For me this was the hardest to watch. I have had to go without food while others ate. I was hospitalized and suffered clinical death due to malnutrition. At the table if I was allowed the meals could turn quickly for me from possible danger to happening harm. I spent a lot of time diving under the table to doge something thrown at me or in dodging the blows aimed at me. Being kicked under the table was common and if I yelped or complained I was the one punished. I learned to eat without looking at my food always looking around out the sides of my eyes because to look scared brought more violence. I was told I ruined their meals. I often could only choke a few bites out of fear and anxiety. I basically ate one meal a day which was at school and mostly was two hot dogs and a serving of french fries, and when school was out I would take a sandwich and stay away from the house. The only place I could eat freely and in peace was my grandparent’s home I went to on the weekends. What these people are going through is a war crime and a crime against humanity that the government of Israel and the military people must answer for. Never again applies to more than Jewish people. Hugs
August 23, 1933 Mahatma Gandhi, weighing only 90 pounds, was released unconditionally from Sassoon Hospital in Poona because, after 5 days of his latest “fast unto death,” the doctors feared that his body could no longer stand the strain of fasting. He had been taken to the hospital from Yeravda jail, which he had described as his “permanent address,” when he started his fast. He was protesting official refusal to allow him to continue his work with the Untouchables (he had called them harijan, or “children of God”) while in prison. Gandhi leaving hospital, 1933 He had deliberately courted arrest, rejecting an order permitting him to reside only within the limits of Poona, and had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. Gandhi and his fasts
August 23, 1945 In a letter to his friend Anne Marie Petersen shortly before the end of British colonial rule in India, Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “When there is independence, why should you fear the majority? If you have God with you and the majority have not, should you still fear? And if both have God between them who should fear whom? Is there then any question of majority and minority? Let us pray. Love. Bapu”
August 23, 1989 Over one million joined hands across the three Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) in a 400-mile-long chain of resistance against control by the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). It was the 60th anniversary of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany who had negotiated it. Generally called the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it secretly agreed to Soviet control of Latvia and Estonia, and German influence over Poland and Lithuania. Germany, again secretly, later ceded control over Lithuania to the Soviets for 7.5 million dollars in gold ($115 in 2008 dollars). Baltic hands The Baltic Way(with pictures of the action)
August 22, 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower announced a voluntary moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. A report outlining a system for monitoring and verifying compliance of a complete ban on such testing had been released just the day before. The Conference of Experts, as it was known, had been meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to work out the details on detection of violations of such a treaty. The U.S. delegation was led by Nobel physics laureate Ernest Lawrence from the University of California (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is named after him). Eisenhower predicated his moratorium on U.S.S.R. and U.K. agreement to the same limitations. All three countries agreed to the one-year halt in testing and to begin negotiations on a complete test ban at the end of October; all three performed last-minute (atmospheric) tests before the opening of talks.
August 22, 1964 Singing at a boardwalk demonstration: Hamer (with microphone), Stokely Carmichael, (in hat), Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ella Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), testified in front of the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention. She was challenging the all-white delegation that the segregated regular Mississippi Democrats had sent to the presidential nominating convention. Mississippi’s Democratic Party excluded African Americans from participation. The MFDP, on the other hand, sought to create a racially inclusive new party, signing up 60,000 members. The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state.The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state. In her testimony she spoke about black Mississippians not only being denied the right to register to vote, but being harassed, beaten, shot at, and arrested for trying. Concerned about the political reaction to her statement, President Lyndon Johnson suddenly called an impromptu press conference, thereby interrupting television broadcast of the hearing. Hear her testimony Link to photo gallery
August 22, 1971 The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) arrested twenty in Camden, New Jersey, and five in Buffalo, New York, for conspiracy to steal and destroy draft records. Eventually known as the Camden 28, most were Roman Catholic activists, including four priests, and a Lutheran minister.“We are not here because of a crime committed in Camden but because of a war committed in Indochina….” Cookie Ridolfi The Camden 28
August 22, 1972 Rhodesia’s team was banned from competing in the Olympic Games with just four days to go before the opening ceremony in Munich, Germany. The National Olympic Committees of Africa had threatened to pull out of the games unless Rhodesia was barred from competing. Though the Rhodesian team included both whites and blacks, the government was an illegal one, controlled by whites though they represented just 5% of the country’s population. It had broken away from the British Commonwealth over demands from Commonwealth member nations that power be yielded to the majority. Read more
August 22, 1986 The Kerr-McGee Corporation agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million ($2.68 in 2008), settling a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit. She had been active in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, specifically looking into radiation exposure of workers, and spills and leaks of plutonium. The story of Karen Silkwood
The excellent Minnesota Vikings cheer squad. Image credit: David Berding // Getty Images)
The American economy has become sluggish, Trump’s foreign policy has been abysmal, and we still don’t have the Epstein files that likely implicate Trump’s role in a massive sex operation that targeted children.
Thus, the distractions keep on comin’, and the latest culture war fiasco being trial-ballooned by rightwing media is… male cheerleaders in the NFL.
If you’ve spent any time on social media over the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen the predictable, manufactured outrage over the Minnesota Vikings adding two men to their cheer squad this season.
Fox News, conservative influencers, and even Republican elected officials are getting in the mix, desperate to find any damn distraction they can to keep folks from paying attention to the massive failures and glaring scandals of the Trump administration and Republican Party across-the-board this year.
But this ain’t a new thing. There have been male cheerleaders in the NFL since 2018, when the Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans Saints became the first franchises to add men to their cheer squads.
Since then, the Carolina Panthers, Seattle Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, Indianapolis Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens have selected male cheerleaders.
This season, a full third of NFL teams have men on their cheerleading squads, but what I find truly hilarious is that the past eight winners of the Super Bowl have male cheerleaders.
In fact, the past eight Super Bowls have only featured teams with male cheerleaders.
Yesterday, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama—a former college coach—weakly attempted to fear-monger over the issue with one of the more bizarre claims he’s made in a while:
But if you’re going to be woke and you’re gonna try to take the men out of men’s sports, which is what you’re doing. They’re trying to take gender and say, ‘OK, we’re going to make it more about gender than we are about masculinity.’ Then, you’re going to have a huge problem. It’s coming.
I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about, either. I caught the oblique reference to trans women in women’s sports, but good lord, what an awkward way of framing the argument.
This is all the more amusing when you consider the long history of Republican politicians who were male cheerleaders.
That includes four Republican presidents in their college years: both George W. Bush and his father George H. W. Bush at Yale, Ronald Reagan at Eureka, and Dwight D. Eisenhower at West Point.
Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was a cheerleader at Texas A&M. So was Senator Trent Lott at Ole Miss. So was Mitt Romney at Stanford.
The Republican Party has a long and proud history of producing the nation’s finest male cheerleaders. In the past 50 years, more Republican presidents have been male cheerleaders than seen combat.
So, what’s the play here? We all know it’s a distraction, but why are Republicans and conservative media hoping this’ll stick?
Some rightwing men are angry over male cheerleaders because male cheerleaders distract from their open lusting toward women cheerleaders.
They see male cheerleaders as a distraction because they might “accidentally” objectify a male cheerleader amidst all the pretty ladies and that puts them on edge.
Yet they’re openly lusting for women cheerleaders at a public venue in front of kids.
These are the same dudes who claim any LGBTQ content in any public context is harmful to kids because from the warped and sad perspective of these dudes, merely the presence of LGBTQ visibility is always sexual in nature.
But they’re actually very pleased to ogle sexy women and see no problem doing so in front of kids. Sexual performance is never a problem when it caters to straight men.
As always, this goes back to the male gaze and some straight men being entirely incapable of reconciling their own sexuality and religious hypocrisy and using the “safety of kids” to alleviate their own discomfort.
The problem isn’t the presence of sexy cheerleaders, regardless of gender. It isn’t the presence of children. It isn’t even supposed religious teachings.
The problem, as always, are some straight, conservative men needing the entire world to cater to all their whims and all their discomforts and holding up a Bible to cover for that, which immediately gets set back down the moment there are sexy ladies to ogle.
It’s pathetic, but what would you expect from a political party that’s doing everything it can to distract from its leader, Donald Trump, being connected to a massive sex trafficking operation?
The Republican Party is in desperate need of better crowd chants. Maybe they should ask their own male cheerleaders to help them out.
