Nancy Mace is not Okay

 

This picture is a screencap from Rep. Mace's own Twitter-feed (I'm still not calling it "X") and this is s few days in to her manic posting about bathrooms and there being a transwoman in Congress now, and this is not okay. I think (I hope) she Photoshopped this, because this is the cap I took from her own feed. What the hell is going on with these angles? 

This is pro-ana ideation, and I am worried about this woman. I get that attention whores and bullies try to do DARVO and present themselves as victims, and Rep. Mace's grown woman response to whether she is bullying soon to be Rep. McBride is very much to claim she is the victim here because she was a former victim of rape and assault. But she also is telling us she lost 30 pounds because of a traumatic event that triggered her PTSD, and I am not going to front that I know what's up with all that. 

She has claimed that she was threatened as a rape victim by even being asked why as a rape victim she supported Trump and other rapist candidates and political figures. And received threats, because I guess that is a thing. 

Sometimes a Flute is Just a Musical Instrument

 

Sometimes I struggle with the diagnosis of being "terminally online". I prefer to think of myself as only "critically online". What I do know is, as a blogger, I don't love that my blog muses occasionally insist on my dealing with whatever messed-up thing is going on with the Online Discourse. 

I try: "Please," I bargain. "Let me do other stuff. The Discourse sucks. The people are terrible. I hate it here."

And the answer I get is hollow, mocking laughter. "This is the price you pay for your remit: the culture, white supremacy, radicalization, misogyny. Do your thing here, or we won't let you do the other stuff." 

And there I am. 

So, for some reason, the right wing online freaked out because Melissa Viviane Jefferson, an American musician and actress known for her ability to play the flute, was invited to play a 200-year-old crystal flute once owned by James Madison that was being stored at the Library of Congress. That's right, a modern popular musician who has done as much for the flute lately as, I dunno, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull or Chris Wood of Traffik (look, folks, I am not young anymore and rock music only ever does so much flute) played an instrument that it would be a damn shame to never get played again, and the racists got all up in arms. 

My "favorite" dumbass comment is probably this one from some guy I never heard of named Pedro who was just openly racist:

He said "The thing that is obvious but people don't want to say is that this is about humiliating white people, about desecrating American history and heritage. That's what you do when you're a conqueror. Humiliate the conquered."

It isn't obvious. This wouldn't humiliate white people who weren't unrelenting racists. She's literally a musician playing a musical instrument. She's an American, She's respecting the awesomeness of playing an antique historical artifact. There was no conquering or desecrating. She just played a flute. It was made to be used by musicians. The entire world this terribly online creature lives in is grievance-based and for no reason at all. 

What he's saying is: she used the wrong water fountain. She sat in the wrong bus seat. He wants to take her existence as an accomplished musician receiving the opportunity to handle a unique object as an affront, but by doing so, can only point to her race as the reason for his discomfiture. Because that's all the outrage is. 

Stating my Possibly Unpopular Opinion Re: Rep. Barton

There are a couple of things about l'affaire Barton that I think, just being a reasonable person, don't seem all that scandalous. He divorced in 2015. He had some consenting relationships with adult women. He sent them communications of a sexual nature. One of the women seems to have felt some way about having competition, and shared material that was intended to remain private. He advised her beforehand that this was a bad idea and not without repercussions.

Here's the thing--releasing a graphic video or photos of someone in an intimate situation because it screws with them when that person did not want it out and about is called "revenge porn". It is a crime in many states, and a damn nasty trick to pull on someone. All things considered, if he and the individual who released the material had a relationship that was cool and consensual at one point, and he felt like opening up in this way, turning around and using his vulnerability against him is just not cool, whether he is a US Congressman or a total political hack or has garbage opinions about the environment or health care, or any other thing totally not related to a naked video of Rep. Joe Barton making the rounds on social media.  He's a person who has a right to not have his private shit thrown out in the street like this.

I also have a problem with the body-shaming comments getting made about a video that was not ever made for mass consumption--also not cool, not necessary, not really an apt criticism. A dude in his 60's with a mostly desk-related job might not be your idea of pleasing to the eye. Got it. But he never made that for you. He made that for someone he thought would appreciate it and not actually release it to the broader public, because why in the hell would someone do that?

Which is kind of where judgment does come into this situation. When you send any material digitally to someone else, you run the risk of it being reproduced or forwarded to who knows how many other people. Being a person in his political position, he should have been well aware of the risk to his reputation if it ever came out--but he was being trusting. He just didn't think. Things being what they are, though, one always has to be thinking.  And I guess I can see where social conservatives may see this in a different light than I do.

There is precious little overlap between me and Barton politically, but I think he's getting some blowback about this story and its framing that is not entirely fair. It's not about him--it's about whether this is ever a way anyone should try to screw over a romantic/sexual partner if things end poorly. And I say this is not OK. If he's in jeopardy related to his job, it should be because he's said dumb stuff about wind being a finite resource or that we should apologize to BP over the Gulf oil spill, or has nonsense ideas about workers' rights and minimum wage and other right wing claptrap. It should be at the ballot box he gets his, and not over this.

Unless it turns out he sent that to be creepy or abusive to someone who never wanted it or some garbage like that. But the story so far doesn't seem to make him out to be that guy.

UPDATE: I guess it might be a factor in considering Barton's overall ethics that he was likely still married when he began his relationship, but this really still wouldn't have any bearing on whether it's appropriate to digitally pimp someone's business.

This Steve Bannon Picture has been bothering me...

I don't really believe in body-snarking against people, especially on the subject of fatness, because I am not a small person and have had my own struggles with weight, but the picture of Steve Bannon, above, has been the subject of some Twitter snark, and I get it--the guy is not healthy-looking, or a particularly great representative of a fit human animal. This is what makes punchlines like "Sean got fatter" sort of weird, and some have latched onto it as a kind of answer to white supremacy in general, like saying "This is genetic superiority? This?"

I think it seems bad especially because there's this weird bulge on the left. I note it mostly because it is roughly the same size and shape and placement where you'd expect a liver to be:

And that sort of matches the jokes people tell about Bannon as looking like a great huge drunk.  But that's massively unfair. Lots of people have bad skin and lots of people have drinking issues--I drink, myself, rather more than I would always like at times. And this does not make someone "bad people"--you can be fat and have bad skin and even drink a shitload, and that doesn't make you a bad person. I am a little fat and drink a bit and am not a Nazi. But it is very probable that Bannon is, in fact, an actual bad person based on his personal history and editorial output.

In short, you just don't know from a picture what a person is about, even a grossly unflattering one.  You should judge them based on what they do.

And for all we know, he might just have an alien in his guts.

And how would you answer that, SJW cuckflakes? You can't. Long story short, Steve Bannon is a Nazi who looks terrible, but it could just be he has an alien in his liver. I don't know why I'm shitposting my own blog like this. I blame the culture.