Cagle World

Ahmaud Arbery is not here, but he heard the verdicts. He knows, in that place where his restless soul resides, that his death has been avenged.

An overwhelming white jury in Georgia found that three white men had stalked a Black man for no legitimate reason, gunned him down and then tried to justify their actions under the false argument of “enforcing the law.” That is weighty, that is substantial, and that matters.

Others will tie this to race, and only the most jaded or ignorant would deny that if Ahmaud were white, he would likely still be alive. The 9-1-1 tape caught one of his killers saying that the problem they had was a “Black man” running around the neighborhood. Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil, and that comment is a reflection of exactly that principle: the color of Ahmaud’s skin was the “problem” for men who could only see him as a threat. His existence, his being, was the “evil” they perceived, and there was nothing that the victim could have done to avoid the death sentence his killers marked him for.

Beyond the issue of race, there is the fact that a man who did nothing wrong was targeted for extermination because three narcissists decided their right to play lawman was more important than his right to life. These pathetic, overweight, inarticulate Marshall Dillon wannabes arrogated to themselves the privilege of omniscience. They decided that their ability to figure out what was criminal or legal, what was normal or an aberration, what was acceptable or beyond the pale, was absolute. And they used their guns to underline that point.

The fact that the jury spent less than a day deliberating shows how little daylight there was between a just verdict and reasonable doubt. There was no doubt that Travis McMichael stalked Arbery, and that race was at least part of the reason. There was no doubt that the other two men, including his father, were so assured of their infallibility and secure in their privilege that they filmed themselves killing a man, thinking the video evidence would be seen as justification for their rogue actions. They probably even expected to be praised for their bravery and initiative once the video was made public and shared on social media.

They might even have thought they’d be heralded as heroes on national television.

Well, that video was shared, and they did make it into the national spotlight. The thing is, they never expected to be on the wrong end of a jury, a judge, a prosecutor and public opinion. And that is part of the tragedy.

What is so clear to me and to millions of Americans appears to have been beyond the comprehension of Ahmaud’s killers. And the fact that they could grow up and function in that echo chamber of justification, that they could even try and fight the charges against them as if they were entitled to take this man’s life as opposed to seeking a plea (which might not have been forthcoming, truth be told) is evidence that there is something deeply broken in our society.

But in a moment of grace on the day before Thanksgiving, we saw that even the broken edges of society can be smoothed down with the application of justice. The verdicts of “guilty” on so many of the most serious charges in this case are a message that carries beyond that Georgia courtroom. They are a sign that juries usually get it right, even though we accuse them of being biased because of a racial, class or gender imbalance. And when you take this in conjunction with the verdict handed down in Kyle Rittenhouse, you also see how juries can withstand even the most oppressive intimidation from the media and nihilistic dissidents in society, and come to the right conclusion.

We all mourn the death of Ahmaud Arbery. But with these verdicts, we have found a way to have faith in the system of justice. Refuse to let the pundits who get paid spin partisan fables and fairy tales. Refuse to let them convince you that this verdict wasn’t powerful, and that it wasn’t enough. It was, and it will continue to be, just as the Rittenhouse verdict with which it will always be twinned will be a tribute to the virtue of 12 men and women, endowed with the superpowers of the Constitution.

This was a November to give thanks.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

About a month ago, I was traveling on the subway in Philadelphia when I was attacked by a young African-American male in a hoodie, who was angry that I was filming him after he’d punched me in the head moments before.

I made a report, and other than anger that SEPTA is incapable of guaranteeing my safety for the increasingly expensive fare they charge, I’m fine. In fact, I’d basically forgotten about the incident until last week, when I saw a video of a few African-American girls attacking Asian students in a Philadelphia subway car.

It is a disgusting display of inhumanity, with the aggressors yelling and screaming curses at the victims, who seem to be cowering in their seats and very much afraid for their lives. The attackers appear to be unarmed in the video, but they are feral and brutal, and much more violent than the teen who attacked me.

When the first reports were issued about the attacks on the train, local media and officials twisted themselves into Philly soft pretzels to avoid addressing the elephant in the room. One news channel posted an article about how they were “investigating” if this was a hate crime, ignoring the fact that on the video you can, if you listen closely, discern racial epithets screamed at the victims. It’s not conclusive, but it matters.

More important, though, were the official announcements tweeted out by people like Mayor Jim Kenney, who wrote:

“I’m appalled by yesterday’s assault involving students on the Broad Street Line. Those involved in the assault have been identified and will be held accountable. I want our residents to know that we will not tolerate any acts of hate.”

At first glance, it’s not bad, although he doesn’t mention the race of the assailants, nor the race of the victims. You can be certain that if it were a gang of Proud Boys attacking a person of color, we’d not only know the races of all parties involved, we’d have marches in the streets.

Imagine if a bunch of white girls from the suburbs had called a bunch of Black girls racial epithets, and that was caught on video. You know that this would be the number one story on the news for the next two cycles, and there would be op-eds written, community activists consulted and sensitivity trainings initiated.

Here, though, there seems to be a much lower sense of urgency. WHYY, Philadelphia’s local public radio station and “voice of the community,” barely mentioned the race of the attackers when they posted articles about these “alleged” hate crimes. I looked on their website, and could only find one reference to “African-American” teens embedded far down in the article.

Contrast that with what happened in Georgia last year, when there was the attack on Asian women by a white male. Before any of the details became known and the actual motives assessed, the media were in full “white supremacy” mode with the man going after women of color because of his toxic white masculinity. It was only after the real motive was determined to be the misogyny of a mentally unhinged man who couldn’t get a date did the media recalibrate its narrative to be something along the lines of the dangers faced by women of color with the emphasis on domestic abuse as opposed to racial animus.

We don’t even need to go that far back to see the hypocritical gymnastics the media does when discussing race. After Kyle Rittenhouse was justifiably acquitted of all charges in Wisconsin, the usual race baiting suspects came out with comments about how if it had been a Black boy who shot white guys, he’d be sentenced to life. They inject race where it’s irrelevant, but ignore it when it is actually relevant, as when Africa- American teenagers are brutalizing Asian students.

Time after time, if the aggressor is white and the victim is not, it automatically becomes a narrative about bigotry and white supremacy. The “Through the Looking Glass” moment came when Rittenhouse, who is white, shot three men, who were also white, and he’s still attacked as an example of white privilege. This is madness, and we are in societal quicksand.

Refusing to point out that race was very likely a factor in the attack by these Black students on Asian youth is racism by omission, namely, refusing to even consider the possibility that bias was a central part of the equation.

If we really want to have an honest discussion about race, we have to discuss all the messy, uncomfortable aspects about it.

We need to treat all instances of hatred and bias equally, because if we don’t, we are proving that only some lives matter.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

If Kyle Rittenhouse is convicted of anything other than, at most, a misdemeanor offense, I will write glowing articles about Nancy Pelosi, make Christine Blasey Ford my social media profile photo, and contribute to NARAL. And to top it all off, I’ll put my pronouns (she/her/you figure it out) in my electronic email signature.

That should give you some idea as to how convinced I am that the jury will find Rittenhouse not guilty on the most serious charges, including first degree intentional homicide.

I hope that Black Lives Matter will not claim this scalp, and the talking heads at CNN and MSNBC, not to mention their fellow travelers in the print media, will have to stand down in shame. And I hope that this time, a mediocre and politically motivated prosecutor will not be able to advance his career on the body of am 18 year old boy, who has now become the symbol of all that the left hates.

Kyle Rittenhouse is guilty of only one thing: youthful stupidity, and a failure to understand that all of your best intentions are no match for nihilistic anarchists hell bent on burning down the only world you’ve ever known.

Not being a criminal attorney, you have to take my assessment of the legal aspects of this case with a grain of salt. I make no pretense of expertise in this area of the law, and have to rely on those who actually are. One former prosecutor thinks the government not only over-charged the case, but managed to undermine its own arguments with witnesses who buttress the defendant’s claim of self-defense. Another thinks the prosecutor is horrible, but wonders whether Kyle’s trip to Kenosha bearing weapons will have some impact on the jury.

There’s a healthy split of opinion in the legal community on whether Rittenhouse proved self -defense, and we won’t know which side called it correctly until the jury weighs in.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have opinions about this case, which has become as much a reflection of the troubled social climate as the O.J. trial was almost three decades ago. I remember that when the not guilty verdict was rendered, the country reacted as if they’d seen two separate trials. African Americans, on the whole, were thrilled that a Black man had somehow beaten the system, while a majority of the rest of us were horrified at the obvious miscarriage of justice.

Thirty years later, I have to reflect on my own reaction to the O.J. debacle. It was, in fact, a debacle, because there is no question that even though the prosecutors did a particularly mediocre job, O.J. was factually guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. The trial reflected the maelstrom we found ourselves in the 1990s, mixing race with celebrity and violence against women. A perfect societal storm.

Not much has changed. It is ironic that the Rittenhouse case involves a white defendant, white shooting victims, a white prosecutor, a white judge, and white defense attorneys, and is still somehow a referendum on the amount of melanin in your skin. It is O.J. redux, only this time the domestic violence angle is replaced by hatred of Trump and MAGA culture.

That’s incredibly troubling. We have Harvard Law grad Elie Mystel calling the presiding Judge Bruce Schroeder a “racist” and arguing that Rittenhouse will get off only because he knows “what white people are willing to do to defend white supremacy.”

You have that washed-up, bitter geriatric Keith Olbermann calling for a prosecution of the “racist” judge. You have CNN commentator Wajahat Ali comparing the judge to a Klan member, tweeting, “This dude should just put on the hood and show off his Halloween costume.” And these are just the printable comments.

Then, perhaps most troubling, is candidate Joe Biden using a photo of Kyle Rittenhouse as the face of “white supremacy” in an ad last year. Nice way to put a target on the back of a criminal defendant, Joe.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the left is again out in full force using that sad, tired trope of racism. It’s been effective since well before the days of O.J. But as an attorney who respects her profession, I’m disgusted by the sort of people who will use their own obvious prejudices to convict an 18 year old of murder when their lying eyes tell them otherwise.

And because my faith in my fellow Americans has been shaken to its core by these ridiculous displays of bigotry on the part of those who should know better, I’m preparing myself that upcoming contribution to NARAL. I pray to God I’m spared that hell.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I speak four languages fluently, read a fifth and am learning a sixth. I taught Spanish, French and Italian, and use all three languages on a daily basis in my immigration practice. I say this not to brag as much as to display how important language and its correct usage is to me.

I’ve seen a lot of that dishonesty lately, with people making up words like “Latinx” and using plural pronouns for a single person who might have multiple identities but can only claim one complete set of organs.

Words matter, and have an innate power that can both build bridges and fracture relationships. And they evolve over time, as we’ve seen with terms that were once used innocently with no intent to offend, but are now erased from the lexicon because of different mores and perceptions.

But language can also impact the way we assess people and situations, and one of the most illustrative examples of that happened the other day in Wisconsin. A state court judge primed to preside over the criminal trial of Kyle Rittenhouse made a preliminary ruling that shocked a lot of people and made headlines. Judge Bruce Schroeder held that the term “victim” could not be applied to the persons shot and killed by Rittenhouse last year during Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha.

The dictionary definition of the term according to Collins is “someone who has been hurt or killed.” However, that’s not the way we tend to view the word in normal conversation. Calling someone a “victim” of anything implies that they have been wronged. It triggers the perception that this is an innocent person who has been persecuted, abused, attacked or otherwise harmed by another person or entity that needs to be punished.

The MeToo movement paints women as “victims” of abusive men. Young boys were “victims” of predator priests. Native Americans were “victims” of the U.S. government’s aggression. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were “victims” of a corrupt judicial system.

I use this last example on purpose. The Italian anarchists were executed after being tried on trumped up charges of murdering a guard. The prosecution was fueled by anti-immigrant bigotry at the beginning of the last century, and is one of the darkest blotches on America’s criminal justice system. We now know that the men had nothing to do with the crimes they were accused of committing. They were, in fact, true victims.

Rittenhouse poses a different sort of dilemma. Wisconsin law permits a person who “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself” to shoot in self-defense. Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense will argue that he traveled to Kenosha to protect businesses and business owners from the looting and vandalism that he saw breaking out in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. That argument may not be successful.

Nevertheless, it is a legitimate argument under state law, and if Rittenhouse can establish that his actions were justified under the color of that law, he did not commit a crime. If there was not crime, there was, in fact, no “victim” as that term is commonly understood. Using it before guilt has been established is prejudicial to the defendant, and the judge was right to bar the use of that word in a court of law.

That doesn’t mean other people can’t use it. Journalists will, supporters of Black Lives Matter surely will and anti-gun activists will too. The difference is that none of these folks have the power to sentence a man to life in prison. Only a judge a jury can do that, and the odds should not be stacked against the man whose life they weigh because of some rhetorical games.

Some have accused the judge of bias or at the very least inconsistency, because he is going to allow the defense to use the terms “looter” and “rioter” if it can prove that this was the activity in which the people shot by Rittenhouse were engaged when he shot them.

It’s a fair point. But there’s much less wiggle room about whether someone who sets fire to a business or breaks its windows is a “looter” than there is about whether someone who gets shot after threatening someone is a “victim.” One is a question of fact, the other is a question of law.

So I applaud Judge Schroeder for making an extremely unpopular decision in this heated climate, where words matter and using the wrong words can have deadly consequences. Solomon would be proud.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Anyone who was expecting Pope “abortion is murder” Francis to criticize Joe “abortion is health care” Biden was either naïve, or sorely disappointed this week when the two most powerful living Catholics met at the Vatican.

According to Biden, the pope told him he was happy that our president was a “good Catholic” and that he had his permission to keep receiving Communion. Of course, there were no cameras, so it could just be Joe doing that plagiarism thing he’s perfected.

Personally, however, I don’t doubt that Pontiff told POTUS that he could continue doing what he had every intention of doing anyway, shoving his unrepentant pro-abortion politics in the face of practicing anti-abortion Catholics. Despite the opposition of American bishops and many conservative faithful like myself who are deeply troubled by this façade of piety, Biden and his many supporters (a large portion of which calls itself Catholic) think his advocacy for abortion rights should be brushed off like some annoying flake of dandruff on the wings of St. Michael.

Given his public comments, I believe that the pope was willing to forgive this lost sheep from Wilmington. I know I’m not going to change hearts, minds and eternal souls with my words. That’s not my intention, nor is it within my power to tell someone how to approach their relationship with God and their conception of morality.

But silence is not an option when it comes to the hypocrisy of people who regularly attack others as immoral, and we’ve seen how both of the two most powerful Catholics have done that. Francis talked about the evil of “building walls,” a distinct dig at Trump, while Biden has gone after everyone, including and most especially Republicans who stand in the way of his agenda.

I cannot do is sit idly by while the leader of my faith and the leader of my country live out this elderly bromance for the world to see without expressing how depressed, how disrespected and how very, very angry it makes me.

Among all faiths, Catholicism has been the most vocal in its opposition to the destruction of human life in utero. It has also been outspoken against the death penalty, fiercely supportive of immigrants and refugees, cognizant of our stewardship of the earth and concerned with the welfare of the disabled and the dispossessed. As Cardinal Joseph Bernardin described it in terms more poetic than any bible verse, it is all about the “seamless garment of life.”

So when two extremely high profile members of that faith seem to excuse the ripping and tearing and destruction of that radiant garment at the hem, at the beginning where life takes hold and becomes manifest in the fertilized embryo, I have a big problem with the messaging.

Women like the acolytes of Planned Parenthood can get out there with their “I’m Glad I had An Abortion” T- shirts and parade their obscene pride in this barbarity on social media, and I just wince and scroll by. People like Nancy Pelosi can act like theologians and talk about how abortion is actually permitted by the church, and I just laugh and excuse the octogenarian’s little mental blip. But if the pope doesn’t draw the line in the sand when that “good Catholic” deliberately flouts a core principle of our faith, I don’t know why I should obey any of the rules myself.

What does it even mean to be a Catholic anymore?

Don’t answer, I think I already know. We apparently get to write our own rules now because “Who is he to judge?”

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I was watching “The View” the other day, and while I’d normally come away from that experience scarred by the smirking face and screeching cackle of Joy Behar, this time was different. This time there was a woman with a brain at the table. This time, it was more than just a group of caffeinated dames pretending to have gravitas when they’re nothing more than Real(ly) Annoying Housewives.

Condoleezza Rice was the guest. This is the first woman of color to fill the role of Secretary of State, and only the second woman overall. She’s a concert pianist, an Olympic level ice skater, fluent in Russian, a former National Security Advisor, the daughter of a preacher and a woman whose dream job was, by her own admission, NFL Commissioner. In short, a perfect human being.

I’ve admired Condi Rice for over two decades, ever since she entered my consciousness. She would often talk about her father, the Rev. John Wesley Rice, and told a story about him in her speech at the Republican National Convention in August 2000. In the segregated Birmingham of the 1950s, Rev. Rice tried to register with the Democrat Party, and was turned away because he was Black. In response, he became a lifelong Republican in 1952. His daughter announced, “My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.”

Ironically, the editors of Essence magazine refused to put her on its cover, this woman of immense achievement and grace. This was years ago, even before the Black Lives Matter movement displayed the hypocrisy of those who insist on choosing just which Black lives matter.

Clearly not Ben Carson, world renowned neurosurgeon turned HUD Secretary under Donald Trump. Certainly not Shelbey Steele, whose beautifully nuanced essays on race are ignored while the simple-minded and accusatory tracts of race baiters like Ibrahim X Kendi are elevated to classics status. Surely not Clarence Thomas, who is increasingly the voice of a principled and constitutionally authentic conservatism on the highest court in the land.

That’s why seeing her on “The View” was such a gift, especially since she’s been out of the public eye for such a long time. Add to that the fact that we’ve been force fed narratives of women who are independent because they whine about reproductive rights and cry about the deprivation of birth control and access to abortion, or because they stood up against the sexism of a man like Donald Trump (but never a Bill Clinton or a Joe Biden) and it’s like manna from heaven to hear her speak. Really, nourishment in the ideological desert.

The conversation on “The View” turned to critical race theory, a favorite obsession with these Women Who Chat. When asked her opinion about it, this is what the first Black female Secretary of State had to say:

“I want Black kids to know that they are beautiful in their Blackness, but in order to do that I don’t need to make white kids feel bad for being white.”

When someone like me, a white woman from the suburbs of a majority minority city says something like that, she gets tarred as a racist. That’s just the way things are played these days, and I’m used to it.

But when someone like Rice makes those same comments, you need to listen. You realize that this is no longer a Black and white issue (excuse the unavoidable pun.) It’s not about left and right, right and wrong, Democrat and Republican. It’s about the truth, that thing that keeps getting lost in the shuffle these days between competing interests and 140 characters.

Condoleezza Rice knows what discrimination looks like. She learned about it from her father, who was turned away by the Democrats and found a home with a party that later made his daughter Secretary of State. She also knows what it looks like in the present day, denied her rightful place in history by men and women who measure a person’s worth by the level of their liberalism.

To hear Rice say that she doesn’t think white children need to be vilified so that Black children can be honored sounds an awful lot like something another reverend who spent time in Birmingham observed, several lifetimes ago: what matters is not the color of our skin, but the content of our character.

That’s a lesson the lightweights on “The View” needed desperately to hear.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

It’s very easy these days to say that social media is toxic. People act in ways they’d never do in real life, because it isn’t real life. They act like feral wolves, because they can. The Twitter police don’t carry guns, and their badges are imaginary.

In fact, social media is one big imaginary world, and we’re all way too wrapped up in things that don’t matter – the opinions expressed by strangers in public.

Last week, Jon Gruden’s life exploded because of some private email exchanges that he had between 2011 and 2018 with a colleague. The emails included comments that were objectively racist, sexist and homophobic, and it’s hard to figure out how to defend them. You really can’t. Gruden doesn’t.

But they were private conversations between two men, and they became public because of a wholly separate investigation into another individual suspected of wrongdoing. Gruden, who was not the target of that investigation, became the victim of what we’ve all seen over the past few years, something I call the Twitch Hunt. When the private comments became public, Gruden was essentially turned into a non-person. Matt Taibbi had a great column where he described Gruden as becoming increasingly invisible, like a ghost evaporating into the fetid air. Gone, done, cancelled. He wrote:

“Throwing the door open, I could still see him for a second in outline, like Wonder Woman’s Superfriends plane, crouching in my shirt-rack. Then, in a flash, he was gone. The shirts fell back into place. All that was left was a voice.

“Is this forever?”

“I’d put your over-under at nine years.”

“Jesus.”

I have friends who were canceled because someone believed that they’d overstepped some social boundaries, boundaries that are now delineated by the tech gods and their acolytes. It’s not that Twitter and Facebook make all of the rules, but they empower those with animus and hostility toward “this” or “that” to crush the inconvenient and non-conforming. Social media creates, and it destroys, because it has such immense power to influence the way we see the world. In doing so, it effectively changes that world.

You can no longer use certain words, because the Twitter armies will hunt you down and take your soul hostage if you do. You can’t express certain dissonant views about vaccines and masks, or the Facebook Stasi will sniff you out and tag your posts with disclaimers, the social media equivalent of being placed in the public stocks.

And if you dared to use racist, sexist or homophobic language with a friend in the privacy of your email (which of course was never private) you will be sentenced by the Star Chamber years after you transgressed. The sentence will be social oblivion.

I was canceled by a newspaper because the Twitter mobs forced the powers that be to silence me. So be it, I found another place, another bully pulpit, another microphone where more than one voice is permitted to speak. But others are not so fortunate. And many, many others who don’t have the money and the resources of a guy like Jon Gruden have not only been disappeared like a victim of some South American junta. They have been destroyed.

It’s all so ephemeral, and yet deadly. A person who we will never meet, and who made some bad comments to someone else we will never meet, is neutralized. None of it touches us, but we’re supposed to care.

Meanwhile, real life is happening, and we’re too busy looking at our phones to notice. But at least we can mark ourselves “Safe from Jon Gruden.”

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I was watching TV the other night, and one of those ubiquitous campaign ads popped up. This time, it was a female candidate for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, discussing all of her accomplishments.

Other than the fact that it was refreshingly positive and didn’t engage in any vitriol there was nothing particularly notable about the ad. But something stuck with me, something that others might consider completely innocuous but that has been bothering me for years.

The candidate noted that she was “the first in her family to go to college.” Many people have used that in the past, the whole American Dream story about children doing better than their parents, who did better than their own parents. It’s a classic narrative of upward mobility, and who can blame someone who has struggled for being proud of their accomplishments?

But as the child of the “first college graduate” in his family, and someone who, herself, has two degrees which were paid for through trust funds, student loans and a few annoying summer jobs, I am starting to realize that there is something really wrong with measuring ourselves by our level of education.

My grandmother Mamie left school in the third grade because her mother and father needed her to earn a paycheck. She worked in a cigar rolling factory, in a candy factory, in restaurants, in stores, in any place that didn’t care about child labor laws. That covers pretty much every industry in the early 1900s.

My grandfather Mike was a trashman and spent the best part of his youth and adulthood driving through the streets of Philadelphia, gathering up other people’s refuse.

My mother Lucy ended her academic career with a diploma from West Catholic Girls in 1956, and then went to work. She handed over every paycheck, unopened, to her parents. It never occurred to her to go to college, because that high school diploma was already more than Mike and Mamie could have hoped for her.

My father Ted worked his way through school, didn’t get a penny from his own parents, gratefully accepted the love and financial assistance from his girlfriend-fiancee-wife Lucy, and ended up on Temple Law Review. And the rest is history.

I write these things to point out that getting a college degree is only a measure of someone’s value if they did it by themselves, without having stood on the shoulders of beloved people. My father would have been the first to tell you that he was only able to do what he did because of my mother. My mother would have been the first to tell you that she was only able to wear her own cap and gown because Mamie rubbed her knuckles until they bled, washing someone else’s clothes. She was only able to do it because Mike lived among the steaming discards of strangers.

There is nothing wrong with that judge being proud of her accomplishment as the “first college graduate in the family,” as long as it is mentioned with humility and generosity of spirit and not as some attempt to separate herself from her origins. As someone who was blessed with the ability to spend 20 years of her life in a classroom on someone else’s dime, I am in no position to undervalue importance of a college education. It is the greatest gift my parents gave me, after life.

But I would never, ever say that I was the “first” in my family to do something (especially since I’m actually the “second”). My father was no longer alive when I got my degree from Bryn Mawr, but Mamie was. The first person I ran to when I got the diploma, the first person whose arms wrapped tightly around me in an embrace that smelled of Jean Nate and powder, was my grandmother. And the first person I thought of at the party afterward, looking at the plates of half-eaten food and empty bottles of soda, was Mike. He would have cleaned up the mess, and not danced in the aisles.

There are reasons that I am able to write at all and reach strangers with these thoughts, and they have nothing to do with my college education. My life is possible only because other people did the hard work, the dirty work, the work that goes unmentioned in campaign ads.

So the next time I hear someone say she was “the first to go to college in my family,” I will wait for her to thank that family for the glory in their life. When I go to sleep tonight, I’ll be thanking my own.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I remember when people were poring over photographs of President Trump’s inaugural back in 2017, trying to disprove his theory that it was the largest crowd in history. Clearly, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close, which didn’t particularly bother me in the least. I was never one of those ladies who thinks size actually matters.

But I changed my mind after I saw the photos from the recent PA March For Life, which took place last week in Harrisburg, Pa. It was the very first time that Pennsylvanians gathered together to express their support for the voiceless, and it was an overwhelming success. Even I, who’ve attended other pro-life rallies and been disappointed at the turnout, was awestruck by the seemingly endless crowds of people massed together in front of the state Capitol.

This was not a photoshop. This was an actual, palpable measure of the passion on the pro-life side of the divide that separates the humane from the narcissistic, and it clearly had an impact. Almost immediately, the abortion advocate who for the past eight years has masqueraded as governor tweeted out this message:

“Today’s ‘March for Life’ in Harrisburg is just an anti-woman rally by a different name. They want to remove health care options during pregnancy — a time when so many already can’t access life-saving care. I’ve vetoed three anti-choice bills. I’ll veto any others that come to me.”

I re-read that tweet several times, and while it angered me (as pro abortion propaganda always manages to do) I also found myself chuckling at the typical logic of Tom Wolf. He suggests that abortion is a “health care option” during pregnancy. It’s kind of like saying a bender is a “health care option” during rehab. The disconnect is glaring. Abortion terminates pregnancy. Getting smashed ends sobriety.

In neither case would these alternatives be considered “health care options,” unless you’ve got a sadist for a doctor and a masochist for a patient.

The language of the left is unraveling, as well as their narrative that the country supports liberal abortion rights. In fact, they aren’t even content to let the Supreme Court do their dirty work for them anymore.

Fearful of the prospect that a majority of the justices might finally overturn Roe, those in positions of authority have decided to codify the right to an abortion. The same week that Pennsylvanians told their lame-duck governor what he could do with his veto, Democrats in the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly to allow women to have an abortion up to the moment of birth. They call it the “Women’s Health Protection Act.”

I call it dead in the water, because there is no way that they are going to get enough votes in the Senate to turn this sham of a reactionary bill into law. They know that, of course. They don’t care, just as Tom Wolf doesn’t seem to care that a once silent majority of Pennsylvanians think he’s one step removed from Sweeney Todd.

I say “once,” because that display on Monday proved that the anti-abortion movement is growing in strength, influence, and acceptance. The momentum is with us, which is why the other side is ramping up its efforts to make us look like extras from “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

The PA March for Life was not a one-off event, nor was it the last gasp of a movement that swallows the line that most Americans want to keep abortion legal. In fact, a recent Marist Poll found that only 27% of Democrats believed that women should be able to have abortions at any point during the pregnancy. When you’ve lost the Dems, you start rage tweeting.

And yet, the House just passed a bill that would allow women to abort their babies up through the ninth month, if they could prove that their health would be negatively impacted by the birth. That includes “emotional” or “mental” health, which takes the ruling in Roe’s companion case, Doe vs. Bolton, and makes it statute.

Again, that bill won’t make it past the House. It will be like that “lonely old bill” sitting alone (and singing) on Capitol Hill from that School House Rock cartoon in the 1970s. And there’s a pro child majority on the Supreme Court. And the law in Texas is, in fact, the law for the foreseeable future. And Amnesty International is filled with hypocrites. And Tom Wolf is a lame duck. And … science.

This time, you can believe the photos.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Whenever I write about abortion, I get a lot of pushback from people who disagree.

I fully admit that I’m an extremist when it comes to whether a child has a right to be born. There is no wiggle room for me, no negotiation, no gray areas. The “rape and incest” exceptions are what my old law professors used to call “red herrings” used to shut down discussion.

I am a conservative, an anti-feminist, a woman of the far right. I was a Republican and I was a Democrat and I was an independent but even through those partisan mutations, my identity remained constant: I hate liberalism. There’s no way to sugar coat it or conjure a Kumbaya moment: At my core, I reject anything that smacks of progressive policy.

The fact that I work with asylum applicants, something that would normally place me in the “enemy” camp for some Republicans and many “seal the border” conservatives, does not change my beliefs that every human life has dignity and should be treated with respect until it no longer deserves that treatment. That’s a conservative position, one that recognizes a tradition that derives from our Founders: We all have an inalienable right to life. We also have the liberty to make mistakes, but the obligation to bear the consequences. As for the pursuit of happiness, I’ll leave that to AOC and the folks at the Met Gala.

Which brings me to the point of this column, several paragraphs in: I despise feminism. You can put that in the “duh” category, I suppose, but I’ve seen an unfortunate trend over the past few years that somehow equates being independent, strong and outspoken with being a feminist. Sadly, some of my fellow conservatives have fallen for the hoax, hook line and stiletto.

Feminism is sold and packaged as the idea that women are as good as men, and that they have an equal place in society. It is presented as a philosophy that empowers females and is used to show how “evolved” we have become, or need to be, in respecting our daughters. It fueled the MeToo movement, caused a run on pink yarn, justified the murder of 48 years worth of babies, and spawned millions of pages of books with titles like “Know Your Worth” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Vagina Monologues” and its sequel “Telling The Vagina To Shut Up.” (Yes, I made that last one up.)

There are even some women who identify as “anti-abortion” but who also define themselves as “pro-life feminists.” Ick and eew. That dishonors those of us who believe that feminism is an exclusionary philosophy with very little to do with empowering women and everything to do with shaming men.

Let me give you a recent example of how mean-spirited self-described feminists can be. Eighties Super Model Linda Evangelista came out last week and admitted that she’d been the victim of botched plastic surgery, which left her “unrecognizable.” She explained that because of the medical procedure, she had essentially become a hermit, hiding from public view.

Instead of being supportive, as “the sisterhood” claims it always is, they made snarky, cruel comments about the fact that she shouldn’t be obsessed about the way that she looks, how ridiculous it was that a woman valued herself based on her looks, and how this played into the hands of the patriarchy.

My first thought when I viewed these comments on social media was that it was quite easy for the women who looked like they did (you could see their profiles in their tweets) to make fun of a woman who made millions based on her beauty. Clearly, they’d never had that problem.

But even more than this, I was reminded of how modern feminism only values a certain form of woman, a certain type of independence, a certain flavor and color and breed of fierce. It brooks no dissent, nor does it accept any request for clarification, as in why did the institutional feminists not respect the accomplishments of Justice Amy Coney Barrett? Or, why did they abandon Monica Lewinsky? Or, why did they simply roll their eyes when Senator Susan Collins got death threats for voting in favor of Justice Brett Kavanaugh?

At a more personal level, why did they call me an obscenity on a national website devoted to “empowering women?”

Those are all rhetorical questions, of course. The truth is fairly simple.

Feminists cannot see beyond the tips of their annoyingly noisy vaginas, and fail to understand that the only organs that truly matter have nothing to do with gender: The fearless heart and the magnificent, independent brain.

–

Copyright 2021 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].