The band, which has been active about fundraising for breast cancer since keyboardist Jenny Conlee’s bout with the disease, has decided to pull its support from Susan G. Komen For the Cure after that group made a clearly politicized decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood’s breast health work. Now, they’ll send the money they make from selling their Team Jenny t-shirts directly to Planned Parenthood’s Breast Health Emergency Fund. They’re not the only indie band taking action. The Mountain Goats, who are particularly politically active, warned their Twitter followers that “Pro-choice musicians, know that Komen for the Cure is now on the side of the bad guys.”

What’s particularly nice about the Decemberists’ action is that they’re not withdrawing the fight—they’re just giving their money to a direct service provider instead. Susan G. Komen for the Cure has a long list of bipartisan celebrity supporters, some of whom—like Neil Patrick Harris and Cynthia Nixon—have bigger national platforms than an indie band. Let’s hope some of them make the same decision, and help make it so Planned Parenthood is better off after losing Susan G. Komen’s support than they were before.

I appreciate the work that Susan G. Komen has done to make breast cancer a publicly discussable disease. But I also think that charities should have viable competitors to keep them honest. And for those of us who want a comprehensive approach to women’s health, and who want to give to a program that’s more about direct service and less about cancer culture and products, a reexamination of Susan G. Komen for the Cure is a healthy debate to be having and a spur to thoughtful philanthropy. It’s just too bad that Susan G. Komen for a Cure had to cut off aid to the women who need it most to get the conversation started.

In the comments on my Salon piece about The League, one commenter raised an objection I hear from time to time, often, to their credit, from men, that there’s no way to make a really funny rape joke. I should note first that everyone has different trigger levels, and I understand that some people will never be comfortable hearing jokes about sexual assault, and that position should be treated with the utmost respect. No one has the right to try to force anyone else to enjoy something. But I do think it’s possible that very carefully constructed and tightly targeted jokes can effectively reinforce the idea that rape is a horrible thing to do.

Take this bit, from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

Charlie is obviously not actually a professional “full-on rapist,” nor is their any suggestion that such a thing would be a good or admirable thing to be. The joke is about his own patheticness: he’s so afraid to admit what he actually does for a living that he lies, trying to say he’s a philanthropist, and then when he pronounces it wrong, he rolls with it even though saying he’s a rapist is vastly worse on every level than just telling his date that he works as a janitor. The routine doesn’t shame victims, it doesn’t mitigate the gravity of sexual assault, it just serves to dig Charlie, sweating and hornet-stung as he is, into an even deeper hole.
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