Update 2024
The original video with both Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen performing has undergone linkrot; the only substitutes I can find are low quality filmed from way back in the audience, so I'll embed instead a performance just by Lily Allen:
More info on Olivia Rodrigo (American with three Grammys, Time's 2021 "Entertainer of the Year") and Lily Allen (Brit with Grammy, Brit Award, and MTV Video nominations, and the composer of the song).
In response to the 2022 overruling of the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Rodrigo performed "Fuck You" with British singer Lily Allen at Glastonbury Festival. She prefaced the performance by dedicating it to the associate justices who voted to overturn the agreement, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, saying “I'm devastated and terrified. So many women and so many girls are going to die because of this. I wanted to dedicate this next song to the five members of the Supreme Court who have showed us that at the end of the day, they truly don’t give a shit about freedom. The song is for [those] justices.” The Guardian described it as a "thrilling and furious" moment.
"Fuck You" was originally composed in response to the far-right British National Party, but has found wider application, and has been popular throughout Europe. Excerpts of the lyrics:
[Verse 1]Look inside, look inside your tiny mindThen look a bit harder'Cause we're so uninspired, so sick and tiredOf all the hatred you harbourSo you say it's not okay to be gayWell, I think you're just evilYou're just some racist who can't tie my lacesYour point of view is medieval[Chorus]Fuck you (Fuck you), fuck you very, very much'Cause we hate what you doAnd we hate your whole crewSo please, don't stay in touch (Da-da-da-da-da-da-da)Fuck you (Fuck you), fuck you very, very much'Cause your words don't translateAnd it's getting quite lateSo please, don't stay in touch[Verse 2]Do you get, do you get a little kick out of being small minded?You want to be like your father, it's approval you're afterWell, that's not how you find itDo you, do you really enjoy living a life that's so hateful?'Cause there's a hole where your soul should beYou're losing control of itAnd it's really distasteful[Verse 3]You say you think we need to go to warWell, you're already in one'Cause it's people like you that need to get slewNo one wants your opinion[Outro]Fuck you, fuck you, fuck youFuck you, fuck you, fuck youFuck you, fuck you, fuck you(Da-da-da-da-da-da-da)Fuck you, fuck you, fuck youFuck you, fuck you, fuck youFuck you, fuck you, fuck you
Yeah, we know. This really is the beginning and end of what motivates the modern left.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Protecting the health, lives, and rights of everyone including women and minorities is what motivates the modern left.
DeleteWhat, beyond tearing down all those protections, motivates the modern right? There doesn’t seem to be any other goal.
The greatest danger to the daughters of tomorrow...are their mothers.
ReplyDeleteIt simply MUST NOT be the case that the value of an unborn child's life is dependent on the mothers convenience, whim, or fancy. Either a child has intrinsic value...or it doesn't.
I will spot the pro-abortionists all the abortions for rape, incest, severe deformity or disease in the unborn child, the life of the mother, and abortions before 10 weeks. But that is not enough for them. No, they want abortions to be legal at ANY TIME before birth...as if a month before a child travels the birth canal that child is not a human, not a child.
Aaron, I think you are misunderstanding (or mis-stating) the degree of difference among Americans re abortion. The number of pro-choice pro-abortion proponents who would approve of an abortion in the 8th month of pregnancy is vanishingly rare to almost nonexistent.
DeleteConversely, the number of pro-life anti-abortion advocates who would deny abortion to a 12-year old girl who has been raped by a mentally deficient brother and is three weeks pregnant is also extremely small.
Saying “I’ll allow abortion in cases of rape” sounds good but doesn’t mean much when the burden is on the woman to go through the often lengthy process of proving she was raped and then having to pay the additional costs for the procedure, travel expenses, time off from work, and whatever other costs may be necessary.
DeleteMichael Duffy, editor at the Washington Post, elaborates in more detail:
DeleteEver since the draft of a Supreme Court ruling reversing Roe v. Wade leaked to Politico, the political temperature, high to begin with, has continued to rise.
Post columnist Christine Emba contrasted that escalating heat with what she called the “nuanced views” most Americans hold on abortion.
Those attitudes, she writes, “are contingent upon a variety of circumstances, such as how far along a pregnancy is or how risky it is for the mother. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, relatively few Americans hold absolutist views on abortion: Only about 1 in 5 say it should be legal in all cases, and fewer than 1 in 10 say it should be illegal without exception.”
Christine cited the work of journalist Amanda Ripley, who has written that America is in a dangerous state of “high conflict” where every issue is quickly repurposed by advocates to divide us further. Stopping the cycle is extremely challenging.
Writes Christine: “The runaway blaze of high conflict is stoked by what Ripley calls ‘conflict entrepreneurs’: those who have something to gain from the conflict’s continuing, and who thus help it along rather than seek to tone it down, bundling conflicts together to make them feel worse and more distressing. These people delight in the fight, and in adding fuel to the fire.”
Don't flatter yourself thinking there's a extreme-ring wing British party other than the Tories that gets (noteworthy) songs made for them. The alternate title of the song is "Great White Batman", which is odd because there was no Batman movie out at the time. There was however, a US president with those initials.....
ReplyDeleteI should point out here, that the current Tory government, led by a racist and serial adulterer, is the most right-wing government in the UK in decades. And yet, it defends the National Health Service (while undermining it), and supports abortion (even though it doesn't lift a finger to solve the situation in Northern Ireland) and it was David Cameron who legalized gay marriage (because he figured he might as well because Labour got a chance to do so).
This to illustrate how bonkers extreme racist, misogynist, nationalist and anti-democratic the Republican party has become.
@ Aaron S: You have been fooled by crazy christianists into thinking that a fetus is a human being before it's born. There is no biological or medical meaning in the phrase "life begins at conception". Biology barely has a definition of what life is, let alone one that defines when a "new" life begins. Same for medicine.
Religion, however, is very mixed on when life starts. Perhaps surprisingly, islam allows for abortions when the life of the woman is in danger, and is somewhat mixed on abortion in the first trimester. Judaism, on the other hand, reading the exact same text that christians read (remember the Thora is just the first five books of the Old Testament), has concluded that abortion is mostly fine.
So, many Americans states now find themselves more strict on abortion than islam, while denying Jews the free exercise of their religion.
"fooled by crazy christianists into thinking that a fetus is a human being before it's born. " Yeah, crazy thought. Probably a thought held by millions of people, many of whom are not "christinaists." BTW, does a christianist differ from a christian?
DeleteWith your assertion in mind, I assume (always a dangerous thing, I know) that you believe anyone convicted under The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) (and similar statutes in many states) should have that conviction dismissed. That law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."
It is probably just me, but I would view your statement as an "extremist" position, along the line of "it's a human at conception."
FWIW, Abortions in Israel must be approved by a three-person termination committee, 2 doctors and a social worker. A termination committee can approve an abortion in the following circumstances:
DeleteA. The woman is younger than the legal marriage age in Israel (which currently is 18, raised from 17 in April 2013), or older than forty. (This was later amended to also include women under the age of twenty.)
B. The pregnancy was conceived under illegal circumstances (rape, statutory rape, etc.), in an incestuous relationship, or outside of marriage.
C. The fetus may have a physical or mental birth defect.
D. Continued pregnancy may put the woman's life in risk, or damage her physically or mentally.
While all major Jewish religious movements allow (or even encourage) abortion in order to save the life or health of a pregnant woman, authorities differ on when and whether it is permitted in other cases.
BTW, does a christianist differ from a christian?
DeleteOf course. Otherwise, I would say christian, not?
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004
No idea what that law says, so I have no opinion.
I would view your statement as an "extremist" position
Which statement is extremist?
The only think I state in my comment is that it's crazy to say that life begins at conception. It's a truthiness. It feels true, but reality is a lot more complicated.
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004
DeleteNo idea what that law says, so I have no opinion.
Let me Google that for you:
congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/house-bill/1997#:~:text=Unborn%20Victims%20of%20Violence%20Act%20of%202004%20or%20Laci%20and,articles%20of%20the%20Uniform%20Code
Let me Google that for you:
DeleteLook, someone anonymous made assumptions about my opinion on a law I wasn't aware of. It is not up to me to have instant opinions about laws because someone anonymous assumes I do.
love you even more for having stayed young inside and posting things like this.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about this ruling is that a woman now has less rights to decide what to do with her own body than does a corpse. If that doesn’t mean anything to some people, I urge them to revisit their morals.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAaronSJune 26, 2022 at 9:38 PM
The greatest danger to the daughters of tomorrow...are their mothers
Utterly perverse way to try and make this a victory for women.
There are so many things wrong with this, justification? What’s next for you lot? The greatest danger to the daughters of tomorrow are condoms?
I’d like to ask anyone who wanted Roe v. Wade overturned how they think a woman who was a victim of rape or incest is supposed to prove she was the victim of a crime when she’s going to be a suspect of a crime for wanting an abortion.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, in cases where a woman’s life is in danger from a pregnancy, why does she have to face the additional burden of proving that to law enforcement officials who have no medical experience? Especially when, thanks to the closure of clinics in states where abortion is now banned, she’ll have to see a specialist in another state.
Did anyone who wanted Roe v. Wade overturned think about these consequences, or care?
It should be noted that procedures such as the removal of a cancerous uterus or the removal of an ectopic pregnancy are not considered abortions and have never been prosecuted in this country, even when the mother's life was not immediately threatened.
DeleteAlso, implying that opponents to Roe do not think about or care about the consequences you cite is similar to implying that proponents of Roe do not think about or care about the unborn child. Most likely, neither implication is true.
It should also be noted that you completely skip the issues of rape and incest. I’m not implying anything. It seems to be a fact that opponents of abortion haven’t thought about the implications in those cases since they’re either unwilling to address them or in some cases insist that rape and incest can’t cause pregnancy, in spite of the fact that it can.
DeleteIt should also be noted that you’re not addressing the fact that a woman with an ectopic pregnancy or other life-threatening condition is still going to have the added burden of proving to law enforcement officials that her abortion is necessary. How many other conditions require someone to hand over medical records to the state?
Even if women aren’t prosecuted the forced closure of clinics and relocation of specialists makes procedures more difficult for women to get. It’s not a coincidence that Arizona, a state with some of the most severe restrictions, is also one of the worst states for women’s health.
Never mind that pharmacies in Texas are now also refusing to fill prescriptions for drugs that are unrelated to pregnancy but there’s a fear they’ll cause an accidental miscarriage. This potentially affectis women with lupus, stomach ulcers, and even cancer.
I’m not implying that abortion opponents don’t care. I’m stating the fact that there are consequences that were probably unintended. How abortion opponents respond, or if they do at all, will show how much they care.
As a Catholic lad, I was taught that at the “moment of conception,” a new soul was brought into the world. This soul, on this basis, was in every way the spiritual equivalent of a full-grown human’s soul. Therein, since spiritual equivalency is the end-all, questions of physical equivalency are of minimal importance.
ReplyDeleteSo, here’s the elephant in the room of the abortion discussion: The subject is not one that can be comprehensively addressed with logic. If I say a fertilized egg is made in the “image and likeness” of God, has an immortal soul, etc., this is not something that can be addressed with other than theological logic, which stipulates a faith-based premise. That is, a premise for which no proof is required. (I realize there are “proofs” for the existence of God. I find this an interesting intellectual exercise at best.)
Once we are in any realm where evidence is not required, we are simply “out to sea” on an ocean of speculation, which dogma hardens into truth. Rape and incest? Terrible, but how does one argue that the resulting moment of conception is not one of God’s miracles? It all depends on how seriously one takes the non-evidence-based premise.
One person’s superstition is another person’s sacred truth. The abortion battle is about evidence and whether we are an evidence-based, thinking and acting society. It’s a delicate matter, for while I am firmly in the evidence camp, there is potential tyranny in the narrowly empirical.
As always, civilized humans live on a razor's edge.
You bring up one of the big problems with legislating abortion- the separation of church and state. One person may believe that a blastocyst has a soul and is created in God's image. But the next person may believe that a fetus doesn't have the value of a soul until the quickening (about 20 weeks) under their religion. A third religion may value the quality of life of the mother and her potential later children as more valuable than a fetus. When one belief creates laws for all others, that violates the First Amendment.
DeleteThe second big issue is bodily autonomy. We don't require people to donate organs, even though their refusal may cause someone else's death. Some folks did not want the covid vaccine, even though remaining unvaccinated endangered other people's lives. Many of the same people want to require a woman to subsume her rights and needs for a fetus she is carrying. Who has the right of body autonomy?
As with damn near everything, if a person simply insists on a version of reality and has the power to impose all associated conditions, the power is the key. It appears there's an abortion debate, but no possible agreement on terms, and, hence, no real debate. As with slavery, which could be defended on a Biblical basis, if there is an insistence on a God-given truth, the conversation dies. Believers cannot do otherwise. Of course this is not limited to God-related dogma.
Delete