I’m not Catholic anymore, but that’s how I was raised, and even though I’ve :::hand to forehead::: fallen away, there are parts of the One True that just stay with you. Which is the long way around to saying that when a Jesuit speaks about morality, I tend to listen with an open mind.

And hey, one did, Fr. James Martin, S.J., asking the question in the headline: How Do You Respond When an Anti-Vaxxer Dies of Covid?

Great question! I struggle with this one. There have been a few high-profile Covid deaths around here, and a few more on the national stage. I’m absolutely out of fucks, as the kids say, but I can’t go so far as touchdown dancing all over the internet, either. Death is the undiscovered country, and the dead know something we don’t. So give them that.

Martin has a few things to say on this topic:

At this point I could run through a list of philosophers, theologians and wise voices from religions and traditions around the world to prove my point. Instead I will reclaim a word that has been largely lost from our discourse: mean. Crowing over someone’s suffering or demise is as far from a moral act as one can imagine. It’s cruel.

Indulged in regularly, schadenfreude ends up warping the soul. It robs us of empathy for those with whom we disagree. It lessens our compassion. To use some language from both the Old and New Testaments, it “hardens” our hearts. No matter how much I disagree with anti-vaxxers, I know that schadenfreude over their deaths is a dead end.

“Come on!” some might say. “It’s a natural emotion.” That’s true — and emotions are usually beyond our control. If someone coughs intentionally (or thoughtlessly) in your face on the subway, it’s natural to get angry. At least for a few seconds.

But what you do with those emotions — give in to them, prolong them or intensify them — is a moral decision. After your fellow subway rider coughs in your face, you don’t need to express your anger by punching him. Simply letting your emotions take you wherever they please is what a baby does, not an adult.

I think that’s right. Higher in the column, he talks about Laura Ingraham, “a commentator who often expresses her belief in ‘Christian values,’ applauded the news that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had tested positive for the coronavirus despite being vaccinated and boosted.” I want nothing to do with Laura Ingraham. So I’ll try it Fr. Martin’s way.

Speaking of morality, one of the zillion Republicans vying for the gubernatorial nomination here in Michigan stepped in it this week, making the case for women pregnant as a result of rape to be “heroic” and choose to carry their fetuses to term.

I’ve long found this position repugnant, but at least morally consistent; after all, if you believe all zygotes, embryos and fetuses to be fully formed humans with civil and constitutional rights, then you might as well go all the way. The people who say sorry, gotta have that kid are fully living their beliefs. The ones who make rape/incest exceptions are saying those embryos are expendable, but not the ones that came because you were a slutty slut. That’s directly punitive of women for their sexual choices, and even worse.

He’s not going to be the nominee, although I don’t know who will be, either. I do know that in just the last few days — and it’s only Tuesday! — one candidate has advocated for election interference and another for forced childbearing.

So now we’re all hunkered down, waiting for the big storm. Eight inches, no 12 inches, no FIFTEEN INCHES of snow, headed our way. We’ll be stuck indoors for two days, at least. So now, I’m going out to snag a cheeseburger made by someone else while I still can. Stay safe if you’re in the path.

Since I started the last entry with an embedded tweet, let’s do it again, hey what?

Candidate for MI governor Ryan D. Kelley tells prospective poll workers to unplug tabulation machines if they suspect fraud in the 2022 election. State senate candidate Mike Detmer takes it a step further: “We need to be prepared to lock & load,” he says. “Show up armed.” pic.twitter.com/rLsmUcUR0q

— Left of Center MI (@leftofcentermi) January 30, 2022

When I trained to be a poll worker, we were instructed in all the most likely scenarios we’d see in the course of an election day: Average voter, voter without ID, voter whose absentee ballot was requested and didn’t arrive, voter whose absentee ballot arrived but not returned in time, all that stuff. Of course, one of the bottomest of the bottom feeders took the training, secretly recorded it, selectively edited it and tried to make it sound like we were being instructed in how to cheat.

Now here’s an actual video, not manipulated beyond taking two clips from a longer piece — which you can watch in its entirety (follow the thread for the link) — that directly instructs people to break the law and bring weapons to polling places/boards of elections.

Whoever said everything is projection with these people sure got that one right.

So. Another cold weekend. I kept busy. We did stuff. Watched the Criterion Channel (“The Killing,” “The Vanishing”). Made soup. Made some progress in a couple of books. Narrowly escaped dying of boredom, as you are probably suspecting. January, this year, has 295 days, 294 of them cold. (Still to come this week: A major snowstorm, followed by another cold snap: -1 on Saturday morning. The joy, oh the joy!)

And there was actually more why-aren’t-we-screaming-in-the-streets news this weekend. Trump says that if he’s reelected, he’ll consider pardoning the January 6 defendants.

When it happens, we’ll wonder why we didn’t see it coming. Maybe because we were playing Wordle. (I was, anyway.)

And so the week begins!

If I’d stayed in Indiana, this dipshit would be my representative:

Have we ever seen a President attack and malign the free press like Joe Biden has??

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) January 24, 2022

Nice ratio, dude.

Sorry I missed Wednesday; we went to a show Tuesday night. Courtney Barnett, a lanky Australian singer-songwriter. I got strong Lucinda Williams vibes from her, minus most of the country feel. They checked vaccine cards and everyone wore a mask, so I figure: Shrug. I badly need some time out of the house, not just Tuesday but some more days, too. Maybe the cold snap will break soon, although the one thing about an extended subfreezing stretch: When it finally gets above 20 degrees it feels almost balmy. Wendy and I went for a walk and it was nearly enjoyable.

So. I think I mentioned the sex scandal that broke a couple weeks ago, about the former Michigan Speaker of the House. He’s a big evangelical Christian? Turned out he was banging his sister-in-law? And it started when she was 15? And now there are big money questions? Yeah, that guy. Another shoe dropped today: His dad’s a p.o.s., too:

Rusty Chatfield, the father of former state House speaker Lee Chatfield and superintendent of the Northern Michigan Christian Academy, did not report allegations of unwanted sexual touching last year between two 11-year-old students, according to a police report from the Tuscarora Township Police Department obtained by City Pulse.

Instead of calling local law enforcement or the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ child abuse reporting line, Chatfield brought the accused 11-year-old student to his office, the report showed. The boy admitted to the sexual touching — which included “the inner thigh, the penis and the buttocks” over the clothing, according to the police report.

Chatfield made the boy apologize to the victim, the police report said.

Then, Chatfield ordered the two 11-year-old boys to be separated at all times in the school and advised the alleged victim to physically “beat up” the accused if he touched him again, according to an interview documented in the police report between authorities and Chatfield.

And that, friends, is why as far as we’ve come with gay acceptance, guys like this will never let us get all the way.

Yeesh, what a week, and next week looks no better. Time to turn in early and just read a book for a while.

It’s Monday, which is allegedly a day off for me. It rarely works out that way — I always end up doing something work-related — but I have no deadline bearing down, I spent yesterday dusting and vacuuming, there’s food in the pantry and we’re supposed to get two to four inches of snow today, so I’m clearing the decks and declaring this a Real Day Off. I’m going to read my old friend David Heath’s new book about the development of the Covid vaccine and maybe even take a nap.

But first, a few words for you lovely people.

I read Neil Steinberg’s year-old blog about John Kass this morning, and it reminded me of a truth about newspapers, or what’s left of them: Not everything in it is for you. Or for me. A newspaper is what used to be known as a generalist publication, meaning there had to be something in it for everyone in the whole family. Horoscopes, puzzles, comics, sports scores, stock prices, etc. When we arrived in town, the News and Free Press would even include a few paragraphs of shipping news, i.e., which vessels would be passing up and down Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River, in case you were curious about what the Arthur M. Anderson was carrying, and where she was heading.

If I had read Neil’s blog before I read yesterday’s Page One weeper in the Freep, I might have found the strength to avert my eyes before they started rolling back in my head. It’s paywalled, so I’ll summarize: A registered nurse, a father of seven young children, is recently widowed. The headline: While ER nurse was saving wounded Oxford kids, his wife was dying from COVID-19. He was working the ER, his usual post, when the school shooting happened last November. The story is pitched as a tribute to #OxfordStrong, as the inevitable hashtag goes, because even though he has lost his wife and has all these kids and a demanding job, his church and neighbors are rising to the challenge, etc.

This is not the sort of story I generally find compelling. I’ve read too many of them through the years, and that people are capable of great good and generous grace is not news to me. I’m glad the guy is getting by with a lot of help from his friends. I’m ready to leave the rest of it unread when, record scratch:

As Holt prepared for Elizabeth’s funeral, he Googled her name, trying to find her obituary for some details, and he came across a website that mocked Elizabeth’s illness and death. John and Elizabeth Fowler held strong anti-vaccination views and were attacked on social media.

“I stumbled upon that website,” Holt said. “You know what? I’m OK if you want to be anti-vax or pro-vax. But I’m not OK when you’re anti-people. The problem with politics and vaccinations and religion, and all of that, is that people get caught up in the concept, or they get caught up in the construct of it, rather than the people.”

This wasn’t a debate about an issue. This was an attack, almost a gleeful celebration that she had died.

I bet I know which website he might have found — there’s one whose URL I can’t remember, which lists the deaths of outspoken antivaxxers, and then there’s the Reddit sub called Herman Cain Awards. Probably one of those two. I’ve seen them, but don’t participate; I haven’t the emotional bandwidth, and the older I get, I figure, why bother, it won’t do any good.

That said, this nurse is full of shit. His late wife was a nurse, too, I should mention that. So these two nurses, health-care professionals, he with a master’s degree with “an emphasis on public health,” are/were not only anti-Covid vaccine, they appear to be anti-all vaccines, if this passage is any indication:

“I don’t trust the vaccine companies,” he says. “Because there’s no control. They can make a product that the FDA or whoever CDC says it’s safe. But then if your kid is affected, you cannot do anything to them about it. They’re completely protected by the government.”

He says that McLaren Oakland allows medical and religions exemptions to a vaccine mandate.

“I have a master’s in nursing with an emphasis on public health,” he said. “So I’m not uneducated, right. It’s just, I, I’ve told my kids I said, ‘hey, when you get older, and if you want to pursue college, I’m perfectly OK with you when your immune systems are stronger. If you do a slow course of the different vaccines you need to forward your education, I’m OK with that.’ I just didn’t want to do it when they’re young.”

“Do you regret that you and your wife were not vaccinated?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

Just once, just once!!! I want to hear one of these people say, “Y’know, we were wrong about that. Elizabeth should have gotten the vaccine. All of our now-motherless children should be vaccinated against the vaccine-preventable childhood diseases. And of course I, a nurse who works in an emergency room during a pandemic, will be getting my Covid vaccine a.s.a.p.”

I mean, he’s a NURSE. He works in a HOSPITAL. He has a MASTER’S DEGREE. He studied PUBLIC HEALTH. And somehow he got that degree without learning about vaccines. Or the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, for that matter. I wouldn’t set foot in that fucking hospital.

I shouldn’t have read that story. It wasn’t for me.

OK, then. The snow is coming down, but in flakes so fine you have to look for it out the window. Time to crack that book. Happy Monday, if that’s possible.

The January Uncluttering is complicated this year. We’re ripping up carpet, preparing to redo hardwood floors, and of course, still waiting on the Ukrainians to come redo two bathrooms. But it’ll get done. Pandemic time passes slowly, but it still runs one minute at a time. We’ve offloaded one large piece of furniture, with a second going later this week, fingers crossed. And last week I schlepped three boxes and one bag of books to the used bookstore in downtown Detroit, and left with $60 in store credit that I will probably give away because I have a teensy little problem with accumulating books.

The goal for 2022: Reduce. Become more nimble. Accomplish 10 percent of my Death Cleaning, but don’t actually die in the process.

For Christmas, I asked for very little, but I did receive two new books. Ha ha.

It was a newsy weekend hereabouts. Nothing like sitting down to eat on Saturday and learning the University of Michigan has fired — fired! — its president. It’s the usual reason: Improper relationship with an underling. From the looks of the emails released by the Board of Regents to justify the decision, looks like someone fairly close to the office, an assistant or scheduler or something. Once again, I am amazed at how a man smart enough to have a million degrees, a medical scientist earning more than $900K a year running a major university, is too dumb to conduct a fling anywhere other than his work email. I mean, there are literal apps for this. There’s Gmail, for crying out loud. The mind boggles.

Then there was the volcanic explosion in the Pacific, which was just…daaaammmmnn. The time-lapse satellite views made it look like a bomb, which of course it was, albeit a natural one. Nature always wins, a lesson we’ll learn yet again, one day. One of the books I got for Christmas was “Under the Wave at Waimea,” Paul Theroux’s surfing novel, where several chapters take place in weird, impoverished Pacific island nations like Tonga. This won’t help the local economy, but maybe the influx of researchers will.

I woke up this morning, and read about a fight at a local steakhouse, and not a cheap one. An unruly patron pulled a knife and stabbed a security guard, and the security guard pulled a gun and shot him to death. And so you see where we the phrase “don’t bring a knife to a gun fight” comes from.

Detroit. Never a dull moment.

And finally, there was this:

Trump says white people are being discriminated against on covid treatment: “If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics .. In NY state, if you’re white, you go to the back of the line if you want help.” pic.twitter.com/QLgkC3VESk

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 16, 2022

I have no more words. No, I have these: Boy, he really sounds like an old man, doesn’t he?

Entertainment notes: If you have Apple TV, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is absolutely worth your time, a taut, expertly staged and acted production. Sets, score, costumes, photography, etc., all first-rate, and accomplished in under two hours, hallelujah. If you struggle with Elizabethan dialogue, try turning on closed captions, which did the trick for us.

Is that all? I think so. Supposed to be warmer this week, but gray. So what, I’ll take it.

Yesterday I learned of the death, this week, of a certain local woman. I didn’t know her, but knew of her. Whenever I had reason to watch the local school-board meetings on livestream, she was often among the public-comment speakers. She always prefaced her remarks with a long Bible verse, and often warned members of who they’d have to answer to if they continued on the road to perdition, which they always were.

She spoke for God, in other words, and she had the usual right-wing positions. Her latest issue was masking in schools (she was opposed), and on her website, there’s a hodgepodge of paranoia over vaccines and why the God-approved treatments of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, Vitamin D, etc. are being kept from The People.

You’ll never guess what killed her.

Which would be merely a tragedy to her family and friends, except for this, a note left by her sister on the dead woman’s Facebook page. The sister appears to still have a rational brain:

Seven weeks. SEVEN WEEKS, much of that in intensive care. Seven goddamn weeks, refusing treatment. If anyone wonders why doctors and nurses are shattering like dropped china, here’s one big clue, this woman who refused to save herself, taking up the most expensive real estate in an American hospital for nearly two months.

Hate to be a bummer, but maybe the bright side is this: I’m still capable of being astounded by this stuff. Yay me.

And thanks to the Supreme Court, there will be more Alisons in more hospitals, because Freedom. God bless America.

I want to leave you on a cheerier note, so here’s this: Treble-vaccinated, I am taking care of myself. No symptoms yet from our heedless safari for hummus last week, so feeling I escaped that one. Meanwhile, you do the same. And have a great weekend.

There comes a time, even in a pandemic, when one simply can’t abide the restrictions for one more minute, throws caution to the wind and opts for something UTTERLY CRAZY like… indoor dining.

It was perhaps irresponsible, yes, but honestly I thought I was going to crack from boredom. Alan too, so when he said, “You want to do something?” I thought fuck yeah, I want to try this spot in Dearborn I’ve been meaning to check out for something like three years. I know we’re negative and won’t be infecting anyone. If it goes the other direction, well, I knew the risk.

This place is said to have the best hummus on the planet. (Possible headline for my obit: Unsuccessful writer ‘died for hummus;’ in last words, claims ‘it was worth it’) I can report that while my personal experience with hummus isn’t all that wide, it was in fact very good, and so was the foul, the harhoura, the falafel and the mint tea, as well as the roasted potatoes they sent to the table on the house, why I’m not sure. But I tipped 25 percent. Everyone’s having a hard time, and it was so nice to get out. Of course any carb-fest in Dearborn wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Shatila, a bakery and sweet shop where they serve Lebanese and French pastries:

Truth be told, I’m not the biggest fan of that super-fussy style of dessert — I’ll take a good slice of in-season peach or apple pie over that, any day — although they certainly are fun to look at. And my choice, the pineapple cake at the top left, was very good.

While we were at the first place, we stumbled across the restaurant’s chickpea stash and I took a picture, but I won’t post it here because I suspect it could be an OSHA violation to store a literal ton of chickpeas in 50-pound sacks in a hallway, but when they’re destined for such tastiness, I am willing to keep my mouth shut.

And now I’m so full I won’t eat until tomorrow, but a good swim in the morning will use up the calories.

It was a fine day, for January anyway, and we drove home on surface streets, Warren Avenue all the way, from the hookah shops and clothing stores for traditional Arab women through the industrial this and that of Detroit, then Wayne State, then the east side and all the way to GP.

On the drive out, Alan’s phone chirped with a news alert, which he immediately checked. “I always hope it’s news about Trump having a massive stroke,” he confessed. “Not today.”

The rest of the weekend was spent absorbing another Lansing scandal: The most recent Speaker of the House, a 33-year-old preacher’s kid who spent his six years in the lower chamber basically being a professional Christian, was revealed as anything but. His sister-in-law came forward to claim he started sexually abusing her when she was 15 (and he was 21), and didn’t stop until last summer. It’s a tawdry tale, but only surprising if you are shocked that halo-polishing Christians dig hanging at strip clubs and banging lots of chicks. I am not.

Nor am I surprised by the ex-Speaker’s high-and-tight fashy haircut. It’s like semiotics with these guys.

Bloggage? Here’s something a little light-hearted, that serves as a pretty good example of why Detroit stands alone as a news town, or at least on a par with Miami: A flashback story about the time a radical anarchist prankster threw a shaving-cream pie in the face of a so-called “child guru,” then was tracked down by the guru’s followers and beaten with a hammer. The prankster sounds like someone I would have liked a lot:

Halley was a well-known rebel character in the Wayne State University neighborhood. He drove a cab for a living but was also a writer, poet, pamphleteer, actor and self-described anarchist clown. He staged guerilla-theater events in parks, streets and the lobby of the Fisher Theatre, where he and fellow performers taunted people paying top dollar for mainstream Broadway plays.

Operating his own storefront theater, Halley once put on a satire about the 1978 massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, offering the audience Kool-Aid. That was a sardonic reference to the hundreds of Jonestown cult members who died after a drinking a fruit-flavored beverage laced with poison. On another occasion, Halley led audience members through the Cass Corridor as actors popped out from behind trees and garbage cans. One of his characters was Dirty Dog the Clown, who played a harmonica and spouted radical slogans.

In a 1978 Free Press article that recalled the pie incident, Halley, with a straight face, told a reporter the plastic plate surgeons had implanted in his head picked up radio signals.

All this entertainment for the cost of a newspaper. I ask you.

Happy week ahead, all. Let’s hope I’m still testing negative at the end of it.

Covid test came back negative. I went back to the pool Wednesday. Of course, if I go to the pool, there’s a chance I’ll get it from one of my fellow swimmers, because everybody has Covid here. Kate’s entire band. All the other bands in the city, seemingly. And now, the governor’s husband.

Part of me wants to get this over with before we have our bathrooms remodeled at the end of the month. God knows those Ukrainian contractors haven’t been vaccinated.

Just what we need, coming out of the holidays, right? Another winter confined to quarters, or to a drafty tent somewhere? I put on makeup and a fancy French scarf to go to CVS this afternoon, because I think I may be going insane. As the man says, I picked the wrong month to stop drinking.

Oh, what am I talking about? We had a lovely dinner tonight. (This one, plus some oven-roasted potatoes.) Tomorrow starts the weekend. The tree has been dragged to the curb and run through the chipper. Kate and Alan are downstairs buffing the bass they’re working on. Life is good, even if it is very cold. Eleven degrees this morning, 19 at the moment.

Peter Bogdanovich, or as I like to think of him, Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, died today, a man with great talent who proved that at heart, even great artists of keen intelligence are sexual toddlers. His erotic fixation was a lot like John Derek’s, it turns out. Derek was married four times; his last three wives looked so much like one another they could have been sisters. Bogdanovich fell for a series of 20-year-old blondes, two of them sisters. Those would be Dorothy and Louise Stratten, of course, and you can google the details. Dorothy was murdered by the husband she left to be with Peter, of course. We all saw “Star 80,” which wasn’t terrible at all, and not directed by Bogdanovich, but Bob Fosse. Don’t know much about Louise, except that she’s allegedly a movie producer and that their marriage didn’t last. (No! Really?)

I liked him as Kupferberg, which for you non-“Sopranos” watchers was Tony’s therapist’s therapist. He was great in the part, no doubt having done years of therapy himself. He understood the subtle humor of the role, the kind of doctor who keeps a giant water bottle at hand and drinks from it often, because lord knows you can’t drink enough water, can you?

Anyway, he was 82, surprisingly old to me. He got his full measure.

I see everyone took apart that J.D. Vance profile from a few days back, so I won’t bother to link. What a fucking maroon that guy turned out to be. This seems to get to the point with admirable succinctness:

Some people think this is the sound of a thoughtful man whose ideological transformation should be treated with respect. https://t.co/xxgnTBrCSH

— Stephen Rodrick (@stephenrodrick) January 6, 2022

Onward to the weekend, then. Have a good one.

Day three without alcohol, and I slept well last night and had the best workout I’ve had in a while. Starting to remember why I do this every year.

There’s a fair number of doom-and-gloomers on Twitter at the moment, ringing the fear bell, saying omicron will devastate American workforces in coming weeks, and it’s best if you stock up on everything now and have a plan for when you’re down to existing on ketchup soup and a seven-year-old can of white asparagus spears, which is all that’s left in your pantry. Case numbers certainly are mind-bogglingly high, but hospitalization is fairly stable. I’m not inclined to panic just yet. Although I headed out to the grocery at a very bad time yesterday (5 p.m.) and found it had been stripped like the last visitors were a swarm of locusts. I’m blaming that on the holiday weekend, however. Lots of company, much of it staying longer thanks to airport snafus.

Meanwhile, Margie Greene lost her Twitter permanently, leading some of American’s leading conservative intellectuals to lose their shit:

Just totally absurd. These companies need to be crushed. pic.twitter.com/FqAsMoZZaR

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) January 2, 2022

Once again, I must say it: The comedown of this guy, from Thoughtful GOP Leader to I’ll-Say-Anything-to-Get-Elected Troll, is breathtaking. And he still won’t get elected.

Just a quick blog offering today, the NYT obit for Sandra Jaffe, who along with her husband established Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and in many ways saved traditional jazz in the process. Another of the many, many contributions of Jews to jazz.

Random France picture? Sure. Since it’s scarf season, a stop at the Hermes store:

Au revoir!

I was making a new recipe for chicken curry and threw the seeds and trimmings of a jalapeño pepper down the disposal, then made the mistake of turning it on and not immediately running to the other side of the kitchen. Been coughing ever since. Instant pepper spray! How many times have I learned this lesson? Too many times to count. Sometimes I feel like the world’s stupidest home cook.

The curry was…C+, I guess. Splendid Table recipe, used yogurt. I think I prefer coconut milk, but it was good enough for dinner and it’ll be fine for next-day lunch.

The carnage in Kentucky was awful, as was some of the social-media snark about Rand Paul strutting on the floor of the Senate in 2012, talking about how “other people’s money” was going for relief from Hurricane Sandy. The response to a 180 in a dim-bulb libertarian may well be jeering, but maybe we can point this out another time, eh? The response to a disaster in the United States is to relieve the suffering. Yes, Rand Paul is an hypocrite. Yes, the people of Kentucky elected him (and Mitch McConnell, oy). No, the response is not to tell them “sucks to be you” when tornados kill them and destroy their homes, businesses and towns.

However, we’re in a sucks-to-be-you moment right now. I read a little over the weekend about Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania. Lia swam for the men’s team for two years of her college career. She transitioned during the Covid-cancelled season, and is now swimming as a woman, and winning. “Breaking records,” in fact, but here is one place where I have to part with Sherri, to name one person in our readership, who has said that any advantage to being a biological male in sports disappears after a year of hormone treatment. I simply don’t believe that, at least in this case.

Thomas isn’t just breaking records, she’s obliterating them. Winning by 7 seconds in the 200 free, and 38 in the 1650-meter free, to name but two. These aren’t normal new-record margins. Swimming is a sport where records fall by fractions of seconds, not seven of them. (Unless she is Katie Ledecky. Lia Thomas is not Katie Ledecky.) There is an advantage here that comes from being taller, stronger, more broad-shouldered and from having trained and competed all your life as a man. The photos of her are crazy. She’s a hulk.

As you would expect, the right-wing media has picked up this story and is shaking it like a dog. I had to scroll down in the search results to find a source I thought could be fair — Swimming World magazine, which I am confident knows more about the sport than, say, the New York Post or Fox News.

And this piece is pretty evenhanded, explaining that while Thomas is swimming slower on female hormones than when she was a male, she suddenly catapulted from an Ivy League finalist to an Olympic-level contender, threatening records set by the greatest women in the sport, including Ledecky and Missy Franklin. Swimming World also had the decency to ask for decency, after getting the expected onslaught of reader abuse following their reporting. And they’ve also done sensitive reporting on F-to-M trans swimmers like Schuyler Bailar, so I feel like I can trust their editorial judgement.

But even SW editorialized against allowing Thomas to compete in the NCAA championships in March:

Athletes transitioning from male to female possess the inherent advantage of years of testosterone production and muscle-building. There is also the advantage (in many cases) of larger body frames, hands and feet. All of these traits are beneficial in the sport of swimming. In the case of Thomas, she had nearly 20 years of this testosterone-building advantage, something cisgender women could not attain. Although she took part in the testosterone-suppression process, a look at her performances clearly reflects that she is benefitting from the genetics of her birth sex.

“There’s absolutely no question in my mind that trans women will maintain strength advantages over cis women, even after hormone therapy,” said sports physicist Joanna Harper in an interview with WEBMD Health News. “That’s based on my clinical experience, rather than published data, but I would say there’s zero doubt in my mind.”

…Now, Thomas is stalking Ledecky’s 500 freestyle record, a chase that reveals the unfairness in her racing against cisgender women. A look at the all-time rankings in the 500 free shows that Leah Smith is the second-fastest female performer in the event. Yet, she is almost five seconds back of Ledecky. The fact that Thomas could break the record of such a once-in-a-generation athlete confirms the biological advantages she possesses, and their power.

The stories of Thomas’ meet performances are agonizing: She finishes first by a wide margin, and the crowd sits on their hands. When the cisgender female touches the wall second, they erupt in cheers. This may be a cruel reaction, but it is also honest. These are not fair competitions. The question is, what do we do about them?

The floor is open. I’m honestly interested in what some of you have to say.