On Mrs. Obama's disdain
--Tip Drill, Nelly
In heaven's name
why do you play these games?
--Hang On, to Your Love,
Sade
We see not only with our eyes,
but with all that we are,
and all that our culture is
--Dorothea Lange
I've seen all good people
turn their heads each day
So satisfied I'm on my way
--I've Seen All Good People,
Yes
In heaven's name
why do you play these games?
--Hang On, to Your Love,
Sade
We see not only with our eyes,
but with all that we are,
and all that our culture is
--Dorothea Lange
I've seen all good people
turn their heads each day
So satisfied I'm on my way
--I've Seen All Good People,
Yes
_______________________
[The graphic features the rapper Nelly and his "Tip Drill", in which he slides a credit card between a woman's buttocks. I saw it playing on a t.v. in a gym in 2001. An inauspicious beginning to the 21st century, far as women's rights go, I thought.]
Mrs. Obama, recently delivered a tremulous speech hailed for its unbridled emotion ostensibly on behalf of every woman. One does not become
an attorney without some acting skills.
No doubt Mrs. Obama, hailing from Southside Chicago, knows of some men who “throw down, and take away.” But Mr. Trump has never been accused of being one of those men.
ISTM in the pantheon of bad male behavior, copping a few feels and talking locker room about ladies private parts pales in comparison to the ACTUAL behavior of so many men who have inhabited the Oval Office. Stealing a kiss or copping a feel versus getting fellated in the Oval Office and inserting a cigar into a 19-year old's vagina.You decide.
But we trot out the little ladies when need to feel chivalric, which is to say, righteous and purposeful, in the face of a national political atmosphere which is anything but.
Witness one of the after-the-fact phony justifications for the Phony Wars on Terror (PWOT ©): women's rights. And things have gotten a lot better for women since that action, no?
But no one questions the bombast, because it sounds so good. I mean, who could be against women having rights, right? That is like saying you are against moms and apple pie.
This speech came in an atmosphere that has allowed the wide dissemination of false rape tales like that of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Magnum by members of the Duke Lacrosse squad. The mythical targets were black women, in a reverse Mandingo fantasy.
We are all good people, and have been taught to atone. We believe that wearing our horsehair shirt will buy favor from the gods.
So when Mrs. Obama says “we”, what we hear is, “we black women”. We live in an age in which there are calls for monetary reparations for slavery, and #blacklivesmatter is a social networking movement. A collective guilt gets superimposed upon any man, especially a privileged one, accused of some wrongdoing.
Mrs. Clinton’s initial campaign ads featured a black girl alone before the image of a florid Trump exhorting something on the screen, ad infinitum. She is wide-eyed, and seems afraid.
Ironic that a month later, tapings of Trump's private conversation appear, along with a few women over a span of 30+ years who allege they have been “inappropriately touched” (NYT headline) by Mr. Trump.
Have we no shame? Is there no adult in the newsroom, or among the viewers of the spectacle?
The stumping Mrs. Obama expresses her horror at Mr. Trump's bravado and possible overreach:
No doubt Mrs. Obama, hailing from Southside Chicago, knows of some men who “throw down, and take away.” But Mr. Trump has never been accused of being one of those men.
ISTM in the pantheon of bad male behavior, copping a few feels and talking locker room about ladies private parts pales in comparison to the ACTUAL behavior of so many men who have inhabited the Oval Office. Stealing a kiss or copping a feel versus getting fellated in the Oval Office and inserting a cigar into a 19-year old's vagina.You decide.
But we trot out the little ladies when need to feel chivalric, which is to say, righteous and purposeful, in the face of a national political atmosphere which is anything but.
Witness one of the after-the-fact phony justifications for the Phony Wars on Terror (PWOT ©): women's rights. And things have gotten a lot better for women since that action, no?
But no one questions the bombast, because it sounds so good. I mean, who could be against women having rights, right? That is like saying you are against moms and apple pie.
This speech came in an atmosphere that has allowed the wide dissemination of false rape tales like that of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Magnum by members of the Duke Lacrosse squad. The mythical targets were black women, in a reverse Mandingo fantasy.
We are all good people, and have been taught to atone. We believe that wearing our horsehair shirt will buy favor from the gods.
So when Mrs. Obama says “we”, what we hear is, “we black women”. We live in an age in which there are calls for monetary reparations for slavery, and #blacklivesmatter is a social networking movement. A collective guilt gets superimposed upon any man, especially a privileged one, accused of some wrongdoing.
Mrs. Clinton’s initial campaign ads featured a black girl alone before the image of a florid Trump exhorting something on the screen, ad infinitum. She is wide-eyed, and seems afraid.
Ironic that a month later, tapings of Trump's private conversation appear, along with a few women over a span of 30+ years who allege they have been “inappropriately touched” (NYT headline) by Mr. Trump.
Have we no shame? Is there no adult in the newsroom, or among the viewers of the spectacle?
The stumping Mrs. Obama expresses her horror at Mr. Trump's bravado and possible overreach:
“It’s that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office.”
Unfortunately, her speech about the bogeyman
bossman is fraught with untruth. And the lawyer in her would say that The New
York Times will surely face a libel suit after this election.
But if the paper gets its candidate into Office, it will have been worth it. The lawsuit will occur post-election, and someone will happily foot the bill.
No woman has said that she said "no" to Mr. Trump, and that he then gave chase, as Mrs. Obama implies. And sorry to say, but exploitation and misogyny did not stop back in Mrs. Obama's mother's day.
This is a transparent attempt to tarnish Trump with the biggest sin, that of being old and therefore, out of touch. The implication is clear: Mr. Trump and his superannuated brethren are from another place and time. This is blatant ageism.
Trouble is, Mrs. Clinton is exactly the same age, and the FLOTUS's speech is rent is rife with problems.
She states Mr. Trump spoke "freely and openly" on the secretly recorded tape. This IS still America, and we may hold opinions and we have free speech. We may speak freely, with an expectation of privacy unless permission has been granted otherwise.
She also said she is "worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.”
However, if she were truly worried about that, then she would address the very real problem of the much too many young black boys who grow up lacking fathers or even father figures, for that surely has a corrosive effect upon that population, and our population at large. (She could witness that in Southside Chicago, too.)
Incarceration rates for black males are at epic proportions. 72% of black children are raised in single head of household families. Now those are problems that need tending to.
Mrs. Obama says she is hurt to her core over Trump's words. To quell her shock, perhaps she should stop listening to "Earth, Wind and Fire" and borrow her husband's iPod to broaden her horizons regarding the state of relations between the sexes.
There, she may listen to some of Jay-Z's greatest hits -- try "Big Pimpin'" for a start. Oh, I know, now that he and his wife are billionaires he tries to explain it away. But misogynist rappers have always contended that they are just expressing life as it is.
Jay-Z's wife, Queen Bey, earned her almost half a billion by robustly shaking her moneymaker and singing about fellating men in limousines, among other things.
Probably not what Mrs. Obama wants for her daughters, but there it is.
This would be today, and it is exactly where women stood in her mother's day (and hers), if she cared to see and tell the truth.
[cross-posted @ milpub.]
But if the paper gets its candidate into Office, it will have been worth it. The lawsuit will occur post-election, and someone will happily foot the bill.
No woman has said that she said "no" to Mr. Trump, and that he then gave chase, as Mrs. Obama implies. And sorry to say, but exploitation and misogyny did not stop back in Mrs. Obama's mother's day.
This is a transparent attempt to tarnish Trump with the biggest sin, that of being old and therefore, out of touch. The implication is clear: Mr. Trump and his superannuated brethren are from another place and time. This is blatant ageism.
Trouble is, Mrs. Clinton is exactly the same age, and the FLOTUS's speech is rent is rife with problems.
She states Mr. Trump spoke "freely and openly" on the secretly recorded tape. This IS still America, and we may hold opinions and we have free speech. We may speak freely, with an expectation of privacy unless permission has been granted otherwise.
She also said she is "worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.”
However, if she were truly worried about that, then she would address the very real problem of the much too many young black boys who grow up lacking fathers or even father figures, for that surely has a corrosive effect upon that population, and our population at large. (She could witness that in Southside Chicago, too.)
Incarceration rates for black males are at epic proportions. 72% of black children are raised in single head of household families. Now those are problems that need tending to.
Mrs. Obama says she is hurt to her core over Trump's words. To quell her shock, perhaps she should stop listening to "Earth, Wind and Fire" and borrow her husband's iPod to broaden her horizons regarding the state of relations between the sexes.
There, she may listen to some of Jay-Z's greatest hits -- try "Big Pimpin'" for a start. Oh, I know, now that he and his wife are billionaires he tries to explain it away. But misogynist rappers have always contended that they are just expressing life as it is.
Jay-Z's wife, Queen Bey, earned her almost half a billion by robustly shaking her moneymaker and singing about fellating men in limousines, among other things.
Probably not what Mrs. Obama wants for her daughters, but there it is.
This would be today, and it is exactly where women stood in her mother's day (and hers), if she cared to see and tell the truth.
[cross-posted @ milpub.]
Labels: ageism, Michell Obama, Trump portrayed as having antiquated sexist view
posted by Lisa at 2:33 PM
10 Comments:
Wandering into the weeds here, it's striking that this is what people have hitched their wagon to as disqualifying Trump from the presidency. The fact that Trump has a pattern of serial harassment of women is at most a matter of him as an individual before the law. At least until he lies to Congress about it, to name one not-so-hypothetical scenario that I'm sure is totally irrelevant to any candidate at hand.
Just in the past few weeks, Trump has declared that he would jail his political rival, insisted that she should be banned from running for office, claimed that there is a global conspiracy to defeat him and his movement, and even suggested he will reject the election as illegitimate. None of these have any parallel in recent history except in basketcase countries in the Third World.
It says a lot about the liberal establishment, about what they think their voters will react to, and, judging from the fallout, about the fact that they are CORRECT in that thinking, that Trump would be rejected on the grounds of his history of sexual harassment and not on the grounds that his political philosophy is a clear and present danger to the republic.
As I said in the other thread in response to your comment, personally I am not sure that any of this amounts to more than inflammatory rhetoric, but one has to wonder. Would these liberals accept fascism if it was presented to them with a smiley face and a like button, and it mouthed the right platitudes about diversity and pluralism?
A hypothetical question in 2016, but possibly not in the near future.
David,
It appears to me that the liberals are behaving much worse than their opponents have throughout this election.
I just scanned the TRAVEL section of the NYT, and there are two articles on the fallout of fear from "Donald J. Trump's" incident of groping 30 years ago. FEAR mind you, David.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity. Is this the best they've got?
Yes -- "it's striking that this is what people have hitched their wagon to as disqualifying Trump from the presidency." If he is such a threat to -- something -- then why not address that something?
Surely he is not the embodiment of misogyny in our society. Look up at a vodka billboard ad or watch a movie or listen to a song ... you get the idea that feminism is 100-year-old movement, whereas Homo sapiens have been evolving along their behavioral lines for a mighty long time (as Ranger observes.)
It's all such a warped joke, IMHO. How can any of these "serious" players keep a straight face?!?
I guess you could make the argument that he has BECOME the "embodiment of misogyny in our society," however temporarily. But yes, this is exactly my point.
Let's say you're a liberal op-ed writer, or anything really, and you're convinced that Trump is going to be the next Hitler. That at any rate appears to be the general consensus.
Now, in the space of a couple of weeks, the Trump campaign gives you 4 gifts: he says he would jail his political opponents, he says he dodges the question of whether he will accept the results of a democratic election, he wanders off into the weeds of a conspiracy theory every bit as bizarre as the ones many leftists can concoct about sinister corporate influence. Oh, and it turns out that he sometimes assaults women and brags about it.
All of those are grist for the partisan mill, but some seem more Hitler-y than others, if that's the frame of mind you've got going in. Or not, apparently.
As much as I believe that Trump has successfully sold a lot of people I like and respect a worthless bill of goods, it is now obvious that many of Trump's critics are at least as divorced from reality as anyone.
David, Let's be honest here, please. Trump became "Hitler" the day he said he enforce immigration laws. All the rest is just bullshit piling on.
Actually, to be more accurate. Trump is Hitler merely because he exists.
There was a demonstration at Berkeley today. The students no longer want a cis gender white male dean (or some such). These kinds of ideological expressions happen every day. Look at the dribbling idiot Senator Pocahontas and all her supporters. Are going to tell me that such people can be reasoned with? That there is anything a straight, white, non-psychotic man could say that would resonate with these people. Liberals are schizophrenics. Full stop.
In my darker moments I enjoy the thought of God Emperor Trump, in an effort to save the country, calling in airstrikes on wardenless asylums like Berkeley, the NAACP and the New York Times and deploying belt fed machine guns to finish off the fleeing survivors. So maybe they should be afraid. But it's just a little pleasant reverie. It won't happen, of course. But I'll bet the lunatics fear it because they know how their insanity troubles the sane. They know they have deliberately pushed past limits of what is healthy.
avedis
You're right on that, which is hilarious and for exactly the same reason. Let's say you were trying to argue that some political candidate was the next Hitler.
Tough immigration laws don't come to mind as the thing Hitler is remembered for.
Neither does harassment of women.
When Trump himself gives them better material to write their columns, why are they so easily distracted by a sex scandal?
If you want to know how much good an emperor can do for a republic, I suppose you could always ask the Romans.
David, exactly. I came back tonight, b/c I was worried someone might not realize I was joking (mostly :-). We will suffer the fools and the country will go somewhere; perhaps oblivion.
avedis
avedis - Don't worry, I didn't actually think you were planning to massacre the helpless idealists at Berkeley.
If you want my view of it, the tragedy and the victory of this campaign are that the primaries proved how fragile the elite consensus is. There were actually two revolutions this year in the primaries. One worked. 50% is a pretty good success rate as far as revolutions go.
Unfortunately, I've never got on board with it because of a couple reasons. First, I think both that the man leading it is never really going to step away from his own background as an elite, once the chips are down and his own investments are threatened. The reason I dislike politicians being bought off by elites is because then they represent elite interests. Trump doesn't need to be bought off because those interests are already his own.
Second, even if he was the genuine article, he's incompetent as anything more than a jester. Yes, the press is biased, and yes the Clintons are frantically arm-waving to distract us, yet Trump has walked straight into this as if he's oblivious, saying things that manufacture one silly controversy after another. In a way these candidates deserve each other. Neither would have a prayer against anyone else.
There's my thoughts, spelled out mainly because we've been sparring over this for weeks now and I want to make clear why. None of this would have even had to happen if the leading lights of the left hadn't abandoned the working class to focus on identity politics in the first place. The notion that it takes a billionaire realtor to lead a revolt against free-market capitalism proves that modern life is a farce.
David, I agree with you. Trump is a horribly flawed leader of the revolution. I liked Rand Paul, but he could get a minute with the media. Wikileaks apparently released something that suggests the media, in collusion with the Clinton campaign, hyped Trump b/c they thought him to be easy to tear apart and defeat. So they did it to themselves and to us because their choice is also a horribly flawed candidate. So I will vote Trump in the hope that we can stick it to 'em and teach 'em a lesson - though I believe that delusional arrogance probably blocks the ability to learn.
The identity politics must end. The only identity we should be promoting is American. But is an environment of scant resources people clan up and the clans fight. Resources are scant b/c the elites have them all and make bad decisions for the masses.
This is refreshing. We have talked, argued and now arrived at an understanding! That is so rare these days.
avedis
Yes, I saw that too. Very depressing. I hesitate to say I told you so, and there is still more than enough time left for Clinton to regret that decision, no matter what the polls supposedly say. But it is as I feared. Maybe there will be a revolution anyways despite their plans, but this election was always about rival elite factions plotting against one another, nothing more.
A thought experiment: had a Trump-like figure emerged from the left, pandering the right platitudes of course, it would be the liberals overlooking his obvious authoritarian tendencies and the right allying with financial elites to bring him down, instead of the opposite.
Bread and circuses, as I believe you pointed out a few days ago.
avedis & David,
Pleased to see reasoned thought.
But David, you oughtn't be taken in by the screaming memes.
Per the Trump accusations, none are exactly correct:
1) He didn't say he'd jail opponents! He said, if Clinton were found guilty of her criminal deeds, she would go to jail. That is how our country is run.
2) He dodged Clinton's question, but did not say outright that he would reject a loss. (After all, Gore didn't.) Why should he even anticipate a loss.?
Clinton was yanking strings, saying, "Aha! The press knows that I must win -- now, do you?"
3) Everyone's got conspiracy theories, even when they're state-sanctioned ones. Why look at Clinton's tap-dance around Benghazi, or any of her other dark doings.
Ah, NOT conspiracy when it has the State's imprimatur, no?
4) Trump's locker room talk does not equate with what a few women have accused him of doing. The 24-y-o said he kissed her on the face, and then (eeww), on the mouth.
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