The Looming Danger of Justices Thomas and Alito & Is Asbestos in Makeup Giving Women Cancer?
Microplastics are in Our Bodies, Texas Tried to Ban Books that Mention "Butt" and "Fart," Liam Neeson is the Easter Bunny, Crowded House Sings “Don’t Dream It's Over"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Don’t understand art? Maybe this quote will help.
The Looming Danger of Justices Thomas and Alito: This man is morally and intellectually unfit. What can we do about it?
Appeals court tells Texas it cannot ban books for mentioning ‘butt and fart’: This story is much more insidious than it first appears.
Kareem’s Video Break: Liam Neeson is back, this time auditioning for the role of the Easter Bunny.
Is there asbestos in your makeup? Why women with cancer are suing big beauty brands: Women have been poisoning themselves for decades. Are their children next?
Microplastics found in every human semen sample tested in study: This disturbing study should be a wake-up call. But only if you’re listening.
Crowded House Sings “Don’t Dream It’s Over”: There’s something mesmerizing about this song.
PERSONAL NOTE FROM KAREEM:
My very close friend Jerry West died this week. Coming so soon after the loss of Bill Walton has left me shattered. I’ll probably write more on this after I’ve had some time to recover. Just know that aside from being one of the greatest basketball players ever, he was a man of integrity and passion. For now, I’ll just share what I said that day: “The reason Jerry West is the logo for the NBA is because he embodied the qualities we admire in our best athletes: skills as a player, dedication as a teammate, and integrity as a person. He was my coach and my advisor, but mostly he was my friend. Today, a part of the continent has broken off and we are all left a little smaller.”
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Timms: Sir. I don’t always understand poetry.
Hector: You don’t always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it
now, know it now and you’ll understand it whenever.
Timms: I don’t see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry’s about
hasn’t happened to us yet.
Hector: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready!”
Alan Bennett, The History Boys
This dialogue exchange is from the brilliant play (and the movie adaptation) The History Boys. Timms is a young, lonely high school student frustrated with the poetry lessons from his very caring teacher Hector. What I love about this exchange is how wonderfully Bennett captures the typical complaint people have about art while also offering a powerful defense of art.
Art has the power to entertain, comfort, inspire, give us insight, and lift our spirits. But it can also make us feel dumb. We read a poem and scratch our heads. We stare at an abstract painting and shake our heads at the waste of paint. Yet, experts are fawning over those works as genius. That frustration is what Timms is expressing. Why bother to create art that most people won’t get? Because top-shelf art wants us to reach higher than a limerick, a Fast and Furious movie, or a cozy mystery. Yes, we can enjoy those things (I sure do), but sometimes the mind hungers for more than tasty snacks for the mind. It’s the same motivation for why some people train daily to run faster, jump farther, or score more points.
The reason good art can appear to be dense and inaccessible is because it wants to force you to look closer. Usually, everything you need to know is right there in front of you in the work, but it nudges you to be the detective and see the clues. This isn’t a gimmick, it’s a means to train the audience to be more observant of the clues in their own lives so they can be more in control of their happiness. People repeatedly make the same mistakes because they don’t recognize the signposts screaming at them: Unsafe Relationship Ahead! or Justification Slippery When Hasty!
Timms’ point is that the life lessons in most of the poetry they study are for things that haven’t happened in their young lives—yet. The narrator in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is contemplating suicide because of the emptiness of his life; the narrator of W.D. Snodgrass’ “Lying Awake” bemoans his inability to change his mundane life because he lacks the will power. That kind of drama is down the road for a high school student, so why study it at all?
Hector’s explains that you’re assembling an emotional first aid kit for the maladies later in life so that when they happen, you are prepared to understand and cope with them because you’ve already thought deeply about them. So many times in my life something momentous has happened that knocked the wind out of me, but I was able to recall a passage from a novel, a song from Marvin Gaye, a stanza from a poem, a painting I once saw, and that helped give me a way to think about what had happened to me. It helped me cope because it provided a language for me to understand what was happening and put it in a larger context.
Sometimes art takes a little effort—but that effort is rewarded with a lifetime of pleasure and understanding. Art can be a key that unlocks some of our most intimate and profound thoughts—if we let it.
The Looming Danger of Justices Thomas and Alito
This is from Heather Cox Richardson’s June 7, 2024 Substack newsletter:
…Justice Clarence Thomas amended a financial filing from 2019, acknowledging that he should have reported two free vacations he accepted from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow. While in the past he said he did not need to disclose such gifts, in today’s filing he claimed he had “inadvertently omitted” the trips on earlier reports. ProPublica broke the story of these and other gifts from Crow, including several more trips than Thomas has so far acknowledged.
Fix The Court, a nonprofit advocacy group that seeks to reform the federal courts, estimates that Thomas has accepted more than $4 million in gifts over the last 20 years. As economic analyst Steven Rattner pointed out, that’s 5.6 times more than the other 16 justices on the court in those years combined.
…Clarence Thomas was a key vote on the Supreme Court. But as ProPublica reported in December 2023, Thomas complained in 2000 to a Republican member of Congress about the low salaries of Supreme Court justices (equivalent to about $300,000 today) and suggested he might resign. The congressman and his friends were desperate to keep Thomas, with his staunchly Republican vote, on the court. In the years after 2000, friends and acquaintances provided Thomas with a steady stream of gifts that supplemented his income, and he stayed in his seat.
But what amounts to bribes has compromised the court. After the news broke that Thomas has now disclosed some of the trips Crow gave him, conservative lawyer George Conway wrote: “It’s long past time for there to be a comprehensive criminal investigation, and congressional investigation, of Justice Thomas and his finances and his taxes. What he has taken, and what he has failed to disclose, is beyond belief, and has been so for quite some time.” A bit less formally, over a chart of the monetary value of the gifts Thomas has accepted, Conway added: “I mean. This. Is. Just. Nuts.”
MY TAKE: I’ve commented on Thomas’ corruption before, but it’s worth revisiting right now because the extent of it is so staggering and because the moral corruption within the U.S. Supreme Court is getting worse. We’ve had to deal with Justice Alito’s flags that support Christian Nationalism (which has a goal of dismantling the U.S. Constitution) and election denying (which dismantles the foundation of democracy). Both men display such supreme arrogance that they proudly proclaim they are invincible to the law. They are untouchable, so screw us if we don’t like it.
They’re not wrong. The Constitution states that Justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." Justices remain in their positions as long as they choose and can only be removed through impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate. The only Justice to be impeached was the highly partisan and volatile Samuel Chase in 1805. He was accused of promoting his biased political agenda thereby “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan.” Although a majority of Senators voted to convict Chase, it wasn’t enough to meet the two-thirds necessary. He was acquitted and resumed his duties until he died in 1811.
In other words, once in office, there’s no practical way of getting them out—regardless of how corrupt their behavior or how irrational their decisions are. Amending the Constitution to put term limits on Justices is a reasonable solution that makes Justices more accountable and keeps the Court from being just another partisan fortress. But because Trump stacked SCOTUS with Republican conservatives there is no way the GOP would agree to do what’s best for the country over what helps their party.
In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of ‘Godliness.’ Roberts Talks of Pluralism. (The New York Times)
SUMMARY: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a woman posing as a Catholic conservative last week that compromise in America between the left and right might be impossible and then agreed with the view that the nation should return to a place of godliness.
“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito told the woman, Lauren Windsor, at an exclusive gala at the Supreme Court. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”
Ms. Windsor pressed Justice Alito further. “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument,” she told him, according to the edited recordings of Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which were posted and distributed widely on social media on Monday. “Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”
“I agree with you, I agree with you,” he responded.
MY TAKE: Alito’s comments are sharply contrasted with Chief Justice Roberts who disagreed that the Court had any duty to guide the country morally (“It’s not our job to do that.”). He also disagreed with Alito that the country was beyond coming together to reach decisions. Roberts’ reasonableness made Alito’s comments look even worse.
Justice Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, also had a lot to say, including, “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag, because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month,” referring to June being Pride month. (You ponder what her version of Jesus is that he would not be loving.) She then went on to complain about “feminazis,” and the many flags she’s designing in her head for when her husband is “free of this nonsense.” She also agreed that there is “no negotiating with the radical left” because “They feel. They don’t think.” (You can ponder the irony of that last statement at your leisure.)
Of course, the beliefs of one’s spouse do not prove anything. But Alito’s own words seem to align with those of his more verbose wife. A Supreme Court Justice makes decisions that can affect the entire country for generations, in effect establishing or restricting the rights of Americans. Their allegiance can never be to their religion before the letter or spirit of the U.S. Constitution. That’s the oath they take. That he doesn’t understand that is a failure of his intellect, morality, and patriotism.
Appeals court tells Texas it cannot ban books for mentioning ‘butt and fart’ (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: An appellate court has ruled that Texas cannot ban books from libraries simply because they mention “butt and fart” and other content which some state officials may dislike.
The fifth US circuit court of appeals issued its decision on Thursday in a 76-page majority opinion, which was written by Judge Jacques Wiener Jr and opened with a quote from American poet Walt Whitman: “The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.”
In its decision, the appellate court declared that “government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree”.
It added: “This court has declared that officials may not ‘remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the idea contained in those books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion’.”
…Those books include seven “butt and fart” books with titles including I Broke My Butt! and Larry the Farting Leprechaun, four young adult books on sexuality, gender identity and dysphoria – including Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen – and two books on the history of racism in the US, among them Caste and They Called Themselves the KKK.
…In a report released last October, the American Library Association found that Texas made the most attempts in the US to ban or restrict books in 2022. In total, the state made 93 attempts to restrict access to more than 2,300 books.
MY TAKE: If you’ve watched any animated movies or TV shows in the past ten years, you’ve noticed that nearly all of them have jokes about butts and farts. Why? Because they’re funny to kids—and most adults. They are reminders that despite our cultural pretensions, we are all physical beings with basic and unpleasant physical needs and reactions. In some ways, the fart is the great equalizer among people, expressed by royalty and working folk alike. When one rips in the most formal settings—church, school, an elevator—it’s hysterical.
The reason it appears in children’s books and movies is because it gets kids’ attention, hooking them into the story. It also helps them cope with embarrassment, which is the main fear of almost all children. How drab our kids’ books would be if we couldn’t poke fun at our social fears. A humorless Mississippi school district fired an assistant principal in 2022 for reading to his students the children’s book I Need a New Butt. What precisely is their fear of children acknowledging that they have butts? The additional harm here is teaching children to be ashamed of their bodies and bodily functions rather than marvel at the ingenuity of their design. For religious folk, it seems like they’re insulting their God for a sloppy creation.
Butts and farts are just the misdirections hoping to get parents on board so they can go after the real targets: the two books on the history of racism in the US. They have decided to hide the shame of our past by employing the shameful behavior of censorship.
Kareem’s Video Break
A few months ago I featured a very funny video of Liam Neeson auditioning to be Santa. Here he is auditioning to be the Easter Bunny.
As Liam would say, “I have a particular set of skills.” Only mine are used to write this newsletter.
This Week in Environmental Danger
Is there asbestos in your makeup? Why women with cancer are suing big beauty brands (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: Mention asbestos and disease, and most people’s thoughts turn to old, unstable floor tiles or insulation in homes or offices, or jobs in shipbuilding or construction – the kind of heavy industries that employ men in hi-vis jackets and hard hats. One place we don’t tend to think of it is in the beauty industry; rarely do we consider nude eye-shadow palettes or peachy pink blushers as health hazards.
Yet scores of British women are taking leading cosmetic companies to court in the United States, claiming that they contracted mesothelioma – a particularly nasty, treatable, but incurable cancer of the lining of the lung, heart or stomach – through their use of beauty products.
The ingredient they hold responsible is talcum powder, which is ubiquitous in makeup. You’ll find it in bronzer, blusher, eye shadow, foundation, mascara, lipstick and even dry shampoo, because it does an excellent job in absorbing moisture and preventing caking. Talc is a mineral that is mined from underground clay deposits – but it can also often have veins of asbestos present in it.
Almost all of the big brands use talc in their cosmetics, and they reject any suggestion that they may be tainted. The Estée Lauder Companies group, which includes Clinique and Bobbi Brown as well as Estée Lauder itself, said: “We only use talc that is tested and certified as asbestos free. Additionally, all our ingredients undergo a comprehensive safety review and evaluation, and our products are safe for their intended use.”
Certainly, the majority of people who have been using these products for years haven’t developed mesothelioma, partly because asbestos isn’t distributed equally in talc (which makes it especially hard to test for), but also because we’ve been fortunate that asbestos fibres haven’t lodged in our pleura (which lines our lungs) or peritoneum (the membrane lining the abdomen).
…There have been periodic scares about cosmetic talc, but the world’s attention around the issue increased in 2018 with an avalanche of lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson (J&J), alleging that the company’s Baby Powder and other talc products were contaminated by asbestos (though most claimed they had caused ovarian cancer rather than mesothelioma). A Reuters investigation into the company’s internal documents found that J&J had known for decades that asbestos had lurked in its Baby Powder. It is currently facing around 54,000 lawsuits related to talc in Baby Powder, but maintains that its products do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer.
MY TAKE: Here’s what makes this issue so complicated. Studies have not shown a link between talc and mesothelioma. However, the problem seems to be that the method of testing used by the cosmetic industry to wash their hands of any responsibility is not as accurate as it should be when the stakes are so high:
The most sensitive – and therefore most reliable – method is transmission electron microscopy, but the most common method used by the cosmetics industry is X-ray diffraction. This is less sensitive – it can’t detect levels beneath 0.5%, but it allows the industry to claim that its talc contains “no detectable asbestos”. As one peer-reviewed paper documenting the talc industry’s insidious influence over regulation and public health policy observes: “‘No detectable asbestos’ is not the same as ‘asbestos-free’.”
Cosmetics can be marketed as “safe” because of a method of testing that they know isn’t revealing the truth. A 2020 study found asbestos in three out of 21 powder-based cosmetic products sold in the U.S. Other studies referred to in the article show a clear relationship between the use of cosmetics and mesothelioma. There are talc-free cosmetics out there, but the major players in the industry follow the same pattern as all Big Business—think tobacco and oil—when their products are shown to be unhealthy: deny, deny, deny.
So, before you start buying cosmetics for your child, maybe you should consider whether or not you’re giving them poison that will destroy their health.
Microplastics found in every human semen sample tested in study (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: Microplastic pollution has been found in all human semen samples tested in a study, and researchers say further research on the potential harm to reproduction is “imperative”.
Sperm counts in men have been falling for decades and 40% of low counts remain unexplained, although chemical pollution has been implicated by many studies.
The 40 semen samples were from healthy men undergoing premarital health assessments in Jinan, China. Another recent study found microplastics in the semen of six out of 10 healthy young men in Italy, and another study in China found the pollutants in half of 25 samples.
Recent studies in mice have reported that microplastics reduced sperm count and caused abnormalities and hormone disruption.
Research on microplastics and human health is moving quickly and scientists appear to be finding the contaminants everywhere. The pollutants were found in all 23 human testicle samples tested in a study published in May.
Microplastics have also recently been discovered in human blood, placentas and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory.
Millions of tonnes of plastic waste are dumped in the environment and much is broken down into microplastics. These have polluted the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People are known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in.
“As emerging research increasingly implicates microplastic exposure as a potential factor impacting human health, understanding the extent of human contamination and its relation to reproductive outcomes is imperative,” said Ning Li, of Qingdao University in China, and colleagues.
MY TAKE: This story scares me a bit. I’m not so naive as to think we can suddenly stop producing plastics without crashing the worldwide economy and sending billions into poverty. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing. What particularly worries me is the Republicans’ insistence—led by Big Business’s paid shill Trump—to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as eliminate various other oversight groups and laws meant to protect the environment so that we aren’t being poisoned by our water, food, and air.
To support this campaign, you’d have to refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming facts and studies that indicate the peril we’re in. You’d also have to have no regard for the lives of your children or grandchildren, believing that the quick buck now is worth the risk. Protect children from the words “butt” and “fart”, but let them wither from everything around them.
We should be investing more in the EPA, the FDA, and other organizations and research groups trying to reverse the damage rather than pretending, “Nothing to see here, folks, move along.”
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Crowded House: “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (1986)
Australian rock band Crowded House released this song as part of their 1986 debut album Crowded House. Originally called The Mullanes, they changed their name to reflect the tiny Hollywood Hills house they were staying in while recording their album.
I’m not a big fan of eighties pop and rock music—except for a couple dozen songs I’ll feature here from time to time. There was a certain mechanical emptiness to the music and the lyrics often seemed both whiny and smug. They seemed deliberately shallow as a direct reaction against the earnestness of sixties and seventies songs. But “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” written by lead vocalist Neil Finn, has a pleading surrealism that I’ve always found compelling. These lyrics especially intrigued me:
There is freedom within There is freedom without Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
And later:
Now I'm towing my car There's a hole in the roof My possessions are causing me suspicion But there's no proof
Whenever I hear the song, I stop and consider the poetry of those lines that lift the song beyond a formulaic love song. Hope you find the same pleasure I do.
You’re not dreaming. This newsletter is over—for now. But if you share it will still be ongoing for others.
Many of the members of the current Supreme Court were appointed using questionable tactics. The names were given to Bush and Trump by a bunch of extreme billionaires who want to fulfill Alito’s vision of a (white) Christian nation. So far, they have restricted abortion and access to women’s health and advancement. They have allowed extreme gerrymandering, gutted the Voting Rights Act, protected industries that pollute and exploit their workers, and in return, they have given everyone a military style weapon to protect themselves from Black people and liberals. Most recently, they have made sure that the man who has committed some of the most serious crimes in American history won’t have a trial. They have already made life more difficult and unequal in America, and they are not finished yet. We have to continue to highlight their extreme arrogance and corruption, and find ways to reform the court.
I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend, Jerry West. May memories of your friend Jerry soon replace your sadness with smiles.
As a young adult, I had the privilege of watching you both play basketball. Now I feel gifted again by the honor of reading your brilliant words. Thank you.