What Fresh Hell Is This? And This? And This? ...

Oh, and Happy Independence Day 2022. Enjoy it while you can.

(Welcome to a special Independence Day edition of Life Its Ownself. If you enjoy reading it, please let me know by 1) hitting the Like button at the bottom, 2) subscribing to this newsletter, and 3) recommending it to others. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.)

1. SCOTUS reverses Roe v. Wade in landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision

In keeping with journalistic practice, here’s what we know about the victims:

• Millions of American women have lost constitutional protection of their freedom to choose to have an abortion.

• Between 2016 and 2020, an average of 136,235 American women were forcibly raped each year. If the trend continues and some of those women become pregnant, they have lost constitutional protection of their choice to terminate that pregnancy, and many will have to carry their rapist’s babies to term and raise them.

• Approximately three percent of babies born in the United States are affected by birth defects. These genetic disorders account for about 20 percent of all infant deaths. The ability to terminate a pregnancy due to a profound or fatal genetic deformity is being limited or even eliminated altogether in states that have imposed new abortion restrictions in the wake of the Dobbs decision.[1]

• About 100,000 women suffer ectopic pregnancies every year. An abortion is part and parcel of the treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, every time, 100% of the time. But a physician may be reluctant to perform that life-saving procedure in moral deserts like Texas that not only ban abortion but deputize bounty hunters to plunder the lives of anyone associated with performing an abortion.  

More victims are being identified on a daily basis, and their status is being clarified and updated.

2.      What fresh hell is this? And this? And this? And this?

When the Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v. Wade was issued last Friday, a friend texted me, “What fresh hell is this?”[2] My first thought was, which particular hell are you talking about? Lately we seem to be consigned to a new fresh hell about every other day – elementary school massacres, the Great Climate Backslide, plots to overthrow a free and fair election, coverups of school massacres, forest fires in one state with torrential flooding in the state next door, deranged major political party platforms, gunslingers in the streets of New York, plots to overthrow the Constitution, pardon requests from people plotting to overthrow the Constitution, helpless migrants dying in tractor-trailers, etc.  

This fresh-hell-a-minute stuff is exhausting. These are soul-wearying times. Believers (like me) in the slow, inexorable progress of humanity are having to reevaluate the timetables of progress, if not the ultimate direction. I am not ready to give up on the United States, or even Texas – which has become a Lost Cause in the last 20 years – but I do find myself wondering about life in Mexico or, failing that, New Mexico.

So, to buck up my spirits this Independence Day weekend, write something about America’s greatness and opportunity in the comments. Try to avoid ephemera like fireworks, baseball and apple pie – this is not a Chevy ad, for christ’s sake!

3.      It could happen “Only In America”

What a great story.

In the early 1960s, the husband-wife songwriting duo of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill – part of the iconic “Brill Building Pop” songwriting and recording empire that included Burt Bacharach and Carole King and produced dozens of hits – wrote a song that was, for the Brill Building crowd, very edgy and powerful. “Only In America” was originally written as an anti-racism anthem:

Only in America, land of opportunity, can they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me,

Only in America, where they preach the Golden Rule, will they start to march when my kids want to go to school.

The song was recorded by The Drifters, who were signed with Atlantic Records and had hits with other Brill Building songs like “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance for Me.” They planned to release it in the spring of 1963. Then all hell broke loose.

Atlantic Records CEO Jerry Wexler convinced Mann and Weil that in the reality of those times (and most likely in the consideration of record sales and turning profits), the song wouldn’t get much, if any, airplay, and that a rewrite was necessary. Another prolific writing duo, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, worked with Mann and Weil to write a more patriotic version, which the Drifters then recorded. But the Drifters refused to release it, saying they did not believe in its sunny patriotism. Wexler then gave the song to Jay and the Americans, who had a hit with it; it reached #25 on the charts. The lyrics were much … safer:

Only in America, can a guy from anywhere, go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire
Only in America, can a kid without a cent, get a break and maybe grow up to be President

So here, on this Independence Day weekend, because it’s a great song, and in recognition of the stumbles and sidesteps on the road to freedom and equality, is the Drifters’ (sanitized) version of “Only in America.”

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[1]                https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-the-roe-v-wade-decision-impacts-genetic-testing#Ending-a-pregnancy

[2]                I got curious about the phrase and decided to research its provenance. Dorothy Parker is credited with the phrase.