How to Interview a Bigot

 

Jon interviewed Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas Attorney General, about why her state banned gender-affirming care for minors - ignoring the guidelines of major medical organizations and taking the decision out of parents’ hands. Watch the full interview on @AppleTVPlus pic.twitter.com/4SoH3orWa6

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) October 7, 2022

You challenge their bullshit. It's that simple. You do not let them push a completely fake narrative without challenging it. Every actual journalist needs to take note that this is completely a thing you can do. Know enough about the topic to understand when you are hearing bullshit, and then when you hear it, call it out. The point of journalism isn't airing a side without facts or creating a false equivalency--at some level it has to be about respecting the truth, the facts, the Big Picture, or you are just creating an unchecked forum for actual trash people to unloose their trash opinions in.

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.

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.

Bill Maher is Problematic

Bill Maher is a weird ally because he fucks up in oh so many ways. I think he's a little bit condescending regarding gender and race, and he thinks he's "down" enough to say something like "house-nigger" when that actually is not a thing for white people to say--so where is the good thing he's doing? It's hard to say--after all, he puts Ann Coulter, and Darrell Issa, and Dana Rohrbacher. and Jack Kingston, and so on and so on, on his show. They aren't there to present real conversation--forget that. They are presented to normalize pretty fringe RW tropes. Jack Kingston, Darrell Issa, and Dana Rohrbacher and Ann Coulter, are all right now exactly the people who support Trump. They are and have been, clowns. Maher does not clown them, or let them clown themselves. He gives them a platform, and caters to their normalization.

In one way, Maher is supposed to be my people: atheist, mostly science-minded, rational potty-mouthed comedy folks. And I do agree with some of the things he stands for--I've got a libertarian (socially) streak, after all. I stand for science, and I want to think there are avenues of conversation with people who don't 100% share my viewpoint.

But while I try to respect folks like SE Cupp and Ana Navarro and Rick Wilson who seem like people with whom a lefty like me can speak, largely because Bill Maher put them forward as reasonable folks (I follow them on Twitter, though), Ben Sasse,  as was discussed on the show--is dangerous: he looks sane and nice, but his language isn't left-language and his outlook isn't compatible with ours. He may not love Trump, but he doesn't have a political overlap with us. And while Sasse sorted out how to make a public response via social media and even Bill Maher apologized after a fashion for his fuckup, we still might want to look at how a real left critique of Maher's use of this phrase might work, not forgiving Maher on free-speech grounds, and not excoriating him on the grounds he would dismiss as "politically correct". I mean to address the harm. Not the correctness, the framing we so often lack as uptighty whities. The harm that this language does to descendants of slavery in the US.

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This isn't Art, and Not a Good Point

I guess, arguendo, different people will have different ideas about what constitutes "art". Art is something like porn was for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: You know it when you see it. This is a definition that doesn't satisfy, and as every good internetizen knows: YMMV. (For what it's worth, if you just put the search words "porn" and "potter" in a search engine now, you will be confronted with pages of Harry Potter porn links. Some of them might conceivably be at least a little artistic, porn and art not being mutually exclusive.) But I think the standard where an image of the red-headed comedian holding aloft a fake-blood-covered Donald Trump mask in an imitation of a beheading falls a bit short of art, and seems a bit more like political porn.

There is a stuffiness about discussing "redeeming social value". Art isn't always redemptive--it can sometimes be cynical and stark as all hell. But points have to be given on the basis of whether a piece effectively conveys what was intended--and I can't say that this does. The "Trump" imagined by Kathy Griffin's pose is, perhaps, a gorgon:

Or a dragon or a giant or a lamia or any other sort of beast that can be beheaded in a legend without our considering that entity as human, but fully monstrous. In a profession where targets are "roasted", audiences are "killed", and failing acts "bomb", this over-the-top symbolism might make sense: It was comedy that killed the beast. (After the tagline of most renditions of King Kong--substituting "comedy" for "beauty".  Contra Keats, what is beautiful is not always true, but comedy usually works because of a kernel of truth. Truth, reality, is the anti-matter to a lying regime. But it only works if the joke doesn't need to be bloody explained.)

We don't live in such times where we are dealing with mythological creatures in a way where an audience accepts legend as our referent. Donald Trump is, whatever his faults, a human man, and the worst thing we can say about his policies is that they are centered in dehumanizing others: criminalizing immigrants, privileging some religions over others, encouraging punch-down violence. Where, then, is the sense in dehumanizing him, and making violence a matter of smirking exultation?

It was misguided, and not supported by most liberals, and Griffin herself has now apologized. As a bad bit of art that should be and was rubbished, that should be that. And yet we now have a counter-example to whatever violent image fuckery we on the left mean to decry-- "But Kathy Griffin". This is absurd, and completely expected.

It should not take the sting out of factual claims about what is happening on the right, however. The gorgon's head was never meant to shock us liberals, you know. Attention-sponge and thirsty-comedian Kathy Griffin was pushing RW buttons. And I would be afraid to wade in into her social media mentions right now, because that woman is probably getting cause to call the authorities--and that? Is as well worth talking about as her satire-misfire. I believe she intended no threat (does anyone seriously think even a D-list celeb is going to be a fence-jumper?) and is probably just being nearly Ted Nugent-levels of shit-talking stupid.

But if you come to "But Kathy Griffin" at me, I will "but BLM" forever. Or "but queer-bashing" forever. Or "but Portland" forever.  Because a ham-fisted visual message isn't the same thing as actual physical violence, any more than eating a menu is just as good as eating a sandwich. And while Griffin's message was botched, she wasn't actually trying to get anyone killed.

Another Trumpworld Grab Bag

I just want to point out that this weekend is another weekend where President Trump visited a couple of his golf courses to hit the links and schmooze in familiar surroundings, like he does most weekends since he became president, and Fox Mushroom Farm is being a little less than honest in pretending that he literally spent the whole weekend at the White House. There is photographic proof he did not. Just because he went to the golf course that he owns closest to the White House does not mean he worked at the White House. He smacked a little white ball around. And I get that Republicans have very little trouble with Trump always being golfing. So Eisenhower! Very suburban! Oddly, they never liked to see Barack Obama smacking little white balls around.

But you know, this is Fox News, after all, the official sponsor of saying stuff out loud that Trump doesn't want folks to know came from him, except that you do. Sean Hannity, a very special Fox News personality, got told by one Ted Koppel just what he thinks of him. He's bad. (I note that Sean Hannity came off a bit defensive and threw a "with all due respect" in there like we don't know what that means--bless his heart.) It shouldn't be anything but transparent that Hannity is not merely an opinion-journalist (if you want to call it journalism) but an extreme partisan (and if you want to call that "propagandist", in my book, you go on ahead). I am reminded of the time Jon Stewart told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala that their version of "Crossfire" wasn't helping anything at all. Except Koppel isn't a comedian who does news, but a guy who did straight news his whole career. And if Hannity wants to pretend this is some so-called "liberal media" figure he just dissed, nope. Just nope.

John Cleese Discusses Christianity. An interesting Interview

I enjoyed this conversation, having come across it on YouTube. The idea that humor should approach religious and philosophical figures alike, and that religion and race alike shouldn't be a bar to conversation, are fascinatingly explored. It's an engaging topic, engagingly engaged in.

(Note--I know this is old, I just enjoyed it.)

The Copenhagen Dip

The gunman who shot up a free speech conference and later a synagogue has been killed and identified as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a 22 year old who was already on the criminal radar as running with gangs.

He seems to meet the description of a "lone wolf" so far. It's not unlikely that he was inspired by the Charlie Hebdo attack to do what he did, but he's dead and there seems to have been no accomplice or connection to any larger organization.

I would not be surprised if this inspired additional attacks on Muslims in Europe, though. We've had a bit of that sort of thing here and in Europe post-Hebdo attack.

No, byte this.

I'm not sure what to make of the claims that North Korea is behind the hacking of Sony Corp, since the FBI sort of thinks they did it, but then again, lots of people think they didn't. I don't think it helps that North Korea's message seems a bit mixed on the matter; they didn't do it, but if the US retaliates, then it is on like Donkey Kong! (Against "the whole US mainland"--so, like, Hawaii should feel pretty secure from one of NK's sturdy Aquatic Annoyance Devices.) Seems kind of defensive to me.

So I also don't know what to make of the situation where North Korea's internet went down.  I mean, really, is there any good reason to think the US directly participated in an attack on that nation's information infrastructure? (Maybe they should just ring their provider or something.) Is that how the US rolls?

I still think it's weird to imagine that this is all over a comedy movie that might even be a bit of a bow-wow.  But it looks like the young dictator is still consolidating power, so killing the odd army minister or uncle or religious proselytizers, or even people who watched soap operas, is just how he validates who is really in charge. So it really doesn't do for him to be lampooned in a movie that will probably somehow still be pirated and watched in North Korea anyway. (I think I like the idea, a little, myself.) In the world of a dictator (whose father was a noted cinephile and probably a very, shall we say, dominating influence on him?) trying very hard to grasp and hold the reins of power, something like a movie that doesn't cast him in the best of lights seems far more significant to him than it might to people in a culture where our elected leaders are regularly shredded in the press and television programs.

It's cheap, of course, to malign North Korea's ruler in a comedic vehicle. His regime is associated with the tactics of starvation, imprisonment, labor camps, rape, and torture. The people of North Korea are suffering under a yoke that is anything but comedy gold. It's actually appalling. And there's only so much any of us can do about it, either.

Except to point out that Kim's Macklemore haircut really isn't as face-slimming as he thinks it is.

A Belated Comment on Ben Shapiro's Race Thingy

I've been linking a lot to TPM lately, but there you go: fangirl, thing I do. But I want to punctuate this thoughtful comparison of Jonathan Chait's slightly flawed long piece on conservatism and race and Ben Shapiro's much shorter and dumber piece on Colbert's parody of conservatism with an observation. When I read Chait's piece, even if I thought he was bending over backwards to not depict conservatives and specifically the GOP party message all this while as racist per se even if the results tend that way in practice in terms of income inequality and legitimate claims of inequality of access to the ballot, education, etc., I understood he was well-intentioned.

When I read Ben Shapiro's piece, I was overcome by the black face picture of Al Jolson. Seriously? Whose editorial decision was that picture? (Does, um, Shapiro have editorial control over his thing over there?) Because when Shapiro makes the claim that Stephen Colbert's satirical representation of conservative thought is a minstrel-show of it which should revolt any conservative watching, I kind of tended to recall that some conservatives watched the show and thought it was great fun because they took it at face value. Indeed, there is an Internet concept of Poe's Law--where it is known to be impossible to distinguish between true extremism and parodies of same, because extremists are so very. And parodies are supposed to depict the so very--so they have considerable overlap.

Maher, Noah, and the Paradox of Blasphemy

I watch Bill Maher--I don't agree with him all the time, and sometimes I think he can be crude (heh, me too, come to think of it), but what I find fascinating is the way he gets up the nose of fundamentalists. Here's Maher the other week regarding the bad image one might get about God from that Book people are always talking about:



And just between you, me, and the rest of the Internet--he has a point. Old Testament God is very smitey and doesn't seem to be especially discriminating about who he does the smiting against. And people to this very day use that kind of smitey Godhead to harsh the mellows of other folks the whole world round, whether it's saying Gays or Boobs cause earthquakes, or even personal messages of how people done asked for it by not forgiving their abusive parents.

So maybe it shouldn't be surprising that some followers of Smitey Godhead want Maher to be punished for blasphemy:

The evangelical activist said Maher is known for his anti-religious views, but Emmanuel said “this time he’s gone too far.” 

“He may have protection under the First Amendment to say whatever slanderous thing that comes out of his toilet bowl brain, but that does not mean Christians should turn the other cheek,” Emmanuel said. 

He agreed with the Psalms 14 passage that questioned the character of anyone who would believe in his heart there was no God, suggesting Maher and outspoken atheists Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens had much in common with the Devil.

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.

The Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear Looked like a Blast.

A big crowd had a fun time with great entertainment and silliness and a message to actually think and act rationally and not hate and fear other people, but try to recognize that we are all just bozos on this Spaceship Earth, so our best bet is to have fun, hang on, and be a little bit less douche-y all the time. Which, for an event by comedians for an audience of campaign-ad weary news-exhausted folks, maybe somewhat liberal-skewing, was entirely timely and completely meaningful.

I didn't go down, because my vacation time didn't work out and that would be more than a day trip for me, but my TV-viewing time did, because I caught a lot of it on my parents' cable when I made my weekly visit (I also catch Bill Maher on "On Demand" at their house. It's a family affair. Every week we listen to jokes and riff ourselves about the issues of the day. Saturday with my parents/political-comedy time is like my sabbath. When Maher is off we just have CNN in the background. Cable for us die hard TVA enthusiasts is temple for the irreligious. We bond, we have a common altar. Our sacrament is snack food and snarking on what happens on-screen. And it is really neat to me that I have parents--and my brother, who is occasionally about, where we just actually hold forth about what political figures are doing and what legislation is going on and what bs is in the news. My folks are cable junkies, I'm a reporter from Left Blogistan. They aren't really online--(They just about know I do this thing where I talk about politics and my life and have a silly pseudonym)--but they also often have really sharp insights themselves and I wish they blogged, too. Because they are some very sane people. But I would be remiss if I left out Jon Stewart's closing message:



That was something sane and touching and meaningful all at once. And there were a lot of people there, and they were very diverse.... Did I mention that?