I hate Kanye too ya'll. Put him in the context of an awards show, a Kardashian, or pretty much anywhere there is a camera, and I'm all, "turn the channel."  Sure, he is a musical genius, but that doesn't make him a good person.

All rules have their exception, however, and Kanye's came the day the levees broke in New Orleans. Kanye found the lens of the camera as he joined numerous famous people to request donations to assist the ailing boot of our United States.  And then, standing next to Canada's own Austin Powers, he dropped this bomb, "George Bush doesn't care about Black people."  Here is the video if you missed it.


The immortal words of The Dude have never been more relevant. To paraphrase, "Your not WRONG Kanye, you're just an asshole."
But that was 9 years ago. Old news.  I mean, in the internet age, a decade of actual time is like 50 years in worldview time.  So those prejudicial attitudes expressed by the media and government were really coming from the 1960's.  Which is more understandable.

And then they started to get rid of affirmative action.  Ok, so that's like, mostly racist, but not the full monty.  Sure, affirmative action is still completely necessary, but at least this particular bit of legislation encapsulates some valid points from both sides.  I guess even more than that, I'm saying that while the choice is still clear to me, I do understand the need for a healthy debate on this topic.

Then the Supreme Court ruled to throw out some of the integral pieces of the Voting Rights Act. You know, the law that prohibited (mostly) southern states from creating barriers to keep minority and poor folks from voicing their opinion.  That law that prohibited government-approved racist practices such as voter ID laws (already being put in place in Texas), redistricting voting populations to marginalize minority opinion, and restrictions on early voting.  That's full monty racist.

Looks like Kayne might have been more than just right, he might have actually, for the first time in his life, been guilty of understatement.  It's not just (add any of their first names) Bush who doesn't care about Black people, it's America.   I remember as a kid I was so proud that my country had a judicial body that seemed above, or at least removed, from the politicking of the other two government branches.  How obtuse and shortsighted of me.  I forgot that every societal fad comes back into fashion a few decades later. I just didn't realize it would be true for the systemic hatred of minorities.

But these are Black people we are talking about after all, and if you look at the world's history with a concentration on minority groups, I guess none of us should be too surprised that we are once again putting the screws to the least empowered of our society.  I mean, all the cool kids are doing it.  So perhaps all this alarmist "we are going in reverse, away from social justice" is just a bunch of hippie's making noise.

Then the Hobby Lobby ruling came.  And then I realized that they're coming for our women too.  Because it is extremely difficult to word voting laws to exclude "the ladies" these days,  instead we are targeting the place inside women that America most fears: their vaginas. Oh, of course, we are legislating all of the vagina's supporting players as well, including: wombs, uteri, cervixes, and if possible, clitorises.  Have you ever noticed how the plural form of female reproductive parts are always difficult declentions?  That's not by accident. The very idea of multiple lady parts in one place is terrifying.

*Brief Tangent:  Last night I watched a television commercial that featured a man lathering up with soap in the shower when his wife comes in and asks him, "Is that my body wash you're using? Because that is pH balanced for a woman's V."   She says, "Vee." The product designed only for women, yet they are still too terrified to even mention the word vagina.  Instead they slap a capital "V" on the packaging and call it feminine.  And I'm not going to even go into all the stereotypical "man" tasks the husband then engaged in to restore his masculinity from the testosterone-leaching V soap.  I hate them.   I hate them a whole bunch. End Tangent*

Hobby Lobby was not the only ruling that was handed down regarding the V, however.  Yes, those hypocritical fuckers who love god but hate other people "won" the ability to not pay for the totality of their female employees' healthcare.  As a for-profit "religious" (and i use that word as loosely as possible here) company, Hobby Lobby wasn't eligible for the exemption freeing them from paying for contraception.   Religious non-profits, on the other hand, are able to opt out of paying for contraception under ObamaCare.  In these cases, the government steps in and covers the cost of those employee's contraceptive needs.

Wheaten College on the other hand, IS a religious non-profit.  A real one.  And so, as per "the law" all they have to do to exclude themselves from paying any of that sweet sweet contraception mony -- oh wait, I mean female contraception money -- is fill out a pretty white form and *WHAMO* no more money to women's healthcare, the burden falling once again on our able government.
"Then what's the big fucking deal," you ask, assuming a reality in which the constituents of our country don't go out of their way to hate women and cause unnecessary time-sucks in our highest courts. The problem is that the jackholes at Wheaten College have claimed, and had the courts temporarily agree with them, that even filling out those forms leads to the baby killing they are against and therefore is directly in opposition to their religious freedom.  Just filling out the form, mind you! As a person who has spent over a decade enrolled at educational institutions, I can say with confidence that filling out forms is at the very core of higher learning.  Waiver form this, exemption form that, 14 signature pages here, work-study hours there.  I killed my own private rainforest just by filing the necessary forms for graduation.  Setting a precedent against the act of filling out forms is an extremely dangerous precedent for a college institution to set.

If this were the argument of a Walmart executive, it would be utterly offensive, but not surprising. But this is a purported institution of higher education!  You can't excuse this as anything but horribly sexist.  Full monty sexist (without, of course, the sexist undertones of men taking off all their clothes in front of you).

Is this kinda shit ok now? Is it, like, cool to view women as lesser again?  I hear joke after joke about the wage gap between men and women, skewering how ridiculous it is that in 2014 the ladies still only pull in 3/4th of the cash for the same work as their male counterparts.  Yet we still haven't done anything about it.  It still rests there on our country's mantel, symbolizing that while we have more cash than any other nation, we are far from the most progressive.

Abortion clinics are closing, women's healthcare options are increasingly being dictated by old white men, and I'm starting to get the feeling that if someone were to slip a bill to Congress purposing women be once again considered the legal property of their male counterparts, that proposed piece of legislation would minimally get partisan support.  I can almost see Crazy-Eyes Bachmann extolling the benefits and pleasure of following her kind Christian husband's every command.  Gag me.

The Committee for Writing the Book Filled with Everything They Don't Know about Vaginas

I wonder what will break the levee of female rage.  Will it be a young woman in Texas dying on the table from the illegal quickie abortion she had no other option but to procure?  Or maybe it will be just one too many names, perhaps a famous person's daughter, added to the laundry-list of unprosecuted college rape cases.  Whatever it is, make no mistake the rage exists, and it's building.  How long before, instead of sad-clown Kayne, we have Elizabeth Warren at the podium.  This time speaking truth to power by declaring, "America Doesn't Care about Female People!"