Mary Sisney's Blog - Posts Tagged "metoo"
Real Women: The #METOO Moment Versus The Women's Movement
When my once and possibly future mean-tweet target, humorist Lizz Winstead, argued on Joy Reid's show that women can take care of their reproductive organs without men's help or interference, I sweet-tweeted her. But I didn't just tweet "Amen" or "Right On." I used the opportunity to take a shot at the #METOO whiners. I told Ms. Lizz that women are either bad-ass bitches who can take care of their own bodies and rule the world or they're weak, whiny wenches who need special laws to protect their bodies from scary men. We can't be both. I realized later that I was drawing a distinction between the two types of women breaking their silence during this backlash to the election of a pussy-grabbing, racist maniac. The bad-ass bitches are in the Women's Movement. They're the "nasty," "persistent" women who voted for Hillary and when Trump won, took to the streets and to the Internet to organize the resistance. The weak, whiny wenches may or may not have voted for Hillary (Susan Sarandon didn't, for instance), but they're now whining about sexual harassment and assault by powerful men with whom they probably flirted to advance their careers.
There are three other major differences between the two types of women and the movements to which they belong. 1) The Women's Movement is a grassroots movement started by women who were not celebrities while the #METOO movement is media-created and led by such celebrities as Rose McGowan, Alyssa Milano, the black dress wearing stars at the Golden Globes, and the white rose carrying musicians at the Grammys. 2) The #METOO moment focuses on sex while the Women's Movement focuses on more important issues. 3) The Women's Movement is like the civil rights, gay rights, and earlier women's rights movements that have helped our country move forward toward a more perfect union even when we take one step back for every two steps forward. #METOO is not a movement but a moment like the McCarthy or Salem witch hunt moments that brought shame to our country.
The women's march on the day after Trump's inauguration was not organized by celebrities, although many of them participated, and was not heavily promoted by the media. Some unknown but obviously extraordinary women started planning the march, inspiring millions to join them. At the time, I had fewer than ninety Facebook friends, yet I had friends (high school and graduate school classmates, former students, my stepfather's niece) marching in L.A., San Diego, Atlanta, Rhode Island, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Three of my Facebook friends marched with their adult daughters. The youngest marcher from my group (not counting the daughters) was twenty-nine, and the oldest was sixty-nine. The media expressed shock and awe at the size of the crowds not only in American cities but around the world. They were probably shocked because they had little to do with what happened on January 21, 2017. However, they had everything to do with the #METOO moment. The clearly narcissistic Rose McGowan is now taking credit (as she sells her book and television show) for NBC's involvement, but there was a coordinated effort by the media to focus on this topic at this time. Before publishing the rejected by NBC Ronan Farrow story about Weinstein, NEW YORKER profiled so-called civil rights lawyer (actually women who have had sex with celebrity, especially black, men lawyer) Gloria Allred. The NEW YORK TIMES joined the NEW YORKER in going after Weinstein, and then MSNBC and CNN took the ball and ran with it. What racism? What mass murders? Let's talk about sex.
Of course, the #METOO moment is about sex. It's not about equal pay for equal work. It's not about voting for women's candidates or for more women running for elective office. It's not even about the women's right to choose. These issues are the top priorities of the bad-ass bitches in the Women's Movement. The women in the #METOO moment are whining about sexual behavior that ranges from actual rape to dirty jokes. If Al Franken pretends to grope a comedian's boobs while she's sleeping (which probably didn't happen), then his behavior is as "horrible" and "appalling" as Harvey Weinstein's masturbating in front of a woman or using his large frame to overpower or intimidate a young actress into having sex with him. My differing responses to the Arquette sisters, two talented actresses, reflect how I view the movements that they represent. When she picked up her Best Supporting Actress Oscar a couple of years ago, Patricia used her moment in the spotlight to argue for equal pay for actresses. I loved that moment, especially when the camera cut to my birth year mate, the "overrated" Meryl Streep, and showed her pointing to Patricia as if to say, "Right on, Bitch!" I thought that Patricia might never work again, but I was really impressed with her courage. When her once more famous sister Rosanna (there was even a song named for her) appeared this year at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, representing the Weinstein victims, and stood holding her chest, looking overcome with emotion, my (out loud) reaction was, "Sit down, Bitch. You're not Rosa Parks. I've seen your movies. You didn't play nuns."
Patricia and the women who focus on equal pay, a woman's right to choose, and her right to hold elective office, including President, have more in common with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King than do the whiners in the #METOO moment, who have more in common with Joseph McCarthy, the witch-hunters in Salem, and the KKK who used to lynch black people. The Women's Movement is based on facts and led by bad-ass bitches who don't have to bully people with whom they disagree or demonize men whom they accuse of rape and sexual assault. Rose McGowan calls Weinstein the monster. Try to find evidence of civil rights leaders name-calling. Rosa Parks went to jail and had death threats. Some civil rights leaders actually died. I have yet to hear a #METOO whiner say that she didn't want to complain about the man who harassed her because she feared he would lose his job or because he was a beloved figure, a role model who had contributed to our culture. Instead they claim that they were frightened because these men were so powerful and might ruin their careers or their lives. In other words, they were selfish cowards. I can't imagine Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King taking millions of dollars in hush money to keep quiet about racism. They risked their lives, not just their livelihoods, to fight injustice. Their movement, like the Women's Movement, was also based on reality and truths, not false narratives. Black people were denied their equal rights. We were going in back doors, riding in the back of the buses, we couldn't stay in hotels and motels in the South, we couldn't eat in most restaurants, and in many states we couldn't vote. Among the false narratives promoted during this #METOO moment is that women who have been sexually abused have not been heard. Ask Emmett Till if women have not been heard. Oh, that's right; he's dead, tortured and murdered when he was fourteen because a woman was heard. Well, then, ask those white privileged Duke students if the black stripper who accused them of rape was heard. And ask Stanford student Brock Turner if the privileged, drunk white woman hiding behind the fake name Emily Doe was heard when he fingered her while he was also drunk. Ask the publishers of ROLLING STONE if they heard the lying anonymous woman who complained about sexual assault at the University of Virginia. Women have always been heard, and occasionally they have lied. These anonymous women who are ruining the careers of men like Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, and Harold Ford without due process should be exposed. We should know as much about them as we know about the activists in the BlackLivesMatter movement. They should take some heat as anyone who is trying to create change, to start a revolution, must do. Only a weak, whiny wench would hide her identity while destroying other people's reputations. Only weak, whiny wenches would take the hush money and then later talk, pretending to be victims. Only weak, whiny wenches would bully anyone who doesn't agree with everything they're saying and doing while pretending that they are the ones being silenced and bullied. Bad-ass bitches use their real names, engage in real debates, and win.
There are many reasons why Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college in 2016, but two of them were the misogyny caused by the seventies feminist movement and the belief by some men and women that women are too weak to be President. The post-seventies misogynists, the ones who bought the nutcracker Hillary, screamed "lock her up," and loved the image of her being hit by an errant Trump golf ball were mostly responding to the fringe element of that seventies movement, the women who called men pigs and seemed to hate all men. But there were probably more men and women who voted for the weak, mentally ill Trump because they believed that no woman, not even the clearly tough, competent, and composed Hillary, could handle the job of President. The media response to the pussy-grabbing tape and Hillary's fainting spell in 2016 helped confirm this belief.
The Women's Movement can help us to elect a female President but only if this #METOO moment ends quickly. The weak whiners' message that women need special protection from horny men and their demonization of men, leading to more misogyny, will make it harder for us to break through that final glass ceiling. I said in an earlier post (11/26/17) that I was with the male victims of the #METOO witch hunt, perhaps even (UGH!) Weinstein, but I'm even more with the powerful women of the Women's Movement--the bad-ass bitches. I'm with them.
There are three other major differences between the two types of women and the movements to which they belong. 1) The Women's Movement is a grassroots movement started by women who were not celebrities while the #METOO movement is media-created and led by such celebrities as Rose McGowan, Alyssa Milano, the black dress wearing stars at the Golden Globes, and the white rose carrying musicians at the Grammys. 2) The #METOO moment focuses on sex while the Women's Movement focuses on more important issues. 3) The Women's Movement is like the civil rights, gay rights, and earlier women's rights movements that have helped our country move forward toward a more perfect union even when we take one step back for every two steps forward. #METOO is not a movement but a moment like the McCarthy or Salem witch hunt moments that brought shame to our country.
The women's march on the day after Trump's inauguration was not organized by celebrities, although many of them participated, and was not heavily promoted by the media. Some unknown but obviously extraordinary women started planning the march, inspiring millions to join them. At the time, I had fewer than ninety Facebook friends, yet I had friends (high school and graduate school classmates, former students, my stepfather's niece) marching in L.A., San Diego, Atlanta, Rhode Island, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Three of my Facebook friends marched with their adult daughters. The youngest marcher from my group (not counting the daughters) was twenty-nine, and the oldest was sixty-nine. The media expressed shock and awe at the size of the crowds not only in American cities but around the world. They were probably shocked because they had little to do with what happened on January 21, 2017. However, they had everything to do with the #METOO moment. The clearly narcissistic Rose McGowan is now taking credit (as she sells her book and television show) for NBC's involvement, but there was a coordinated effort by the media to focus on this topic at this time. Before publishing the rejected by NBC Ronan Farrow story about Weinstein, NEW YORKER profiled so-called civil rights lawyer (actually women who have had sex with celebrity, especially black, men lawyer) Gloria Allred. The NEW YORK TIMES joined the NEW YORKER in going after Weinstein, and then MSNBC and CNN took the ball and ran with it. What racism? What mass murders? Let's talk about sex.
Of course, the #METOO moment is about sex. It's not about equal pay for equal work. It's not about voting for women's candidates or for more women running for elective office. It's not even about the women's right to choose. These issues are the top priorities of the bad-ass bitches in the Women's Movement. The women in the #METOO moment are whining about sexual behavior that ranges from actual rape to dirty jokes. If Al Franken pretends to grope a comedian's boobs while she's sleeping (which probably didn't happen), then his behavior is as "horrible" and "appalling" as Harvey Weinstein's masturbating in front of a woman or using his large frame to overpower or intimidate a young actress into having sex with him. My differing responses to the Arquette sisters, two talented actresses, reflect how I view the movements that they represent. When she picked up her Best Supporting Actress Oscar a couple of years ago, Patricia used her moment in the spotlight to argue for equal pay for actresses. I loved that moment, especially when the camera cut to my birth year mate, the "overrated" Meryl Streep, and showed her pointing to Patricia as if to say, "Right on, Bitch!" I thought that Patricia might never work again, but I was really impressed with her courage. When her once more famous sister Rosanna (there was even a song named for her) appeared this year at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, representing the Weinstein victims, and stood holding her chest, looking overcome with emotion, my (out loud) reaction was, "Sit down, Bitch. You're not Rosa Parks. I've seen your movies. You didn't play nuns."
Patricia and the women who focus on equal pay, a woman's right to choose, and her right to hold elective office, including President, have more in common with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King than do the whiners in the #METOO moment, who have more in common with Joseph McCarthy, the witch-hunters in Salem, and the KKK who used to lynch black people. The Women's Movement is based on facts and led by bad-ass bitches who don't have to bully people with whom they disagree or demonize men whom they accuse of rape and sexual assault. Rose McGowan calls Weinstein the monster. Try to find evidence of civil rights leaders name-calling. Rosa Parks went to jail and had death threats. Some civil rights leaders actually died. I have yet to hear a #METOO whiner say that she didn't want to complain about the man who harassed her because she feared he would lose his job or because he was a beloved figure, a role model who had contributed to our culture. Instead they claim that they were frightened because these men were so powerful and might ruin their careers or their lives. In other words, they were selfish cowards. I can't imagine Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King taking millions of dollars in hush money to keep quiet about racism. They risked their lives, not just their livelihoods, to fight injustice. Their movement, like the Women's Movement, was also based on reality and truths, not false narratives. Black people were denied their equal rights. We were going in back doors, riding in the back of the buses, we couldn't stay in hotels and motels in the South, we couldn't eat in most restaurants, and in many states we couldn't vote. Among the false narratives promoted during this #METOO moment is that women who have been sexually abused have not been heard. Ask Emmett Till if women have not been heard. Oh, that's right; he's dead, tortured and murdered when he was fourteen because a woman was heard. Well, then, ask those white privileged Duke students if the black stripper who accused them of rape was heard. And ask Stanford student Brock Turner if the privileged, drunk white woman hiding behind the fake name Emily Doe was heard when he fingered her while he was also drunk. Ask the publishers of ROLLING STONE if they heard the lying anonymous woman who complained about sexual assault at the University of Virginia. Women have always been heard, and occasionally they have lied. These anonymous women who are ruining the careers of men like Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, and Harold Ford without due process should be exposed. We should know as much about them as we know about the activists in the BlackLivesMatter movement. They should take some heat as anyone who is trying to create change, to start a revolution, must do. Only a weak, whiny wench would hide her identity while destroying other people's reputations. Only weak, whiny wenches would take the hush money and then later talk, pretending to be victims. Only weak, whiny wenches would bully anyone who doesn't agree with everything they're saying and doing while pretending that they are the ones being silenced and bullied. Bad-ass bitches use their real names, engage in real debates, and win.
There are many reasons why Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college in 2016, but two of them were the misogyny caused by the seventies feminist movement and the belief by some men and women that women are too weak to be President. The post-seventies misogynists, the ones who bought the nutcracker Hillary, screamed "lock her up," and loved the image of her being hit by an errant Trump golf ball were mostly responding to the fringe element of that seventies movement, the women who called men pigs and seemed to hate all men. But there were probably more men and women who voted for the weak, mentally ill Trump because they believed that no woman, not even the clearly tough, competent, and composed Hillary, could handle the job of President. The media response to the pussy-grabbing tape and Hillary's fainting spell in 2016 helped confirm this belief.
The Women's Movement can help us to elect a female President but only if this #METOO moment ends quickly. The weak whiners' message that women need special protection from horny men and their demonization of men, leading to more misogyny, will make it harder for us to break through that final glass ceiling. I said in an earlier post (11/26/17) that I was with the male victims of the #METOO witch hunt, perhaps even (UGH!) Weinstein, but I'm even more with the powerful women of the Women's Movement--the bad-ass bitches. I'm with them.
Taboo Words: Rapist Versus Racist
When the caustic female comedian at the White House Correspondents' dinner last night dropped the F-bomb, I barely noticed, and I certainly wasn't bothered by her use of the word "pussy." Only when I listened to commentary by MSNBC talking heads after the event did I remember that cursing is not allowed on basic cable. When the President can say "sons of bitches" at a rally and when millions vote for him after he's heard bragging about grabbing pussies, it's hard to be shocked by anything a comedian says. Earlier on Saturday, my sometimes favorite cable anchor Joy Reid had to apologize for words she may or may not have used in blogs written ten years earlier. In the discussion that followed her apology, the talking heads pointed out how much damage can be done by words. I have written several blogs about words that matter. Recently (2/12/17, 1/21/18), I've focused on subliminally racist language. But I've also been increasingly disturbed by how two very similar words (only one letter is different) have been treated. It's stunning to me that people feel more comfortable calling men like Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Donald Trump rapists than they do calling Trump and his deplorable followers racists. In fact, yesterday afternoon (between Joy's show in the morning and the Correspondents' dinner in the evening) when I said while commenting on a Joy Reid fan club post that calling a black man who sexually assaulted a white woman a rapist is racist, an apparently younger black woman chastised me for mentioning race because that's why whites become upset with us and accuse us of playing the race card. As the former FBI director might say, "Lordy!"
Both rapists and racists are deplorable. But only rape is a heinous crime that can lead to years of jail time (depending on the race(s) of the victim and perpetrator). If racists don't act on their racism by attacking nonwhite people or vandalizing their property, they are free to spread their racist lies about lazy black and brown rapists and drug dealers. And as I suggested in an earlier post (10/29/17), unlike sexual assault and harassment, rape is easy to define. If one person says no, and the other person (or people in gang rape) forces himself (because most rapists are men) on her, it's rape. If one person having sex is underage and the other one is not, even if the younger person (male or female) gives consent, it's statutory rape. Racism, like sexism, is harder to define. To rewrite an old Ralph Ellison joke (INVISIBLE MAN), some nonwhite people are so racially sensitive that they might condemn a white person as racist for not liking the dark meat of a turkey. But we should all be able to agree that when a white man accuses a black man born in Hawaii to a white mother and black African-born father of being secretly Kenyan, he's a racist. We don't have to worry about what he did in the seventies or what he's saying about "shithole" countries or the black NFL players now. Yet media critic Howard Kurtz, in his book MEDIA MADNESS, criticized journalist Ben Smith, the editor of BUZZFEED, for calling Trump a racist. I gave Kurtz's book a one-star rating in my Goodreads review for the following sentence: "That might have been the most troubling declaration: that Trump's racism was simply an undisputed fact, not a journalist's assessment, and that there was no room for dissent on this score." I have news for Mr. Kurtz; Trump's racism is an undisputed fact; it's as undisputed as his gender, race, age, and birth place.
I'm not sure why "racist" is a taboo word, and "rapist" isn't. The MSNBC commentators' response to the F-bomb and the comedian's use of the word "pussy" at least twice last night suggests that references to sexual acts should be more taboo, but Americans, especially those in the media, have always preferred discussing sex to race (See my 11/24/13 and 11/26/17 blogs). In fact, I'm convinced that the METOO movement was started by the media not only to help create an atmosphere where they could lock up freaky Bill Cosby for having weird sex with all of those white women but also to take attention away from Trump's constant racist outbursts--shithole countries, building that southern wall, attacks on nonwhite immigrants/refugees and black athletes. And, of course, if we don't mention race, then we might not notice that the prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Cosby for rape is white, that the foreign woman who took three million dollars of his money and then pursued him in a criminal case is white as are all but two of his alleged victims, that the witness who claimed that the foreign white woman had talked about framing a celebrity for money is black, and that all but two of the jurors who apparently believed the white woman and not the black one were white. We can pretend that calling a black man who had sex with a white woman a rapist has nothing to do with lynching, Emmett Till, and the objections to integrated schools in the fifties. We can pretend that what James Baldwin said explicitly and other black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison have implied--racism is all about sex--is not true.
The problem with taboos is that we tend to be drawn to them; like priests denied sex, we become more obsessed and eventually perverted in our need to sample the forbidden. Ellison made that point about white women and black men with his character Sybil. We tend to desire what we can't have, which is why white women like Sybil secretly want black men to rape them and may scream rape when it's the last thing on a black man's mind. And black men might want to have sex with white women because until the seventies sexual contact between a black man and a white woman (but not between a black woman and a white man) was taboo. Our failure to openly discuss racism not only allows it to hide in plain sight, to grow, fester, and move into the White House but also probably makes all of us secretly think and worry about racism more than we would if we could openly discuss it. We become secretly obsessed and perverted in our thoughts.
I have become the racism whisperer (actually shouter). If I see racism, I will call it out, and as I said in my review of Kurtz's book, I like to point out that the racism deniers are more dangerous than Trump and his deplorable followers. Bill Cosby may or may not have committed criminal sexual assault, but he is definitely not a rapist. Those who call him a rapist are either racists or brainwashed nonwhites and clueless whites who need to read some black history to know what time it is. Calling a black man accused of having nonconsensual sexual contact with a white woman a rapist is racist. That should be (in fact, is) an undisputed fact.
Both rapists and racists are deplorable. But only rape is a heinous crime that can lead to years of jail time (depending on the race(s) of the victim and perpetrator). If racists don't act on their racism by attacking nonwhite people or vandalizing their property, they are free to spread their racist lies about lazy black and brown rapists and drug dealers. And as I suggested in an earlier post (10/29/17), unlike sexual assault and harassment, rape is easy to define. If one person says no, and the other person (or people in gang rape) forces himself (because most rapists are men) on her, it's rape. If one person having sex is underage and the other one is not, even if the younger person (male or female) gives consent, it's statutory rape. Racism, like sexism, is harder to define. To rewrite an old Ralph Ellison joke (INVISIBLE MAN), some nonwhite people are so racially sensitive that they might condemn a white person as racist for not liking the dark meat of a turkey. But we should all be able to agree that when a white man accuses a black man born in Hawaii to a white mother and black African-born father of being secretly Kenyan, he's a racist. We don't have to worry about what he did in the seventies or what he's saying about "shithole" countries or the black NFL players now. Yet media critic Howard Kurtz, in his book MEDIA MADNESS, criticized journalist Ben Smith, the editor of BUZZFEED, for calling Trump a racist. I gave Kurtz's book a one-star rating in my Goodreads review for the following sentence: "That might have been the most troubling declaration: that Trump's racism was simply an undisputed fact, not a journalist's assessment, and that there was no room for dissent on this score." I have news for Mr. Kurtz; Trump's racism is an undisputed fact; it's as undisputed as his gender, race, age, and birth place.
I'm not sure why "racist" is a taboo word, and "rapist" isn't. The MSNBC commentators' response to the F-bomb and the comedian's use of the word "pussy" at least twice last night suggests that references to sexual acts should be more taboo, but Americans, especially those in the media, have always preferred discussing sex to race (See my 11/24/13 and 11/26/17 blogs). In fact, I'm convinced that the METOO movement was started by the media not only to help create an atmosphere where they could lock up freaky Bill Cosby for having weird sex with all of those white women but also to take attention away from Trump's constant racist outbursts--shithole countries, building that southern wall, attacks on nonwhite immigrants/refugees and black athletes. And, of course, if we don't mention race, then we might not notice that the prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Cosby for rape is white, that the foreign woman who took three million dollars of his money and then pursued him in a criminal case is white as are all but two of his alleged victims, that the witness who claimed that the foreign white woman had talked about framing a celebrity for money is black, and that all but two of the jurors who apparently believed the white woman and not the black one were white. We can pretend that calling a black man who had sex with a white woman a rapist has nothing to do with lynching, Emmett Till, and the objections to integrated schools in the fifties. We can pretend that what James Baldwin said explicitly and other black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison have implied--racism is all about sex--is not true.
The problem with taboos is that we tend to be drawn to them; like priests denied sex, we become more obsessed and eventually perverted in our need to sample the forbidden. Ellison made that point about white women and black men with his character Sybil. We tend to desire what we can't have, which is why white women like Sybil secretly want black men to rape them and may scream rape when it's the last thing on a black man's mind. And black men might want to have sex with white women because until the seventies sexual contact between a black man and a white woman (but not between a black woman and a white man) was taboo. Our failure to openly discuss racism not only allows it to hide in plain sight, to grow, fester, and move into the White House but also probably makes all of us secretly think and worry about racism more than we would if we could openly discuss it. We become secretly obsessed and perverted in our thoughts.
I have become the racism whisperer (actually shouter). If I see racism, I will call it out, and as I said in my review of Kurtz's book, I like to point out that the racism deniers are more dangerous than Trump and his deplorable followers. Bill Cosby may or may not have committed criminal sexual assault, but he is definitely not a rapist. Those who call him a rapist are either racists or brainwashed nonwhites and clueless whites who need to read some black history to know what time it is. Calling a black man accused of having nonconsensual sexual contact with a white woman a rapist is racist. That should be (in fact, is) an undisputed fact.
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!
Civil Rights Versus METOO: HEROES AND VILLAINS
In an earlier post (2/4/18), I contrasted the media-generated 2017 METOO movement to the 2016 women's movement, which was started by then unknown women. At one point in that post, I suggested that the women's movement had more in common with earlier civil rights and gay rights movements than with METOO, which was more like the Salem witch hunts or lynch mobs. In making that point, I noted that the leaders of the civil rights movement didn't take millions of dollars in hush money and then later whine about segregation. As I've continued to watch the destruction caused by the METOO witch hunt and having recently read an account of the civil rights movement, WALKING WITH THE WIND, by John Lewis, I'm even more certain that METOO is a witch hunt, not a civil rights movement.
Some of the differences between the fifties and sixties fight to end Jim Crow and the METOO movement are the same as those between that witch hunt and the current women's fight for equal pay, the right to choose, and the right to campaign for and win the highest offices in the land. Like the women's movement, the civil rights movement was not started by the media or celebrities. John Lewis, Rosa Parks, and Reverend Martin Luther King Junior became famous because of their work for civil rights. The media covered the movement only after it had started, and such celebrities as Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, and Mahalia Jackson participated in marches and provided financial support but were never the leaders. Also, although the murder of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old, handsome, black boy accused of whistling at a white woman, helped launch the movement, the focus was never on sex (unless you include FBI director Hoover's obsession with Reverend King's sexual behavior). At no time in his book does Lewis mention fighting to allow blacks and whites to marry in every state. Although he was still alive when the Loving case finally ended all laws against miscegenation, King did not participate in that fight. He was fighting to end segregation in housing in the North as well as the South and against poverty everywhere in 1967.
One of the most important differences between the civil rights activists of the fifties and sixties and the METOO whiners is the refusal of the activists to demonize the white racists who tormented them. As I tweeted to the somewhat unhinged Rose McGowan, Reverend King and Rosa Parks never called any of the bigots they were battling "monsters," a name she repeatedly uses to describe Harvey Weinstein. I had not read Lewis's book at that point and did not realize that one of King's rules of engagement was that the activists must fight social injustice, not individuals. Their fight was not personal. Although he was at times angry and disgusted, I don't recall Lewis expressing hatred toward the white men who beat him. He seems to understand that they too were victims of the racist Jim Crow system into which they were all born. He certainly understood how difficult it is for all of us to deal with change.
The civil rights movement was about uplifting the oppressed, not destroying the oppressors. Even when Lewis and other activists were beaten and tormented in public, and those attacks were seen on television, the people who beat them did not go to jail; usually, the victims of the beatings did. In fact, most of the physical assaulters of the civil rights activists were police officers. Even after we all understood that what those officers did was wrong and unlawful (and many understood that point at the time), none of them went to jail. The only criminals who were pursued in court and in the media by civil rights activists were those who actually killed people, like the murderer of Medgar Evers, who finally went to jail in the nineties. Because of the way the civil rights activists behaved, their oppressors could sometimes reform and make peace with them. Perhaps the most prominent example is the late Democratic senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd. He was once in the Ku Klux Klan and fought hard against the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-sixties, but in 2008, he supported half-black President Barack Obama, and one of his last acts before he died was to shout, "Shame!" "Shame!" to the racist, obstructionist GOP senators as he was being wheeled into the Senate chamber in early 2010 to cast one last vote supporting the healthcare bill.
Contrast the almost saintly, loving behavior of Lewis and the other civil rights activists to the vicious spitefulness and bullying of the METOO witch hunters. They celebrate the destruction of powerful men. They get off on sending an eighty-one year old, blind, black man to jail and causing other powerful men to lose their jobs and have their reputations destroyed. I recently had to change the channel when watching "Black Girls Rock." The originally unknown black woman (I still can't remember her name because she is clearly not the leader of this movement; blonde, white male Ronan Farrow and brunette, white female Gloria Allred, among others, are) whose movement the media and celebrities co-opted in part so they could lock up Cosby for having freaky sex with white women (the late Dick Gregory had some other theories in the book I just read, but I'm sticking with mine) was given an award at the event. In introducing her, the presenter bragged that she had taken down really powerful men. Hey, I can be spiteful, especially when dealing with white men (ask the two white male lawyers who recently tried to play me), but I know that destroying people, costing them their careers and their reputation, is not a positive trait. Why would a movement celebrate personal destruction? Why wouldn't they want to focus on the women who have been protected and the men who have been educated and reformed rather than how many powerful men have been destroyed? I'm spiteful enough to look forward to the time when the leaders of this movement will (hopefully) feel ashamed that they behaved so badly in 2017 and 18.
That shame may never come, however, because of the media's involvement. When a movement is generated by the media, it has the protection that civil rights activists never had. One of the most dangerous characteristics of this movement is the refusal of the media to criticize the behavior of the activists, which leads to fear among those critics (and they are rare) who are smart enough to know that the media can destroy them. Comedian Bill Maher, who was bold enough to be politically incorrect right after 9/11 (causing him to lose his job as the host of an ABC show ironically called "Politically Incorrect"), always genuflects to the witch hunters before he criticizes them. He always says that he believes women should be heard and is against rapists, blah, blah, blah. A friend of mine (a white mother of mixed race sons) who was helping me take on some METOO supporters on Facebook had to begin one comment with the apologetic statement, "I'm not blaming the victims." Why not? The civil rights beating victims were thrown in jail and blamed for causing trouble; they were called Communists and outside agitators. You want to talk about blaming victims, read about the young black boys (one of them twelve) who were killed by cops or wannabe cops. And read or watch the media coverage of the BlackLivesMatter movement, a slightly less saintly, modern version of the civil rights movement, that rose up in response to the killings by cops of unarmed, mostly young black males.
The primary difference between the civil rights activists and the METOO whiners is in the character of the participants. To paraphrase Trump, I like my heroes to be brave and noble. I don't like cowards, whiners, and demonizers. The civil rights activists were not cowards. They were willing not only to lose their careers for their cause but to die for it. Dr. Ford is the latest METOO "hero" who wanted to attack someone else's good name without exposing her own. She wanted to tell her story but remain anonymous because she didn't want her comfortable life disrupted. The only differences between her and one of my least favorite people (I like her more than I do Trump, Allred, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, and Judges Thomas and Kavanaugh), that drunk whiner Emily Doe, are that she's better educated (so far) and apparently not a sloppy drunk. If Dr. Ford couldn't stand the heat, she should never have entered the kitchen.
I could never have been a civil rights activist. I'm not physically violent, but I believe in hitting back verbally when I'm attacked. I could never be beaten, called names, and jailed while remaining quiet or singing "We Shall Overcome." I admire and thank John Lewis and all of the many unknown heroes who took the beatings and went to jail so that I could vote and live a little freer. I'm proud to say that I also could never be a METOO, whining witch hunter. I think too clearly and am too much of a lone ranger (without Tonto) and a Mary, Mary, quite contrarian to join a lynch mob. I'm also "brave" and contrary enough to take on the witch hunters now when it's unpopular to do so. Of course, unlike the Democrats, I know how to use the weapons I have. As a black woman from the working class who was pawed by white men and witnessed the effects of a brutal rape (not sexual assault or harassment, pussies, but rape), I can take these whiners down. My biggest weapon is this one: Black women voted for the sane white woman while white women voted for the insane white man. If white women had voted the way black women did, Hillary Clinton would be selecting the judges, and the world leaders of the UN would not be laughing at us.
METOO whiners, there are children in cages because white women voted for an insane sexual assaulter to stop the browning of America. Until you white women figure out how to vote, sit down, shut up, fall back, move to the back of the bus, and let the black women, who know how to vote, drive. And, oh, tell your daughters to prepare for the backlash that your vicious, destructive movement will cause in the not so distant future. Finally, if you're feeling oppressed, if you think your life has been difficult because some powerful, predatory men told you nasty jokes or looked at your boobs or under your dress, read WALKING WITH THE WIND.
Some of the differences between the fifties and sixties fight to end Jim Crow and the METOO movement are the same as those between that witch hunt and the current women's fight for equal pay, the right to choose, and the right to campaign for and win the highest offices in the land. Like the women's movement, the civil rights movement was not started by the media or celebrities. John Lewis, Rosa Parks, and Reverend Martin Luther King Junior became famous because of their work for civil rights. The media covered the movement only after it had started, and such celebrities as Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, and Mahalia Jackson participated in marches and provided financial support but were never the leaders. Also, although the murder of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old, handsome, black boy accused of whistling at a white woman, helped launch the movement, the focus was never on sex (unless you include FBI director Hoover's obsession with Reverend King's sexual behavior). At no time in his book does Lewis mention fighting to allow blacks and whites to marry in every state. Although he was still alive when the Loving case finally ended all laws against miscegenation, King did not participate in that fight. He was fighting to end segregation in housing in the North as well as the South and against poverty everywhere in 1967.
One of the most important differences between the civil rights activists of the fifties and sixties and the METOO whiners is the refusal of the activists to demonize the white racists who tormented them. As I tweeted to the somewhat unhinged Rose McGowan, Reverend King and Rosa Parks never called any of the bigots they were battling "monsters," a name she repeatedly uses to describe Harvey Weinstein. I had not read Lewis's book at that point and did not realize that one of King's rules of engagement was that the activists must fight social injustice, not individuals. Their fight was not personal. Although he was at times angry and disgusted, I don't recall Lewis expressing hatred toward the white men who beat him. He seems to understand that they too were victims of the racist Jim Crow system into which they were all born. He certainly understood how difficult it is for all of us to deal with change.
The civil rights movement was about uplifting the oppressed, not destroying the oppressors. Even when Lewis and other activists were beaten and tormented in public, and those attacks were seen on television, the people who beat them did not go to jail; usually, the victims of the beatings did. In fact, most of the physical assaulters of the civil rights activists were police officers. Even after we all understood that what those officers did was wrong and unlawful (and many understood that point at the time), none of them went to jail. The only criminals who were pursued in court and in the media by civil rights activists were those who actually killed people, like the murderer of Medgar Evers, who finally went to jail in the nineties. Because of the way the civil rights activists behaved, their oppressors could sometimes reform and make peace with them. Perhaps the most prominent example is the late Democratic senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd. He was once in the Ku Klux Klan and fought hard against the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-sixties, but in 2008, he supported half-black President Barack Obama, and one of his last acts before he died was to shout, "Shame!" "Shame!" to the racist, obstructionist GOP senators as he was being wheeled into the Senate chamber in early 2010 to cast one last vote supporting the healthcare bill.
Contrast the almost saintly, loving behavior of Lewis and the other civil rights activists to the vicious spitefulness and bullying of the METOO witch hunters. They celebrate the destruction of powerful men. They get off on sending an eighty-one year old, blind, black man to jail and causing other powerful men to lose their jobs and have their reputations destroyed. I recently had to change the channel when watching "Black Girls Rock." The originally unknown black woman (I still can't remember her name because she is clearly not the leader of this movement; blonde, white male Ronan Farrow and brunette, white female Gloria Allred, among others, are) whose movement the media and celebrities co-opted in part so they could lock up Cosby for having freaky sex with white women (the late Dick Gregory had some other theories in the book I just read, but I'm sticking with mine) was given an award at the event. In introducing her, the presenter bragged that she had taken down really powerful men. Hey, I can be spiteful, especially when dealing with white men (ask the two white male lawyers who recently tried to play me), but I know that destroying people, costing them their careers and their reputation, is not a positive trait. Why would a movement celebrate personal destruction? Why wouldn't they want to focus on the women who have been protected and the men who have been educated and reformed rather than how many powerful men have been destroyed? I'm spiteful enough to look forward to the time when the leaders of this movement will (hopefully) feel ashamed that they behaved so badly in 2017 and 18.
That shame may never come, however, because of the media's involvement. When a movement is generated by the media, it has the protection that civil rights activists never had. One of the most dangerous characteristics of this movement is the refusal of the media to criticize the behavior of the activists, which leads to fear among those critics (and they are rare) who are smart enough to know that the media can destroy them. Comedian Bill Maher, who was bold enough to be politically incorrect right after 9/11 (causing him to lose his job as the host of an ABC show ironically called "Politically Incorrect"), always genuflects to the witch hunters before he criticizes them. He always says that he believes women should be heard and is against rapists, blah, blah, blah. A friend of mine (a white mother of mixed race sons) who was helping me take on some METOO supporters on Facebook had to begin one comment with the apologetic statement, "I'm not blaming the victims." Why not? The civil rights beating victims were thrown in jail and blamed for causing trouble; they were called Communists and outside agitators. You want to talk about blaming victims, read about the young black boys (one of them twelve) who were killed by cops or wannabe cops. And read or watch the media coverage of the BlackLivesMatter movement, a slightly less saintly, modern version of the civil rights movement, that rose up in response to the killings by cops of unarmed, mostly young black males.
The primary difference between the civil rights activists and the METOO whiners is in the character of the participants. To paraphrase Trump, I like my heroes to be brave and noble. I don't like cowards, whiners, and demonizers. The civil rights activists were not cowards. They were willing not only to lose their careers for their cause but to die for it. Dr. Ford is the latest METOO "hero" who wanted to attack someone else's good name without exposing her own. She wanted to tell her story but remain anonymous because she didn't want her comfortable life disrupted. The only differences between her and one of my least favorite people (I like her more than I do Trump, Allred, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, and Judges Thomas and Kavanaugh), that drunk whiner Emily Doe, are that she's better educated (so far) and apparently not a sloppy drunk. If Dr. Ford couldn't stand the heat, she should never have entered the kitchen.
I could never have been a civil rights activist. I'm not physically violent, but I believe in hitting back verbally when I'm attacked. I could never be beaten, called names, and jailed while remaining quiet or singing "We Shall Overcome." I admire and thank John Lewis and all of the many unknown heroes who took the beatings and went to jail so that I could vote and live a little freer. I'm proud to say that I also could never be a METOO, whining witch hunter. I think too clearly and am too much of a lone ranger (without Tonto) and a Mary, Mary, quite contrarian to join a lynch mob. I'm also "brave" and contrary enough to take on the witch hunters now when it's unpopular to do so. Of course, unlike the Democrats, I know how to use the weapons I have. As a black woman from the working class who was pawed by white men and witnessed the effects of a brutal rape (not sexual assault or harassment, pussies, but rape), I can take these whiners down. My biggest weapon is this one: Black women voted for the sane white woman while white women voted for the insane white man. If white women had voted the way black women did, Hillary Clinton would be selecting the judges, and the world leaders of the UN would not be laughing at us.
METOO whiners, there are children in cages because white women voted for an insane sexual assaulter to stop the browning of America. Until you white women figure out how to vote, sit down, shut up, fall back, move to the back of the bus, and let the black women, who know how to vote, drive. And, oh, tell your daughters to prepare for the backlash that your vicious, destructive movement will cause in the not so distant future. Finally, if you're feeling oppressed, if you think your life has been difficult because some powerful, predatory men told you nasty jokes or looked at your boobs or under your dress, read WALKING WITH THE WIND.
YOUTOO: How Women Can Stop Whining And Start Winning
Several events led me to write my birthday blog (that this less beloved than before my birthday I-Pad ate) two weeks ago on a topic not directly related to turning seventy-one. 1) My contemporary Elizabeth Warren “suspended” her campaign after not winning a state or even coming in second, and women started complaining about sexism while insisting that the winner between the two old white men left in the race as viable candidates (Gabbard was never viable, and Bernie was barely viable; he’s not now) must pick a woman to be his Vice President. 2) Jewish Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to twenty-three years in jail despite being found not guilty of the most serious charges, and women celebrated. 3) Jewish Woody Allen’s memoir (which has now been published) was dropped by the first publishing company to accept it because of complaints by two of Mia Farrow’s blonde children. 4) Often obnoxious, but sometimes great, interviewer Chris Matthews abruptly “retired” from his long-running MSNBC show and admitted that he was “out of step” with the times because he had commented on women’s looks, and “The View” anchor Joy Behar, who had commented on men’s looks, thought he deserved to lose his job. 5) I read three articles in VANITY FAIR that seemed connected, but the female editor didn’t comment on or even acknowledge the connections. The first was a profile of the woman on the cover, a “hot” Cuban actress, whose career is on fire and who was described in the article as “a pre-implosion Weinstein Company starlet,” who earlier “was in a serious relationship with Agent Franklin Latt.” The second was an article described as “An Oral History of a Predator,” in which thirty of Weinstein’s alleged victims are quoted, and one of them, actress Rosanna Arquette, compares him to Charles Manson and Hitler because he tried to take out his penis in front of her, and another says he and Jewish Jeff Epstein should be compared to Jack the Ripper, a serial killer of mostly prostitutes (Hmmm, I wonder if she realizes that and understands the significance). The final article profiled a woman who was actually oppressed. Princess Haya, who lived in Dubai until she escaped to London, and one of her stepdaughters were apparently being terrorized and held captive by the Princess’s husband. Since my birthday two weeks ago, nothing has happened, not even being told to stay home because of a contagious, sometimes deadly virus, to stop me from once again (see 10/14/17 and 2/4/18 posts, for instance) calling out (mostly) white women for being whiners, refusing to take responsibility for their actions. In fact, Bernie cultists have now tried to resurrect the METOO attack on presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. And the Cuban actress, Ana de Armas, who looks white, has appeared in two other magazines with her new boyfriend, recent co-star (cough! cough!), two-time Oscar winner, former PEOPLE MAGAZINE Sexiest Man, and serial dater of famous actresses (he married and had three children with Jennifer Garner after being engaged to Jennifer Lopez and dating Gwyneth Paltrow) Ben Affleck.
Let me start the “call out” with some facts: 1) 56% of the 2016 electorate was female; white females made up 41% of the 2016 electorate. While 98% of black women voting in 2016 chose Hillary Clinton, only 45% of white women did. 47% of them chose the insane white supremacist who was heard on tape bragging about grabbing pussies a few days before the election. 2) In 91% white Iowa and 93.9% white New Hampshire, the progressive baby boomer white female came in third and fourth while the moderate X-generation white female came in fifth and third in the 2020 primary/caucus. The overwhelmingly white populations of the two states which should never again start the Democratic primary calendar placed the oldest and youngest men in the race first and second. 3) So far the METOO movement has resulted in two Jewish men (Epstein and Weinstein) and two black men (Cosby and Kelly) being jailed and demonized in the media. Not one straight, Protestant white man has been jailed or even indicted (gay two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and black Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Junior have both been indicted, but the charges against Kevin were eventually dropped). Another Jewish man, 2020 frontrunner Al Franken, was run out of the Senate (karma is a bitch, which is why the six Senators who signed the petition to force Franken’s resignation and ran for President all lost, or in Bernie’s case, will lose) using fake charges that dirty political trickster Roger Stone helped orchestrate, and another black man, civil rights icon, former employer of Rosa Parks, and at the time, ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers was forced to resign using fake charges instigated by Gloria Allred’s daughter Lisa Bloom because he was too old and senile to handle the job of Judiciary Chair when the Democrats won in 2018. Meanwhile the insane white supremacist, a self-confessed sexual assaulter of women, is still President, and there is a room in the Capitol building named after segregationist and father of a half-black daughter with his mother’s servant Strom Thurmond. 4) Not one of the many books written about the chaos in the White House has suggested that worst President ever Donald Trump is raping women or grabbing their pussies while pretending to be the best President ever, but brown children are in cages, people of color are being murdered, and hatred toward people of color is being promoted.
While I initially distinguished between the grassroots women’s movement that led to the inspiring march on the day after the pussy grabber’s inauguration and the sexual misconduct movement started a year after white women made it possible for him to win the rigged electoral college, I now realize that both of those movements were distractions from the fact that white women are as racist and almost as sexist as white men, and that they, not the Russians, the voter suppression laws, the media, Bernie Sanders, or Jim Comey are the reason we are in this mess, and black women’s lives have become much more difficult. One of my primary objections to the METOO movement was that it took the focus off of more important issues such as racism, gun violence, and “real” sexism, like the wage gap between men and women. Now I realize that the focus (after the 2016 election) on sexism by women, some of them wearing “pussy hats,” hid the fact that if 98% of white women had voted for Hillary, the pussy grabber would not have won a state. Even if 47% of white women had voted for her and 45% for him, Hillary, who won the popular vote with help from women of color, would be in the White House now, competently dealing with this health crisis. It doesn’t matter whether this focus on sexism and sexual misconduct instead of racism was a subconscious or conscious distraction, the effects have been devastating. An insane white supremacist is endangering the world while black and Jewish men are being demonized and jailed.
Several months before white women elected a self-confessed sexual assaulter and more than a year before the media-generated fake sexual misconduct movement started, I connected the focus on women as sexual prey with no agency or personal responsibility to Hillary’s candidacy for President. Believing that Emily Doe was a privileged white woman instead of a privileged half-Chinese woman, I suggested in the 6/19/16 blog post that the portrait of a white woman as so weak that she’s permanently traumatized by a drunken sexual encounter with a younger, equally drunk man would hurt Hillary’s chances. And it did, not only with men, but with white women. Why would black women overwhelmingly vote for Hillary when so many white women wouldn’t? Is it because we know that we are strong enough to be President, so when we see a strong, “persistent” white woman, we assume that she can be President too? Even if they occasionally whine (looking at you, Elizabeth) about how they lost a job when they were pregnant (I tweeted to ask if she lost the job to a black woman), we assume that women strong enough to run and win as Senator and to battle men in the Senate are strong enough to be President. Obviously, the white women of Iowa and New Hampshire don’t agree since both of the New Hampshire Democratic Senators are white women, and Iowa has one conservative white female Senator. The supposedly smart Amy Klobuchar thought that what happened in 2018 meant that the white women formerly known as soccer moms but now called suburban were ready to elect a woman President. Nope! As one conservative white woman suggested in an interview, when white women hear President, they think of a man, maybe because men who are not insane like the pussy grabber white women elected are more willing to take responsibility for their actions and much less willing to play the victim than white women are.
I have contrasted how black people like the family members of the Americans killed by a racist domestic terrorist in a church in Charleston and the young man whose brother was killed by a white female cop when the brother was sitting in his own apartment behaved to the vindictiveness of “sexual assault” victims like Emily/Chanel, the Weinstein whiners, and the Cosby bigots. But I was struck recently by how graciously two elderly white men, victims of the despicable METOO movement, behaved. The often obnoxious Matthews did not blame his bosses or women for the loss of his job. He took responsibility for being “out of step with the times” and said it was time for younger people to take over. When he was interviewed by Chris Cuomo on CNN, the totally innocent Al Franken did not condemn the Senators who signed that fake petition; he did not use his bitingly sharp wit to throw shade on those 2020 candidates from the Senate who had already lost and to predict the demise of Sanders. Instead he said that he forgave the eight Senators who had expressed regret about signing the petition and called them his friends. The so-called METOO victims who are comparing Jewish men to Hitler, Charles Manson, and Jack the Ripper could learn from these two white men.
White women, here’s how one of you can become President. Act like sane white men. 1) Refuse to accept the victim role, and take responsibility for what you did wrong, you know, hanging around and flattering older, powerful, married men like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, hoping they will help your career. 2) Stop using men’s coattails, and that includes Joe Biden, who has coattails because of two black men (Obama and Clyburn) and the black women of South Carolina, to get ahead. 3) Vote for each other, you know, the way black people did for Obama, and your husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers do for white men.
Some conservatives are urging Joe Biden to pick fellow moderate Amy Klobuchar as his running mate. This black woman who voted for Hillary and was supporting Amy until she started bragging about how she could convince those suburban (i.e. white) women to vote for her while totally ignoring the Democratic base (black women) who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary (Joe didn’t ignore us) says, “Hell, no!” A white woman needs to win the presidency by convincing her sisters to vote for her. Joe’s VP can be a brown or yellow woman, but she should be a black woman. Without us, Bernie might be deciding who would be his running mate. I said in 2017 when the despicable METOO sexual misconduct movement started that the first female President would have to be a woman of color because white women are too weak. Until white women stop whining and start voting for each other, I stand by that statement.
Let me start the “call out” with some facts: 1) 56% of the 2016 electorate was female; white females made up 41% of the 2016 electorate. While 98% of black women voting in 2016 chose Hillary Clinton, only 45% of white women did. 47% of them chose the insane white supremacist who was heard on tape bragging about grabbing pussies a few days before the election. 2) In 91% white Iowa and 93.9% white New Hampshire, the progressive baby boomer white female came in third and fourth while the moderate X-generation white female came in fifth and third in the 2020 primary/caucus. The overwhelmingly white populations of the two states which should never again start the Democratic primary calendar placed the oldest and youngest men in the race first and second. 3) So far the METOO movement has resulted in two Jewish men (Epstein and Weinstein) and two black men (Cosby and Kelly) being jailed and demonized in the media. Not one straight, Protestant white man has been jailed or even indicted (gay two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and black Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Junior have both been indicted, but the charges against Kevin were eventually dropped). Another Jewish man, 2020 frontrunner Al Franken, was run out of the Senate (karma is a bitch, which is why the six Senators who signed the petition to force Franken’s resignation and ran for President all lost, or in Bernie’s case, will lose) using fake charges that dirty political trickster Roger Stone helped orchestrate, and another black man, civil rights icon, former employer of Rosa Parks, and at the time, ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers was forced to resign using fake charges instigated by Gloria Allred’s daughter Lisa Bloom because he was too old and senile to handle the job of Judiciary Chair when the Democrats won in 2018. Meanwhile the insane white supremacist, a self-confessed sexual assaulter of women, is still President, and there is a room in the Capitol building named after segregationist and father of a half-black daughter with his mother’s servant Strom Thurmond. 4) Not one of the many books written about the chaos in the White House has suggested that worst President ever Donald Trump is raping women or grabbing their pussies while pretending to be the best President ever, but brown children are in cages, people of color are being murdered, and hatred toward people of color is being promoted.
While I initially distinguished between the grassroots women’s movement that led to the inspiring march on the day after the pussy grabber’s inauguration and the sexual misconduct movement started a year after white women made it possible for him to win the rigged electoral college, I now realize that both of those movements were distractions from the fact that white women are as racist and almost as sexist as white men, and that they, not the Russians, the voter suppression laws, the media, Bernie Sanders, or Jim Comey are the reason we are in this mess, and black women’s lives have become much more difficult. One of my primary objections to the METOO movement was that it took the focus off of more important issues such as racism, gun violence, and “real” sexism, like the wage gap between men and women. Now I realize that the focus (after the 2016 election) on sexism by women, some of them wearing “pussy hats,” hid the fact that if 98% of white women had voted for Hillary, the pussy grabber would not have won a state. Even if 47% of white women had voted for her and 45% for him, Hillary, who won the popular vote with help from women of color, would be in the White House now, competently dealing with this health crisis. It doesn’t matter whether this focus on sexism and sexual misconduct instead of racism was a subconscious or conscious distraction, the effects have been devastating. An insane white supremacist is endangering the world while black and Jewish men are being demonized and jailed.
Several months before white women elected a self-confessed sexual assaulter and more than a year before the media-generated fake sexual misconduct movement started, I connected the focus on women as sexual prey with no agency or personal responsibility to Hillary’s candidacy for President. Believing that Emily Doe was a privileged white woman instead of a privileged half-Chinese woman, I suggested in the 6/19/16 blog post that the portrait of a white woman as so weak that she’s permanently traumatized by a drunken sexual encounter with a younger, equally drunk man would hurt Hillary’s chances. And it did, not only with men, but with white women. Why would black women overwhelmingly vote for Hillary when so many white women wouldn’t? Is it because we know that we are strong enough to be President, so when we see a strong, “persistent” white woman, we assume that she can be President too? Even if they occasionally whine (looking at you, Elizabeth) about how they lost a job when they were pregnant (I tweeted to ask if she lost the job to a black woman), we assume that women strong enough to run and win as Senator and to battle men in the Senate are strong enough to be President. Obviously, the white women of Iowa and New Hampshire don’t agree since both of the New Hampshire Democratic Senators are white women, and Iowa has one conservative white female Senator. The supposedly smart Amy Klobuchar thought that what happened in 2018 meant that the white women formerly known as soccer moms but now called suburban were ready to elect a woman President. Nope! As one conservative white woman suggested in an interview, when white women hear President, they think of a man, maybe because men who are not insane like the pussy grabber white women elected are more willing to take responsibility for their actions and much less willing to play the victim than white women are.
I have contrasted how black people like the family members of the Americans killed by a racist domestic terrorist in a church in Charleston and the young man whose brother was killed by a white female cop when the brother was sitting in his own apartment behaved to the vindictiveness of “sexual assault” victims like Emily/Chanel, the Weinstein whiners, and the Cosby bigots. But I was struck recently by how graciously two elderly white men, victims of the despicable METOO movement, behaved. The often obnoxious Matthews did not blame his bosses or women for the loss of his job. He took responsibility for being “out of step with the times” and said it was time for younger people to take over. When he was interviewed by Chris Cuomo on CNN, the totally innocent Al Franken did not condemn the Senators who signed that fake petition; he did not use his bitingly sharp wit to throw shade on those 2020 candidates from the Senate who had already lost and to predict the demise of Sanders. Instead he said that he forgave the eight Senators who had expressed regret about signing the petition and called them his friends. The so-called METOO victims who are comparing Jewish men to Hitler, Charles Manson, and Jack the Ripper could learn from these two white men.
White women, here’s how one of you can become President. Act like sane white men. 1) Refuse to accept the victim role, and take responsibility for what you did wrong, you know, hanging around and flattering older, powerful, married men like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, hoping they will help your career. 2) Stop using men’s coattails, and that includes Joe Biden, who has coattails because of two black men (Obama and Clyburn) and the black women of South Carolina, to get ahead. 3) Vote for each other, you know, the way black people did for Obama, and your husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers do for white men.
Some conservatives are urging Joe Biden to pick fellow moderate Amy Klobuchar as his running mate. This black woman who voted for Hillary and was supporting Amy until she started bragging about how she could convince those suburban (i.e. white) women to vote for her while totally ignoring the Democratic base (black women) who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary (Joe didn’t ignore us) says, “Hell, no!” A white woman needs to win the presidency by convincing her sisters to vote for her. Joe’s VP can be a brown or yellow woman, but she should be a black woman. Without us, Bernie might be deciding who would be his running mate. I said in 2017 when the despicable METOO sexual misconduct movement started that the first female President would have to be a woman of color because white women are too weak. Until white women stop whining and start voting for each other, I stand by that statement.
Time’s Up For METOO: Ending The Hypocrisy And Absurdity
As happened on my birthday, I will ignore the obvious topic—being “isolated” from my mother on Mother’s Day—to address for what seems like the one hundredth time Americans’ obsession with sex. Everything that happened during the two weeks since my last blog makes it clear that we need to stop worrying and talking about sexual misconduct. We learned about the modern-day lynching in February of still another unarmed black man in Georgia while, more recently, armed white men stood unmasked within inches of masked Michigan police officers’ faces and weren’t even arrested. The two white men who murdered the dark-skinned, unarmed jogger were finally arrested only after a video of the murder surfaced. As for the armed white men in Michigan, some of whom waved confederate flags, I’m sure their arriving with guns for a protest to force the state government to open businesses so that more black people could die of a deadly virus had nothing to do with the fact that the Lieutenant Governor, who was presiding over the legislature that they were allowed by the police to enter and try to disrupt, is a dark-skinned black man. I’ve pointed out multiple times, most recently in the March 29 post, that the focus on men’s sexual misconduct is a distraction from the real story of Trump’s election and reign—racism. In fact, as early as March 24, 2013 (“Race Versus Sex: What Is America’s Favorite Topic”), when the idea of a Trump presidency was just a bad joke, I discussed how much white Americans hate talking about race and how they will change the topic to sex. I pointed out that shortly before there was a national discussion of a stained blue dress and the sexual antics of the man called the first black President by my favorite writer Toni Morrison that white President said we needed to discuss race. We never did.
While white men and the virus were killing blacks, Russia was still a thing in Trump’s America. The hoax President and his favorite b-boy, the man who is supposed to be our attorney general, were working to free former national security advisor Mike Flynn before he goes to jail, probably as a reward for not telling everything he knows about what was going on in 2016. Putin’s Puppet has been on the telephone taking orders from his master, and according to one national security expert speculating on Nicolle Wallace’s show, they are probably preparing to overturn the indictments of the Russian nationals. Why not? Who’s going to stop them? Certainly not the Republicans in Congress. Trump and Barr’s attempt to prove that the Mueller investigation was a partisan hoax recalls what happened just before Election Day in 2016. Apparently, it was briefly and quietly reported that Russia was interfering in our election, but I don’t remember that report (and may not have heard or read it) because I was focused on the much louder news of Trump’s bragging about sexual assault on an “Access Hollywood” tape and the content of Clinton campaign e-mails leaked by (wait for it) the Russians. Last week, while we were watching the taped killing of a young black man and Trump was working with Barr and Putin to destroy our democracy, the news media was still talking about the lies of the latest fake sexual assault victim Tara Reade, who once wrote an article about how much she, a liberal Democrat (wait for it), admired Putin. I keep hoping to wake up and learn that I’ve spent the last four years living in a really long, bad SNL skit.
From the beginning, the METOO movement has been absurd. Early during the movement, I mean-tweeted Chelsea Handler after hearing her say seriously on Bill Maher’s show that we have to believe women now because we didn’t believe them in the past. I told the hard-drinking, not well-educated comedian that I knew this thinking thing was new to her, but she needed to up her game. The women weren’t heard or believed claim is what KellyAnne Conway would call “an alternative fact.” I’ve mentioned Emmett Till, the Scottsboro Boys, the Duke University athletes accused by a black stripper, and the Rolling Stone/University of Virginia mess that cost that magazine a great deal of money so frequently that I wish I could just stamp my response. Lately, I’ve recalled Reverend Sharpton’s friend Tawana Brawley, who accused four white men of raping her and writing on her body. She was believed until her story fell apart, and there are probably people who still believe her. Even if we didn’t believe some women in the past, it certainly doesn’t mean we should believe every woman now or that we should take every accusation seriously. If the woman who used to
break into David Letterman’s house had accused him of rape, should we have believed her? Women are just as crazy and/or evil as men. Crazy, evil men rape; crazy, evil women are more likely to lie about being raped.
I don’t know how crazy or evil Tara Reade is, but she’s clearly a liar, and she’s lying for political reasons just as the women accusing 2020 Democratic frontrunner Al Franken in 2017 lied for political reasons and just as the METOO movement was used to remove 88-year-old, somewhat senile Civil Rights icon John Conyers for political expediency; the younger and more mentally agile Jerry Nadler could then chair the House Judiciary Committee if and when the Democrats won in 2018. It was not only a racist (accusing black men of rape or sexual misconduct is as old or older than this nation), cynical, and cruel act, but also an absurd one. Once 47% of white women and 80% of white evangelicals voting picked the self-confessed sexual assaulter instead of the white woman, sexual misconduct should never again have been used as a political weapon. That it has been used more frequently by both political parties since 2016 is beyond absurd.
As I watched the “scandalous” Mika B, who wasn’t married to Joe S when they started working together, grill Joe B and watched the female Democrats (Harris, Gillibrand) who signed the Al Franken petition and voted against Kavanaugh have to explain why they believed Joe B while a METOO- promoting LA columnist whom I have mean-tweeted several times, including when she suggested that the now late Kobe Bryant shouldn’t receive an Oscar because he was accused by one white woman (where were all of the other accusers?) of rape, wrote an awkward explanation of why she is still planning to vote for Joe B, I saw another problem with this movement—hypocrisy. As I mean-tweeted Mika, sex scandals spread like this deadly virus. I reminded her of what happened with the Republicans after they impeached Clinton over sexual misbehavior. Speaker Gingrich was also cheating on his wife as was the next potential Republican Speaker, and the man who became Speaker after those two “scandalous” Republicans left is now in jail for sexual misconduct before he entered politics. As that example shows, there is also the problem in politics of bipartisan scandals. Trump claimed that Reade’s changing, ridiculous, incredible story was more credible than the one told by Dr. Ford. Well, at least Reade wasn’t talking about something that happened when Biden was in high school. Neither story should have been told or heard, and while we’re back in the nineties, which is when the alleged Biden sexual assault occurred, this false accusation against him could be karma for his allowing that absurd “high-tech lynching” to happen in 1991. Dr. Anita Hill, Biden, and everyone involved in that circus owe my least favorite Supreme Court Justice, the man I call Uncle Thomas, an apology. Sexual misconduct should not be used as a political weapon against any political candidate, no matter his/her race, gender, or sexual orientation. But it is especially despicable to use it against a black man, even when the accuser is a black woman.
As I said on Facebook, the Biden/Reade fiasco shows that it’s time for METOO to join Jim Crow, prohibition, the war on weed, the criminalization of homosexuality, and the decriminalization of spousal abuse in the dustbin of history. The men who have lost their jobs and their reputations because of this vile movement can’t have their dignity or maybe their careers restored, but perhaps they can sue NBC, New Yorker, Time and the other media outlets that launched the “nasty men” movement. Epstein is dead, and Kelly, who preyed on young black girls and is clearly crazy, needs to stay in jail or be placed in a mental institution. But Cosby and Weinstein need to be released at least until Trump goes to jail. I’ve tweeted to Harris, Warren, Gillibrand, and Sanders that they need to sign a new petition apologizing to Al Franken and condemning the use of sexual misconduct as a political weapon. I’ve tweeted (for the second time) to the Congressional Black Caucus and Nancy Pelosi that they need to name a room or a bill after the now deceased John Conyers and restore his good name. I pointed out that his birthday is this month.
I may have some media help in ending this absurd and extremely damaging movement. As I switched between Don Lemon’s show and Bill Maher’s on Friday, I found myself clapping for both of their monologues. Lemon preached about how tired blacks are of being killed and pointed out that we black folks have joined other people’s movements. Perhaps because he’s gay, he mentioned the LGBTQ movement, but he used the tag (to my delight) USTOO. GO, DON! Maher used his New Rules monologue to take down the Democrats for allowing themselves to be played by conservatives and the media, using sexual misconduct. He angrily mentioned how the Democrats threw Al Franken under the bus. GO, BILL! But ultimately lying con artists like Tara Reade and Jacob Wohl, who has tried to smear Mueller and Pete B with fake charges of sexual misconduct, will help destroy METOO. Eventually, even the most foolish, cultish Americans, the ones most likely to join a high-tech lynch mob, will have to stop believing and start thinking.
Finally, on this Mother’s Day, as my mother resides safely in a memory care facility, I’m remembering February 2, 1990, when I arrived at her friend Doris’ home, still hoping that she had lied about being raped the night before because she was scared to live alone and wanted me to sell my home and buy one with her, only to see the damage that the just released from prison freak who lived next door to her with his mother had done to her face. I remember a white man about to give me grief when I was pushing ahead of him at the police station because my mother and I were late for an appointment to take pictures of her bruises, seeing her face and saying, “I’m sorry. Go right ahead.” And I remember my mother telling me with surprise how “nice” the police, doctors, and nurses were to her. See, a black woman born in Kentucky in 1928 doesn’t expect to be treated with compassion and kindness, no matter what has happened to her, no matter how brutally she has been beaten and raped. Finally, I remember how angry she was at Anita Hill during that ridiculous 1991 educated-black-folks-talking-about-sex hearing. I was surprised because her rapist was black, and she was still angry at all black men not related to her or to her close friends. The only time she laughed at Will Smith, aka Fresh Prince, was when he and Cousin Carlton were jailed. But she believed that a black woman publicly complaining to white men about a black man telling dirty jokes was, as she said at the time, “terrible and not raised right.”
On this Mother’s Day, for my mother and all of the mothers and future mothers who have been raped, I say, “Time’s Up for METOO. Let’s get #NOTMETOO trending.”
While white men and the virus were killing blacks, Russia was still a thing in Trump’s America. The hoax President and his favorite b-boy, the man who is supposed to be our attorney general, were working to free former national security advisor Mike Flynn before he goes to jail, probably as a reward for not telling everything he knows about what was going on in 2016. Putin’s Puppet has been on the telephone taking orders from his master, and according to one national security expert speculating on Nicolle Wallace’s show, they are probably preparing to overturn the indictments of the Russian nationals. Why not? Who’s going to stop them? Certainly not the Republicans in Congress. Trump and Barr’s attempt to prove that the Mueller investigation was a partisan hoax recalls what happened just before Election Day in 2016. Apparently, it was briefly and quietly reported that Russia was interfering in our election, but I don’t remember that report (and may not have heard or read it) because I was focused on the much louder news of Trump’s bragging about sexual assault on an “Access Hollywood” tape and the content of Clinton campaign e-mails leaked by (wait for it) the Russians. Last week, while we were watching the taped killing of a young black man and Trump was working with Barr and Putin to destroy our democracy, the news media was still talking about the lies of the latest fake sexual assault victim Tara Reade, who once wrote an article about how much she, a liberal Democrat (wait for it), admired Putin. I keep hoping to wake up and learn that I’ve spent the last four years living in a really long, bad SNL skit.
From the beginning, the METOO movement has been absurd. Early during the movement, I mean-tweeted Chelsea Handler after hearing her say seriously on Bill Maher’s show that we have to believe women now because we didn’t believe them in the past. I told the hard-drinking, not well-educated comedian that I knew this thinking thing was new to her, but she needed to up her game. The women weren’t heard or believed claim is what KellyAnne Conway would call “an alternative fact.” I’ve mentioned Emmett Till, the Scottsboro Boys, the Duke University athletes accused by a black stripper, and the Rolling Stone/University of Virginia mess that cost that magazine a great deal of money so frequently that I wish I could just stamp my response. Lately, I’ve recalled Reverend Sharpton’s friend Tawana Brawley, who accused four white men of raping her and writing on her body. She was believed until her story fell apart, and there are probably people who still believe her. Even if we didn’t believe some women in the past, it certainly doesn’t mean we should believe every woman now or that we should take every accusation seriously. If the woman who used to
break into David Letterman’s house had accused him of rape, should we have believed her? Women are just as crazy and/or evil as men. Crazy, evil men rape; crazy, evil women are more likely to lie about being raped.
I don’t know how crazy or evil Tara Reade is, but she’s clearly a liar, and she’s lying for political reasons just as the women accusing 2020 Democratic frontrunner Al Franken in 2017 lied for political reasons and just as the METOO movement was used to remove 88-year-old, somewhat senile Civil Rights icon John Conyers for political expediency; the younger and more mentally agile Jerry Nadler could then chair the House Judiciary Committee if and when the Democrats won in 2018. It was not only a racist (accusing black men of rape or sexual misconduct is as old or older than this nation), cynical, and cruel act, but also an absurd one. Once 47% of white women and 80% of white evangelicals voting picked the self-confessed sexual assaulter instead of the white woman, sexual misconduct should never again have been used as a political weapon. That it has been used more frequently by both political parties since 2016 is beyond absurd.
As I watched the “scandalous” Mika B, who wasn’t married to Joe S when they started working together, grill Joe B and watched the female Democrats (Harris, Gillibrand) who signed the Al Franken petition and voted against Kavanaugh have to explain why they believed Joe B while a METOO- promoting LA columnist whom I have mean-tweeted several times, including when she suggested that the now late Kobe Bryant shouldn’t receive an Oscar because he was accused by one white woman (where were all of the other accusers?) of rape, wrote an awkward explanation of why she is still planning to vote for Joe B, I saw another problem with this movement—hypocrisy. As I mean-tweeted Mika, sex scandals spread like this deadly virus. I reminded her of what happened with the Republicans after they impeached Clinton over sexual misbehavior. Speaker Gingrich was also cheating on his wife as was the next potential Republican Speaker, and the man who became Speaker after those two “scandalous” Republicans left is now in jail for sexual misconduct before he entered politics. As that example shows, there is also the problem in politics of bipartisan scandals. Trump claimed that Reade’s changing, ridiculous, incredible story was more credible than the one told by Dr. Ford. Well, at least Reade wasn’t talking about something that happened when Biden was in high school. Neither story should have been told or heard, and while we’re back in the nineties, which is when the alleged Biden sexual assault occurred, this false accusation against him could be karma for his allowing that absurd “high-tech lynching” to happen in 1991. Dr. Anita Hill, Biden, and everyone involved in that circus owe my least favorite Supreme Court Justice, the man I call Uncle Thomas, an apology. Sexual misconduct should not be used as a political weapon against any political candidate, no matter his/her race, gender, or sexual orientation. But it is especially despicable to use it against a black man, even when the accuser is a black woman.
As I said on Facebook, the Biden/Reade fiasco shows that it’s time for METOO to join Jim Crow, prohibition, the war on weed, the criminalization of homosexuality, and the decriminalization of spousal abuse in the dustbin of history. The men who have lost their jobs and their reputations because of this vile movement can’t have their dignity or maybe their careers restored, but perhaps they can sue NBC, New Yorker, Time and the other media outlets that launched the “nasty men” movement. Epstein is dead, and Kelly, who preyed on young black girls and is clearly crazy, needs to stay in jail or be placed in a mental institution. But Cosby and Weinstein need to be released at least until Trump goes to jail. I’ve tweeted to Harris, Warren, Gillibrand, and Sanders that they need to sign a new petition apologizing to Al Franken and condemning the use of sexual misconduct as a political weapon. I’ve tweeted (for the second time) to the Congressional Black Caucus and Nancy Pelosi that they need to name a room or a bill after the now deceased John Conyers and restore his good name. I pointed out that his birthday is this month.
I may have some media help in ending this absurd and extremely damaging movement. As I switched between Don Lemon’s show and Bill Maher’s on Friday, I found myself clapping for both of their monologues. Lemon preached about how tired blacks are of being killed and pointed out that we black folks have joined other people’s movements. Perhaps because he’s gay, he mentioned the LGBTQ movement, but he used the tag (to my delight) USTOO. GO, DON! Maher used his New Rules monologue to take down the Democrats for allowing themselves to be played by conservatives and the media, using sexual misconduct. He angrily mentioned how the Democrats threw Al Franken under the bus. GO, BILL! But ultimately lying con artists like Tara Reade and Jacob Wohl, who has tried to smear Mueller and Pete B with fake charges of sexual misconduct, will help destroy METOO. Eventually, even the most foolish, cultish Americans, the ones most likely to join a high-tech lynch mob, will have to stop believing and start thinking.
Finally, on this Mother’s Day, as my mother resides safely in a memory care facility, I’m remembering February 2, 1990, when I arrived at her friend Doris’ home, still hoping that she had lied about being raped the night before because she was scared to live alone and wanted me to sell my home and buy one with her, only to see the damage that the just released from prison freak who lived next door to her with his mother had done to her face. I remember a white man about to give me grief when I was pushing ahead of him at the police station because my mother and I were late for an appointment to take pictures of her bruises, seeing her face and saying, “I’m sorry. Go right ahead.” And I remember my mother telling me with surprise how “nice” the police, doctors, and nurses were to her. See, a black woman born in Kentucky in 1928 doesn’t expect to be treated with compassion and kindness, no matter what has happened to her, no matter how brutally she has been beaten and raped. Finally, I remember how angry she was at Anita Hill during that ridiculous 1991 educated-black-folks-talking-about-sex hearing. I was surprised because her rapist was black, and she was still angry at all black men not related to her or to her close friends. The only time she laughed at Will Smith, aka Fresh Prince, was when he and Cousin Carlton were jailed. But she believed that a black woman publicly complaining to white men about a black man telling dirty jokes was, as she said at the time, “terrible and not raised right.”
On this Mother’s Day, for my mother and all of the mothers and future mothers who have been raped, I say, “Time’s Up for METOO. Let’s get #NOTMETOO trending.”
Three D’s And Sex: Ending Black (Mostly) Male Genocide
As usual in the Trump era, the last two weeks have been challenging, maddening, and exhilarating. I’ve spent them yelling at the television, e-mailing the NEW YORK TIMES, posting on Facebook, and mean-tweeting Trump, multiple politicians (I also sweet-tweeted some advice and support to Democrats), media folks, and a few tweeters who must not know about me because they tried to set me straight, which is always a bad idea. The Cooper encounter in Central Park, the murders of three unarmed black people (this time one was a woman in Kentucky; her uninjured boyfriend was arrested) while NYT wrote a 5000 word article on Tara Reade (I didn’t read it), and both PEOPLE and the LA TIMES hyped a documentary demonizing still another powerful black man, father of hip hop and relative of reality stars Russell Simmons, with sexual misconduct charges made it clear what my topic would be this week. I’ve told multiple media folks, including MSNBC’ s Rachel Maddox, who usually doesn’t focus on either sex or racism, and the editors of NYT, PEOPLE, and the LA TIMES that the media’s focus on sex is the reason unarmed black men are being murdered and threatened by privileged, spiteful white women. The use of sex both to demonize black men and to distract from the issue that led to the election (by white evangelicals, white women, and the racist electoral college) of an insane white supremacist is the reason black (mostly) men are being murdered while jogging, waking up to what they think is a home invasion, or being arrested while unarmed. Racism denial by liberals and sometimes the media is the other reason, which is why the last few days have been exhilarating. The killing of George Floyd has finally made the world adopt the BlackLivesMatter slogan and take a knee. The marches that should have happened when a self-confessed sexual assaulting white supremacist was elected by white women and white evangelicals are happening now. But some folks in the media still want to discuss sex.
I’ve been writing about Americans’ preference for discussing sex instead of race since shortly after I started this blog. See the 11/24/13 post “Race Versus Sex: What’s America’s Favorite Topic?” In the 5/10/20 blog, I was still making that point. But using sex to distract us from the most relentlessly destructive problem (even more destructive than our love of guns) in our country and culture is not as dangerous as using it to demonize black men. It’s not just shameful and disgraceful that the media and the Pennsylvania prosecutor continued to pursue Bill Cosby after Donald Trump became President, it’s dangerous and potentially deadly for black folks. Despite writing about it multiple times, I still have not heard any person with a media platform make the connection between the media’s pushing the Bill Cosby is a rapist lie (sexual assault and rape are as different as pick pocketing and armed robbery), starting in 2014, and the domestic terrorist explaining why he killed (in 2015) nine black people, including elderly women, in a church, by saying, “They rape our women.” White supremacist Donald Trump had given his “Mexicans are rapists” speech a few days earlier, but even the most ignorant bigot knows the difference between Mexicans and blacks. Besides, the murders took more planning than a few days. Just as all white people and even all white men are not blamed when one of them murders 58 people in Las Vegas or 22 in El Paso, calling Trump or the other dirty Bills—Clinton and O’Reilly—rapists will not lead to white people being killed in a church. I doubt that even the despicable demonization of Harvey Weinstein and Jeff Epstein using sex will cause more murders in synagogues. Jews have not been sexualized in Western culture the way blacks have. They’re demonized using religion and fears of their ability to gain power.
Racism against blacks has always been about sex. The movie “Birth of a Nation,” which was based on a book about the Klan, makes a pro-Klan argument with a scene showing a scary-looking black man chasing a beautiful white woman who jumps off a cliff to avoid being raped. The primary argument against integration and for Jim Crow was that black boys and men would seduce or rape white girls and women if they socialized. The first secretary of the NAACP James Weldon Johnson illustrated this point in his classic 1912 novel AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN. In a debate on a train where Ex is passing for white, the Union Man clearly wins the debate with the statement, if black people were inferior, whites wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep them in their place. But then the Texan plays his “trump” (I wonder what Daddy would have said if Ivanka married a black man instead of a Jewish one. Hmmm. Maybe I should tweet Tiffany) card. He asks the Union man if he would want a black man in his living room or marrying his daughter. The Union man said no, but then he didn’t socialize with most white people. Of course, there was never any concern about a white son marrying or having sex with a black woman. Ex’s father is a wealthy white man; his mother is a light-skinned black woman who worked for Ex’s paternal grandmother. When I taught the novel, I connected Ex’s story to segregationist Strom Thurmond, who had a daughter with his mother’s black servant. We don’t know if he raped or seduced her. The story of miscegenation in America, as not only Johnson, Frederick Douglass, and Richard Wright showed but even William Faulkner and Harriet Beecher Stowe made clear, is white men raped black women while black men were often falsely accused of rape and lynched. In fact, the use of charges of rape (usually of white women) to destroy powerful black men is older than this nation. White women, like the two reporters for the NEW YORK TIMES, who cheered when an elderly black man was locked up for pawing, not raping, a foreign (Canadian), over six feet tall white woman, were at best ignorant of American history if they believed they were witnessing progress, and at worst, they’re as racist as Trump and don’t realize it.
The way the Bill Cosby is a rapist narrative started is interesting. Those of us who pay attention to pop culture had known about Bill’s extramarital activities since shortly after his son was murdered in the late nineties. When a white woman claimed falsely that he was the father of her child, he admitted to having an affair with her. A biography that was published the same year that the Cosby is a rapist narrative surfaced mentions his affairs but not drugs and sexual assault. Still, I remember reading an article about his bad behavior with a former model, drug addict, and fame whore (she was on multiple reality shows, including one that helps celebrity drug addicts) years before the major media attacks started. Why 2014? Well, Cosby was clearly making a power move, whether or not he was trying to buy NBC. He was performing stand-up, doing interviews with his wife about his art collection, and that mostly laudatory biography was published. Maybe people were just sick of him and thought his time was up. But not so coincidentally, the media attack on the entertainer who did more to enhance the black male image than even Reverend King and President Obama, who weren’t on television as long as Cosby was (I was in high school when he was starring in “I Spy”), started the same year that the BlackLivesMatter movement became prominent. Do you believe in coincidences? I don’t. The black comedian who made the Cosby is a rapist joke was not on television. His routine was taped on a cellphone. I argue that Cosby, OJ, and Clarence Thomas were all used as counter-narratives to the BLM narrative.
Racism denial allows liberal whites to support the media attack on Cosby by simply pretending that it has nothing to do with race. Uh, almost all of Cosby’s so-called victims were white. Uh, “civil rights lawyer” Gloria Allred not only went after Cosby but also Herman Cain, OJ, and Tiger Woods. What do they have in common? They’re black men who had sex with white women. If whites pretend that race doesn’t matter, especially when discussing sex, then they don’t have to ask why Lifetime presented two documentaries on R Kelly, but none on Donald Trump’s sexual behavior or for that matter Matt Lauer’s and Charlie Rose’s. If they pretend that race doesn’t matter, they don’t have to be outraged that on the same day that the legally blind, 81-year-old Bill Cosby was going to jail because he was supposedly so dangerous that he couldn’t stay at home while his appeals went through the courts, confessed sexual assaulter Donald Trump was at the UN being laughed at by other world leaders. If they pretend that race doesn’t matter, they don’t have to ask why the new streaming service HBO Max would open with a documentary about Russell Simmons’ bad sexual behavior instead of about Donald Trump’s or Matt Lauer’s or Charlie Rose’s. If they pretend that race doesn’t matter, they don’t have to make the connection between the genocidal assassination of unarmed, mostly dark-skinned, sometimes large black men and the American media’s obsession with black men’s sexuality.
It took seven years (the black lives matter phrase was first adopted after George Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013) for the BlackLivesMatter movement to be accepted around the world. Trump likes to thank himself, so we should probably thank him and his despicable followers for making racism and racism denial uncool. No decent white person is saying “white lives matter” or “blue lives matter” now. I hope it doesn’t take as long for folks to wake up to the evil caused by the focus on sexual misbehavior. I see signs of awakening. A younger black woman tweeted yesterday about the need for women who lie about being raped to be punished. But NYT still published that distracting Tara Reade profile, and HBO Max didn’t realize it was a bad time to debut a documentary demonizing a black man for sexual misconduct. There’s more work to be done.
The genocide of black (mostly) men will not end until we stop focusing so much on sex and start focusing more on race. Women who feel that they have been raped or sexually assaulted by any man, whatever his race, should be heard in the court, by the police, and by their friends and family. They should not be heard in the public sphere. They have no right to be heard about some sexual encounter that they claim happened decades earlier. Spiteful women like the dog-walking Cooper in Central Park should be called out by society. And women who are caught lying about rape should not be jailed as the young tweeter suggested but demonized. If we see lying about being raped as almost as disgusting as raping, fewer white men will have their reputations destroyed, and fewer black men will be murdered. #NOTMETOO!
I’ve been writing about Americans’ preference for discussing sex instead of race since shortly after I started this blog. See the 11/24/13 post “Race Versus Sex: What’s America’s Favorite Topic?” In the 5/10/20 blog, I was still making that point. But using sex to distract us from the most relentlessly destructive problem (even more destructive than our love of guns) in our country and culture is not as dangerous as using it to demonize black men. It’s not just shameful and disgraceful that the media and the Pennsylvania prosecutor continued to pursue Bill Cosby after Donald Trump became President, it’s dangerous and potentially deadly for black folks. Despite writing about it multiple times, I still have not heard any person with a media platform make the connection between the media’s pushing the Bill Cosby is a rapist lie (sexual assault and rape are as different as pick pocketing and armed robbery), starting in 2014, and the domestic terrorist explaining why he killed (in 2015) nine black people, including elderly women, in a church, by saying, “They rape our women.” White supremacist Donald Trump had given his “Mexicans are rapists” speech a few days earlier, but even the most ignorant bigot knows the difference between Mexicans and blacks. Besides, the murders took more planning than a few days. Just as all white people and even all white men are not blamed when one of them murders 58 people in Las Vegas or 22 in El Paso, calling Trump or the other dirty Bills—Clinton and O’Reilly—rapists will not lead to white people being killed in a church. I doubt that even the despicable demonization of Harvey Weinstein and Jeff Epstein using sex will cause more murders in synagogues. Jews have not been sexualized in Western culture the way blacks have. They’re demonized using religion and fears of their ability to gain power.
Racism against blacks has always been about sex. The movie “Birth of a Nation,” which was based on a book about the Klan, makes a pro-Klan argument with a scene showing a scary-looking black man chasing a beautiful white woman who jumps off a cliff to avoid being raped. The primary argument against integration and for Jim Crow was that black boys and men would seduce or rape white girls and women if they socialized. The first secretary of the NAACP James Weldon Johnson illustrated this point in his classic 1912 novel AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLOURED MAN. In a debate on a train where Ex is passing for white, the Union Man clearly wins the debate with the statement, if black people were inferior, whites wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep them in their place. But then the Texan plays his “trump” (I wonder what Daddy would have said if Ivanka married a black man instead of a Jewish one. Hmmm. Maybe I should tweet Tiffany) card. He asks the Union man if he would want a black man in his living room or marrying his daughter. The Union man said no, but then he didn’t socialize with most white people. Of course, there was never any concern about a white son marrying or having sex with a black woman. Ex’s father is a wealthy white man; his mother is a light-skinned black woman who worked for Ex’s paternal grandmother. When I taught the novel, I connected Ex’s story to segregationist Strom Thurmond, who had a daughter with his mother’s black servant. We don’t know if he raped or seduced her. The story of miscegenation in America, as not only Johnson, Frederick Douglass, and Richard Wright showed but even William Faulkner and Harriet Beecher Stowe made clear, is white men raped black women while black men were often falsely accused of rape and lynched. In fact, the use of charges of rape (usually of white women) to destroy powerful black men is older than this nation. White women, like the two reporters for the NEW YORK TIMES, who cheered when an elderly black man was locked up for pawing, not raping, a foreign (Canadian), over six feet tall white woman, were at best ignorant of American history if they believed they were witnessing progress, and at worst, they’re as racist as Trump and don’t realize it.
The way the Bill Cosby is a rapist narrative started is interesting. Those of us who pay attention to pop culture had known about Bill’s extramarital activities since shortly after his son was murdered in the late nineties. When a white woman claimed falsely that he was the father of her child, he admitted to having an affair with her. A biography that was published the same year that the Cosby is a rapist narrative surfaced mentions his affairs but not drugs and sexual assault. Still, I remember reading an article about his bad behavior with a former model, drug addict, and fame whore (she was on multiple reality shows, including one that helps celebrity drug addicts) years before the major media attacks started. Why 2014? Well, Cosby was clearly making a power move, whether or not he was trying to buy NBC. He was performing stand-up, doing interviews with his wife about his art collection, and that mostly laudatory biography was published. Maybe people were just sick of him and thought his time was up. But not so coincidentally, the media attack on the entertainer who did more to enhance the black male image than even Reverend King and President Obama, who weren’t on television as long as Cosby was (I was in high school when he was starring in “I Spy”), started the same year that the BlackLivesMatter movement became prominent. Do you believe in coincidences? I don’t. The black comedian who made the Cosby is a rapist joke was not on television. His routine was taped on a cellphone. I argue that Cosby, OJ, and Clarence Thomas were all used as counter-narratives to the BLM narrative.
Racism denial allows liberal whites to support the media attack on Cosby by simply pretending that it has nothing to do with race. Uh, almost all of Cosby’s so-called victims were white. Uh, “civil rights lawyer” Gloria Allred not only went after Cosby but also Herman Cain, OJ, and Tiger Woods. What do they have in common? They’re black men who had sex with white women. If whites pretend that race doesn’t matter, especially when discussing sex, then they don’t have to ask why Lifetime presented two documentaries on R Kelly, but none on Donald Trump’s sexual behavior or for that matter Matt Lauer’s and Charlie Rose’s. If they pretend that race doesn’t matter, they don’t have to be outraged that on the same day that the legally blind, 81-year-old Bill Cosby was going to jail because he was supposedly so dangerous that he couldn’t stay at home while his appeals went through the courts, confessed sexual assaulter Donald Trump was at the UN being laughed at by other world leaders. If they pretend that race doesn’t matter, they don’t have to ask why the new streaming service HBO Max would open with a documentary about Russell Simmons’ bad sexual behavior instead of about Donald Trump’s or Matt Lauer’s or Charlie Rose’s. If they pretend that race doesn’t matter, they don’t have to make the connection between the genocidal assassination of unarmed, mostly dark-skinned, sometimes large black men and the American media’s obsession with black men’s sexuality.
It took seven years (the black lives matter phrase was first adopted after George Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013) for the BlackLivesMatter movement to be accepted around the world. Trump likes to thank himself, so we should probably thank him and his despicable followers for making racism and racism denial uncool. No decent white person is saying “white lives matter” or “blue lives matter” now. I hope it doesn’t take as long for folks to wake up to the evil caused by the focus on sexual misbehavior. I see signs of awakening. A younger black woman tweeted yesterday about the need for women who lie about being raped to be punished. But NYT still published that distracting Tara Reade profile, and HBO Max didn’t realize it was a bad time to debut a documentary demonizing a black man for sexual misconduct. There’s more work to be done.
The genocide of black (mostly) men will not end until we stop focusing so much on sex and start focusing more on race. Women who feel that they have been raped or sexually assaulted by any man, whatever his race, should be heard in the court, by the police, and by their friends and family. They should not be heard in the public sphere. They have no right to be heard about some sexual encounter that they claim happened decades earlier. Spiteful women like the dog-walking Cooper in Central Park should be called out by society. And women who are caught lying about rape should not be jailed as the young tweeter suggested but demonized. If we see lying about being raped as almost as disgusting as raping, fewer white men will have their reputations destroyed, and fewer black men will be murdered. #NOTMETOO!
Define, Demonize, Silence, and Purge: How To Battle White Supremacists
When former Trump friend Donny Deutsch said on “Morning Joe” that socialism was the most unAmerican term, I rushed to my I-Pad to tweet that it’s too bad white supremacy is not the most unAmerican term. In fact, it may be the most American term. After the media-generated, lock up the Jews and blacks METOO movement started, I contrasted the treatment of the mostly white women activists in that movement to that of the black women who started the BlackLivesMatter movement. Even when that movement went viral last year after the on camera knee-to-neck murder of George Floyd, it was still being demonized by vile white supremacists like Donald Trump, William Barr, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson. The peaceful protesters were being called anarchists and terrorists, and the destruction, looting, and violence caused by white supremacists posing as antifa and opportunistic thugs were blamed on them. Long before 1/6/21, I contrasted the treatment of the unarmed, peaceful BlackLivesMatter protesters, who were being beaten, gassed, and shot with rubber bullets by rioting police officers, to the treatment of the armed white “Liberate Michigan” terrorists who stormed that state capitol. But again the insane white supremacist who finally left the White House has been our best weapon against racism. When he unleashed the mob that I called TRASH (Traitors, Racists, Anarchists, Seditionists, Hoodlums) in my last post (1/17/21), he made violent white supremacy go viral and led President Biden (I love saying that phrase) to declare war on white supremacy and white supremacists. I’m ready to join that battle. In fact, I was battling white supremacy when our new President was hanging out with white supremacist and father of a daughter by his mother’s sixteen-year-old black maid Strom Thurmond during the last three decades of the 20th Century. I know how we can win this battle and make white supremacy the most unAmerican term. We need to define, demonize, silence, and purge white supremacists.
First, we need to distinguish between racism and white supremacy. Racism is a condition like mental illness or asthma; white supremacy is an ideology like socialism. As the anti-racist authors have made clear, all of us are biased, and depending on how we define racist (some suggest it has to involve power), all of us might be racist. I would argue that some of us are racist against our own people. But most racists don’t believe that only white people (some would say only white men) should vote and run our country. Most don’t believe that slavery was okay or a necessary evil or that people of color aren’t real Americans, no matter how long their ancestors have been here and how they came, that they are foreigners. Whether they identify as white supremacists or not, the following Americans, whatever their race, believe in white supremacy: 1) birthers 2) voter suppressors who think black folks and other people of color are cheating when they vote and that a President who doesn’t win the majority of white votes is not a legitimate President 3) people who think slavery and segregation were good for blacks 4) people who think this land was and still is white folks’ land and never belonged to the Native Americans 5) people who think that all brown and yellow people are foreign, and all black people are unpatriotic haters of America.
While some white supremacists like the so-called Proud Boys wear the name proudly, most try to hide their ideology (see the 10/11/20 post) and become incensed when anyone suggests that they could be racist or a white supremacist. I loved seeing Tucker Carlson, who demonizes BlackLivesMatter protesters and defends white supremacists, looking hurt and whining when President Biden declared war on white supremacy. He wanted to know exactly what the President meant by white supremacy and who was a white supremacist. As one social media comic said, “Look in the mirror.” To battle white supremacy, we need to make the term even more toxic so that we can use it against racist conservatives the way they use socialism against progressives. We can do that by contrasting the out of the closet white supremacists to socialists and BlackLivesMatter activists. Socialist AOC and new member of the Squad, BlackLivesMatter activist Cori Bush, can be contrasted to QANON believer, anti-masker, pro-gun rights, white supremacist Marjorie Taylor Greene (my new favorite state Georgia’s one big mistake). The Squad members wear masks to protect themselves and their fellow humans from Covid and don’t carry guns in case they decide to execute a political opponent. AOC has never advocated murdering Bloomberg, Trump, or the Koch brothers, and Representative Bush never shouted “burn the pigs in a blanket.” (Some white supremacists are anti-cop, and they’re the ones who want to kill and cremate police officers. They did kill one Capitol police officer by beating him on the head with a fire extinguisher and injured many others during the 1/6 insurrection.) There are no films of AOC, Bush, or any of the Squad members harassing a teenage mass murder survivor the way Greene harassed gun control activist David Hogg. And nothing they’ve said is as crazy as almost everything Greene has said (a laser started a wildfire in California, for instance). We can also contrast the sometimes armed white supremacists who stormed the Capitol to the peaceful BlackLivesMatter protesters, who didn’t shout “Hang Pence” or leave urine and feces on the White House grounds. White supremacists are clearly crazier, trashier, and more dangerous than socialists or BlackLivesMatter activists, and we have the pictures and videos to prove that point.
The white supremacists are also more dangerous (although not necessarily crazier) and destructive to our culture and democracy than Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and all the men who have been METOOed since 2017. We need to treat them the way we’ve treated powerful, successful, but apparently raunchy, men like Mark Halperin and Matt Lauer. I was outraged when Halperin’s former partner John Heilemann interviewed white supremacist and indicted for fraud (this happened before fellow white supremacist Trump exercised his pardon power) Steve Bannon on Showtime’s political show “The Circus.” Halperin helped create “The Circus” and seemed to be the star, but he hasn’t appeared on the show since it was revealed that he was what my mother would call “a dirty dog,” sexually harassing women behind the scenes. Yet Bannon can be welcomed on the show and allowed to spread his poison? The folks on television need to follow the lead of Twitter and Facebook. Silence the white supremacists. Send them to Parler, Fox, and wherever else vile white supremacists are welcome. Then demonize those media outlets for promoting white supremacy.
If powerful men like Cosby, Weinstein, Halperin, and Lauer can be purged from our culture because of private sexual misbehavior, why can’t we purge white supremacists like Hannity and Carlson? Bill O’Reilly was the highest rated cable news star, but he lost his job on Fox because of his sexual misbehavior behind the scenes. Hannity and Carlson fly their white supremacy flags on camera! Why are they still on television? It’s not enough for them to lose sponsors; they can find new sponsors like that stupid pillow guy. They need to be cancelled. There should be no place for white supremacists on any respectable news media outlet. TIME, NEW YORKER, NBC, ABC, CBS, and all of the other media outlets involved in the 2017 METOO lock up the black and Jewish men movement, demonize white supremacists and demand that they be cancelled. Congress folks who used the METOO movement to get rid of elderly, cognitively impaired Civil Rights icon Representative John Conyers and supporter of women and 2020 presidential frontrunner Senator Al Franken, demand that the white supremacists (Cruz, Hawley, Greene, Jordan, Nunes, Brooks, etc.) resign or at least lose all committee assignments. Military leaders, ban white supremacists the way gay and transgender folks were banned until the progressives ended that discrimination. State, local, and federal agencies, make all new employees (after you purge the old ones) take an oath swearing that they are not white supremacists (that includes people of color since we can be white supremacists just as women can be sexist against women) the way I had to take an oath in 1965 swearing that I was not a Communist before I could work as a temporary federal employee at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. I don’t remember taking such an oath when I was hired to teach high school in Illinois in 1971, and I know I didn’t take that oath when I taught at USC, Tufts, and Cal Poly Pomona in the late seventies, but a friend remembers having to swear she wasn’t a Communist when she was hired to teach at a Los Angeles area elementary school, probably in 1970. All teachers, professors, firemen, and especially police officers need to take an oath swearing that they are not white supremacists before they are hired.
The United States of America was founded on white supremacy. It was written into the Constitution with the dehumanization of my people (3/5 human) and Native Americans. We may never completely eliminate that vile ideology, but Trump and TRASH have made this moment our best chance to defeat it so that no sane American will ever again proudly claim to be a white supremacist. If we define, demonize, silence, and purge white supremacists, they may not “disappear like a miracle,” but they will never again be able to gain so much power and attack our culture and democracy.
First, we need to distinguish between racism and white supremacy. Racism is a condition like mental illness or asthma; white supremacy is an ideology like socialism. As the anti-racist authors have made clear, all of us are biased, and depending on how we define racist (some suggest it has to involve power), all of us might be racist. I would argue that some of us are racist against our own people. But most racists don’t believe that only white people (some would say only white men) should vote and run our country. Most don’t believe that slavery was okay or a necessary evil or that people of color aren’t real Americans, no matter how long their ancestors have been here and how they came, that they are foreigners. Whether they identify as white supremacists or not, the following Americans, whatever their race, believe in white supremacy: 1) birthers 2) voter suppressors who think black folks and other people of color are cheating when they vote and that a President who doesn’t win the majority of white votes is not a legitimate President 3) people who think slavery and segregation were good for blacks 4) people who think this land was and still is white folks’ land and never belonged to the Native Americans 5) people who think that all brown and yellow people are foreign, and all black people are unpatriotic haters of America.
While some white supremacists like the so-called Proud Boys wear the name proudly, most try to hide their ideology (see the 10/11/20 post) and become incensed when anyone suggests that they could be racist or a white supremacist. I loved seeing Tucker Carlson, who demonizes BlackLivesMatter protesters and defends white supremacists, looking hurt and whining when President Biden declared war on white supremacy. He wanted to know exactly what the President meant by white supremacy and who was a white supremacist. As one social media comic said, “Look in the mirror.” To battle white supremacy, we need to make the term even more toxic so that we can use it against racist conservatives the way they use socialism against progressives. We can do that by contrasting the out of the closet white supremacists to socialists and BlackLivesMatter activists. Socialist AOC and new member of the Squad, BlackLivesMatter activist Cori Bush, can be contrasted to QANON believer, anti-masker, pro-gun rights, white supremacist Marjorie Taylor Greene (my new favorite state Georgia’s one big mistake). The Squad members wear masks to protect themselves and their fellow humans from Covid and don’t carry guns in case they decide to execute a political opponent. AOC has never advocated murdering Bloomberg, Trump, or the Koch brothers, and Representative Bush never shouted “burn the pigs in a blanket.” (Some white supremacists are anti-cop, and they’re the ones who want to kill and cremate police officers. They did kill one Capitol police officer by beating him on the head with a fire extinguisher and injured many others during the 1/6 insurrection.) There are no films of AOC, Bush, or any of the Squad members harassing a teenage mass murder survivor the way Greene harassed gun control activist David Hogg. And nothing they’ve said is as crazy as almost everything Greene has said (a laser started a wildfire in California, for instance). We can also contrast the sometimes armed white supremacists who stormed the Capitol to the peaceful BlackLivesMatter protesters, who didn’t shout “Hang Pence” or leave urine and feces on the White House grounds. White supremacists are clearly crazier, trashier, and more dangerous than socialists or BlackLivesMatter activists, and we have the pictures and videos to prove that point.
The white supremacists are also more dangerous (although not necessarily crazier) and destructive to our culture and democracy than Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and all the men who have been METOOed since 2017. We need to treat them the way we’ve treated powerful, successful, but apparently raunchy, men like Mark Halperin and Matt Lauer. I was outraged when Halperin’s former partner John Heilemann interviewed white supremacist and indicted for fraud (this happened before fellow white supremacist Trump exercised his pardon power) Steve Bannon on Showtime’s political show “The Circus.” Halperin helped create “The Circus” and seemed to be the star, but he hasn’t appeared on the show since it was revealed that he was what my mother would call “a dirty dog,” sexually harassing women behind the scenes. Yet Bannon can be welcomed on the show and allowed to spread his poison? The folks on television need to follow the lead of Twitter and Facebook. Silence the white supremacists. Send them to Parler, Fox, and wherever else vile white supremacists are welcome. Then demonize those media outlets for promoting white supremacy.
If powerful men like Cosby, Weinstein, Halperin, and Lauer can be purged from our culture because of private sexual misbehavior, why can’t we purge white supremacists like Hannity and Carlson? Bill O’Reilly was the highest rated cable news star, but he lost his job on Fox because of his sexual misbehavior behind the scenes. Hannity and Carlson fly their white supremacy flags on camera! Why are they still on television? It’s not enough for them to lose sponsors; they can find new sponsors like that stupid pillow guy. They need to be cancelled. There should be no place for white supremacists on any respectable news media outlet. TIME, NEW YORKER, NBC, ABC, CBS, and all of the other media outlets involved in the 2017 METOO lock up the black and Jewish men movement, demonize white supremacists and demand that they be cancelled. Congress folks who used the METOO movement to get rid of elderly, cognitively impaired Civil Rights icon Representative John Conyers and supporter of women and 2020 presidential frontrunner Senator Al Franken, demand that the white supremacists (Cruz, Hawley, Greene, Jordan, Nunes, Brooks, etc.) resign or at least lose all committee assignments. Military leaders, ban white supremacists the way gay and transgender folks were banned until the progressives ended that discrimination. State, local, and federal agencies, make all new employees (after you purge the old ones) take an oath swearing that they are not white supremacists (that includes people of color since we can be white supremacists just as women can be sexist against women) the way I had to take an oath in 1965 swearing that I was not a Communist before I could work as a temporary federal employee at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. I don’t remember taking such an oath when I was hired to teach high school in Illinois in 1971, and I know I didn’t take that oath when I taught at USC, Tufts, and Cal Poly Pomona in the late seventies, but a friend remembers having to swear she wasn’t a Communist when she was hired to teach at a Los Angeles area elementary school, probably in 1970. All teachers, professors, firemen, and especially police officers need to take an oath swearing that they are not white supremacists before they are hired.
The United States of America was founded on white supremacy. It was written into the Constitution with the dehumanization of my people (3/5 human) and Native Americans. We may never completely eliminate that vile ideology, but Trump and TRASH have made this moment our best chance to defeat it so that no sane American will ever again proudly claim to be a white supremacist. If we define, demonize, silence, and purge white supremacists, they may not “disappear like a miracle,” but they will never again be able to gain so much power and attack our culture and democracy.
METOO, PC, White Women, And The Media: How We Lost Virginia
Four years ago, when the Democrats won big in Virginia, I wrote a blog (11/12/17) explaining what lessons we should learn from that election. One lesson was that we should engage in “identity politics” and run unconventional candidates. Obviously, the Democrats didn’t learn that lesson. They ran a white male former Governor who lost to a sly, inexperienced, white male Trump clone who knew how to appeal to the base Trump cult (demonizing a teaching method that doesn’t exist in K-12 schools or most colleges and universities) while keeping the insane white supremacist out of the state. I wondered when I saw that the former Governor was being recycled what happened to the black Lieutenant Governor who had been METOOed after the current white male Governor was PCed. I learned from a Virginia resident on Twitter that he had run in the primary but lost to two black women and the white former Governor. What would have happened if the current Virginia Lieutenant Governor hadn’t been METOOed and had run as the Democratic candidate for Governor in the now usually blue state that has already elected a black Governor? What if one of the black women had run as Lieutenant Governor? Instead the clever Republican businessman ran with a conservative, gun-toting black woman, and she became the first black female Lieutenant Governor in Virginia. She also became the weapon the white supremacists could use to counter the argument that the people who voted for a man who used an attack on teaching critical race theory to elementary school children (as big a lie as the 2020 election steal one) to whip the white vote are white supremacists. As I said on Twitter, black folks (like Larry Elder) can be white supremacists just as women, like the majority of white women who voted for a self-proclaimed sexual assaulter instead of a white woman in 2016, can be sexist. Virginia will now be run by a tax-cutting (I urged the Virginia voters to review what happened to the state budgets in Kansas and California when those voters chose a tax-cutting Republican) white supremacist because of the Democrats’ use of political correctness and METOO to attack (mostly white) men, because white women are even more racist than white men, and because the media keeps telling big lies about what’s going on.
After the experienced and once popular governor Terry McAuliffe lost, I proclaimed that smart black female voters like this one don’t want to support a candidate who can be PCed with lies about wearing blackface in the eighties or METOOed the way not only the Virginia Lieutenant Governor was unsuccessfully (until the Democratic primaries) but also the way both former Senator Al Franken and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo were successfully. I also warned (I’ve been busy on Twitter and Facebook since Wednesday) that Democrats need to stop focusing so much venom on Manchin and Sinema and pay attention to Schumer and Gillibrand, who attack popular Democrats with phony METOO charges. Once Cuomo was forced out by the dirty Democrats, I decided that I would no longer donate money to white men like Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Kelly has been quiet so far, but what if he decides to raise his profile if he wins reelection? What if he starts eloquently talking on television about gun control? What if he writes a bestselling book? Won’t jealous narcissist Schumer come after him with help from every-man-is-a-predator-and-all-women-are-innocent—prey Gillibrand? Why waste our votes and our money helping elect white men so that those two anti-democracy, reputation-destroying, evil Democrats can get rid of them? I assume Reverend Warnock is safe, not because he’s black (ask the black Virginia Lieutenant Governor and Bill Cosby if being black protected them; you can’t ask civil rights icon John Conyers because he’s dead), but because he’s a minister, so I’ll donate to his campaign.
I have been railing against METOO and political correctness for years, first, because they’re used against Democrats, most often by other Democrats but also by dirty Republican operatives like Roger Stone, and second, because they are distractions from the real story of what’s destroying our democracy and what allowed an insane, immoral, incompetent white supremacist to become President—racism. In one of my earliest (3/30/14) blog posts, “Blackface/Whiteface: Why We All Need Thicker Skins,” I complained that the focus on crude Nick Cannon wearing whiteface and sweet dancer/singer Julianne Hough wearing golden face, which was stupidly called blackface, kept us from focusing on the real problems with systemic racism. I made similar points in a more recent blog post (6/5/21) “Distractions, Denials, Revisions, And Reversals: How White Supremacists Win.” The biggest distraction is, of course, the media-generated METOO movement. The focus on sexual misconduct, almost exclusively by men, and toxic masculinity by a movement started (by NEW YORKER and NEW YORK TIMES) two months after the Nazi march in Charlottesville and one month after a crazy white man killed almost sixty people in Las Vegas, turned our attention away from the fact that the majority of white women voted for an insane, racist sexual assaulter instead of a sane white woman.
Once again, the white women voted for the bigot, but when I called them villains posing as victims, one conservative white woman came for me on Twitter. She soon learned it was a mistake. I’m armed with facts. When she suggested that calling white women villains was causing hate, I wondered if calling men, including black men like former beloved comedian Bill Cosby, rapists also generated hate. She didn’t respond directly but changed her tone. I didn’t even have to point out how black and Asian women are being harassed (sometimes beaten) partly because Kamala Harris is Vice President for this relatively smart woman to realize that she couldn’t really play the victim when debating a 72-year-old black woman, born in the Jim Crow South. Not all white women are villains posing as victims, but the majority of white women voted for an insane, self-proclaimed sexual assaulter twice, while mostly different white women continued to whine about being made uncomfortable by sexually harassing men. I was triggered last week by Fox beauty queen Gretchen Carlson, who sat in the conservative seat on “The View” panel for two days. Because she’s conservative, it is possible that she voted for Trump at least once, yet she was whining about sexual harassment. This woman who became famous by parading around in a bathing suit while wearing high heels received 20 million dollars for her pain and even more fame (including portrayal in a movie called “Bombshell”) for being a victim of sexual harassment by “toxic” men while I have not received one dime for having to deal with racist men and women since I entered white institutions at twelve. How much should I receive for watching my seventh grade white female teacher count the black students in her class and leave the room (she wanted some of us removed), Ms. Gretchen? How much should I be awarded for being called the so-called n-word my freshman year of high school by a white freshman girl whom I punched, the only time I was “in trouble” during my public school years? How much does a young black woman deserve for being pawed on a bus and in a movie theater by freaky white men? For being twice offered money for sex by horny, “toxic” white men, once when she was a graduate student at USC, and once when she was an assistant professor at Cal Poly Pomona? How about for being called the n-word when she was walking down the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the year when she was an assistant professor at Tufts (making $15,000 a year in 1979-80)? When the smug, privileged beauty queen linked sexual harassment to racism during her second day on the show, I told myself that I might have to stop watching “The View” as I rushed to my I-Pad to mean-tweet Ms. Gretchen.
I’ve stopped watching CNN and MSNBC (except Jonathan Capehart on Sunday mornings) because they and other news media outlets are the main reason our democracy is on life support and my blood pressure is rising. The news media started and continue to promote the METOO movement. They demonize more decent people like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden while celebrating corrupt media whores like Donald Trump and Michael Avenatti. I just finished reading Woody Allen’s memoir and shook my head at his cluelessness when he expressed surprise that the NEW YORK TIMES reporters didn’t tell the truth about Mia Farrow’s lies. I was surprised by some of the truths he revealed because the media didn’t cover them just as they didn’t cover the statements of actors who supported Woody as frequently as they did those who expressed regret at appearing in his films. What Woody apparently doesn’t understand is the NEW YORK TIMES used a black woman’s movement to distract from the white supremacy narrative and to lock up his black contemporary Bill Cosby. He also doesn’t understand that the very qualities he adored about Mia (her fragile beauty and extreme whiteness) “empower” her to portray herself as a victim, with a big assist from the media, when she’s clearly a crazy villain (see my 4/2/18 post). He also doesn’t want to understand that his Jewishness and his Asian wife’s race make them easier targets. Ironically, Woody reports that Hillary returned his and Soon-Yi’s political donations during her 2016 campaign. You would think that a woman who had been a victim of witch hunts, along with her husband, wouldn’t join one, but most people, even seemingly courageous, strong ones like the People’s 2016 President, are sheep. She also might be buddies with Woody’s estranged (possible biological) son Ronan, who I believe worked for her at one point.
I hope the Democrats learn the lessons of the 2021 Virginia election. I hope they stop METOOing and PCing male Democrats. I hope they spend less time attacking DINOs Joe and Kyrsten and more time reining in METOOing Chuck and Kirsten. And I hope they start doing a better job of calling out the media for not focusing on the sins of the Republicans instead of demonizing Democrats and for focusing on sexual harassment and toxic masculinity instead of white supremacy. We can still win, even with Republicans suppressing the vote and trying to steal elections, if we stop sabotaging ourselves and each other.
After the experienced and once popular governor Terry McAuliffe lost, I proclaimed that smart black female voters like this one don’t want to support a candidate who can be PCed with lies about wearing blackface in the eighties or METOOed the way not only the Virginia Lieutenant Governor was unsuccessfully (until the Democratic primaries) but also the way both former Senator Al Franken and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo were successfully. I also warned (I’ve been busy on Twitter and Facebook since Wednesday) that Democrats need to stop focusing so much venom on Manchin and Sinema and pay attention to Schumer and Gillibrand, who attack popular Democrats with phony METOO charges. Once Cuomo was forced out by the dirty Democrats, I decided that I would no longer donate money to white men like Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Kelly has been quiet so far, but what if he decides to raise his profile if he wins reelection? What if he starts eloquently talking on television about gun control? What if he writes a bestselling book? Won’t jealous narcissist Schumer come after him with help from every-man-is-a-predator-and-all-women-are-innocent—prey Gillibrand? Why waste our votes and our money helping elect white men so that those two anti-democracy, reputation-destroying, evil Democrats can get rid of them? I assume Reverend Warnock is safe, not because he’s black (ask the black Virginia Lieutenant Governor and Bill Cosby if being black protected them; you can’t ask civil rights icon John Conyers because he’s dead), but because he’s a minister, so I’ll donate to his campaign.
I have been railing against METOO and political correctness for years, first, because they’re used against Democrats, most often by other Democrats but also by dirty Republican operatives like Roger Stone, and second, because they are distractions from the real story of what’s destroying our democracy and what allowed an insane, immoral, incompetent white supremacist to become President—racism. In one of my earliest (3/30/14) blog posts, “Blackface/Whiteface: Why We All Need Thicker Skins,” I complained that the focus on crude Nick Cannon wearing whiteface and sweet dancer/singer Julianne Hough wearing golden face, which was stupidly called blackface, kept us from focusing on the real problems with systemic racism. I made similar points in a more recent blog post (6/5/21) “Distractions, Denials, Revisions, And Reversals: How White Supremacists Win.” The biggest distraction is, of course, the media-generated METOO movement. The focus on sexual misconduct, almost exclusively by men, and toxic masculinity by a movement started (by NEW YORKER and NEW YORK TIMES) two months after the Nazi march in Charlottesville and one month after a crazy white man killed almost sixty people in Las Vegas, turned our attention away from the fact that the majority of white women voted for an insane, racist sexual assaulter instead of a sane white woman.
Once again, the white women voted for the bigot, but when I called them villains posing as victims, one conservative white woman came for me on Twitter. She soon learned it was a mistake. I’m armed with facts. When she suggested that calling white women villains was causing hate, I wondered if calling men, including black men like former beloved comedian Bill Cosby, rapists also generated hate. She didn’t respond directly but changed her tone. I didn’t even have to point out how black and Asian women are being harassed (sometimes beaten) partly because Kamala Harris is Vice President for this relatively smart woman to realize that she couldn’t really play the victim when debating a 72-year-old black woman, born in the Jim Crow South. Not all white women are villains posing as victims, but the majority of white women voted for an insane, self-proclaimed sexual assaulter twice, while mostly different white women continued to whine about being made uncomfortable by sexually harassing men. I was triggered last week by Fox beauty queen Gretchen Carlson, who sat in the conservative seat on “The View” panel for two days. Because she’s conservative, it is possible that she voted for Trump at least once, yet she was whining about sexual harassment. This woman who became famous by parading around in a bathing suit while wearing high heels received 20 million dollars for her pain and even more fame (including portrayal in a movie called “Bombshell”) for being a victim of sexual harassment by “toxic” men while I have not received one dime for having to deal with racist men and women since I entered white institutions at twelve. How much should I receive for watching my seventh grade white female teacher count the black students in her class and leave the room (she wanted some of us removed), Ms. Gretchen? How much should I be awarded for being called the so-called n-word my freshman year of high school by a white freshman girl whom I punched, the only time I was “in trouble” during my public school years? How much does a young black woman deserve for being pawed on a bus and in a movie theater by freaky white men? For being twice offered money for sex by horny, “toxic” white men, once when she was a graduate student at USC, and once when she was an assistant professor at Cal Poly Pomona? How about for being called the n-word when she was walking down the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the year when she was an assistant professor at Tufts (making $15,000 a year in 1979-80)? When the smug, privileged beauty queen linked sexual harassment to racism during her second day on the show, I told myself that I might have to stop watching “The View” as I rushed to my I-Pad to mean-tweet Ms. Gretchen.
I’ve stopped watching CNN and MSNBC (except Jonathan Capehart on Sunday mornings) because they and other news media outlets are the main reason our democracy is on life support and my blood pressure is rising. The news media started and continue to promote the METOO movement. They demonize more decent people like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden while celebrating corrupt media whores like Donald Trump and Michael Avenatti. I just finished reading Woody Allen’s memoir and shook my head at his cluelessness when he expressed surprise that the NEW YORK TIMES reporters didn’t tell the truth about Mia Farrow’s lies. I was surprised by some of the truths he revealed because the media didn’t cover them just as they didn’t cover the statements of actors who supported Woody as frequently as they did those who expressed regret at appearing in his films. What Woody apparently doesn’t understand is the NEW YORK TIMES used a black woman’s movement to distract from the white supremacy narrative and to lock up his black contemporary Bill Cosby. He also doesn’t understand that the very qualities he adored about Mia (her fragile beauty and extreme whiteness) “empower” her to portray herself as a victim, with a big assist from the media, when she’s clearly a crazy villain (see my 4/2/18 post). He also doesn’t want to understand that his Jewishness and his Asian wife’s race make them easier targets. Ironically, Woody reports that Hillary returned his and Soon-Yi’s political donations during her 2016 campaign. You would think that a woman who had been a victim of witch hunts, along with her husband, wouldn’t join one, but most people, even seemingly courageous, strong ones like the People’s 2016 President, are sheep. She also might be buddies with Woody’s estranged (possible biological) son Ronan, who I believe worked for her at one point.
I hope the Democrats learn the lessons of the 2021 Virginia election. I hope they stop METOOing and PCing male Democrats. I hope they spend less time attacking DINOs Joe and Kyrsten and more time reining in METOOing Chuck and Kirsten. And I hope they start doing a better job of calling out the media for not focusing on the sins of the Republicans instead of demonizing Democrats and for focusing on sexual harassment and toxic masculinity instead of white supremacy. We can still win, even with Republicans suppressing the vote and trying to steal elections, if we stop sabotaging ourselves and each other.
Goodbye, Goodreads: My Final Post!
I wrote my first Goodreads blog on August 20, 2013. Initially, I saw writing a blog on a site that focused on reading as a way to promote and sell books, but I sold more books at parties with my Cal Poly Pomona English Department colleagues than I did on any social media site. Eventually, I saw writing a blog as a way of having my say without having to write and publish a book, which took too long. I liked the instant gratification of writing commentary and then publishing it myself. By the third blog, I had found a blog day—Sunday. Like the scholarship girl I’ve been since at least junior high school, I never missed a Sunday. A few months ago, to relieve the Sunday pressure, I expanded my writing period to the weekend. Usually that meant writing on Friday morning. During the first year, I wrote every week, but on August 17, 2014, I announced that I would write every other week. I had found a new site—Google+—where I had more followers and received more feedback. I stopped writing on Google+ shortly after Trump became President because the conservatives all ignored or blocked me, and the liberals got on my nerves with their PCing and METOOing. Today is the last day that I will write a blog on Goodreads. Yesterday I wrote my last book review.
I’m not leaving this site because I’m frustrated by the lack of entertaining conversations and debates. Except for the occasional debate in response to a review, I haven’t had conversations on Goodreads since I left the liberal Goodreads group around the same time that I stopped posting on Google+. I’m leaving because Goodreads is another media site that is promoting METOO instead of anti-racism. Until yesterday, I had never been censored by the Goodreads police. When I wrote a blog with the provocative title “Positive Discrimination” and tweeted it, the Twitter police censored me (but to their credit did not censor my mean tweets attacking their censorship of black women), and Goodreads flagged it, not allowing me to post the blog on Facebook or Twitter for a couple of weeks, but then I guess someone read the content of the blog (the Twitter police may not read anything longer than four sentences) and realized it wasn’t as provocative as the title.
Although I’ve made a point of not blocking or reporting anyone, no matter how crude and vicious their insults, last week I flagged two one-star, two-sentence Goodreads reviews of my books because they were clearly written by someone with an agenda, someone who hadn’t read the books. A woman named Molly said that my books were disgusting, and I was a disgusting person. When I checked yesterday, one of those reviews had been taken down, but the other was still there. One reason I flagged the reviews is I remembered a statement by the Goodreads administrators about eliminating reviews by people who might be involved in a coordinated campaign. When I saw the attacks on me and my two books, I assumed they came from a white supremacist. However, as I read a few of Molly’s other reviews, I saw that she had called someone else disgusting because of what she considered to be racist comments. I decided then (and the actions of the Goodreads police confirmed my suspicions) that she probably objected to my anti-METOO commentary.
In 2019 I read and wrote a review of KNOW MY NAME, a book written by the infamous (at least to me) Emily Doe (see the 6/19/15 post). I found it amusing that Emily or Chanel (her very appropriate real name), who I assumed was white, was half-Chinese and looked Chinese. My review was lengthy and scathing. One Emily/Chanel fan called me names a day or two after I posted my review, and her comment was censored (I found it in my e-mail in-box, but by the time I looked for it on Goodreads, it had been removed). However, yesterday, more than two years after I posted that review, it was removed for violating community standards dealing with personal attacks and hate speech. Well, I did include some hateful comments about Chanel, but I also complimented her writing and said in some ways she seemed less villainous in her book than in her narcissistic victim impact statement since the cops and the media were the ones who falsely accused Brock Turner of rape (demonizing a college freshman) before she embraced her victimhood. I criticized her for her lack of empathy for Brock’s mother and her lack of gratitude to Stanford. It was one of my better reviews, well-written and passionate. I was proud of it as I told the Goodreads police in my scathing, “hateful” attack on them. My review showed that I had read and thought about Chanel’s book. The jerk who attacked me and my two books didn’t mention one detail from the books to explain why she thought they and I were disgusting.
As soon as I made my decision to leave Goodreads, I felt more relief than sadness. I had just been complaining to a fellow early morning walker who was wearing a neck brace because of arthritis about my occasionally painful neck and shoulders, caused primarily by spending too much time writing on my I-Pad. We both agreed that being tense aggravated the condition, and writing is both pleasurable and tense for me (especially since this I-Pad has sabotaged me a few times). I like sharing my thoughts and believe that they are usually worth sharing, but I can share them less frequently on other sites. I had planned to write on the topic “Crazy Uncle Don And Wise Auntie Mary: What Smart Black Women Have In Common With An Insane White Supremacist” on Friday or Saturday. And I’m sorry that I never got around to writing a blog post in praise of “a few good white women,” tentatively titled “The Kathy G’s And The KK Women.” I thought my praise of Kathy Griffith, Kathy Griffin, and the Kardashian women would be a good counter to my incessant rants (and I won’t stop until I hear or read others ranting with me) about “the majority of white women voting for a self-proclaimed sexual assaulter, an insane white supremacist, twice,” and to the misuse and abuse of my most loyal blog reader’s name—Karen—to call out obnoxious white women.
Goodbye, Goodreads! Since I’m not addictive (although I am somewhat fanatical), I probably won’t miss you anymore than I have missed reading NEWSWEEK, TIME, and USA TODAY or watching MSNBC and CNN. I hope you take my advice and change your name to Badreads or Baddeeds. It’s a more appropriate name for a site that silences a black woman who spent most of her now long life promoting reading and spent more than thirty years of that long life teaching students of all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, nationalities, classes, religions, political affiliations, and sexual orientations how to read more carefully and think more critically about what they’re reading. Shame on you for abusing and silencing a well-educated, “wise auntie”! And shame on you for promoting METOO!
I’m not leaving this site because I’m frustrated by the lack of entertaining conversations and debates. Except for the occasional debate in response to a review, I haven’t had conversations on Goodreads since I left the liberal Goodreads group around the same time that I stopped posting on Google+. I’m leaving because Goodreads is another media site that is promoting METOO instead of anti-racism. Until yesterday, I had never been censored by the Goodreads police. When I wrote a blog with the provocative title “Positive Discrimination” and tweeted it, the Twitter police censored me (but to their credit did not censor my mean tweets attacking their censorship of black women), and Goodreads flagged it, not allowing me to post the blog on Facebook or Twitter for a couple of weeks, but then I guess someone read the content of the blog (the Twitter police may not read anything longer than four sentences) and realized it wasn’t as provocative as the title.
Although I’ve made a point of not blocking or reporting anyone, no matter how crude and vicious their insults, last week I flagged two one-star, two-sentence Goodreads reviews of my books because they were clearly written by someone with an agenda, someone who hadn’t read the books. A woman named Molly said that my books were disgusting, and I was a disgusting person. When I checked yesterday, one of those reviews had been taken down, but the other was still there. One reason I flagged the reviews is I remembered a statement by the Goodreads administrators about eliminating reviews by people who might be involved in a coordinated campaign. When I saw the attacks on me and my two books, I assumed they came from a white supremacist. However, as I read a few of Molly’s other reviews, I saw that she had called someone else disgusting because of what she considered to be racist comments. I decided then (and the actions of the Goodreads police confirmed my suspicions) that she probably objected to my anti-METOO commentary.
In 2019 I read and wrote a review of KNOW MY NAME, a book written by the infamous (at least to me) Emily Doe (see the 6/19/15 post). I found it amusing that Emily or Chanel (her very appropriate real name), who I assumed was white, was half-Chinese and looked Chinese. My review was lengthy and scathing. One Emily/Chanel fan called me names a day or two after I posted my review, and her comment was censored (I found it in my e-mail in-box, but by the time I looked for it on Goodreads, it had been removed). However, yesterday, more than two years after I posted that review, it was removed for violating community standards dealing with personal attacks and hate speech. Well, I did include some hateful comments about Chanel, but I also complimented her writing and said in some ways she seemed less villainous in her book than in her narcissistic victim impact statement since the cops and the media were the ones who falsely accused Brock Turner of rape (demonizing a college freshman) before she embraced her victimhood. I criticized her for her lack of empathy for Brock’s mother and her lack of gratitude to Stanford. It was one of my better reviews, well-written and passionate. I was proud of it as I told the Goodreads police in my scathing, “hateful” attack on them. My review showed that I had read and thought about Chanel’s book. The jerk who attacked me and my two books didn’t mention one detail from the books to explain why she thought they and I were disgusting.
As soon as I made my decision to leave Goodreads, I felt more relief than sadness. I had just been complaining to a fellow early morning walker who was wearing a neck brace because of arthritis about my occasionally painful neck and shoulders, caused primarily by spending too much time writing on my I-Pad. We both agreed that being tense aggravated the condition, and writing is both pleasurable and tense for me (especially since this I-Pad has sabotaged me a few times). I like sharing my thoughts and believe that they are usually worth sharing, but I can share them less frequently on other sites. I had planned to write on the topic “Crazy Uncle Don And Wise Auntie Mary: What Smart Black Women Have In Common With An Insane White Supremacist” on Friday or Saturday. And I’m sorry that I never got around to writing a blog post in praise of “a few good white women,” tentatively titled “The Kathy G’s And The KK Women.” I thought my praise of Kathy Griffith, Kathy Griffin, and the Kardashian women would be a good counter to my incessant rants (and I won’t stop until I hear or read others ranting with me) about “the majority of white women voting for a self-proclaimed sexual assaulter, an insane white supremacist, twice,” and to the misuse and abuse of my most loyal blog reader’s name—Karen—to call out obnoxious white women.
Goodbye, Goodreads! Since I’m not addictive (although I am somewhat fanatical), I probably won’t miss you anymore than I have missed reading NEWSWEEK, TIME, and USA TODAY or watching MSNBC and CNN. I hope you take my advice and change your name to Badreads or Baddeeds. It’s a more appropriate name for a site that silences a black woman who spent most of her now long life promoting reading and spent more than thirty years of that long life teaching students of all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, nationalities, classes, religions, political affiliations, and sexual orientations how to read more carefully and think more critically about what they’re reading. Shame on you for abusing and silencing a well-educated, “wise auntie”! And shame on you for promoting METOO!
