This post originally appeared on Think Progress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is on the May/June 2010 cover of the DC magazine “Capitol File,” and conservatives are all worked up that the photograph of her may have been airbrushed. The Washington Examiner has a piece titled “Cover girl Pelosi looking rather … airy in D.C. glossy”:

If you haven’t managed to score a copy of the May/June 2010 edition of Capitol File magazine (typically flanked on every table or bathroom at any D.C. social function) you’ll notice the cover girl Nancy Pelosi looking particularly young.

Celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Ayman Hakki of Luxxery Medical Boutique in Waldorf, Md., said although he believes Pelosi has had work done (specifically Botox of the frown lines, fat injections, a mini face-lift), the image is not the product of additional plastic surgery.

“There is airbrushing around her eyes, her upper lid has been airbrushed to make it look like there is less fat on the inside,” Hakki told Yeas & Nays. “And there is airbrushing on the line of her jaw.”

The story was touted on Fox Nation and featured on the Drudge Report:

Drudge doesn’t seem to sense any irony in the fact that next to his Pelosi story is a picture of former First Lady Laura Bush’s book cover, which also looks less than 100 percent natural. ThinkProgress spoke to a couple of graphic designers who said that there definitely was some airbrushing done to the Laura Bush photograph. (View a larger version of the cover here.)

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Written by Martha Kempner for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

On Tuesday, while the Oklahoma Legislature was voting to override a gubernatorial veto and reinstate a law requiring women to have ultrasounds before allowing them to have an abortion, I was, well, having an ultrasound. This is not the first state law that requires this procedure prior to abortion but this one takes it one step further and mandates that the doctor or technician set up a monitor so the woman can see it and that he or she describe the heart, limbs, and organs of the fetus. The law does not make an exception for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.

Perhaps, it was because I’d just gone through the procedure or perhaps it’s just the pregnancy hormones raging through my system but the thought of a woman being forced to go through this when all she wanted was to exercise her legal and moral right to terminate the pregnancy made me cry. That kind of manipulation is cruel.

My husband tried to console me by saying that I shouldn’t worry, at those very early ultrasounds the images are so murky and the fetus has so little resemblance to a human baby that it will not successfully convince any woman to change her mind. He may be right – at my first scan, the fetus was more alien than baby. Then again, I could see and hear a heartbeat, and despite the fact that the fetus was smaller than a grape, the magnified images let me see a tiny developing spine. We’ve all watched those stereotypical scenes in movies and sitcoms where a couple goes to the OB and are chatting, fighting, texting, or otherwise not paying attention until the sound of the heartbeat stops them cold and brings tears to their eyes. Clearly, changing the mind of women who are seeking abortions is exactly what the lawmakers are hoping to do but I’m not sure that whether they succeed matters. Just trying is degrading and damaging to women.

I wanted to be pregnant, so for me the goal of the 8-week scan was to hear a heartbeat and confirm that this was a viable pregnancy. After all, at that stage of pregnancy one doesn’t look pregnant or necessarily feel any different. It was heartening to learn that the home pregnancy test was right. I wouldn’t exactly say that it was an emotional experience for me but the thought “okay, there really is something in there” kept going through my head. In my opinion, this isn’t a thought that women seeking an abortion in early pregnancy should be forced to have.

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On Thursday’s Daily Show, Stewart tried to make sense of Gordon Brown’s “bigoted” remarks. With the help (and behind-the-scenes criticism) of correspondent John Oliver, Stewart began to piece it altogether.

Watch:

The white-washing of Arizona — and its glorious history — marches on.

In a thinly veiled attempt to censor thriving Mexican American Studies/La Raza courses in Tucson, Arizona, and essentially eradicate 450 years of Mexican and Mexican-American history, culture, heritage from the curriculum and consciousness of Arizona students, state lawmakers in Arizona reportedly approved the shadowy HB 2211 bill last month — passed through the state senate this week — that would restrict “any courses or classes” that “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or “advocate ethnic solidarity.”

According to news reports, the bill would also “ban classes that ‘promote resentment toward a race or class of people’ or “stir up resentment.”

Resentment? Is teaching Arizona children that Arizona native and Chicano leader Cesar Chavez led nonviolent marches on behalf of farm workers stirring up resentment?

Introduced by state Rep. Steve Montenegro, an immigrant from El Salvador, the bill has been thebrainchild of Canadian-native state school superintendent Tom Horne for several years. Born in Montreal, Horne has referred to ethnic studies programs in Arizona as “extremely dysfunctional.”

Let’s put aside the historical reality that Mexicans and Mexican Americans have been instrumental in building the Arizona economy of cattle, copper, citrus and tourism, served in our armed forces in huge numbers, and have defined Arizona culture over the past several centuries, from the cowboy/vaquero to its modern New West borderland traditions.

Let’s talk about Arizona la raza hero Cesar Chavez.

Perhaps before Arizona goes any further in their anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican American legislation — especially lawmakers like El Savaldoran Montenegro, Canadian Horne, and California-raised Governor Jan Brewer — they might want to brush up on their Arizona history, and learn that the studies of contributions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans from Arizona, like Cesar Chavez, are nothing to fear, but an opportunity to celebrate for all students in Arizona, and the nation.

As Robert F. Kennedy once proclaimed, “When your children and grandchildren take their place in America, going to high school and college, taking good jobs at good pay, when you look at them you will say, ‘I did this. I was there, at the point of difficulty and danger.’ And though you may be old and bent for many years of hard labor, no man will stand taller than you when you say, ‘I marched with Cesar Chavez.”

“Heroic Media” is a group that heroically peddles anti-choice propaganda masked as neutral information to women facing unwanted pregnancies. The organization runs TV, billboard and radio ads that helpfully orient women to crisis pregnancy centers, where they can learn about the pros and cons of heartlessly butchering babies. Heroic Media also has a special site for teens — Teen Breaks! — where, among other things, young people are told that abortions cause “Hemorrhage and shock, especially if the uterine artery is torn” and shown “fetology photos and descriptions of how YOU grew each month from conception to birth.”

Anyway, they’re awful, which makes them a really good match for Sarah Palin, who’s headlining a fundraiser for them today. And, the Austin Statesman reports that the only way journalists can cover Palin’s appearance is to shell out for a ticket — the proceeds of which, of course, go to Heroic Media, so they can continue the important work of misleading and terrifying women and young people for the sake of a dying culture war.

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Reposted from The Revealer, a daily review of religion & media, published by New York University.

by Jeremy F. Walton

Recent days have, alas, been marked by a sense of déjà vu all over again for scholars of contemporary Islam. On April 14th, the American cable network Comedy Central aired the first half of a double episode of the immensely-popular cartoon sitcom “South Park.” The episode specifically parodied Islamic prohibitions on the pictorial representation of the Prophet Muhammad by portraying him in concealment, first within a U-Haul truck and then inside an ursine mascot costume. On the day prior to the episode’s airing, the American websiterevolutionmuslim.com posted the following comments by one Abu Talhah al-Amrikee:

We have to warn Matt and Trey [Matt Stone and Trey Parker, co-creators of South Park] that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.

Al-Amrikee’s comments were accompanied by an image of Van Gogh’s body; the Dutch enfant terrible filmmaker was assassinated in Amsterdam by a Dutch-Moroccan extremist in November of 2004.  In spite of al-Amrikee’s insistence that his posting did not constitute a threat, the inclusion of the image of Van Gogh, as well as the addresses of Comedy Central offices and a Colorado home co-owned by Stone and Parker, strongly suggested otherwise. In partial response to al-Amrikee’s post, Comedy Central opted to censor all references to Muhammad in the second half of the episode, which aired on April 21^st. And so a familiar script was established: As in 1989 with the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (popularly known as “The Rushdie Affair”), as in 2005 with the global uptake of the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad publishedby the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, so too in 2010. Almost immediately, the complex theological and political issues at hand were reduced to a regrettable polarization of two mutually-exclusive fundamentalisms: stringent religious orthodoxy and free speech. My modest aspiration in this reflection is to attempt to think beyond the either-or of rigid orthodoxy and free speech—an admittedly difficult task in a political context that privileges the comfortable satisfactions of easy dichotomies.

Theologically, the “South Park” episode in question is far from transparent.  There is a double irony to the brewing controversy: First, the history of Islam itself encompasses a variety of traditions and arguments relating to the depiction of Muhammad; and, secondly, the “South Park” wags were exceptionally careful not to portray Muhammad in the episode, at least in any clear, incontrovertible way. Erroneous generalizations about Islam’s “iconophobia” are common media fodder these days. A brief BBC piece on the “South Park” episode flatly proclaims that “Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous. But such blanket proclamations obscure, for example, the tradition of Persian and Ottoman miniature paintings that depict Muhammad, his face often obscured by flames, not to mention other creative reconciliations between aesthetic practice and theological principle.

Of course, such nuances do not seem to be of much interest to the firebrand commentators onrevolutionmuslim.com either, and this is a point that deserves emphasis: The mass-media production of controversy tends to support the efforts of political and theological extremists to monopolize collective identities such as ‘Islam’. From a brief perusal of the website, it is clear thatrevolutionmuslim.com is at least as concerned with radical anti-imperialist political rhetoric and mobilization against American foreign policy in Muslim countries as it is with Islamic theology.  Of course, theology is important to the argument that revolutionmuslim.com makes against “South Park”, but the arguments mounted by the website’s commentators are hardly incontestable.  In a broader response to the episode published after al-Amrikee’s provocation attracted media attention, Younus Abdullah Muhammad cites authoritative Sunni jurists such as Imam Malik and Ibn Taymiyyah to assert unequivocally that insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a crime in Islam punishable by death.  While Abdullah Muhammad’s argument thus seems to rest on firm theological and jurisprudential ground, there is a decisive issue that he glosses over entirely: What procedures establish the “South Park” episode as an insult to the Prophet Muhammad? In other words, does insulting Muslim attitudes about the Prophet amount to an insult against the Prophet himself?

Abdullah Muhammad takes it for granted that ”South Park” insults Muhammad (not just Muslims), but, having watched the episode myself, I would argue that its status as blasphemous insult is far from clear. After all, the episode is careful to cue the viewer to the fact that Muhammad is not portrayed (and, incidentally, this alone distinguishes “South Park” from Kurt Westergaard’s infamous depiction of Muhammad with an ignited bomb in his turban). Furthermore, other characters treat Muhammad (who is depicted only in the aforementioned bear costume or, later, covered by a black box that reads “Censored”) with exceptional respect. This deference stands in stark contrast to the portrayal of other religious figures in the episode—the viewer is treated to the indelible tableau of the Buddha snorting formidable lines of cocaine while Jesus surfs the internet for porn. In short, one might contend that the episode does not clearly insult Muhammad. The episode is not necessarily blasphemous in a theological sense even if it does succeed in offending many Muslims. With the distinctive sort of meta-humor that often characterizes “South Park”, the episode does make fun of Muslim sensitivity to issues of Muhammad’s visual portrayal, even as it eschews portrayal itself. But then, to the best of my knowledge, there is no principle in Islamic law that forbids tweaking Muslims’ sensitivities. To collapse blasphemy against the Prophet with an offended collective sensibility, asrevolutionmuslim.com does, is to confuse theology with contemporary politics. And to confuse theology with politics is, unfortunately, to play directly into the hands of the free speech fundamentalists.

Revolutionmuslim.com does not deserve our sympathy. The website’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no legitimate excuse for publishing the addresses of Parker and Stone or for the intimidation inherent in the image of Theo Van Gogh’s corpse. That said, the free speech fundamentalists’ own score card on questions of tolerance and understanding is hardly admirable, and their immediate indignation over al-Amrikee’s post provokes a productive question: What are the political and intellectual foreclosures inherent in valorizing free speech as an unassailable virtue (not merely a legal right) beyond all criticism?

In his April 25^th piece, “Not Even in South Park?” , New York Times columnist Ross Douthat acts as an effective, if utterly unoriginal, mouthpiece of liberal free speech fundamentalism (although Douthat fashions himself as an intellectual conservative, his defense of free speech would surely please John Stuart Mill). Douthat seems most troubled by the fact that Islam has even succeeded in censoring “South Park”, that most impudent watch dog of American freedom of expression:

Across 14 on-air years, there’s no icon “South Park” hasn’t trampled, no vein of shock-comedy (sexual, scatalogical, blasphemous) it hasn’t mined…Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing.

Of course, neither Douthat nor other free speech fundamentalists are under any obligation to sanction Muslim sensibilities about the Prophet Muhammad or criticisms of the “South Park” episode in particular.  That said, Douthat’s apoplexy over the censorship of the corporate speech of Comedy Central seems off mark—after all, corporations frequently censor their statements for myriad reasons.  More troublesome, however, is the eagerness with which Douthat dismisses Muslim sensibilities and criticisms without endeavoring to comprehend them in the least. A deep ignorance about Islam saturates his column. This fundamentalist dismissal of Muslim criticisms reveals a crisis and a contradiction in liberalism more generally: Free speech no longer coexists with the complementary and supplementary principle of free and rigorous inquiry. Without the balance of inquiry—the antithesis of self-satisfied ignorance—free speech quickly becomes a doctrinal fundamentalism like any other. And, more tragically in the case of Islam’s relationship to contemporary American society, the ignorant defense of free speech leads to a proliferation of fear.

Molly Norris, a Seattle cartoonist who has emerged as one of the more interesting figures in the “South Park” controversy, is more forthright than Douthat about the role of fear in her own anti-Muslim provocation. As a response to Comedy Central’s decision to censor aspects of the second installment of the episode, Norris dedicated a facetious cartoon to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, titled “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”.  Soon after Morris’ cartoon appeared on the internet, an independent Facebook group took inspiration from it and proclaimed the upcoming May 20^th“Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”—unfortunately, it is difficult not to suspect that this blasphemous faux holiday will only serve to reinforce broader American misunderstandings of Islam and Muslims.  Norris explains her motivations for drawing the cartoon with the following illuminating remarks on her fear and ignorance of Islam:

I am personally afraid of Muslims because the peaceful folks of that religion do not often come forward to differentiate themselves from any radical elements! I mean, if I do not hear from moderate Muslims then how am I supposed to KNOW that they, too, are not harboring ill intent toward non-Muslims?! Please if you are a non-radical Muslim tell people about yourselves. Write to newspapers. Have community round tables. When Americans don’t know what you really think or feel, we might stay mired in stereotypes. Offer us knowledge!

Sadly, Norris’ twin fear and ignorance are both ridiculous and routine. In classic, patronizing liberal fashion, she places the responsibility for her fear and ignorance of Islam on Muslims themselves: “Offer us knowledge!” Are we really to believe that she has been deaf to the many Muslim individuals and organizations that have struggled to do just this over the past decade?  Of course, given public fantasies of Islam in the United States, this attitude is hardly surprising; its typicality makes it all the more frustrating. To state the matter somewhat schematically: In contemporary liberal societies (both American and European), the defense of free speech is a means of reinforcing stereotypes and ignorance about Islam, rather than a means of combating them. This tragic, ironic reinforcement is all-too-evident in both Douthat’s indignation and Norris’ fear.

Last week, I had the pleasure of discussing the Jyllands-Posten controversy with a devout, African-American Sunni friend of mine here in New York. I asked him what his first response to the Danish caricatures was, and he responded with admirable nuance. His thoughts are equally applicable to the current South Park controversy, so I’ll leave the final word to him:

When I saw them, my first reaction was ‘Really? I mean, this is just silly.’  Think of all of the things that Muslims have been through over the centuries. Just look at the life of the Prophet, all of the challenges he faced. And you want to make a big deal over these stupid cartoons? Of course the cartoonists were out to offend us, of course it would’ve been better had they not published them. But the Muslims who reacted violently weren’t acting as good Muslims either. For someone who truly understands and follows the example of the Prophet, as every devout Muslim should, there are more important things to worry about than some ridiculous images.

My thanks to Adam H. Becker and Noah D. Salomon for their invaluable comments on this piece.

Jeremy Walton is an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Religious Studies Program, New York University.

Reposted from The Revealer, a daily review of religion & media, published by New York University.

By Mikhail Lyubansky, Prof. University of Illinois, Race-Talk contributor

I’ve been reading, talking, and thinking a lot about justice lately. And the deeper I get into it, the more evident it is that our justice system isn’t meeting our needs. What we want, I think, is a justice system that produces not just rehabilitation, but redemption. Is it any wonder that Shawshank speaks to us the way it does?

Redemption does happens in the real world. Consider the case of Wilbert Rideau, who in 1961 killed a bank teller during a botched robbery and served 44 years in prison (decades longer than others who had committed similar crimes) before finally being released. While in prison, Rideau not only “became rehabilitated” but started an all-Black magazine in the prison and, after mandatory desegregation laws were finally implemented (Rideau is Black), took over as the editor of the main prison publication, The Angolite. NPR summarized his next 25 years:

For 25 years, Rideau reported on events that were taking place within Angola’s walls — covering topics such as the mishandling of AIDS funds for prisoners, the brutality of electrocutions and the pervasive sexual violence inside the prison. During Rideau’s years as editor, The Angolite won the George Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award — and Rideau became a correspondent for Fresh Air, reporting on what it was like to live in solitary confinement and how prisoners feared for their safety on a daily basis.

Remarkably, considering the violence and inhumane treatment he describes, Rideau says that prison saved him by introducing him to reading and writing, which in turn gave his life meaning.

Rideau’s story is as inspiring as anything produced by Hollywood. Yet, had it not been for a fortuitous court ruling having nothing to do with him, Rideau’s redemption would not have happened at all. Rideau was sentenced to death for his crime and lived on death row until 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty (temporarily, it turned out), giving Rideau the second chance he needed.

Stories of redemption are, unfortunately, all too rare. However, despite the anti-segregation laws, much of the racial bias Rideau experienced continues to pervade the entire criminal justice system.

It starts with law enforcement

In the wake of Arizona’s new legislation permitting law enforcement officials to stop anyone suspected of being undocumented and to demand documentation of legal status, racial profiling is suddenly getting front page coverage. But though it might be a relatively new approach to controlling the border, perceptions of racially biased policing practices have been around for a long time.

For example, data from a national sample of 7,034 people stopped by police in previous 12 months indicate that
Black men are 35 percent more likely than white men to report being stopped by police for a traffic violation (Lundman & Kaufman, 2003).

Though this particular study examined perceptions rather than actual “objective” data, where available (not all states require police departments to report or even track racial information during stops), such data consistently support the perception of bias.

Consider some recent racial profiling data from my home state of Illinois, where the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has been compiling racial profiling data for almost 10 years. According to the 2008 data (the most recent available at the time of this writing), “minority drivers” were 13% more likely to be be stopped (after controlling for demographic differences in population) and more than twice as likely to have their car searched (this requires consent but consent is given more than 90% of the time).

When confronted with such data, police officers (and chiefs) usually respond that they are merely doing their job — that the racial discrepancy in stops and searches merely reflects group differences in criminal behavior. Yet, the city’s own data suggest otherwise. Those consensual searches? They yielded contraband (either weapons or drugs) for 15% of the “minority drivers” compared to almost 25% of “caucasian drivers (see arrows at bottom of table below). If there were true probably cause, that kind of difference wouldn’t happen.

Of course, law enforcement is just one half of the justice system. There is also the criminal trial and the appeals that often follow. Unfortunately, this part of the process is no less biased.

Incarceration

It’s relatively common knowledge that the U.S. prisons are filled primarily by people of color. What is less commonly known is how our prison population has skyrocketed in the past 30 years and that the growth is a direct function of the government’s War on Drugs. Michelle Alexander explains in the introduction of her provocative new book, The New Jim Crow:

The impact of the drug war has been astounding. In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase (Mauer, 2006). The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the United States, the number is eight times that, or 750 per 100,000 (PEW Center, 2008).

Alexander goes on to point out that “the racial dimension of incarceration is its most striking feature” and that “in Washington, D.C….it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.” (Braman, 2004, citing D.C. Department of Corrections data from 2000). The racial comparisons are indeed striking, as evident in the national statistics below.

Even more remarkable than the racial discrepancy itself is that it cannot be explained by actual rates of drug crimes. Studies consistently show that people use and sell illegal drugs at highly similar rates (Alexander cites a dozen different studies). If anything, when race group differences in drug crimes emerge, it is white males who tend to be the highest perpetrators. Despite this, Alexander reports that in some states, black men have been incarcerated on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than white men.

The greatest crime of all

It gets worse. Seventy five percent of those convicted of participating in a Federal drug enterprise under the general provisions of SS 848 have been white and only about 24% of the defendants have been black. Yet, 78% of the defendants chosen for capital prosecution have been Black.

The same racial bias can be seen in other capital crimes. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, since 1930 nearly 90% of those executed for the crime of rape in this country were African-Americans.

The racial discrepancy in the application of the death penalty was so severe and so clearly biased that in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium on the death penalty and converted the death sentences of hundreds of death row inmates to life in prison. Wilbert Rideau was among this lucky group. As part of the 5-4 majority, Justice William Douglas explained his reasoning:

“The discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a suspect and unpopular minority, and saving those who, by social position, may be in a more protected position.” Justice Douglas (1972, Furman v. Georgia).

The moratorium lasted a mere four years, ending in 1976 with Gregg v. Georgia. At that time, the Court was apparently convinced that the states had enacted legislation that would remove the bias and arbitrary imposition. Unfortunately, despite the Court’s conviction, the racial discrepancy began to emerge almost immediately upon reinstatement.

At the moment, it only seems to be getting worse. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that about 50% of those currently on the nation’s death rows are from racial minority populations, which represent about 20% of the country’s population.

Put another way: If he were on death row today, Wilbert Rideau would likely remain there until his execution. And the numbers in the prisons are still on the rise, even as violent crime has dropped off. It may not be coincidence.

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander asserts that the U.S. criminal justice system is currently functioning as a contemporary system of racial control, much like slavery and Jim Crow laws have in the past. She points out that though racial discrimination is no longer legal or socially acceptable, “discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public benefits; denial of the right to vote; and exclusion from jury service — are suddenly legal once you’re labeled a felon.”

Alexander argues that the fact that over 50% of the young black men in any large U.S. city are either under the control of the state or saddled with a criminal record is not just a function of poverty or poor choices but “evidence of a new racial caste system at work.”

If she is right, and the data certainly don’t contradict her position, there is no choice (for those interested in justice), but to mobilize for a new (and hopefully, final) civil rights movement.

For all the injustice we have wrought, there is still the opportunity for redemption.

###

I’m a member of the teaching faculty in the department of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I teach, among other courses, The Psychology of Race and Ethnicity. My research and writing interests focus on immigration, racial/ethnic group relations and social justice. I write a blog about race and racial issues for Psychology Today. Please follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mikhaill (@mikhaill)

This post originally appeared on Balloon Juice.

Some interesting political and demographic facts about the Arizona law….

Polls in Arizona:

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“It’s premature to say this is catastrophic.” The words of Gulf Coast Coast Guard Commander Mary Landry about the BP oil spill Tuesday were spoken as the families of eleven rig workers were still waiting for word of their loved ones, now presumed dead.

While Landry may have reviewed her assessment, the word still makes one think. How do we define catastrophe? By Iraq’s uncounted dead? By the uncounted casualties of greed on Wall Street? By the 40,000 dead a year due to lack of health insurance? How about by the 5,000 workers who die every year on the job?

April 28 marked Workers Memorial Day, when workers and their unions pause to remember those who die or are injured at work. This year’s toll already includes 29 men killed in a dangerous but money-making mine, 195 coalition forces in a couple of imperial wars. And how about the thousands in Haiti impoverished so we can have cheap shirts?

Those eleven oil rig workers might have been saved by a safe-guard switch that other oil producing countries require but US regulators don’t. And as I speak, two more miners are trapped beneath the rubble of a Kentucky coal mine’s collapsed roof.

Maybe at the end of Confederate History Month, it’s time to admit that’s it not just good ol’ boy Southern governors who like to hush about slavery and loss. In an economic climate that prizes wealth over life, the erasure of pain in pursuit of profit is as American as mining or drilling. As American as making a killing.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.

Once again, our hearts and prayers go out to the families of coal miners–this time in western Kentucky–as reports emerge of a mine collapse at the Alliance Resource Partners’ Dotiki Mine in Hopkins County, Kentucky.

According to AP, one coal miner has died; another coal miner is missing.

Once again, the nation is witnessing the deadly toll of coal mining on our miners and coalfields in an industry contemptuous of laws and regulations.

And once again, an infamous coal baron–this time, Joseph Craft III, CEO of Oklahoma-based Alliance, who turned the hallowed University of Kentucky basketball confines into a national embarrassment as “Wildcat Coal Lodges” and the “Joe Craft Center” and now graces the UKY walls in the Gatton College Alumni Hall of Fame–is exposed for putting production and profit over safety.

According to the Herald-Leader, the Dotiki Mine has “received 2,973 citations,” over the past five years, of which, “968 were considered significant and substantial.” The Herald-Leader added:

The Dotiki operator was cited 216 times so far in 2010, according to MSHA’s Web site. In 2009, the company was cited 649 times, more than the 458 citations issued last year against the West Virginia mine that blew up April 5 killing 29. On April 13, MSHA cited the operator for not notifying it quickly of an accident and for not preserving an accident site.

While his mines operated in violation of MSHA regulations and laws, Craft made national headlines last October by making a 19th century backroom deal with University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr to rename the beloved Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge as the Wildcat Coal Lodge for a price tag of $7 million.

Over at the Coal Tattoo blog, Charleston Gazette journalist Ken Ward has done a great breakdown of Alliance’s infractions of the past several years, including a “quick check of U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration reports revealed seven such incidents that claimed nine lives in the last five years alone” in Alliance’s non-unions mines.”

As always, hope dies last in the coalfields, and our heart and prayers and actions must support all coal miners and their families until these lawless practices of violation-ridden operations end.