Is the Royal Family's Comms Broken?

 

#KateMiddleton seemed to be in good spirits while out and about with #PrinceWilliam Saturday. https://t.co/kLUsfvt3b2 (🎥: TMZ/The Sun) pic.twitter.com/EqbtVojBcw

— TMZ (@TMZ) March 18, 2024

I am not a celebrity follower in general and in my world, this is what the Royal Family is to me--like, reality stars and not people who actually influence things. That said, something is very really broken here--because my social media is blowing up with "fake, fake, fakity, fake" regarding every attempt the Windsors are making at pretending all is well.

 Now, doing protocol or press is not my forte, but the Royal Fam could have just issued a statement like, a few weeks ago, that said "The Princess of Wales is still recuperating from her surgery and is unavailable for press and other events, but she appreciates the affection and well wishes she has received and looks forward to greeting with the public again as soon as she is able. In the meanwhile, please respect her privacy as she works towards her recovery."

Nonspecific but optimistic. No time frames. Appreciative but setting boundaries.

The Trump White House handled Melania's kidneys ever so much better, and they were a clusterfuck. What the whole entire hell? 

This weirdness is what makes it feel like, somewhere, someone is shitting the bed. If there's something badly amiss that can't be said--say nothing. Do nothing. Do not fake things are okay It's worse, so much worse for people to feel lied to than for them to just hear a permissible silence. Discretion--not deception. 

TWGB: Who is the Fairest One of All?

 

Donald Trump is very jealous that Taylor Swift is prettier than him and has a football player boyfriend and is the Time Magazine Person of the Year. And she did it all herself.  So he wants to send his flying monkeys to let her know he IS SO more popular than her. He was president once you know, and probably still has papers in his possession that prove it! He's still BIG. It's just the Deep State and the Lying Media's fault he looks SMALL. 

He'll show them! He's ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille! 

Just, maybe not so close. And with a bit of a filter, And with so much makeup it looks like he's applying shoe polish to his face. 

Deciding he needs to go after a female pop star just after a hefty defamation decision against him sounds like just the sort of beef he would get into. Being appalling to women is one of his hobbies, after all. And consider that it's women who are or would be giving and have given him the most trouble. The nasty Hillary Clinton, who first pegged him as a national security threat and his followers as a basket of deplorables. Nancy Pelosi of the two impeachments. Letitia James. Fani Willis. Nikki Haley. Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, Tanya Chutkan... 

Look! A Shark!

 

For some reason, James Woods is threatening to sue the DNC for trying to take down his deeply meaningful Twitter post about Hunter Biden's penis because it retroactively got "Shark" cancelled and made him terribly unpopular, even if he was brilliant at playing such diverse roles as Byron De La Beckwith, Rudy Giuliani, and the sleazy boyfriend of the wife in Casino. 

Except I guess he was kind of like just being himself in roles as gross people?  Maybe just being extended universe versions of the smarmy AP teacher in Welcome Back Kotter isn't sustainable. Maybe too many anecdotes about being abusive existed. 

Anyway, I don't think the DNC is to blame for him not getting the same kind of roles as he used to at his age. I don't even understand how the take-down of a post violating Twitter's TOS undermines his whole entire career. 

I guess they rigged his votes.  That must be it. 

Kanye and Consequences

 

Sometimes people talk about "cancel culture" as really being "consequence culture"--you have a right to free speech, but not consequence-free speech. The picture above depicts banners unfurled over a busy highway (the 404 in LA) reading: "Honk if you know", "Kanye is right about the Jews", and "Goyim TV TV Rev. 3:9 John 8:44." They were put up there by a notorious hate group: the Goyim Defense League. They are appalling, not amusing, and they are inspired by the inane ramblings of an irresponsible man with a big bullhorn.

So, they are amplifying what Kanye said--to amplify their own message of hate. Kanye sympathized with their message, and they are showing him the exact sort of love he should have expected, because of course, other haters were going to notice.

Who else notices? People who see that banner in their community and feel a tightness in their stomachs, People who were just singled out even though they have done nothing at all--but exist. 

I don't like revisiting this so soon--but the reason a figure like Kanye loses platform or business deals is because that speech has an effect. He isn't thinking about who responds to that speech and what they do. It isn't that he's responsible for what someone else does--he's just making them feel better about their choices. He's not being edgy or controversial--it's the same hate as preached by thugs and has no edifying value. His previous accomplishments don/t elevate it--but his profile makes it more visible for recruitment by groups like the above.

Maybe it affects his bank account that he's "canceled". It's not his place of worship that has to hire security. It isn't his families' headstones being desecrated. It isn't his place of business that would be vandalized by symbols of hate or his physical safety he fears for.  And his co-optation of Jewish identity with Black Israelite conspiracy shit just feels like trolling. It feels like he's daring people to make something of it, hoping one identity camouflages that he is using the same hate that white Christians have used. 

Occurring against the backdrop of a rise in anti-Semitic sentiment and political Christian nationalism it's shocking. Seeing it celebrated by hate groups is instructive.

They Only Needed to Be Shamed

 

The PACT Act will be going to President Biden's desk to be signed after needless and spiteful delay on the part of Senate Republicans, who spent the weekend trying to defend their fist-bumping vote against the bill with sad claims of "gimmicks" and "pork". They got rightfully hammered for that, but 11 Republican senators still voted against--all of whom also voted against the bill in June.

This group includes Rand Paul of KY, who argued that veterans would take advantage of the program because one could not tell for sure that their illnesses were from service-related expose (that's right--he's basically accusing cancer-stricken vets of trying to pull one over on the government), Mitt Romney of Utah, generally incorrectly perceived as a moderate, and my outgoing (but not soon enough!) senator, Pat Toomey, who opposes spending money to help people or basically being useful at all, just on general principles. 

So, what happened here? It looks like the Republicans got caught out for being spiteful hacks that literally didn't have a problem with the bill, just with Democrats.  And some of them still pretty transparently seem to have contempt for the idea that after having served and made sacrifices on behalf of this country, veterans want to be compensated for the harm done to them.

This is who they are. Don't forget it. 

And as an afterthought, although so many people worked to make this bill a law, a lot of praise goes to Jon Stewart for using humor, outrage, the superpower of celebrity, to advocate forcefully for the Seante to just do the right thing. He's a good guy. 

Many Things Can Be True At Once

 

I was absolutely not interested in writing about a certain case which has been all over the news, but unfortunately, I get stuck in my writing if something like this goes by and I haven't commented. But I will not refer to anyone BY NAME because I know my readers will know what I'm talking about. And it feels like a nice blind item for a gossip column that way.

Sigh. So here goes...

It can be true that men can be abused. That does not give them a pass to also be abusive. Women can be abusers, but that does not mean that a woman has to be perfect to also be able to say that she has been harmed. The two people in this case both seem to have made each other thoroughly miserable and there was substance abuse involved. I hope for both of their sakes they are getting therapy. I'm not for the purposes of this post taking sides, but if you know what I've written about #MeToo and misogyny previously, you can probably imagine. 

That said, what I want to post about isn't this case per se, but the reaction to it--it's been weirdly personal, and despite getting more details than anyone ever could want and both of these people being famous--regardless, we don't know them. These are people underneath their celebrity and the roles they have performed. We know the cases their lawyers and PR professionals have made on their behalf.  Stories can have more than one side. 

But this case and its result should not affect anyone else's story, or anyone else's right to talk about their own abuse, and I think the reason in part this particular case became so riveting is because people wanted to fold it into some other narrative about cancel culture or whether men (all men, not this particular man) can now shrug off claims of abuse because women won't be believed, because this one woman wasn't believed. 

That doesn't seem right. 

But regardless, while I am not saying that all the people who sympathized with a certain nameless person are rotten people, it doesn't escape my attention that all the really rotten people are high-fiving each other over this jury's decision. And while I don't know the other nameless party personally, I know there are people who have suffered abuse and were not believed and can only imagine how gutting the gloating over this feels for them, because it's like their own predicament is being rubbed in their faces. It could have a dampening effect on other people trying to seek help or admit what has happened to them. 

That doesn't seem right, either.

So I want it clear that it really feels to me like there is some serious misogyny at play and while I'm not going to try to convince anyone about what happened in this case, I ask anyone who cares about domestic violence in general to take a good look around at who is supporting whom, and why. It can be eye-opening. 

RIP Buck Henry

Buck Henry ‘Graduate’ Writer and ‘Get Smart’ Co-Creator, Dies at 89 https://t.co/9GTiaRUdDt

— Variety (@Variety) January 9, 2020

I tried to explain to my spouse what he would have seen Buck Henry in and had to stop myself, because although we are the same age, I am a little older than him in terms of watching tv and that. And I guess it also happens that his genius was being the poker-face kind of actor even if he had a mad genius wit so some of his characters were maybe not the guy you remember the most? I think the thing I liked best was Get Smart which influenced my lifelong love of the cold war spy send-up. He was just associated with so much good-quality comedic stuff. He had that ear for satire. I'm going to have to find "Quark" because it seems like it was very deeply also my kind of thing. He came off like he was not just sharp and funny, but a cool guy.

I'll try to find "Taking Off" and watch that, too.

Hey Kids! Lookit the Wacky Fun Enemies List!

Whoo-hoo! That's quite a normal thing for a White House press secretary to put out on social media! See, it's all in good jokey fun. It creates the narrative that the media is full of lugenpresse and traitors, but in a way that is back-slapping and relatable. In other news, Trump's campaign is trying to blacklist his critics from news programs, which is a slightly less jokey way of playing the same game, you guys! What a neat coordination of messages!

Ha, Teamwork makes the dream work, right?

The Strange Case of Mr. Smollett

Regardless of whether you believe actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to stage a hate crime attack on him, the question on many people's minds is why he -- or anyone -- would lie about such a thing https://t.co/ujAR99aGgL pic.twitter.com/PBoP0PyIBn

— CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2019

There's something about the Jussie Smollett situation that pretty much scrapes every nerve, and even now, I find myself trying to understand why a person who is in a good position as an artist, is talented and well-liked, and who has a solid reputation for trying to do good, would engage in such a pathetic, time and emotion-wasting lie. There is a lot of real hate out there, for people of color and LGBTQ folks. There has been no shortage of examples of people who have experienced hate and violence. For someone to perpetrate a false alarm with the intention of just garnering sympathy to make himself more marketable or valuable in a salary dispute is so extraordinarily selfish it literally beggars my capacity to consider that such a nakedly selfish motive could be all there is to the story.

If anyone, anyone at all, considers the rights of victims of hate crimes or other deeply personal violence, it has to be understood that false accusations harm real victims. The biggest barrier to justice is the fear of reporting due to being disbelieved, or being accused of trying to ruin someone else's life or reputation. It places a terrible stigma on a person already injured by encouraging other people to consider "what if this terrible thing never happened?" Maybe the world isn't so terrible that people can randomly be assaulted for any reason. Maybe the victim is the problem. We can see this easily with circumstances of domestic violence or rape. Victims sometimes opt not to come forward because their reputations will be damaged, or they will face other societal or economic penalties for trying to receive justice. With hate crimes, this can also have other levels of blowback, if one suspects that law enforcement are not sympathetic to their race or orientation or gender expression. There is a risk of further oppression.

For Jussie Smollett to wave away the entirety of what the revelation of his imposture would mean to real victims, his counting on his identity to earn his sympathy, and the supposition that he would never be found out, shows an enormous ignorance or tunnel-vision about social and criminal justice. The idea that he staged this for solely monetary reasons, when the reality of his salary is already just nonsensically rich to regular folks, is as unsympathetic to consider--in much the way the plight of an actual victim of hate would seem sympathetic.

And yet--the perpetrated story of Jussie Smollett is his story, and it was told to family, friends, co-workers, fans, and the world. The love and sympathy and outpouring of affection he received, and the harshness with which people would condemn violence against people due to racism or homophobia are still good motives, even if what he did to elicit them was a lie. It is still right to stand by marginalized people because of real harms they experience, and it is still right to listen to the stories of victims because most really are true. It is still right to condemn hate and seek justice, and although Smollett's story called out MAGA hat wearing fake perps, I want one thing to be pretty clear:

The fake details were not a smear against all Trump-supporters. This was Smollett's version of verisimilitude. He was working with the reputation MAGA hat wearing people (like Cesar Sayoc) already had, in rather the same way Susan Smith blamed the death of her boys on a carjacking by black men.  He wasn't trying to make a political statement--his shit was very personal.

And what remains to be considered is whether some other issue (outside leverage or mental instability) encouraged what Smollett seems to have done. There may be a reason besides the extremely selfish for what he has done. But although the details were political, I don't see this as solely a political case. The people he hurt most were POC and LGBTQ people whose stories are now going to be met with "but Jussie". It was certainly not "MAGA country" people.

Whatever, Ben

So, Kevin Hart, who is really a talented and likeable performer, was picked to host the Oscars, but the problem was, he used to say some pretty homophobic shit. It was offensive, and he recognized it enough to delete his previous Tweets, but people screenshot them because whoa!, and instead of apologizing, Hart sort of responded at first about how he was changed, but didn't exactly apologize or acknowledge how he knew what he said was wrong, and it just wasn't enough. Saying you've evolved pretty much means putting your better ideals into action, and he realized this shitstorm was something he owned, and he posted a Tweet that showed he owned where he went wrong, and stepped aside.

And that seems like a reasonable trajectory. Losing out on one gig isn't getting his career ended, and you can still like Kevin Hart's work otherwise and it really takes a lot to actually get one's career so fucked that, once a star, one doesn't work again. Mel Gibson still gets work, ok?

Ben Domenech wants to make a couple of points, here: Hollywood is two-faced because it celebrates black artists but then holds them to account when they have fucked up, that regular people hate Hollywood values because apparently that's the only place the gays are, that voluntarily choosing not to accept a job when it become controversial is solely the business of the "Liberals What Are in Charge of the Whole Entertainment Shebang" and there is a thing called "intersectionality" and it is really scary and fuck that thing.

So much ignorance there, Mt. McCain. See, I get where Kevin Hart is coming from: he went to George Washington HS and is a Gen X-er and I went to Northeast HS and graduated about six years before he did.  My frame of reference is Philadelphia and the culture we grew up with in that time. I listened to rap music that referenced f------ and this was how people talked around me, even though I was already recognizing I wasn't exactly straight. I don't know what language Hart was specifically raised with (his mother was a University professor) in the home, but we had anti-LGBT language in our experience; I did, I know he did. His perspective as a black male (intersectionality) may have informed his observation that life as both black and gay would be undesirable because of the way gay people were treated, but the reality is that gay and black people exist, and instead of counseling them to deny their existence, the empathetic course is to show them the love some retrograde parts of the world won't.

I don't necessarily think Hart is being held more to account here than a white artist having said the same things would be (although this is a reasonable distinction to draw--I would unquestionably want a white artist to be considered equally suspect for homophobic language). But part of his commentary was about his potential child displaying non-heteronormative behavior, and being punished not for even being gay, but for behaving in a way that could be perceived this way. Little kids have been beaten and killed by their parents for this kind of thinking. This is what kills so many gay or non-heteronormative-presenting kids all the time: the lack of support, denial of validity, the coached expectations to just try being straight, as if this was a choice, not an essential part of one's selfness. They are beaten, or disowned and put out on the street, or they suicide.

The harm of this language and what it means to LGBT people is real. His perspective might have been explained by culture and immaturity, but he made these statement when he was grown enough to know better and have seen better, and the gripe that he is being punished for them now seems to stem not from whether Hart's response was too little and too late, but from a culture (conservatism) that really has no problem at all with actual homophobia. With decreeing that gay or trans persons shouldn't fully participate in the military service or public life. With denying job protections against discrimination.

Kevin Hart is a talented comedian and I enjoy most of his work, but this is a problematic area. I think we need to get to where we can recognize that not all places and people experience "wokeness" vis a vis all cultural intersections at the same rate, but credit should be granted for trying. The culture war response downgrades the idea that one should even bother doing better, and this helps exactly no one. I don't want his career wrecked and don't think it will be. I just think he can do better and should. And if he's the guy I think he is, he will do better. (And sometimes I'm wrong, but here's me, doing the benefit of the doubt thing.)

Ben Domenech can also do better. I just don't have the same faith he will. Because his team seems to reward bullshit signifying (sort of a RW version of "virtue-signaling", I guess, where there is surely signals, but the actual virtue is harder to place).

Ken Berry 1933-2018

I mostly knew him from "Mama's Family", but he was not just a gifted comedic actor, but a brilliant dancer.  (This is nearly break dancing, right here.)

Rest in peace.

The Celebrity White House

My most difficult task as a blogger in the Trump era is trying to sort out the noise from the actual reality of things, when, for a considerable part of this administration, the noise is their point. It's easy to be distracted by something as obviously eyeball-seeking as Trump's invitation of Kid Rock and Kanye West to a White House bill signing to-do that really had nothing to do with them. The bill in question ensures artists can still receive royalties from music made before 1972. Neither Kid Rock nor Kanye West were making any music before 1972, but they are vocal Trump supporters--so there they are. 

Amidst the odd things rambled about in the event, one might miss that Trump, when questioned about the apparent murder of US green-card holder and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, gave some of the weakest baby-shit answers imaginable. Well, it's a darn shame. And it didn't happen here but in Turkey. And he wasn't an actual US citizen. And we made an arms deal. This genuinely makes me wonder if Trump actually grasps that murder is bad when governments do it. He doesn't seem to--consider his admiration for the Chinese handling of the Tiananmen Square protesters. He's praised the toughness of people like Rodrigo Duterte and Kim Jong Un specifically regarding their ruthlessness. It might sound in his mind like he's being some version of macho, the same as when he threatens the press with phrases like "enemy of the people"--he's "fighting back"!

And yet, here's the weakness of his rhetorical corner: this peculiar admiration for "toughness" means he "fell in love" with the North Korean dictator who delivered Otto Warmbier back to us in a clearly brutalized state. And because of Trump's "happy talk" kind of rhetoric, he paints himself into a bit of a corner, doesn't he? If North Korea is not compliant regarding what they might have agreed to think about doing (or if, perhaps, China and Russia are not compliant in upholding any sanctions re: North Korea on their end), Trump's switch from "love" is like a confession of failure. Trump needs his list of accomplishments, after all. 

It seems like, to Trump, a wee bit of extrajudicial killing for dictators is like pussy-grabbing when one is a celebrity: they just let you do it. "They" being people with no earthly observed or enforced ability to stop you. Why would he enforce what he clearly thinks is okay for Saudi Arabia to do? Aren't we already helping them do genocide in Yemen?

Which brings us back to celebrity and Kanye West. I am curious about what brought about the invitation of Trump-backing musical artists to this particular event, and wondered if, in part, the batshit signal didn't go up in response to Taylor Swift's recent endorsement of Democratic candidates and clarion call regarding the importance of voting.  It's like a form of entertainment-news poker: "I see your Swift and raise you a Yeezy."

But I worry that this is sort of like creating a spin-off of his usual brand now that his campaign-style rallies are even being ditched for low ratings on Fox News Channel. In rather the way The Celebrity Apprentice was a more interesting vehicle for the Trump reality tv brand--will we be seeing more famous(ish) Trump-supporting faces out there to sort of give him a little buzz when press is rough? Will Trump Administration press turn away from press briefings (which Sarah Huckabee Sanders seems really loathe to do, and Raj Shah is basically not likable for Sean Spicer values of "ugh") to just do weird "Love Boat" like "episodes" where Scott Baio or whoever just show up and everyone's time gets wasted because this person was in entertainment? 

There is no good reason for press persons to ask Kid Rock what he thinks about anything, except for enumerating the various right reasons for starting an escort service. There is no value in psychoanalyzing Kanye West, or even studying whether his performance suggests that Get Out was a documentary. His mental health is a family issue--but his and Trump's rhetoric about race (and masculinity) is definitely and regardless, not healthy. It's window-dressing that forces us to deal with "Trump as Celebrity" when we need to look at "Trump as Accountable Elected Official".

And he is failing at accountability, transparency, swamp-draining, and more. His celebrity persona, his carefully-cultivated persona, was being the guy who said "You're fired" and made money all the time--but the reality is he's a cheat, a scam artist, and he is afraid of firing John Kelly. He can't stand up to North Korea or Saudi Arabia and has to pummel immigrants and shit-talk Democrats to fake being something. 

He is a Potemkin president, all surface. But he has nothing at his core. His image is celebrity, and nothing more. 

RIP Rose Marie

Rose Marie was a regular on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which was one of my favorite syndicated reruns as a kid (obviously, it was already old when I was young). It's kind of hard not to like Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore and Morey Amsterdam, but you know? It was Rose Marie as Sally Rogers that I identified with. She was mouthy and sharp and sometimes awkward. She might have waited around for her Herman Glimscher to finally come across with a proposal, but you kind of knew her character wasn't ever going to settle for someone who didn't appreciate her for her talent, and she scared suitors off with her outsized personality. Rose Marie's delivery and comedic timing came at the speed of seeming like the effortless ad lib of an actual gifted comedy writer. She was herself gifted, humorous, and already, by then, an entertainment veteran.

In her 94 years, Rose Marie spent most of them performing, and her earliest performances are a revelation and actually, are also really adorable.





I followed her on Twitter only really recently. There is a great movie of her life that says so much about the business, and she also had a #metoo experience. Following her on Twitter was a little like having a kind of grandparent of comedy influence to hear from and appreciate, if that makes any sense. (I have been fresh out of grandparents for a few years now, but you never lose the need to have beloved elders to teach you things about the past.) I loved her, her talent, her sharing her story. She was unique and I will miss her.

I'm kind of happy for that little while she was on Twitter and we could hear from her and know she was still around before she left us. She did not go out as a trivia question or a person people of a certain age might suppose had already left us. She left us knowing she was still an outsize, kind and beautiful person with a lot to tell us about her experiences. She had an amazing run.

A Reckoning is Never Gentle

This year has brought about a kind of collective reckoning about how people, men, mostly, have abused their power relationships with other people sexually. We're listening to women and men come out about how egregious behavior by others who should have certainly known better have hurt them and impacted their lives. I think this is a good thing. It's past time we collectively as a society wanted accountability for how people treat one another, and for the real damage done by gross, selfish, unethical and deliberately or negligently harmful behaviors to get the discussion that is due. 

And that means sometimes saying that some individuals who did really good work that you appreciated just need to get cut off--like Bill Cosby. As I relentlessly bore youse with, I am from Philadelphia, and Cosby could have gone anywhere, but he was a native son here and he went to Temple. I grew up with Fat Albert. I watched The Cosby Show and Picture Pages.   (Although A Different World, a spin-off from The Cosby Show, was definitely more my favorite show--because the original kind of has some Brady Bunch vibes, but I just liked where A Different World was coming from. Debbie Allen was the creative mind influencing later episodes of that show, and of course, I loved her since Fame.)  Like, every comedian I came across for years had to have a Cosby impression going on. His HBO specials where he discussed fatherhood and his life were great decent material.  He was a major influence on culture, and some comics today can still talk about him with reverence because he did do some great work--

But he also did so many shitty things. And eventually, that is what people will remember, because that's how it goes. And it's sad. I won't think less of his work product, necessarily, but I will have to reckon with the damage that went into it. And that is ugly. 

Same thing with Kevin Spacey--if I were to go back in time and tell 1999 me, just getting out of a theater having taken a half-day from work because I just thought I wanted to take in a movie in a mostly-empty theater and really appreciate American Beauty, that in my timeline, Kevin Spacey came out in 2017.  I loved that movie so hard. 

1999 Me: Hey, that is really great. I'm glad he's finally able to live his truth. I know it's hard to come out in his business and there's a danger of being typecast, but with his talent... 

          2017 Me: He came out to deflect from being a serial abuser and rapist of young men and boys

          1999 Me: Fuck everything he even thinks about into tiny little pieces and set them on fire. 

And I would have meant it then. And I mean it now--sometimes the truth hurts but you have to take it--even someone whose work you really like. It's true if the artist is someone you know, the way Sarah Silverman talks about Louis CK :

“One of my best friends of over 25 years, Louis C.K., masturbated in front of women,” she continued. “He wielded his power with women in -—ed up ways, sometimes to the point where they left comedy entirely. I could couch this with heartwarming stories of our friendship and what a great dad he is, but that’s totally irrelevant, isn’t it? Yes, it is. It’s a real mindf—, because I love Louis. But Louis did these things. Both of those statements are true. So I just keep asking myself, ‘Can you love someone who did bad things? Can you still love them?’ I can mull that over later certainly, because the only people that matter right now are the victims. They are victims and they are victims because of something he did. So I hope it’s OK that I am, at once, very angry for the women he wronged and the culture that enabled it, and also sad, because he’s my friend. But I believe with all my heart that this moment in time is essential. It’s vital that people are held accountable for their actions, no matter who they are. We need to be better. We will be better. I can’t -—ing wait to be better.”

What she said. So, taking in that Al Franken, who has been a solid liberal voice, and a capable US Senator, has behaved in ways that are inappropriate with respect to female coworkers in any setting, my instinct is to believe the accuser, to look at the picture without trying to deflect that he seems to be miming groping only, or that he touched her for the sake of "comedy", as if that made autonomy and personal choice about being touched less important.

Of course what he did was wrong. The thing with being a real feminist or ally is owning up to the failures of people to be who we need them to be regardless of how they mostly represent themselves as. I don't need an 80% anti harassment ally. I need a 100% ally, because that 20% is what keeps sexism and inequality going strong. I think people should acknowledge their bullshit and understand why their bullshit was wrong, and promise to never go back on their bullshit. I think Franken did a good ego-check based on his statement of apology and contrition, and called for his own senate investigation. He isn't deflecting. He's here to do the work. I can support that kind of accountability. I can also pick apart why it is stupid to carry out a mime-groping of a sleeping individual and sympathize with her dismay about what people saw fit to do around her while she was unconscious and incapable of consent and mourn how that was not transparently beyond the pale for them.

It's a reckoning. I like Al Franken and think he does good work, and am proud of him for calling for his own investigation. I don't think he's probably abusive as a general rule, and recognize that comedy can be about exploring edges, and might sometimes encroach on shibboleths, so I don't hold his comedic speculations against him as "proofs" of eventual poor behavior. I truly think proportionality is an essential part of justice.

But yeah. I also have to check in that what Franken did was sexist bullshit that took no input regarding the woman he was working with. That is wrong.

But like the vicious partisan I am, I need to also remark on this:

The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps? .....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2017

Yeah. Trump is still also an abuser, and has done worse than Franken as far as we have heard alleged. So I don't think Mr. Glasshouse should be using his slingshot like that right now.

This is Awkward, Really

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer makes a surprise cameo at the #Emmys https://t.co/Ml6hmALXuq pic.twitter.com/2OkbenqQl8

— CNN (@CNN) September 18, 2017

In criticizing Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I made the awkward comparison to Sean Spicer, in that Spicer seemed to have an awareness that he was lying and that it might be kind of bad, at times. Maybe that was why he sometimes had to go hide in the bushes. I don't know.

I do know that I'm not really comfortable with him being made a kind of celebrity. Yeah, he can be personable. But there's something just really messed-up about a person lying for a corrupt, media-hating, bigoted Trump Administration for several months, and then whimsically making a farce of it, as if being dishonest for a living was a punchline.

It's probably true that he won't ever get a job in any elected official's press shop again, and it's probably also true that we can't expect a juicy tell-all about the White House from him. I just don't know that he should be feted for separating from a job that it should have become apparent was morally appalling to do and I am not thrilled with the Emmy program sort of "sheep-dipping" him this way.

If he were to talk straight about the Trump Administration, that might be the start of something.

Get a Load of this Guy

These Tweets are all because Meryl Streep mentioned some nameless person who mocked a disabled reporter. Which he actually did. And he did it because the reporter did not back up Trump's lie about watching Muslims celebrating 9/11.  This is who Trump is.


And this is who we could have had.

Field Vexillology: Don King

I don't believe I ever noticed this before, but 85 year old boxing promoter Don King really loves flags. I mean he adores them. I never saw someone carrying so many different flags on so many occasions. This is a dude who loves flags.  I don't even think a whole lot about his support of Donald Trump at all. I mean, if you are riding with Trump, of course you get to hold more flags, because Trump certainly seems to hold assorted allegiances (maybe). I can't hold the man's passion for flags against him, though. Like his passion for airbrushed distressed denim--it is a bold choice, but no doubt a deeply personal and well-considered one.

Rest in the Force

Carrie Fisher, one unbelievably witty, talented, and truly genuine person, is dead at age 60. It seems cruel that she was stricken with her cardiac event four days ago, and was hospitalized and even in stable condition before she had passed, giving her fans hope that she would rally. But that didn't happen--I only hope that she was able to know the outpouring of well-wishes people had for her before she was gone.

Best known for her role as Princess (later, General) Leia Organa, leader of the rebellion against the Dark Side-led Empire in George Lucas' cinematic epic Star Wars series, she sort of was one of my feminist heroes. She portrayed a tough, sarcastic, brave Princess who didn't always need saving--and it was great to know that the actress behind that great character was a bit like that, too. Feisty. Honest. And a fighter for a cause. Her openness about her mental health and addiction behavior helped to lessen the stigma of those conditions. She was keenly aware that she wasn't perfect in a culture that tries to fake perfection, and she was knowing, wise, and humorous about it in her writing.

Star Wars was the first film I saw in a theater, and is pretty much a touchstone for many in my generation. (It still seems a little shocking to me when I come across a forty or thirty-something who has somehow not seen any Star Wars movies. How?) I think, over the arc of that series of movies, Leia seems to be as fully-realized as a character gets--and it is in no small part because Fisher herself deeply understood how scene writing and dialogue worked (and was well known as a script doctor giving often uncredited assistance to so many projects).

It's probably purely selfish of me that I'm relieved she had finished shooting for Star Wars Episode VIII, but feel so deprived, not just for myself but all her fans, of all the interesting things she still would have had in her. Her portrayal of the older, sadder, but wise General Organa showed that (despite some of the jackassery people had to say about the weird fact that actresses actually age) the character, and the actress, had not so much aged as ripened. How I wish she had more time with us.

I don't have any ideas about what the cosmos contains, but sort of want to think she is with the Force.

I'm on Team Gwyneth Tried.

A lot of articles regarding Gwyneth Paltrow's attempt at the SNAP challenge are being pretty snarky about her quest only lasting about four days. But I want to go ahead and agree with this article that starts out Team Gwyneth--because she tried.

Ok. She comes from successful people and has been food-privileged her whole life. I don't think we need to stand and wonder about how she didn't know beforehand how difficult it was to feed oneself on the cheap--she has simply never had to do it. It's one thing to know what you know--and (I know this is an awkward way of saying it) it's really hard to know what you don't know. Unless you grew up knowing from dollar stores, discount bins, the brilliance of cheap meat slow-cooked and used as flavoring, and the necessity of eating lots and lots of noodles, where exactly do you go to find this out? Because some of us learned from our mothers and grandmothers--how to turn $3-4 worth of chicken thighs and a smattering of cabinet staples into meat you could do for dinner one night and sandwiches a time or two later, or why the basis of casseroles and hotdish all over the country begin from essentially, macaroni and cheese. That cookbook is word-of-mouth, not necessarily available at any store.

She didn't know. She has been about healthy eating and didn't know whole food eating is costly. Cheap food is prepared foods sometimes, and also pretty starchy, salty, and sugary. She wouldn't have known to compromise.

Comedy Befits the Dignity of the Office...Because it is an Office

With respects to the burning issue of whether or not appearing on a comedy program with Zack Galifianakis somehow reduces the office of the presidency or whatever, I must confess I find it on a par with carping about dungarees or any other trifling thing that effectively has nothing to say about the substance of the policies the twice-elected current president of the US promotes.

But I think it might as well be pointed out that in general, I don't feel that in a democracy, an overly scrupulous public persona ought to prevail. We aren't a monarchy and have nothing akin to lese majeste as such, other than the standards against slander and libel that might pertain to any citizen of repute. That being noted, a great deal is said against all of our public figures, our elected officials not excluded, sometimes flirting right up on that line of slander or libel. Politics being what it is, suits don't even seem to be often pursued on the issue of libel, because it too often publicizes the very doubt about one's character one would rather not have been entertained in the first place.

But just as critics have substantial leeway with respects to public figures, those figures also need room to do their jobs and be human beings. I think regarding the idea that the seriousness of parts of one's job preclude the possibility of enjoying any light-hearted moments is weirdly constrictive. The presidency of the United States is a unique position--it doesn't really have regular hours because at any time, there might be some crisis to attend to. So why not lighten up sometimes?

In this country, the Nerd Prom  has become an institution of a sort and strongly resembles a kind of roast, in a way, of our Politico-Media complex. Political figures and causes have often depended on celebrities to spread the word with their endorsements. There's nothing particularly out of the ordinary in using this kind of platform to inform about or popularize a given program. So the only real criticism I really hear is the fear that..I don't know...it will work?

Yeah. I think that is the problem.