Masculinity, Southern Gentlemen, and the Strange Story of Alabama’s First U.S. Senator, William Rufus DeVane King

Posted by nickdupree – May 7, 2013

OR John Kerry Should’ve Grown A Beard: The North-South Manliness Inversion

A Post That Cites Its Sources…with Footnotes!

As I mentioned in the preceding post, the Nick’s Crusade blog is a history blog too. I think delving into history can be very valuable, not just because the strange doglegs and twists in the American story—history NEVER progresses in a straight line—are infinitely interesting, but because we become better thinkers and citizens the more we understand our prologue, the previous generations, the prior struggles, and what we’ve gained and lost since.

One thing we’ve lost—though we have gained from its absence in many ways—is the whole concept of the elite 19th century Southern Gentleman, the image of the Southern aristocrat with smooth, un-calloused hands and clean-shaven plump faces, and the brutal slave-driving that made such lifestyles possible. A lot of insight into that old image can be gleaned from the strange story of William Rufus deVane King of Alabama (my home state).

Art by Nick Dupree: Unlucky 13th Vice president, William Rufus deVane King, served only 45 days before dying of tuberculosis. Only a few of the 45 days, his last days, were on American soil, as he returned from Cuba via Mobile, then died on his plantation near Selma. He is the only vice president from Alabama ever elected.

Art by Nick Dupree: Unlucky 13th Vice president, William Rufus deVane King, served only 45 days before dying of tuberculosis. Only a few of the 45 days, his last days, were on American soil, as he returned from Cuba via Mobile, then died on his plantation near Selma. He is the only vice president from Alabama ever elected.

William R. D. King——more typically referred to as just “William R. King”—was the first U.S. Senator from Alabama (alongside John Williams Walker, who was also sent to Washington—the state legislature electing two U.S. Senators per constitutional requirements—after Alabama was admitted to the Union in December 1819). King also played a major role getting Alabama statehood done, and helped write the constitution of Alabama, named the city of Selma “Selma” meaning “high seat” or “throne” in the 18th century Ossianic poem The Songs of Selma, and was president pro tem of the United States Senate, got into a Hamilton-Burr-style duel with Henry Clay,¹ and served as U.S. Minister to France and had other diplomatic posts in Naples and St. Petersburg, and was behind the writing and passage of the Compromise of 1850 and more. What’s odd is, he did all this while being…while being known by the public as super effeminate and flamboyant, and was re-elected again and again by the hardcore states’ righters in Montgomery (prior to the ratification of the 17th amendment in 1913, state legislatures elected U.S. Senators to represent their state).

I won’t say William R. D. King was gay, though it is very striking that, in a culture that almost never mentioned such things, contemporaries like Andrew Jackson publicly called him by derogatory names like “Miss Nancy,” and

Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861) was also Minister to the UK (Court of St. James).

Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861) was also Minister to the UK (Court of St. James).

powerful Tennessee Dem Aaron Brown (later appointed postmaster general under Buchanan) referred to him as “she” and “Aunt Fancy” and [Buchanan's] “better half.”² The Senators King and Buchanan were reported walking arm in arm around Washington, though that was common for men even in James Garfield‘s time 30 years later. The rumors of King wearing 18th century powdered wigs and stockings long after they’d been abandoned in the 19th century are false,³ but there was definitely a very intimate relationship with future-president James Buchanan, and something must have been unusual enough to’ve drawn derision at the time. Nelson from the Simpsons, famously pointing out someone deserving derision Buchanan was called “Mr. Fancy Pants” or “Granny Buck.”

Still, the serious historian demands a high standard of proof: the text document equivalent of “pics or it didn’t happen.” Though there is more material suggesting King was seen as gay than almost anyone else in the 19th century, it’d be unwise to say King was a homosexual with certainty. I agree with the James Buchanan entry in glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture that:

In his The Invention of Heterosexuality Jonathan Ned Katz cautions against the application of contemporary terms regarding sexuality to other times and societies in which “[w]ays of ordering the sexes, genders, and sexualities have varied radically.” He further points out that in the “pre-Freudian world [of early-nineteenth-century America], love did not imply eros”–although neither, of course, was an erotic component excluded.⁴

As King’s effeminate manner is evident beyond a shadow of a doubt, I’ll ask a broader—and, I think, more interesting—question, on gender presentation widely-speaking: how is it that such an effeminate public figure got elected by the legislators in rough-and-tumble frontier Alabama?
The answer is, there was nothing odd about William R. D. King amidst the Southern slaver planter aristocracy of his generation. It only seems strange to us, seeing through the lens of the latter half of the 20th century and its mega-strict gender roles. In the antebellum South, the elite planter could be flamboyant, his body unmarked by any of the wear and tear associated with daily labor, his beardless, cherubic visage and opulent clothing a sign of plantation riches, heralding social status as much as signaling the success—and therefore rightness—of the Old South. That kind of presentation harkens back to the aristocratic plantation lifestyles of the 17th and 18th century colonies, when it was, if anything, MORE pronounced. The kind of luxurious appearance and elite manner King exemplified was not uncommon among antebellum aristocrats in cotton country, in fact, flaunting your aristocratic bona fides was cool.

The anti-slavery left, the free soil partisans of the north who were organizing into what would soon be called the Republican Party, had picked up on this. By the time Millard Fillmore—a northerner with pro-slavery sympathies—moved into the White House following President Taylor dying of dysentery in 1850, they had a name for his sort: doughfaces, an obvious allusion to the idle, beardless planter aristocracy.
The best explanation of masculinities of the 19th century and the politics of facial hair I’ve found, is in Adam Goodheart’s amazing book 1861:

It was no accident that Northerners who sympathized with slaveholders were called “doughfaces”: in the American context, beards connoted a certain frank and uncompromising authenticity. Nor was it a coincidence that “Honest Abe” began cultivating his famous beard as he prepared to take over the presidency from “Granny Buck.”⁵

Northern free-soilers began presenting themselves as everything opposed to those they framed as the effete, decadent planter class, or as they referred to them, “the slave party.” They cultivated an image marketed as everything opposite the idle, soft-handed, soft-faced rich Southern aristocrats, they were the candidates of rough-hewn common working men with beards! They [the first decades of Republican Party free soil candidates] were one of the Real ‘Merickens who crawled out of mama and into a log cabin, grew up ridin’ a blue ox and drinking hard cider, and as a man split rails with an axe in one hand while reading law with the other. In the case of Abraham Lincoln, this backstory was kind of true, and his 1860 presidential campaign leveraged that to. the. MAX. The Republican National Convention in Chicago that (unexpectedly) nominated Lincoln for president in 1860 was held in a massive, makeshift wooden “wigwam”—Chicago’s fire marshall didn’t get any sleep that week—and the crowd badgered Honest Abe to tell the convention his “clearing the land with an axe” story…again. The Fall campaign was almost singularly about the image of Lincoln “the rail-splitter,” and was used non-stop; I’m sure some folks didn’t even know his name, just knew “rail-splitter.” To focus on the frontiersmen ethos and related manliness, and all the subtle messages within that, while not mentioning free soil doctrine, abolition, or any of the issues currently boiling over was a brilliant stroke of campaigning genius, and stands out in political history.


Adam Goodheart’s 1861: The Civil War Awakening is the best, most quick-to-understand work of social history I’ve read to date, delving into what Americans lives were really like on the eve of the Civil War. It goes into the BIZARRE social arrangements of 1861 Washington, DC, where free blacks owned slaves, and in Goodheart’s descriptions, those slaves were better off than much of DC’s free black population, who were largely stuck below-subsistence-level in squalid shantytowns, and with no “owner” to vouch for them, they were “undocumented” in a way—my term—and had no real rights to move around in public spaces and were subjected to frequent stops and harassment by police. 1861 has a whole chapter on young James Garfield’s doings at the time, and the way passions were channeled into male friendships in his social circle since expressing emotions was quite circumscribed where women were concerned. I’d like to explore that more in another post.

What I discovered by looking back at William R. King vs. early Republican campaigns—and it’s exciting when you figure something out for the first time—is that the North and South have not only undergone a political transformation, there’s been a cultural inversion alongside it. First, the obvious political inversion. Look at the electoral map following Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 presidential run. The liberal “free soil” north is ruby red, Republican. The South, pro-slavery, is the Democratic Party “solid south,” and with the exception of the fracturing of the Democrats behind several Southern candidates in 1860, then a period of Republican military rule and Republican-elections, “Reconstruction,” the solid Democratic south stays together a remarkably long time, from Andrew Jackson to like… John Kennedy’s run in 1960… Kennedy loses significant votes to Nixon in the Deep South, then in 1972 ALL Southern states peel off—a huge change from the results of the ’68 presidential election just four years before, when the solid south voted for the Dem, Humphrey, and the former-Dem-then-Dem-again, George Wallace—and REALLY break in Nixon’s favor, what with his infamous “southern strategy” and a Dem challenger perceived as wimpy. ’72 clinched the end of realignment, sealed the deal. Ever since, the South has been Republican red, with Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond and ex-Wallace supporters defecting to the GOP in droves and Lincoln’s states up north increasingly leaning Democratic; it’s a total inversion!

What I’ve realized is, it’s also a North-South inversion of the culture of masculinity. In short, northerners are framed as effete, wimpy, decadent, out-of-touch elites today, similar to the way northerners caricatured southerners in the first decades of Whig and Republican campaigns (1840-1870ish). Now, it’s southerners that seem to treasure uber-rigid common man masculinity, and William Rufus deVane King couldn’t get elected dog catcher in today’s Alabama; despite his great wealth, I doubt he could find a place in Alabama public life due to his…different gender presentation. Southerners of today expect a working man to run for office, someone manly and “like us,” the opposite of William R. King. Thomas Frank explored today’s Republican “backlash” against “elites” in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas. This “backlash” is far more determinative than people realize, and deserves much more examination.

John Kerry got the brunt of this backlash in the 2004 campaign, with Karl Rove using the words “effete, elite Massachusetts liberal!” every day. Kerry got Buchanan’ed! Today’s Republicans are as aware of Americans’ deep-seated resentment of “the idle rich” as their northern founders were!
John Kennedy did a modern version of the “Hard Cider Campaign” in 1960; you could call it the “high-ball glass and scotch campaign.” It worked. The “effete, elite Massachusetts liberal!” line was certainly attempted against Kennedy, but for the most part it failed to stick, and he won a majority of working class voters and held the bulk of the South. Kerry failed…failed BADLY to counter the “effete, wimpy, decadent, out-of-touch” frame employed against him. Maybe John Kerry should’ve tried some form of the Kennedy strategy. Maybe he should have gone full Abe, grown a beard and had the press film him chopping firewood.

What he tried instead, photos and videos of him “huntin” backfired terribly, making him look even more phony and out of touch.

Cartoon by Nick: 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, huntin...he says "I too enjoy leisure time practicing as a huntist!"

Cartoon by Nick: 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, huntin…he says “I too enjoy leisure time practicing as a huntist!”

Unfortunately, image matters and always has mattered in American politics. Today, it matters disproportionately, and 21st century Democratic candidates like John Kerry have been awful at it. He was completely unable to fight back against the opponent’s framing him as an elite, decadent aristocrat, just as King and Buchanan and other antebellum southern gentlemen were caricatured.

Southern politics and southern masculinity has shifted dramatically, and I wonder if we haven’t lost something important. I wonder if becoming much more rigid in gender expectations isn’t narrowing what’s possible in political life, excluding not just potential 21st century William Rufus Kings, but ANYONE who doesn’t look like a square, iron-jawed working man. We’ve narrowed potential in public life, and I think that’s always bad.

Nick

Footnotes

1. Clay “believed the Globe to be an infamous paper, and its chief editor an infamous man.” King responded that Blair’s character would “compare gloriously” to that of Clay. The Kentucky senator jumped to his feet and shouted, “That is false, it is a slanderous base and cowardly declaration and the senator knows it to be so.” King answered ominously, “Mr. President, I have no reply to make—none whatever. But Mr. Clay deserves a response.” King then wrote out a challenge to a duel and had another senator deliver it to Clay, who belatedly realized what trouble his hasty words had unleashed. As Clay and King selected seconds and prepared for the imminent encounter, the Senate sergeant at arms arrested both men and turned them over to a civil authority. Clay posted a five-thousand-dollar bond as assurance that he would keep the peace, “and particularly towards William R. King.” Each wanted the matter behind him, but King insisted on “an unequivocal apology.” On March 14, 1841, Clay apologized…
Senate Historical Office. “William Rufus King, 13th Vice President (1853).” Senate.gov. (accessed May 6, 2013).
2. p. 189: Hernandez, David. Broken Face in the Mirror: Crooks and Fallen Stars That Look Very Much Like Us. Dorrance Publishing, 2010. http://books.google.com/books?id=OJ-0nNPAisgC&pg=PA189 (accessed May 6, 2013).
3. “Vice President King is sometimes confused with [signer of the Constitution in 1787 and Federalist presidential candidate] Senator Rufus King of New York. This confusion with the first King explains the rumors that persist to this day of the latter King’s wearing of ribbons, scarves and powdered wigs long after they were in fashion. Vice President King always wore the contemporary styles of the early-to-mid-1800s and he never wore a wig.” pp 13-14: Stern, Milton. Harriet Lane, America’s First Lady. 2005. http://books.google.com/books?id=5B9ngDFT2vgC&pg=PA14 (accessed May 7, 2013).
4. Rapp, Linda. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Chicago, IL: glbtq, Inc., 2004. http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/buchanan_j,2.html (accessed May 6, 2013).
5. p. 113: Goodheart, Adam. 1861: The Civil War Awakening. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2011. http://books.google.com/books?id=bCPbnsUPhB0C&pg=PA113

Famous 8th century Umayyad mosque destroyed in Syrian crossfire

Posted by nickdupree – April 28, 2013

Over the years, this blog has covered many things, and one of those, historical blogging, has accounted for a lot of my best stuff, like my essay on Zheng He and the Chinese Age of Discovery, my six-part series “Are We Rome?” (examining the Roman invasions of what’s-now-called Iraq) and most recently, my in-depth exploration of the Know-Nothing party of the 1850s… so, in my history blogger hat, I want to mention that the Syrian civil war has recently partially destroyed one of the most famous mosques of the Islamic Golden Age, the Great Mosque of Aleppo, a cultural and artistic treasure built in the 8th century. The war that has been destroying Syrian society, has now taken a World Heritage site (and rare extant example of Malmuk architecture) down with it.

The Great Mosque’s famous minaret, rebuilt to a towering height in the 11th century following damaging Mongol invasions, is lost completely.

The work of the Islamic Golden Age getting torn down by infighting and fratricidal war… seems more than a little symbolic.

This portion of Crash Course World History #14 covers the achievements of the Islamic Golden Age really well. The intellectual achievements of the Abassids included basically inventing modern medicine and mathematics, and their preservation of the texts of the greatest Greek, Roman, and Indian thinkers and reintroduction of these to Mediterranean Europe… would trigger the Renaissance.
It’s ironic that the Muslim thinkers that praise the Islamic Golden Age the most, touting its superiority over Europeans of the same period (middle ages) and calling for a return to the Caliphate and so forth, writers like Sayyid Qutb¹, are the same guys spurring the jihadists and the radicalization that is literally bombing Golden Age monuments to dust. The newest, most extremist branches of Salafi Islam have been notorious for destroying great cultural treasures, like the Buddhas of Bamiyan, or more recently destroying some of the sacred sites of Timbuktu, taking apart certain Islamic Golden Age shrines and masoleums with axes and shovels.

I have a lot of old content commenting on the Middle East in historical context, click the Middle East tag to access it.

There will be more new history content here—in-depth explorations of U.S. political history—with the Real Policy Differences video series. Here’s a sneak peek of some of the cartooning I’ve done for the series.

Stay tuned!

Nick

1. Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer-winning book The Looming Tower covers the roots of the modern jihadist movement and al-Qaeda, with a detailed chapter on Sayyid Qutb, the founding father of the Egyptian jihadist movement. Wright chronicles Qutb’s time in the United States, where he became radicalized observing decadent 1950s New York City, and the women of Colorado.

Journeys with mitochondrial disease

Posted by nickdupree – April 21, 2013

It’s a new world, and those of us who have rare disorders are able to connect with and advise each other like never before. For me and my brother Jamie, the rare disorder is mitochondrial myopathy, and back in 1985 we were told we were among JUST 24 cases identified worldwide of what was then called “primary carnitine deficiency.” Today, “carnitine deficiency” is recognized as merely a symptom of numerous types of mitochondrial diseases, and there are WAAAY more people diagnosed than the two dozen identified in 1985, and some mitochondrial diseases even have names now (like Leigh’s disease, MELAS, MNGIE). Sadly, my type of mito has yet to be identified,

Cartoon of a crying mitochondrion (painted by me). Technically a mitochondrion (singular) but he is representing the sadness of all 1000-2000 mitochondria per cell in my body

Cartoon of a crying mitochondrion (painted by Nick). Technically a mitochondrion (singular) but he is representing the sadness of all 1000-2000 mitochondria per cell in my body

though the uncertainty that it’s really mito is all but gone since the tests results came back negative for every known form of muscular dystrophy earlier this month. I am different than many in that I don’t have neuro symptoms, mainly it is muscle loss so bad there’s nothing left to biopsy, and my body temp overheating constantly, though, judging from the mito bloggers out there, lacking neuro symptoms isn’t as uncommon as I thought.

The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation—UMDF, which didn’t exist until 1996—says there’s a lot of cases added each year, with “1,000 to 4,000 children in the United states born with a mitochondrial disease” annually. As one of my favorite mito mom bloggers put it, it feels like an epidemic. I’d agree, rates of mitochondrial disease are up, and I think environmental factors are to blame…the fact that we pump pollutants and radiation into the natural world without knowing the potential mito-toxic consequences, and then we eat, drink and breathe from the natural world, and the external becomes the internal as those food materials become the matter you’re made of, the building blocks of the human. But the causes of the mutations that trigger mitochondrial disease understandably take a back seat for people like me and families who’re in daily coping-and-survival mode.

I’ve been following some of the mito blogs, and I am awed at how parents and loved ones of mito children (kids similar to me as a kid) are using the web to support each other. I wish this had been available for me and my mom when I was a kid (back in the 1980s and early ’90s).

As a survivor of childhood mito, I’d really like to share what I know, help others avoid some of what I’ve suffered, be a knowledgable listener and advisor among the mito bloggers, though I know I don’t exactly fit in with the mom blogs. I really want to help, and when I see kids going through what I went through, the BiPap, the chronic pain—which is still a constant battle for me—I really want to talk to, help, that family. And I want to help build a network of mito-activists and mito-knowledge to help those of us dealing with these diseases, who are too often treated horribly by the medical-industrial-complex, like anyone with complex medical needs that are difficult for them to understand. We need a veritable army of people behind us just to survive the system. I’m not sure exactly how to get such a network off the ground. But paired with the experience and knowledge mito bloggers have collectively, such a community could be a game changer.

Speaking of mito knowledge, there’s been controversy recently about the study published in Nature Medicine that proved a link between L-carnitine and arteriosclerosis, gunk in your arteries that causes heart attacks and stroke. Since the study focused on giving L-carnitine to mice with normal microbiota, normal gut processes and digestion, those of us taking daily L-carnitine supplements to treat a mitochondrial disease wonder how this effects us, if at all. With its emphasis on red meat (the most carnitine-rich part of the American diet), the study has been covered heavily all over the mainstream news channels—THIS from CBS News is a representative sample—with a lot of pics of red meat and beef B-roll producers love. When I think of this study, I don’t think of beef, I think of research residents giving mice micro-baby bottles of liquid L-carnitine in their cute mouse mouths, but that’s just me.

Because of this high-profile news and the—not necessarily invalid—concerns about arteriosclerosis, I’m being pushed to discontinue my L-carnitine supplements. The UMDF recently issued a statement urging caution. Because of the specifics of my mito journey, I’m reluctant to drop the carnitine.

I first started taking carnitine through Dr. Zellwegger’s clinical trial for the FDA’s safety and effectiveness human trials 1984-1985, via University of South Alabama, before carnitine was on the market. Literally I’m getting carnitine in my baby bottle. Then we couldn’t get carnitine when the trials ended.
Then in September 1991, when I was 9, I had what I call a “mito collapse” immediately following back surgery and an intense infection at the surgical site. The thin muscle I had was gone in less than a week, the opposite of “slow progression.” I went into a tailspin, ileus, dismotility and malabsorption so extreme that I was put on TPN. All your classic mito symptoms, at least that’s how Mom and I perceived it at the time. It makes sense that, in an inborn error of metabolism, the digestive system—where the heavy lifting of metabolism occurs—would be greatly effected, and BOY was it during this time. My digestive system grinding to a halt, the futile cramping, it was the most horrific thing I had experienced up to that point. For a few months, all I could keep down by mouth was the peach-flavored version of this very specific carbonated water, something like this.
Fortunately, carnitine was on the market, and some time very close to the day I began using the BiPap, I was started on the L-carnitine. Post-levocarnitine, the digestion problems ceased, and I haven’t had any ileus or needed TPN since that time. The supplements seemed to stop the free fall.
Ileus and dismotility haven’t been a problem since, nor has there been another “mito collapse,” though there is pretty much nothing left to lose in terms of muscle, and I have been 24/7 vent-dependent for almost 20 years, 22 years if we count the BiPap. It’s unlikely I could survive another “mito collapse.”

So I’m scared to go off carnitine… but never say never. I would be willing if it’s part of an audit of my entire “mito cocktail”—which since 1996 or thereabouts has been Levocarnitine, B2 and CoQ10—in totality, with other things changed, added, a systematic approach.

Each of our journeys with mitochondrial diseases are different, certainly none are easy, and many days it feels impossible. I really hope we can communicate more, network more, putting our knowledge together and gaining strength in numbers. Please comment below or on Facebook or Twitter.

In mitochondrial solidarity,

Nick

Chaining down the money you’ve earned: the debate over Chained CPI

Posted by nickdupree – April 11, 2013

The debate over Chained CPI has been heating up all over the country and all over the web.

What’s Chained CPI?
Congressman Ellison explains.

Rep. Ellison recorded this video in December. If he were recording today, he’d mention that PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA is the driving force behind Chained CPI, despite its intense unpopularity on all sides. This is a video of Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, calling Chained CPI a “Shocking Attack On Seniors.”

The AARP is organizing against this, and the Republicans are going to use this against President Obama in the 24/7 campaign season for sure (and that’s already begun).

Chained CPI is so awful because it imposes costs on those who can least afford it, doesn’t bridge yawning budget gaps, and reinforces the false right-wing “out of control entitlements” talking point. In fairness to conservatives, they’re opposing Chained CPI, and right now the only people pushing this are from a certain, grotesque strand of neoliberalism…. Barack Obama is making this draconian plan the centerpiece of his 2014 budget proposal, David Axelrod defends it with ease on TV, and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office Alice Rivlin calls it “absolutely necessary.”

The disability community has to unite on this, and fight back with the full-throated message that we’ve earned Social Security, it isn’t an entitlement! The entire “social insurance” concept is that it’s an earned benefit. With every paycheck, a worker pays into Social Security, pays pays pays pays pays, and when they retire they receive that earned benefit. The earned benefit usually amounts to around $14,000 a year, meager, well beneath the poverty line, and that is what neoliberals want chained down as an “out of control entitlement.”

“We’re not going to have the White House forever, folks. If he doesn’t do this, Paul Ryan is going to do it for us in a few years,” said a longtime Obama aide…

This kind of thinking, “give me your lunch money now, or the big bully down the hall will take it and you won’t like how he does it” from the White House is disturbing, and a bad omen (the correct answer is “no, I’d prefer the dignity of a public fight with the enemy to a silent surrender to a quisling”).

Unless we can create a groundswell of opposition to chains and chainsaw policies, the future for the elderly and disabled is indeed bleak.

The oddball lefty blog Crooks & Liars has the best, most comprehensive sources and lib commentary on Chained CPI that I’ve seen in the leftosphere so far. Hat tip to them.

Nick

A Note on Robert Bork and the End of Busing as a Desegregation tool

Posted by nickdupree – April 9, 2013

It’s been a while since I blogged about racism, but this blog has a broader mission to shine a light on the concerns of unheard, marginalized groups everywhere, which is why, in the past, I’ve written about things as far-flung and diverse as an effort to fund safehouses for LGBT youth being hunted down by Islamist death squads in Iraq and the violence against raw food shops and consumers in California, where the government effectively acted as enforcers for big agribusiness, helping them shut down the competition.

As the new About page says:

This blog is a safe space, where I highlight unreported and under-reported issues effecting people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups and the U.S. as a whole.

I really want to give underreported and unreported stories some space. That is what I think the blogosphere should be, a megaphone for the people the news media ignore.

Under racism, in the past I’ve spotlighted the legacy of slavery and the Capitol building, an anti-Latino death squad who were ignored by the media even after killing a family, and more.

Recently, comments on C-SPAN’s BookTV sparked my interest, because Appellate Judge Frank Easterbrook said something very revealing. He talked about how he and then-solicitor general Robert Bork crafted the legal reasoning that now is the dominant precedent that prohibits or stifles desegregation across America. And no one noticed. Segregation and the laws around it deserve more discussion.

This is a clip I made of Judge Easterbrook’s comments, which reveal a history few know about (c-spanvideo.org allows you to make your own clips now!) During a discussion of Robert Bork’s last, posthumously published book “Saving Justice,” Frank Easterbrook reveals how he and Robert Bork’s reasoning that school segregation “by personal choice” is not a violation, though so inflammatory in the ’70s the DOJ ordered it shredded, is now the opinion affirmed by the Supreme Court.

Click here to see the clip (which, for some reason isn’t embeddable).

Even Robert Bork thought the anti-busing opinion should be shredded at the time; according to Judge Easterbrook, Bork was worried it would empower violent bigots in the ongoing Boston busing conflict.

Somehow, this opinion was unearthed from the bowels of hell and embraced by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has again and again affirmed this radical-right reasoning that school segregation doesn’t hurt anyone and is just fine as long as the state isn’t forcing it and it’s “segregation by private choice.”

The nail in the coffin for desegregation seemed to come from Bork and Easterbrook’s brief.

With my own eyes, I’ve seen the retrenchment of segregation in the South. My hometown of Mobile, Alabama was once a good example of relative-racial harmony; Mobile boasts it was the only major city in the Deep South never to suffer race riots. Leaders on both sides of this peaceful, heavily Catholic city made negotiation work instead of the conflagration everywhere else. My college, Spring Hill College (“The Jesuit College of the South”) was praised in MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail for being the first university in the Deep South to integrate, in 1954. When the KKK tried to burn a cross (highly blasphemous) on campus in response, students chased them off with rocks and baseball bats, a couple of Jesuit priests in tow. We showed how possible integration could be; we showed that not everybody in the Deep South supported the Klan. (Also, people tend to see the world through the lens of their hometown values and upbringing, and this post gives you insight into mine, where I am coming from).

It’s been sad watching my hometown leave behind their powerful legacy of peaceful desegregation without discussion, following the other Southern cities. Accelerating subsequent to the 1991 Supreme Court ruling Board of Education v. Dowell, which—in a 5-3 decision—lifted integration-busing court orders (Thurgood Marshall, on the verge of retiring, wrote the dissenting opinion) busing has been jettisoned as a relic, and the busing-integrated high school I went to, John Shaw High School, was shuttered.

There’s been a retrenchment of racial segregation throughout the South—and elsewhere too (see this article about Omaha dividing into separate segregated school districts at the request of the black minority). The reasons for re-segregation are complex and difficult to talk about; it’s clear that both communities are fueling this trend. Black communities may dislike sending children on hour-long bus rides, among other things, while white communities may want to wall off their children from the kinds of things going on in the black ghettos (which may or may not be a true perception, because in MY high school, the white kids were the ones dealing drugs).

Some relevant sources:
Justices Rule Mandatory Busing May Go, Even if Races Stay Apart – New York Times 1991 (reported on the announcement of the Board of Education v. Dowell ruling)
Schools Resegregate, Study Finds – New York Times 2003
Fighting School Resegregation – Editorial – NYTimes.com 2003
and a ton more sources are available on the Google

According to a 2003 Harvard study, following the flurry of court rulings against busing, black students were less integrated at the turn of the millennium than in 1970, “a year before the Supreme Court authorized the busing that became a primary way of integrating schools.” These trends have accelerated unabated since 2000. In many of these segregated communities, a kid has a better chance of winning the lottery than meeting a person of different ethnic background than them. It looks as though our broken judiciary will allow entire states to re-segregate, decades of progress down the tubes, because we’ve made the democratic choice for that kind of society. And in a democracy we should be able to choose that; but let’s not be blind to the destructive potential of segregation: the damage to the children socially and emotionally, the distancing of racial communities, the retrenchment of a U.S. caste system. A growing body of social science research is reaching the conclusion that school desegregation should get some credit for the drop in urban crime in the ’90s and ’00s, and that the rise in crime in recent years can be partly blamed on re-segregation (Source: Slate: Resegregation has led to a spike in violent crime).
We need to be honest about the prejudice, the pre-judging we’re all capable of, and try and do what’s right. Separate but equal can never be equal, and invites a myriad of problems.

My younger brother Jamie, who’s also on a vent, said of visiting one high school, “I felt like the little white chunk no one wants at the bottom of the can o’ pork ‘n beans.”
That isn’t good, but it is the reality in the 2000s and 2010s….

Mobile has its first black mayor now, and peace and negotiation is still the order of the day for the most part, but in places like Atlanta and New Orleans the intensifying of segregation has communities on both sides simmering with racial tension. Racial violence in Atlanta isn’t yet “only of interest to historians.” Economic and social segregation in New Orleans, not to mention the strict geographic segregation—so extreme you wouldn’t believe it—has racial discord at all time highs. Hurricane Katrina (which I barely survived in Mobile) not only devastated New Orleans bow to stern, it opened up a LOT of old wounds. Surprisingly virulent racist memes have come back, big time; too often, Louisiana whites have welcomed that stuff back with open arms.

Libertarians like Ron Paul are right to point out that laws alone can’t turn hearts and minds around, and that’s an important point, but laws provide enforcement of equal opportunity against the worst injustices. Laws that have dis-empowered the most egregious offenders, especially vis a vis voting rights and equality under the law, have driven most of the progress we’ve seen.
Bork and Easterbrook’s brief provide a window into how we got to where we are. And where we are, and the legal opinions behind it, deserve re-examination.

Nick

Video: “Aging Out” of the health care needed to survive at 21 threatens future of two Florida college students

Posted by nickdupree – April 5, 2013

The 21 cut-off, the policy that I fought hard to change in Alabama with a full campaign that I began two years before the cut-off would hit on my 21st birthday, and now I fight on this blog, is still a threat to many around the country. As people with severe disabilities are saved by technology and are increasingly able to grow up, greater and greater numbers of us will trip over the 21 cliff, “aging out” of the in-home care that we need for the most basic survival and dignity. It is a problem that too many state Medicaids essentially shove the people who need services and supports the most off the cliff as a 21st birthday present, and this continues to cause real harm.
We cannot allow states to undo the incredible progress people have made, with the help of life support technology, surviving to adulthood and thriving, adding our talents and contributions to our families, communities, states, and country. It is not the will of the American people that states pull the rug out from under the most vulnerable just because they’ve turned 21, but too many states have been doing exactly that for far too long; I’m continually haunted that, in Alabama, not all my friends survived it.

This video, featuring Sarah, and Jordan of the 21 disabled campaign, two college students grappling with the consequences or future consequences of the 21 cut-off and other hardships foisted on them by short-sighted Medicaid bureaucrats, will wake you up to the continuing crisis that aging out at 21 is right now, in 2013.

In this video ^ Jordan mentioned her first 21 disabled video: you can see that original 21 disabled video here that went viral and really made a difference, pressing Florida Medicaid into giving Jordan a reprieve until graduation.
I really admire how Jordan, with so little time remaining on the clock—just a few months—when she found out the 21 cut-off existed and found herself barreling toward the 21 cliff, was able to fight back effectively and win. A big part of her success was her savvy with social media, maximizing Facebook, Twitter and WordPress to get her YouTube video in front of 30,000 people in a matter of days. Neither YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or WordPress existed during “Nick’s Crusade” (March 2001-February 2003) but now that these social media tools ARE available, I hope me + the disability community writ large can leverage them effectively enough to make the bulk of internet users aware of the 21 cut-off, and then build the support necessary to end “aging out” of in-home care in all 50 states!

Sarah, who talks about her experiences first in the newest video, has no reprieve from the 21 cut-off on the horizon. She describes a situation of fighting tooth and nail to get services, waiting until age 18 to finally get some desperately needed services and supports so she could live out her college dreams, then upon arrival at the university dorms was told she would have to go home, for the excuse I’ve seen used again and again to oppress and exclude us, “liability reasons.” Sarah didn’t leave and didn’t give up, and that alone shows more fortitude than most could fathom. And now she is looking ahead at the 21 cliff, facing the prospect of the life-sustaining hands-on care that makes college possible for her going away after her 21st birthday.

Such a system as Florida has, that allows you just three years of the care you need to survive—from age 18 to 21—then pulls the rug out from under you mid-semester, is a uniquely cruel system. In fact, there is little else in American life THIS openly cruel in its impact on people with disabilities and their families, and, in my travels, I’ve not seen any other policy that poses as clear a clear and present danger to people with severe disabilities as this 21 cut-off policy does, which is why I’ll never shut up about it. Help me. Don’t let me be the only voice out there on this issue of “aging out” of life-sustaining services and supports! Given the intransigence of Florida Medicaid and the intractable nature of the Florida legislature when it comes to social programs, we will need all hands on deck to gain meaningful change for Sarah!

Awareness of this issue MUST go on the front burner. It is a nationwide problem: Raul Carranza in California, who is on a vent 24/7 like me, was forced out of college at ACLU for his 21st birthday when he no longer qualified as “pediatric” and the state became stingy (go to Raul’s web site for the full story, which is more complex than other cases, but has a very similar root cause).

Let’s do something.

IDEA 1: consider helping me with BLOGSWARM FOR SARAH: End the age 21 cut-off!. If I can get Sarah’s permission, I’d create a hub here on www.nickscrusade.org for a mass movement of blogging about preventing the dream-destroying 21 cut-off from harming Sarah and others, with everyone posting on their blogs on the issue, expressing their unique thoughts, views and ideas, and linking back to the central hub, as was done with past ADAPT Blogswarms and Blogging Against Disablism Day (BADD).
Interested bloggers, please contact me via email at nick @ nickscrusade.org or on Twitter @NickDupree or on Facebook at Nick Dupree

IDEA 2: This goes hand-in-hand with the preceding idea; just MAKE JORDAN AND SARAH’S NEW VIDEO GO VIRAL! Put the video, embedded above, or this nickscrusade.org post with the video in it in front of as many people as possible; Facebook it, tweet it, re-tweet it, email it, reddit it, SHARE IT far and wide! Whether you blog about the video or not, SPREAD IT!

We live in interesting times. Now more than ever, survivors can get involved online and share their stories with the world. It’s an amazing thing that those of us who breathe and/or move with the help of technology can now use other, Internet-based technologies to participate in the world, make our unheard voices heard, give the megaphone of the blogosphere to the unrepresented, make public the pain and oppression that has always been hidden away… but to really be heard over the social media noise, to really maximize online tools and make a difference, WE NEED YOUR HELP! You, the person reading this right now.

With hope,

Nick

How ACA “ObamaCare” Exchanges Work: A Nick Animation

Posted by nickdupree – March 30, 2013

I made the above animated vignette to explain how the health insurance exchanges being established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), online marketplaces for “shopping” for health insurance, roughly, will work. People will begin signing up for health insurance plans on the exchanges October 1st, and those plans will go into effect Jan 1st, 2014. And any credible fact check will tell you, as this one from the Associated Press does, that the tax credits that fuel the exchanges, that subsidy that will make the now-$20,000-a-year bronze plan cost $5,000 for a family of four in one IRS estimate, will be delivered directly to your insurer. You won’t catch a glance of your tax subsidy.

The insurance companies are raising prices through the roof, not only because they’re required to cover much more in terms of minimum health care services, but because they know the government will pay and pay and pay. Thus, sticker shock will put anything but the new-legal-minimum bronze plans out of reach for the vast majority of participants. Pouring cash by the dump truck onto insurance companies is emblematic of our “only in America” health care non-system, and a primary cause of its deterioration.

The dump truck-full of unimaginable, astronomical sums of money won’t come from the sky like in my cartoon, it will come from the IRS. The IRS will be in charge of doling out the tax subsidies, and extracting the fines from those who don’t comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance. I gave a thorough overview of the individual mandate and subsidized insurance exchanges recently: What Is ObamaCare? 2013-2014: Overview Part 1.

Nick

High-Speed Rail Vital for PWD and the Nation; Why Have the Promises Evaporated?

Posted by nickdupree – March 28, 2013

High-Speed Rail (HSR) would help everyone and boost the economy but would disproportionately benefit PWD—people with disabilities—because for a significant percentage of us, it’s difficult to impossible to use the airlines. And with the TSA confusing the grit you get on your hands operating a manual wheelchair with “bomb residue” again and again, fewer PWD will bother (President Obama mentioned the TSA-free joy of rail himself). High-speed rail has become a necessity for the social and economic relations of Americans, but sadly the promises the Obama Administration has made on high-speed rail have not been fulfilled.

I want high-speed rail that goes up and down the Eastern United States at 500mph so I can go from NYC to my family in Washington DC and Norfolk.

Imagine the economic benefit HSR could bring to the United States and Canada, if we had two-hour trips from NYC to Toronto or four-hour trips to Montreal or Ottawa! Imagine the ability of West Virginians to zip in an hour to Washington DC for jobs that simply don’t exist in Appalachia! Imagine the life-blood this would be for tech start-ups, when suddenly software engineers and DIY white hat hackers can whoosh in from Quebec to Boston or NYC for in-person collaboration! Imagine people able to work in New York but live in relatively-inexpensive Cleveland. That kind of economic game-changer is necessity. That kind of hope is a necessity, and President Obama really tapped into that…

…and then did absolutely nothing.

That’s right, nearly three years after the sweeping promises about Chinese-style bullet trains, not a single yard of HSR has been put down. We didn’t get the high-speed bus system The Onion proffered as a post-austerity alternative either. :P

The below AC 360 segment, “Keeping Them Honest,” explains where the billions in funding Congress appropriated for high-speed rail went. It all went to slow rail. As is also true of the news stories that I share on Twitter, I don’t always agree with everything in a given article I post, and in the case of this “Keeping Them Honest” segment, I don’t agree with CNN reporter Drew Griffin that allocating federal funding to make extant Amtrak routes less slow is “a boondoggle,” nor is the general thrust of the report that the entire thing is a shameful waste of taxpayer dollars representative of my point of view. I know people who use that very Vermont route, and those routes need funding too. But Drew Griffin is RIGHT that the Obama Administration and President Obama himself promised Americans high-speed rail, on camera, numerous times, and so far it’s a promise they’ve not kept; the only project the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) allotted HSR funding for that can actually be construed as high-speed rail, is the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) project to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles with a one-way travel time of at least 2 hours and 40 minutes, and it’s been bogged down with NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) lawsuits and red tape so severely that not a single track has been laid. He’s RIGHT to ask, “you’ve promised us bullet trains like the Europeans and Japanese have had since the 1980s; where’s the high-speed rail?” Why can’t we have nice things?

This high-profile failure to deliver public transportation technology that Americans need should trigger much more discussion. Why is the executive branch unable to deliver on its promises, even after Congress appropriated the funding necessary? We need to discuss the general direction here, because we’re headed for eight years of Democrats running the executive branch and still our trains are stuck at 1950s speeds, we have a 1950s power grid, and our existing transportation infrastructure (rail, roads, highways, bridges, airports, ports) got a D+ for 2013 from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). At least one of America’s bridges may crumble this year and lead to a mass casualty event. It feels like MALAISE.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) is now evidently so chastened by ridiculous NIMBY lawsuits arguing the deleterious effects of high-speed trains on “aesthetics,” that they’ve begun to move forward with a pared down, slow-speed rail plan that they promise is only temporary (the “blended plan,” they call it). The founder and former head of CHSRA has now come out against this plan, since it doesn’t meet the Prop 1A ballot initiative’s requirements for true high-speed rail. If truly rapid transit for the masses, and all its social and economic benefits, can be thwarted long-term by some wanker micro-minority concerned about—not environmental impact, since rail reduces pollution vs. cars and buses—aesthetic impact alone, then that says something very distressing about where we are headed.

I don’t usually blog about transportation, but I want this space to showcase writing about the unreported and under-reported stories, amplify the voices of the unrepresented, and this issue hasn’t gotten a third of the coverage and discussion it warrants. Our leaders make sweeping, epic promises and too often the media doesn’t follow up in any sustained way. I do wish the private sector would lay high-speed rail and bring in the newest Japanese bullet trains, a mega corporation would definitely get more media discussion than the CHSRA, but they would likely give up after a week of the BS posed by regulatory hurdles, intractable NIMBYites, and the red tape nightmare of building across multiple state and county jurisdictions.
We have to put it out there to the people, over and over again, that we need current technology for high-speed rail, we need truly rapid transit, widely available and accessible, for many reasons, but freedom of movement for the poor and disabled populations who have the greatest difficulty accessing transportation at the top of the list.

Nick

Public Policy and Activism: The Harm of Denial

Posted by nickdupree – March 26, 2013

The bulk of this post was taken from a piece of my upcoming memoir I’ve left on the cutting room floor.

It’s like 12-step programs say, “the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.”

So just getting people to understand that people with disabilities exist and admit that there are multiple, severe problems with the systems we rely on to survive—to the point we cannot survive in too many cases—just getting that understanding is a major hurdle. There’s this widespread false belief that people like me are “taken care of” and don’t need community help and involvement, when we do more than ever! The institutional bias is a huge problem. Austerity is a huge problem. I need people involved, I need volunteers, and the need for assistance and advocacy that I and the disability community as a whole NEED is only increasing as austerity budgets reduce the government support we’re receiving.

We, the grassroots activists, must educate the state governors and Medicaid commissioners who are running the programs and the legislators who are supposed to oversee them as to the real problems; it’s a bizarre psychedelic upside down situation where the insiders have little knowledge of the most egregious unintended consequences their programs create. We have fallen through the looking glass, and the captains don’t notice that their ships have holes in them. The few grassroots activists who see and come to understand how Medicaid programs in their state really work after they’re been through the special interest gauntlet and legislative sausage machine end up feeling like Cassandra, the Greek mythological prophetess who predicted doom and destruction and a Trojan horse was coming, was disbelieved, and was right. It’s hard to be the one person interrupting the party to point out the horrible truths.

The captains insist their hole-y fleet is just fine; “we’re not taking on water, and wouldn’t you be better off thinking positive and being grateful for what we have?” When optimism is preached by “see no evil, hear no evil” wind-up monkey leadership, it can actually be quite harmful. Sometimes politicians and CEOs employ an almost Maoist forced optimism to squelch the legitimate grievances of individuals. In the first few months of my campaign, Nick’s Crusade, the majority of the signs were discouraging. I wasn’t even sure that I could convince people that there was a problem. I kept going because I couldn’t do otherwise.

In this lecture, Barbara Ehrenreich talks about this forced optimism, its use as a tool of social control in authoritarian societies, its destructive consequences.

What Is ObamaCare? 2013-2014: Overview Part 2—Medicaid expansion

Posted by nickdupree – March 16, 2013

An ObamaCare Overview 2013-2014 Part 2: Medicaid Expansion

This is the second part of a two-part blog post: click here for Part 1

In the 2013-2014 period, states must decide whether to opt-in or opt-out of the “Medicaid expansion.”

Though it pains me deeply that the Affordable Care Act doesn’t fix any of the problems within Medicaid, even the most egregious, lethal flaws, I do understand how important the Medicaid expansion is, especially in the Southern states. The Medicaid expansion expands the number of people covered by raising the income threshold for eligibility. That means that families who are severely impoverished, making like $12,000 a year, can now qualify for Medicaid in places they couldn’t previously. like Florida. I know that it is hard to believe, but many states, especially in the Deep South, put their Medicaid eligibility thresholds ridiculously low; in Alabama, for example, you can’t qualify for Medicaid unless you make under $251 a month (or thereabouts, it may have changed slightly since I left the state). That means that Alabama Medicaid excludes the working poor, the bulk of all impoverished Alabamians unless they’re children or too disabled to work at all, leaving an enormous swath of Alabamians uninsured and bankrupting the hospitals who provide a great deal of “indigent care.” In Alabama, several rural hospitals have had to close following Medicaid budget cuts that came down from Montgomery, because their patients are mostly not covered, and they’re very dependent on the Medicaid reimbursements they can get for caring for the few rural people who are covered. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that prior Medicaid expansions led to a fall in mortality rates; in other words, expanding Medicaid saves lives.

Unfortunately, the states who need the Medicaid expansion the most, i.e. Alabama, are the ones refusing the expansion.

Medicaid works through matching funds, or FMAP (Federal Medical Assistance Percentage) that go toward each state’s Medicaid program. The FMAP varies based on the income of the state… here’s a cartoon I made to explain Medicaid funding:

Medicaid expansion explainer
Click to enlarge.

As you can see, the Medicaid expansion increases the number of eligibles, and grants states enhanced FMAP to cover almost all of the costs. But the Administration and Congress have given states enhanced match before, with the “stimulus” bill, the Recovery Act of 2009 (more about this round of enhanced matching). The news media is (per usual) misleading the public. Everywhere I’m seeing print headlines, radio segments and TV talking heads saying, without nuance, that governors opting-in to the Medicaid expansion are “accepting ObamaCare.”

This reddit headline, highlighted on the Brian Lehrer Show recently, is unfortunately typical of the dominant narrative around the Medicaid expansion:
Governor Christie Accepts ObamaCare - GOP's heads explode

Just because this Medicaid expansion is tucked into an amendment of the Affordable Care Act doesn’t mean you’re “accepting ObamaCare” by participating in it. I agree with Chris Christie on almost nothing, but it is important to be fair to everyone. Christie isn’t flip-flopping on ObamaCare, which I explained in Part 1 is all about subsidized private insurance exchanges, he is participating in Medicaid—a state-federal partnership signed into law alongside Medicare by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965—and he’s taking the enhanced match to pay for almost all the tab new eligibles will incur.

If we’d stop mislabeling governors as “flip-flopping,” maybe more red states would opt-in to the Medicaid expansion; the Southern states need this assistance the most desperately, but are the least likely to take the Administration up on its offer.

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R – Columbia Hospital Corporation) is, so far, the only Southern governor to show any openness to the expansion. Scott’s change of heart, which since he explicitly denounced the Medicaid expansion, was really a flip-flop, is discussed here on PBS. This is one of the least awful talking head segments I have found, though its failure to distinguish Medicaid and ObamaCare clearly enough may further contribute to the confusion:

Nick

Previously: What Is ObamaCare? 2013-2014: Overview Part 1 (Insurance Subsidies)

Next: The Changing Use of Medicaid Waivers, For Evil

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