We Resist: Day 299

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

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Here are some things in the news today:

Earlier today by me: Mike Pence Is a Liar. And by Fannie: Rape Culture Rigs the System Against Women.

Ashley Parker at the Washington Post: Trump's Asia Trip Was Mostly Free of Incidents — Until It Wasn't.

After an eight-day stretch of mostly good behavior, Trump wandered off script this past weekend in Vietnam as he headed into the final leg of his visit. Chatting with reporters on board Air Force One, the president suggested that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertions that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 presidential election and, on foreign soil, disparaged three former U.S. intelligence agency heads as "political hacks."

...White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not flinch when Trump began recounting Putin's denials to the White House press corps — "I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," the president said — and no one from the West Wing made any effort the explain or clarify his initial remarks.

In a news conference the next day, however, Trump was asked exactly what he meant, and explained that he ultimately believes his own intelligence agencies — which have concluded that Russia did, indeed, meddle — over Putin's claims to the contrary.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, meanwhile, all but shrugged when asked about Trump's tweet insulting Kim with schoolyard taunts, saying that Trump alone "put it out."

"They are what they are," Kelly said of the tweets.

And what they are is disloyal trash. In any other administration, the president suggesting he believes the leader of a hostile adversary over U.S. intelligence would be a fucking scandal. In this administration, it's just another day in an illegitimate presidency that the most powerful people in this nation have inexplicably decided to normalize, at the potential cost of the complete decimation of our democracy.

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[Content Note: Sexual assault] Charles Bethea at the New Yorker: Locals Were Troubled by Roy Moore's Interactions with Teen Girls at the Gadsden Mall. "This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people — including a major political figure in the state — who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls. Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees. (A request for comment from the Moore campaign was not answered.)"

The Gadsden mall in Alabama has a Sears, Chick-Fil-A, and it may turn out, higher standards than the World's Greatest Deliberative Bodyhttps://t.co/kRp3AL7wIc

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) November 14, 2017

[CN: Sexual assault] Abby Baird at ThinkProgress: A Fifth Woman Is Accusing Roy Moore of Sexual Abuse. "Moore's campaign responded to the allegations in a statement Monday, saying, 'Gloria Allred is a sensationalist leading a witch hunt, and she is only around to create a spectacle.'" Oh fuuuuuuuuuck that.

[CN: Sexual assault] Matt Shuham at TPM: Alabama Rep.: 'Contested' Sexual Assault Allegations Won't Change My Vote. "Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) said Monday that he would still vote for Roy Moore to become Alabama's next senator, despite a wave of allegations of sexual assault and misconduct made against Moore by women who were teenagers at the time of the alleged incidents. 'America faces huge challenges that are vastly more important than contested sexual allegations from four decades ago,' Brooks said in a text message to AL.com. 'Who will vote in America's best interests on Supreme Court justices, deficit and debt, economic growth, border security, national defense, and the like?' Brooks continued, according to the paper. 'Socialist Democrat Doug Jones will vote wrong. Roy Moore will vote right. Hence, I will vote for Roy Moore.'" Seethe.

[CN: Sexual harassment; video may autoplay at link] MJ Lee, Sunlen Serfaty, Sara Ganim, and Juana Summers at CNN: 'Nothing About It Felt Right': More Than 50 People Describe Sexual Harassment on Capitol Hill.

Be extra careful of the male lawmakers who sleep in their offices — they can be trouble. Avoid finding yourself alone with a congressman or senator in elevators, late-night meetings, or events where alcohol is flowing. And think twice before speaking out about sexual harassment from a boss — it could cost you your career.

These are a few of the unwritten rules that some female lawmakers, staff and interns say they follow on Capitol Hill, where they say harassment and coercion is pervasive on both sides of the rotunda.

There is also the "creep list" — an informal roster passed along by word-of-mouth, consisting of the male members most notorious for inappropriate behavior, ranging from making sexually suggestive comments or gestures to seeking physical relations with younger employees and interns.

CNN spoke with more than 50 lawmakers, current and former Hill aides, and political veterans who have worked in Congress, the majority of whom spoke anonymously to be candid and avoid potential repercussions. With few exceptions, every person said they have personally experienced sexual harassment on the Hill or know of others who have.

In an environment with "so many young women," said one ex-House aide, the men "have no self-control."

"Amongst ourselves, we know," a former Senate staffer said of the lawmakers with the worst reputations. And sometimes, the sexual advances from members of Congress or senior aides are reciprocated in the hopes of advancing one's career — what one political veteran bluntly referred to as a "sex trade on Capitol Hill."

These anecdotes portray a workplace where women are subjected to constant harassment.

I'm guessing that environment of constant harassment is unlikely to change during the administration of a president who is himself a confessed serial sex predator, especially as long as his abetting party is running the Hill.

The @GOP leadership shouldn't be too goddamned surprised that their party attracts serial sex predators when a central plank of their platform is forcing women et. al. to do with their bodies a thing they do not want to do.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 13, 2017

[CN: Sexual assault] Kaiser at Celebitchy: Jon Stewart Was 'Stunned' to Hear About Louis CK, Despite Hearing Rumors a Year Ago. "In one of the stories I did about Louis CK last week, I mentioned the year-old video of Jon Stewart being asked directly about Louis and the rumors (at that time, it was just 'rumors') of his sexual harassment of young, female comedians. Jon Stewart was a complete douche about it. ...Jon was on the Today Show this morning to promote The Night of Too Many Stars, which he's hosting for HBO. ...Jon says he was 'stunned' and he asked himself 'Did I miss something? Could I have done more?' and 'In this situation, I think we all could have. So you feel anger at what you did to people.' Except that he did hear about it a year ago... Jon says he had a feeling of 'I know Louis; he's always been a gentleman to me' and admits that 'it speaks to the blindness that I think a man has…'" I really despise Jon Stewart.

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Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed: Justice Department Confirms Prosecutors Are "Evaluating" Claims Raised Against Hillary Clinton. "Senior federal prosecutors are looking into whether there is any merit to allegations made against Hillary Clinton and the FBI's investigation into her during the election, a Justice Department lawyer told lawmakers in a letter on Monday. Congressional Republicans have requested the appointment of a second special counsel to look into allegations relating to Clinton and the Clinton Foundation — including those relating to the Uranium One sale — and the investigation into Clinton's email server. On Monday, the head of the Justice Department's legislative affairs office responded to those requests by confirming that 'senior federal prosecutors' were 'evaluat[ing] certain issues raised in your letters.'"

Catherine Lucey and Meghan Hoyer at the AP: Trump Choosing White Men as Judges at the Highest Rate in Decades. "Donald Trump is nominating white men to America's federal courts at a rate not seen in nearly 30 years, threatening to reverse a slow transformation toward a judiciary that reflects the nation's diversity. So far, 91 percent of Trump's nominees are white, and 81 percent are male, an Associated Press analysis has found. Three of every four are white men, with few African-Americans and Hispanics in the mix. The last president to nominate a similarly homogenous group was George H.W. Bush." Huh. It's almost like men who sexually assault women don't respect them or something.

Gideon Resnick and Sam Stein at the Daily Beast: Before He Was Tapped by Donald Trump, Controversial Judicial Nominee Brett J. Talley Investigated Paranormal Activity. "Brett J. Talley, nominated by [Donald] Trump to the Federal District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, has never tried a case, is married to a White House lawyer, and has been dubbed as unqualified by the American Bar Association." I would call this unbelievable, but, of course, it's entirely believable, because this administration is a toxic dumpster fire.

Rebekah Entralgo at ThinkProgress: The Senate Tax Bill Is a Handout for Wealthy Americans. "Republicans in the Senate were determined to a write a tax plan that, unlike the House's proposal, would be less of a handout to some of the wealthiest Americans. Unfortunately, it seems the new plan still benefits them significantly. Both bills center around a huge corporate tax cut that Republicans hope will allow freed-up cash to trickle-down to the middle-class in the form of higher wages and more jobs. Analyses of the House tax plan finds that it falls far short of that goal, and the Senate bill doesn't hold up any better under scrutiny."

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post: If the Tax Bill Is So Great, Why Does the GOP Keep Lying About It? "Nearly every claim Republicans are using to market their tax plan is at best a distortion, at worst a deliberate falsehood. Which raises the question: If their plan is really so great, why not sell it on the merits? ...Why all the falsehoods? Why not just sell their tax agenda on the merits? Presumably because Trump and Republican lawmakers know they're offering a plan the public doesn't want. Ergo, they need to promise things the tax plan doesn't do."

[CN: White supremacy] Auditi Guha at Rewire: Congress Wants to Stop Pipeline Protests by Prosecuting Activists as Terrorists. "In case a military-style takeover wasn't enough to deter pipeline protesters at Standing Rock, some congressional lawmakers are pushing to treat environmental activists like terrorists. A group of 80 congressional Republicans and four Texas Democrats in October submitted a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking him to look into the possibility of prosecuting pipeline protesters under the domestic terrorism statute. They cited attempts to shut off valves and damage pipelines but seem to include the larger nonviolent resistance in their push to use the terrorism statute against activists. The bipartisan group claims that 'maintaining safe and reliable energy infrastructure is a matter of national security.'" Chilling.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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I'm So Thrilled Jon Stewart Popped Up Again Just to Remind Me Why I Don't Like Him

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Jon Stewart's been getting a lot of attention for his searing insight that Donald Trump is a "man-baby." Getting significantly less attention are his comments about Hillary Clinton's "inauthenticity."

Jon Stewart on Monday weighed in on what he termed Hillary Clinton's "inauthenticity" during an interview with David Axelrod, comparing it to the "weird lag" of playing a PC game on a Mac computer.

The former host of "The Daily Show" told Axelrod that some politicians render "their inauthenticity in real time," while others do so with a bit of a lag.

"It's like when you have a Mac and you want to play a Microsoft game on it and there's that weird lag. That's Hillary Clinton," Stewart said during the taping of the interview at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics.

"What gives me hope in that is that there is a delay, which means she is somehow fighting something," he continued. "I've seen politicians render their inauthenticity in real time, and that's where you go, 'That is a sociopath.'"

You know what? I never, ever, want to hear another dude comment on how Hillary Clinton is so terribly "inauthentic"—or its ugly cousin "calculating"—in response to visible evidence of the modulation she's obliged to practice as a result of decades of personal scrutiny so intense that it would lay waste to an average person without possession of her unfathomable reservoir of steely resolve.

Like every woman, she must contend with the Can't Fucking Win List—that list of contradictory rules that ensures we can never fucking win. And, on top of that whimsy-obliterating nightmare that forces each of us to adopt a restrictive self-consciousness, she's measured against a standard of perfection while being relentlessly subjected to incomprehensible personal attacks on an impossibly grand scale.

And she has been doing this for her virtually her entire adult life.

Yes, maybe that does make her guarded and somewhat more hesitant than she might be otherwise. Which ought to evince profound sympathy from any decent person, rather than some smug repartee about how "inauthentic" she is.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

This is very good news: "The World Health Organization announced Friday that an Ebola vaccine has shown great promise in halting the spread of the deadly virus during a clinical trial in Guinea. 'We believe that the world is on the verge of an efficacious Ebola vaccine,' Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director general for health systems and innovation, said in announcing the results of a preliminary study on the vaccine trial. ...According to results published in the journal Lancet on Friday, the vaccine was found to be 100 percent effective in people treated. More than 4,000 people have been vaccinated with VSV-EBOV, and none have developed Ebola after between six and 10 days, the amount of time needed for people to develop immunity."

[Content Note: War on agency] Senate Republicans continue to find excellent (sarcasm) ways to spend their time: "The Senate is poised to vote Monday on a Republican proposal to defund Planned Parenthood and divert the funds to other health-care entities. The bill, S. 1881, was drafted by a 'working group' led by Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA), Rand Paul (R-KY), and James Lankford (R-OK), and has at least 32 Republican co-sponsors." Fuck all of these people.

[CN: Misogyny; war on agency; violence] Relatedly: Today at 2pm ET, join @reproaction on Twitter for a discussion about "what women actually need, deserve, can do." Because "women are betrayed…by all manner of things."

This is also very good news: "Prison inmates will be eligible to obtain federal Pell grants to finance college education while they are behind bars under an experiment announced Friday, two decades after Congress banned prisoners from receiving such grants. Under the experiment, Obama administration officials said, a limited number of prisoners could begin receiving Pell-financed instruction from a select number of colleges as soon as fall 2016. ...This experiment will be called the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program. It aims to help prisoners work toward an associate's or a bachelor's degree while incarcerated. Obama officials said research shows that correctional education helps reduce the likelihood that prisoners will commit crimes again after they are released, ultimately saving taxpayers money." Also, just by the by, it's a decent fucking thing to do, irrespective of whether it saves money.

[CN: Wildfires] Goddamn: "A grass fire fueled by strong winds destroyed seven homes in a mobile home park Thursday as fires continued to rage in Northern California. The fire swept through the Isleton mobile home park Thursday, forcing residents to run for their lives. A small vegetation fire in the Solano County delta town got out of control and reached the homes before firefighters could quell the flames. Meanwhile, the destructive wildfire burning north of Napa Valley has scorched 13,000 acres, damaged multiple outbuildings and forced 650 people to flee."

This is just a real headline in the world: "Facebook Ready to Test Giant Drone for Beaming Internet Via Lasers." Sure. Gleep glorp.

[CN: Privacy violations] Shiiiiiiiit: "Windows 10 is under attack over default settings which users say compromise their privacy, just days after the operating system's successful launch saw more than 14 million installs in the first 24 hours. Hundreds of commenters...have criticised default settings that send personal information to Microsoft, use bandwidth to upload data to other computers running the operating system, share Wi-Fi passwords with online friends, and remove the ability to opt out of security updates. ...Users are given the option to opt out of most of the data collection, but critics say that that isn't enough. ...'There is no world in which 45 pages of policy documents and opt-out settings split across 13 different Settings screens and an external website constitutes 'real transparency.''"

Do you like Meryl Streep? Do you also like Mamie Gummer? I like Meryl Streep AND Mamie Gummer! If you are like me, then you might enjoy hearing Mamie Gummer talk about working with her mom, Meryl Streep. And about other stuff!

[CN: Misogyny] Of course Jon Stewart is having Louis CK as one of the guests on his final show. OF COURSE he is. Hopefully they can tell us more about how humorless, scary, and violent feminists are!

Okay! "In the series, Tom Hardy plays James Keziah Delaney, a rogue adventurer who returns to London in 1813 after spending 10 years in Africa, only to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his father, who has been killed. Delaney refuses to sell his family's business to the East India Company, and opts to build his own trading and shipping empire instead, which thrusts him into the middle of the War of 1812, between the U.S. and Britain. ...Hardy actually crafted the original story himself with his father Chips Hardy." I will never stop being delighted that Tom Hardy's dad is called Chips Hardy!

And finally! Proof that cats have been hilarious assholes since at least 100 AD!

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Sounds About Right

[Content Note: Racism.]

As you may recall, I'm not exactly a huge fan of Jon Stewart. And one of the primary reasons that I increasingly lost ardor for him and The Daily Show over the years is because, in my experience, people who are hostile to the very idea of identity politics tend to be pretty hostile to the people with those identities when they advocate for inclusion themselves. (Leave it to the white dude comedians, okay, people? Geez.) Case in point:

[Wyatt Cenac, a black man], who was a writer and correspondent on The Daily Show for over four years, spoke with Marc Maron on his "WTF" podcast about what it was like working with Stewart. Maron asked, "And you got along with Jon?" "Naw," replied Cenac. While Cenac initially wanted to see Stewart as a father figure, he didn't get that. What he remembers instead is a moment when Stewart screamed at him in front of the entire staff. "There had, in my experience, never been an explosion like that," he said.

This happened back in the summer of 2011, when Stewart was roundly pillorying the 2012 presidential hopefuls, including one Herman Cain. He made fun of Cain by doing a "voice." At the time Cenac was on a field assignment, and watched the bit from home. "I don't think this is from a malicious place, but I think this is from a naïve, ignorant place," he remembered thinking. "Oh no, you just did this and you didn't think about it. It was just the voice that came into your head. And so it bugged me."

...Cenac, who was the only black writer there at the time, voiced his concerns during the writer's meeting. "I've got to be honest, and I just spoke from my place," said Cenac. "I wasn't here when it all happened. I was in a hotel. And I cringed a little bit. It bothered me." He wanted them to drop the bit and said that it reminded him of Kingfish, a character Tim Moore played on Amos 'n' Andy. He remembers:

[Stewart] got incredibly defensive. I remember he was like, What are you trying to say? There's a tone in your voice. I was like, "There's no tone. It bothered me. It sounded like Kingfish." And then he got upset. And he stood up and he was just like, "Fuck off. I'm done with you." And he just started screaming that to me. And he screamed it a few times. "Fuck off! I'm done with you." And he stormed out. And I didn't know if I had been fired.

The fight carried on at Stewart's office and was only stopped when one of the office dogs began pawing at them. (Aww.) Eventually, the show had to go on, and Cenac remembers going outside to a baseball field and having a breakdown. "I was shaking, and I just sat there by myself on the bleachers and fucking cried. And it's a sad thing. That's how I feel. That's how I feel in this job. I feel alone," he said.

I'm so sorry that happened to Wyatt Cenac, and, because there are so many people who are straight-up calling him a liar, I also want to say that I believe him.

And I don't believe him just because I think Jon Stewart is kind of a jerk (although I do), but because I have been a woman who has been treated the same way in the same situation, and because I am a white person who has been precisely the same kind of ass that Jon Stewart was when I was called out on something by a person of color.

I believe Wyatt Cenac, because I have experienced exactly this dynamic, on either side of the privileged and marginalized power imbalance.

And who I don't believe is anyone who would claim to have never experienced it. Who doesn't recognize themselves in at least one half of that story, if not both.

Anyway. The moral of this story is that social commentators who distance themselves from accountability because "I'm only a comedian" are not trustworthy. Comedy is meant to be a weapon against the powerful, not a shield from criticism made by people to whom you're ostensibly an ally.

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A Thought

[Content Note: Antisemitism; misogyny; fat hatred; domestic violence; regionalism.]

So, the new host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, has a history of tweeting shitty "jokes" about Jewish people, fat women, domestic violence, and people in "flyover" states.

(As an aside, I've watched one of his stand-up specials, much of which was fairly solid, so it's pretty crappy to know he's capable of punching up but is happy to punch down in other spaces.)

And many people have reacted by accusing The Daily Show of failing to properly vet Noah.

Except that sort of ignores the fact that the The Daily Show is pretty much fine with xenophobic, fat-hating, misogynist, regionalist humor.

Imagining this was a vetting problem is contingent on forgiving disablism, fat hatred, mockery of intersex bodies, reproductive policing (with more fat hatred), jokes about how feminists are so scary and violent, etc. That's hardly a complete list. The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart at the helm, did a lot of punching down, when it should have always been punching up.

Maybe this isn't a vetting problem. Maybe this is a decency problem.

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No Tears

[Content Note: Privilege; tone policing; misogyny; transmisogyny; disablism; fat hatred.]

Jamelle Bouie has written a piece for Slate about why Jon Stewart was bad for the liberals who loved him. And it's an interesting piece, in which Bouie makes some very good points about the nature of the cynical indifference inherent to Stewart's brand of humor, although it's critical to note that "the liberals who loved him" loved him precisely because he gave them permission to be indifferent to things they already didn't want to care about; to be judgmental about marginalized people; to tone police anyone who urged seriousness about what is routinely referred to in disdainful tones as "identity politics."

I am shedding no tears over Jon Stewart's departure from The Daily Show, and it's because I am a liberal who didn't and couldn't love him. Not for a very long time. Because loving Stewart was contingent on ignoring disablism, fat hatred, mockery of intersex bodies, reproductive policing (with more fat hatred), jokes about how feminists are so scary and violent, etc. That's hardly a complete list. The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart at the helm, did a lot of punching down, when it should have always been punching up.

Which might have something to do with the fact that its writing staff was always very white and very male.

And, sure, we all like problematic things, and we all draw our lines about what is too problematic in different places.

For me, to continue to be a fan of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show would have obliged me to navigate way too much shit. And to be a fan of Jon Stewart himself would have obliged me to overlook his contempt for people like me.

I didn't share Jon Stewart's privilege. Most of the people I know don't share his privilege. And thus I had zero appreciation for his tone policing and concern trolling, rooted in the luxury of believing that our biggest problem in this country is a lack of moderation and compromise.

Some smug dipshit sneering at me a false equivalence between the left and the right that equates marginalized people fighting for our basic rights and very lives with the privileged bigots who oblige us to right in the first place isn't something I find funny or charming or cool. It's indecent.

Stewart was always contemptuous of people who yell. No matter if they leaned left or right: If you yell, you're an extremist, and extremism is what's tearing this country apart.

Welp.

I yell because I HAVE TO.

People die because of the hatred disgorged, practiced, legislated, and codified by people on the opposition. I'm not going to be made to feel guilty because I don't respond to deadly antipathy with moderation.

The shame belongs to someone so fucking privileged that he didn't feel obliged to yell, too.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: War] War, war, and neverending war: "President Obama on Wednesday formally asked Congress to authorize a three-year military campaign against the terrorist group the Islamic State that would avoid a large-scale invasion and occupation but in addition to air power could include limited ground operations by American forces to hunt down enemy leaders or rescue American personnel. ...[I]n a letter to Congress accompanying the proposal, Mr. Obama, who has said there would be no boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, envisioned limited ground combat operations 'such as rescue operations' or the use of 'Special Operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.' He also said the legislation would allow the use of ground forces for intelligence gathering, target spotting and planning assistance to ground troops of allies like Iraq's military."

[CN: Death] Oh no: "At least 300 migrants are feared to have drowned after attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa this week in rough seas, the UN says. UNHCR Europe director Vincent Cochetel said the incident was a 'tragedy on an enormous scale.' ...The UNHCR said [that four dinghies] left Libya at the weekend. Those rescued on Wednesday morning had spent days drifting without food or water in two of the other dinghies—with each said to be carrying more than 100 people. The survivors said the fourth dinghy disappeared at sea. Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said the victims had been 'swallowed up by the waves,' with the youngest a child of 12. ...The UN said the latest incident should be a message to the European Union that the current search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean was inadequate. 'Europe cannot afford to do too little too late,' Mr Cochetel added."

[CN: Homophobia; transphobia; video may autoplay at link] What the actual fuck: "State workers [in Kansas] are no longer protected based on their sexual orientation or gender identity following an executive order by Gov. Sam Brownback on Tuesday. ...His order rescinds a prior order from former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, which expanded the protections." What an absolute asshole.

[CN: War on agency] And anti-choicers' strategy of chipping away at Roe continues unabated: "On the heels of a record-breaking number of new abortion restrictions that have been enacted over the past four years, state lawmakers are continuing to push forward with a stringent anti-abortion agenda in 2015. By last week, states had already introduced more than 100 bills intended to regulate access to abortion, according to researchers at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Lawmakers are working to restrict the procedure in more than half the states in the country."

[CN: Sexual assault] I don't even know what to say about the trial of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has been repeatedly accused of rape. He is clearly a sexual predator and an unrepetant liar.

Speaking of liars, Brian Williams has been suspended from NBC for six months without pay, for his tall tale of coming under fire in Iraq. Ian Milliser observes: "BREAKING: Brian Williams becomes first person in human history to suffer professional consequences for lying about the Iraq War." Boom.

Something something Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show. Okay. Who cares.

Wisconsin's problem wants to be a national problem: "Scott Walker, the Republican who leads the presidential pack in Iowa polling, is the first of the 2016 White House aspirants to open an office here." Good grief.

Want to see popcorn explode in slow motion? It's pretty cool!

And finally: This goat loves peanut butter. "This tastes way better than a tin can!"

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Whooooooops Your "Feminism"

[Content Note: Misogyny; reproductive policing; fat bias; transphobia.]

We all like problematic shows, and we all draw our lines about what is overwhelmingly problematic in different places. So I'm not judging or criticizing anyone who watches The Daily Show. I don't watch it anymore, and haven't watched it regularly for years, because the balance between valuable and objectionable material tipped toward objectionable for me a long time ago.

Anyway. Today, I've seen Jon Stewart getting a lot of credit for a segment in which he called out the double-standard regarding grandparenting in presidential politics. So I watched the segment, and it was a perfect reminder of why I no longer watch The Daily Show.

Here is a transcription of the relevant part of the segment, running from 1:10 to 2:45, and following an introduction that noted Chelsea Clinton has announced she's pregnant with her first child:

Stewart: News media! Set the 2016 presidential speculatron to behbee!

Cut to a news clip of a white female anchor saying: "Everyone is wondering what impact it might have on Hillary Clinton's decision to run for president." Cut to a news clip of a white male anchor saying: "Does the fact that she's going to become a grandmother on top of the other considerations factor in?" Cut to a news clip with video of Chelsea Clinton, over which a female anchor offscreen says: "Could it put a bump in Hillary's 2016 plans? And is it sexist to ask?" Cut back to Stewart in TDS studio.

Stewart: No! No! No, sillybilly, of course it's not sexist. Even though it's a question that has never, ever, been posed to a male candidate ever. For god's sakes, Mitt Romney has like a litter of grandchildren. [an image of Romney with a bunch of his grandkids pops up onscreen, as the audience roars with laughter] Mitt Romney has, for god's sakes, if I'm not mistaken, Mitt Romney has like a grandchild petting zoo! [an image of the Romney family pops up onscreen, to more laughter] The guy added three grandchildren [another picture of Romney with his family] while he was campaigning!

He is the only candidate in history whose electoral college total is less than the number of chairs he has to put out at Thanksgiving. My point is, he, he got crushed in the election by someone with no grandchildren. Yet somehow the grandchild factor never came up in the race between Obama and Romney.

For god's sakes, when William Howard Taft was running in 1908, he was actually pregnant! [an image of Taft, famously the fattest president, comes onscreen, photoshopped so that Taft is holding his belly like a pregnant woman might hold her belly; uproarious laughter] He was pregnant! Nobody said anything! Nobody brought it up!

From there, Stewart goes on to observe some other differences about how women and men are treated in politics.

Okay, here's the thing: I am a firm believer in the simple principle that no type of bigotry, policing, or other kinds of harm are solved by more of the same.

So when Stewart seeks to criticize the policing and politicization of Hillary Clinton's reproduction, and her daughter's reproduction, by policing the reproduction of Romney and his kids, that isn't helping.

Yes, I get that it's a comedy show, and it's supposed to be funnier to say that Mitt Romney has a "litter" and a "petting zoo" of grandchildren, as opposed to just pointing out he's got grandchildren and it was never an issue.

But this is the problem with The Daily Show and Stewart, who constantly want to have it both ways by saying they're not a real news show even as they tackle serious issues: Criticizing the auditing of one family's reproduction is ineffective when you turn around and criticize another family's.

By joking about the quantity of Romeny's grandchildren, he's auditing their reproductive choices. Further, there is a long history of talking about large families with lots of children using animal imagery, especially families of color. To reinforce and legitimize those narratives will not marginalize the Romneys, but it will marginalize the vulnerable families against whom they're routinely used.

And, not for nothing, but Romney didn't give birth to any of those kids. The women in his family did. In taking a swipe at Romney, Stewart is calling his wife and daughters-in-law brood mares. Which is replicating the exact sort of sexism that he's purporting to criticize.

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And then there's the bit about Taft. Jesus Jones. The entire joke, such as it is, rests on the absurdity of a man being pregnant, which disappears the lived experiences of trans men who have been pregnant. And, of course, that old chestnut about how fat men's bellies are pregnancies.

Stewart's fat hatred is nothing new: This is, after all, a man who appeared in a fucking fat suit on the show.

Pregnancy humor at the expense of trans bodies and fat bodies is garbage, in and of itself. But the policing of trans bodies and fat bodies is a crucial feminist issue. To include such rubbish in a segment ostensibly designed to challenge misogyny is not just cruel; it's counterproductive.

* * *

Protip: When your segment on sexism obliges me to defend the Romneys, you are doing something wrong.

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Nope

[Content Note: Rape culture; rape jokes; misogyny. If you watch the segment, there are also anti-Semitic "jokes," which I have not included here.]

So, Louis CK was on The Daily Show last night, and he talked about Toshgate, and his "misunderstood" tweet, which he says was a totally unrelated tweet he sent just about how he enjoys Tosh's show while watching it on vacation, not even knowing what was going on. So, to be clear: He was ONLY sending rape enforcer Daniel Tosh who features actual acts of sexual violence on his show as comedy a tweet about how great his show is, he was not defending Daniel Tosh's rape jokes and rape incitement.

Anyway.

There's a lot of buzz this morning about how Louis CK said on The Daily Show that he's not going to tell rape jokes anymore, sort of a second act to his promise not to use gay slurs anymore. Except: He never said that.

I watched the segment this morning, and what I heard was:

* Louis CK calling feminists humorless.

* Louis CK saying that feminists and comedians are "natural enemies," thus disappearing all feminist comedians.

* Louis CK calling bloggers and comedians "uneducated" fonts of "hyperbole and garbage."

* Louis CK saying that comedians can't take criticism, which makes them "big pussies."

* Louis CK saying: "For me, any joke about anything bad is great. That's how I feel. Any joke about rape, the Holocaust, the Mets ahhhhhh! whatever. Any joke about something bad is a positive thing."

* Jon Stewart and Louis CK eating cookies about how Louis CK has "evolved" and grown "as an individual."

* Louis CK say some gender essentialist reductive shit about men and women, which included telling women to shut the fuck up: "The women are saying, 'That's how I FEEL about this,' but they're also saying, 'My feelings should be everyone's primary concern.' The men are making this mistake: The men are saying, 'You're feelings don't matter; your feelings are wrong and your feelings are stupid,' and if you've ever lived with a woman, you can't step in shit worse than that, than to tell a woman that her feelings don't matter. So, to the men I say: Listen, listen to what the women are saying about this. To the women I say: Now that we've heard you, you know, shut the fuck up for a minute."

* Jon Stewart joke about how Louis CK would have to get airlifted outta there, because feminists are so scary and violent, of course.

I also heard, which seems to be the piece that is getting construed as a promise to not tell rape jokes anymore:

I've read some blogs during this whole thing that have enlightened me to things I didn't know. This woman said how rape is something that polices women's lives—that they have a narrow corridor. They can't go out late, they can't go to certain neighborhoods, they can't dress a certain way, because they might get— Now that's part of me that wasn't there before, and I can still enjoy a good rape joke.

I did not hear any promise to not tell rape jokes. I did, however, hear a promise to keep finding them funny.

Because, shit, nothing could be worse than being humorless about rape jokes.

Ahem.

It appears to me that Louis CK is being given credit for something he didn't actually say, at the expense of ignoring what he did say, which is a heaping fuckload of misogyny punctuated by his continued fondness for rape jokes.

UPDATE: I also want to quickly address the argument I'm seeing a lot that Louis CK should be given "credit," or some variation thereof, for either "evolving" on rape culture and/or speaking about rape culture on a national platform, despite the rest of his objectionable shtick.

First of all, contemplating rape culture for the first time as a 44-year-old man with two daughters, and patting oneself on the back for it instead of framing it as the profoundly regrettable evidence of privilege that is is, isn't something that ought to be praised—and praising it breathes life into the terrible idea that rape culture is difficult for "men" to understand. That is not accurate. It's not difficult for lots of male survivors; it's not difficult for lots of trans* men; it's not difficult for lots of gay men; it's not difficult for lots of men who have been incarcerated; it's not difficult for lots of men who are vulnerable by virtue of physical disability; it's not difficult for lots of highly privileged men who simply have the willingness to listen to women.

Let us not confuse "difficult to understand" for "easy to ignore by virtue of privilege."

Secondly, it is problematic, to put it politely, that the person being given the national platform to talk about rape culture is a guy who's had his first thoughts about it within the last week, after a career of telling and defending rape jokes. And, let's be honest, the platform was mostly offered so he could defend himself. I don't see his using that platform as some great piece of progress; I see his being given that platform as just another example of how the people who are most knowledgeable and sensitive about the gravity of sexual violence are the ones least likely to be given the opportunity to speak about it.

Finally, compartmentalizing Louis CK's "evolution" and misogynist jokes into two separate pieces, in order to praise the former, elides the fact that misogyny underwrites rape culture. He didn't say that he realizes rape culture exists in a void; he said it in a segment in which he used a classic feminist silencing trope, a misogynist slur, gender essentialist humor, and told women to "shut the fuck up for a minute." Extricating his "evolution" from that context is to fail to acknowledge that treating women as less than is a key feature of rape culture.

What he did isn't progress. It's ass-covering.

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Want to Get a Gander at My Garbage Governor?

Welp, here ya go: Republican Indiana Governor Mitch "The Blade" Daniels was on The Daily Show last night (thanks for the heads-up, Shaker Sarah), and he spoke with Jon "Both Sides Are Stupid and I Am the Perfect Center" Stewart about how the Republican Party's rhetoric is definitely terrible, mostly because it's too honest about how terrible their policies are.

Once again, I'll note that the reason Daniels is so scary is because he has the capacity to sound so reasonable, even though his politics are just as extreme as Rick Perry's. He talks a good game about how he cares about the social safety net and providing access and opportunity to poor folks, but he was the first governor in the nation to sign a bill defunding Planned Parenthood. And he can brag about "growth" in Indiana all he wants, but the fact remains that our infrastructure is crumbling to pieces. He is a snake. And we are in real trouble if he changes his mind about running in 2012.

Anyway, here he is. (My apologies for not providing a transcript: If anyone can locate a transcript of the episode, please drop a link in comments. If there's anyone able and willing to provide a transcript, please let me know in comments.)

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Both Sides Blah Blah Fart

Digby has the energy to take to task future conservative Jon Stewart for engaging in more of his increasingly tiresome equivalency bullshit.

All I have the energy for is linking to Digby.

Because I've already tread this path.

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LOL

[Trigger warning for various mentions of inappropriate "humor."]

An actual bid for conservative email addresses poll currently being run by that honorable bastion of conservative thought, Townhall.barf.

[Click to embiggen.]
Yes, who IS the most liberal media personality?

Is it Keith Olbermann, the rape apologist and misogynist who has "joked" about killing Hillary Clinton, referred to Michelle Malkin as " a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it," and used alleged promiscuity to justify incessant jokes at the expense of young women like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton?

Is it Chris Matthews, the homophobic, racist (and racist and more racist), misogynist (misogynist, misogynist, misogynist, misogynist, misogynist, misogynist...) dildobrain?

Is it the Bill Maher, the deeply misogynist, fat-hating, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, one-man rape joke machine?

Is it Jon Stewart, who, when he is not actually lecturing liberals on how terrible they are, spends his time anchoring a comedy news show that is written almost exclusively by white men and uses humor that's as edgy as it is progressive like fat jokes and transmisogyny?

Or is it a tie between ALL THESE AWESOME LIBERALS?

You know, the sad part is that there are lot of progressives fauxgressives who would actually agree with Townhall.fart that these men are good liberals.

But they are all just opportunists whose ideas of justice had boundaries extend only as far as whomever he wants to make fun of, be cruel to, or marginalize as unserious or uncredible.

They were Bush-haters. They were never progressives.

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So, Jon Stewart Was on the Rachel Maddow Show

[Background: On the "Restore Sanity/Fear" Rally, Too Clever By Half, I Write Letters.]

Still whinging that his Big Important Rally was misunderstood, Jon Stewart took a seat beside Rachel Maddow and, in the first segment of their interview (the remaining pieces of which, as well as the raw, unedited interview in its entirety, can be found here), explained what the rally was REALLY all about to us stupidfuck critics who are too daft to get hip to his jive:

These are the relevant bits that I want to address:

The intention [of the rally] is to say that we've all bought into [the idea that] the conflict in this country is left and right, liberal and conservative, red and blue. All the news networks have bought into that. CNN sort of started it. They have this idea that, you know, the fight in Washington is Republicans and Democrats, so, why don't we isolate that and we'll stand back here, and…Democrats and Republicans will go at it. Red and blue staters will go at it. And what it does is amplify a division that I actually don't think is the right fight.

…Both sides have their way of shutting down debate. …You've said Bush is a war criminal. Now, that may be technical true. In my world, war criminal is Pol Pot or the Nuremburg trials. …I think that's such an incendiary charge that when you put it in the conversation as—well, technically he is. That may be right. But it feels like a conversation stopper, not a conversation starter. …We were talking about tone, not content necessarily.

…My problem is it's become tribal. And if you have 24-hour networks that focus—their job is to highlight the conflict between the two sides—where I don't think that's the main conflict in our society. That was the point of the reality, was to deflate that idea that that's a real conflict—red/blue, Democrat/ Republican. I feel like there's a bigger difference between people with kids and people who don't have kids than red state/blue state.

Wow. I mean, it must be nice to be so privileged that you can argue, with a straight fucking face, that progressive-conservative isn't "the right fight," that it's just a made-up conflict started by CNN (!) and wildly blown out of proportion for ratings or fun or whatever.

It must be nice to be so privileged that the most vast difference you see among people hinges on whether they're parents.

Holy. Shit.

I mean, yes, this rally was, from the get-go, evidence that Jon Stewart is a privileged wanker with his head firmly stuck up his ass, but HOLY SHIT. "In my world, Pol Pot is a war criminal, not George Bush." Okay, but YOUR world isn't THE world.

In THE world, the one in which Jon Stewart and the Great Parental Chasm aren't the center of the universe, the "technical" truth of George Bush being a war criminal and Stewart's distaste for the "tone" of shouting that fact in public doesn't fucking matter to the millions of displaced people, the countless dead, the survivors of the dead, the wounded, the tortured, the indefinitely detained, people whose lives were ended or will never be the same all because George W. Bush started two wars of choice on lies with no strategic longterm plans for success, for rebuilding, for caring for our soldiers when they came home, and then threw out the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law, which doesn't even begin to examine what his folly has cost USians in treasure, in safety, and in support from their government as social services will be decimated to pay for his mess.

The biggest distinction between Pol Pot and George Bush is that the latter did his damage while wearing white gloves.

It's not the content, it's the tone. Right, Jon?

And I don't know how many different ways I can say that imagining there is no legitimate progressive-conservative grievance in this country is bullshit. Look, I get that Stewart is pissed that corporate rule is irrevocably corrupting our system, and that the media plays a big part in that, and that people on the left and the right need to find some way to work together to stop the fire sale of the entire nation to corporate vampires who haven't a shred of patriotism or any interest in protecting the long-term security of the US economy, because they'll just move onto China once we've been bled dry.

But suggesting that it's exclusively a false conflict trumped up by the media which divides left and right, and that there are no genuine barriers, beyond ideology and media narratives, stopping some grand cohesion of progressives and conservatives, is unmitigated horseshit.

I guess it probably does just feel like a game to someone whose humanity, basic rights, bodily autonomy, and dignity aren't at fucking stake. But Stewart needs to get it through his goddamn impenetrably thick exoskeleton of privilege that IT ISN'T A GAME TO MARGINALIZED PEOPLE.

In HIS world, where there are "real" war criminals and "technical" war criminals, elite conservatism is populated by people who are only anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-affirmative action for political reasons, but personally want access to abortion, don't give a fuck about gay marriage, and hire people of color without having to be required.

But in THE world, James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, and Dr. George Tiller are dead.

"My problem is it's become tribal." Yeah? Well, fuck you, Stewart. And fuck your smug contempt for the hoi polloi and its primitive tribalism. (I'm not even going to get into the implicit racism in that bullshit. Suffice it to say: Congratulations for being as enlightened as a 17th century ethnographer.) Not all tribes are formed in pursuit of conflict. Some tribes are formed as refuge from attack.

A reality which, I acknowledge, is decidedly inconvenient in its fundamental subversion of the "imaginary conflict" narrative.

I am deeply, deeply sympathetic to the idea that the media distorts and exacerbates conflict, but not the idea that the media creates it. The ideological divide is meaningful beyond having different ideas about how things should be done; it is also, because of ancient bigotry, about who we are as people. Pretending otherwise doesn't help in any way at all the people targeted for who we are. Especially when that dangerous pretense is accompanied by insufferable concern trolling about our "tone."

Stewart says, in order to justify his rally and the philosophy he's embraced which underlined it, and without seemingly any worry that he might be wrong, "I actually don't think [left-right division] is the right fight."

"Right fight" implies a choice. "Right fight" implies that marginalized people could spend their time discussing Very Serious Things, but instead they're fighting the Culture Wars with hysterical tones.

It's not about the "right fight." I don't know any feminist/womanist who wouldn't give anything to never have to worry about rollbacks of Roe ever again. I don't know any LGBTQI activist who wouldn't give anything to never have to spend another moment advocating for rights LGBTQI people don't have ever again. I don't know any anti-racist activist who wouldn't give anything to never have to be concerned with a person of color being denied access or opportunity ever again. I don't know any advocate for people with physical disabilities, people with neurological disabilities, undocumented immigrants, the poor, the uninsured, the unemployed, fat people, non-Christians, abuse survivors, veterans, and/or other marginalized people who wouldn't give anything to never have to fight for equality denied or be obliged to teaspoon oceans of bigotry ever again.

It's not about the "right fight." It's about the necessary fight. It's about the fights we can't avoid, no matter how much we want them to not exist at all.

And, yeah, there was a time when this fight didn't exist, not in the way it does now. And part of that is attributable to cable news. But mostly it's because marginalized people started asserting their rights. We don't want to live in a country where black and white folks are at separate water fountains, gays are in closets, people with disabilities are tucked away in institutions, and women are dying in back alleys anymore. We don't want to live in a country with internment camps and reservations and housing projects, of separate but equal and 75 cents on the dollar and Don't Ask Don't Tell anymore. We don't want to be marginalized for the sake of maintaining civil peace for the privileged anymore.

And if there's a fight about that, it's because the people holding the power to grant our equality are treating we the people as an exclusive country club and liberty and justice for all as a suggestion.

The media didn't create this fight. The media is only responsible for treating both sides as equal, for pretending two women getting married to each other is "shoving their sexuality in people's faces" but the Quiverfull movement isn't, for pretending that "choice" and "my way" are equally valid arguments, for pretending that "because God says so" is a legitimate political position.

And that's the same damn rap that Stewart's running, by pretending the fight isn't real.

It's real. And its genesis is a nation that promises its people equality, then endeavors to deny it to them.

Stewart is right that it's not strictly about left vs. right; it's more about marginalized vs. privileged (which is a lot more left vs. right than it's not). The irony, of course, is that it's his unexamined privilege which renders him unable to see that he's getting it wrong, to understand that his "solution" is just another part of the problem.

Urging moderation, suggesting there can be compromise with oppressors, is just a big silencing tactic, the same one that's been used to discredit marginalized people angling for what their nation promised them, since the nation's inception. History tells us that the only compromise acceptable to privileged oppressors is our surrender. We fight loud and hard because that's all there can be.

We don't need another concern troll, Jon Stewart. We need allies.

And if you're not going to lead or follow, then get the hell out of the way.

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Too Clever by Half

[Trigger warning for violence.]

I've really just about had it with Jon Stewart:

After facing criticism for his recent Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C., Jon Stewart has come up with the perfect solution to keep everyone happy: Another rally.

On last night's episode of "The Daily Show," Stewart aired the grievances of left-leaning critics, including "Real Time" host Bill Maher, who claimed the rally was about nothing, and Keith Olbermann, who said Stewart created a "false equivalence" between the services of MSNBC and Fox News.

Stewart then joked that he will hold another event on November 13 to make it right, calling the occasion "the Rally to Determine Precisely the Percentage of Blame to Be Doled Out to the Left and the Right for Our Problems Because We All Know That the Only Thing That Matters Is That the Other Guys Are Worse Than We Are and/or Fear."

Oh my aching sides.

The thing that Jon Stewart is really, really, really missing here is underlined by the fact that it's three white, straight, thin, wealthy men (who publicly present as cis and able-bodied) with their own vast media platforms who are arguing about this shit, when the material, practical, demonstrable effects of the differences between the Left and the Right are not most evident among the most privileged of USians.

It is marginalized people who most feel, in all aspects of their lives, the difference between the Left and the Right (monikers which are, btw, distinct from the Democrats and the Republicans, who are generally center-right and extreme right).

Women's bodily autonomy, right to value her own life over a fetus, right to be childless by choice, freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and access to legal medical procedures, rape kits, emergency contraception, equal pay, equal opportunity, and equal rights are not (generally) under attack from the Left.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer people's basic equality, fundamental rights of marriage, parenting, employment, housing, healthcare, inheritance, etc., freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and personal safety are not (generally) under attack from the Left.

People of color do not (generally) find their basic equality, fundamental rights of access and opportunity, freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and personal safety under attack from the Left.

Trans people's employment rights, healthcare equity, and personal safety are not (generally) under attack from the Left.

The social programs on which poor people depend to keep them from falling off the edge—foodstamps, housing programs, healthcare assistance—the things that can make the difference between homelessness and a roof over one's head, eating and starving, life and death, are not under attack from the Left.

Undocumented immigrants are (generally) not demonized and scapegoated and spoken about with the most vicious eliminationist language, while simultaneously being exploited in horrendous working conditions, by the Left.

People with physical and/or psychological disabilities do not (generally) find their basic equality, fundamental rights of access and opportunity, freedom from marginalizing bullying, harassment, and legislation, and personal safety under attack from the Left.

When women and their allies and their abortion providers are targeted for violence, it is by rightwingers. Dr. George Tiller was not killed by a leftist. When gay/bi women and men, people of color, trans people, people with disabilities are targeted for violence, victimized by hate crimes, it is not progressives who wield the weapons.

The most vulnerable people in our society, whose actual lives are at risk because of virulent, violent, unconstrained hatred, are not being targeted by the Left.

That fucking matters.

And it matters not because I'm interested in bickering about "Precisely the Percentage of Blame to Be Doled Out to the Left and the Right for Our Problems," but because to gloss over that reality is to aid and abet with indifferent silence the extreme elements who would not merely see marginalized people indefinitely interred in their marginalization, but would see them FUCKING DEAD, given half the chance.

That's why Fred Phelps carrying "God Hates Fags" signs and my using vulgar language and an indelicate tone to vociferously defend gay equality is not the bloody same. And, let's be honest: I wouldn't be screaming my fool head off all the time in defense of gay equality if assholes like Fred Phelps didn't go on the offensive against my family, friends, and fellow citizens.

You're goddamn right I yell. But it's because I HAVE TO.

People die because of this hatred. I'm not going to be made to feel guilty because I don't respond to deadly antipathy with moderation.

The shame belongs to someone so fucking privileged that he doesn't feel obliged to yell, too.

Jon Stewart responded to criticism by "intercutting clips of Maher and other detractors of Stewart's recent D.C. rally (Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow) with a parody of Martin Scorsese's boxing classic Raging Bull featuring Stewart taking a slow-motion beating."

Hilarious. What a comedy fucking genius.

You know, Jon, there are people in this country who REALLY GET ATTACKED AND BEATEN because of who they are and/or what they believe. And the fact that you can equate criticism with violence is precisely the reason why you deserve the criticism you're getting.

For someone whose business is irony, you ought to appreciate that. Asshole.

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On the "Restore Sanity/Fear" Rally

So, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a rally yesterday. (More here.) And Jon Stewart closed the event with a serious monologue urging cooperation, which I suppose was supposed to be profound, but is, frankly, utterly meaningless in the context he created of "both sides are just as bad."

Both sides are not just as bad, and both sides are not equally responsible for the antagonism that has led to the extreme political polarization which currently prevents cooperation.

It's evident in a Democratic president who's alienating his own base in order to work with the opposition—and an opposition who overly promise gridlock and talk about blood oaths to shut down the government if they don't get their way.

It's evident in a civil rights movement in which people want the basic rights to serve their country openly and marry whom they love, the equality guaranteed them by the Constitution—and their ideological opponents shutting down debate with lies and fearmongering and hatred mendaciously cloaked in religion, so they can claim a right to religious freedom, even as their religious beliefs oppress others.

It's evident in a debate about a legal medical procedure in which the people with the pro-choice position are said to be restricting freedom, though no one is forced to submit to the procedure under their paradigm; in which the people who support giving access to women to a life-saving procedure are the ones who are said to be murderers. People with the "pro-life" position harass patients and murder doctors.

The positions and strategies "both sides" of these issues—as on many others—are not equivalent.

The pro-choice position does not force anyone to get an abortion who does not want one; the anti-choice position, however, prevents women who want abortions from getting them. The pro-marriage equality position does not force anyone to marry a person of the same sex, nor require that any churches perform same-sex marriage ceremonies; the anti-marriage equality position, however, prevents same-sex couples who want to get married from doing so and prevents churches who want to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies from doing so.

The progressive position treats women and LGBTQIs as autonomous, rights-bearing human beings deserving of full equality; the conservative position treats women's bodies as state property and LGBTQIs as second-class citizens.

There isn't room for "compromise" there. There is only a fervent belief in the consent, autonomy, respect, and dignity of marginalized people—and a shameless, unapologetic movement to protect undeserved privilege at the expense of the same.

The progressive position allows for individual choice; the conservative position does not. The progressive position expands collective freedom; the conservative position limits it. Over and over and over.

Affirmative action. Immigration reform. Gun laws. Funding the social safety net. Rendition. Torture. Eavesdropping. War v. diplomacy. Pick any issue. It's always the same.

Because that's the nature of conservatism: To preserve privilege.

And lecturing "both sides" about cooperation when one side is about advancing opportunity and expanding access, and the other is about preventing both, is bullshit. The end.

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I Write Letters

Dear Jon Stewart:

"The Rally to Restore Sanity" is disablist shit.

That the politics in this country have become extreme, absurd, and increasingly dangerous is not a result of mental illness; it's the result of ignorance and bigotry—and opportunistic fuckheads willing to exploit the same, without a modicum of regard for any consequences aside from their personal gain.

The "crazy" thing (see what I did there?) about your framing what is a legitimate threat to this democracy as "insanity" is that, because of the stigma against mental illness, the issue is being taken less seriously than it ought to be. These people aren't nutty outliers; they are knowingly and deliberately and rationally complicit in a campaign to undermine both the credibility of the democratic process and the efficacy of the US government.

It's a comprehensive strategy crafted by intelligent people who fervently believe in ideas like government should be small enough that "we can drown it in the bathtub." (And constantly vulnerable to that possibility.)

Because we live in a culture where people with mental illness are to be dismissed out of hand as the hopeless lunatics they are, your disablist frame is actively counterproductive.

"Crazy" turns this steaming mess into a joke—a joke that doesn't have to be taken seriously. And more deeply entrenches the marginalizing narratives that created that dismissability in the first place.

Snake. Tail. Yummy yummy. Fail.

Contemptuously,
Liss

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