The Sorensen Monologues
Vagabond State
I’ve seen various reports lately about universities not having enough housing for students, with some being forced into homelessness, sleeping in their cars, etc. It’s apparently a global problem — I just had a conversation with a woman in the Netherlands who was telling me about the plight of students trying to attend university in the Hague. As someone who spent four years living in university housing, this is almost imaginable to me. College is hard enough without worrying about having a roof over your head.
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A Visit to the Harmacy
Many women are finding that in states with strict abortion bans, drugstores won’t fill their prescriptions without special confirmation from a doctor or a privacy-invading consultation with the pharmacist. It’s yet another way in which anti-choice extremism is upending healthcare. This article in The Guardian provides an overview.
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Migrant Mixup
There’s not anything particularly complicated about what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are doing by shipping asylum seekers and migrants off to far-flung “blue” cities under reportedly deceptive pretenses. It’s just dehumanizing and cruel, exploiting desperate people to score political points with a base that’s been whipped into a hateful frenzy.
Lured by the promise of jobs, the migrants find themselves dumped in the middle of nowhere (or in front of Kamala Harris’s house in DC, in the case of those bused by Abbott). Some were given papers suggesting they had appointments hundreds or thousands of miles away in order to stay in the country. Communities like Martha’s Vineyard have risen to the occasion to help the migrants, but that’s apparently not enough to stop extremists on the right from celebrating some perverse “gotcha.”
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A Biden Speech to Please the Mainstream Press
I thought Biden’s speech was long overdue, and about as mild-mannered as could be given the circumstances. It could have been tighter and more eloquently delivered, but the important thing is that he did it. The nitpicking that ensued from the mainstream press completely missed the forest for the trees. He was mean to Trump voters! He engaged in “partisan” talk about policy! You would think that after all we’ve been through in the past two years, that maybe it would be OK for the President to finally criticize the MAGA movement. In fact, he has a moral obligation to do so.
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Funding Fanatics
$1.6 billion — tax free — is going to an entity run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the Federalist Society. This would be “the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history” according to Propublica. Among other things, the Federalist Society is responsible for the radical tilt of the current Supreme Court. One of the Federalist Society’s star lawyers is John Eastman, who tried to overturn the 2020 election for Trump. You would think a legit legal organization would distance itself from an attorney who led a coup attempt — he insisted that Mike Pence refuse to certify the Electoral College results at Trump’s pre-insurrection rally! But no.
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Vanishing Video
Now, it’s one thing for a show to get canceled. What new CEO David Zaslav is doing is nuking shows — particularly animation series and kids’ programming — from the face of the earth. It’s possible they will never be seen again, or will only become legally viewable in a century or so once the copyright expires. The reason given for these actions is cost-cutting: a tax break available in mergers for writing off incomplete projects (like Batgirl), and savings on residual payments for the cast and creators of series. God forbid the artists make a few crumbs! Meanwhile, Zaslav’s compensation package in 2021 alone was valued at $241 million. This is capitalism at its most absurdly cannibalistic, of profits based on destruction.
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Black Hole Seized from Mar-a-Lago
Trump could openly threaten to suck us all to our doom and the mainstream media would still treat it like some sort of political parlor game where every move to stave off apocalypse is motivated by “partisanship” and nothing more. The irony of this cynical take is that the Dems — most especially Biden and Merrick Garland — seem to avoid confrontation religiously, until they would be breaking the law themselves if they didn’t do something. If that wet noodle of an Attorney General signed off on the raid, there was almost certainly a good reason for it! In fact, there’s not even that much to discuss beyond what were they looking for, what did they find, and how violent will the right’s response be.
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Remote Control
I think there is some value to socializing with your colleagues in person, at least occasionally. But for many workers, there are practical reasons to avoid the expensive and time-wasting schlep to the cubicle farm.
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What Does “Liberal” Mean, Anyway?
The word “liberal” has been through a lot. Since the ’80s, liberals have been ludicrously demonized by the right. At a certain point, I began using “progressive” instead as it seemed more contemporary and carried less baggage. These days, it seems that the concept of liberalism is often conflated with neoliberalism — which is pretty much its opposite. To the extent that some socially-liberal people are unconcerned with the excesses of capitalism and economic inequality, I would argue that means they are conservative, although that word has also become somewhat meaningless in an era of extremism.
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Fragrant Future
I recently purchased the worst smelling garbage bags yet, emitting what can only be described as an overpowering stench of portaloo liquid throughout the kitchen. As this Guardian article notes, around 4,000 chemicals are used in fragrances, the details of which remain “trade secrets” and are therefore unregulated. EWG adds that even products labeled “unscented” may contain fragrance to cover up other odors. Many are derived from petrochemicals, contributing to urban air pollution in the form of VOCs. So in addition to irritating those of us who are sensitive to smell, they’re actually bad for air quality.
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“Polarization”
In the case of present-day America I’m afraid this has become a weasel word — a way for political commentators to safely bemoan our sad state of affairs without actually saying anything that could be construed as “partisan.” The term “polarization” erases differences in power, places dominant and marginalized groups on the same plane, and implies a false equivalence between violent movements and vulnerable people trying to defend themselves. It is an intellectually dishonest way of looking at our current situation, one that has been ruthlessly exploited by those very extremists who would destroy the press that insists on normalizing them.
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Delivering the Goods
It’s a rare single-panel cartoon from me. The end of Roe felt like it required a simple, direct response. My one hopeful thought is that enough people have had a taste of freedom thanks to the social revolutions of the past 50-60 years that those ideas will be difficult to erase — though that is exactly what the GOP is trying to do.
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