August 15, 2011

Revealed: The Electric Hitler Kool-Aid Estrogen Test

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/freenerd/3353938653/sizes/l/in/photostream/">Flickr/Freenerd</a>

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Giving you all the news you can use, the Telegraph of London filed this dispatch today:

Some tried bombs to neutralize the fuhrer, others tried bullets. All failed. Now it has come to light that British spies looked at an even more audacious way of derailing the man behind the German war machine—by giving him female sex hormones.

Agents planned to smuggle doses of oestrogen into his food to make him less aggressive and more like his docile younger sister Paula, who worked as a secretary.

Spies working for the British were close enough to Hitler to have access to his food, said Professor Brian Ford, who discovered the plot.

Ford, a professor at Cardiff University in Wales, says he uncovered the plot while working on his new book, Secret Weapons: Technology, Science, and the Race to Win World War II.

What exactly would “feminizing” Hitler have accomplished? Plenty, perhaps, in the eyes of modern conservatives, who’ve always tried to cast their political adversaries as girly-men who can’t keep the homeland safe. Rick Perry played that card just yesterday with the current US commander in chief.

But beyond the obvious “masculinity-equals-militarism” questions for gender-studies theorists, the Electric Hitler Kool-Aid Estrogen Test could reinforce the worst fears of right-wing conspiracy theorists who’ve long held that female hormones in our drinking water are de-nutting American society. (On a related note, our own Econundrums wiz, Kiera Butler, recently highlighted pro-life groups who believe that women should feel guilty about taking birth control because it ends up in rivers and “is making male fish, frogs and river otters less masculine.” Unsurprisingly, it turned out the pro-life groups were wrong.)

Sure, it takes an impressive ignorance of scientific evidence to believe in wacky estrogen conspiracy theories—and it takes a host of bigger issues for you to obsess over an allegedly impending sissy-fication of American society. But maybe some readers will find the scenario plausible. As the Telegraph suggests, what’s good for the frog was good for the fuhrer.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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