Silly me! I thought that the possibility of nuclear extinction was the toughest issue we’d be tackling on today’s show.
I had the honor of speaking with Dr. Helen Caldicott, who’s been educating the world on the dangers of nukes – from weapons to power and everything in between – for decades.
I was lucky enough to speak with her in Sept 2013 (that interview is posted below) about the dangers the world is facing from Fukushima.
Today, Dr. Caldicott is in the US getting ready for a symposium called The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction.
Today, we talked about the scary facts that provide the backdrop for this weekend’s symposium:
Russia and the U.S. possess 94% of the 16,400 nuclear weapons in the global nuclear arsenal. The U.S. maintains its first strike winnable nuclear war policy, and both countries have raised their nuclear arsenals to a higher state of alert because of the situation in the Ukraine. Furthermore it has just been announced that the administration has plans to replace every nuclear warhead and their delivery systems via ship, submarine, missile and plane, at a cost of one trillion dollars over the next thirty years.
If you’re in the NYC area, please try to attend this conference. All the details are here, and it’s affordable ($30-60 total). Anywhere else, they will have a live stream. Just visit the site in time for the start, 9 AM Saturday morning, for the link.
Now on to the really controversial part of today’s show… The Oscars were last night. At the top of the show, I applauded the winners for all injecting something they thought important into their acceptance speeches:
- JK Simmons urged all 1 billion + watching to call their parents (if they’re lucky enough to still have parents to talk with, something I’ve said many times).
- Julianne Moore called out for more attention paid to Alzheimer’s sufferers
- Eddie Redmayne urged attention to ALS victims
- Graham Moore, who won for Best Adapted Screenplay for the Imitation Game told of his suicidal youth, encouraging those who feel “different” to “embrace weird”
- Common and John Legend spoke of the need to strengthen the Voting Rights Act while accepting their award for Best Song for “Glory” from Selma
And after thanking all those on her list, Patricia Arquette proclaimed,
Every woman who gave birth to every tax payer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me! I was watching last night in my bedroom. I stood up and applauded and even went in the living room where my fiance was watching a few minutes behind to hear her say that again!
In the second hour of today’s show, as she does each Monday morning, Julianna Forlano joined in. We talked about Bill O’Reilly’s lying (not that there’s anything new there), and then moved on to the Oscars, when I noted a Tweet from Elon James White
I had no idea that with that statement, she was dissing women of color or who are part of the LGBTQ community. But apparently it was the sin of omission. She didn’t single them out as she stood on the biggest stage in the world to accept the biggest honor her career affords.
And backstage, while being pounced upon by the world’s media, this actress (who usually speaks the words others write for her), said more:
“It’s time for women. Equal means equal. The truth is the older women get, the less money they make. The highest percentage of children living in poverty are in female-headed households. It’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don’t.”
Good so far? Great…
“One of those superior court justices said two years ago in a law speech at a university that we don’t have equal rights for women in America and we don’t because when they wrote Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women. So the truth is even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America right under the surface there are huge issues at play that really do affect women.”
The Jezebel writer is starting to feel a bit put off… ooh, the actress doesn’t have all of the proper vernacular rolling off her tongue in these, the weirdest of circumstances.
But then she made the ultimate sin… that of “erased intersection“:
“It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”
Somehow, Patricia Arquette didn’t understand that it was her duty to say, “when I say ALL the Women in America, I mean women of color and LGBTQ women on her. Shame on her!
When I questioned the term “erased intersection” on Twitter, I was excoriated, due to my #WhiteFeminism and #whiteprivilege!
Asshole after asshole came out of their Twitter holes to tell me that I just don’t get it cuz I’m a bigoted white person. I’ll save you from the masses of tedious tweets and just say that you can look on my stream (though I did block most of the idiots who attacked me, so they may not show up).
All the thin-skinned people who don’t get that Patricia Arquette is actually speaking for ALL WOMEN when she says ALL WOMEN probably won’t read this far anyway. But I checked out GiveLove.org after she mentioned it in her acceptance speech. It’s a relief organization that she founded for the survivors of the Haiti earthquake.
Maybe all of those slighted women of color who feel so left out by her statements in support of ALL WOMEN might want to check it out.
Tomorrow, we’ll try to take the discussion to the civilized airwaves rather than the blood-thirsty Twitter, with Imani Gandy of RHRealityCheck. Then I’ll open the lines for you to weigh in…. radio or not.
