What bullshit is this?!

From Massachusetts to Utah, small community theater productions of To Kill a Mockingbird are being shut down under threat of a lawsuit by the producer of the new Broadway production.

It doesn’t matter that the new version, penned by Aaron Sorkin, is completely different from the Christopher Sergel play that’s been performed by high school students and community theater actors for decades. Nor does it matter that the community theaters paid a licensing fee of at least $100 per performance to the Dramatic Publishing Company, which owns the rights to the earlier version of the play.

What matters, lawyers for Broadway producer Scott Rudin say, is that according to the contract between Dramatic and the Harper Lee estate, most amateur performances can’t proceed now that a new version of the story is on Broadway.

That 1969 contract, according to The Times, blocks Mockingbird performances within 25 miles of cities that had a population of 150,000 or more in 1960 while a “first-class dramatic play” based on the book is playing in New York or on tour.

Gee. Are people allowed to read the novel within 25 miles of cities that had a population of 150,000 or more in 1960? Are enforcers with To Kill a Mockingbird-radar combing the environs of every sizable city in the country even as we speak?

It’s not just community theaters in the U.S. that have been forced to shut down their productions. Last month a touring version of the Sergel play, set to run in the U.K. and Ireland, was canceled after being faced with legal threats.

Rudin “made it clear” that his company “would commence legal proceedings against the tour’s producer, originating theatre and all venues where it was due to be presented if the tour were not cancelled with immediate effect,” the tour’s producers said in a statement, according to Playbill.

The show must go on! Unless it’s competition.

I saw this the other day but didn’t get around to it.

A revised statement from Little, Brown and Company. pic.twitter.com/zSQp1Q132C

— Little, Brown and Co (@littlebrown) February 26, 2019

We will work with E. J. Levy to publish her novel with sensitivity to the issues that have been raised, including the use of the proper pronouns to describe Dr. Barry’s embodiment.

The “proper pronouns” forsooth – they might as well be obeying a demand for submission from the god-emperor. Use the proper pronouns or it’s ten years in the slammer for lèse-majesté.

It’s interesting to think about how many novels there have been in which women are portrayed as evil schemers, bloodsucking sex fiends, stupid empty dependents, silly vain dolls, barely perceptible nonentities…yet have women ever once been able to pressure a publisher into telling an author to do a better job with the female characters? Maybe some female editors have, but groups of women outsiders forming pressure groups? Not that I’ve ever heard of; do let me know if I’m wrong.

Okay…

Transgender cyclist wins Dutch professional women’s cycling event. At the age of 44. The average age of her 8 team mates is 24. This is all fine, though. Totally fine. https://t.co/rAwq7szGhn

— Ben (@BenWlv) March 1, 2019

Googles

Yes, that’s a male body in the middle.

Paul Krugman gives himself a break from thinking about Trump to think about the Trump Princess.

You see, recently she said something that would have been remarkable coming from any Republican, but was truly awesome coming from the Daughter in Chief.

The subject under discussion was the proposal, part of the Green New Deal, that the government offer a jobs guarantee. Ms. Trump trashed the notion, claiming that Americans “want to work for what they get,” that they want to live in a country “where there is the potential for upward mobility.”

O.K., this was world-class lack of self-awareness: It doesn’t get much better than being lectured on self-reliance by an heiress whose business strategy involves trading on her father’s name.

Right? What real work has Princess Ivanka ever done? Mincing around the landscape looking like a Barbie doll doesn’t count.

But Krugman’s point is that the upward mobility thing is bullshit; we have less of it than the other developed countries, not more. This comes as zero surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the ever-growing gulf between rich and poor here.

America’s exceptionally low social mobility is distinct from its exceptionally high income inequality, although these are almost surely related. Among advanced countries, there is a strong negative correlation between inequality and mobility, sometimes referred to as the “Great Gatsby curve.” This makes sense. After all, huge disparities in parents’ income tend to translate into large disparities in children’s opportunities.

Witness the Trump and Kushner offspring, talentless dweebs to a person.

Where do people from poor or modest backgrounds have the best chance of getting ahead? The answer is that Scandinavia leads the rankings, although Canada also does well. And here’s the thing: The Nordic countries don’t just have low inequality, they also have much bigger governments, much more extensive social safety nets, than we do. In other words, they have what Republicans denounce as “socialism” (it really isn’t, but never mind).

What does that translate to? Universal health care, better schools, more public housing. What does that help foster? New generations who get decent schooling and a safe place to do homework and get enough sleep. You do the math.

News out of Missouri:

The Missouri House of Representatives voted 117-39 Wednesday to approve a bill that would effectively ban abortions in Missouri except for medical emergencies.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Nick Schroer, R-O’Fallon, would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually around six weeks of pregnancy.

The legislation, sponsored by someone who will never, under any circumstance, be forced to undergo 9 months of increasing physical strain and then hours of trauma, to force people of the sex he is not to undergo 9 months of increasing physical strain and then hours of trauma. A man sponsored legislation that would (if passed) force women to suffer pregnancy and then childbirth against their wills. That’s what this legislation does: it forces women to suffer trauma they don’t want.

Supporters of the legislation called it the “strongest pro-life bill in the country” at a time when Missouri has only one abortion provider.

“I think here in Missouri, we know that life is precious. We want to give women, men, young people the choice: the choice to live,” Schroer said.

Women? No. They are not giving women the choice. They are hoping to force women to continue pregnancies that they don’t want.

Via Acolyte of Sagan, a hideous crime in Argentina:

An 11-year old girl who became pregnant after being raped was forced to give birth after Argentine authorities refused to allow her the abortion to which she was entitled.

11. She’s 11. ELEVEN.

The authorities ignored repeated requests for an abortion from the child, called “Lucía” to protect her identity, as well as her mother and a number of Argentine women’s right activists. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, she had to undergo a caesarean section on Tuesday. The baby is unlikely to survive.

They wouldn’t let her end the pregnancy that was criminally forced on her, then they ripped her open. In other words the rapist raped her and then the authorities committed GBH on her.

Lucía told the psychologist at the hospital to which she was admitted after two suicide attempts: “I want you to remove what the old man put inside me.”

Lucía, the youngest of three sisters, became pregnant after she was abused by her grandmother’s 65-year-old partner. She was placed under her grandmother’s care in 2015, after her two older sisters were reportedly abused by her mother’s partner.

So I guess the authorities felt her life hadn’t been shit enough yet, and they needed to make it much more so.

No surprise, but still horrifying. The (non-)mystery of Prince Jared’s security clearance is solved:

President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Sure, that’s fine – that scummy little weasel of a real estate hustler can’t possibly do any harm with access to top-secret intelligence, any more than his wife’s father can do any harm with access to top-secret intelligence and nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

Yeah great. They wrote memos. That’ll fix everything.

Trump lied to the Times about it last month. Of course he did.

Kushner’s lawyer lied about it. Princess Ivanka lied about it.

Asked on Thursday about the memos contradicting the president’s account, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said, “We don’t comment on security clearances.”

We hand them out to criminals and gangsters, and we lie to anyone who asks us about it, but we don’t comment. Peasants.

Mr. Kushner has spent this week abroad working on a Middle East peace plan. Among his meetings was one with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

He’s not qualified to be “working on a Middle East peace plan.” He’s a crooked little weasel with no relevant education or training or experience. He should be selling cheap condos in Pierre, South Dakota.

Another clash between people who oppose the buying and selling of women and people who favor it:

A London sex-work researcher is adding her voice to the growing dismay over the police decision to begin releasing the names of men accused of buying sex, as a petition demanding police reverse the policy is launched.

Chief John Pare announced the new policy at last week’s police board meeting, touting the move as another tool in the fight against human trafficking.

The change was championed by the London Abused Women’s Centre and others advocating for an end to prostitution, but it drew a swift backlash from organizations representing sex workers and their allies advocating for the continuation of prostitution.

“I don’t know how the decision was made. It is a perfect illustration of ignoring research in favour of moralizing,” said Treena Orchard, a health studies researcher at Western University.

Moralizing? It’s moralizing to work to prevent trafficking? It’s worth sneering at those efforts in order to make sure prostitution remains a job option?

Experts have identified London as a hub for human trafficking — defined as the exploitation of people for profit through force, fraud or coercion — because of its location along Highway 401 between Toronto and the U.S. border.

Tut, more moralizing.

H/t YNNB

Hmm.

President Trump called @mattgaetz last night from Hanoi to talk the Cohen testimony and the threats (since rescinded) Gaetz made about Cohen.
"I was happy to do it for you. You just keep killing it," Gaetz was heard telling him.
(Gaetz told me he doesn't discuss calls w/POTUS)

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) February 28, 2019

Interesting, but full of holes. “Gaetz was heard” by whom? Where was this? Would Gaetz really exchange criminal chitchat with Trump in the presence of witnesses? How does Dovere know it was Trump? How does whoever heard what Gaetz said know it was Trump?

Unsubstantiated.

Michael Cohen kept me from other things yesterday, so now: Cardinal Pell found guilty.

Of what?

Raping children.

Cardinal George Pell, once the third most powerful man in the Vatican and Australia’s most senior Catholic, has been found guilty of child sexual abuse after a trial in Melbourne.

…

Pell, who is on leave from his role in Rome as Vatican treasurer, was found guilty of sexually penetrating a child under the age of 16 as well as four charges of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16. The offences occurred in December 1996 and early 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, months after Pell was inaugurated as archbishop of Melbourne.

…

Pope Francis, who has previously praised Pell for his honesty and response to child sexual abuse, has yet to publicly react, but just two days after the unreported verdict in December the Vatican announced that Pell and two other cardinals had been removed from the pontiff’s council of advisers.

Pell’s conviction and likely imprisonment will cause shockwaves through a global Catholic congregation and is a blow to Francis’s efforts to get a grip on sexual abuse.

It comes just days after an unprecedented summit of cardinals and senior bishops in the presence of the pope at the Vatican, intended to signal a turning point on the issue that has gravely damaged the church and imperilled Francis’s papacy.

Well, if they will insist on claiming to be representatives of Mister God, raping children isn’t a good look on them.

H/t Rob

Rod Liddle congratulates the men winning women’s competitions:

Already a Democratic party representative, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, is insisting that the US powerlifting tournaments allow transgender women to compete, so that people who look very much like Geoff Capes, and have the same chromosomes as Geoff Capes, and the same bone structure and musculature, can compete against women. Meanwhile, the fastest female college sprinter in the US is CeCe Telfer, who, once again, is not what you or I or science would call a lady, and one of the world champions in women’s cycling is a chap called Rachel McKinnon, whom I have mentioned here before.

…

Those who support the rights of transgender women to compete in women’s sports often cite the only piece of research done on the issue which ‘proves’ that it is a myth that transgender women have an advantage over normal women. This study was published in 2015 and is cited every time the issue arises — but I have one or two problems with it, to tell you the truth. First, it concerned a total of just eight athletes, which is a smallish sample (no control group, either). Second, it was not carried out by a qualified geneticist or social scientist, but by a ‘medical physicist’ by the name of Joanna Harper. And third, Joanna Harper, once an athlete herself, was, um, how can I put this, not always called Joanna. She was raised as a boy and transitioned to being a fairly fast lady in her thirties. So she has skin in the game and we might surmise that she, or he, set out to prove a thesis, rather than, in good Popperian practice, trying to disprove it.

Other than that…

Charles Pierce is blistering about the Republicans’ performance in that hearing yesterday.

Not one Republican asked a question about the specific offenses that Cohen had illuminated in his opening statement.

Why is that? I suppose because they don’t doubt any of it? But then why do they continue to support him? Because it’s worth it to them to stick it to women, stick it to the poor, stick it to brown immigrants, stick it to people of color generally.

And everybody kept yielding time to the egregious ranking Republican member, Jim Jordan of Ohio, or to Jordan’s fellow Freedom Caucasian, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, and those two jamokes couldn’t get out of their own way.

Jordan insisted that some dark—Dare he say, Clintonian?—forces were behind Cohen’s testimony, using the name of Lanny Davis, the old Clinton hand who is Cohen’s attorney, as a conjuring word. Jordan expressed surprise that Cohen might have consulted with the chairmen of other committees before which he might testify. He got so insufferable that Steve Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, went all Southie on Jordan’s mug, running through a litany of people connected with the Trump campaign and/or the administration* who have been arrested, indicted, convicted, or copped a plea.

Crime isn’t crime unless it happens in Chicago.

This was a vivid look into the chronic ward of the prion disease that has eaten away the higher functions of American conservatism—and, thus, those of the Republican Party as well—since Ronald Reagan first served up the monkey brains almost 40 years ago. These are the complete creatures of the talk-show culture, the perfect products of two and three generations of gerrymandered in-breeding. These are the monsters from inside The Bubble.

And the gerrymandering continues, so they will only get worse.

A theme emerges.

Difficult week for some members of the British left as it turns out Julie Bindel really is a feminist and Chris Williamson really is an antisemite, whoever could have guessed

— Sarah Ditum (@sarahditum) February 28, 2019

Now you people who want to no platform @bindelj take a long hard look at what she has achieved for women – Justice for Women – over her life time and tell what you have done that comes near it. Ta

— suzanne moore (@suzanne_moore) February 28, 2019

To all those whoever wondered, 'Gosh, what has @bindelj ever done for women in prison?", and couldn't research it because their Googling finger was broken, start here and work backwards over 3 decades. Yes @bindelj and @HWistrich! Ultimate power couple https://t.co/WnZhnIeDX9

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) February 28, 2019

When people say "what has Julie Bindel ever done for women in prison" – her tireless and fearless campaigning for women is humbling. https://t.co/etz11iLvn0

— sianushka (@sianushka) February 28, 2019