Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "aziz-ansari"
Rape Versus Reputation: Who Are The "Real" Victims?
Since I live alone now, I usually share my meals with MSNBC anchors. I eat breakfast with Hallie, lunch with Katie or occasionally Ali, and dinner with Rachel. If MSNBC decides to show a live event with Trump while I'm eating, I'll switch to CNN, and if they're carrying him live, I'll see what's happening on BET, OXYGEN, or TVONE. I have a weak digestive system that can't handle Trump. Rachel is the MSNBC anchor least likely to upset my stomach at this time. Her dog-with-a-bone, digging-deep-into-the-weeds, obsessive focus on a story used to annoy me, but that style is perfect for what Trump calls "this Russia thing." As I was calmly watching her show and enjoying my meal, Rachel announced that there was some breaking news about Kavanaugh. My stomach turned a little because I can't stand that smug, shameless future Supreme Court justice. But when I learned that my senior senator had sent a letter to the FBI about some Kavanaugh bad behavior, I was momentarily ecstatic. I even stopped chewing and swallowing long enough to say, "Go, Feinstein!" But then I started to worry; I hoped that the bad behavior didn't involve sex. When Rachel reported that the bad behavior was indeed sexual, and then as he took over at 7:00, Lawrence revealed that it happened when Kavanaugh was in high school and wouldn't be considered a crime, I almost broke the dish I was washing and did stomp my too-old-to-be-stomping-on-a-hard-floor feet. I decided that I might have to start watching Fox before this #METOO madness ended. The liberals have clearly lost their minds.
Even before the #METOO madness started in 2017, I was complaining about the focus on sexual misconduct. I wrote a scathing public letter (see 6/19/16 post) to the drunk, narcissistic Emily Doe, who was being celebrated as a hero for destroying the reputation of a younger, equally drunk undergraduate. Later, I tweeted Lawrence and other liberals, complaining about the overreaction to the "Access Hollywood" tape. I made the point in those tweets that white people didn't react as strongly to unarmed black youth being killed in the street or to Trump's racist birther lies. I also complained to both Doe and the "Access Hollywood" tape whiners that the suggestion that women can be so easily traumatized by "sexual assault" (quite different from rape) would hurt Hillary's chances in November. Uh, was I wrong? But after the media-generated movement was cynically used by both Republicans and Democrats to dump the too popular Al Franken, the #METOO whiners became public enemy number two after Trump and his enablers. And they're moving up.
Shortly after I finished eating breakfast with my weekend MSNBC companion Joy Reid yesterday, she and her panelists discussed the Feinstein/Kavanaugh situation. I was hoping at least one of them would complain that there were so many more important issues to discuss with this despicable nominee, including the fact that he was appointed by an illegitimate President, that we shouldn't waste our time talking about something that may or may not have happened when he was in high school. I was hoping someone would express discomfort at how often we're using sexual misconduct to bring down powerful men. Maybe one of them would compare this situation to what happened to Al or more recently Moonves, who was in a power struggle with Redstone's daughter when the sexual misconduct charges broke. I hoped someone would take the Gayle King route and talk about the need for due process. No such luck! The man on the panel focused more on the judge's lies and seemed not that interested in the sexual misconduct. But the women suggested that Kavanaugh knew this charge was coming because he quickly put out a letter with more than sixty women defending his honor. As I tweeted to the show, any powerful man who doesn't have a letter ready to defend himself now is a fool. A Republican in politics who saw what happened to Moore (the molesting fourteen-year-old girls charges didn't surface until he was about to win the Republican nomination for senator) would be especially foolish not to be ready for those charges. And liberals who saw what happened to Al Franken and John Conyers should also be prepared; if the Democrats take back the House, and younger Democrats want to move aside some more older men (not quite as old as Conyers) and take over their committee chairmanships, don't be surprised if we suddenly learn that Representatives Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn are sexual predators.
As I indicated in my 7/8/18 post, I believe in public shaming. Trump should have been publicly shamed for his birther lies, and Kavanaugh should be shamed for accepting a Supreme Court nomination from an insane, racist pathological liar who is also at best, a Putin puppet, and at worst, a Russian agent. But I don't believe in shaming people for private behavior, especially private behavior that happened more than thirty years ago. Probably the shameless Kavanaugh isn't ashamed and humiliated, but maybe his wife and children are. Franken, who seems to be a decent man, also supported by more than sixty women, including Jane Curtin, said that he was embarrassed as was the comedian Aziz Ansari, who was shamed for being a little oafish on a bad date, and so was great black actor Morgan Freeman, who told some sexual jokes that offended a few privileged bitches. Most people agree that Al and Aziz should not have been lumped with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. But two blue-eyed, blonde, seemingly intelligent men apparently believe that it's okay for a few good men to be sacrificed to the greater cause of making sure that no privileged white bitch is ever offended by a man. In response to what happened to Al, Lawrence talked about "a wave" sometimes taking down a few people. What!? A man's career and reputation are ruined, and that's okay because this is some kind of positive change for women, a wave? Mia and Woody's son Ronan (formerly Satchel) made a similar point to Bill Maher. He basically shrugged off what happened to Aziz (I don't remember if Bill mentioned Al) as collateral damage for a worthy and important cause. Ronan, it must be nice to start life on third base because you have two talented, rich, and famous (although nutty) parents, and you inherited your mama's good looks and your daddy's superior intelligence. It must be nice to be able to use the media to go after your daddy, without whom you wouldn't be on earth, not to mention so smart (Mia is no intellectual genius, and neither was great singer Frank Sinatra, so he's not your daddy), but most people value their reputations and their good names more than they do whatever they have between their legs, which is usually invisible, so you need to get off your entitled high horse and recognize the damage you are causing with this despicable crusade. As horrible as rape is, the raped victim has the option of keeping her victimization quiet, of hiding behind a fake name, like the disgusting Emily Doe, or not even discussing her violation. And I know not only from reading the books of true victims like Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, and Michelle Knight, but also by witnessing the response of a close family member who was brutally raped when she was almost 62 years old that strong women can move past such a terrible ordeal. Rape victims can get their lives and even their freedom back. But how does a smeared and humiliated man get his reputation, his good name back?
Americans obviously do not believe in the idealistic principle that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than that one innocent man be locked up. We can tell that we don't believe in that principle because there seems to be much more outrage when a man we think is guilty (looking at you, OJ) goes free than when we hear about men (and occasionally women) imprisoned for years for crimes they didn't commit. But we should use the O'Donnell/Farrow model: It's okay if a serial rapist or serial killer goes free and rapes or kills a few more people because the principle of letting ten guilty people go free to avoid locking up one innocent person is so noble.
Besides Gayle King, a few male comedians have tried to push back against this media-generated witch hunt movement. On his September 7 show, Maher argued that we need Al to come back and ridicule Trump in the 2020 election. Because we often think alike (don't ask me why I think like a white male comedian, who is a Catholic turned atheist, who used to hang out at the Playboy Club, and apparently still loves to get high; ask why he thinks like me), I knew that Bill wasn't about to say he was entering the race when he talked about the need for someone to ridicule Trump. I knew he was pitching Al, and I loved his takedown of the fake charges against the popular senator. But, as he was making his case, a privileged, white female journalist named Michelle Goldberg interrupted him to claim that there were other charges besides the one launched by the conservative comedian doing Roger Stone's dirty work. This woman had been on the show before, so she knew she wasn't supposed to interrupt Bill's "New Rules" commentary. That's how hysterical these METOO creeps are. Bill pushed back against her rude interruption, but unfortunately, he didn't ask if any of those other accusers (they claimed Al touched their asses or grabbed their waists during photo shoots) were named Jane Curtin. Another white male comedian, Norm Macdonald, has also tried to push back against the METOO movement, but he's experienced some backlash. Norm apparently has made the point that a famous, powerful man will eventually commit suicide because of this movement. Well, one famous, somewhat powerful man has already committed suicide; he wasn't one of the accused, but he was dating one of the Weinstein accusers, and we recently learned that he paid off her young male accuser. What if Anthony Bourdain killed himself because he realized that his girlfriend Asia Argento was not only a sexual predator herself but a liar? There was also a female suicide victim of the METOO witch hunt. In a current VANITY FAIR article called "Collateral Damage," reporter Evegenia Peretz reveals that a little-known female producer was so shamed and humiliated by both Harvey Weinstein and one of his crazier accusers, Rose McGowan, that she killed herself.
I was blocked on Twitter for the first time when I battled some of McGowan's so-called army. But my tweet to her when she blamed the suicide of Jill Messick on "the monster" Weinstein was my most popular one so far. I pointed out in that tweet that there are no monsters and no saints and that Rose should take responsibility for her part in causing Ms. Messick to kill herself. I also pointed out that she wasn't raped because she didn't say no or try to resist and even faked an orgasm; how was the narcissistic Harvey supposed to know she was faking? I suspect the first unhinged person who blocked me was Rose herself, using a fake name. But my ability to shut down her army suggests that we need a black female comedian to save us from this madness. The white men can't do it because they can be treated as Matt Damon was when he dared to point out the difference between a pat on the ass and rape. We black women have the high moral ground, and we need to use it to save the powerful men of all races, our democracy, our culture, and our sanity.
This black female comedian, our savior, probably has to be younger than Whoopi Goldberg, who has already been burned when she tried to defend Cosby, so that she can't be accused of being a pre-civil rights era black woman who feels she has to always defend black men or from the era where men ruled women (I wondered why they didn't play "Ain't No Way" during the Aretha tributes until I listened to the lyrics; let's just say that song wasn't a feminist anthem). A black woman under fifty, born after the sexual revolution and the women's movement, can destroy these whiny, mostly white women. She can start with the fact that most of them voted for pussy-grabbing Trump and then when he got in the White House and started attacking people of color, they made this horrible period all about them. Are you living in a cage, separated from your child, white woman? Has your unarmed son been shot in the street, privileged white bitch? Are black or brown people calling the police on you because you're trying to live while being white, princess? The black comedian might also go after the politicians the way I went after Feinstein over that ridiculous Kavanaugh letter, suggesting that she was probably behind dumping Al so she could place Kamala Harris on the judiciary committee (how did a comedian/radio host get on the judiciary committee). The first woman to partially represent me demographically, my junior senator, half-sister Kamala, didn't escape my snarky tweets. After saying that I appreciated her performance on the judiciary committee, I let her know that I didn't appreciate that she had Al's seat. After complimenting her clever question about laws governing men's bodies, I pointed out that women could discuss the relative sexiness and attractiveness of men like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, John Edwards, and Barack Obama without being attacked, but when Obama said she was the best looking attorney general, there was outrage; some people acted as if he was Trump. If there can be a double standard dealing with how we talk about women's and men's bodies and how we touch men's and women's bodies, why shouldn't there be a law governing the bodies that seem to need more protection from predatory gazes, comments, and touches?
There is plenty of material for a young or middle-aged black female comedian to take down this absurd movement, and it would be appropriate for her to do it. After all, the media cynically used a not especially well-known black male comedian's joke about Cosby raping women to go after him pre-METOO. It's too bad that we black women, the mules of the earth as Zora Neale Hurston calls us, have to clean up so much of the mess that white folks have made. We had to take care of that mess in Alabama, and I hope we'll take care of some more messes in November. But somebody has to save the world, and obviously we're stronger than white women. Most of us don't fall apart if we're pawed or French kissed by some powerful, predatory man. Wherever you are, strong, funny, young-ish black woman, please hurry up and save us from this madness!
Even before the #METOO madness started in 2017, I was complaining about the focus on sexual misconduct. I wrote a scathing public letter (see 6/19/16 post) to the drunk, narcissistic Emily Doe, who was being celebrated as a hero for destroying the reputation of a younger, equally drunk undergraduate. Later, I tweeted Lawrence and other liberals, complaining about the overreaction to the "Access Hollywood" tape. I made the point in those tweets that white people didn't react as strongly to unarmed black youth being killed in the street or to Trump's racist birther lies. I also complained to both Doe and the "Access Hollywood" tape whiners that the suggestion that women can be so easily traumatized by "sexual assault" (quite different from rape) would hurt Hillary's chances in November. Uh, was I wrong? But after the media-generated movement was cynically used by both Republicans and Democrats to dump the too popular Al Franken, the #METOO whiners became public enemy number two after Trump and his enablers. And they're moving up.
Shortly after I finished eating breakfast with my weekend MSNBC companion Joy Reid yesterday, she and her panelists discussed the Feinstein/Kavanaugh situation. I was hoping at least one of them would complain that there were so many more important issues to discuss with this despicable nominee, including the fact that he was appointed by an illegitimate President, that we shouldn't waste our time talking about something that may or may not have happened when he was in high school. I was hoping someone would express discomfort at how often we're using sexual misconduct to bring down powerful men. Maybe one of them would compare this situation to what happened to Al or more recently Moonves, who was in a power struggle with Redstone's daughter when the sexual misconduct charges broke. I hoped someone would take the Gayle King route and talk about the need for due process. No such luck! The man on the panel focused more on the judge's lies and seemed not that interested in the sexual misconduct. But the women suggested that Kavanaugh knew this charge was coming because he quickly put out a letter with more than sixty women defending his honor. As I tweeted to the show, any powerful man who doesn't have a letter ready to defend himself now is a fool. A Republican in politics who saw what happened to Moore (the molesting fourteen-year-old girls charges didn't surface until he was about to win the Republican nomination for senator) would be especially foolish not to be ready for those charges. And liberals who saw what happened to Al Franken and John Conyers should also be prepared; if the Democrats take back the House, and younger Democrats want to move aside some more older men (not quite as old as Conyers) and take over their committee chairmanships, don't be surprised if we suddenly learn that Representatives Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn are sexual predators.
As I indicated in my 7/8/18 post, I believe in public shaming. Trump should have been publicly shamed for his birther lies, and Kavanaugh should be shamed for accepting a Supreme Court nomination from an insane, racist pathological liar who is also at best, a Putin puppet, and at worst, a Russian agent. But I don't believe in shaming people for private behavior, especially private behavior that happened more than thirty years ago. Probably the shameless Kavanaugh isn't ashamed and humiliated, but maybe his wife and children are. Franken, who seems to be a decent man, also supported by more than sixty women, including Jane Curtin, said that he was embarrassed as was the comedian Aziz Ansari, who was shamed for being a little oafish on a bad date, and so was great black actor Morgan Freeman, who told some sexual jokes that offended a few privileged bitches. Most people agree that Al and Aziz should not have been lumped with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. But two blue-eyed, blonde, seemingly intelligent men apparently believe that it's okay for a few good men to be sacrificed to the greater cause of making sure that no privileged white bitch is ever offended by a man. In response to what happened to Al, Lawrence talked about "a wave" sometimes taking down a few people. What!? A man's career and reputation are ruined, and that's okay because this is some kind of positive change for women, a wave? Mia and Woody's son Ronan (formerly Satchel) made a similar point to Bill Maher. He basically shrugged off what happened to Aziz (I don't remember if Bill mentioned Al) as collateral damage for a worthy and important cause. Ronan, it must be nice to start life on third base because you have two talented, rich, and famous (although nutty) parents, and you inherited your mama's good looks and your daddy's superior intelligence. It must be nice to be able to use the media to go after your daddy, without whom you wouldn't be on earth, not to mention so smart (Mia is no intellectual genius, and neither was great singer Frank Sinatra, so he's not your daddy), but most people value their reputations and their good names more than they do whatever they have between their legs, which is usually invisible, so you need to get off your entitled high horse and recognize the damage you are causing with this despicable crusade. As horrible as rape is, the raped victim has the option of keeping her victimization quiet, of hiding behind a fake name, like the disgusting Emily Doe, or not even discussing her violation. And I know not only from reading the books of true victims like Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, and Michelle Knight, but also by witnessing the response of a close family member who was brutally raped when she was almost 62 years old that strong women can move past such a terrible ordeal. Rape victims can get their lives and even their freedom back. But how does a smeared and humiliated man get his reputation, his good name back?
Americans obviously do not believe in the idealistic principle that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than that one innocent man be locked up. We can tell that we don't believe in that principle because there seems to be much more outrage when a man we think is guilty (looking at you, OJ) goes free than when we hear about men (and occasionally women) imprisoned for years for crimes they didn't commit. But we should use the O'Donnell/Farrow model: It's okay if a serial rapist or serial killer goes free and rapes or kills a few more people because the principle of letting ten guilty people go free to avoid locking up one innocent person is so noble.
Besides Gayle King, a few male comedians have tried to push back against this media-generated witch hunt movement. On his September 7 show, Maher argued that we need Al to come back and ridicule Trump in the 2020 election. Because we often think alike (don't ask me why I think like a white male comedian, who is a Catholic turned atheist, who used to hang out at the Playboy Club, and apparently still loves to get high; ask why he thinks like me), I knew that Bill wasn't about to say he was entering the race when he talked about the need for someone to ridicule Trump. I knew he was pitching Al, and I loved his takedown of the fake charges against the popular senator. But, as he was making his case, a privileged, white female journalist named Michelle Goldberg interrupted him to claim that there were other charges besides the one launched by the conservative comedian doing Roger Stone's dirty work. This woman had been on the show before, so she knew she wasn't supposed to interrupt Bill's "New Rules" commentary. That's how hysterical these METOO creeps are. Bill pushed back against her rude interruption, but unfortunately, he didn't ask if any of those other accusers (they claimed Al touched their asses or grabbed their waists during photo shoots) were named Jane Curtin. Another white male comedian, Norm Macdonald, has also tried to push back against the METOO movement, but he's experienced some backlash. Norm apparently has made the point that a famous, powerful man will eventually commit suicide because of this movement. Well, one famous, somewhat powerful man has already committed suicide; he wasn't one of the accused, but he was dating one of the Weinstein accusers, and we recently learned that he paid off her young male accuser. What if Anthony Bourdain killed himself because he realized that his girlfriend Asia Argento was not only a sexual predator herself but a liar? There was also a female suicide victim of the METOO witch hunt. In a current VANITY FAIR article called "Collateral Damage," reporter Evegenia Peretz reveals that a little-known female producer was so shamed and humiliated by both Harvey Weinstein and one of his crazier accusers, Rose McGowan, that she killed herself.
I was blocked on Twitter for the first time when I battled some of McGowan's so-called army. But my tweet to her when she blamed the suicide of Jill Messick on "the monster" Weinstein was my most popular one so far. I pointed out in that tweet that there are no monsters and no saints and that Rose should take responsibility for her part in causing Ms. Messick to kill herself. I also pointed out that she wasn't raped because she didn't say no or try to resist and even faked an orgasm; how was the narcissistic Harvey supposed to know she was faking? I suspect the first unhinged person who blocked me was Rose herself, using a fake name. But my ability to shut down her army suggests that we need a black female comedian to save us from this madness. The white men can't do it because they can be treated as Matt Damon was when he dared to point out the difference between a pat on the ass and rape. We black women have the high moral ground, and we need to use it to save the powerful men of all races, our democracy, our culture, and our sanity.
This black female comedian, our savior, probably has to be younger than Whoopi Goldberg, who has already been burned when she tried to defend Cosby, so that she can't be accused of being a pre-civil rights era black woman who feels she has to always defend black men or from the era where men ruled women (I wondered why they didn't play "Ain't No Way" during the Aretha tributes until I listened to the lyrics; let's just say that song wasn't a feminist anthem). A black woman under fifty, born after the sexual revolution and the women's movement, can destroy these whiny, mostly white women. She can start with the fact that most of them voted for pussy-grabbing Trump and then when he got in the White House and started attacking people of color, they made this horrible period all about them. Are you living in a cage, separated from your child, white woman? Has your unarmed son been shot in the street, privileged white bitch? Are black or brown people calling the police on you because you're trying to live while being white, princess? The black comedian might also go after the politicians the way I went after Feinstein over that ridiculous Kavanaugh letter, suggesting that she was probably behind dumping Al so she could place Kamala Harris on the judiciary committee (how did a comedian/radio host get on the judiciary committee). The first woman to partially represent me demographically, my junior senator, half-sister Kamala, didn't escape my snarky tweets. After saying that I appreciated her performance on the judiciary committee, I let her know that I didn't appreciate that she had Al's seat. After complimenting her clever question about laws governing men's bodies, I pointed out that women could discuss the relative sexiness and attractiveness of men like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, John Edwards, and Barack Obama without being attacked, but when Obama said she was the best looking attorney general, there was outrage; some people acted as if he was Trump. If there can be a double standard dealing with how we talk about women's and men's bodies and how we touch men's and women's bodies, why shouldn't there be a law governing the bodies that seem to need more protection from predatory gazes, comments, and touches?
There is plenty of material for a young or middle-aged black female comedian to take down this absurd movement, and it would be appropriate for her to do it. After all, the media cynically used a not especially well-known black male comedian's joke about Cosby raping women to go after him pre-METOO. It's too bad that we black women, the mules of the earth as Zora Neale Hurston calls us, have to clean up so much of the mess that white folks have made. We had to take care of that mess in Alabama, and I hope we'll take care of some more messes in November. But somebody has to save the world, and obviously we're stronger than white women. Most of us don't fall apart if we're pawed or French kissed by some powerful, predatory man. Wherever you are, strong, funny, young-ish black woman, please hurry up and save us from this madness!
