Sharon Waxman On the Business of Entertainment
The founder and editor of TheWrap’s take on life on the left coast, high culture, low culture and the business of entertainment and media. Waxman writes frequently on the inside doings of Hollywood, and is is also the author of two books, Rebels on the Back Lot and Loot
I’m afraid to share with you how angry I feel. I am so angry I’m almost numb. Paralyzed to feel these emotions and acknowledge the deepest betrayal to me by my own country, my government, with the abolition of a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
It doesn’t matter that I am well past child-bearing years. The insult is so deep, the offense so cutting: the highest court in the land deciding that I am no longer free to make my own reproductive choices.
The mind reels. The imagination collapses. What? Suddenly the state decides if I have a child?
To be a woman in 2022 is to be angry. Perhaps that should say: to be a woman in the 21st century is to be angry.
Why raise me with the ideals of democracy, teach me civics, fill a young head with the stories of our founders and the sacrifices that they made to ensure that our government was constructed to be of, by and for the people, if you’re just going to end up with a Supreme Court that behaves like the Sharia courts in Iran?
I am angry at the sham of our Supreme Court, handing down Christian theocracy cloaked in faux constitutional mumbo jumbo. Issuing a decree – yes, a decree, like some Saudi Arabian terrorism court – that make a mockery of legal precedent and the clear, overwhelming will of the people.
I am angry that Democrats failed to protect our rights.
I am angry that these self-righteous Supreme Court justices lied with impunity during their confirmation hearings about whether abortion rights were established law. Angry that Senators Susan Collins and Joe Manchin were such willing stooges for a religiously driven Federalist Society and its candidates for the court.
I am angry at Planned Parenthood. How could the organization allow this to happen?
I am angry at Ruth Bader Ginsberg, whom I previously adulated, for not having the humility to step down from the court when President Obama asked her.
I am angry at Barack Obama for not having the political skill to convince RBG to step down.
I am furious at Congressional Democrats who allowed Mitch McConnell to deny Merrick Garland a hearing. (What could they have done, you ask? Anything that mattered. Hunger strike. Sit-in. Why are Democrats always so incredibly toothless?)
I am angry at Joe Biden for being such a nice guy that we all know he won’t dare pack the Supreme Court, even though it has become a rogue, illegitimate institution.
And I am furious that not enough people have poured into the streets to demand the restoration of women’s rights. Women’s rights are, after all, human rights.
We watch our democracy disappear before our very eyes. We must fight for it, or we will lose it. We are losing it.
On a day of infamy that shames our constitution, shames our founders, debases our values and calls the future of a free society into question, angry is all we can be.
