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A Political History of "True Blood"

by RoderickHaswell Posted on June 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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“How progressive of him.”

That was one of the first sentences that Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer), a nearly two-century-old vampire, ever uttered to his one true love Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) in the HBO series True Blood. The two were briefly discussing her friend, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), and his support for the Vampire Rights Amendment (VRA), which would endow vampires with the same Constitutional rights identical as other Americans:

This was the first conversation, political or otherwise, that Sookie and Bill ever had. This exchange is from the pilot episode, which aired in late 2008, and it was an early hint that the True Blood crew would regularly inject political notes into their blood-and-sex vamp saga, to the point that each season can arguably be read as its own political allegory. With the seventh and final season premiering on Sunday, here’s a look back at some of the show’s political greatest hits:

1. The whole thing is really about gay rights and civil rights:

In the True Blood universe, vampires are—along with being sexy and dangerous—an oppressed minority. The struggle of mainstream, generally peaceful vampires to gain acceptance in American society is routinely paralleled with the fight for gay rights and marriage equality. Here’s a shot from the opening credit sequence that shows a “God Hates Fangs” sign—drop the “N” and it’s an obvious reference to the Westboro Baptist Church‘s infamous placards:

Screenshot: HBO

In 2010, GLAAD declared True Blood the most gay-friendly series on TV: “Thanks to its large cast (and often sexually ambiguous vampires), HBO’s True Blood is the most inclusive program currently on television, featuring six regular and recurring LGBT characters,” according to organization’s 2010-2011 “Where We Are on TV” report.

2. Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann inspired the fifth season:

Season five features an insurgent group of fundamentalist vampires called the Sanguinistas, who are itching to instigate a civil war within the global bloodsucker community. According to True Blood creator Alan Ball, this violent, theocratic vampire movement was inspired by none other than failed 2012 Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.

Here’s Ball, talking to TheWrap about how he mapped out the season, and how the two politicians inspired his vision of vampire terrorism:

For me the jumping off point was watching the Republican primaries, watching Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and asking what would it be like to have a theocracy in America—which is way more terrifying than any fictional monster could ever be…What’s terrifying is how many people agree with Santorum.

“A lot of right-wingers would like to see a theocracy in America,” Ball said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

3. “The Obamas” are an anti-vamp death squad:

The fifth season also introduced the Obamas, a gun-fetishizing, anti-supernatural band of thugs. As they roam around killing vampires and other supernatural beings, they hide their faces behind Barack Obama masks:

Screenshot: HBO

4. The final season appears to reference the devastation of Hurricane Katrina:

The new season finds Sookie’s hometown of Bon Temps, Louisiana, at the center of a new war between humans and a band of infected, extra-ravenous vampires. Some the town’s residents take matters into their own hands, raiding the local police department’s cache of firearms. “We’re here for our guns that are a part of our Second Amendment right not to be fucked over by our government!” one of the spooked citizens says.

An investigation brings the Bon Temps cops to another community that has been slaughtered by the same group of roving vampires. They find this in the decimated town:

Screenshot: HBO

The federal government did not act to save these people, and failed to answer Bon Temps’ cries for help. This should remind you of something else that happened to Louisiana some years ago.

5. There’s a politically powerful church that drives the anti-vamp-rights agenda:

The Fellowship of the Sun is based outside of Dallas and aims to wage a holy war against all vampires. The church also cuts TV ads to counter pro-VRA forces in Congress. “Children see this lifestyle, and maybe they want to imitate it,” says a woman in the following political ad:

6. The Louisiana governor is pretty much a vampire-hating Hitler:

In the sixth season, Gov. Truman Burrell (Arliss Howard) oversees a major crackdown on the state’s vampire population. His policies—death camps, terrible medical experiments on vampires—take a cue from the Nazis. For the record, BuzzFeed’s Louis Peitzman raised a fair point about this last year: “Here’s the real problem with True Blood‘s civil rights allegory: In this case, the so-called bigots are right. Their discrimination of vampires is reasonable, because all of their fears about vampires are true.”

Anyway, here’s a clip of one of Burrell’s speeches, in which he announces the closure of vampire-owned businesses and encourages Louisianans to buy guns and ammo:

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A Political History of "True Blood"

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GOP Senate Candidate Cory Gardner Disavows His Support for Fetal Personhood—After Sponsoring a Bill Last Year

by VickiHazel Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Col.) has Democrats spooked. Less than three weeks after his late-in-the-game announcement that he would challenge Sen. Mark Udall (D-Col.), a poll from the left-leaning firm Public Policy Polling found Gardner trailing Udall by just two points.

But Gardner, a two-term congressman, brings plenty of baggage to the race, including his background as a fierce culture warrior. Among other attempts to limit abortion access, he co-sponsored a 2011 bill that would have changed the definition of rape under federal law, limiting abortions that could be covered under Medicaid to instances of “forcible rape.” So on Friday, Gardner took a step toward softening his image as a social conservative crusader by recanting his vocal support for fetal personhood laws, which would confer constitutional rights on fetuses and ban abortion from the moment of conception.

“This was a bad idea driven by good intentions,” Gardner told the Denver Post. “I was not right. I can’t support personhood now. I can’t support personhood going forward. To do it again would be a mistake… The fact that it restricts contraception, it was not the right position.”

What changed? Gardner says he “learned to listen” to critics of fetal personhood measures—something it couldn’t have hurt to have done before he co-sponsored a House bill that established a “right to life for every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization.” That bill, which Gardner signed last July, was named the “Life at Conception Act.” During his first run for Congress, in 2010, Gardner boasted of circulating a petition for a personhood ballot measure at his church. Coloradoans voted against that ballot measure—and a nearly identical measure in 2008—by a margin of 3-to-1 that year.

But their opposition didn’t register with Gardner until he faced an electorate that voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential race. Now, his eyes are open. “The voters of Colorado have spoken on this issue,” Gardner told the Post. “To me, that’s the end of it.” What a difference a tight Senate election makes.

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GOP Senate Candidate Cory Gardner Disavows His Support for Fetal Personhood—After Sponsoring a Bill Last Year

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Spy Camp: Photos From East Germany’s Secret Intelligence Files

by sepjod5 Posted on December 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Stasi agents learned how to don (supposedly) inconspicuous disguises.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

Like most government agencies, the NSA lacks a sense of humor; instead, it has paranoia, which can be unintentionally comic. Case in point: The agency’s recent cease-and-desist letter to Dan McCall, an online vendor whose parody t-shirts raised NSA hackles. The agency, along with the Department of Homeland Security, cites copyright infringement—it’s illegal to appropriate the NSA logo for commercial use (especially after it’s been “mutilated”). Depending on your mood, the crackdown on satire is either disproportionate enough to be amusing, or totalitarian enough to be, well, totalitarianism.

Simon Menner’s new photobook, Top Secret: Images from the Stasi Archive, reminds us that the difference between terror and kitsch is mostly one of proximity. Per the book’s subtitle, the images were culled from the vast archives of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, which spied on, bugged, interrogated, intimidated, murdered, and otherwise bullied its citizenry for 40 years. According to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor turned Nazi-hunter, the Stasi was “much, much worse than the Gestapo, if you consider only the oppression of its own people.”

Indeed, the numbers are staggering: When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Stasi records show that it had 91,000 employees on the payroll, along with around 173,000 unofficial collaborators. Given East Germany’s population of 17 million, this amounts to one informer per 6.5 citizens—or, as author John O. Koehler more viscerally puts it, “It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of 10 or 12 dinner guests.” In Koehler’s book Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, former Stasi Colonel Rainer Wiegand estimated that the total number of informers was as high as two million.

Think about what that means. Phones were tapped, mail was intercepted and read, families betrayed each other, apartment buildings and hotels crawled with informers, surveillance cameras abounded. A special division was tasked with inspecting garbage, while holes drilled into walls became the unofficial calling card of Stasi spooks. On the threshold of German reunification, approximately six million people were under surveillance.

From the Stasi’s catalog of disguises. Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

All of this was part of a more systematic program called zersetzung (“decomposition”) that wreaked psychological havoc across East Germany. The idea was to disrupt people’s sense of normalcy by employing “soft torture” techniques. “Tactics included removing pictures from walls, replacing one variety of tea with another, and even sending a vibrator to a target’s wife,” noted the Guardian. “Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were going mad; some suffered breakdowns; a few killed themselves.”

Repressive regimes around the globe turned to the Stasi for its surveillance bona fides: The secret police of Angola, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Syria, Uganda, and Yemen were all clients. In the 1980s, the Stasi and the KGB collaborated to spread propaganda that HIV/AIDS originated in US government laboratories (PDF). And an investigation leaked in 2011 suggested a link between the Stasi and Horst Mahler, a founding member of West Germany’s Red Army Faction (also known as Baader-Meinhof), raising questions about just how deeply the spy agency had infiltrated its anti-communist neighbor.

Agents learned to trail a target without being noticed. Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

From a film showing agents how to shadow suspects. Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

Once it became apparent that the Iron Curtain was fraying, Stasi agents scrambled to destroy incriminating documents, including thousands of photographs. On January 15, 1990, protestors stormed Stasi headquarters and prevented a complete wipeout. That October, a newly reunified Germany established a government agency, BStU, to preserve the old records, which were declassified two years later. Millions of Germans have been able to share the surreal experience of perusing their own surveillance reports.

An agent learns to apply facial hair.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

An image damaged in the Stasi purge.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

Menner spent two years combing the vast archives—a combined 50 miles of shelving that included 1.4 million photographs, slides, and negatives. His book is divided into chapters with innocuous titles such as “Wigs and their Application,” “How to Apply Fake Facial Hair,” and “Disguising as Western Tourists.” There’s a tension—which these titles exploit—between our inclination to read the photos as kitsch and the ominous history they represent. The photos were rehearsals for surveillance, arrest, interrogation, and blackmail; they are unnerving mementos of a government intoxicated by control. And what seems quaint or campy or mundane at first blush is harrowing in retrospect.

Case in point: the Polaroids that Stasi agents took during their routine home break-ins. These shots of kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms, which depict life in a typical East German apartment, have a bland predatory quality—a knowingness—that’s disturbing. Equally so is Menner’s note that agents used the Polaroids as a reference for returning a room to its prior state after ransacking it. The artlessness of the images only intensifies their eeriness.

Elsewhere, the book offers a field guide for espionage. Agents demonstrate secret hand signals, shadow suspects, and rendezvous on desolate roads. Mock arrests are staged in dismal rooms, the agents’ faces inexpertly redacted with a black Sharpie. Houses are searched and possessions cataloged. Unease tinges a photo of a teenager’s bedroom wallpapered with Madonna clippings—Western sympathies, if simply of the pop-culture variety, could be cause for an investigation, or worse.

An agent transmits a secret hand sign.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

A mock arrest.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

Contents of a confiscated package.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

Top Secret is a timely rejoinder to those who argue that the NSA is a necessary evil, and it’s even more timely in light of the revelation that the NSA targeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel for eavesdropping. The US is not East Germany, and the NSA is not the Stasi, but they share a common taproot of fear. While the NSA may not resort to the Stasi’s cruelest methods, it lords over one of the most sophisticated and pervasive intelligence apparatuses on the planet. Would it be surprising if, decades from now, someone found similar relics in the NSA archive?

But the NSA recently offered this comforting nugget to the Washington Post: “The notion of constant, unchecked, or senseless growth is a myth.” So relax, your secrets are safe.

Stasi agents amused themselves by dressing up as their enemies—in this case, the Church.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

From the Stasi handbook of disguises.
Simon Menner and BStU, 2013.

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Spy Camp: Photos From East Germany’s Secret Intelligence Files

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Postal Service Officially Taken Over By America Haters

by UIVJodiexgz Posted on November 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Postal Service inflamed the general public earlier this year when it tried to eliminate Saturday delivery, but now it’s really playing with fire. Stamp collectors are up in arms over their latest venture, and you do not want to piss off stamp collectors:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Postal Service is scheduled to release 20 postage stamps honoring Harry Potter, and officials at the cash-strapped agency hope the images, drawn straight from the Warner Bros. movies, will be the biggest blockbuster since the Elvis Presley stamp 20 years ago.

But the selection of the British boy wizard is creating a stir in the cloistered world of postage-stamp policy. The Postal Service has bypassed the panel charged with researching and recommending subjects for new stamps, and the members are rankled, not least of all because Potter is a foreigner, several members said.

….“Harry Potter is not American. It’s foreign, and it’s so blatantly commercial it’s off the charts,” said John Hotchner, a stamp collector in Falls Church and former president of the American Philatelic Society, who served on the committee for 12 years until 2010. “The Postal Service knows what will sell, but that’s not what stamps ought to be about. Things that don’t sell so well are part of the American story.”

Meh. I just googled Harry Potter stamps, and it looks to me like half the countries in the world have already issued them. If France and Albania can do it, why can’t we? So go ahead. Next up for the America haters: Babar postage stamps. I’d buy some.

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Postal Service Officially Taken Over By America Haters

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Divine intervention? Pope opposes fracking

by sssaa Posted on November 13, 2013

Divine intervention? Pope opposes fracking

By

Catholic Church England and Wales

The worldwide leader of the Catholic Church, none other than the motherfracking pope himself, has come out in opposition to the worldwide scourge of hydraulic fracturing.

OK, so Pope Francis didn’t exactly make a policy statement or a speech denouncing fracking. But hints have emerged that he might do so soon. And Twitter is afire with pictures of His Holiness holding up anti-fracking T-shirts. The pictures were taken Monday following meetings with Argentinians dealing with environmental issues:

Environmental filmmaker Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas told elEconomista that the pope had indicated during a Monday meeting that he was working on a papal memo, known as an encyclical, that will address environmental issues.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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National Briefing | Religion: Church Dropping Fossil Fuel Investments

by Myrna Posted on July 3, 2013

The United Church of Christ has become the first American religious body to vote to divest its pension funds and investments from fossil fuel companies because of climate change concerns. Original link:  National Briefing | Religion: Church Dropping Fossil Fuel Investments ; ;Related ArticlesListening Post: Obama Seeks New U.S. Role in Climate DebateAfter Failed Attempt in April, Europe Approves Emissions Trading SystemOfficials Say They See Signs of a Slowdown in Deadly Arizona Wildfire ;

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National Briefing | Religion: Church Dropping Fossil Fuel Investments

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Vegetarians live longer, researchers find

by donkorleone842 Posted on June 4, 2013

Vegetarians live longer, researchers find

By John Upton

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Instead of bacon, try these. You’ll live longer.

If you want to live longer, you could dabble in cryonics, hire Dick Cheney’s medical team, or, more realistically, pass on the meat and live the life of a vegetarian.

A recent study concluded that vegetarians were less likely to die from heart disease, diabetes, or kidney failure than were those who ate meat.

Researchers tracked more than 70,000 American members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which promotes clean living and vegetarianism, though not all followers shun meat. The scientists noted the subjects’ diets and recorded the causes of 2,570 deaths during the six-year study.

Overall, the vegetarians were 12 percent less likely to die during the study. The results were published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Caloric intake didn’t seem to matter. The different participant groups generally ate around the same amount of calories daily. Researchers found that the beneficial associations weren’t related to energy intake.

The advantage appeared stronger in men than women, whose diet didn’t seem to make as much of a difference. Eating plant foods didn’t seem to protect participants against cancer, which struck both the vegetarians and non-vegetarians in roughly equal measure.

Researchers don’t know why a plant-based diet seems to have a protective effect, but one likely reason is the nutrient profile of vegetarian diets, which tend to be higher in fiber and lower in saturated fat. Vegetarians tend to be thinner, another factor known to have an effect on health outcomes, [lead author Michael] Orlich says.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Most Protestant pastors don’t think climate change is real

by ansonsten Posted on April 22, 2013

Most Protestant pastors don’t think climate change is real

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Say, God, who do you think is turning the weather weird?

A majority of Protestant pastors in the U.S. fail to grasp the scientific fact that humans are turning the weather weird. But, hey, at least they recycle!

Asked whether they “believe global warming is real and man made,” only 43 percent of Protestant pastors said “yes” during a a recent survey by LifeWay Research, an arm of a company that sells Bibles, church supplies, and the like. That was up from 36 percent in 2010 but less than the 47 percent who said “yes” in 2008.

Unsurprisingly, Democratic pastors are far more likely to understand human-induced climate change than Republican ones. But in an odd twist, the older pastors are more likely to get climate change than their younger colleagues. Way to be, church seniors.

From a summary of the survey findings:

Pastors identifying as Democrats are the most likely to strongly agree (76 percent) in the validity of man-made global warming, followed by Independents (20 percent). Just 7 percent of Republican pastors strongly agree. Conversely, Republican pastors are the most likely to strongly disagree (49 percent), followed by Independents (35 percent) and Democrats (5 percent).

“Pastor opinions on global warming reflect their own political beliefs,” said Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research. “The pendulum of public and pastor opinions on man-made global warming is swinging back toward agreement but still lacks a majority.” …

The survey also reveals pastors age 65 or older put more stock in the validity of global warming over their younger counterparts. This group is more likely (32 percent) than pastors age 45-54 (20 percent) and 18-44 (19 percent) to strongly agree with the statement: “I believe global warming is real and man made.”

While there’s confusion among these leaders about who is actually influencing the weather, at least most of them are into recycling. Again from the research summary:

Recycling programs … [are] well established among churches. More than 60 percent of Protestant pastors say their church has an active recycling program in place at their church building while a third (34 percent) do not.

“More churches are proactively recycling and reducing carbon emissions in urban areas,” McConnell said. “While this may reflect being attentive to local community needs, it also may simply be a reflection of municipal regulations or the economic pressure on utility bills. Either way, it seems to be good news that churches are caring more about the environment and acting accordingly.”

Hurrah for recycling, but boo for climate ignorance. Could we respectfully suggest that you get your information about climate change from scientists rather than your pastor?

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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New Pope Francis sure likes buses, but will he be a leader for climate action?

by gerdi Posted on March 14, 2013

New Pope Francis sure likes buses, but will he be a leader for climate action?

By Susie Cagle

Catholic Church

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been named the new head of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis, as he’s now called, awaits his future wearing cute outfits and riding around Vatican City in the popemobile. But where does Bergoglio stand on climate change?

Ex-Pope Benedict XVI, aka Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, used his papal platform to promote social and political action in response to global warming, and even added an electric car to the popemobile fleet. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was also a proponent of climate action. And other Catholic leaders have spoken out about the need for a response to the impending “serious and potentially irreversible” effects of a warmer planet. (But, shhh, don’t say anything about birth control and population growth.)

Bergoglio is still a bit of a mystery, but his humble background is well-documented. A Jesuit, he claims to have quietly rebelled during a period of grisly military dictatorship in Argentina, hiding people in his church and giving out fake identity papers. He chose to live in a small apartment instead of the fancy cardinal’s house in Buenos Aires, and he is best known “as a champion of the poor,” says The Washington Post.

This is often reflected in his very humble lifestyle, despite his position. One much-cited example of his personal (and very Franciscan) commitment is that he takes the bus.

He will presumably give up this practice for security reasons, but it says much about the personality and beliefs of the man who will now lead the Catholic church.

Boy do we love it when fancy-seeming people who have all kinds of transportation resources at their fancy disposal decide to take public transport instead. But how much does that really matter?

Bergoglio’s small efforts — from eating meals at home to speaking out for the poor in times of globalization to those bus rides — seem to reflect his personal, humble beliefs. The biggest clue to future pope’s politics, though, might be all in the name. Bergoglio took the name of Saint Francis, patron saint of animals and the environment.

Bergoglio probably won’t be organizing a Catholic tree-sit to block the Keystone XL pipeline, but, at least at first glance, it seems like Pope No. 266 might not be half-bad for the climate. Maybe Rick Santorum will even call him a radical.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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New Pope Francis sure likes buses, but will he be a leader for climate action?

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Tim DeChristopher banned from dangerous acts of ‘social justice’

by Myrna Posted on December 4, 2012

Tim DeChristopher banned from dangerous acts of ‘social justice’

By Susie Cagle

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher, who was locked up for 15 months for disrupting an auction of oil and gas leases on public land, is now out of prison and trying to put his life back together. As part of that effort, DeChristopher secured a job at a First Unitarian Church — that is, until the Federal Bureau of Prisons stepped in.

Cliff LyonTim DeChristopher.

DeChristopher wasn’t seeking a job in oil leasing or even environmental activism — fields related to his “crime.” But the feds, in their infinite wisdom, put their feet down. “You know what, we’ve been too easy on these hippies and their subversive jobs at churches.”

From the Deseret News:

DeChristopher had been offered a job with the church’s social justice ministry, which would include working with cases of race discrimination, sex discrimination or other injustices that fall contrary to Unitarian beliefs.

“The Bureau of Prisons official who interviewed Tim indicated he would not be allowed to work at the Unitarian church because it involved social justice and that was what part of what his crime was,” [DeChristopher’s attorney Patrick] Shea said.

Ken Sanders, proprietor of a downtown rare books store, instead offered DeChristopher a job as a clerk. That employment has been deemed “safe,” Shea confirmed.

Oh god, but what’s in the books? Science, economics, politics? What’s in the books???

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