Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "cnn"

I've written several blogs dealing with fake outrage and too much emphasis on being politically correct. First, in "Blackface/Whiteface: Why We All Need Thicker Skins" (3/30/14), I criticized the media for making a fuss about comedian/host/Mariah's babies' daddy Nick Cannon wearing whiteface and dancer/actress Julianne Hough wearing blackface. I argued that the fake outrage allows us to ignore the real horrors of our society caused by systemic racism. In "Morals Versus Manners: Why I Support the Anti-PC Movement" (4/10/16), I distinguished between people like me (and the character Simon Rosedale in THE HOUSE OF MIRTH) and those like the corrupt members of my community's Home Association. I might call the President of the HOA racist and maybe even a bitch, which offended another racist white bitch serving illegally on the board, but I wouldn't participate in a corrupt coup to prevent the people selected by the community to represent them from serving on the board. In "Black and Blue: What We Can Do" (7/16/16), I said that one way we can stop the men and women in blue (police officers) from murdering unarmed blacks is to ignore the molehills (like tasteless jokes or racial slurs) and focus on the mountains.

Apparently, no one is paying attention to me and my blogs because once again last week there was an outbreak of fake outrage. I have chastised people on Facebook and Google+ for joking about killing Trump or for discussing how much they hate him. I even refused to join a special Facebook group called "I Hate Trump," although I belong to one called "Republicans Suck." Hating makes us haters, and we shouldn't celebrate the murder or death (sorry, Supreme Court Judge Scalia, but you can rest in peace because karma, also known as McConnell, appropriately from Kentucky, punished me) of anyone. Still, when insult comedian/provocateur Kathy Griffin was demonized for holding up a decapitated bloody head that resembled the electoral college President, I was outraged. Like many other folks on social media, I pointed out all of the ways that Trump had insulted Obama, not caring about his children. (I didn't mention Ted Nugent, who had threatened Obama yet recently spent a day in the White House with Trump and Sarah Palin, but many others did.) And since I like to mean-tweet as much as he does, I let the electoral college President know how I felt. I also tweeted CNN and asked why they allowed Trump to continue to come on their shows after he accused our (half-)black President of being foreign and called Mexicans rapists. I even went after Kathy's so-called friend Anderson Cooper, telling him to grow some balls and defend his friend because Trump grabs pussies. When the former producer of Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" wrote an op-ed in USA TODAY, claiming that Kathy's tasteless joke had united Americans in defense of Trump, I set him straight. I let him know that some of us were old enough to remember when Jay Leno moved ahead of David Letterman in the late night ratings because Dave didn't think the trial of a black football hero accused of savagely murdering two young white adults was comedy material while Jay had fun with the Dancing Itos and Marcia Clark and Kato Kaelin lookalikes.

My spirits lifted on Friday evening when my favorite politically incorrect comedian Bill Maher gratuitously dropped the so-called n-word into an interview with Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. I had tweeted Bill a few hours earlier, saying I hoped he and the other anti-pc comedians would defend Kathy. But I didn't assume he had read my tweet; I like him mainly because he's the only white man I know who thinks like me. I assumed Bill was defending Kathy by provoking the pc cops to attack him so that he could blast them for faking outrage over a word or a picture instead of over having an insane bigot in the White House. Imagine my surprise when I learned yesterday that Bill (like Kathy who turned into a whiny bitch and hired all-women-are-victims lawyer Lisa Bloom) apologized. Now one difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals will apologize. But I thought Bill, who lost his ABC job for being politically incorrect (the name of the show) after 9/11, who still spouts anti-Muslim rhetoric despite being chastised by just about every liberal who communicates with him, including Ben Affleck and me, and who continued to ridicule Trump after being sued for saying Trump's daddy was an orangutan, would stand his ground. WTF!? Has Trump driven everyone crazy?

The problem with fake outrage is it allows us to ignore the real horrors and outrages, the ones that are more damaging to our society and that are harder to fix. If we go nuts because Bill Maher or Paula Deen used the n-word, we don't have to think about cops killing unarmed black people, Republican governors and legislators working to prevent blacks and browns from voting, the electoral college discriminating against urban nonwhites, or a point that Bill made to Sasse, the fact that the very diverse California, with 40 million people, has the same number of senators not only as Nebraska but as mostly white states like Montana and Wyoming, which are so sparsely populated that they have more senators than they do U.S. Representatives. We don't have to worry about our so-called democracy turning into apartheid. If we go nuts about a self-proclaimed D-list comedian posting an offensive picture that evokes violence, we don't have to worry about mentally ill people killing white children in schools or elderly black women in churches, about racists stabbing people on trains, or religious/political terrorists blowing up nightclubs. We can make the offending celebrities apologize, we can fire them from their jobs, we can even take down symbols like Confederate flags and monuments to Civil War "heroes," and feel good.

There is another problem with fake outrage. As I tweeted in response to a woman on Katy Tur's MSNBC show shrilly proclaiming how shocking it was that a man had streamed a murder live, "When everything is shocking, nothing is shocking." I pointed out to Katy that some of us are old enough to remember (being old has its advantages) when the man who killed our President was shot "live" on television, and we remember wars that were televised. I didn't mention that we had also seen a teacher blown up on her way to space and two very tall buildings crumble and fall with thousands of people, including many firemen, trapped inside. One explanation for how Trump managed to win the electoral college is " shock and outrage fatigue." By the time the "Access Hollywood" tape was released, we were beyond being outraged.

As I've been saying for the last few days, we should be outraged, horrified, and terrified that an insane, incompetent bigot is in the White House. Everything else is just distracting noise.

One of my earliest Goodreads posts (12/1/13) attempted to debunk the liberal media myth. I recognized that just as the affirmative action myths undermined black folks, this false narrative ("alternative facts" hadn't entered our vocabulary in 2013) hurt Democrats. If the majority of the media were pro-liberals, and yet they criticized liberals and exposed their scandals even more than they did conservatives, then liberals must be worse than conservatives. I pointed out in that post that the NATIONAL ENQUIRER attacked Democrats (Hart, Jackson, Edwards, the Kennedys, the Clintons) and protected Republicans (Arnold S, the Bushes, McCain, and all of the sexually scandalous--Ensign, Sanford--Republicans). I also called out ABC for airing a fake documentary about the so-called ten greatest scandals of the 21st Century that included six Democrats and listed as the top three sexually misbehaving liberals (Edwards, Spitzer, Weiner) who were no longer in office. They didn't mention Katrina, the WMD lies that led to the Iraq War, or the recent (2013) GOP-led government shutdown. Since I wrote that post, I watched ABC interrupt regular programming to snarkily announce something that they thought would be bad news for Obama and when it turned out to be good news (some captured American military had been released), they abruptly returned to regular programming. Of course, this behavior on the part of what is supposed to be liberal media makes liberals look especially bad. But there are actual liberal media folks like most of the MSNBC anchors and at least some (Lemon, Cuomo, Cooper) of those on CNN. Unfortunately, just as Democrats tend to attack each other instead of behaving like conservatives who will support and defend a child molester or a racist maniac (see 2/17/19 and 3/31/19 posts), the liberal media will often attack Democrats more ferociously than they do Republicans. The behavior of the real liberal media is one of the many reasons why Democrats have trouble winning elections. If the real liberal media acted more like Fox, we would win more often and more easily.

A few months ago during the latest GOP government shutdown, I tweeted about the liberal media bullying elected Democrats for being paid while other government workers were not. I had watched morning MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson bullying a Democratic Congressman I didn't know. Why was she shaming him? He was not the rich, narcissistic, sadistic bigot who claimed he would be proud to shut down the government and then shut it down. Now the Democrats are being bullied by MSNBC and CNN anchors over impeachment. These know-it-all talking heads who didn't know that Trump could win, who didn't know or care that Michael Avenatti was a media whore (see 11/24/18 post), and who focused on the content of the Clinton campaign e-mails instead of on who had hacked them and why, think they know more than the leaders who gave us the now popular ACA. The two most obnoxious liberal media bullies are angry, suddenly-obsessed-with-impeachment black woman Joy Reid on MSNBC, who rudely interrogated the seventy-something, very dignified and stately (also too courteous for my taste) black Representative James Clyburn about what really happened when Clinton was impeached, and the privileged, entitled, smugly self-righteous (smug-righteous?) white man Chris Cuomo on CNN, who not only wants the Democrats to impeach the insane bigot that the media and Republicans elected but wants them to send money to the Homeland Security Department so that the Republicans will use it to help those poor immigrant children as if the racists running our government won't use that money to make life even more difficult for those brown children. It must be wonderful to be a naïve, know-it-all, born-to-fame-wealth-and-power white man.

If you keep attacking Democrats instead of protecting them and attacking Republicans, you will help Trump win again, liberal media, so here's what you must do:

1) Attack Republicans for not demanding that Trump resign or activating the 25th Amendment. Remind everyone that Nixon was not impeached, that he resigned before impeachment. Also, remind everyone (some talking heads are making this point) that the two impeached Presidents were not removed, and impeachment takes a long time. Shame, blame, and attack every Republican who enables or defends the President. Make it clear that Trump needs to go now because he is causing more damage to our democracy, our citizens, migrants of color, and our reputation around the world every minute that he stays in the office that Putin (and you) helped him win.

2) Attack McConnell, Graham, and other Trump enablers who are facing reelection. Focus not only on how they're enabling Trump but also on any connections they may have with Russia or any other nonsexual corruption you can find. Instead of digging up dirt on the 2020 Democratic candidates, which is the conservative media's (including ABC) job, dig up dirt on the Republicans and Republican-leaning organizations like the NRA.

3) Continue to attack the conservative media whenever they attack liberals. Chris Matthews (my least favorite MSNBC anchor because he has the personality of a Fox anchor) was especially effective last week at debunking the fake criticism of Speaker Pelosi's mentioning (in a private meeting) that Trump should go to jail.

4) Help me with my drive-Trump-crazier campaign by constantly criticizing him and comparing him unfavorably to Obama and the Clintons. Follow the Brits' lead by highlighting the polls revealing Trump's approval ratings around the world versus Obama's. Also, contrast how Obama responded to criticism and smears (with wit or by ignoring them) like Trump's racist birtherism to how Trump responds.

5) Minimize or don't report any good news, and maximize any bad news about the economy, relations with our allies or adversaries, etc. Blame Trump for anything bad that happens, and give others (Obama, Congress, the Cabinet members) credit for anything good that happens. You could also interpret good news as bad news or question the source of the good news as the conservative media did when the unemployment and jobs created numbers were good for Obama.

What's happening now reminds me of how the media helped elect messy GW Bush twice (attacking Gore as dishonest and calling Florida and the race for Bush in 2000 before taking it back, promoting the Swift Boat nonsense in 2004) and then criticized Obama for not cleaning up the mess left by the media's President fast enough and for the way he cleaned. The Democrats did not put Trump in the White House; racists, the electoral college, Putin, and the media did. The media need to get him out of there, and they can do that by attacking him and his enablers while protecting and supporting the Democrats. The media may not be the enemy of the people, but they are helping destroy our democracy by the way they treat Democrats and Republicans.

As I said in a post on the Joy Reid Fan Club site (the post was quickly removed by the moderators; hmmm, don't liberals believe in freedom of speech, constructive criticism?), if Trump wins in 2020, we should blame the media again. Let's hope the real liberal media will start acting like the conservative media. Let's hope the MSNBC anchors and the liberals on CNN will be more like Fox so that the 2020 Democratic nominee can win in a landslide.

The most despicable source for Bob Woodward’s RAGE, the man I now call “overconfident idiot” (a phrase he used in Woodward’s book to describe the much more intelligent Gary Cohn, James Mattis, and Rex Tillerson) Wannabe Prince Jared bragged about how his “stable genius” father-in-law played the press. Trump has also claimed that he played at least two prominent members of the press—his frenemies MSNBC’S Joe and Mika, who have been two of the sharpest media thorns in his side since their friendship ended. I agree that Trump played the media in 2016. In fact, I blamed the media (see 4/23/17 post), especially NBC, which didn’t fire him for his racist birther lies and then allowed him to guest host “Saturday Night Live” (another thorn) while he was running for President, for creating the monster Trump, demonizing his opponent for almost thirty years, including during the 2016 campaign, and giving him free, mostly positive or neutral coverage, thus causing the 11/9/16 disaster. However, the media played Trump during that campaign as much as he played them. He often made news, sometimes gave great sound bite, and always brought high ratings. When the ratings started to decline and/or his frequent attacks on the media became annoying, possibly dangerous, they stopped covering his rallies. That’s when Trump started playing them so that they would continue to let him “dominate” the news. He pretended that he was going to make a major announcement about foreign policy at one rally, so the press showed up only to hear the same Lock Her Up, Build the Wall nonsense they had been hearing for months (maybe the media just grew tired of the act). He also claimed that he was going to address the birther issue and hold a press conference at his newly opened, conveniently located (near the White House) hotel but instead introduced a group of very old, male military folks while briefly admitting that Obama was born in America without explaining why he lied about the half-black President’s place of birth for five years. When he tried to conduct a tour of the hotel instead of a press conference, the media refused to play. Maybe Jared forgot how that stunt backfired. I’ll never forget how angry Jake Tapper of CNN was, but he wasn’t angry that a white man had acted as if he had the right to determine whether or not a black man, the President of the United States, was a “real American.” He was angry because he and his colleagues had been played; Trump didn’t answer the media’s questions as he promised he would. Ultimately, the people who were played by Trump and the media who loved him were his more competent and usually saner (Carson might be the exception, and Graham seems to have some problems) Republican opponents, the much saner, more decent, and much, much, much more qualified historical Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and the citizens of America and the world. We got played in 2016, and the media and their still favorite media whore (see 11/24/18 post) played us again last week.

Admittedly, once the media helped Trump become the totally incompetent 45th President, they mostly held him accountable for his bad acts. Fox and other conservative outlets were his only safe havens during the nightmare years of his presidency. Still, the so-called liberal mainstream media (actually corporate media) would occasionally let him play them; I remember how he once called a news conference that forced Paul Ryan’s previously scheduled town hall on CNN to be postponed for an hour. He and Ryan, who mostly indulged him, were feuding at the time. He also once interrupted a MSNBC segment that was critical of him to celebrate a rare winning sports team that appeared at the White House (many teams skipped that traditional ceremony while Trump was President). Katy Tur, who was anchoring the segment, pointed out that he was holding the celebration early. I wondered (in a tweet) why MSNBC didn’t just tape the ceremony and show it later the way they do his White House-lawn-while- the-helicopter-waits press conferences. When NBC allowed Trump, who refused to participate in the second (virtual) debate, to counter program Biden’s ABC town hall last month, I wasn’t angry because I believed they made a deal to convince him to participate in the debate moderated by a black woman (he played me during that debate because I was counting on him to walk out and/or bully her more than he did Chris Wallace), hoping his despicable behavior would hurt his poll numbers even more than the disastrous first debate did. When Biden’s town hall did better in the ratings than Trump’s, I was quite pleased with the NBC decision. But then came election week, and I am not pleased.

Many of us have been stressed out by Trump since the night of November 8, 2016, when it first occurred to us that he might win. And this year has been the most stressful. The man is literally trying to kill black, brown, yellow, and red people with Covid and armed white supremacists. Because of what happened in 2016, we didn’t believe the polls showing Biden winning in a landslide, so we were anxious. The last thing we needed was for the news media jerks to treat this election that they called most consequential like a sporting event. We didn’t need them to play “let’s jack up the ratings” games with fake suspense when we had voted like our lives depended on it because they did, and so did our democracy. Nor did we need them to indulge bully Trump by pretending that he had a narrow path to victory when he clearly didn’t. I decided that I would watch the returns only if the race wasn’t tight. When I switched from HBO to MSNBC around 8 p.m on Tuesday and saw that Florida was going to Trump and so was Texas, I knew I wasn’t going to be watching. When I checked my I-Pad and learned that Arizona had been called for Biden (by AP and Fox, but not CNN and MSNBC), I felt calm enough to sleep, and when I woke up after a few hours of sleep and learned from a Facebook friend that Fox had said Biden would win after they called New Mexico for him, I felt even better, especially after I saw that the one Republican house on my 6 a.m. Wednesday morning walk had already removed the Trump-Pence sign while Biden-Harris signs had appeared in three new yards. Still CNN and MSNBC wouldn’t call the race. By Wednesday afternoon, I was more angry than anxious. Once again, black women, who have saved this democracy during the last few years (thanks for acknowledging us, Joe B), were being played and screwed. We were being denied the chance to celebrate the historical victory of Kamala Harris, who had broken five glass ceilings (female, black, Asian, biracial, born to two immigrants) as the newly elected Vice President, so CNN and MSNBC could increase their ratings (Fox already has the highest ratings), and Big Baby Trump wouldn’t have a tantrum.

I enjoyed celebrating yesterday and recognized the poetry of the declaration of Biden’s victory happening on the 48th anniversary of his first being elected to the Senate at 29. The announcement also happened on a day when it rained for the first time since April in dangerously dry Southern California while it seemed to be warm and pleasant everywhere else, so American patriots could celebrate outside. But I will never forget how badly anxious old black women like me (my digestive system took a beating) and my high school friend who lives in red state Missouri, old white women like my graduate school friends in Pasadena and Rhode Island, old white men like my Rhode Island friend’s husband and my former neighbor and surrogate brother now living in Oceanside, slightly younger Asian women like his wife, my surrogate sister-in-law, and old black men like my real brother who lives in my new favorite state Georgia with my real slightly younger sister-in-law (another black woman being abused by these jerks), and my 79-year-old third cousin, who lives in Illinois and claimed when he called me yesterday that he hadn’t slept since Tuesday night, were treated last week. Shame on the clowns in the news media for playing and torturing patriotic American citizens like us, for treating this consequential election between a decent man and an existential threat to the world like a tennis match! I said that John McCain and John Lewis were dancing in Paradise yesterday. I hope RBG was dancing with them. But I think Walter Cronkite was crying in Paradise last week.

More than four years ago, as Donald Trump was beginning his disastrous stay in the White House and Bill Cosby was going on trial (the first time) for sexually assaulting a giant, foreign white woman, I tried to start a movement called FREECOSBY/LOCKUP TRUMP. The movement was such a failure that in September, 2018, Cosby was on his way to prison on the same day that world leaders were derisively laughing at the White Supremacist fake President as he spoke at the UN. I said at the time that if Cosby had been our President the other world leaders would have been laughing at his jokes, not at him and us. Well, as often happens in my life, Cosby was released from jail this week, and “coincidentally,” the next day, Trump’s company and its chief financial officer were indicted. Trump is still free to rant insanely at White Supremacy Anti-Democracy rallies, to hang around the southern border lying about the wall, and to brag about passing a mental competence test. But I was happy to see half of my goal fulfilled until I turned on the television and later read some social media comments. I had to switch to CNN during lunch because NBC’s sister station MSNBC was continuing to demonize the black man who saved the station once jokingly called the Negro Broadcasting Company during the eighties. Later, I had to mean-tweet a few younger black folks who had the nerve to call out the talented, intelligent, and very dignified Phylicia Rashad for supporting the man who helped her career, something that other women didn’t do (looking at you, Samantha G and Gayle K) when men far more decent than Donald Trump, but not than Cosby, had their careers and reputations destroyed during the fake movement started in October, 2017, to lock up the black superstar for touching white women and to change the subject from the August White Supremacy demonstration in Charlottesville and the September mass murders by a white man in Las Vegas. Just as Trump’s mob (TRASH) stole my thanks-Georgia-relatives-for- saving-the-country-and-the-world joy on 1/6, the knowledge that the so-called racial awakening summer of 2020, the rebellion of sane liberals against the attempt to demonize first Joe Biden and then Andrew Cuomo with fake METOO allegations, the stories of Tulsa and the Exonerated Central Park Five, and most of all the fact that the majority of white women voted for the insane White Supremacist again, and then some of them stormed the Capitol after he still lost, thanks primarily to black folks and other people of color, had not changed the perception of Cosby dampened my joy and turned my stomach on 6/30. Before I switched to CNN, I heard the black female assistant prosecutor who was the n-word the white bigots used to get the n-word (they also used a black comedian’s joke about Cosby being a rapist and a black woman’s anti-sexual harassment and assault movement) refer to the Cosby accusers as “survivors.” As I tweeted to MSNBC later, CNN was covering a real survivor—a brown woman who survived the collapse of the building where she lived in Florida and was heard on her brother’s voicemail looking for her neighbors, trying to help them. The white woman that despicable black prosecutor represented took 3.4 million dollars from Bill Cosby and then years later pursued him in a criminal trial. I wondered on Twitter why 3.4 million dollars and almost three years in jail were not enough payment from a black superstar who pawed a white woman after she voluntarily took three pills from him. Interestingly, a somewhat famous blonde actress named Allison (this black baby boomer, who has spent the last more than three years as an anti-METOO word warrior, kept picturing 1960’s Mia Farrow, Woody Allen’s demonizer, when I read about her, even after I saw her picture) was just sentenced to three years for tricking and luring multiple women into sex slavery. Yet people were upset that now 83-year-old, still legally blind superstar entertainer, super enhancer of the black image, generous philanthropist Bill Cosby was getting out of jail after slightly less than three years.

Maybe because I didn’t watch BET or TVONE on Wednesday and no longer post on Google+, where I used to interact with several black groups, I didn’t read or hear anything about how unjust and racist it was that a prosecutor pursued Bill after he had been promised that he wouldn’t be prosecuted. No one condemned the Pennsylvania prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Bill Cosby. No one condemned the judge for allowing potentially incriminating statements that Bill made during a civil deposition after he was assured there would be no criminal prosecution, for allowing other alleged victims to testify against him, thus prejudicing the jury, or for declaring the then 81-year-old, legally blind superstar a dangerous predator (the most dangerous predator in America at that time was in the White House) so that he could be locked up instead of staying at home (as the former governor of Virginia did) after he was found guilty until the appeal process was completed. As far as I know, I was the only one who said that the racist judge wanted to put this old black man in jail for touching white women. I also didn’t hear anyone talking about or read any comments about the justice reform bill that three black people in Congress are working on or about how the eighties war on drugs and the nineties war on crime were really wars on black men. I pointed out the connection between accused rapist Donald Trump and the Exonerated Central Park Five and reminded people that the Tulsa massacre started because a white woman screamed when a black man entered the elevator. No one debated me, but I doubt that I changed any minds. White people and even younger black people want to believe that Bill Cosby was locked up because he drugged and raped women. They don’t want to believe that he could go to jail after being convicted of pawing only one white woman who took the drugs he gave her.

In an earlier post (7/31/16), “Assholes Versus Creeps: A Theory Of Donald Trump And Bill Cosby,” I argued that Bill Cosby was a creep, although he occasionally could be an asshole, and Trump was definitely an asshole but probably also a creep. I wrote that post before the “Access Hollywood” tape was released and before multiple women accused Trump of sexual assault and later one accused him of raping her in the dressing room of an expensive department store. I also wasn’t aware (or at least didn’t remember) five years ago that Trump had taken out ads (why was he allowed to do that?) during the eighties calling for the execution of the five young males of color who had been framed as the “wilding” Central Park rapists. Now I know that this insane, racist rapist is much creepier, much more of a sexual freak than Cosby could ever be because Bill didn’t secretly drug the foreign white woman (or possibly any of his mostly white accusers) as I thought he had when I was reading about his sexual misbehavior in 2016. She took the pills voluntarily. In the earlier post when I thought Bill was a sick freak (he’s still a little freaky), I said he was a better man than the asshole known as Donald Trump. That may be the understatement of this young century. Yet he’s still being demonized, and Trump still has a cult following. 74 million people voted for Trump to be President, and at least some media jerks are still demonizing the man who promoted HBCUs with his television shows and used his fake positive public image, his shows, and his money to improve our culture. What racial awakening?

I don’t know or care if Cosby was trying to buy NBC, but I do know that the media attacks on him started around the time (2014) that the BlackLivesMatter movement began. And as I said in the 2/27/15 post, OJ Simpson was also resurrected around that time. Interestingly, the day after a white man killed 58 people in Las Vegas, some media folks were in town because OJ was being released from prison. I wonder if any of these newly woke former racism deniers have noticed how much so many Americans are bothered by two superstar black men who were once beloved by people of all races not serving enough time in jail for crimes they allegedly committed against whites. I wonder if they have noticed that we don’t seem to be nearly as bothered by the many innocent black men who spend years, sometimes decades, basically a lifetime, in jail for crimes they didn’t commit. We’ll talk about the Central Park Five briefly, watch the 2019 movie “Just Mercy,” starring Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan, about an innocent black man framed for murder, maybe even read the book, but then go back to complaining about “toxic masculinity” and how the mostly white sexual assault “survivors” should be “heard.” And we seem much more upset about OJ and Bill Cosby not staying in jail forever than we do about those mostly unknown innocent black men who spent their lives in jail. Why don’t I know the name of the man Jamie Foxx played? Why can’t I remember or find the name of the man Rachel Maddow was talking about recently—an innocent black man who is still in jail because the governor is too “busy” to release him even though the prosecutors want him freed? We all know the answer—because black lives don’t matter. That’s why I don’t know the name of the black man who killed three of superstar Jennifer Hudson’s relatives but will never forget the names of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.

I recently said that having Juneteenth become another federal holiday is nice, but I’d prefer to have my right to vote protected. BlackLivesMatter protest marches, documentaries about Tulsa, and anti-racism books sold in Target and WalMart are also wonderful. But if we have to wait decades before we recognize the injustice done to Bill Cosby, who was tried twice after racist, accused rapist Donald Trump was elected President, then that arc of the moral universe is bending too slowly for me. Until we wake up to the fact that white women screaming rape are and have always been more dangerous than sexually freaky men of any race or sexual orientation and that in America black men have been victimized much more than white women have and at least as much as have black women, there will be no justice, and our country will continue to be threatened by white supremacy, which always had a sexual undertone (maybe overtone). See the movie “Birth of a Nation.”

Until the majority of white people, including women and evangelicals, voted for a low-rated reality television star, a self-proclaimed sexual assaulter and insane white supremacist, for President, I loved watching reality television shows. It started with the Osbornes, (then) married singers Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, and best friends (until the show caused some trouble between them) Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton. Later came the Kardashians and the (sometimes unmarried) “wives.” I not only watched the Beverly Hills and Atlanta Housewives but also enjoyed the Basketball Wives and briefly a series starring the ex-wives of Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Prince, and (late addition to the cast) R Kelly. I also enjoyed shows that featured celebrities and once were or wannabe celebrities living together (“The Surreal Life”), trying to lose weight (“The Celebrity Fitness Club”), recover from drugs (Dr. Drew’s shows), and most hilariously, work as cops in Muncie, Indiana. The only totally scripted (I figured out fairly quickly that most of the reality shows were partly scripted) shows I watched during this period were set in schools—“Community” and “Glee.” I watched only one season of “The Apprentice,” the one that featured LaToya Jackson (who was one of the “celebrity” Muncie cops and also briefly had her own show as did her brothers shortly after Michael’s death; I watched both shows while complaining about the exploitation of Michael’s death and LaToya’s lack of talent), Atlanta Housewife NeNe Leakes (may her husband RIP), former “The View” cohost Star Jones, and the very contemptuous of the show and other “contestants” legendary singer Dionne Warwick. I wasn’t a fan of that show, especially after Trump started his racist birther lies. Once he entered the White House and started creating chaos, I mainly watched news shows because I had to know what that incompetent maniac was doing to our country and the world. I usually watched MSNBC but would switch to CNN if I didn’t like the guest or the topic on the MSNBC shows. I would watch Hallie Jackson’s show while eating breakfast, Katy Tur’s (occasionally Ali Velshi’s if I was late eating) during lunch, and Rachel Maddow’s during dinner. When the news was especially important or scary, I would also watch Lawrence O’Donnell and Brian Williams’ shows. During the last year of Trump’s reign, which featured Covid and the BLM protests, I started turning on “Morning Joe” as soon as I woke up and watched Nicolle Wallace and Joy Reid’s afternoon (in LA) shows. Once Biden finally moved into the White House, I dropped Nicolle’s show, which had expanded to two hours, but continued to watch Joy and frequently to check out Joe and Mika’s show in the morning. Then came what I refer to as the Cuomo mess. I was so disgusted by the Democrats’ dirty politics, using fake sexual misconduct charges to force another popular Democrat to resign after the majority of white women and evangelicals had voted for a self-proclaimed sexual assaulter and accused rapist twice, that I turned off MSNBC and CNN and started streaming comedy and documentary shows while eating my meals.

Dining with SNL’s Bernie Sanders, aka Larry David, whose show (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) I’m currently streaming, is so much more relaxing than trying to eat while the MSNBC or CNN anchors are presenting their biased version of the news. My only worry is that I might choke while eating and laughing at Larry’s foolishness. Hurricane survivors Vivica Fox (I don’t remember her character’s name) and her brother Leon (played by a should be more well-known comedian named J.B. Smoove) have added color to the show. Before Larry’s show, I enjoyed watching the first season of “Hacks,” which won several Emmys on Sunday, “Nora Is From Queens,” which is about a hilarious Chinese family, and all six or seven seasons of “Sex and the City.” I’ve also watched a couple of documentaries, one about Obama, which was as informative as it was inspiring, and a disturbing (but also informative) one about Sandra Bland. But even that documentary was less difficult to swallow with my food than the METOO-promoting, false equivalency nonsense too often spewed on MSNBC and CNN.

I still watch Jonathan Capehart’s MSNBC show on Sunday morning, but I’ve usually finished breakfast before I start watching him, and I will skip segments that I think might agitate me. I once said that being able to tweet and post on social media had stopped me from screaming at the television, but lately I’ve been doing both, screaming at the television and then rushing to my I-Pad to tweet. Since Snowflake Meghan McCain (See 3/14/21 post) is gone, I’m watching “The View” again, but after a segment on Monica Lewinsky turned my stomach this week and sent me to my I-Pad to launch a Twitter storm about Clinton being impeached over sex and Monica still cashing in on her infamy after all these years, I wondered if I would be able to continue watching that show. I’m too old to watch provocative political television. I need entertaining comfort television, especially while I’m eating.

Since I believe it’s important for American citizens to be informed, I now read my two daily newspapers more carefully and realized too late to save my 9/11 experience (I turned off the television when all of the stations I checked had switched to a speech by the second worst President in my lifetime instead of continuing to show the solemn and moving name-calling ceremony at Ground Zero) that I can watch C-Span during major political and historical events. Sorry, Brian, Rachel, Joy, and Nicolle, while your 2020 Democratic convention commentary was entertaining, I think I’ll provide my own commentary for major events while watching CSPAN without commercials.

I’m looking forward to seeing our Vice President on “The View” this morning. I hope Whoopi is back to help interview her and don’t expect Ana to cause any problems because she is one of my favorite Republicans (along with Nicolle and Steve Schmidt; I like McCain’s 2008 campaign staff much more than I do his daughter). But when I turn off “The View” and start eating lunch, I’ll be streaming “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I don’t care what the anchors on MSNBC and CNN think about the Harris interview. I figured out years ago that I’m a better critical thinker (although equally biased) than they are. Between 11:00 and 11:30, I’ll be laughing at Larry’s foolishness, not screaming at the fools on MSNBC or CNN who will probably be criticizing VP Harris for all the wrong reasons.