Saturday open thread for night owls: Can 'The Handmaid's Tale' change people's political views?

Wired magazine’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy ponders—Can The Handmaid’s Tale Change People’s Political Views?

HULU’S ADAPTATION OF Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian thriller in which a Christian theocracy overthrows the US government and forces fertile women to bear children for high-ranking government officials. It’s a premise that, reviewer Beth Elderkin notes, men find imaginative or improbable and women see as chillingly real. [...]

Writer Sara Lynn Michener agrees that the show hits close to home. She says that’s no coincidence, since Atwood based everything in the story on real historical events.

“It is not irrational for us to fear this, given that these are things that you can find in other cultures, or in our culture in different periods, or in our culture in the present,” she says.

Michener, who was raised by conservative Christians, wishes more people from that community would watch The Handmaid’s Tale, which she thinks might cause them to question some of their more extreme views. [...]

Reviewer Charley Locke agrees that The Handmaid’s Tale can help change people’s minds, which is why protesters have started dressing up in red robes like the ones in the show. [...]

• What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …

• Stop Trump and the Republicans from defunding public broadcasting, by Denise Oliver Velez


• Right-wing media politicize murder of NYPD officer to attack Black Lives Matter, Hillary and Obama, by Ian Reifowitz


• Trump’s ‘voter integrity’ panel is a joke—and a serious threat, by Sher Watts Spooner


• Were NPR tweets inciting revolution? One’s terrorist is the other’s revolutionary, by Egberto Willies


• A reason to believe and why this is important to the Democratic Party, by David Akadjian


• Someone you know has had a miscarriage. That’s a virtual guarantee, by Laura Clawson


• The GOP’s Holocaust sound byte bites back, by Jon Perr


• New poll offers deeper insight into what ails rural America, by David Jarman

• An Activists’ Calendar of Resistance Events

• Indivisible’s list of Resistance Events & Groups

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BLAST FROM THE PAST

At on this date in 2010—Federal Court Holds DOMA Unconstitutional:

In a pair of opinions issued this afternoon (Gill, Commonwealth), The Hon. Joseph L. Tauro agreed with Gill and the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] and held Section 3 of DOMA—the part forbidding federal benefits to same-sex couples—to be unconstitutional.

DOMA fails to pass constitutional muster even under the  highly deferential rational basis test. As set forth in detail below, this court is convinced that "there exists no fairly conceivable set of facts that could ground a rational relationship" between DOMA and a legitimate government objective. DOMA, therefore, violates core constitutional principles of equal protection.

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