Good Lord, if you thought Joshua Foust's post on Pussy Riot was awful, you should see the posts of the other Registanis Sarah Kendzior and Casey Michel.

They're all beside themselves that a worldwide protest movement is underway about a case in Russia that frontally challenges Putin's rule and the Kremlin's hideous practices, and that the international media is giving Pussy Riot saturation coverage. It annoys them no end that Putin is coming in for this beating — although they don't really "do" Russia, they want to be the one to administer any beatings — in appropriately small and pragmatic doses — and do it the "right way" — while accomplishing their other everlasting goal — denigrating Western intellectuals who protest against dictators.

What is WRONG with these people?!

Kendzior goes on and on like an undergraduate paper in feminist critical theory, castigating the "narrative" and the "frame" of the Western media in covering the trial, because they've "objectived" the women. Gosh, you'd think this was a tabloid of the 1940s with lurid tales of being "sold into white slavery" or something. Yes, the media commented on the women's cuteness or vulnerability or accentuated their femininity. Don't they always? Isn't that why we hear about Michelle Obama's dresses and become engrossed in the hair-do of an Olympic star? So what? That's the way of the world and the mass media. Thank God that despite the best efforts of the Center for American Progress and bloggers like Mark Adamonis and Kevin Rothrock at Global Voices/A Good Treaty, people are seeing through the scrim of enforced "moral equivalency" and finding that yes, Russia is worse, and worse in a really bad way for these women.

The main thing is that *there is coverage* and that the Kremlin is *getting a much-needed, long-awaited challenge, and that's a good thing.* You would never know it from the Registanis. And since when do they do Russia?!

But Kendzior is in an absolute lather of what can only be described as Pussy envy over the attention this case is getting — without her approval, and going against a target she never, ever criticizes — the Kremlin:

At a protest rally
in New York, celebrities like Chloe Sevigny pretended to be Pussy Riot
members (a tribute yet to be paid to Kasparov or Khodorovsky) while fans
proclaimed to feel their pain. “Pussy Riot makes me feel like, I can
imagine being thrown in jail for doing absolutely nothing,” said one
attendee. Well, no, actually, she won’t, but it is not about reality, it
is about a Western fantasy of relevance and dissent. “Punk matters”,
claim legions of articles on Pussy Riot, with the subtext:  “I matter,
too.”  And so around the world, we have Pussy Riot reenactments, Pussy
Riot sublimations – protests free from arrest or anxiety, isolated from
historical and political context.

Again, since when has Kendzior ever cared about Kasparov or Khodorovsky? Concern-trolling all the way here. And what's wrong with a movie star empathizing in this way with Russian women who really shouldn't be thrown in jail for their protest action? Absolutely nothing. This is like Akhmatova at The Crosses — "can you describe this?" Kendzior makes it sounds like Pussy reenactments are something tawdry or tacky — and worse, analytically correct because they are "isolated from historical and poltiical context".

Can she stop being a second-rate anthropologist for one moment and see the reality here?! The world is paying attention to a really bad thing in Russia — good! The press is giving it saturation coverage — good! The world's intellectuals and celebrities are taking notice — good! It doesn't matter if they do this superficially or without layers of nuance and special knowledge about lesser known cases or "realities" — what matters is they are making the kind of human moral protest that the cynics at Registan never, ever make — and should be ashamed of themselves for.

Kendzior can't resist not only moralizing but morally-equalizing the objectification and denigration of the Russian women in the setting of Russia — which is profound — with the kind of titilating press the Western journalists can give by referring to the women as pale or suffering or beautiful — although really, I haven't seen that in the mainstream press and Kendzior is really stretching here, and there's a huge difference between being sent to jail over a medieval concept like "blasphemy" and pilloried in public by  judges who question feminism and… being called pretty by an American journalist, you know?

Kendzior can't resist distracting with more lit-crit analysis — she should stick to anthropology — and puts the word "innocent" in scare quotes, as if there's some dark undertow and we can't take the story at face value — that such punishment is not to be deserved. Petulantly, she cites the tweet of an Afghan journalist: "I wonder if #PussyRiot would get so much attention if they were a band of men called #DickMob" — who himself seems to have a problem with Russian women getting attention for their cause which ought to be his cause as well if he is a liberal.

What's wrong with these people?!

"Removing Pussy Riot from the broader problem of political persecution in
Russia is a mistake, but the case also raises specific questions about
gender, media and politics," says Kendzior in the usual slapdash omnibus analysis for which Registan is infamous.

Er, nobody removed Pussy Riot from any "broader problem" — in fact, by seizing on this case, they've got their hands on all the broad problems of Russia — the lack of the rule of law, the misrule of Putin, the cosiness of the church with the powers that be, the reactionary parts of the public, etc. etc. If anything, Kendzior like the other Registanis seems to be irritated that the people around the world taking up this case with such vigour have gotten it all too well — and have ran ahead without her to focus on the real problem — Putin — and not Blame America First. Good!

Then there's the post by Casey Michel, the former Peace Corps volunteer, who seems, like the other former Peace Corps types around Registan, to favour softness on the regimes of the region and hardness on their Western critics and of course those hypocritical venal Western governments.

"Now that all the Pussy Riot-ing’s settled — and now that women’s rights orgs have been rerouted to more legitimate,
more pressing issues — it may be worth a step back to frame all of the
claims that have been knocked back and forth over the past few weeks," he pontificates.

Um, what? Why would any re-routing have to be done? This is a major case. It isn't major just for its own sake, it's emblematic of the problem of prosecution of "extremism" or "blasphemy" in Russia in general and the casual pandemic of punishment of "hooliganism". It exemplifies the absence of the rule of law in Russia in a hundred ways.

And good Lord, re-routing to the Todd Akin sillyness an example of something "more legitimate"? WTF?! In fact, Todd Akin said something that was true: pregnancy from rape *is* rare. The edge-casing around this relatively infrequent result of sexual assault which itself isn't the norm is merely politicking in election season. Todd Akin hasn't prevented anyone from getting an abortion and hasn't put anyone in jail for blasphemy. How could turning to his folly be "more legitimate"?! Only in the feverish minds of these "progressives".

Just as with Foust's unseemly slam on Magnitsky and the corruption "as he saw it," so Michel uses the discussion around Pussy Riot to slam previous cases of political persecution: "While Khodorkovsky and Kasparov can be legitimately portrayed as sifting
oligarchs and angry, arrogant pricks, the crimes of those Pussy Riot
‘sheroes’ were vibrant, obvious, and, most importantly, filmed."

Huh? "Angry, arrogant pricks?!" About people beaten and put in jail for contrived reasons? Wouldn't this be a better description of the bloggers at Registan?!

Michel then cites a poll that 75% of Russians want the Russian Orthodox Church to "stay out of politics" — the sort of fact that should make both Foust and Michel appreciate the Pussy Riot case far more than they do — but which instead, in that every-ready balancing act that these progressives engage in, prove cause for Michel to warble that while Putin's approval numbers are slipping, they're higher than Romney's or Obama's. No surprise there, given Putin's far greater control over the media, you know?!

Michel concedes that the Russian public seems to be getting more dissatisfied with Putin, according to the polls, but then he doubles back and finds this a reason to disparage the girl punk act in the same way Foust does ("they're not peasant women but…") and do a know-it-all twirl at the end:

The women imprisoned may have generated faux outrage among a few
has-been musicians — and consequent antipathy from knowledgeable
observers — but they may have also, in a way we’ll only know going
forward, catalyzed something. Their timing may be pure coincidence,
true. But their circus seems the latest reason for the growing distance
between Putin, the church, and the erstwhile flocks. And the more that
Putin slams the separation of church and state as a “primitive notion,” and the more Kirill insists on blessing
Putin’s moves and motivations, the more both institutions risk
tethering themselves to another organization that is increasingly
maligned, increasingly irrelevant, and, it appears, slowly sinking.

Um, has-been musicians' faux outrage? That's hardly what my Facebook feed is showing, with numerous Russian bloggers and columnists finding all kinds of ways to protest every aspect of the Pussy Riot case.  To hear Michel tell it, the problem of Pussy Riot is a kind of "divide" just like that "divide" between "that liberal" Medvedev and "that conservative" Putin. Putin is merely suffering from low oil prices, and if those raise, why, we won't see Pussy Riots anymore.

Like Foust, Michel also trips over his own knees to castigate the critics of Putin — Putin must be preserved, you see. And it's damn weird:

Those slacktivists carrying Pussy Riot as a pet cause diminished all
those hard-wrung realities of Navalny and Kasparov and Khodorkovsky and
Magnitsky. They turned the trial from a domestic farce into an
international one, and turned those previously legitimate concerns
facile. And while I think mere awareness still carries some merit — the
more who know, the more dominos may fall — all those musicians who
picked-and-chose this cause cut the actual complaints, and actual
travails, at the knees. One more reason to loathe the hipsters, and all
that.

Like…Casey Michel or Joshua Foust or any of them appreciated Navalny and the others? Didn't we just hear them called "pricks"?! Like this crowd has ever supported the Magnitsky Act?! There's absolutely no reason to "loathe" the hipsters who tuned in late and superficially to this story and didn't see its many layers of nuance and back story. They got the basic narrative — women unfairly punished for rebelling against a restrictive church entwined with the ruling powers — and they responded adequately — and good for them!