Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "common"

After calling out everyone else who was getting on my nerves by creating such bronze rules as "U.S. Streets Are Not Boxing Rings Or Battlefields Rule -- Police officers, stop harassing, attacking, and killing innocent citizens" (I wrote this rule shortly before the BlackLivesMatter movement started), I called out myself at the end of my book THE BRONZE RULE: "Mary Sisney Is a Virtual Celebrity Stalker Rule--People who can't stand fame-hungry spotlight seekers should probably stop subscribing to every issue of PEOPLE, US, and ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY." While I still subscribe to those three pop culture magazines, I no longer watch most of the shows that I was watching when I wrote that book in 2013. I'm too busy keeping track of politics on MSNBC and occasionally CNN to pay attention to "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood." And once a reality star moved into the White House, I stopped keeping up with the Kardashians, the Beverly Hills and Atlanta Housewives, and all of the other media whores who let cameras into their homes. Still, I'm enough of a pop culture expert and celebrity stalker (I still read many celebrity memoirs) to recognize media whores when they show up on television. And I've recently spotted a new one--Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti.

I didn't recognize Avenatti's media whore symptoms immediately. Like several MSNBC commentators, I assumed that the previously unknown lawyer was just smartly using Trump's own tactics against him. Trump is a master manipulator of the media. He is in the White House because of the way he used the media decades before he became a candidate. The calm, seemingly more intelligent Avenatti appeared to be beating Trump at his own game. But then he started showing up at events where a lawyer should not appear with his porn star client, and I recognized what was happening. Avenatti was not a clever lawyer helping a female underdog win a case against the most powerful and despicable man in the world; he was a media whore just like the man he was battling. He was using a sex scandal (a favorite media whore strategy) to get himself on television.

Once I understood his condition, it was easy to recognize the Trump-in-lawyer's clothing, the male Gloria Allred's tactics for what they were--media bait. He would file new lawsuits so he could come on television to talk about them, and of course he gave good sound bite. Then the L.A. TIMES wrote a couple of articles about his company's bankruptcy and his betrayal of a partner, and I thought Mr. Avenatti's brief moment in the spotlight had ended. But I forgot how skillful a true media whore is and how much the media loves a good whore (and I don't mean Stormy). Mr. Avenatti breezily dismissed the bad press and kept showing up on what one judge called his "publicity tour." Then Trump and Sessions started separating children from their parents, and the media didn't have much time for the Stormy story. But a true media whore knows how to stay in the spotlight, so the lawyer for a porn star who took hush money suddenly became a "prominent" lawyer willing to help these poor children. When that didn't work, probably because there are actual immigration lawyers whose job it is to help those children, he put out the word that he would help any ICE whistleblowers. Meanwhile a new, or actually old, media whore entered the Stormy/Cohen story. Roseanne's second husband, third-rate comedian and actor Tom Arnold, was on MSNBC Friday, claiming that Cohen was about to flip on Trump. Avenatti was on one MSNBC show commenting, but he looked slightly defeated since he had been pushed into a secondary role by the much more experienced (if less coherent and sane) media whore, Arnold.

As I told a former high school classmate who clearly can't recognize a media whore when she sees one and so was promoting (on Facebook) Avenatti as a good lawyer trying to help the persecuted immigrants, activists use the media to help their causes, and there's nothing wrong with that. Dr. King and the other civil rights activists used the media in the sixties as did the student gun control activists earlier this year. I also appreciate such celebrities as George Clooney, Sean Penn, rapper Common, and singer John Legend, who use their celebrity to draw attention to important causes. But media whores use the causes to draw attention to themselves.

I was disheartened when my brief crush (it turns me on to see a blonde, blue-eyed white man angrily go after bigots), Lawrence O'Donnell, had Avenatti on his show even after I tweeted to him to wake up and spot the media whore. I thought Lawrence was smarter than the average cable news anchor because he despised Trump even before he became a racist candidate. But Lawrence has to worry about his ratings, and media whores bring not only good sound bites but high ratings. That's why as long as there is media, there will be media whores.

As comedian Michelle Wolf pointed out at the White House Correspondents Dinner earlier this year, the media and Trump are like former lovers. The media created the monster that is Trump; they loved him when he was just a clown who could never possibly be President and who gave them unlimited access and high ratings. They fell out of love not only because he did become the incompetent, insane, racist, electoral college President but also because he stopped providing them with access and started attacking them. But the fact that they will still carry his absurd events live shows that they still secretly love him. And his talking to them for several minutes on the White House lawn while the helicopter is waiting shows that he still really loves them too; he's just angry and hurt that they don't love him as much as they once did.

We consumers of the media need to protect ourselves from the media whores and the media who loves them. We need to recognize the whores for what they are and do whatever we can to wake up other media consumers. It sickens me to read comments from female Joy Reid fan club members who can't stand Trump but have a crush on Avenatti. I was also sickened when I saw an Avenatti fan club advertised on Facebook. It had more than 10,000 members. A couple of days later, it had grown to more than 15,000. Remember how many Twitter followers Trump had before he ran for President? We just keep making the same mistakes because we don't think.

#BOYCOTTMEDIAWHORES!

I hope I didn't doom Toni Morrison by starting 2019 reading one of her books published in the nineties. After reading a collection of essays (edited by her) on the OJ trial near the end of 2018, l opened my reading year with RACE-ING, GENDER-ING POWER, a collection of essays dealing with the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill mess. I had already changed sides (from Hill to Thomas) on that issue but was stunned to learn from essays in Morrison's book that Hill was a Bork-supporting conservative. I was too busy teaching and serving on important department committees during the fall of 1991 to pay as close attention to what was going on in politics as I should have, so I assumed that Anita, who is a black female professor and was testifying to help the Democrats, was a liberal like me. Oops! Following a trend that began in 2017 after the election of an insane white supremacist, I read several books focused on politics last year. Since the best President in my lifetime has apparently not yet completed his memoir (come on, BHO!), I read David Remnick's Obama political biography THE BRIDGE, published early in the first (half-) black President's reign, and his UN ambassador and national security advisor Susan Rice's very interesting and informative memoir TOUGH LOVE. I also surprised myself by reading and enjoying a Barbara Bush biography called MATRIARCH. Since I read that very long book mainly because it included a nasty comment about Trump, it's not surprising that most of the political nonfiction books I read focused on that existential threat to our democracy and the security of the world. Joy-Ann Reid's THE MAN WHO SOLD AMERICA was the most informative, but I also enjoyed parts of humorous Republican strategist Rick Wilson's EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES. However, the book that gave me the most important information about politics, TOUCHED BY THE SUN, was written by singer Carly Simon about her friendships with Jackie Onassis, Mike Nichols, and other celebrities. Carly stuttered as a child, and when she explained that she blurted out sometimes inappropriate comments because she was more likely to stutter if she thought about what she was saying, I knew what was wrong with Joe Biden. He wasn't having mini-strokes or in the early stages of dementia. He was occasionally stuttering and seeming to be incoherent during debates because he was worrying too much about the politically correct police. His childhood stutter explained both his past problems with gaffes and his new problems with coherence. For that reason, Carly's book was my favorite nonfiction book of 2019. My least favorite, beating Anonymous' Trump book A WARNING, a waste of my time and money, was rapper Common's LET LOVE HAVE THE LAST WORD. Well, certainly the usually eloquent rapper shouldn't have the last word. His book was badly written, repetitious, and full of clichés. Worse, he didn't discuss his relationship with Serena Williams. Common, stick to rapping, and all celebrity writers, if you write a book with "love" in the title, and you dated and/or married one or more famous people, you have to "kiss and tell."

My least favorite novel was an old one that I found on one of my bookshelves. I don't know why I bought 20th Century British novelist Elizabeth Bowen's THE LITTLE GIRLS decades ago, but I certainly wasn't interested in reading any more novels by her after struggling through that one. On the other hand, I read and enjoyed two novels by another Elizabeth, nineteenth century British novelist Elizabeth Gaskell. After enjoying two shorter novels by her (RUTH and NORTH AND SOUTH), I ended last year and started this year reading the longer WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. Reading Gaskell's books reminded me why the 19th century British novelists were the best. Forget Bowen, Gaskell, while no Dickens or Austen, is a better novelist than modern British greats Lawrence and Woolf and than great 19th/20th Century American writers James, Hawthorne, Wharton, Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Even my favorite novelist Morrison has to bow down (in literary heaven) to Austen and Dickens. If I live and nothing happens (as wise old black folks used to say, and now I know why), this will be the year that I reread my favorite 19th Century novel, Dickens' BLEAK HOUSE. However, the novel did not die at the end of the 19th century. It is still alive with new 21st Century novelists Colson Whitehead, whose second novel, THE NICKEL BOYS, I enjoyed, and Delia Owens, whose first novel, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, was brilliant, continuing the tradition of entertaining, informing, and inspiring readers. I also continued to discover new young adult novelists like Elizabeth Acevodo (WITH THE FIRE ON HIGH) and Rachael Lippincott (FIVE FEET APART).

In addition to the usual celebrity memoirs (I enjoyed Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spicy's BRUTALLY HONEST but was disappointed in Demi Moore's INSIDE OUT; I read Neil Patrick Harris' CHOOSE YOUR OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHY to help me figure out if he was the peacock on "The Masked Singer"; I thought he was after reading his book, but it was Donny Osmond) and the inevitable books on race (I'm a pre-civil rights era black woman living during an extremely racist period; sue me), I created a new category last year--books that I hate read. I hate read three METOO books--Chanel Miller's KNOW MY NAME, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's SHE SAID, and Ronan Farrow's CATCH AND KILL. I've already expressed my disdain for Miller (see 10/27/19 post), although her book was well written. However, I found myself liking and respecting the other three writers more than I had planned. Farrow looked at the role played by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER in spreading gossip about the sexual misconduct of some celebrities while covering for others ("catching and killing" stories), and he attacked NBC executives as lying hypocrites. However, I was disgusted to learn that during his brief reign as an NBC (daytime) anchor he participated in the high-tech lynching of Bill Cosby. He's also clearly biased because of the behavior of his father Woody Allen (including the probably false claim that Woody molested his sister when she was a child) and yet tries to present himself as an impartial investigative reporter. The two female New York Times reporters impressed me with their work ethic, but they too were part of the get-the-old-black-man-who-touched-white-women-in-jail Cosby witch hunt (let's not forget also that Weinstein is, like Woody and Epstein, Jewish). Before I hate read these books, I already knew that we can dislike (I try not to hate) the writers or the writers' goals and still enjoy their work or their art. The same should be true of singers like R Kelly and entertainers like Bill Cosby.

I started 2020 by finishing Elizabeth Gaskell's novel and am hoping that Obama's memoir will be published before the year ends, but I'm mostly looking forward to rereading Dickens' BLEAK HOUSE. Happy 2020 reading, everyone!