English Defence League's new tactics to persuade us that they're not a bunch of racist wingnuts, by new writer Secunder Kermani.
If you've got to the end of all that and are still thinking no, Laurie! Bugger the exciting wider world of journalism, we want your words and yours alone! - then you may be interested to read something I wrote for One In Four's last issue -
- an interview with Andy Roberts, founder member of the Mental Patients' Union in the 1970s - an astonishing gentleman who I'm very glad to have had the privilege to spend an afternoon with.
Normal service will be resumed as shortly as is feasibly possible. Keep the red flag flying in my absence, you wonders.
Awesomeness, thank you. Have just FBed that abortion doctor story. Horrendous.
ReplyDeleteWant to be Johann Hari in every way? As in, Hari the longstanding apologist of power, cheerleader for repeated "humanitarian interventions" and opponent of anything that looks a bit radical?
ReplyDeleteSrsly, yr better than that.
The story about the abortion doctor was worrying on many levels. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course it is galling and wrong for anyone to call themselves "pro-life" if they support the death penalty, eat meat, etc. Yeah. Clearly. And in his own way, he's very courageous in acting on his beliefs, but there are still worrying things.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, what was that bit at the beginning about the young woman with complications? If it really was "very late" in her pregnancy, why an abortion rather than doing a C-section with the hope the baby the parents allegedly wanted might survive? That was not explained at all.
Secondly, performing an abortion on a teenager so disturbed that she thought he deserved to die for carrying out abortions? Surely she was either insane or otherwise mentally incapable of giving informed consent to any medical procedure?
Thirdly, calling people "malignant"? Lovely.
Fourthly, aborting foetuses because of dwarfism and Down's Syndrome? You don't have to be Sarah Palin to think there's something a little off about aborting a foetus merely because of Down's Syndrome.