The White Male Establishment Will Not Save Us

The New York Times front page on March 25, 2019:

"MUELLER FINDS NO TRUMP-RUSSIA CONSPIRACY" is blasted in all-caps bold across the front page.

The New York Times front page on April 30, 2019:

A somewhat less conspicuous title, "Mueller Objected to Barr's Description of Russia Investigation's Findings."

Now, if Mueller objected to Barr's description, what might that say about how Mueller might feel about the accuracy of the paper of record, among many others, amplifying Barr's framing of his report?

Also, if a person obstructs a full investigation into whether a crime occurred - which it appears Trump did - and that investigation subsequently isn't able to establish that the crime occurred, is it actually an exoneration?

Factually, it is not. But, these are post-fact times and so many in our media are failing us. 

Also, this part of the latter NYT story made me chuckle and then cry (emphasis added):

"A central issue in the simmering dispute is how the public’s understanding of the Mueller report has been shaped since the special counsel ended his investigation and delivered his 448-page report on March 22 to the attorney general, his boss and longtime friend."

Goddess help anyone who thought a pair of Republican buddy-bros were going to pop in like Batman and Robin and save us from the misogynist white nationalist nightmare running our country. It's Mueller Time, indeed.

I like to think of this political moment we're in as America's Hindenberg era, particularly as those on the moderate-to-left side of the political spectrum act completely enamored with the notion that some elderly white establishment statesmen or another is going to save us. Mueller. Biden. Bernie.

What if, instead, we are the heroes we need. What if the conditions that led to Trump are varied and multi-faceted and cannot simply be solved by replacing one old white man with another?

We should be the streets right now demanding justice, as part of a mass movement. Why are we not?

Deep Thought of the Day

I know there's a lot going on right now, but sometimes I still think about whether the last time Dottie and Kit saw each other before the @AAGPBL Hall of Fame opening was that Peaches/Belles world series game where Dottie dropped the ball.

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) April 18, 2019

Yes, I'm ignoring a really big fucking elephant in the room that is the Mueller Report, but I don't know what else to say, really, other than that I'm sick to death of "I have to get the first, hottest take even before I read the entire report" being the norm among professional journalists. Yesterday, NPR was having reporters fumble through the report live, on-air pointing out bits and pieces they thought were maybe, perhaps, possibly important?

We don't need a fucking hot take - don't we get enough of that from Twitter? - and certainly not from public radio that is supposed to be better than the rest. We need facts and accountability. We need an honest narrative of what happened.

Talk about stuff, or whatever. Like, at what point do we just quit our jobs, buy a VW bus, and cross-country road trip it before the Oh-pocalypse?

I welcome the Oh-pocalypse. https://t.co/m0FqVA79Hp

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) April 19, 2019

Woo. I'm delirious.

If you're Hillary Clinton right now, how are you not just drinking vodka out of the cat dish all day long?

Stop Trying To Make "Partisan Prejudice" Happen

What is the moral imperative Americans have to "tolerate" people with with different political views than us, and in what contexts does this imperative extend?

The Atlantic ran a series of pieces last week on the concept of partisan prejudice implicitly arguing that Democrats ought to broadly "tolerate" Republicans in virtually all spheres of life, and vice versa.

It turns out I had some thoughts about these pieces, which I shared today over at Shakesville. Check it out!

Nah, I think We Will Scrutinize Comedians

Admitted workplace sexual harasser Louis CK continues to accept invitations to do "comedy" shows across the country. Most recently, he's in San Jose, California, joking about "retarded" people, dead babies, 9/11, and how he likes to masturbate in front of people.

What I want people to understand is that, at this point, when people watch Louis CK perform, they're no longer watching comedy.

They're watching a man be rewarded and applauded for banal cruelty while they maintain a collective pretense that his work is edgy, and they - the audience - are cerebral for "getting it" when other people "don't," when what they're all really doing is simply colluding together in rape culture.

Kudos to the people there protesting Louis CK's putrid, unapologetic presence.

It's certainly braver and more ethical than the statement put out by the folks at San Jose Improv, justifying giving this loser abuser a platform (emphasis added):

 “We want [artists] to perform without scrutiny,” according to the statement. “We trust that our audiences can decide for themselves what their limits are. We understand that not everyone will agree with our decision and we respect their right to protest. We also respect Louis C.K.’s right to perform.”

It's funny how it's never women, queers, and/or people of color who are given this special entitlement by the powers-that-be to perform "without scrutiny."  I mean wow. WOW.

On the Hashtag Resistance

From time to time, I think about the folks who deride, sneer at, and otherwise denigrate what they refer to as the hashtag resistance.

This happens on Twitter a lot. As folks across the political spectrum engage in this ridicule, a common bond is often, although not always, that its purveyors are straight white cisgender men.

With the Trump Administration disproportionately targeting those who are women, people of color, LGBTQ, disabled, immigrants, and/or poor, this ridicule is no coincidence, but part of a backlash to social justice activism and, especially, feminism. For one, many men, whether they will admit it or not, and regardless of political party, are likely following Trump's lead in the way that those on the center-to-left side of the political spectrum so often internalize Republican attacks and cruelty.

Is there a person who is on the left side of the political spectrum who would ever admit or acknowledge that they've been affected or swayed by Republican attacks and talking points?  Probably not, and yet.

Remember that rash of post-2016 election articles telling us to give up on identity politics since that's what led to Trump?

Let's also look at the way the right obsessively attacks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Many center-to-left folks love her, but over the years, we're going to see that change. Now, a change in popularity is bound to happen to any politician, but with a woman of color in the US, it's always going to be complicated and tainted by misogyny and racism. Rightwingers know this, and know that they can taint liberal-left politicians by simply putting attacks "out there" and letting them seep into the minds of receptive liberal-left audiences.

Also, millions of kids are growing up in conservative homes only learning the Fox News perspective that she is terrible. These kids will grow up to be voters one day, with some of them leaving behind their conservative roots and yet, how many of them will have echoes of the constant attacks against Ocasio-Cortez ringing through their heads?  There's just something about her, they'll say, they just can't fully trust or like.

We'll see.

And two, regarding the hashtag resistance, it's not straight white cisgender men who are leading it.  It's women, primarily. And, an eternal political question in the USA seems to be whether, if men are not at the center of a political movement, does it exist as all a serious phenomenon?

The men who are part of the hashtag resistance, meaning that they understand the reality that Democrats and Republicans have significant differences and they are not at all "the same," are also ridiculed, probably in no small part for their association with something associated with pink pussy hats and wine moms.

Consider a piece in bro-rag Vice, in which its author actually spent time curating "The Worst Anti-Trump #Resistance Pop Culture of 2018." His examples are things like Jim Carrey's art and JK Rowling's Twitter presence and oh who gives a fuck, why is this even a battle someone would want to fight right now? The big kicker, though, is his intro, in which he snarks:

"Donald Trump is a demonstrably corrupt and narcissistic con man. Two years into his presidency, this is not a novel thing to say. Actually, you would think that pointing out his loutish personal behaviour, destructive policies, or chaotic governing technique as if it were a new observation would be regarded with the same sort of derision reserved for people who still say Nickelback sucks. Yes, and your point is."

Yes yes. It's so interesting that many people - many women, including that crone Hillary Clinton - were warning about Trump more than two years ago and while so many media men stood around with their dicks in their hands, literally in some cases, they have now come to understand the danger and also, by the way, they don't think it's, like, even very interesting to point out anymore.In fact, it's so uninteresting to say nowadays, that anyone pointing it out ought to be mocked.

This sentiment has to be something pretty close to peak privilege these days.

Imagine thinking that, let alone putting it in writing, when Donald Trump's approval rating currently hovers around 42%, meaning literal millions of people actually do think he's doing an okay job and don't yet see or care that he's a con man. Contrary to this writer's dopey assertion, we don't actually have collective agreement in our nation, at all, about Donald Trump.

Trump fans approve of his cruelty. The indulge it, celebrate it, and engage in it themselves and, worse, they weaponize it via their votes and continued support of this man who is actively hostile toward marginalized people.

My point?

This Vice piece is part of a toxic online ecosystem that privileges the viral, marketable "hot take" over the accurate, but no longer new, statement of fact..

The center-to-left Cool Guy on the Internet mockers of the hashtag resistance never seem to care about what a gift their smackdowns of a woman-led movement are to the millions of rabid, bigoted Trump fans that exist in the US. They don't have to, because so much of politics is an abstraction to them, an ironic joke to make, or a quippy, one-liner re-tweet that he desperately hopes will help him build his Twitter brand.

Entertaining is the point, rather than informing.

Which, coincidentally, is also how the normalization of Trump has functioned.

No, You Don't Have To "Tolerate" Nazi "Free Speech"

Today at Shakesville, I have a piece up about "free speech" and the tolerance trap:

"What if all of your abstract adherence to 'anything goes' free speech for, and liberal 'tolerance' of, bigots isn't principled at all; it's just a reflection of your own comfort with a bigoted status quo and your discomfort with taking a stand against abusers?"

 Read the whole thing!

On McCain: Something To Ponder

As the mainstream media breathlessly falls ass-over-heels onto its fainting couch detailing all the real and imagined indignities Donald Trump inflicts upon the honor of John McCain.

They are still chanting "lock her up" at Trump rallies, but look at how appalled mainstream pundits are at how Trump is treating a white conservative man.

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) August 27, 2018

I really have nothing else to say except to note that, while yes there's a lot of news these days, it will never not be sickening to see mass displays of ahistorical insta-memoriams of dead conservative white men.

The bar is. so. fucking. low.

More Thoughts on Playing the Woman Card

I have a new piece up over at Shakesville on the parallels between female trial attorneys and politicians, and what it means to "play the woman card." A snippet:

"The legitimate critiques of progressive female politicians also often serve as a gateway rationale for 'progressive' misogynists to hold female politicians to vastly higher standards than their male opponents and, ultimately, dismiss them from consideration altogether.

You know how it goes, I'd vote for a woman, just not that woman. 

It's why I will always believe that Donald Trump was the candidate for many of the men who didn't care if people called him a misogynist. Bernie Sanders was the candidate for many of the men who did. Sometimes I wonder how much of The One True Revolution is built upon the reality that many misogynists who were anti-Trump simply needed, and found, in Bernie Sanders a candidate who wasn't the woman. But, when white men continue to dominate the narration of US politics, who within the mainstream media will tell you that?"

 Check out the whole thing.

A Personal Twitter Update

I've deleted Twitter from my phone.

I may install it again, but my main goal in deleting it was to at least temporarily prevent myself from compulsively checking it, while observing any change in my attitude, perceptions of the news, and my own mental state.

So far, it's been highly liberating (even though, yes, I do check it via computer).

As I mentioned last week, news happens very fast on Twitter, along with lightning-fast "takes" and misinformation. Twitter largely, for me, has become something of a time suck in which I observe a steady stream of people reacting (which I guess is the point), but the reactions themselves are often strongly-negative while also being somehow incredibly-fleeting.

It's not all bad. But, in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, I wrote that people on social media, especially Twitter, seemed to have been having different experiences and perceptions of Election 2016 than people who were not. We now know, of course, that some of the skewing of perception and the shit-stirring was intentionally cultivated by Russian agents and Cambridge Analytica, among others.

"Today on Twitter, the President said" is just a thing that we read and hear and see over and over and over again because it is also now completely normalized within the mainstream media that Donald Trump recklessly and incompetently broadcasts his democracy-destroying utterances and warmongering provocations via his Goebbels-Schnauze, while the press largely seems to be very impressed that he speaks so "directly" to the citizenry of the world, unlike that deceptive she-bot who ran against him.

I also find that I am not always remembering some of the outrages from months ago, not because they are not horrible, but because they are so, so many. So much that I sometimes think, my god, how can we ever dig ourselves out of this? Can this ever become unbroken?

To maintain my hope, I cannot have these thoughts be the first and last that I reach for at my nightstand.

A Reminder: (Mis)Information Spreads Fast

Melissa Jeltsen at Huffington Post has written a piece about the prosecution of Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. In it, she notes, "Every mass tragedy begets a frantic search for answers, for a common understanding of what happened, for a narrative, and the 2016 Pulse massacre was no different."

This happens very, very fast on Twitter, in particular.

People first learn of an event, then they immediately begin crafting a narrative based on initial news reports that are not always accurate, and then the narratives start going viral. Information and misinformation spreads much more quickly than investigations occur offline. Narratives get even more complicated when the situation involves victims and perpetrators who are all members of different marginalized groups.

I'm thinking most recently of the tragedy of the Hart family, all of whom are believed to be dead after their car was found crashed off the Pacific Coast Highway, and in which the Twitter consensus seems to be that two women hatched a Thelma & Louise conspiracy to murder their family, even though - as just one of several other possible explanations - one of them could also be a victim of spousal abuse and/or murder.

Jeltsen continues, regarding the Pulse shooting:

"A Muslim woman who by her family’s account was beaten by Mateen, Salman might have been a sympathetic figure in a different context. But I think now of Bob Kunst’s sign. A longtime human rights activist, Kunst was protesting outside the federal courthouse, just two miles from the nightclub where the tragedy occurred, as Salman’s trial began. 'FRY’ HER,' his sign read, 'TILL SHE HAS NO ‘PULSE.'  It didn’t seem to occur to many people that Noor Salman might have been a victim of Mateen, too.

Salman’s trial cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen. There was no evidence he was a closeted gay man, no evidence that he was ever on Grindr. He looked at porn involving older women, but investigators who scoured Mateen’s electronic devices couldn’t find any internet history related to homosexuality. (There were daily, obsessive searches about ISIS, however.) Mateen had extramarital affairs with women, two of whom testified during the trial about his duplicitous ways.

Mateen may very well have been homophobic. He supported ISIS, after all, and his father, an FBI informant currently under criminal investigation, told NBC that his son once got angry after seeing two men kissing. But whatever his personal feelings, the overwhelming evidence suggests his attack was not motivated by it.

As far as investigators could tell, Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statement that Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex. They presented evidence demonstrating that Mateen chose Pulse randomly less than an hour before the attack. It is not clear he even knew it was a gay bar. A security guard recalled Mateen asking where all the women were, apparently in earnest, in the minutes before he began his slaughter."

I want to be clear that I see queer people's terror (including my own) in response to the Pulse shooting as entirely legitimate. All narratives aside, the facts at hand in the immediate aftermath were that Mateen did indeed slaughter people at a gay bar, and living in a society that constantly tells you that you are less than for being queer, this type of tragedy is horrifying and seems very obviously targeted at you.

Yet, Jeltsen documents the swift carelessness with which mainstream media outlets began linking Salman to the crime (Sample New York Post headline: "She could have saved them all"). Here, how might have implicit and explicit biases against Muslims informed the widely-believed narrative that Mateen and his wife were co-conspirators in a targeted hate crime against gays?

How many people have been misinformed about a myriad of facts in the two years since the tragedy occurred? How many people will ever have their perceptions or knowledge of this tragedy corrected?

Columbia Journalism Review on the 2016 Election Media Coverage

It's not just that the political narratives in the 2016 election that were most amplified were those written by prominent media men (including prominent harassers, predators, and rapists), it's that the mainstream media overwhelmingly covered Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, as well as the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta hacks, far more than they covered her (or Trump's) policy positions.

I'm guessing for many readers, that is not a startling revelation. 

However, a recent Columbia Journalism Review article argues that this flawed coverage by the mainstream media, and professional journalists, had far more influence on the election than "fake news." I suspect that's probably correct, mostly given the reach of the mainstream media compared to "fake news," although I do think "fake news" helped tip the scales toward Trump.

Here's a snippet of the article, referring to just The New York Times' coverage from September 1, 2016 up to the election day, November 8, 2016 (emphasis added):

"Of the 150 front-page articles that discussed the campaign in some way, we classified slightly over half (80) as Campaign Miscellaneous. Slightly over a third (54) were Personal/Scandal, with 29 focused on Trump and 25 on Clinton. Finally, just over 10 percent (16) of articles discussed Policy, of which six had no details, four provided details on Trump’s policy only, one on Clinton’s policy only, and five made some comparison between the two candidates’ policies."

1% of front-page articles in The New York Times covered Hillary Clinton's policies.

If you followed Clinton's campaign, read her website, listened to her speeches, and read What Happened, as I did, you would know that she had many policy positions. She had also prepared policy binders, ready to go, so she could get right to work had she won.

It's been a popular talking point for those across the political spectrum to say that Clinton had "no policies," or that all she offered was that she "wasn't Trump." That has always been inaccurate. Hillary Clinton had policies, the media just liked to talk about everything but those policies.


Where is the accountability and what would that even look like here?

On Matt Lauer: "But Her Emails" As Misogynistic Pretext

Here is Hillary Clinton, in an excerpt from What Happened:

"[Matt] Lauer promised the [Commander in Chief Forum] would be an opportunity to 'talk about national security and the complex global issues that face our nation.' That's exactly what I wanted. With Election Day just two months away, it was time to have a serious discussion about each candidate's qualifications to be President and how he or she would lead the country."

Clinton goes on to detail how she loves talking about foreign policy and looked forward to demonstrating that she was ready to be Commander in Chief, unlike Donald Trump, who was "dangerously unprepared."

Yet, when she took the stage with Lauer, who was moderating the one-on-one discussion, she describes how he interrupted her to talk about the media's favorite topic of the 2016 election:

"I've been around the block enough times to know that something bad was coming. Lauer had the look of someone proud of himself for having laid a clever trap.

'The word judgment has been used a lot around you, Secretary Clinton, over the last year and a half, and in particular concerning your use of your personal email and server to communicate while you were Secretary of State, Lauer said. 'You've said it's a mistake. You said you made not the best choice. You were communicating on highly sensitive topics. Why wasn't it more than a mistake? Why wasn't it disqualifying, if you want to be Commander In Chief?'"

This line of questioning comes in the context of the US media covering Clinton's "emails" for 600 straight days, even though the FBI found no criminal wrongdoing.

It also comes in the context of multiple senior staff members in the Trump Administration using a private email system, something that has been known for almost a year now with barely a blip on the media radar. It also comes in the context of the State Department remaining "dangerously understaffed" because Donald Trump doesn't seem to know or care about the importance of diplomatic positions to our national security.

In What Happened, Clinton describes the media's reckless pursuit of false equivalence between herself and Trump. Everyone knew that Trump would have difficulty answering even the most simple questions about national security or foreign policy. Yet, Matt Lauer and the mainstream media helped blur the important distinctions between the candidates by exaggerating the importance of "the emails."

So, there's the pursuit of false equivalence, but there's also the reality that, as I wrote back in March, our political narratives are disproportionately written by men, "who receive 62% of byline and other credits in print, Internet, TV, and wire news."

I didn't know it then, but something of a reckoning was headed our way.

As Melissa noted earlier today at Shakesville, Matt Lauer has just been fired after an allegation that he sexually harassed a colleague, in what may not have been an isolated event.  I strongly believe that the way men treat women reveals how they think about women specifically, and gender and power relations more broadly. These views, in turn, shape the way they speak and write to and about women.

That is to say, once again, misogyny is a national vulnerability. I believe this was on display, on all places, at the Commander In Chief Forum, where a man deigned to express concern about our national security while his treatment of Hillary Clinton on the public stage undermined it.

"But her emails" was always about misogyny.

Quote of the Day: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in "Donald Trump is the First White President," is worth reading in full, but here's a snippet. After noting that Donald Trump won every class-based group of whites, he writes:

"The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump’s presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of."

Of course, the focus on the white working class - particularly men - is not puzzling at all.

White men dominate the media narratives across the political spectrum. The white male media elite were largely enamored, entertained, and/or fascinated by the rise of the two angry white male populists who ran in the 2016 election. Many of these men, in the wake of their complicity, now demand that we ditch identity politics, stop listening to Hillary Clinton, and/or stop saying accurate things about Bernie Sanders because Trump is the "true" enemy.

We were close, in 2016.

We know how scared so many men were because of how they are acting now, desperate to stay at the center of all things.

NYT "Q&A" on Abortion and Democrats

Want to know what's perfect for the year 2017?

Two men posting a "Q&A" session at The New York Times about "How Democrats Can Stop Being Perceived as the Abortion Party," in which they highlighted and responded to reader comments on this topic.

AND

Out of 2,500 reader comments from which to choose, these men chose to highlight this contribution to the discourse first:

Hillary Clinton "lost because her campaign was horrible." Nevermind that she received more than votes than any white man in the history of the United States. Let's give this rando a platform, so we can likewise give two dudes the opportunity to respond, about abortion, and then proceed to dominate and frame a fauxbective conversation about a topic that disproportionately impacts women's bodily autonomy.

It is the year 2017.

Women's reproductive autonomy is still up for debate. Many times, women don't even get to participate as thought leaders in the debate on the world's biggest platforms. There's your liberal "fake news" media for ya.

A Glimpse Into Something Far Worse

Do Team Trump's connections to Russia rise to a Watergate-level scandal?  Is the full scope of this ongoing saga much, much worse and more than what we currently know?

I briefly explore the connections today, over at Shakesville.

Election 2016 Fallout Part 4: Normalization

(4) On normalizing Trump.

Here is a reminder that the normalization of Trump started during the primaries, continued during the general, and will escalate in the coming days, weeks, and months. Never forget:

Remember how cute this was? pic.twitter.com/7Ritk6QacX

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) November 9, 2016

We must resist this normalization, always.

That upchuck you taste in your mouth every time you hear the phrase "President-elect Trump"? Never take antacid for that. Your reaction is what it is for a reason and that reason is self-preservation.

Which brings me to the Huffington Post, that stalwart establishment of new media.

During general election season, HuffPo correctly added an editorial note to articles featuring Trump, highlighting his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. On Nov. 9, 2016, they announced they would stop doing so, suggesting that to call a spade a spade would taint the legitimacy of the Presidency in a way similar to how birtherism tainted Obama's tenure. Yes, seriously, they found it appropriate to make a most deplorable moral equivalence:

"....[T]hroughout the entire administration of Barack Obama, a segment of the Republican coalition, led by Trump, questioned the very legitimacy of his presidency, breaking from a long-held American tradition. 
 
We’re not going to do the same. Whether we like it or not ― and let’s continue to be honest, we don’t ― he won the election. It was a win that was at once foreseeable ― yet one we failed badly to see.

Where we find fault in how Trump governs, we won’t hesitate to call it out. If he encroaches on the norms of our democracy, if he targets minority groups or other vulnerable elements of the population, we won’t hesitate to say so loudly and clearly. If he follows his worst instincts and caters to the klatch of white supremacists who endorsed him, we won’t flinch from calling him racist. But we have hope that the man we saw on the trail at his worst moments is not the man who will enter the White House.

If Trump can reverse the economic inequality he decried during his campaign, bring back manufacturing jobs, find a way to give people better healthcare for less money, invest in infrastructure to stimulate the economy and otherwise make the country great, we’ll cheer him on. We’ll find out."

Nope to the nope nope nope-ity fucking nope.

Even if Trump does some good while President, that does not negate the harm he has done during the 18 months of his deplorable campaign, the fear he has instilled, and the bigots who have mobilized in his name. He has done nothing to atone for that. He has not owned the pain he has caused. He has not apologized for anything. He is stacking his cabinet with unrepetant racists and xenophobes, just like we knew he would. Trump is a predator dumpster fire of a person who is 70 and will not now magically become a better, classy guy.

And god, the cruelty.

"For all her faults" was Hillary Clinton's middle name for the past 18 months because we could forgive her for nothing. But, for a man - this man- all is instantly forgiven, erased, white-washed so we can "give him a chance." Wouldn't want to ruin a promising young man's career, after all. Can't we all just get along and see what happens?

No. I reject this narrative. I cannot stress enough how profoundly I want to be excluded from this narrative.

(Also, FML if Trump starts rounding up critics. Nice knowing ya'll!)

Lastly, remember that this normalization of Trump will make other Republicans who are no less deplorable, yet who are more subtle in their bigotries, seem normal, decent, and better by comparison.

Remember that they are not.

That Michael Moore Movie

As fawningly described by Richard Brody in The New Yorker:

Moore’s prime argument for Hillary is an argument from character. The first good thing that he can say about Hillary Clinton is that she likes him. He refers to the chapter “My Forbidden Love for Hillary” from his 1996 book “Downsize This!” and describes the White House dinner to which he was invited as a result—in particular, dwelling on the frank and surprisingly specific enthusiasm that Bill Clinton expressed for Moore’s work and the even greater show of enthusiasm with which Hillary followed it. The apparent element of vanity actually plays exactly in the opposite direction—what Moore’s doing here, deftly, is endowing Hillary with longstanding progressive bona fides, bringing her alongside him to share in his fan base. (emphasis added)

Oh god.

Okay, three things:

1)  I likely will not watch the movie. Why? I don't seem to be its target audience. I already like Hillary. I already think she is progressive. Why? Because I've listened to her and am informed about her. And, more to the point, I don't need a man to vouch for her in order for me to trust her.

2) Note "the first good thing" Michael Moore can say about Hillary Clinton: She likes him.

Jeeeeeeeeeesus.

And how does Richard Brody frame this "good thing" about Hillary Clinton? Well, I'll say this. Leave it to the male gaze to frame Michael Moore liking Hillary Clinton because she's ostensibly a Michael Moore fangirl as "deft" filmmaking rather than Trump-like narcissism.

3) But, if that wasn't clear enough for you, welcome to the *jazz hands* Michael Moore Show:

Some note it was my post in July, the 5 reasons Trump could win, that lit a fire under millions 2 take this seriously & get busy. Ur welcome https://t.co/el0W1ue6Nw

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 9, 2016

"Ur welcome."

Sure bro. If you say so.

In case there was any uncertainty as to why many feminists distrust leftier-than-thou "progressive" political figures in the US of the Sanders/Stein/brocialist vein, here is a clue. This attempted narrative that Michael Moore has uniquely "lit a fire" under people to take the US presidential election seriously erases the women, especially women of color, who comprise Hillary's base, who are and have been her most enthusiastic supporters, and who have trusted and backed her even when Moore was supporting Bernie Sanders over her. 

Many of us have always been taking this race seriously, viewing Trump not through the lens of abstraction or entertainment, but as a genuine threat to democracy, bodily autonomy, and human dignity.

This is not to say Moore has not had an impact, but man oh man. There is a saying women sometimes hear when people feel that we've gotten too uppity and it usually goes something like "get over yourself." I suggest that it might apply to Moore in this case, even though men are of course given far greater latitude than women to self-promote and exaggerate their influence, competence, and skills.

So, before we let him re-write history (before it's even been written I might add - are we all getting a leeeetle bit ahead of ourselves here with the Election 2016 post-mortems?), I'd like to give credit to some of the writers, public figures, and people in the TV/film industry who I think have been pretty darn impactful in terms of lighting fires under the populace (not a comprehensive list, so add to it if you will):

Shonda Rhimes, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders (...eventually, via his endorsement), Cecile Richards, Kerry Washington, Khizr Khan, Hillary Clinton's social media and Twitter team who have been on point all year, The Washington Post's Election 2016 Fact Checker, Melissa McEwan/Peter Daou and colleagues at Shareblue, the dozens of editors of major newspapers across the US who have officially endorsed Clinton, Lindy West, the Broad City gals, Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Silverman, Kate McKinnon, and even whoever made that Shaquille O'Neal shimmy gif.

I mean how do you even end this list or sufficiently quantify it, really?

There are indeed so many people, too many people to name here, perhaps, but it's a start. The larger point is that I won't stand by while late-to-the-party Michael Moore writes his own Great Man Narrative about his own critical role in securing victory for our first female President.

The Cheese Stands Alone?

Hillary Clinton is too distant, says conservative man using his New York Times platform to pen an intimate, humanizing portrayal of an authoritarian predator.

I've seen even liberals approvingly cite David Brooks' recent column on Trump, cited above, but my summary is really the big take-away I get from it.

Brooks asks us repeatedly to imagine that we are Trump and how pathetic and sad that must be, and that, if/when Trump loses he'll be all alone in his isolated misery.

No.

Let's take a step back.

Shortly after California's anti-gay Proposition 8 passed in 2008, a professional class of "marriage defenders" started increasingly framing themselves as a "civil" voice of opposition to marriage equality, in contrast to, say, Fred Phelps and his more obviously hateful clan. The role of these groups, such as National Organization for Marriage, seemed to be, in part, to convince courts, legislatures, and the populace that opposition to marriage equality was not rooted in bigotry but, rather, in a mere nicey-nice belief that all children deserved a mother and a father.

An expression of this purportedly non-bigoted belief can be found in the book What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, by Robert George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan Anderson. Sample: "Marriage is a comprehensive union of two sexually complementary persons who seal (consummate or complete) their relationship by the generative act."

While perhaps sounding innocuous, it wasn't really one that most non-professional, non-paid, non-academic opponents of marriage equality would cite for opposing same-sex marriage. Rather, such "regular people" were more likely to express varying levels of disapproval of homosexuality or, what we often think of as, bigotry.  (Sample: Homosexuality is wrong and society shouldn't condone it by allowing gays to marry).

I have a long, 10+ year, history of engaging with anti-equality folks on Internet. And, it's my strong belief that the professional class of marriage defenders knew that their base was bigoted, leveraged this bigoted base in support of various anti-gay measures, and simultaneously acted outraged at all suggestions that their base was bigoted. (Sample: some writing I did at Family Scholars Blog awhile back on civility in the context of same-sex marriage debates).


With Supreme Court doctrine articulating that animus toward homosexuality could no longer be an acceptable basis for law, it was incumbent upon professional marriage defenders to gaslight LGB people about the very real bigotry we experience.  And, these marriage defense think-tankers often did so while pulling down six-figure salaries, book deals, and speaking gigs themselves.

You know what else they did? Convinced their poor- and middle-class bigots that same-sex marriage was going to doom the country.

Hmmm, we have marriage equality now so what happened to all that?

I think many people are realizing that same-sex marriage has had little, if any, tangible impact on the lives of most of its opponents, other than that people now live in a society that is more accepting of it. So what benefits, if any, did the marriage defense establishment tangibly provide for its base, in the long run?

So, coming back to the present.

In a similar vein, Republicans have long articulated deplorable beliefs in subtle, dog-whistle ways, knowing that their base has various bigotries. Racism. White supremacy. Anti-Muslim sentiment. Misogyny. Transphobia. The Republican establishment has leveraged these bigotries for their own benefit, giving cover to a base that holds more explicitly deplorable views, while also doing very little for this base. They've effectively stoked rage and, because they've done nothing to assuage it, have also created the conditions for anti-establishment sentiment. 

Republicans and conservatives now seek to distance themselves from Trump. As David Brooks does, they fantasize that Donald Trump is perhaps an uncommon, rogue, lone wolf not representative of the base they've long catered to.

Yet, he's exactly who Republicans have enabled to become the leader of their raging pack.

And, if/when he loses, the Republican establishment may abandon Trump to his incompetent, man-child misery.  It seems doubtful, however, that Trump's millions of supporters and fans will also do so.

Important Ghostbusters Update

[Content note: Spoilers-allowed thread; discussion of abuse, racism, sexism]

Okay, consider this post an open Ghostbusters thread!

I saw it over the weekend and loved it!  Where I saw it, the people in the packed theater laughed pretty much non-stop and, broke out into applause twice, once after Holtzman's fight scene (if you've seen it, you know which one probs) and at the end of the movie.

Highlights for me include:

• In general, I enjoy portrayals of female friendship. Such portrayals in TV and film are relatively rare. Ghostbusters does more than a bare-bones passing of The Bechdel Test, it portrays women as part of team, working together instead of fighting one another for status or male attention;
• I liked each of the female leads and what they brought to their characters (especially Kate McKinnon, obvs); and
• It's just a fun movie - gadgets, ghosts, jokes, action - yes please;

I mean, I really don't have anything deep to say, because like the original, it's not a super deep movie. So, imagine all of the people outraged by it, such as the raging nerd man-boys who have all the sads and mads that the movie didn't bomb its opening weekend (it came in at about $46 million, number two, right behind The Secret Life of Pets).

Apparently, but not surprisingly if you follow Internet culture at all, men are tanking the Internet ratings of Ghosbusters, because that's how they're gonna spend their free time apparently.  Via Walt Hickey at 538:

Here are a few stats I collected early Thursday for the new “Ghostbusters” movie: 

IMDb average user rating: 4.1 out of 10, of 12,921 reviewers
IMDb average user rating among men: 3.6 out of 10, of 7,547 reviewers
IMDb average user rating among women: 7.7 out of 10, of 1,564 reviewers 

The movie isn’t even out in theaters as I’m writing this, but over 12,000 people have made their judgment. Male reviewers outnumber female reviewers nearly 5 to 1 and rate “Ghostbusters” 4 points lower, on average.

And, one popular misogynistic garbage fire wrote a bitter, scathing review of the movie, contending (as other MRA-types have) that the movie unfairly portrays men as morons and villains.  To prove how non-villainous men are, a bunch of (primarily) men began sending racially-abusive Tweets to Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones:

Ok I have been called Apes, sent pics of their asses,even got a pic with semen on my face. I'm tryin to figure out what human means. I'm out

— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 18, 2016

If you're up for it, a hashtag in support of Jones was started: #LoveForLeslieJ

No one should have to endure this shit.  But, such is the outrage that women and people of color so often face when white men aren't the center of pop culture.

It's like they can't just let the people who like this movie like it, they have to try to spoil it for everyone.  It's reminiscent to me of the MRAs who do no actual advocacy for men, but who instead just sit back and rail at feminists for not doing enough to solve all of the problems facing men.  Free labor on gender issues is apparently feminist work, while they just constantly throw obstacles and harassment in our path to increase the difficulty setting in our lives.

Got entitlement?

Lesbian Vote Achievement Unlocked (n=1)

All of these women are everything. Check out Kate Mckinnon doing battling impressions of Hillary Clinton and Ellen DeGeneres, right in front of them

.

 Also, I. would. die. if I was being fought over by Hillary and Ellen.

 Annnnd, just to fully capture the zeitgiest for the sake of posterity, the cast of the upcoming all-female Ghostbusters reboot were on the very same same episode of Ellen that Hillary Clinton was on. They too were the proverbial "everything."

 Ba-bam.