MoJo Articles | Mother Jones

What Regina Spektor Sees From the Cheap Seats

Hannah Levintova — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

When she first landed in the Bronx, nine-year-old Regina Spektor probably stood out a little. It was the early '90s, and Biggie Smalls and Pearl Jam were flooding the airwaves, but Spektor, whose family had just immigrated from Soviet Moscow, turned up her nose at hip-hop, punk, and even rock and roll. She preferred the classics, the Mozart and Tchaikovsky she played on the family's Petrof upright back in Russia. Estranged from her beloved instrument, the young Spektor would habitually tap out her pieces on windowsills and tabletops—until she came across a shabby piano in the basement of a local synagogue.

Now 32, Spektor has long since changed her tune on pop music, but her offbeat imaginings and daredevil sound still distinguish her from the crowd. Her songs are packed with unlikely metaphors—black holes, blue pianos, trapped paintings—and all manner of vocal experimentation."If something feels right to you, you make a choice," she says of her unorthodoxy. "If everybody is saying, 'Oh this is a really amazing work of art,' pointing at the fire extinguisher in the gallery, and then you walk in and you’re like 'That fire extinguisher? I just saw like 30 of them down the hall.' There's a silent agreement. If you're not agreeing with it, then, you know—everybody's either with you or they're not."

Everybody's with her these days, it seems. On the eve of her sixth album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats (out May 29), Spektor has collaborated with violin maestro Joshua Bell, been sampled by Jay-Z, toured with artists from Kings of Leon to Tom Petty, and played stages from Carnegie Hall to the White House. I caught up with Spektor to chat about her polyglot tendencies, gay rights, and how it feels to be labeled a weirdo.

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Mitt Romney and the Women Who Don't Love Him

Stephanie Mencimer — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Mitt Romney has a particular effect on voters of the opposite sex—and it's not a good one. During the heated final days of the GOP primary, female Republicans in many states favored Rick Santorum. Romney's dismal luck with the ladies was more apparent in April, when, according to a Washington Post poll, he was trailing President Barack Obama among women voters by 19 percentage points. Romney's female appeal hasn't improved much in the past month. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released this week still puts him 15 points behind Obama.

His numbers are particularly dismal among single gals. While Romney leads Obama among married women by about 9 points, Obama blows him away among single women by 36 points. This matters: There are 55 million single women in the United States. If they got motivated, they are a big enough block to swing the election.

The Romney campaign has responded to the candidate's female voter problem by deploying Ann Romney and putting the candidate on the stump with high-profile Republican women including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. It has also been prominently touting his recent endorsement by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who proclaimed Romney "the better choice for women." He's been peppering his stump speeches with stories of women he's met on the campaign trail (people like "Woman Whose Husband Took an Upholstery Class," as the AP dubbed her, because the Romney campaign has failed to actually identify any of these women). And recently the Romney campaign tried to take Barack Obama down a peg with women by insisting (falsely) that the majority of jobs lost during the recession were lost by women.

Republicans writ large have had problems with female voters for two decades: George H.W. Bush won the female vote in 1988 and lost it (and the election) in 1992. Bob Dole lost women voters by 16 points in 1996. And George W. Bush lost by 11 points in 2000 and 3 points in 2004. But Romney's problem with women seems to go deeper than that of the average Republican candidate. Consider this: Romney has never netted a majority of women voters during any of his political races, even when he won.

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"Hysteria": Very Feminist, Very Socialist, Mildly Funny

Asawin Suebsaeng — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Hysteria
Sony Pictures Classics
95 minutes

Allow me to be straight with you: Half of this movie is just watching physicians in 19th-century England getting rich old ladies off.

Now for a quick history lesson: Hysteria is set in London in the late 1800s—a time when the word "horny" had not yet entered the women's medical lexicon. Whenever a housewife or a mistress got into a sexually-repressed fidgety funk, medical professionals of the time—men who knew less about female sexuality than a Pomeranian puppy does—would simply diagnose them as suffering from the "disease" of female hysteria, a term used to cover emotional instability and jittery behavior. (This diagnosis remained on the books at the American Psychiatric Association up until the early 1950s.)

And what, you ask, did these Victorian doctors prescribe to calm their women patients? Why, a physician-administered volcanic orgasm, of course!

That's where Dr. Mortimer Granville (played by the versatile Brit actor Hugh Dancy) comes in, to apply his professional turbo-fingering to the cause of mental health. As a rising star at Dr. Robert Dalrymple's (the always worthwhile Jonathan Pryce) premier clinic, Mortimer gets paid top dollar to devote his talents exclusively to masturbating the hell out of the era's 1 percent. It's a lucrative business, bringing dozens of women to full-blown "paroxysm," as he repeatedly labels the sensation, day in and day out. That is, until he develops carpal tunnel syndrome from kneading too many Englishwomen down south.

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9 Progressive Vets to Watch in the Battle for Congress

Adam Weinstein — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Six years ago, Democrats rode a wave of public disaffection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to take back Congress. Part of their winning strategy was to tout military veterans as progressive candidates. Few of these "fighting Dems" made it into office; of 50 candidates listed by Democrats, 5 were elected to the House, and 1 became a senator. But they helped wrest the national security mantle from Republicans, and supported successful efforts to wind down the wars, expand military opportunities for women, and repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

This year, the Dems are again trying to take back the House, and again they're relying on military experience to help. So far, 41 progressive-leaning vets are running for Congress. The dynamics are different this year: Voters appear to value economic know-how over global security experience. Even so, a recent poll showed that vets get more respect from voters on fiscal issues than other candidates do. And whether or not they win, the candidates in long-shot districts may bring out votes for tight Senate contests and the race for the White House—several are running in battleground states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Florida, where the military vote could end up being key.

Here are nine of the new fighting Dems worth watching:

Ken Aden—Arkansas, 3rd District

Most folks in the United States first heard of this former Army staff sergeant, Iraq vet, and nonprofit organizer in January, when his campaign manager's cat was found murdered with the word "LIBERAL" scrawled across its body (warning: graphic image at the link). This month, Aden paused in the middle of his 253-mile run for hunger-awareness to rescue a motorist from her flipped car. He's hoping to turn back a freshman congressman best known for joining the "shutdown caucus."

Pros: Did we mention that he rescued a woman from a flipped car in the middle of his 253-mile run against hunger?

Cons: At least one resident of his district is willing to use violence against progressives.

Jay Chen—California, 39th District

A Navy Reserve intelligence officer and school board president, Chen has gotten conservatives' goat for proposing Chinese-language immersion programs for schoolkids. He's a long shot against tea party incumbent Ed Royce in this GOP-heavy Orange County district, but has gained some high-profile endorsements and some attention.

Pros: He was a pretty good sport on the Daily Show.

Cons: As an ex-consultant for Bain Capital, he may be more Cory Booker than down-ticket Obama booster.

Brandon Shaffer—Colorado, 4th District

After stints as a naval officer and president of the state Senate, Shaffer—a well-liked protégé of popular ex-governor Roy Romer—has set his sights on a House seat that progressive icon Betsy Markey lost to a tea partier in 2010. But although Democrats got favorable redistricting in Colorado last year, the 4th ended up more Republican, making Shaffer's chances difficult.

Pros: He drives the pro-gun lobby nuts.

Cons: He drives the pro-gun lobby nuts.

Heather Beaven—Florida, 6th District

This trendsetting cryptologist was one of the first female sailors picked by Bill Clinton to serve aboard a combat ship. That might play well in the fight for this newly drawn district, which encompasses Jacksonville—a military-friendly and increasingly blue town. Beaven's GOP opponent for this open seat is a Navy JAG who says he's "rejected the political leftism that pervaded" his alma mater, Harvard Law.

Pros: Used to oversee job creation in Kansas, giving her bipartisan cred.

Cons: She lost a House race in 2010 by 38 points, and some local progressives murmur about her anti-Medicare, pro-business rhetoric.

Tammy Duckworth—Illinois, 8th District

One of the original fighting Dems of 2006, Duckworth lost the lower part of both of her legs from injuries sustained while piloting a Blackhawk under fire in Iraq. Since then, she served as the state's chief of veterans' affairs, and she was recently the top legislative liaison in Obama's VA. She faces the deeply unpopular tea party freshman (and onetime child-support deadbeat) Joe Walsh.

Pros: Go ahead, say something mean about her.

Cons: Hard to come up with, unless maybe you count desperate conservatives grumbling that she's a "Chicago machine" politician, and then promptly apologizing.

Brendan Mullen—Indiana, 2nd District

A distinguished West Point grad and Iraq vet, and now a small business owner, Mullen is fighting for the seat vacated by Joe Donnelly, who is running for Senate. Mullen faces "Wacky Jackie" Walorski, an "abortion zealot" and Liberty University alum who almost beat Donnelly last time around. This could be an important hold for Dems in a battleground state.

Pros: Looking at a picture of his family will make you want to buy an apple pie, drive a Chevy, and hum Lee Greenwood.

Cons: Apparently not wacky enough: He's way behind his opponent in the money game.

Tulsi Gabbard—Hawaii, 2nd District

Gabbard is the young face of a state political dynasty. A National Guard vet and state representative, she secured endorsements from EMILY's List and the Sierra Club for this open seat, where August's crowded Democratic primary is likely to decide the winner in November.

Pros: She's got friends in high places and an appealing public image.

Cons: Rumors have swirled that she's a closet conservative against LGBT rights, more in line with her father, a longtime state legislator and onetime Republican. (But she recently came out in support of President Obama on gay marriage equality.)

Manan Trivedi—Pennsylvania, 6th District

Trivedi is not just a Navy doctor who participated in the initial invasion of Iraq with the Marines—he's also one of a very small number of Indian American national political candidates. He's got a long, close fight ahead of him, running against incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach, a moderate Republican in this gerrymandered suburban Philadelphia district.

Pros: His candidacy is one of the Dems' biggest "Red-to-Blue" priorities this year.

Cons: He's running against a guy who beat him by 14 points in 2010.

John Douglass—Virginia, 5th District

This retired Air Force general and ex-assistant Navy secretary challenges ~~Frank Wolf~~ Robert Hurt, a tea party freshman, for a battleground seat once held by celebrated progressive Tom Perriello. A tough fight for Douglass and another big one for Dems; even if they don't flip the traditionally Republican district, a tight race could help Obama up-ticket.

Pros: The web headline "John Douglass Is a General Who Proves MacArthur Wrong" shows he has a tech-savvy staff that knows from SEO.

Cons: His last major job was running the aerospace industry's top lobbying association; don't expect him to get tough on corporate welfare in the defense budget.

Afghanistan: Our Forgotten War

Tom Engelhardt — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

It's the saddest reading around: the little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two—those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: rank; name; age; small town, suburb, or second-level city of origin; means of death ("small arms fire," "improvised explosive device," "the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform," or sometimes something vaguer like "while conducting combat operations," "supporting Operation Enduring Freedom," or simply no explanation at all); and the unit the dead soldier belonged to. They are seldom 100 words, even with the usual opening line: "The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom." Sometimes they include more than one death.

They are essentially bureaucratic notices designed to draw little attention to themselves. Yet cumulatively, in their hundreds over the last decade, they represent a grim archive of America's still ongoing, already largely forgotten second Afghan War, and I've read them obsessively for years.

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WATCH: The Adventures of Blasty the Drone [Fiore Cartoon]

Mark Fiore — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:06:14 +0000

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

Meet Larry Smith, Texas' Wannabe Anti-Shariah Sheriff

Adam Serwer — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Larry Smith, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent running for sheriff in Smith County, Texas, has a unique plank in his platform: He has pledged to protect this deep-red border county from the creeping menace of Islamic religious law, or Shariah.

Outside of science fiction, this Texas county—which voted for John McCain at a 70 percent clip—doesn't seem the most likely place for an Islamist takeover. After all, creeping Shariah is mostly a myth. The issue might come up in civil cases if both parties to a contract have accepted an agreement based on religious law, but the Constitution bars religious law from superseding civil law.

Despite his out-there Shariah stance, Smith has earned the endorsement of the county's local paper. And local Democrats aren't even fielding a candidate in the sheriff's race. That means next Tuesday's Republican primary—which includes four candidates for the county's top law enforcement post—will likely decide whether Smith County's next sheriff devotes time to worrying about a Shariah takeover.

Two of Smith's rivals say Shariah shouldn't be an issue in the race.

"We hear [about Shariah] on the national media, but here specifically in Smith County, Tyler, in the state of Texas, I'm not seeing that this is going to be a big problem," says Chris Green, a former game warden running in the primary. "I don't think it's gonna occur, especially here; it may in some of the more liberal states."

Another candidate, Bobby Gorman, Smith County's chief sheriff's deputy, suggested Smith was just trying to provoke a controversy over nothing. "Running for sheriff, you always want to get somebody's attention," Gorman says.

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John McCain: The Maverick Returns?

Andy Kroll — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Pete Marovich/ZUMAPRESS

The maverick may be staging a comeback.

For more than two decades, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) carved out a reputation as one of Congress' feistiest reformers, a lawmaker willing to take on corporations, unions, wealthy benefactors, and sometimes the leaders of his own party. For years McCain fought alongside former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to ban unregulated, unlimited, undisclosed campaign cash known as soft money. He believed so strongly in campaign finance regulation and tough enforcement of the law that one former Federal Election Commission official recalls McCain telling him, "You're doing God's work."

Yet McCain's 2008 presidential bid disillusioned many of his reformer allies, such the good-government group Public Citizen. They watched with disgust as McCain distanced himself from campaign finance reform and his iconoclastic image. For his part, McCain felt hung out to dry by those allies after they supported Barack Obama despite all the political capital McCain had expended fighting for reform.

Now, however, McCain is starting to resemble his reformer self again. He slams the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision every chance he gets. He has teamed up with Democrats to demand a rethinking of Citizens United and to craft a new bill that would beef up disclosure of campaign donations and political ads. "He is starting to exert himself, which he had not been doing over the past couple years," says Craig Holman, the top lobbyist for Public Citizen.

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This Third Party Makes a Difference

Josh Harkinson — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

In recent years, Oregon state Rep. Mike Schaufler spent some $6,000 from his campaign coffers on more than 90 separate visits to Magoo's Sports Bar in Salem. A five-term Democrat known around the capitol as "Bud Man," Schaufler was tight with Republicans and corporate donors, who helped him raise 60 percent more money than progressive challenger Jeff Reardon in the lead-up to last Tuesday's Democratic primary. So Schaufler must have awoken with an epic hangover on the morning after the election, because he somehow managed to lose his seat.

Reardon, a high school teacher with limited resources and minimal political juice, says he never could have dispatched such a powerful incumbent were it not for the help of a relatively new political force in Oregon: the Working Families Party. Since its founding in New York 14 years ago, the WFP has expanded into four other states and logged a string of high-profile political victories—from reforming New York's drug laws to providing the extra votes needed to clinch the election of Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, a liberal leader in a fairly moderate state. Many progressives believe the WFP could eventually become the left's answer to the tea party.

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Can a Pro-Pot-Legalization Texas Dem Beat an Incumbent Drug Warrior?

Tim Murphy — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

When a new congressman heads to Washington from Texas' 16th congressional district, he tends to stick around a while. The 16th, a border district that includes the city of El Paso, has been represented by just three men in 48 years; primary challenges are virtually unheard of. So it was noteworthy when, earlier this month, the area's largest newspaper asked its readers to fire eight-term incumbent Rep. Silvestre Reyes.

In Reyes' place, the El Paso Times recommended Beto O'Rourke, a 40-year-old former El Paso councilman who's running neck and neck with the incumbent ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary. O'Rourke is an outsider in two key respects. He is a white man of Irish decent in a district that's 77 percent Latino. And he is, as the author of a new book proposing the legalization of marijuana, an outspoken critic of federal drug policy. That makes O'Rourke's clash with Reyes more than just a story of an insurgent taking on the machine—in a border district, the contest is partly a referendum on the War on Drugs itself.

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