No No No No No No No

I really hope that this is the stupidest shit I read today, because I don't have the energy for something even stupider: "There's a Bigger Prize Than Impeachment: Keeping Trump in Office Will Destroy the Republican Party" by former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart at the New York Times.

One doesn't even need to get into the actual text of the piece before encountering major problems. Often, I warn against trusting headlines to be fair representations of the text, because writers for publications they don't manage usually don't write their own headlines. But, in this instance, both the head and subhead are accurate summations of arguments Lockhart makes.

Impeachment is not a "prize," and talking about politics like it's a game has always been gross, but it is especially so in this particular moment of relentless political malice and resurgent fascism.

And, no, for all that is decent, keeping Trump in office will not "destroy the Republican Party," which has spent the last two years almost uninterruptedly consolidating power behind Donald Trump.

As one might expect, getting into the body of the piece we encounter even more contemptible assertions:

For Democrats, leaving Donald Trump in office is not only good politics — it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation. Mr. Trump is three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party.

Donald Trump is not three years into destroying the Republican Party; he is three years into destroying U.S. democracy. The Republican Party is doing just fine — holding the Oval Office, the Senate, the Supreme Court, a rapidly increasing number of federal court seats, and the majority of state legislatures.

Anyone who can take a look at those facts and imagine that the Republican Party is in danger of being "finished off" doesn't even understand basic math, no less modern politics.

Lockhart continues:

Mr. Trump has abandoned most of the core principles that have defined Republicans for the past century. Free trade abandoned for protectionism. Challenging our adversaries and promoting democracy replaced by coddling Russia and cozying up to dictators near and far. Fiscal conservatism replaced by reckless spending and exploding deficits.

What's left of the party is a rigid adherence to tax cuts, a social agenda that repels most younger Americans, and rampant xenophobia and race-based politics that regularly interfere with the basic functioning of the federal government.

Republicans today are the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson — a coalition that, in the face of every demographic trend in America, will mean the long-term realignment of the federal government behind the Democrats.

We're not quite there yet — but keeping [Donald] Trump in office is the best way to cement Trumpism's hold on the Republican Party.

There is a lot wrong in those four paragraphs, but I'll just briefly note two of the most consternating problems.

First, Donald Trump is not even remotely an anomaly of Republican politics (which abandoned principle many decades ago): He is instead its inevitable endgame. He did not emerge from a vacuum, but from the well-marked path that the GOP has been laying for decades. Trump ascended as the uncensored id of a carefully cultivated Republican base. He is not a betrayer of Republican values, but their most shameless promoter.

Secondly, this ubiquitous notion that the Republican Party, especially its most extreme elements, is soon to die with the aged is just flatly wrong. It wasn't pensioners who marched through Charlottesville with tiki torches.

The unfortunate truth is that the most reactionary and violent parts of the conservative movement are comprised of many, many angry young white men.

Lockhart then declares:

For Democrats, it's the dream scenario — as long as he completes his term.

I can't even wrap my head around being so privileged that you can assert giving Trump two more years in office is a "dream scenario," knowing that those two years could very well see, just for a start, the construction of military-run concentration camps at the border, the re-criminalization of abortion, the death of the Affordable Care Act, the rollback of LGBTQ rights, continued empowerment of white supremacy from the Oval Office, and possibly two more Supreme Court seats transferred to conservatives with loyalty to an authoritarian president.

Lockhart concludes thus:

Allowing Mr. Trump to lead the Republican Party, filled with sycophants and weak-willed leaders, into the next election is the greater prize. Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realign American politics along progressive lines, very much like Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in the 1980s.

Trumpism equals Republicanism as long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And a real shift to progressivism in America will be delivered by a devastating rebuke of the president and his party, a rebuke that will return control of the Senate and state houses across the nation. Politics is always a gamble — and this is the best bet we've had in a long time.

The best bet we had, possibly in the nation's history, was Hillary Clinton, who was the last person standing between the preservation of our democracy and the Russian nesting doll of character defects who now inhabits the White House and leverages the power of the presidency to destroy our democracy as swiftly and irreparably as he can, with the assistance of the rest of the Republican Party, who are neither ashamed of him nor on the precipice of being consigned to the dustbin of history.

We gambled on her and rolled a winning shot and still lost, because of election meddling — for which the meddlers, foreign and domestic, have not been held accountable. And that almost certainly means that they will be back again with a vengeance in 2020.

Counting on free and fair elections to solve the problem of Donald Trump and the Republican Party is a bullshit proposition. I wish desperately that were not the case.

There may yet be time to ensure that it isn't, but if there is any hope of restoring the basic tenet of our democracy, the integrity of our elections, it starts with impeachment hearings.

It certainly does not start with fucking trash about how great the remainder of Donald Trump's presidency will be for progressives.

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This Is a Real Thing in the World

This is just a real thing that a real person wrote and other real people edited and then decided to really publish in a real publication in the world: Biden Should Run on a Unity Ticket with Romney.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.

The author of this heap of trash is Juleanna Glover, whose author bio at the end of the piece informs us that she "has worked as an adviser for several Republican politicians, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Rudy Giuliani and advised the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Jeb Bush. She is on the Biden Institute Policy Advisory Board."

Cool cool cool.

Setting aside that the Biden Institute has on its advisory board a Republican operative who has presumably also found gainful employment between election cycles as a fox guarding hen houses, I suppose we can assume that her affiliation with the Biden Institute means this is a trial balloon.

If this is an indication of the sorts of ideas we can expect from Joe Biden should he run yet again, HARD FUCKING PASS.

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OMGGGGGGG WHAT DID I JUST READ

Y'all. Y'ALL.

Sometimes I read something so terrible that all I can do is post it here for you to read and then head to comments to give it the thorough mocking it richly deserves.

To wit: "I discovered the rest of America on my summer holiday," by Lawrence Summers.

In case you don't know who Larry Summers is, there is a helpful mini-bio at the end of the article: "The writer is Charles W Eliot university professor at Harvard and a former U.S. Treasury secretary."

I had a few thoughts on Twitter, including this one: I feel like a U.S. economist should know how farms and seasons work.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You know me and my unreasonable expectations!

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Today in Men Who Can't Resist Proving the Point

[Content Note: Sexism; racism.]

Imagine being a white dude who thinks right now is the perfect time in history to write a column about how unfair everyone is being to white dudes. https://t.co/1eqFRq6zsD

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 17, 2018

"All this is by way of saying to women: I'm on your side." No, you really fucking aren't, bub.

Not for nothing, but a white man who publicly insists on telling the world that he "recoils" at women calling for women to be employed in prominent roles across all industries is pretty much making the case for us that we need women from marginalized communities who have a commitment to intersectional leadership to fill leadership roles, because white men keep showing us that they can't be trusted to treat us as their equals.

Or even acknowledge that we have spent millenia being denied that equality. Or care about it, beyond grudgingly "conceding" our complaint.

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What in Patriarchal Hell Did I Just Read?

[Content Note: Toxic masculinity; misogyny; sexual assault; stalking; class warfare.]

Of all the horrideous post-election Reporter Ethnographies of the Mysterious Masculinity of the Rust Belt pieces, this might be the absolute shittiest, which is really saying something: "Why I Hitchhiked the Rust Belt in Search of the American Man" by Drew Philp at the Guardian.

There are abundant egregious failures in this piece — and I will leave it to you to tease out each and every one of them in their appalling abundance in comments, should you be so inclined — but there is no more execrable failure in the piece than its opening, in which is recounted a story of the writer and his accompanying photographer being picked up by a woman, who tells them of being "raped, beaten, left for dead" by an ex-husband who also killed their son in utero and continues to stalk her.

There is no follow-up to this story in the piece. No commentary on what that story, the story of an American woman whose life has been made a relentless misery by an American man, means for a piece in which two men are on assignment "in search of the American man."

That's because there's no room in this story for women at all. There never is.

There is never room for the women and children who are victims of the American man, and who are simultaneously victims of the class warfare and unregulated capitalism and union-busting and erosion of worker's rights and automation and wage stagnation and insufficient safety net by which many American men in the rust belt are victimized, too.

There is only room for the conjuring of our sympathies for men, by other men who escaped their fate — and deal with the trappings of their privilege by lionizing men of the lower classes with gilded patronization.

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WTF Is This?

[Content Note: Misogyny; white supremacy.]

Actual Headline: "In defense of the white male."

Actual Paragraph from This Actual Article Actually Published by the Boston Globe in the Year of Our Lord Jesus Jones Two Thousand and Seventeen:

It's not hard to argue that white men have done more harm in history — from the keeping of slaves to the genocide of Native Americans, and a thousand other examples — than any other single group. But it can also be argued that they have done more good — in combatting evil regimes, in developing medicines, in inventing everything from the automobile to the cellphone to various methods of birth control. White men discovered penicillin, Novocain, the drug regimen used to treat people afflicted with AIDS. In many places the chances are good that if your home is on fire, it will be a white man who comes to put it out. And, if it were not for the millions of white men who gave their lives in World War II, we might all be starting the work day with the Nazi salute.

Someone remind me: Were any of the Nazis white men?

LOL wow. Zero acknowledgment of history of WM keeping women/non-whites out of the sciences, fire brigade, military. https://t.co/kJt1J4QtDs pic.twitter.com/M6ojQslh0A

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 5, 2017

Yes, white men have accomplished quite a lot on the uneven playing field they created to favor them! Thank you, white men!

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 5, 2017

I mean, honestly. What is the Boston Globe even doing publishing a piece titled "In Defense of the White Male" esp. at this moment in time?

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 5, 2017

"In defense of the white male." One hundred and sixty-seven days into the presidency of a white man, the successor of a Black president and defeater of a female rival, who endeavors in every way to roll back equality for people who are not straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied, Christian, wealthy white men.

Fuck off.

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Whut.

[Content Note: Gender essentialism; policing masculinity; disablism; abuse.]

What in the hell is this, and why on earth was it posted at the Washington Post's Wonkblog? "Today's men are not nearly as strong as their dads were, researchers say."

I'm having a hard time deciding what the worst part of this is: Is it the image of the "Muscle Beach" strongman, labeled "This is your dad. He can still crush you like a twig."? No, that is not my dad, and what a "funny" thing to say about dads when so many people have survived physical abuse at the hands of their fathers.

Or is it the information that fundamentally undercuts the entire purpose of the article, offered essentially as an aside?

Now, there is a caveat here. The participants in the North Carolina study were recruited from college and university settings, so they're not representative of the population as a whole. If you were to look exclusively at young adults who never went to college, for instance, you might get different results.

Or is it the exclusive definition as "strong" as muscular strength?

Or it is this glib har-harring? "A new study in press at the Journal of Hand Therapy (yes, a real thing)..." The friend who sent this article to me noted in her email: "Why the fuck wouldn't that be a real thing? As someone who has had multiple rounds of hand therapy, I resent the implication that a journal dedicated to that subspecialty is somehow ridiculous."

What's ridiculous is this article. All of it. What's ridiculous is that it was commissioned, written (by someone presumably paid for their work), edited, and published, and nowhere in that process did anyone say: "You know, maybe this is dogshit."

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This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

[Content Note: Manclaiming; rape culture.]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT: "Yoga for bros: 'Broga' a new twist on thousands-year-old practice."

It's hard for me to say what is my favorite, ahem, part of this article. Is it referring to women as "the fairer sex" in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and sixteen?

Is it the guy who markets yoga to dudes referring to himself as a "man-treprenuer"?

Is it men who worry that the lotus pose is too "girly" for men?

Or it is this delightful bit of rape culture? "Sidoti says Broga even offers men-only retreats for guys who fear the allure of women wearing lycra pants may distract from their yogic journey."

I CAN'T CHOOSE! ALL OF IT IS SO GREAT.

*jumps into Christmas tree*

[H/T to @v_m_phil.]

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Whut.

[Content Note: Sexism.]

What in the shit is this? "Hillary Clinton is walking into Donald Trump's trap."

There is so much wrong with this garbage that I hardly know where to begin. But this is definitely my favorite, ahem, part:

Consider her slogan, "Fighting for us." For many men, this slogan would have to be experienced as emasculating. A woman fighting for them? Rightly or wrongly, the slogan rubs the wrong way in relation to traditional notions of masculinity.

I'm pretty sure any dude who can't deal with a women fighting for him is already voting for Trump, and Clinton doesn't need to waste her time giving them a moment's thought.

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What the F@#k Is This Article?!

[Content Note: Misogyny; racism; dehumanization.]

Apparently not content with containing their misogyny to Hillary Clinton, Newsweek has published a profile of her chief aide, Huma Abedin—or, rather, what reads a lot more like a hit piece on both Abedin and Clinton, masquerading as a profile.

There is a whole lot to deconstruct here, and I'll leave it to you to tease out every shred of indecency in comments, but I just want to note some of the things that Newsweek evidently believe are okay things to say about a Muslim woman of color:

* "For most of the past 20 years, Huma Mahmood Abedin, now a vice chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign, has served as Clinton's 'body-woman'—basically a glorified lady's maid."

* "The perpetually lipsticked and soigné Abedin is elegant and gentle—qualities Clinton sometimes lacks—but also relentlessly obedient, a quality her boss treasures." (OBEDIENT. IS SHE A DOG?)

* "selfless servility"

* "She does some bag-schlepping, but her job has evolved: She carries her own purse (she has a collection of designer 'it' bags)."

* "Like her boss, Abedin has mastered the steely glare"

* "But after a career of being seen but not heard..." (OH COOL SHE'S BEEN UPGRADED FROM A DOG TO A CHILD)

* "From the wounded master who taught her everything she knows, she has learned that to be candid is to be crucified."

I mean. Wow.

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Welp

[Content Note: Classism; regionalism; misogyny; racism.]

This is a very long article at Vox by Emmett Rensin on "the smug style in American liberalism."

I don't disagree with his premise. In fact, one of the very first pieces I ever wrote in this space, almost twelve years ago (!), made essentially the same case.

Which, actually, underscores my problem with his piece: In all those many words, he fails utterly to mention that this is not a problem of "American liberalism," but a problem of the most visible, loudest, most highly-rewarded liberalism. The liberalism primarily defined and expressed by white men.

Feminist women, especially flyover feminists and/or women of color, have been making this very case for a very long time. It is a regular subject of discussion on Black Twitter. It isn't Latinx activists who are perpetrating this shit. Etc.

Are we not American liberals, too?

To make this a case against "American liberals," without noting there are wide swaths of liberals who actively push back on this smug shit, is disingenuous.

And, further, a failure to acknowledge us only serves to more deeply entrench the problems underwriting this strain of smugness in the first place.

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Good Grief

Another day, another iteration of the ZOMBIE FRAME that will not die about Hillary Clinton supporters' supposed lack of enthusiasm, this time couched in treating one of Clinton's greatest strengths as though it's somehow a weakness: "Clinton Offers Predictability in an Erratic Political Year."

During 1960 presidential campaign, swooning teenagers who ran after John Kennedy's convertible were called "jumpers." For Hillary, the predominant mood during her lunchtime kick-off rally for the April 19 New York primary was affection rather than raucous enthusiasm.

..."I don't have to tell you -- this is a wild election year," Clinton said in a tone that acknowledged that "wild" was an understatement. "I'm not taking anything or anyone for granted. We're going to work for every vote in every part of the state just like I did when I ran for the Senate."

It is difficult to imagine a presidential candidate more out of step than Hillary with the incoherent emotionalism running through the primaries in both parties.

...Listening to Hillary's half-hour speech (and, yes, the mind can drift while she's speaking), I realized that we probably have a better advance sense of her presidency than that offered by any other candidate in the past half century. There are no major mysteries about a second Clinton White House other than the role that would be played by Bill.

...Little about this White House agenda would prompt repeated standing ovations from partisan Democrats. They probably would nod approvingly -- and admire the new president's pluck in searching for compromise with seemingly intransigent Republicans. And Americans as a whole might even feel confident about President Hillary Clinton answering a 3:00 a.m. crisis phone call.

So, in these tumultuous times, the underlying message of the Clinton campaign is: "Please be seated. Everything will be okay."

"This election is filled with reactionary buffoons! But why does Hillary gotta be so boring, tho?" *pout*

One of the primary reasons for my enthusiasm about President Obama's presidency, as I've said previously, "is how competent it has been. I implicitly trust President Obama to know what he's doing and to not be a fucking embarrassment. And even when I have disagreed with the President's agenda, sometimes vehemently, I don't think he's come to his decisions down a path of unpreparedness or incompetence or untrustworthiness."

I don't take that for granted. Not after being born during the Nixon administration, spending my childhood during the Reagan administration, and spending a significant part of my adulthood during the George W. Bush administration. I appreciate it, and I am enthusiastic about it.

I'm pretty damn enthusiastic that Clinton would be similarly dependable and steadfast. I don't want my president to entertain me. I want my president to represent me in a way that doesn't constantly make me feel anxious.

Not valuing most highly the qualities of seriousness, competency, and predictability is why our presidential elections have become circuses. If Clinton is "boring," we could use a lot more "boring" in our politics.

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Hillary Sexism Watch, Part Wev in an Endless Series

[Content Note: Misogyny; violent imagery.]

Shaker Liz sent me this NYT piece by Frank Bruni: "Hillary Clinton's Moment." It's basically about how Hillary Clinton is the worst, but, hey, she tries really hard and has moxy. You go, gal! Except she's still very unlikable. OH WELL!

All of it is obviously terrific, but I was particularly fond, ahem, of two passages:

But grit won't be enough.

The surprising, impressive success of Sanders, who had his own key wins on Tuesday, has made that clear. There's an ire and a disgust in the body politic — they fuel his campaign just as they do Donald Trump's — and they're built on a belief that the system is rigged, the status quo is unacceptable and its guardians are untrustworthy.

Clinton is poorly positioned to mollify that rage, and the reason isn't just coziness with Wall Street. It's her familiarity, her celebrity, her crowd. She's political royalty, and she can put the crown deep in a closet; she can renounce it all she wants. There are voters who will still see it there.

And oh, the baggage she carries! Many more Americans have an unfavorable impression of her than a favorable one: In a Quinnipiac University poll from early February, the split was 56 to 39 percent.

She conquers that … how? By introducing herself better to voters? They know her plenty well. By unveiling yet another new image? It's hard to imagine there are any permutations left.

The only way Hillary Clinton has become a legitimate contender for the US presidency is because she had to "pay her dues" for decades. As First Lady of Arkansas, as First Lady of the US, as Senator, as failed presidential candidate, as campaigner for her former rival, as Secretary of State, as diplomat, as presidential candidate once again. It has made her arguably the most qualified candidate in US history.

And now the theory is that she's overexposed? Cool.

Bruni says it is "hard to imagine there are any permutations left," which is not only a neat way of implicitly accusing Clinton of inauthenticity and inconsistency, but also a neat way of ignoring that, while there are policy reasons to oppose Clinton, many of the people who oppose her, especially the ones relying on bullshit shorthands like "she's too familiar," aren't opposing her because of policy, but because she's a woman.

A woman with "a crown," as Bruni notes, while failing wholly to even obliquely consider the misogyny in that statement, no less the aggressive misogyny that is wielded against her by voters and the media.

Of course there are no "permutations" left, because Clinton cannot stop being a woman.

Bruni then pivots to Clinton's unlikability, because of course, and how it will make it difficult for her to beat the super likable Donald Trump:

To attain the presidency, a politician needn't be adored — just less loathed than the alternative.

In that same Quinnipiac poll, Trump's unfavorable to favorable ratio was even worse than Clinton's: 59 to 34 percent. Her supporters and advisers are accordingly crafting a strategy of brutal negativity and relentless attacks, as The Times reported earlier this week. Envisioning that, David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, said that a Clinton bid would be less "hope and change" than "hate and castrate."

Wow.

Nope, no misogyny there. No trading on antifeminist tropes about feminist women being castrating bitches.

And let us consider what it means that a prominent Democratic strategist describes Clinton (potentially) going after Trump for being an abusive shitlord as "hate and castrate."

Trump has literally advocated war crimes, which is merely the tip of the noxious iceberg that is his eliminationist, marginalizing, hateful rhetoric. That's not hate, but criticizing him for it is? And attempting to strip him of the power he gets from advocating violence and displacement and racism and misogyny is "castrating" him?

Cool calculations, bro.

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it eleventy million more times in the foreseeable future: That the media's favorite game is destroying Hillary Clinton and their favorite entertainer is Donald Trump is fucking terrifying. Their glib fuckery is going to carry fascism straight into the White House.

* * *

On a side note, I have read so many pieces recently by people who have worked with Hillary Clinton, talking about what a lovely person she is. Three this week alone:

Former Governor of Vermont Madeleine Kunin: "I've known Hillary and worked with her. She can be serious and funny. She inspires fervent camaraderie in her staff. She is the most intelligent woman I have ever met."

Breaking Down Barriers Mother Sybrina Fulton: "It was a very heartfelt meeting. It was supposed to be pretty short in the beginning, but because of the topics and the tragedies and the things that were being discussed, Secretary Clinton wanted to hear more. The meeting was very productive on our end as mothers. But it was also an eye opener for Secretary Clinton, because now, not only did she hear about these tragedies in the news and on social media and from her staffers, she heard first-hand from the mothers. And she's a mother. She's a grandmother. She's a wife. She's a woman. She related to us at a time when nobody else would listen."

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau: "I had the chance to serve in the Obama administration with someone who was far different than the caricature I had helped perpetuate. The most famous woman in the world would walk through the White House with no entourage, casually chatting up junior staffers along the way. She was by far the most prepared, impressive person at every Cabinet meeting. She worked harder and logged more miles than anyone in the administration, including the president. And she'd spend large amounts of time and energy on things that offered no discernible benefit to her political future—saving elephants from ivory poachers, listening to the plight of female coffee farmers in Timor-Leste, defending LGBT rights in places like Uganda. Most of all—and you hear this all the time from people who've worked for her—Hillary Clinton is uncommonly warm and thoughtful. She surprises with birthday cakes. She calls when a grandparent passes away. She once rearranged her entire campaign schedule so a staffer could attend her daughter's preschool graduation. Her husband charms by talking to you; Hillary does it by listening to you—not in a head-nodding, politician way; in a real person way."

I have read pieces like these for years. Long before this election, there were pieces written by folks about how great it was to work with and/or for her at State, and before that in the Senate.

And I'm sure there are people who haven't enjoyed working with her. But there are an incredible number of people who have. And say so. Publicly.

While, on the other hand, there are precious few horror stories of working with someone who's supposed to be History's Greatest Monster.

Members of the media who discuss her "likeability" ad nauseam know that these stories exist as well as I do. If they cared about doing their jobs, they'd explore why it is there exists this vast cavern of "likeability" between the people who work with her and the people with the choice to vote for her.

Of course, that would require some uncomfortable self-reflection, since they're the ones busily creating the caricature of The Monster in the first place.

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This Is Absurd

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

On Twitter, @GraciousKY sent me the link to this unfathomable article by Nathan J. Robinson: "Unless the Democrats Run Sanders, a Trump Nomination Means a Trump Presidency."

Robinson's basic thesis is that Hillary Clinton would be destroyed by Donald Trump in a general election because Trump's personal attack style of campaigning makes her his "dream opponent," given the long history of controversies, scandals, conspiracy theories, accusations, and lies Clinton has weathered, even though most of it is garbage.

Naturally, Robinson generously recounts all of the "fodder" Trump would have to use against Clinton—as well as explaining that she "is neither the best campaigner nor even a skilled one. In fact, she is a dreadful campaigner."

Basically, the argument is: Decades of misogyny means Trump will use misogyny against Clinton, so she should move aside.

That seems fair.

Meanwhile, Robinson argues: "There's only one real way to attack Bernie Sanders, and we all know it: he's a socialist fantasist out of touch with the Realities of Economics."

This is flatly inaccurate.

Seven months ago, Aphra_Behn wrote an incredible, thoroughly researched, four-part series on Sanders background: "Looking for Bernie." I have oft referred to the series as the vetting on Sanders the media has refused to do.

When she was working on the series, she uncovered a number of things about Sanders' personal life, and his family's personal and professional lives, that are of a similar nature to things which have been used to discredit presidential candidates in the past.

We talked about those things. And we did not publish them in this space, because we don't believe they are relevant or fair game.

But the notion that they don't exist is utterly foolish. And even if they have not become mainstream media fodder, that doesn't mean Donald Trump can't and won't find them and use them.

He will.

And it will not be the the eleventieth time that people are hearing about them, unlike whatever Trump lobs at Clinton. It will be the first time. And the first time that Sanders is obliged to respond to them, without the ready-made deflection of "same old tired partisan attacks" that Clinton has deservedly earned the right to use.

I don't think one can say with certainty who would definitely fare better against Trump's attacks in a general election. We can have opinions, but we should not pretend to be oracles.

What I do know, however, for an absolute fact is that it is contemptible in the extreme to suggest that Clinton's having been subjected to a decades-long campaign of rank misogyny and personal attacks should serve as a disqualifying factor for the presidential nomination, just because the likely Republican nominee will carry on the tradition.

If never having been obliged to navigate repeated discrediting attacks cloaked in vicious misogyny is the standard by which a female candidate's fitness is judged, we will never have a female president.

Ever.

Fuck that.

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Nope

[Content Note: Transphobia; misgendering; sexual assault.]

The Federalist is a conservative garbage rag, which is hardly worthy of any decent person's attention, but this deserves a response: Kaeley Triller is a rape survivor who is using her history of abuse to argue against allowing transgender people to use the appropriate bathrooms, playing on the "trans predator" trope in the most cynical and harmful way.

I want to first say that I'm sorry Triller was abused. It makes me sad and it makes me angry.

But it also makes me sad and angry to see a fellow survivor engage in irresponsible fearmongering about trans people, trading on vicious narratives about trans predators in order to deny trans people—trans women, in particular—the needed and deserved safety that access to gender-appropriate bathrooms affords.

Triller, however, denies she believes trans people are all predators:

Let me be clear: I am not saying that transgender people are predators. Not by a long shot. What I am saying is that there are countless deviant men in this world who will pretend to be transgender as a means of gaining access to the people they want to exploit, namely women and children. It already happens. Just Google Jason Pomares, Norwood Smith Burnes, or Taylor Buehler, for starters.

Okay. So I did Google those names, and here is what I found: Jason Pomares is a cis male predator who dressed as a woman in order to secretly videotape women in a mall restroom. Norwood Smith Burnes is a cis male predator who dressed as a woman in order to expose himself to people in a Walmart restroom. Taylor Buehler is a cis male predator who dressed as a woman in order to engage in voyeurism in a college restroom.

None of them were trans women, and none of them were "pretending to be transgender." They were pretending to be women. That is not a semantic difference.

And if cis male predators are already dressing as women in order to gain access to women's restrooms, then preventing trans women from using women's restrooms is totally irrelevant, unless one believes that trans women are disposed toward predation.

Triller can insist all she wants that she doesn't think trans women themselves are all predators, but denying them access to safe toileting because their very existence gives cover to cis male predators, and conflating trans women with cis male predators in wigs and bras, is no fucking better.

And it's just a bullshit cover, anyhow, because she goes on at length about how allowing trans women in women's bathrooms puts women and children at risk for sexual assault, and then utterly gives away the game by referring to trans woman as "biological males."

Why would people knowingly invite further exploitation by creating policies with no safeguards in place to protect them from injury? With zero screening options to ensure that biological males who enter locker rooms actually identify as female, how could a woman be sure the person staring at her wasn't exploiting her? Why is it okay to make her wonder?

Why would a trans woman be any more likely than a cis woman to stare at another woman in a locker room? To believe that, one has to believe that trans women are inherently more predatory.

They are not.

Triller further argues:

While I feel a deep sense of empathy for what must be a very difficult situation for transgender people, at the beginning and end of the day, it is nothing short of negligent to instate policies that elevate the emotional comfort of a relative few over the physical safety of a large group of vulnerable people.

...There's no way to make everyone happy in the situation of transgender locker room use. So the priority ought to be finding a way to keep everyone safe. I'd much rather risk hurting a smaller number of people's feelings by asking transgender people to use a single-occupancy restroom that still offers safety than risk jeopardizing the safety of thousands of women and kids with a policy that gives would-be predators a free pass.

...Is it ironic to no one that being "progressive" actually sets women's lib back about a century? What of my right to do my darndest to insist that the first time my daughter sees the adult male form it will be because she's chosen it, not because it's forced upon her? What of our emotional and physical rights?

...Even if there aren't hundreds of abusers rushing into locker rooms by the dozens, the question I keep asking myself is, "What if just one little girl gets hurt by this? Would that be enough to make people reconsider it?"

Given that transgender women are much more likely to be harmed just for trying to take a piss or a shit, this is projection in the highest order. It isn't trans people's feelings getting hurt which is the most pressing concern here. What a gross minimization of transphobic violence. Though even if it simply were about feelings, feelings of safety and inclusion are no small thing.

What if just one (more) trans person gets hurt by this, Ms. Triller? Would that be enough to make you reconsider your reprehensible position?

I'll just say once again: I am a cisgender woman who uses public bathrooms, and I am well aware that there are trans women, some of whom might well have a penis, using the same public restrooms I do—Spoiler Alert: AND I DON'T FUCKING CARE—and anyone who's under the misapprehension that no trans women ever currently use women's bathrooms is a cloistered ignoramus who may well have been deliberately misled by a transphobic asshole with an agenda.

Trans women and men and cis women and men already share bathrooms. This is not a tragedy or cause for alarm. OH NOES BATHROOM PANIC! is unmitigated bullshit. The End.

As is any other transphobic shit that is peddled under the auspices of "trans predator" memes, and justified under some variation of the argument that I need to be protected from trans people.

I am a cis woman, and a survivor of sexual violence. I am exactly the type of person who is routinely invoked as needing protection from trans predators. I don't need your protection. No one has my permission to pretend that they're "saving" me by endangering trans people.

(Further, no survivors are welcome to pretend they speak for all survivors when raising trans bathroom panic in support of transphobic bathroom policies. They do not. They most certainly do not speak for me.)

I am not in danger from sharing a bathroom with trans women. But trans women could very well be in danger from not being allowed to share a bathroom with me.

And trans men could very well be in danger from being forced to share a bathroom with me: "[Trans editor and writer Mitch Kellaway] told ThinkProgress that gender policing and stereotypes are a very real threat to transgender men. 'When we use the women's bathrooms we're 'supposed' to use'—according to opponents of trans equality measures like HERO—'we're seen as predators,' and that perception can lead to violence toward trans men."

Predators using bathrooms as an arena for predation is a real issue. (Though stranger sexual assault is much less common than sexual assault perpetrated by someone known to the victim.) But it's an issue that has fuck-all to do with trans people using the restroom.

Predators prey. Trans people just want to take a piss.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

GOOD GRIEF

[Content Note: Classism; Oppression Olympics.]

This might be the worst thing you read all day! The 1Percenters are SO SAD that nobody likes them, and they need therapy to process having to live with the burden of all that money.

"I shifted toward it naturally," [Clay Cockrell, a former Wall Street worker turned therapist] said of his becoming an expert in wealth therapy. "We are trained to have empathy, no judgment and so many of the uber wealthy – the 1% of the 1% – they feel that their problems are really not problems. But they are. A lot of therapists do not give enough weight to their issues."

Let me just pause here to say that there is a real dynamic, not dissimilar from survivor's' guilt, that lots of people experience about having something when there are so many people with nothing. One doesn't have to be part of the "uber wealthy" to have troubling feelings about global class disparities, or even the wealth inequity in our own communities.

This is a genuine struggle for lots of people with social awareness, even people of meager means, and we all have to find the best ways to navigate feelings that arise from knowing, even if we work hard for what we have, there are plenty of other people who also work hard and don't manage to survive or thrive, through some combination of privilege and luck. But that's not what we're talking about here.

Let loose the dogs of the Oppression Olympics!

"The Occupy Wall Street movement was a good one and had some important things to say about income inequality, but it singled out the 1% and painted them globally as something negative. It's an -ism," said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist and founder of the Wealth Legacy Group. "I am not necessarily comparing it to what people of color have to go through, but ... it really is making value judgment about a particular group of people as a whole."

The media, she said, is partly to blame for making the rich "feel like they need to hide or feel ashamed."

..."You can come up with lot of words and sayings about inheritors, not one of them is positive: spoiled brat, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, trust fund babies, all these things," she said, adding that it's "easy to scapegoat the rich."

"Sometimes I am shocked by things that people say. If you substitute in the word Jewish or black, you would never say something like that. You'd never say – spoiled rotten or you would never refer to another group of people in the way that it seems perfectly normal to refer to wealth holders."

Oh, people never say anything antisemitic or racist anymore? GOOD TO KNOW.

And, apart from the fact that her contention about no one saying "something like that" about religious and/or ethnic groups anymore is absurd, it's also a mendacious conflation. Wealthy people are a privileged group, and the groups to whom this asshole is comparing them are marginalized groups. Just because someone makes a mean comment about a privileged group doesn't mean that group becomes marginalized. That ain't how it works.

Further: A person of color, for example, cannot choose to not be a person of color anymore, but a person with money can give it away and not be wealthy any longer with the swipe of a pen.

"Wealth can be a barrier to connecting with other people," confessed a spouse of a tech entrepreneur who made about $80m. "Not feeling you should share some of the stressors in your life ('Yeah, wouldn't I like to have your problems'), awkwardness re: who should pay at a restaurant."

To avoid such awkwardness, some Americans have taken to keeping their wealth secret. "We talk about it as stealth wealth. There are a lot of people that are hiding their wealth because they are concerned about negative judgment," said Traeger-Muney. If wealthy Americans talk about the unique challenges that come with their wealth, people often dismiss their experience.

"People say: 'Oh, poor you.' There is not a lot of sympathy there," she said. "[Wealth] is still one of our last taboos. Often, I use an analogy with my clients that coming out to people about their wealth is similar to coming out of the closet as gay. There's a feeling of being exposed and dealing with judgment."

Shut all the way up.

I've never been "uber wealthy," but I have friends who are independently wealthy, to whose problems about how money can create division among family and friends I have listened with compassion, and I have read enough along similar lines from people who have, for example, won the lottery or hit the professional jackpot, to understand that having lots of money can indeed be a source of friction. But not having any money can be a source of friction with family and friends, too. In fact, not having enough money for spending on social events—from dinner to birthday gifts to weekend holidays to weddings—can be a real source of angst for people who are struggling and whose loved ones misinterpret an inability to spend with an unwillingness to spend.

This isn't so much a "unique" problem as one that many people experience, from one side or the other—often both over the course of a lifetime. Sometimes from either side more than once, as many of us experience cycles of having and not having.

But naturally the precious special elites of the 1percent view this as a precious special problem that only they and people like them can understand.

Which maybe suggests the problem isn't having too much money, but too little empathy.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

OMGLOLWHUT

[Content Note: Privilege.]

Let's all read this terrific piece in the New York Times, "27 Ways to Be a Modern Man," and talk about how TERRIFIC it is. And by "TERRIFIC," I mean "TERRIBLE."

It's always neat when "man" really means "straight, white, middle-class, cis man." So neat!

Personally, my favorite part is this:

9. Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day.

The modern man learns "stuff" from his daughter! Presumably "stuff" like: Female people are human beings, too! And they are put on this planet in order to teach stuff to modern men and complete their superior humanity!

GOOD FUCKING GRIEF.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

The Grossest

[Content Note: Misogyny; sexuality policing; slut-shaming.]

Marisa Kabas: "With 'no hymen, no diamond' mantra, men's rights activists hunt for the perfect virgin."

These men are the absolute fucking worst. There aren't enough hours in the day to detail everything that is wrong with these slut-shaming objectifiers.

I have but only one comment, in response to this nonsense:

"Some women admitted to me that they lie about their sexual history to avoid being judged and shamed," Leora Tanenbaum, author of I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet, told the Daily Dot. "They are right to be concerned, since many men make relationship decisions based on the number of the woman they are interested in."

Listen, I don't tend to dispense unsolicited or blanket relationship advice, but if any person's "standards" require you to lie about who you are in order to meet with their approval, turn tail and run like the wind and never look back.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

OMG LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Content Note: Misogyny; gender essentialism.]

This is just a real thing in the world: "Women Are Not Capable of Understanding Goodfellas."

Here is an actual thing that an actual adult human being named Kyle Smith wrote in this actual column:

[Goodfellas] takes place in a world guys dream about. Way down deep in the reptile brain, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy the Gent (Robert De Niro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci) are exactly what guys want to be: lazy but powerful, deadly but funny, tough, unsentimental and devoted above all to their brothers — a small group of guys who will always have your back. Women sense that they are irrelevant to this fantasy, and it bothers them.

OMG STOPPPPPPPPPPPP LOLOLOLOLOLOL. What are you even writing in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and fifteen, fool?

But the real reason women are not capable of understanding Goodfellas is because women just don't appreciate all the ball-busting. And there is SO MUCH BALL-BUSTING, according to Kyle Smith:

The wiseguys never have to work...which frees them up to spend the days and nights doing what guys love above all else: sitting around with the gang, busting each other's balls.

Ball-busting means cheerfully insulting one another, preferably in the presence of lots of drinks and cigars and card games.

...Women (except silent floozies) cannot be present for ball-busting because women are the sensitivity police...

...What [guys hanging out together would] much rather do than discuss problems and "be supportive" is to keep the laughs coming — to endlessly bust each other's balls.

At its core, "GoodFellas" is a story of ball-busting etiquette...

...Henry saves the day by returning the ball-busting: "Get the f - - k outta here."

...Billy Batts...breaks ball-busting etiquette in two ways. One, he's not really one of the guys (he belongs to another crime family), and two, in the guise of breaking Tommy's balls, he brings up something serious...

...Later, Morrie, the wig merchant, must also die for improper ball-busting.

Even Karen's (Lorraine Bracco) relationship with, and eventual marriage to, Henry is based on ball-busting.

...Karen doesn't realize it, but she has successfully broken Henry's balls.

"Hey, Kyle, can you please fit the words 'balls,' 'busting,' and 'ball-busting' into this piece at least 100 more times?"—No one.

Remember how just earlier today, I was saying that men tend to dismiss female critics by saying they don't understand something, instead of accepting that maybe those female critics simply came to a different conclusion?

Yeah.

Like what you like, bros. If I don't share your opinion, it doesn't mean that I don't understand it. (Would that I could navigate the world without proficient fluency in the dominant white hetero cis male culture!) Sometimes it just means I think it's crap.

As it happens, I actually enjoy the movie Goodfellas. I don't, however, view it as aspirational tale of peak humanity.

I understand why a lot of dudes do, though.

I stay away from those dudes. As much as possible. Which is a mutually beneficial policy. Women are irrelevant to this fantasy, after all.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Oh for F#@k's Sake

[Content Note: Fat hatred; eliminationism.]

A new study has found that there are "six different 'types' of obese people in existence."

Yes. That is a real thing in the world.

A study that tells us that all fat people aren't the same after all! There are SIX WHOLE DIFFERENT TYPES OF FAT PEOPLE! Can you even believe it?! Extraordinary!

Ha ha don't worry, though—we still all definitely need to be "fixed." I mean, the whole reason to spend money on such an insightful and groundbreaking study is to help doctors determine, based on which "type" we are, how to turn us into thin people.

Because, of course, the ideal number of "types" of fat people will always and forever be zero.

This is fat hatred. This is dehumanization. This is eliminationism.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!