Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Karma Kaze: "What is your go-to feel good song? (Emotional, funny, angry, whatever.)"
I don't have a single go-to; rather, I have a raft of go-to songs for every mood. But if I have to name just one, Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" is a song to which I turn over and over. It is perfection.
As I've written before: There is a lot I love about this song, but the thing I love most about it is that it feels like a fat sexy woman to me. That ba-dump, ba-dump just conjures a big, voluptuous woman spilling out of a tight dress on a hot day, walking with her chin up, swinging her hips and her boobs as she walks with purpose, looking lustfully at her man or woman with narrowed eyes. Ba-dump, ba-dump. It makes me feel like that fat sexy woman every time I listen to it.
Maude, how I love Nina Simone.
Your Best Photograph
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.
* * *
I was just trying to get a picture of the glorious full moon when I snapped this photo, not even realizing I was capturing the sunset in the passenger side mirror. It turned out rather splendidly because I did.
Discussion Thread: How Are You?
This week has been a lot, with the anniversary of the election and continued disclosures about sexual harassment and abuse. I am just over here deep-breathing, trying to get through it.
I wish things were better, in so many ways.
I am constantly feeling like I'm not doing enough to make them better.
And then I'm having to consciously think about how punishing myself for other people's cruelty isn't helpful.
How are you doing?
Today in Rape Culture
[Content Note: Sexual assault; hostility to consent; war on agency.]
Meanwhile, on Twitter... 1. Roy Moore and His Party.
Yeah, I'm still gonna need Republicans to explain to me how forcing a woman to do something with her body against her will is "devastating" when it's rape but is a moral imperative when it's denying abortion. https://t.co/MCNncaOjCj
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
Either you think I own my twat, or you think you do. It's really just that simple, Republicans.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
This was Republican Speaker Paul Ryan just yesterday: "We're with Trump." Indeed. So you've kinda lost the moral high ground on sexual assault, Republicans. pic.twitter.com/DycdHnz0KP
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
And further, I want Republicans to give up trying to force me, and every other person who can get pregnant, to do with our bodies what THEY dictate we do with them, regardless of our consent or lack thereof.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
2. Louis CK and His Enablers.
"He said was sorry for shoving her in a bathroom. Ms. Corry replied that he had never done that... [He] said, 'I used to misread people back then,' she recalled." So: 1. He assaulted more women. 2. He blames his victims for signals he merely "misread." https://t.co/54PXXzGrTx
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
A note about those apologies: That's right from the predator playbook, especially the predators who use the "nice dude" schtick as cover for their predation. It's a ploy to make their victims feel guilty about reporting.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
Louis CK is a confident and sophisticated predator. And he is banking on a redemption arc, to allow him to keep doing it. Don't give it to him. Draw the line here, or he'll hurt more women.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
I'm relieved the New York Times wrote about Louis CK's history of predation. That said, the Times is going easy on him. Even the promotional tweet is soft: "crossed a line into sexual misconduct." The story itself focuses on his apology calls, and casts his agent as an equal or even greater villain than he is.
He is a cunning predator, and this sort of soft-pedaling is exactly why he's gotten away with it as long as he has.
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 Resist: Day 294
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Earlier today by me: Joe Biden Is Still Talking and I Still Have No Idea What Donna Brazile Is Doing.
Oliver Milman at the Guardian: Six Weeks after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans Are Still Waiting for Help from FEMA. "Online aid forms that can't be filled out because there's no internet. Follow-up calls missed because cellphones can't get a signal. Federal officials who can't speak Spanish and leave families waiting for weeks. More than six weeks after Hurricane Maria, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is still hobbled by the lack of electricity and reliable cell and internet service — stopping Puerto Ricans from accessing assistance they desperately need. 'I feel like it's constant begging; I'm a professional woman and now I'm crawling, just crawling for help,' said Luz Nereida Montero, a former school administrator who lives in the town of Utuado, a community perched in the mountains that rise in the centre of the island. To apply for federal aid, residents must fill out a form online or call a telephone number — but no one has access to the internet or phone in Utuado."
[Content Note: Neglect; death] Frances Robles at the New York Times: Puerto Rico Deaths Spike, But Few Are Attributed to Hurricane. "On Wednesday, Puerto Rico officials, facing increasing questions about the accuracy of the official death toll from the storm, acknowledged for the first time that 472 more people died this September compared with the same month last year. The storm made landfall on Sept. 20. The government's official death toll is 55. The numbers confirmed what had been speculated for weeks: After the waters receded and the roads were cleared, people here continued to die at rates far beyond normal."
And this is perhaps the most shocking indicator of how poorly Puerto Ricans are being served where they live: "The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that it was finalizing extraordinary plans to fly about 3,000 residents of Puerto Rico still living in shelters to New York and Florida. ...FEMA regularly finds housing for hurricane victims, often at hotels or motels nearby. But because there is so little available lodging on the island, and no easy way to get people from shelters to safe housing, the agency is arranging charter flights for residents, beginning with those still in shelters."
I don't even know when was the last time Donald Trump tweeted about Puerto Rico or even mentioned it. I don't when was the last time anyone in the press asked him about it. This is a national shame. And the president is understood to be such a callous, incompetent wreck that he will escape accountability sheerly by the appalling lack of expectations that he be decent and effective.
* * *
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] John Harwood at CNBC: Gary Cohn: Trickle-Down Is Good for the Economy.
Cohn: The president had two really important principles. Number one is we have to deliver middle-class tax cuts to the hardworking families in this country. Number two, our corporate tax system just is not competitive with the rest of the world. We have to create a corporate tax rate, and along with that a pass-through tax rate, that makes us competitive with the rest of the world so we can attract businesses back to the United States.Trickle-down economics doesn't work. It has been discredited for decades. And still Republicans are peddling this lie, because they refuse to simply be honest about the fact that their primary economic objective is redistributing wealth upward. They were sent to Washington to concentrate wealth in the hands of the already-wealthy, and that's what they're doing to do. The claim to be helping middle- and working-class people is nothing more than a ruse designed to give bigots a talking point to justify (to themselves) why they are clearly voting against their own best interests. It's a scam. And their base is in on it.
Harwood: Let me suggest an alternative principle. Look at the components of the plan: big corporate reductions, big pass-through reductions for business, much more tax cuts for businesses than for individuals. You've got the elimination of the estate tax, you've got the preservation of the step-up basis, you've got the elimination of the alternative minimum tax. What you have is a bunch of people, including you, including the president, who think 'What I do is good for the economy, therefore, taxing the things that I do less will be good for the economy and good for other people' instead of giving direct benefits to those people. Because middle-class people in this tax cut do not get very much in direct benefit.
Cohn: I just completely disagree with you.
Harwood: Look at the numbers.
Cohn: I've done nothing but look at the numbers for the last 90 days.
...Harwood: You're not saying, as you did a few weeks ago, that the wealthy do not get a tax cut under your plan?
Cohn: No. I'm saying there's unique situations to everyone out there. Everyone has their own story. It's not our intention to give the wealthy a tax cut.
Harwood: But they're getting one.
Cohn: I don't believe that we've set out to create a tax cut for the wealthy. If someone's getting a tax cut, I'm not upset that they're getting a tax cut. I'm really not upset.
Harwood: Your old colleague, Steve Bannon, says, 'Ask him why they didn't design a tax plan focused on average Trump voters.' And when I talked to Larry Summers, who's your predecessor at the NEC, also Treasury secretary, he said, 'Look, they're doing what their money wants.'
Cohn: They're entitled to their opinions.
Harwood: Why are they wrong?
Cohn: We have achieved our objectives. We are delivering a middle income tax cut…
Harwood: Small.
Cohn: We are lowering corporate taxes to make ourselves competitive with the world.
Harwood: Big.
Cohn: Yeah.
Speaking of Republican scams... Brad Reed at Raw Story: Carrier to Lay Off Hundreds More Workers, Despite Cash Deal with Trump to Save Jobs. A deal arranged by Mike Pence. "Donald Trump last year struck a deal with the Carrier Corporation last year that was supposed to save American manufacturing jobs at the company and prevent it from moving them overseas. Since then, however, Carrier has laid off hundreds of employees — and Fox News reports that the company is planning to lay off hundreds more workers early next year. Specifically, Carrier says it plans to lay off 215 more workers this coming January, just months after it laid off more than 300 employees earlier this year. The deal that the company struck with Trump gave it $7 million to keep some jobs in the United States, although it still is moving many of the jobs at its Indiana plant down to Mexico anyway." Which it had always planned to do. The entire thing was a farce from go.
Antony J. Blinken at the New York Times: Trump Is Ceding Global Leadership to China. "At home, Mr. Xi is making strategic investments that could allow China to dominate the 21st-century global economy, including in information technology and artificial intelligence — where, Eric Schmidt of Google has warned, China is poised to overtake the United States in the next decade. Mr. Xi is all-in on robotics, aerospace, high-speed rail, new-energy vehicles, and advanced medical products. Mr. Trump's 'strategic' investments — in coal and a quixotic effort to bring back manufacturing lost to automation — would make the United States the champion of the 20th-century economy. ...The contradictions at the heart of China's enterprise could still prove to be its undoing. ...But China's shortcomings may not matter in the absence of a compelling alternative. I'd never bet against the United States, but if the Trump-led retreat into nationalism, protectionism, unilateralism, and xenophobia continues, China's model could carry the day."
[CN: Reference to sexual assault] Tom Phillips at the Guardian: Trump Praises China and Blames U.S. for Trade Deficit.
During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly criticised China, accusing it of "raping" the US economy and being the country's "enemy." But on the second day of his visit to Beijing as part of his 12-day tour of east Asia, the president struck a far softer tone.Wow.
"Trade between China and the United States has not been, over the last many, many years, a very fair one for us," Trump told an audience of business leaders and journalists, describing the relationship as "shockingly" unbalanced and costing the US $300bn (£229bn) a year.
However, to an audible gasp from the audience, the US president went on to suggest that it was not China to blame, but the US itself.
"Right now, unfortunately, it is a very one-sided and unfair [relationship]. But – but – I don't blame China. After all, who can blame a country for taking advantage of another country for the benefit of its own citizens? I give China great credit. But in actuality I do blame past [US] administrations for allowing this out of control trade deficit to take place and to grow. We have to fix this because it just doesn't work … it is just not sustainable."
* * *
Jason Leopold at BuzzFeed: He Solved the DNC Hack; Now He's Telling His Story for the First Time. "The hackers had been gathering copies of all emails and sending them out to someone, somewhere. Every single email that every DNC staffer typed had been spied on. Every word, every joke, every syllable. There was still no warning that Russia might try to interfere on Donald Trump's behalf. So the DNC officials hammered Johnston with questions: What would happen with all their information? All that stolen data? What would the computer hackers do with it? Johnston didn't know. The FBI didn't know. The answers would come when the stolen emails were published by WikiLeaks in a series of devastating, carefully timed leaks. And the implications of what Johnston had found would come later, too: The Russian government may have been actively working against Hillary Clinton to help elect Donald Trump."
EVERY @HouseGOP member of @HouseJudiciary committee just voted against my legislation requiring Congress be notified ASAP by intel officials if election interference has occurred. So, we don’t want to know? #ProtectOurDemocracy
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) November 8, 2017
[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Jim Sciutto and Marshall Cohen at CNN: Flynn Worries about Son in Special Counsel Probe. "Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn has expressed concern about the potential legal exposure of his son, Michael Flynn Jr., who, like his father, is under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. Flynn's concern could factor into decisions about how to respond to Mueller's ongoing investigation." I'll bet!
* * *
[CN: White supremacy; nativism] Nick Miroff at the Washington Post: White House Chief of Staff Tried to Pressure Acting DHS Secretary to Expel Thousands of Hondurans, Officials Say. "On Monday, as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to extend the residency permits of tens of thousands of Honduran immigrants living in the United States, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly called Acting Secretary Elaine Duke to pressure her to expel them, according to current and former administration officials. Duke refused to reverse her decision and was angered by what she felt was a politically driven intrusion by Kelly and Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, who also called her about the matter, according to officials with knowledge of Monday's events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations."
There's your "moderating influence" for you. John Kelly is just another eager abettor of Trump's white supremacist, nativist agenda.
[CN: Nazism] In other fucking Nazi news... Esme Cribb at TPM: Hannity Announces Fox Has Hired Sebastian Gorka as National Security Strategist. "Fox News star host Sean Hannity on Wednesday announced that the network has hired Sebastian Gorka, formerly deputy assistant to [Donald] Trump and a counterterrorism adviser, as a national security strategist. 'Joining us now is Dr. Sebastian Gorka,' Hannity said on his radio show. 'I can officially announce today he is a Fox News national security strategist.'" Of course he is.
[CN: White supremacy] Meanwhile, on Twitter... Ben Collins at the Daily Beast: Twitter Verifies Charlottesville Rally Boss Jason Kessler, Who Called Slain Protester's Death 'Payback Time'. "On Tuesday, Twitter gave its preferred status, a verified check mark, to Jason Kessler, the creator of the white supremacist Charlottesville rally in August that left one dead. Kessler's new verified status comes just 26 days after CEO Jack Dorsey again recommitted to eliminating 'hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence' from its platform." Fucking hell.
And speaking of social media disasters... Mike Allen at Axios: Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook "Exploiting" Human Psychology. "Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, gave me a candid insider's look at how social networks purposely hook and potentially hurt our brains. ...'The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you...more likes and comments. It's a social-validation feedback loop...exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.'" Cool.
Related reading, in case you missed it: "There's No Ethics."
* * *
[CN: Sexual assault; covers this entire section]
There are a number of new stories breaking regarding powerful men and sexual assault allegations. I am not excerpting any of them here; please take care to read them as you are able. Note that there are descriptions of sexual assault at links.
Stephanie McCrummen, Beth Reinhard, and Alice Crites at the Washington Post: Woman Says Roy Moore Initiated Sexual Encounter When She Was 14, He Was 32. I don't understand this headline, nor do I understand the decision by the WaPo to publish family photos (unless it was at her request).
Dialynn Dwyer at Boston.com: 'The Hardest Phone Call I've Ever Taken': Heather Unruh Recounts Son Telling Her about Alleged Kevin Spacey Sexual Assault.
Jayme Deerwester at USA Today: LAPD Opens Investigation into Corey Feldman's Report of Hollywood Pedophile Ring.
[TW] The only thought I really want to share about the report that Charlie Sheen raped Corey Haim when he was 13 is that it must be a massive relief to his friend Corey Feldman that the story is finally public. Carrying the weight of silence is exhausting.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 8, 2017
Gwilym Mumford at the Guardian: Steven Seagal Accused of Harassment by Arrested Development Actor Portia De Rossi.
Kaiser at Celebitchy: A Second Woman Has Come Forward to Accuse Ed Westwick of Raping Her in 2014.
Dominic Patten and Nellie Andreeva at Deadline: Jeffrey Tambor Being Investigated by Amazon on Sexual Harassment Claims; Actor "Adamantly" Denies Allegations.
The premiere of Louis CK's new film has been cancelled with just hours to go because a New York Times story on him is about to break https://t.co/jNcxZt1JnM
— Christine Bohan (@ChristineBohan) November 9, 2017
I feel a grim relief that it appears the allegations against Louis CK are finally about to be told.
* * *
Severin Carrell at the Guardian: Trump Accused of Breaking Promises and Ruining Scottish Dunes. "The spectacular dunes habitat in Aberdeenshire used by Donald Trump for his £1bn golf resort is likely to lose its legal protection because his golf course has ruined the site, conservationists say. Expert ecologists, including one who backed the US president's original plans for the course of 10 years ago, believe the sand dunes will be stripped of their status as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) by the government's conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). ...Jim Hansom, a specialist in coastal ecology at Glasgow University, told a BBC Scotland documentary marking the first anniversary of Trump's election as US president that the extensive works to create the 18-hole course meant the habitat was no longer worth preserving." Awful.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
I Still Have No Idea What Donna Brazile Is Doing
So, on the latest stops on her WHAT THE FUCK tour, Donna Brazile took a cool selfie with nightmare human Sheriff David Clarke and then stopped by Tucker Carlson's show on Fox, where she invited him to go fishing.
Meanwhile, Rachel Cantor, a former Hillary for America staffer, published a piece on Medium which includes a video of Brazile stopping by Clinton campaign headquarters during the campaign, and it hardly depicts the austere, joyless collection of soulless robots she described. To the absolute contrary:
In the video, Brazile's greeted by enthusiastic cheers and applause, which continues throughout her speech. A speech, by the way, in which she says, at 2:55, "I love Hillary Clinton."
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
And watching that, seeing the enthusiastic reception she got then from Clinton campaign staffers, one can only imagine how deep the inexplicable betrayal feels to them now.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
I don't know what is going on with Brazile, but I don't buy the explanation that it's just about selling her book or getting a job on Fox News.
This can't just be about money, because the money in books and appearances right now...is with Hillary. Think about it. It's Hillary's book that's the massive seller. It's Hillary's appearances that are selling out with high ticket prices. If she'd hitched her wagon to Hillary, that would be more lucrative than whatever the fuck it is she's doing right now.
So what is the motivation? I'm afraid none of the possible answers are good.
[Previously: Yeah, So, That Donna Brazile Piece and For All the Earnest Girls.]
Joe Biden Is Still Talking
Joe Biden just can't stop talking about how Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate and he totally woulda won if he'd run. And now he's at it again, saying he couldn't run because Clinton's allies and supporters would have been a bunch of big meanypantses to him.
When Biden says Clinton supporters would have gone negative on him, what he means is that annoying bitches have long memories and would have uncharitably reminded people how he dogged Anita Hill.https://t.co/nnK4elGuGM
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
Joe Biden, with a history of plagiarism, racist and sexist jokes, and losing to Hillary Clinton already in 2008, is sure that he would have won the election that she lost, despite winning the popular vote by 3 million votes. Because everyone would have seen what an amazing leader he would have been, even though he's an adult man who whines about how he couldn't run because people would have been unfair to him. Unlike how everyone is always super fair to Hillary Clinton.
I'm not impressed, Joe. And I can assure you I will remain unimpressed at least until 2020.
"I might have defied ruin, but my young life changed dramatically that day."
[Content Note: Sexual assault.]
Swimmer Diana Nyad has penned an extraordinary piece for the New York Times about surviving sexual abuse by a coach when she was a girl: "My Life After Sexual Assault." It will almost certainly be a familiar story to many women and girls, terribly so. It was familiar to me.
And it prompted this thought:
I thought, as I read this piece, about how there are many variations of our cultural "success despite adversity" tales, but none of them include sexual assault. That, too, is a terrible silence. https://t.co/MmXuq7OzTx
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
There are people who insist that no one doesn't object to sexual abuse (immediately wrong, because its perpetrators don't), but here is further proof: Sexual abuse is so normalized that it's an expected part of female lives.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 9, 2017
For millions of us, it never really goes away. I am grateful to Nyad for saying that. And I am angry at a world that doesn't let us say with frankness that what we've survived is something that makes life harder, and changes us for the rest of our lives.
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by hot sauce.
Recommended Reading:
Katha Pollitt: Year One: My Anger Management
Pam Merritt: [Content Note: Mass shootings; disablism] Mental Health and Guns: Journalists Aren't Asking the Right Questions
Sameer Rao: [CN: Misogynoir] Flint's First Black Female Mayor Faces Recall Election
Amie Newman: [CN: War on agency] "Uber of Birth Control" in the Crosshairs of Anti-Abortion Activists
Ragen Chastain: [CN: Fat hatred] Sitcom Mom Should Know That Fat Suits Aren't Funny
James Whitbrook: [CN: Bi erasure] Thor: Ragnarok's Valkyrie Shows How Far We've Got to Go for LGBTQ Representation on the Big Screen
Monica Roberts: Now There Are Seven Elected Trans National Legislators!
Sue Kerr: Holiday Cards for LGBTQ Elders and Youth
Kristen V. Brown: Gene Therapy Restores Seven-Year-Old Boy's Skin in 'Major Biomedical Triumph'
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
The Make-Up Thread
Here is your semi-regular make-up thread, to discuss all things make-up and make-up adjacent.
Do you have a make-up product you'd recommend? Are you looking for the perfect foundation which has remained frustratingly elusive? Need or want to offer make-up tips? Searching for hypoallergenic products? Want to grouse about how you hate make-up? Want to gush about how you love it?
Whatever you like—have at it!
* * *
Below, a photo of my latest favorite look:
There are a lot of different products involved, but all of them are extremely quick to apply, so the whole thing only takes a few minutes: Neutrogena's Healthy Skin Primer (the primer is the only thing I'm wearing here, with no foundation on top of it); Tarte's Paaarty blush; Tarte's Birthday Suit lip color; Thrive's Brilliant Eye Brightener (in the corners of my eyes, under my eyes, and along my brow bone); Urban Decay's Spike eyeshadow, blended upwards into Urban Decay's Sin eyeshadow; Almay's Intense i-Color mascara in Black Steel; and Ardell Brow Sculpting Gel in clear.
(As always, I'm not affiliated with any of these companies in any way, nor am I getting anything in exchange for these recommendations. I just like the products!)
I'm not even gonna try to fight the pink anymore. I'm just gonna go with it! PINK ALL DAY.
Anyway! What's up with you?
* * *
Please note, as always, that advice should be not be offered to an individual person unless they solicit it. Further: This thread is open to everyone—women, men, genderqueer folks. People who are make-up experts, and people who are make-up newbies. Also, because there is a lot of racist language used in discussions of make-up, and in make-up names, please be aware to avoid turns of phrase that are alienating to women of color, like "nude" or "flesh tone" when referring to a peachy or beige color. I realize some recommended products may have names that use these words, so please be considerate about content noting for white supremacist (and/or Orientalist) product naming.
The What Happened Book Club
This is the sixth installment of the What Happened Book Club, where we are doing a chapter a week.
That pace will hopefully allow people who need time to procure the book a better chance to catch up, and let us deal with the book in manageable pieces: I figured we will have a lot to talk about, and one thread for the entire book would quickly get overwhelming.
So! Let us continue our discussion with Chapter Six: On Being a Woman in Politics.
* * *
That this particular chapter fell on this particular day is almost too perfect. Here we are, a year after an election that was a referendum on how this nation values women, and it's abundantly clear, clearer than ever, that institutional misogyny is a national shame with which we must meaningfully reckon.
There is so, so much to talk about in this chapter, but this stood out as my absolute favorite passage:
I found that the decades of work I had done on women and families served me well in all those places, because it meant that I understood the intricacies of people's lives. I knew how governments could help or hurt families. I knew how to marshal resources and support to the people who needed them most. It turned out that my work on so-called women's and children's issues prepared me well for nearly everything else I've ever done.I don't even know how to explain what that last sentence means to me, and how important I think it is. But if you've been reading here for more than a minute, I'm guessing you get it.
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 Resist: Day 293
One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.
So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.
Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.
* * *
Here are some things in the news today:
Earlier today by Fannie: Days Like These: Thoughts on a Year of Cruelty. And by me: Waking Up to a Democratic Win on the Anniversary of Trump's Win.
Michael Scherer and David Weigel: Republicans Seek New Path after Failure of Gillespie's 'Trumpism without Trump'. "The result is a bad omen for the Republican Party nationally, who will face head winds across the country in 2018, given continued frustration with political leaders in Washington and Trump's low approval rating. Without faith that Trump's base will match the enthusiasm of Democrats, many Republican candidates believe they will have to seek out a new political strategy to hold onto power."
First of all, the "new path," or "new political strategy," will look the same as the old one: Bigotry, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and stacking the courts. Secondly, there's no such thing as "Trumpism." There is only Republicanism, of which Donald Trump was simply the inevitable end game.
I see you, Republicans. You've got nothing but the same old bag of ghoulish tricks. And a new assist from the Russians. But I am prepared to be ruthlessly vigilant, and I'm bringing everyone I can along with me.
Charlie Pierce at Esquire: Sorry, But American Democracy Is Still Edging Closer to Disaster. "Are you ready to have your mellow harshed just a little? On Tuesday, when nobody was looking, the state of Wisconsin brought the country a step closer to a constitutional bloodbath unseen since 1789. The Wisconsin state senate voted, 19-14, to join the call for an Article V convention of the states to propose amendments to the federal Constitution... The movement for this convention was born in the dark-money plutocracy of the current American political system. It aims to fasten an oligarchy to what still would be the shell of a self-governing republic. The tell is in the issues. They are a wish list of conservative policies that were shredded under the existing Constitution."
Rebecca Solnit at the Guardian: One Year on, Donald Trump Is Still an Illegitimate President. "You don't have to factor in the Russian intervention or the Trump team's collusion to regard the election as fatally corrupted. But while the corruption of the voting system seems to have been an achievement of Republican strategists working for decades, the unprecedented role of a foreign government does give an entirely different basis to regard it as illegitimate. As we learn more about the latter, it behooves us not to forget the former, which is as grave a blow to the credibility of the election. You don't have to like the Democratic party or Clinton to come to these conclusions. You just have to like free and fair elections and the right of the people to determine who governs them."
Kevin Poulsen at the Daily Beast: Russia Activated Twitter Sleeper Cells for 2016 Election Day Blitz. "As U.S. polling places opened last Nov. 8, Russian trolls in St. Petersburg began a final push on Twitter to elect Donald Trump. They used a combination of high-profile accounts with large and influential followings, and scores of lurking personas established years earlier with stolen photos and fabricated backgrounds. Those sleeper accounts dished out carefully metered tweets and retweets voicing praise for Trump and contempt for his opponent, from the early morning until the last polls closed in the United States. 'VOTE TRUMP to save ourselves from the New World Order. Time to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,' read one. 'Last chance to stop the Queen of Darkness! Vote Trump!' urged another." Fucking hell.
Josh Gerstein at Politico: Inside Secret Court Hearing in Mueller's Trump-Russia Probe. "Buchanan told Papadopolous to stand and formally advised him he'd been charged in a criminal complaint with obstruction of justice and making false official statements. She then called on Van Grack to lay out the maximum penalties: five years and a $250,000 fine for the false statement charge and 20 years in prison and $250,000 fine for the obstruction charge. Van Grack said the government wasn't seeking Papadopolous' detention — a somewhat unusual move since agents had just arrested him. But the Chicago-based energy consultant was told to give up his passports (two of them) and to keep away from individuals and entities related to the charges against him." How come all of these dirtbags have multiple passports? Manafort had three!
Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Trump Told Senate Dems That the GOP Tax Bill Won't Benefit Him Personally. "Donald Trump on Tuesday called into a meeting between two White House aides and a group of Senate Democrats to attempt to assure the Democrats that the Republican tax cut bill will not benefit him or other rich Americans... Trump told those present at the meeting that he had spoken with his personal accountant about the legislation, who told the president that he would suffer financially as a result of the bill, people in the room told the Washington Post and NBC News. 'My accountant called me and said 'you're going to get killed in this bill,'' Trump said, according to NBC News. Trump also claimed that the legislation will hurt rich people in general, despite analysis from experts indicating that the plan will benefit wealthy Americans and corporations. 'The deal is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something,' he said, according to the Washington Post." What a lying sack of crap.
[Content Note: Police brutality; racism] Ian Simpson at Reuters: Baltimore Officer Cleared of Charges in Freddie Gray Death. "A panel of three law enforcement officials found Officer Caesar Goodson not guilty of 21 administrative charges of violating department policies during Freddie Gray's arrest, meaning he will keep his job, the newspaper said. Goodson, 48, was acquitted in 2016 of second-degree depraved heart murder and other charges, the most serious brought against six officers accused in connection with Gray's death in April 2015. None was convicted." No one will ever be held accountable for killing Freddie Gray, and it makes my stomach ache just thinking about it. I can only imagine how his family feels. I am so sorry.
[CN: Rape culture; rape apologia; sexual assault] H.W. Vail at Vanity Fair: Gay Talese Would Like to Profile Kevin Spacey. "Veteran journalist and Library Lion Gay Talese...broke away from his conversation to tell Vanity Fair about the one [magazine profile] he would want to write right now. 'I would like to talk to Kevin Spacey,' he said. News had come that afternoon that Netflix was cutting ties with the House of Cards star after multiple men had accused him of sexual harassment, beginning with actor Anthony Rapp, who told BuzzFeed that Spacey made a sexual advance towards him in 1986, when he was 14. 'I feel so sad, and I hate that actor that ruined this guy's career,' continued Talese, who possibly had not kept up with the growing scope of the accusations online. 'So, O.K., it happened 10 years ago...Jesus, suck it up once in a while!' Talese, visibly agitated, pressed on: 'I would like to ask [Spacey] how it feels to lose a lifetime of success and hard work all because of 10 minutes of indiscretion 10 years or more ago.'"
I would like to tell Gay Talese what it's like to be a person who has to try to create a lifetime of success and hard work despite the lasting trauma of some dude's "10 minutes of indiscretion" on your body when you're a teenager. https://t.co/9cgfe7MWJ0 pic.twitter.com/cl9SCfKIpU
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 7, 2017
Kaiser at Celebitchy: George Clooney: Democrats Need 'Charismatic' Candidates Like Donald Trump. "He says the Democratic party needs is a candidate 'who lights up a room… Trump, for all his terrible instincts, is very charismatic. A TV star. People didn't vote for him because he accomplished anything. They knew him. And they were, like, he's exciting / Democrats in general are very passive. In debates, the Republican will go, 'That guy's bad, and that guy's good.' And the Democrat will say, 'Well, I understand what you're saying, because your parents were alcoholics…' And the reality is that you need people who go, 'That's good. That's bad.''" Shut the fuck up, George Clooney. The solution to Donald Trump is not jettisoning nuance in favor of more black-and-white thinking.
What have you been reading that we need to resist today?
Days Like These: Thoughts on a Year of Cruelty
2017 was supposed to be a better year than the the one that preceded it. Before the 2016 election, I longed for, but never took for granted, President Hillary Clinton to build upon the progress that President Obama had made over the course of 8 years.
Instead, here we are.
First, there's the misogyny. Amorphous and ever-changing accusations of primary "rigging" aside, everything I've observed about the 2016 election has instead ingrained in me that cultural and political forces would have done anything and everything to prevent us having a female president. Some of us may have wanted it more than anything, but it was never meant to be in 2016. If not the emails or the likeability or the lack of joy/sex in Hillary's campaign or what-have-you, it would have been a myriad of other ever-shifting ex post facto reasons not to support "this woman."
It is undeniable: anyone who says that structural misogyny doesn't exist in the US is simply not operating in good faith.
Then, of course, as documented in this space and elsewhere, terrible news comes at us constantly and quickly these days. Perhaps more patterns, themes, and narratives will become apparent in the years to come, but as I review the past year's news, I see the predominant theme of the Trump Era as being nihilistic cruelty.
In her 2012 book On Cruelty, Maggie Nelson observes anti-death-penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean's belief that if people just understood the actual cruelty of executions, they would oppose the death penalty. Nelson disagrees (and so do I), writing:
"Alas, if only it were so. For if the bad news from Abu Ghraib made anything clear in recent years, it is that this model of shaming-us-into-action-by-unmasking-the-truth-of-our-ations cannot hold a candle to our capacity to assimilate horrific images, and to justify or shrug off horrific behavior."One of the important tasks of the resistance is eradicating from ourselves the notion that if more people simply knew that Trump was horrific that they would oppose him, or even care.
It's true that Trump is historically unpopular, for now anyway, but a certain percentage of Trump's base knows exactly who Trump is, they support him anyway, and they always will. We can debate what that percentage is, but what seems certain is that they voted for him because of the cruelties he's hellbent on inflicting.
In light of these realities I suggest three important tasks for the resistance, although of course there is no shortage of such tasks:
1. We must refuse to be gaslit by those who tell us that deplorable people are motivated not by cruelty but by economic anxiety. Republicans have, for decades, fanned the flames of bigotry for political gain and Trump is an end result of that strategy. As a consequence, many marginalized people live in a near-constant state of fear as to what the Republican administration might do next. It strikes me as adding trauma on top of trauma to ask us to collectively pretend that bigotry doesn't exist in hopes of appealing to the people responsible for inflicting this trauma, or who are at best indifferent to it.
2. Due to our two-party system, the Democratic Party is the only meaningful political party in the US capable of resisting and opposing the Republican agenda. Instead of seeking to tear this party down and transform it into a party centered around white male angst, some folks need to show a better appreciation of the fact that ongoing intra-party/intra-left conflicts are deep, longstanding, and predate the Hillary v. Bernie divide.
Too often, this divide is falsely portrayed as an either/or dichotomy: the Democrats can focus on the economy or "identity politics," but not both. Or, it's presented as a conflict between "progressives" v. "centrists," when the boundaries of these labels are ill-defined, ever-shifting, or have come to be rather-stupidly defined not by policy but by whether someone voted for Clinton or Sanders in the Democratic Primary.
Can't we build up and support candidates who can articulate a nuanced understanding of the reality that while our economic and political systems are flawed, "identity politics" are not mere side issues?
3. More broadly, we must continue resisting the normalization of Trump's cruelties. As we've been seeing with George W. Bush's recent redemption arc, the normalization of Trump makes other Republicans who are no less deplorable, yet who are more subtle in their bigotries, seem normal, decent, and better by comparison. We must remember that they are not.
Thank You, Hillary Clinton
I thought a lot about what I wanted to say on this anniversary of the 2016 election. I considered whether to write something reflecting back on the campaign itself, or something about the interceding year, or something about the resistance.
Ideas, and fragments of sentences, and whole paragraphs have been laying themselves across my mind for weeks, as this date approached. And, in the end, I decided I just wanted to say thank you to the candidate for whom I cast a vote one year ago today.
Dear Hillary:
Thank you.
Thank you for carefully weighing your decision to run for president, and then throwing your hat in the ring, even though you knew how difficult it would be; even though you knew, as keenly as any other woman in the country and more than most, the hellscape of vicious misogyny that would be unleashed against you.
Thank you for running on the most progressive Democratic platform ever, and for being a candidate both capable of learning and willing to learn. We say we want our progressive politicians to progress, and you did — because it was the right thing to do, even though you knew you would inevitably be accused of opportunism, political expediency, inauthenticity. Thank you for the courage and integrity that required.
Thank you for campaigning for 18 long months, day after exhausting day, keeping up a ruthless schedule that would drive most people half your age to collapse after three weeks, no less a year and a half. Thank you for giving up time with your family, your grandchildren; for giving up anything resembling free time; for giving up your privacy. Thank you for making countless sacrifices on behalf of this country, because you knew what was at stake.
Thank you for being a patriot — and for campaigning like one.
Thank you for being first to reach the summit of a major-party nomination, if not the first to walk the trail. Thank you for listening to the women who went before, for honoring them, for learning from them, for building on what they started, for giving them credit.
Thank you for bringing us along. For being a woman who uplifts other women; who never positions herself as superior to other women; who doesn't audit other women's expressions and experiences of womanhood.
Thank you for caring about children. For dedicating so much of your long career to bettering the lives of children and talking about them as the humans they are; for always remembering their present needs; for never using them as a political tool to suggest they need protection from marginalized people (but not from guns or hunger).
Thank you for talking about marginalized people as rights-bearing humans with complex needs and agency. Thank you for saying women's rights are human rights, and gay rights are human rights. For advocating in your every stump speech for protecting and expanding the rights of women and people of color and members of the LGBTQ community and disabled people and voters and workers. (And for understanding those aren't mutually exclusive groups.)
Thank you for understanding that identity is a bread and butter issue for marginalized people.
Thank you for being thoughtful and measured in your deliberations, for taking seriously the gravity of the presidency. For having promised to prioritize harm mitigation. For not treating lightly the enormous responsibility with which you would have been tasked.
Thank you for being a listener, and a learner. Thank you for finding a way to build bridges and forge unity and create fragile alliances with temperamental fools to get things done.
Thank you for putting out an enormous number of policy papers and factsheets, so we could see exactly what you wanted to do and how you would do it. Thank you for every detailed policy addresses, and every voter question you answered with both compassion and seriousness and details.
Thank you for everything you have done along your journey to this day last year. For fighting for educational and housing rights. For fighting for other female lawyers. For fighting for healthcare. For fighting for first responders and veterans. For fighting for people who need jobs, childcare, food. For fighting for people who need someone in power to recognize their value — their humanity.
Thank you for everything you have done in the interceding year. For writing your lovely book. For answering hard questions in public. For taking selfies with your supporters in the woods. For refusing to go away.
Thank you for being willing to fight for me, even when I haven't agreed with you. Even when I didn't support you. Even when I was a younger woman, still full of uninterrogated internalized misogyny, which sometimes spilled out in your direction.
Thank you for challenging me. For obliging me to grow as a woman and as an observer of politics. Thank you for telling me it's okay for me to expect more and hold you accountable, and for inviting me to see you, in all your complexity, as a person and a public servant.
Thank you for letting me see as much of who you are as I have — which cannot be easy, given the scrutiny and vitriol to which you are subjected.
Thank you for modeling self-care and the drawing of boundaries: When the press criticized you for not availing yourself of them — while you were shaking hands and giving hugs and taking photos and talking and listening to voters — I saw how you navigated a balance that allowed you to be vulnerable to the people who need it. And I thank you for that, too.
Thank you for your endless campaigning as you worked for every last vote.
Thank you for your voice — and your laugh, which I love so much. Thank you for your broad smile and your hilarious, utter lack of a poker face.
Thank you for your compassion, and for your wit. For making me cry and for making me laugh. For inspiring me to keep reaching — to persist.
Thank you for finding a way to process all the petty ignominies and sustained personal attacks with which you have been obliged to contend for decades. These things should not be the cost of any woman's success, and yet they are the stuff of every woman's life. To face them in their relentless indignity for decades, on such a grand and visible scale, is unfathomable. Thank you for your perseverance.
Thank you in equal measure for your righteous anger: At the people who try, even still, to harm you and your family; at the people who try to harm the rest of us. There are times in the middle of your mounting a defense of what is right and what is true, when I glimpse the flicker of anger in your eyes, penetrating your stoic veneer of steely resolve; or hear the edge of anger around the contours of your reasonable tone. And it gives me the air in my lungs I need to keep fighting.
Thank you for the moments you have shown undiluted contempt, responding with mirthless laughter. For the times that you have communicated disdain when a less confident or more obsequious politician might elect to indulge that infuriating, dangerous, "both sides have a point" malarkey.
Thank you for knowing there is a time to stop listening, too. To draw a line in the sand and say this is intolerable and cannot stand. To say you have heard quite enough, thank you very much.
Thank you for doing that, even despite the enormous pressure on women to be eternally indulgent and kind and deferential.
Thank you for neither succumbing to many of the foolish and demeaning expectations that are put on women, nor for running away from your womanhood. There are many who want the prize of being first, while abandoning any sense of loyalty or representation. Thank you for being a woman who is not ashamed to be one.
And finally: Thank you for giving me the chance to vote for you. When I stepped into that voting booth and cast my vote, tears spilling from my eyes, it was a moment in which I was so overwhelmed by its magnitude, I still can't articulate precisely what it meant to me. I will never forget it.
Thank you, Hillary.
Warmest regards,
Liss
Waking Up to a Democratic Win on the Anniversary of Trump's Win
Well. That election was something! The Democrats had a big night: Ralph Northam won the governorship of Virginia, where 14 state seats also flipped from red to blue, and Justin Fairfax was elected as lieutenant governor, the first Black lieutenant governor in the state's history and only the second Black person to win statewide in Virginia.
In New Jersey, Phil Murphy was elected to succeed Chris Christie (who wasn't running for reelection), and Sheila Oliver was elected the first Black woman to serve as its lieutenant governor. Oliver continues a history-making streak, as she was also the first Black woman elected as Assembly Speaker, which made her only the second Black female speaker in U.S. history. She said last night of her victory: "This may not be the first glass ceiling I have broken, but it is certainly the highest. And I hope somewhere in this great state of New Jersey, a young girl of color is watching tonight and realizing that she does not have a limit to how high she can go."
Two trans women were elected last night: Andrea Jenkins was elected to the Minneapolis City Council and Danica Roem was elected to Virginia's House of Delegates. (Although it was widely reported that one or both were firsts last night, the first out trans person elected to public office in the United States was Althea Garrison in 1992.)
Roem was running against (and unseated) Bob Marshall, the Republican who introduced Virginia's anti-trans "bathroom bill." He repeatedly attacked her in the ugliest ways during the campaign, and, even in victory, she maintained her decency and integrity.
When asked about Bob Marshall, Danica Roem said “I don't attack my constituents. Bob is my constituent now.”
— Nicholas Trevino (@BlyTarbell) November 8, 2017
She has more grace and composure than I will ever have. #virginia #DanicaRoem
Danica Roem defeated a dude who is profoundly transphobic and was personally abusive to her. He went low. She's going to the capitol. https://t.co/0cfbCMYRID
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 8, 2017
One trans man was elected last night, too: Tyler Titus won a seat on the school board in Erie, Pennsylvania.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of numerous historic wins last night: Vi Lyles is the first Black woman to be elected Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina; Yvonne Spicer, a Black woman, was elected the first mayor of the new city of Framingham, Massachusetts; Joyce Craig is the first woman to be elected Mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, in its 266-year history; Ravinder Bhalla was elected Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, making him the first Sikh American to be elected mayor of the city; Elizabeth Guzman and Hala Ayala became the first Latinas elected to Virginia's House of Delegates, and both defeated Republican incumbents to do it; Kathy Tran, who came as an infant to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam, became the first Asian American woman elected to Virginia's House of Delegates; Jenny Durkan was elected Seattle's first out lesbian mayor and its first female mayor since 1928; Melvin Carter was elected in Minnesota as St. Paul's first Black mayor; Janet Diaz was elected in Pennsylvania as the first Latina member of Lancaster's city council; and there are yet more history making winners being compiled by Philip Lewis and Willa Frej at the Huffington Post!
This is the future of the Democratic Party. And I hope any self-identified progressive who has ever asserted that "identity politics don't matter," or "identity politics are a distraction," or any variation thereof, takes a long look at the Democratic candidates who won last night, all over the nation, and reconsider their patently mistaken stance.
Relatedly, very few people have connected the blow-out in Virginia to the events in Charlottesville just ~90 days ago, but I believe that had to have made a difference.
Virginians saw up close and personal in Charlottesville the future of Trumpism left unchecked. Today, they decided to check the fuck out of it. #ElectionDay
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 8, 2017
That message won't be lost on Republicans. Trust that.
Which is why I'm I am having a strange combination of feelings today. I'm feeling relieved (even more than happy) about the results last night, feeling crappy about the fact that today is the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's win, and feeling worried that the blowback to the results last night will be an acceleration of the takeover that happened last year on this day, to ensure that what happened last night can't happen again.
Mike Pence and Kris Kobach are still working hard to disenfranchise voters across the nation, under the banner of Trump's "Commission on Election Integrity." What we absolutely cannot do is luxuriate in overconfidence. We cannot take for granted that we'll see the same result in 2018. We must fight every effort to disenfranchise voters for the next year. And forever thereafter.
Because here is what I know: The Republicans will respond to this defeat by doubling down on their voter suppression efforts. And Trump is currently stacking the courts as quickly as possible with judges who will uphold such efforts.
If we sit on our laurels, confident we'll destroy in 2018, what will happen is that we won't. Republicans will exploit our inattention for everything it's worth. So: Pay attention. And listen to people who sound the alarm on voter suppression efforts.
And keep your eyes on cases like this:
In other good election news today...! https://t.co/kLVh079fQs
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) November 8, 2017
The road to 2018 begins now. Clink your glass, fill your lungs with air, and get ready to get back to work.
