This blogaround brought to you by post-it notes.
Recommended Reading:
Susan: [Content Note: Breast cancer] Pink Ribbon Consumerism Makes Me Sick
Holly: [CN: Loss] This Heartbreaking Post Explains Why Facebook Memories Needs to Change
Indy Feminists: [CN: War on agency; class warfare] Top Ten List of Disturbing, Unethical, and Underhanded Components of the Indiana and Real Alternatives Contract
Andy: [CN: Homophobic violence; death] Man Charged with Murder of Four Men He Met on Gay Dating Sites
Kenrya: [CN: Racist violence] Maryland Is the Third State to Ban the Confederate Flag from License Plates
Charles: The 7 Superheroes of Color (Who Aren't Storm) Everyone Should Know About
Esther: You Will Not Believe What This Ordinary-Looking Bird Does
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
The Monday Blogaround
This Fu@#king Guy
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
This fucking guy posts a picture of himself holding up a sign reading "This is not what a rapist looks like," as if there is a particular way that rapists look, and then writes a piece about how being asked to attend a university seminar on consent and bitterly moans: "To be invited to such a waste of time was the biggest insult I've received in a good few years."
You know what, dipshit? Shut the fuck up and go attend the seminar and think about the extraordinary privilege you have that being compelled to spend an hour listening to someone talk about consent is "the biggest insult" you've received in "a good few years," a time period during which millions of women around the globe were raped, which is rather a more significant insult.
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."Oh, people never say anything antisemitic or racist anymore? GOOD TO KNOW.
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."
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."Shut all the way up.
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."
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.
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudz in the sunshine.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
O Canada! "Canadians have started voting in fiercely-contested parliamentary elections that could give them their first new leader in nearly 10 years. Incumbent Conservative PM Stephen Harper is fighting for a rare fourth term but the frontrunner is Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, son of late prime minister Pierre Trudeau. The left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) could also play a decisive role. Opinion polls have suggested many people are still undecided. ...An opinion poll released on Sunday showed the Liberals on 37.3%, seven points ahead of the Conservatives at 30.5%. The NDP had 22.1% according to the Nanos survey taken on October 15 to 17. The margin of error was 2.2%."
[Content Note: War on agency] This is a must-read piece by Irin Carmon: "Shuttered: The End of Abortion Access in Red America. 'How are we going to give voice to the women that don't make it here?' [Dr. Bhavik Kumar] asked. 'Because those are the women, in my opinion, that are going to be the more marginalized women—the women that perhaps can't afford to get here, can't afford it, the procedure, if they were to get here. Women of lower socioeconomic status. Women of color. Women that live in South Texas. What happens to those women? Where do they go?' Because, Kumar added, 'We know that there are always going to be women with unwanted pregnancies.'"
[CN: War on agency; anti-choice terrorism] In related news: "Abortion Rights Group Says Clinic Vandalism Should Be Investigated as Domestic Terrorism." Yes. Yes it should.
[CN: Police brutality; rendition; racism] Another must-read piece by Spencer Ackerman on Chicago's Homan Square: "Police 'disappeared' more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal. From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city's population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show. The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square."
[CN: Sexual violence; video may autoplay at link] To a frightening number of men and boys, rape is just a game, a bit of entertainment, something to be filmed so they can relive the excitement over and over again: "Five individuals—four men and a teenage boy—have been arrested in connection with the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl at a Sydney house party earlier in the year, New South Wales Police have said. The incident was filmed on a GoPro-style camera, which was later seized by authorities in relation to an anti-graffiti operation. The sexual assault was discovered by police when viewing footage from the device. ...'It was quite obvious to investigators when viewing this footage that the child was either unconscious or semi-conscious during these assaults,' Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans, from the Child Abuse Squad said." Fucking hell. I hope she has the support she needs. And fuck off, CNN, for ending with this shit: "The teen did not report the rape at the time of the incident." Fuck. Off.
[CN: Fat hatred] Oh good. I can't wait for the fat-hating fuckery that will come out of this deal: "Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey has acquired a 10% stake in Weight Watchers International, sending the dieting company's stock soaring Monday after a prolonged slump." Yay! Let's all make money off of exploiting fat people after telling them to hate themselves! Wheeeeee!
[CN: Antifeminism] OFFS: Emily Blunt is the latest straight, white, thin, cis actress to opine about feminism and its nefarious divisiveness: "Sure I've experienced sexism," she told Radio Times. "But not that often any more. I sometimes feel that we can exacerbate the problem by talking about it more. I think you can keep talking about it and create more and more of a stamp of divide. I think we need to do more—and stop talking about it." Blink. Blink.
NEW ADELE! I repeat: NEW ADELE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Are you a fan of Absolutely Fabulous? Then you might be excited to see the first image of the AbFab movie currently being filmed!
[CN: Moving GIF at link] And finally! What do you get a gorilla for her 44th birthday? Two kittens! ♥
Refugee Crisis Update
[Content Note: Refugee crisis; Islamophobia; sexual violence.]
I read these two stories back-to-back this morning:
The New York Times: "Winter Poses New Danger for [Refugees]."
Perhaps as soon as late October and certainly by the end of November, the season will shift in the Balkans. Finger-numbing rain, a fall fixture, will descend into snow and freezing winds, complicating and even endangering the arduous journeys starting from Syria and other war-torn nations into the heart of Western Europe.The Guardian: "More than 10,000 refugees stranded in Serbia as borders close, UNHCR says."
More than 10,000 [refugees] are currently in Serbia, stranded by limits imposed further west in Europe, the UN refugee agency said on Monday, and warned of shortages in aid.I love, ahem, the chutzpah of crowing about "Christian values" while leaving tens of thousands of people stranded without enough food, medicine, blankets, or any other basic resources. I'm not sure "No room at the inn!" was meant to be the takeaway of the central story in the New Testament.
Thousands of people clamoured to enter Croatia from Serbia on Monday after a night spent in the cold and mud, their passage west slowed by a Slovenian effort to limit the flow of refugees into western Europe.
"We can only say that there are more than 10,000 refugees in Serbia," UNHCR spokeswoman Melita Sunjic said. "It is like a big river of people, and if you stop the flow, you will have floods somewhere. That's what's happening now."
"There is a lack of food, lack of blankets, we are missing everything," Sunjic said.
...Upwards of 5,000 people are crossing the Serbian-Croatian border daily, from Greece where they arrive by boat from Turkey, into Macedonia and Serbia, which barely the capacity to cope.
A Reuters reporter on the Serbian side of the border said there was no apparent police presence to help maintain order. The refugees were cold and tired. They chanted: "Open the gate, open the gate!"
...The arrival of a projected 700,000 [refugees] this year to Europe's shores – fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia by boat across the Mediterranean and Aegean – has exposed deep and often ugly divisions in the EU.
Hungary's rightwing government says the mainly Muslim [refugees] pose a threat to Europe's prosperity, security and "Christian values", and has sealed its borders with Serbia and Croatia with a steel fence and stringent new laws that rights groups say deny refugees their right to seek protection.
Because Hungary has closed its borders, which has slowed down the passage of refugees through Europe and created this bottleneck, people are piling up in ever greater numbers, without supplies and facing life-threatening weather. It's a recipe for desperation and frustration and rage. People are going to get hurt.
People are already being hurt. And dying. And, although very few news stories about the refugee crisis will ever give it even passing mention, women and children are at inordinate risk for sexual violence and exploitation. That risk is only going to increase as the men with whom they are sharing lawless space get more angry and desperate.
The world needs to put pressure on Hungary to reopen its borders. I don't want to hear another goddamn thing about their "Christian vales" while they let people starve and shiver in escalating unsafety.
Good News!
[Content Note: Ad may autoplay at link.]
Well, at least there's one bit of good news in the clusterfucktastrophe known as the Republican Caucus' Search for a Speaker: Indiana Garbage Governor Mike Pence doesn't want the job.
The first-term governor, who was part of the Republican leadership team during his 12 years in Congress, told reporters Tuesday he isn't currently seeking a return to Washington, D.C. — not even as the person second-in-line for the presidency.I bet his favorite part about his job is the "Fire Mike Pence" signs in yards all over Indiana! That's certainly my favorite part of his job, anyway.
"I like my current job," Pence said, while chuckling at the prospect of becoming speaker.
I love the last paragraph of this story: "Pence, and really any person on earth, is eligible to be elected speaker of the House as the U.S. Constitution sets no qualifications for the job, including being a member of the House or even a U.S. citizen." Big Mouth Billy Bass for Speaker!
Jeb Bush Is a Terrible Joke
[Content Note: Terrorism.]
This fool wants to be president of the United States, a country with whose people he seems to have not even a passing familiarity:
While speaking to Bloomberg last week, Trump reminded the interviewer that George Bush was president when the World Trade Center was attacked in New York.Jeb Bush wants to know if "anybody actually [blames his] brother for the attacks on 9/11." Yes. Yes, people do indeed blame him. Hello, welcome to Earth.
"He was president, OK?" Trump said. "Blame him, or don't blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign."
The comments sparked Bush to respond by calling Trump "pathetic" in a Twitter post. And on Sunday, he continued to defend the 43rd president during an interview with CNN.
"My brother responded to a crisis and united the country, he organized our country and he kept us safe," the GOP hopeful told Tapper. "And there's no denying that. And the great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up."
Tapper wondered if Bush's loyalty to his brother "might be in some ways a political or policy liability blinding you to mistakes he made."
"It's what you do after that matters," Bush insisted. "Does anybody actually blame my brother for the attacks on 9/11? If they do, they're totally marginalized in our society. It's what he did afterwards that mattered, and I'm proud of him. And so are a bunch of other people."
Meanwhile, he argues that the only thing that matters is "what you do after" a terrorist attack, which is a pretty curious position for someone who justifies support of all manner of privacy invasion, profiling, rendition, torture, and other despicable state action with rhetoric about preventing another 9/11. Now, all of a sudden, prevention isn't even a president's responsibility! It's only "what you do after" that matters.
Which, as CNN host Tapper pointed out, is not at all the position Jeb Bush has taken regarding Benghazi.
"Obviously al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11," the CNN host pressed. "But how do you respond to critics who ask if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?"Emphasis mine.
Bush stammered in response: "Well, I — the question on Benghazi, which we will now finally get the truth to, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility at the Department of State to have proper security."
"And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack?" he continued. "Was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? That's what the investigation is about, it's not a political issue… Were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates, and during the period, those hours after the attacks started, could they have been saved?"
"That's kind of proving the point of the critics," Tapper noted. "You don't want your brother to bear responsibility for 9/11 — and I understand that argument and al Qaeda is responsible — but why are the terrorists not the ones that are responsible for these attacks in Libya?"
"They are!" Bush replied. "But if the ambassador was asking for additional security and they didn't get it, that's a proper point. And if it's proven that the security was adequate compared to other embassies, then fine, we'll move on."
When even Jake Tapper will call you a rank hypocrite on national television, you know your campaign has derailed. Pack it up and go home, Jeb Bush. You're transparently terrible. And the worst part is that we all know you're not even twisting yourself into logical pretzels because it's your brother whom you're defending: You're a company man, and you'd defend any Republican president the same way. Which is somehow even worse than a misguided loyalty to a family member who doesn't deserve it.
Worst. Republican Primary. Ever.
The Virtual Pub (+ Programming Note)
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
I've got a bunch of non-work life stuff that's going to be taking up lots of my time and attention over the next couple of days. So I'm taking the rest of the week off, and I will see you back here Monday.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by colorful markers.
Recommended Reading:
Miriam: [Content Note: War on agency] As Planned Parenthood Reels, Independent Abortion Clinics Also Suffer—Under the Radar
Anonymous: [CN: Sexual violence; transphobia; war on agency] I'm a Man and I Had an Abortion
Alan: [CN: Anti-immigrationism; trauma; exploitation; hunger] Three Things I Regret Not Asking from Allies and My Community as an (Un)documented and Queer Activist
HAES Blog: [CN: Disordered eating; colonialism; racism; transphobia] A Public Letter Calling for Solidarity with Indigenous and PoC Communities and Against Conferences at Former Labor Camps and Sites of Genocide
Gillian: [CN: Racism] Black Workers Really Do Need to Be Twice as Good
Jenn: [CN: Racism] When Nicholas Kristof Just Doesn't Get It About Asian Americans
Fannie: [CN: Homophobia] Xena: Twenty Years Later
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Daily Dose of Cute
When Zelda wants to be especially adorable, she will rest her chin on her paws this way, and all of the abundant neck wrinkles she inherited from her Shar Pei parent (along with those silly ears!) squoosh out to the sides, giving her the most ridiculous chipmunk cheeks. She sure knows how to be irresistible!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Pay attention to this one: "The Supreme Court Hears a Case Today That Could Give Corporations Even More Immunity from the Law: "If [a] company cheats you and you alone out of a few hundred dollars, you're probably out of luck. But if the same company illegally cheats thousands of people out of a few hundred dollars as part of the same scheme, class actions allow those thousands of people to join together in one grand lawsuit. Because their combined suit is now worth a lot of money, they are suddenly likely to be able to recruit excellent legal counsel to represent the class. Campbell-Ewald Company v. Gomez, a case the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday, could deal a mortal blow to class action litigation, however. Indeed, if the defendant in Campbell-Ewald prevails, companies that engage in multi-million dollar lawbreaking could gain the power to shut down class action litigation altogether by paying out a tiny fraction of what they should owe." Fuck.
[Content Note: Racism; class warfare] This is an excellent report by ProPublica's Paul Kiel and Annie Waldman on "How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods."
[CN: Misogyny] Interesting: "The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has contacted several women directors in Hollywood in an effort to determine whether legal intervention is necessary to disrupt the industry's discriminatory hiring practices. In a letter sent to some 50 women filmmakers, the EEOC—which is responsible for protecting individuals from employment discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion and national origin through enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—requested interviews with them to 'learn more about the gender-related issues' women behind the camera face in both the film and television industries."
"Pope Francis has made a surprise public apology for recent scandals 'either in Rome or in the Vatican.' ...To thousands of people who had gathered for his weekly address, Pope Francis said: 'Before I begin the Catechism, in the name of the Church, I want to ask you for forgiveness for the scandals that have occurred recently either in Rome or in the Vatican. I ask you for forgiveness.' He also said: 'The word of Jesus is strong today, woe to the world because of scandals. Jesus is a realist. He says it is inevitable that there will be scandals. But woe to the man who causes scandals.' His words left Vatican observers scratching their heads in deciding exactly which scandals he meant." Okay. Wevs.
[CN: Anti-feminist tropes; transphobia] Alice Eve, last heard being a transphobic fuckhead, is the latest to jump on the "gender equality is great but feminists are man-haters" bandwagon: "I'm passionate about gender equality in the film industry. I think when anyone is asked if they're a feminist, it's natural that any woman is in defence of her sex. It can be dangerous when it becomes anti-male. I am not massively in support of attacking men, because I think we've moved so much into a place where we objectify them as well. For me, the struggle is really the pay gap—that's a reality that women in every profession are subjected to and that's not OK." Oh do shut up.
[CN: Misogynoir] This interview with Effie Brown is terrific: "What's your relationship with Damon now? 'Word on the street is I'm not his favorite person.'"
[CN: Racist slur] New Daily Show host Trevor Noah, who has been accused of joke stealing before, has been caught nicking a bit from Dave Chappelle. That bit is so famous! Why does he think he can get away with that?!
[CN: Bigotry] If you're interested in reading what Donald Trump had to tweet during the Democratic debate last night, here you go!
And finally! A photo series of wet dogs. That is a lot more adorable and moving that it sounds!
The Democratic Debate Wrap-Up!
[Content Note: Misogyny; racism.]
I did end up watching and live-tweeting the first Democratic debate last night. If you want to read my tweets, I've Storified them here. The Washington Post has a full transcript of the debate available here.
The biggest story of the night was the juxtaposition between these competent, thoughtful, serious people and the jokefucks of the Republican Party during their first two debates. It was like night and day. If I knew nothing about US politics, and watched both parties' debates, I would honestly have trouble believing that they were all running for the same position.
All of the GOP candidates should be shitting themselves thinking about debating any of the Democrats in the general election after last night. I mean, when even Jim Webb could wipe the floor with ya, your party is truly a garbage disaster of epic proportions.
Anyway.
Each of the Dem candidates has good and bad moments, some more good than others. It's tough to pick out just the single best and worst moments for each, but here's my subjective assessment of the highs and lows of the night:
Jim Webb:
High: Not audibly farting during the debate.
Low: Constantly complaining about not getting enough time. Over and over, he grumbled that the other candidates had been talking for "ten minutes." He probably wasted ten minutes of his own time complaining that everyone else was getting more time than he was. At one point, debate moderator Anderson Cooper reminded him that he agreed to the rules of the debate, which included giving time to respond to anyone who had been named by another candidate. The reason Webb wasn't getting more time is because no one was mentioning or directly addressing him, because none of them care. Like the rest of us.
Overall Performance: Poor. He was unremarkable except for his petulance, and he is totally out of step with the Democratic Party on a number of issues. He's definitely the worst Democratic candidate, but definitely the best Republican candidate!
Lincoln Chafee:
High: Making a reasonably convincing case for why he's running as a Democrat: "I have not changed on the issues. I was a liberal Republican, then I was an independent, and now I'm a proud Democrat. But I have not changed on the issues. And I open my record to scrutiny. Whether it's on the environment, a woman's right to choose, gay marriage, fiscal responsibility, aversion to foreign entanglements, using the tools of government to help the less fortunate. ...The party left me. There's no doubt about that. There was no room for a liberal moderate Republican in that party."
Low: Trying to tie Hillary Clinton's email issue to her Iraq War vote to challenge her credibility and ethics. It didn't play well, even before Cooper asked Clinton if she wanted to respond, to which she simply said, "No." To applause from the crowd.
Overall Performance: Shrug.
Martin O'Malley:
High: None of East Coast Gavin Newsom's answers last night were memorably awesome to me. But his goal was to introduce himself to voters as a credible national candidate, and he achieved that. He looked like he belonged on the stage.
Low: His response to a viewer question about whether the candidates believe Black Lives Matter or all lives matter: "Anderson, the point that the Black Lives Matter movement is making is a very, very legitimate and serious point, and that is that as a nation we have undervalued the lives of black lives, people of color." The fact that a white man responded to that question by commenting on the legitimacy of the movement was bad. Real bad. The question wasn't about validation. It's not good at all that O'Malley's instinct was to make an unsolicited pronouncement of the movement's validity.
Overall Performance: Solid but uninspiring.
Bernie Sanders:
High: The moment about which everyone is talking is when Sanders got Clinton's back on the issue of her email: "Let me say something that may not be great politics—but I think the Secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails. ...Middle class in this country is collapsing. We have 27 million people living in poverty. We have massive wealth and income inequality. Our trade policies have cost us millions of decent jobs. The American people want to know whether we're going to have a democracy or an oligarchy as a result of Citizens United. Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing America." This elicited cheers and applause, as well as laughter and a hearty handshake from Clinton.
I will admit I have mixed feelings about this moment. Not because of what Sanders said; that's why I'm marking it as his high moment. But the reaction to it bothers me, because when Clinton said essentially the same thing moments before—"I intend to keep talking about the issues that matter to the American people. You know, I believe strongly that we need to be talking about what people talk to me about, like how are we going to make college affordable? How are we going to pay down student debt?"—she did not get the same reaction. It was a man coming to her defense, saying the same thing she'd said, who's making the big news.
And that doesn't sit well with me. That's not Sanders' fault, and I don't mean to undermine what was certainly the high point of his debate performance. I just didn't want to report this without acknowledging the problems with the way it's been received.
Low: Sanders' low moment, in every sense of the phrase, came after Clinton was asked whether Sanders was "tough enough on guns" and replied, "No, not at all," followed by a detailing of his shitty record on gun reform. It was pretty standard debate back-and-forth, but Sanders got really defensive. When given a chance to respond, Sanders, who had spent the debate up until that point yelling all of his answers with righteous anger, taking advantage of the privilege to be visibly angry that Hillary Clinton does not have, said: "As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton, that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing."
Damn, Bernie.
Clinton was not "shouting," just for the record. Sanders' framing essentially amounted to calling Clinton hysterical, which was deeply shitty. Not to mention un-self-aware. I really, really did not like that at all.
Overall Performance: Sanders started out loudly angry, and it was too much even for me, and I like loudly angry progressives! But he managed to get it under control as the night went on, and I think overall he did a great job of keeping income inequality front and center as a major issue. As always, however, his lack of an intersectional analysis was frustrating.
Hillary Clinton:
High: This one is a tie, because I simply can't decide which was the best of the two moments:
1. When her Iraq War vote came up again, and Lincoln Chafee used it to question her overall judgment, Clinton was given a chance to respond: "Well, I recall very well being on a debate stage, I think, about 25 times with then Senator Obama, debating this very issue. After the election, he asked me to become Secretary of State. He valued my judgment." BOOM.
2. During a question about paid family leave, Clinton gave a great policy answer about the economics of it and then pivoted brilliantly: "It's always the Republicans or their sympathizers who say, 'You can't have paid leave, you can't provide health care.' They don't mind having Big Government to interfere with a woman's right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood. They're fine with big government when it comes to that. I'm sick of it!" POW.
Low: On the question (a terrible question, I might add) of whether Edward Snowden is "a traitor or a hero," Clinton said: "He broke the laws of the United States. He could have been a whistleblower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that." Which is a pretty bullshit answer, frankly, considering the Obama administration's awful record with punishing whistleblowers.
Overall Performance: Winner.
Clinton showed why she has had the long career in politics she has and why she's the frontrunner. She consistently went after the Republicans, while the other candidates were going after her, and she was, as every post-debate commentator on the planet was apparently obliged to observe last night, prepared and polished without looking rehearsed. As we all know, Clinton has to hit a grand slam just to avoid being called a loser, and the fact that she's getting headlines like "Hillary Clinton towers over her debate rivals" from the Washington Post and "Clinton crushes it" from Politico and "Hillary Clinton's Democratic debate magic" from the New York Times are indicative of just how well she did.
Which isn't to say that anyone else did badly! (Except Jim Webb, of course, who is the worst.) And, most importantly, collectively the Democratic candidates just came across as the better party by a country mile. Many country miles. All the country miles.
Whatever issues I have with these candidates—and I have issues with all of them, to one extent or another—they don't make me want to jump off the fucking planet the way every damn one of the Republican contenders do.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker billerina: "What was your senior quote in your high school yearbook? Is it still meaningful to you?"
I don't recall that we had senior quotes in our yearbook. And my yearbooks were lost in a flood many years ago, so I can't even look it up to confirm one way or another, but I'm pretty sure we didn't. If we had, I'm guessing I would've picked some super weird and inscrutable line of dialogue from Twin Peaks, lol.
The First Democratic Debate Is Tonight!
Are you so excited for another presidential debate?! If you are so excited about another presidential debate that you can barely contain your enthusiasm, please check this box: □
I will tell you this much: I am way more excited than I was for the Republican debates, because I will definitely end up despairing for my country less after this debate!
Am I going to watch the debate? Maybe! Am I going to live-tweet it? Maybe!
Irrespective of my debate decision-making, here is a space for discussion about the debate, before and during. Spoiler Alert, care of the Beltway Media: Bernie Sanders already won! Neat!
