I've got a new piece at Shareblue about Donald Trump's supercool unexpected visit to Flint, Michigan, today and his supercool comments while he was there.
Honestly. Just when you think this guy has nowhere lower left to go, he manages to defy expectations.
NOPE
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by corn on the cob.
Recommended Reading:
Shane: Kare Adenegan: Young, Gifted, and Black
Sarah: [Content Note: Islamophobia; bullying; violence; terrorism] 15 Years After 9/11, This Muslim Writer Is Fearlessly Writing from the World Trade Center
Jim: [CN: Privilege; colonialism; appropriation] Lionel Shriver's Speech on Cultural Appropriation
TLC: [CN: Transphobia; gender policing] Transgender Law Center and MALDEF File Lawsuit Against Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Challenging Discriminatory Name-Change Law
Your Fat Friend: [CN: Fat hatred] What It's Like Going to the Doctor as a Fat Person
Mark: [CN: Racism] How Hollywood Gatekeepers Block out Asian American Content—and Why an FCC Proposal Could Change That
Sameer: Meet Melissa VillaseƱor, SNL's First Latina Cast Member
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
Trump's Path to Victory Is Narrow
My Shareblue colleague Anthony Reed, who's also our Benchmark Politics polling expert, collaborated on this piece examining likely election outcomes based on current polling.
While I will caution that this piece reflects a snapshot in time, and nothing is guaranteed, and it ain't over 'til it's over, this should be reassuring. Not so reassuring as to invite complacency: These potential outcomes depend on people making every minute count and then getting out and voting!
But the truth is that, at the moment, it looks like it's going to be hard for Trump to find a way to win.
And if you're a stats nerd (or even if you're not!), I hope you'll enjoy the charts and figures generated by Anthony's proprietary election simulator. It's pretty cool!
Your Best Photograph
(My apologies for forgetting to do one of these threads for so long!)
If you're a photographer, even if a very amateur one (like myself), and you've got a photo or photos you'd like to share, here's your thread for that!
It doesn't really have to be your best photograph—just one you like!
Please be sure if your photo contains people other than yourself, that you have the explicit consent of the people in the photos before posting them.
* * *
Here's one I took recently of the sunset off our back deck:
Aside from the framing, I didn't do anything. That sky was so gorgeous all I had to do was point and click!
In the News
Here are a couple of links of interest from the news today:
[Content Note: Transphobia; carcerality; abuse] This is tentatively very good news: "Imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning ended her hunger strike today, having secured assurances from the Army that she will receive the medically prescribed treatment for her gender dysphoria. The treatment will begin with the surgery that was recommended by her psychologist in April."
[CN: Violence] I don't even have words: "69-Year-Old Woman Punched in Face by Trump Supporter Speaks Out as Assault Aftermath Video Emerges."
Welp: "Ivanka Trump went on national TV and lied about Hillary Clinton's childcare policies." Like father, like daughter.
"Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who served under three Republican presidents, slammed GOP nominee Donald Trump as 'a national disgrace' and an 'international pariah,' according to his personal emails seen by BuzzFeed News." Accurate.
"A Book of Paintings by George W. Bush Is Coming in 2017." Oh goody. "Portraits of Courage will feature 66 paintings and a four-panel mural drawn by Bush of military veterans and those in active duty, the Crown Publishing Group told The Associated Press on Wednesday." At least he's donating the proceeds to charity.
Tom Hardy raises money for charity while cuddling a puppy. Because OF COURSE HE DOES.
What have you been reading?
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
LOLOLOLOLOL
[Content Note: Privilege.]
White guys are under siege and searching for themselves on television this fall. https://t.co/GFUtt0RNyO
— New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) September 13, 2016
WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE WHITE GUYS?!
Haha don't worry—this article is really about how television networks are definitely thinking about the white guys, after their long, horrible exile from the center of the universe:
For a while now, the energy in cable and streaming-TV comedy has been about diversity, inclusion and change: the female president of "Veep," the transgender matriarch in "Transparent," the melting pot of "Master of None." Comedy built around women has been especially vibrant, including "Broad City," "Lady Dynamite" and HBO's coming "Insecure," from Issa Rae of the "Awkward Black Girl" online series.I mean, everything about this article and the content it's covering is obviously terrific, cough, but I think my favorite part is listing Issa Rae's upcoming project which hasn't even begun to air yet as part of the unassailable evidence that television has "for a while now" been about something other than white dudes. Amazing.
But on new fall sitcoms like CBS's "Man With a Plan," "The Great Indoors" and "Kevin Can Wait," the male leads are adjusting to new roles or reduced circumstances. Fox's "Son of Zorn" renders the idea of the throwback man as an actual cartoon.
ELECTION UPDATE!!!
1. Hillary Clinton is definitely dying IF SHE'S NOT EVEN ALREADY DEAD and therefore is totes using a body double. IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT, YOUR DISBELIEF IS EVIDENCE THAT YOU'RE IN THE BAG FOR KILLERY SHILLERY HILLARY, YOU MONSTER. Don't you even SEE how her nose looks different when she's making different expressions or how her wrinkles look different at different resolutions or how she's totally thinner when someone has stretched a photo?! PROOF! It's called SCIENCE.
The one problem (THERE'S DEF ONLY ONE) w/ the Clinton body double theory is that it's hard to believe even 1 woman would put up w/ this shit
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 13, 2016
(BTW: Once you start deep-diving into the body double conspiracy "evidence" (which I don't advise), you realize that "basket of deplorables" was generous.)
2. Donald Trump is up to a lot of heinous stuff, as per usual! Of course it just wouldn't be FAIR or OBJECTIVE if the media covered all of these things, because then it might be obvious that he is a much worse candidate than Clinton! SO KEEP A LID ON IT. GEEZ.
3. Our national media is garbage.
4. Tim Kaine continues to be very delightful and also makes good and serious points about how Donald Trump is a terrible candidate. I hope he's never sent or received any emails or started a foundation that has saved millions of lives or coughed or sat on a stool or felt faint from a combination of heat and pneumonia or rested against a pillow or SUSPICIOUSLY wore his purse on a different shoulder than usual one day. Although it probably doesn't matter, because he's a dude.
5. Mike Pence continues to be the absolute fucking worst.
54 more days of this shit.
That about sums it up! Discuss.
Must-Reads of the Morning
Three things to read this morning:
1. [Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Kurt Eichenwald: "How the Trump Organization's Foreign Business Ties Could Upend U.S. National Security." This is a long one, but worth your time to read every word. Real journalism—how nice to see you again!
2. At Shareblue: "Trump caught saying 50% of Americans are lazy do-nothings." Will the media cover this? Because, if not, they're covering for him. And I'll note that, when Trump says, "The problem we have right now—we have a society that sits back and says we don't have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry—and it's unfair to them—but cannot carry the other 50 percent," some of the unemployed people he's talking about include: People who were laid off; people on disability; unemployed veterans; stay-at-home parents; retired people; students.
3. In Politico: "The Public thinks Hillary Clinton has misled on her health." This is a perfect, terrible example of the dynamic Peter Daou and I have written about many times: The media creates a narrative; then polls on that narrative; then reports on poll confirming that narrative has penetrated. And their entire roll is vanished behind reporting that this is what "the public thinks." As though "the public" came to that conclusion in a vacuum.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker FloraFlora: "When you have a hard problem you want to think through or come to resolution regarding, what is your process? Preferred, or most effective, or just most common..."
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five Films with a Female Director. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
Daily Dose of Cute
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
"We can't afford to act as if there's some equivalence here."
During a campaign event in Philly today, President Obama let loose on the press, telling them to do their jobs—and defending his friend Hillary Clinton in the process—and it was a thing of beauty:
We cannot afford to take this election for granted. We gotta fight for this thing. There are serious issues at stake in this election—behind all the frivolous stuff that gets covered every day.
And let me just make a comment about that. Because I— Look, I'm not running this time. But I sure do get frustrated with the way this campaign is covered. I'm just telling the truth. Guys in the back [gestures at media], I'm just telling you the truth about how I feel about this.
Let me— Do you mind if I just vent for a second? [the crowd cheers] You know, you know, the—you don't, you don't grade the presidency on a curve. This is serious business.
And when we see folks talking about transparency— You wanna debate transparency? You've got one candidate in this race who's released decades worth of her tax returns. The other candidate is the first in decades who refuses to release any at all.
You wanna debate foundations and charities? One candidate's family foundation has saved countless lives around the world. The other candidate's foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself. I mean, you know, he had the taste to not go for the ten-foot version, but.
You wanna debate who's more fit to be our president? One candidate who's traveled to more countries than any Secretary of State ever has, has more qualifications than pretty much anyone who's ever run for this job, and the other who isn't fit in any way, shape, or form to represent this country abroad and be its commander-in-chief.
So, somehow, as things go on, because we've become so partisan, our standards for what's normal have changed. And Donald Trump says stuff every day that used to be considered as disqualifying for being president.
And yet, because he says it over and over and over again, the press just gives up. And they just say, "Well, yeah, you know, okay." They just stop— "I was opposed to the war in Iraq!" Well, actually, he wasn't! But they just accept it!
So, so the bottom line is—is that we cannot afford suddenly to treat this like a reality show. We can't afford to act as if there's some equivalence here.
To be president, you have to do your homework. And you have to know what you're talking about. And you've gotta apply steady judgment, even when things don't go your way. And you've gotta make the tough calls, even when they're not popular.
UPDATE: My colleague Peter Daou has more at Shareblue, including this amazing bit, which followed directly after the excerpt I shared above: "You have to be able to handle criticism without taking it personally. Just brush it off, done. And that's something I learned, and that's what Hillary learned as a Senator and Secretary of State and as a First Lady. Yes, she's got her share of critics like I do, and she's been caricatured by the right and the left. She's been accused of everything you can imagine and has been subjected to more scrutiny and what I believe is more unfair criticism than anybody out here. And she doesn't complain about it. And you know what, that's what happens when you're under the microscope for 40 years. But what sets Hillary apart is that through it all, she just keeps going. And she doesn't stop caring and she doesn't stop trying. And she never stops fighting for us." Blub.
In the News
Here are a couple of links of interest from the news today:
Did you know that Tim Kaine gave the keynote at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner over the weekend? Probably not, since the corporate media didn't care to cover it! But I covered it at Shareblue, and the complete video is there if you would like to see it. (Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a complete transcript.)
[Content Note: Classism] Here's a real thing that Donald Trump said that the media also doesn't seem to care about: "The problem we have right now—we have a society that sits back and says we don't have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry—and it's unfair to them—but cannot carry the other 50 percent." Does that sound familiar?
President Obama's approval ratings continue to climb, and this might have a little something to do with it: "In 2015, household income grew at the fastest rate on record, the poverty rate fell faster than at any point since 1968, and the uninsured rate continued to fall."
[CN: War on agency] "Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ignored abortion rights at the anti-choice Values Voter Summit over the weekend, even as his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, doubled down on ending legal abortion in the United States." Sounds about right. Leave it to the expert on the ticket!
[CN: Environmental damage] Damn: "It's a bleak revelation—a new study reveals that about a tenth of the Earth's wilderness has been lost since the 1990s. Over the last 20 years, a total area half the size of the Amazon and twice the size of Alaska has been depleted. The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Current Biology, say they hope that the sobering revelation that rich natural habitats like the Amazon have been decimated in a relatively short amount of time will act as a wakeup call to global leaders to emphasize conservation efforts in their environmental protection policies."
Breaking News: Stress can affect fertility. Not exactly surprising, given that stress affects one's entire body.
This red panda cub is ridiculously adorable, lol.
What have you been reading?
"There are not two sides to racism."
[Content Note: Bigotry; harassment; threats of violence; racist slur.]
Cleveland.com's Henry J. Gomez has penned an important piece about the bigoted harassment he's gotten for months from Trump supporters:
For 15 years, my ethnic last name has appeared above all of my stories. Which means, for 15 years, some readers have judged me only by that ethnic last name.Emphases mine.
I have heard their voice mails and read their emails. Smirked at their keyboard courage in the comments section. Told myself not to take the Twitter mentions too personally.
Call it bigotry. Call it racism. Call it xenophobia. As a writer – especially one who covers national politics – you chalk it up as coming with the territory, as hurtful and as menacing as it can be. This year, though, it is coming far more frequently. There is no mystery why.
...Trump, whether he means to or not, has fostered a hostile moment in our politics when his supporters feel entitled to racially denigrate others.
...Lately I have struggled with how to cover Trump. Not because I'm a Gomez, but because I'm a journalist who knows the difference between right and wrong. Judging by my emails – even those from the readers who don't resort to bigotry to defend their candidate – many of you disagree. But when a candidate says things that are, at best, offensive to minorities and, at worst, racist, we have a duty to report precisely that. There are not two sides to racism.
Gomez writes that he has "wondered how I can objectively point out that Trump encourages hate," before sharing a selection of some of the racist—and body shaming—messages he's received.
The truth is, nobody who isn't inclined to believe that Trump encourages hate can be convinced. Not at this point. There is too much evidence; too many people from marginalized populations who have shared our lived experiences of being harassed and/or threatened by self-identified Trump supporters.
If you don't believe it by now, you're simply unwilling to believe it.
I have been harassed relentlessly by Trump supporters now for months. Every misogynist slur you can imagine; every variation on calling me fat; every way of telling me my glasses are stupid (which is, for some reason I don't understand, a particular interest of alt-righters); rape and death threats; admonishments to kill myself; calling me a lesbian using ugly slurs; and, having inexplicably decided that I'm Jewish, calling me every antisemitic slur under the sun.
It is endless, and it is intense, and it just the cost of doing my work—just like it is for so many other marginalized people writing about politics, especially if we have the unmitigated temerity to criticize Trump's bigotry, or his supporters' bigotry. It's even worse, of course, if we are publicly Hillary Clinton supporters.
And still the majority of the corporate media refuse to meaningfully engage this dynamic, or even assert that Clinton's calling it out is somehow more toxic.
I'm #NeverTrump. Throwing 20% of American voters, some 27m people, into a basket of deplorables *helps* Trump. https://t.co/7ZP0hG8IyB
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) September 10, 2016
This is manifestly absurd.
Oliver Willis responded to Fournier by asking: "How many Trump supporters calling you a nigger have you had to block this year?" I wondered "if Ron has ever sat around with his colleagues commiserating about the rape threats he's gotten from Trump supporters."
I further wonder how many male members of media have considered what it must be like for Hillary to know her public female supporters face that.
Harassment and threats from Trump supporters, I noted, are the cost her public supporters from any marginalized group bear. Shouldn't she be angry?
What many members of the press clearly fail to consider is that her anger is, in part, a defense of us. And it feels GOOD and IMPORTANT.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 11, 2016
Not only is the ostensibly "objective" press disinterested in telling the story of the people who are harassed by Trump's supporters, but they are criticizing Clinton for defending us.
That isn't neutral. That's taking a side.
And it's the wrong one.
ELECTION UPDATE!!!
1. Hillary Clinton had better release more and more and MORE medical records, because otherwise how are we going to believe her that she's only got pneumonia?! WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO? TAKE HER WORD FOR IT? LOL PLEASE! It's about TRANSPARENCY, people. And obviously people who think she's a LIAR about EVERYTHING are definitely going to believe medical records that show a generally clean bill of health. THAT WILL CRUSH THE CONSPIRACY! FOR SURE. This is definitely not another "optics" issue manufactured by the media, like the Clinton Foundation and emails and EVERYTHING ELSE EVER, but a real concern of serious people whose curiosity and suspicion will TOTALLY be quelched as soon as we see those medical records. Yup.
2. Donald Trump is a transparent bigot, but that doesn't matter, because Hillary said he's a bigot which is wayyyyy worse. Calling out racism is THE REAL RACISM. It's true. Look it up.
3. Our national media is garbage.
4. Tim Kaine continues to be very delightful and also makes good and serious points about how Donald Trump is a terrible candidate. I hope he's never sent or received any emails or started a foundation that has saved millions of lives or coughed or sat on a stool or felt faint from a combination of heat and pneumonia or rested against a pillow. Although it probably doesn't matter, because he's a dude.
5. Mike Pence continues to be the absolute fucking worst.
55 more days of this shit.
That about sums it up! Discuss.
Good Grief
[Content Note: Bigotry; white nationalism.]
This is a real thing that happened in the world: Republican vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence, during an interview with CNN's Teddy Ruxpin Wolf Blitzer refused to say that David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK and Trump supporter, is "deplorable."
Mike Pence declines to call Donald Trump supporter David Duke "deplorable" https://t.co/D6fuQRolmg https://t.co/S1nfCf8Iyy
— CNN (@CNN) September 12, 2016
Blitzer: All right, let's get into this whole issue that Hillary Clinton raised the other night when she spoke about the "basket of deplorables." She said that half, in her initial statement—she said this, she said: "To be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it." Afterwards, very quickly, within a day, she issued a statement saying she regretted saying "half." It wasn't half. I spoke to her press secretary today; I said, well, what percentage; he wouldn't give me a percentage. But she said there are supporters—and you know this—there are some supporters of Donald Trump and Mike Pence who—like David Duke, for example, and some other white nationalists—who would fit into that category of deplorables, right?Oh, save your sanctimonious outrage, Pence. That "litany of perjoratives" is a perfect description of the platform you've tried to legislate in Indiana, so lift yourself from the fainting couch and have a seat on the Bullshit Ottoman.
Pence: Well, as I told you the last time I was on, I'm not really sure why the media keeps dropping David Duke's name. Donald Trump has denounced David Duke repeatedly. We don't want his support, and we don't want the support of people who think like him.
Blitzer: So you call him a deplorable? You would call him that.
Pence: No. I don't—I'm not in the name-calling business, Wolf. You know me better than that. What Hillary Clinton did Friday night was shocking. I mean, the millions of people who support Donald Trump around this country are not a basket of anything. They are Americans. And they deserve the respect of the Democrat nominee for President of the United States. For her to rattle off this litany of perjoratives was just really shocking. And anyone with that low an opinion of the American people should never hold the highest office in this land.
Hillary: Racism.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 10, 2016
Pence: Check!
Hillary: Sexist.
Pence: Check!
Hillary: Homophobic.
Pence: Check!
Hillary: Xenophobia.
Pence: Check!
This is not an exaggeration. Mike Pence is awful for women; a disaster for LGBTQ people; terrible for refugees and immigrants. His entire tenure as Indiana's governor has been an exercise in punitive governance, absolutely horrific in every way for marginalized Hoosiers.
Again, I will remind you that Mike Pence tried to legislate sexism, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia as governor of Indiana.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 12, 2016
Pence doesn't think bigotry is deplorable. He thinks it's a pretty solid platform.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 12, 2016
This guy is a cruel joke. Only Mike Pence could sit there feigning a case of the vapors about Hillary Clinton calling bigots "deplorable" like he's got the moral high ground after he won't even concede that David Duke is "deplorable."
If David Duke isn't deplorable, then who the fuck is?
Oh right. Hillary Clinton.
UPDATE: From a press conference earlier today, here is a cool video of Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and the GOP leadership having a jolly old laugh with the media in response to a question about Ryan's reservations about his party's nominee.
As I noted at Shareblue: "It is yet another moment of clarity about the role of the press, who did not act as pursuers of truth but as wanna-be pals of the politicians they're meant to hold to account. This, as they say, is why we can't have nice things."
Maude Help Us All
[Content Note: Disablism.]
The media have collectively lost their way. (Or, perhaps more accurately, have painfully given up all pretense of their way being anything but destroying the Democratic candidate.)
Anderson Cooper did an absolutely embarrassing interview with Hillary Clinton last night regarding her health, exemplifying everything that is wrong with the political media right now, virtually all of whom—with some notable exceptions, like Lawrence O'Donnell and Christiane Amanpour—have decided that Clinton's lack of transparency, or "secrecy," about having a temporary illness is the biggest news story in an election in which one of the candidates is an extraordinarily dangerous bigot.
It's š not š "secrecy" š to š not š alert š the š media š about š temporary š illness š stop š stop š stop š !!! https://t.co/cXskW9a2l0
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 13, 2016
It isn't even hard to succinctly summarize how truly pointless this obsession with Clinton's health is, not just in this moment, but historically. The Republican Party is either called the Party of Lincoln (depression) or the Party of Reagan (Alzheimer's), and that the greatest Democratic president has usually been said to be Roosevelt (polio) or Kennedy (chronic pain).
Meanwhile, the media are losing their minds over pneumonia. Which, you know, was a concern in 1841, but not so much now.
The issues have become irrelevant. The only thing that matters to the media is optics.
Hillary: Hey, I'm the first woman nominated by a major party!
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 13, 2016
Media: I guess. Whatever.
Hillary: I have pneumonia.
Media: NOW THIS IS NEWS.
Welp.
