Being an interrupter

Holy fuck, I hate being around white people who so enjoy being white.

What the fuck do you say when people make these subtle racist comments? I don't want to, nor am I really capable of ,educating them, but oh my god, it makes me sick. I don't want to participate in the conversation and it makes me super uncomfortable to even listen to it. What I really want to do is say, "You're being gross. It's gross to listen to you revelling in your priviledge without the slightest notion of how racism pervades your world view."

This motivated me to look up some resources about what to say (in a constructive tone) so that people know where you stand.

Okay Boomer

I had an argument with a friend of mine on Facebook last week about cops and protests.

It's a touchy topic of course. She posted someone's Twitter comment about cops who are behaving well during these protests being like abusive boyfriends who briefly act nice and then abuse you again later. My response was that I disagreed because I feel like you have to accept an effort in the right direction. She (a fellow librarian) said there was "significant evidence" that cops who had been friendly to protesters were gassing them later in the evening and I said I wanted to see her evidence because I had looked for evidence myself and wasn't able to find any. But she seemed to misinterpret me and responded with information about police officers and domestic violence and abusive behavior.

I tried to clarify. I said the evidence I was asking about was the evidence she said she had for the exact same cops who were being friendly turning around and being aggressive. But she continued to be outraged that I had challenged her. She said I had suggested her personal experience as a victim of abuse is not adequate evidence of cops' bad behavior. The whole conversation ran off the rails. I kept trying to bring it back to the original issue of the current protests, but she just got more outraged. She said I had been "rude" (which I thought was strange).

This is not somebody that I know only on Facebook. This is a friend. In fact, I had offered to let her stay at my house a couple of years ago when she thought she was going to lose her apartment. This is someone I thought I had a relationship with. I was shocked at how determined she was to misunderstand me.

It got me thinking of another FB argument with a person the same age: 30 year old. They have a huge chip on their shoulder about "Boomers." The argument I had with the other person devolved into "you don't understand what it's like for my generation." I feel like that's the response of both of them and it kind of annoys me because they ignore the histories of people older than they are.

I didn't appear on this planet as a middle aged woman living in the suburbs. I have a whole life history neither one of them know anything about. By the time I was their age, I was a  military veteran. I've been on a human rights commission. I fought for women's rights and gay rights. I was at the March for Women's Lives in DC in 1986 and the gay rights march in 1993. And I was in the gallery of the NJ legislature when they became the 3rd state to recognize gay marriage. I've participated from a very early age in community building and trying to make the world better. Not slacktivism, not liking posts on Facebook. On the ground work.

I know it's typical for young people to dismiss older people and for older people to dismiss younger people, but these are people I know personally - I expect more consideration from them. It's very noticeable that their demand for understanding, sympathy, and tolerance includes none for me. I'm very disappointed in this most recent interaction, especially since she blocked me.

Her loss.

"The Empathy Gym"

Yet another great program from Hidden Brain, about empathy. 

I totally agree that a difficult childhood navigating the intentions of adults is like an empathy workout!

The man who lived in the Chicago art gallery for 30 days was so powerful. I almost cried over the story of the lamp (someone broke his lamp and a complete stranger brought him a new one; other strangers brought him homemade baked goods and new socks). 

I have to say that a few years ago, I would have totally agreed with the theory that people who live in cities and feel more anonymous develop a lack of empathy, but since Trump's election, I no longer believe this. Since then, I have heard friends and relatives express the most shocking lack of empathy, particularly regarding the situation of immigrants and other non-whites. Many of these people live in small towns. It is people in cities who are protesting at airports over the Muslim ban and who are sheltering immigrants from ICE. I no longer think that city living and low empathy have any correlation at all. In fact, it's quite the opposite - living among people who are different from yourself seems to make it harder to see them as Other. People who live in homogeneous situations, where they never see or interact with people who are different, seem prone to develop less empathy for the humanity of others.

David Frum on Immigration

Thoughts about David Frum's article in the April 2019 issue of the Atlantic about immigration policy:

Nice, even-handed presentation of the pros and cons of immigration - both how it benefits America and also causes problems (if it was simple and straight-forward, we would have addressed it long ago!)

I don't think that he makes enough of a distinction between legal and illegal immigration in some of his discussion.

I wish that he had included sources for the data he included. I question his information on the financial contributions of immigrants - he says that they cost more in benefits as they age than they contribute. This is certainly true of citizens, but I have heard the opposite is the case with immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, who are not eligible for many types of benefits. I wonder about his source for these assertions.

Very eye-opening (and credible) assertions regarding the impact of immigration on political attitudes, especially that Trump's hard line is both a result of liberal attitudes and is reinforcing liberal attitudes (and probably making liberals more extreme).

Biden

Holy shit. Now the misogynists in my own party are trying to tear down Ms Flores by noting that she has posed for photos touching men and especially posed with Bernie touching her. It's all a plot to crush Biden, supposedly. A political "hit job"!!

Saying this woman is lying because she touched someone or is seen being touched by someone is nuts. Not all touching is the same!! Touching while posing for a picture is not the same as having someone come up behind you and sniff your hair. You'd think we are sophisticated enough to consider some subtlety here.

And this is the same argument Biden is making - I'm friendly. I touch people. I don't MEAN ANYTHING BY IT. 

So we're back to the same place - women are unreasonable, over sensitive. NOT IN CONTROL OF OUR OWN BODIES!

Expecting our candidate to be decent to women and holding them to a high standard is NOT going to get Trump re-elected. 

This conversation is worth having. Women have a right to their own personal body integrity, WHATEVER that means to THEM.

49 Muslims killed in New Zealand

By Molly Crabapple

50 arrested in scheme to get students into elite colleges.

This story is so depressing, especially seeing Felicity Huffman among those arrested. However, the silver lining is, just like with the Manafort sentencing, we finally pull back the curtain and see VERY CLEARLY exactly what privilege does for rich white people in America.

Frank Bruni wrote a whole book about this . . .

Bribes to Get Into Yale and Stanford? What Else Is New?

A new college admissions scandal is just the latest proof of a grossly uneven playing field.

By Frank Bruni

Opinion Columnist

One of the funniest stories I ever heard about the college admissions madness came from an independent consultant who was paid handsomely to guide families through it and increase the odds that Harvard or Yale said yes.

He recounted the involvement of one father and mother in their son’s personal (hah!) essay, which they didn’t trust him to ace himself. They drafted it, focusing of course on the hardship that he had overcome. But when they showed it to him, he spotted a minor problem. What they’d described — his mom’s difficult pregnancy, a sequence of visits to medical specialists, so much fear, so much suspense — predated his arrival in this world. Poignant as it was, he could take zero credit for it.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced the indictments of dozens of wealthy parents, including the Emmy-winning actress Felicity Huffman, for employing various forms of bribery and fraud to get their kids into highly selective schools. Some of them allegedly paid college coaches, including at Yale and Stanford, to lie and say that their children were special recruits for sports that the kids didn’t even play. Others allegedly paid exam administrators to let someone smarter take tests for their children. Millions of dollars changed hands.

It’s a galling exposé of widespread cheating by families who are already well-to-do and well connected, but it’s not really a surprising one. Anyone who knows anything about the cutthroat competition for precious spots at top-tier schools realizes how ugly and unfair it can be: how many corners are cut, how many schemes are hatched, how big a role money plays, how many advantages privilege can buy.

Best Picture Oscar winner causes upset

Lots of hullabaloo about Green Book winning Best Picture. I'm both surprised and disappointed, but it's not like Oscar always crowns the greatest cinematic achievement of the year.  I liked the movie for its obvious appeal, but saw the flaws too. I read a couple of articles about it this morning (the Morning After), one written by the LA Times reviewer after the win and another that appeared on Huffington Post at the end of 2018.  Here's my reaction to the latter:

I understand what the folks in this interview are saying, I totally do. And I don't think it was the best picture of the year by any stretch. But I also think that some of the criticism is really unfair. Like the scene where Tony throws away the glasses that were used by the black repairmen. That sort of thing happened all the time in the 1960s, that's the point of the scene - it's instructive.

More to the point, I think Nick Vallelonga has as much right to tell his story as anyone else does. His story from his perspective is a valid story. It's not the only story and the fact that we are discussing that fact is a good thing, IMO. And I totally agree that we need a movie about the real green book and what it meant and why it was needed. But that doesn't mean that this story is bad or wrong or is an affront to the Universe.

"The Kindergarten Teacher"

I just watched the movie this weekend. I found the ending and the implications of the film very thought-provoking and interesting, and the poignancy of that final line: "I have a poem" is intense. As well as the poignancy of Jimmy not having realized quite what he was giving up by reporting the teacher to the authorities - he's only 5 years old after all. And of course Maggie Gyllenhaal is amazing as always. HOWEVER, as a mom, I was super uncomfortable with Lisa's choices, both in the way that she tried to steer Jimmy to create poems for her class assignments, and then, later, kidnapping him in order to save him from a life of banality. I get her motivation was to support Jimmy (hence, she sacrifices the instructor's good opinion of her, as well as her job and family), but her actions were really unsettling (as intended, I am sure). Doing the right thing in the wrong way is possible, even common, and you can make a strong case that this movie examines that exact issue.

"The Red Pill"

I was looking for something else on Kanopy, the film site you can access through the library. This documentary by Cassie Jaye (the title references the Matrix and is commonly used in the men's movement to indicate someone who has awoken to the unvarnished "truth") caught my eye and I listened to it while sitting at the research desk on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

She makes some very valid and interesting points, but overall I found the film quite disappointing - very selective and one-sided in the presentation of the issues. I like what a self-proclaimed feminist man says early in the movie: "everyone suffers, but suffering is not the same as oppression." Of course there are men who have been treated unfairly by family court; of course there are men who have been tricked into raising a child who is not theirs biologically. HOWEVER, if the filmmaker had bothered to share some sad stories from women who have been abandoned by their partners, treated poorly by the courts, tricked by men, etc, you could show that there is suffering and unfairness on BOTH SIDES.

The film provides NO CONTEXT for the current situation and status of the sexes. The services for women, the protests for women, etc, etc, come from women who have fought for DECADES for attention and for care. Do you know what the #1 cause of death for pregnant women in America is RIGHT NOW? Murder by their partners. If you don't think men are predators, watch The Hunting Ground. Men DO oppress women - read about Gamergate. Highly qualified women are regularly driven from jobs in tech by vicious harassment, it’s been well documented. And if the media ignores the boys killed by Boko Haram, why is that women's fault??? The media is not controlled by women. Women fight for women, men should fight for men.

She starts out the movie talking about the misogyny that she read on the "men's rights" websites, but she never mentions it again. The film starts with statistics about the predominance of men in our society, such as 98% of the Fortune 1000 companies having a male CEO, but never returns to discuss the implications of this after the filmmaker has supposedly awoken from her feminist "brainwashing."

Unfortunately, the legitimate arguments of the oh-so-reasonable leaders she interviews are DROWNED by the tidal wave of hatred that the movement followers exhibit toward women, which is barely mentioned. Not addressing the continued dominance of men in so many areas of society and the continued very real victimization of women makes the film much less credible. You could produce a really powerful film that makes the case for men but still respects what women have faced and what they have fought for and what they have overcome and what they still deal with, but she has not made that film.

Commentary on Noah Smith's "You and Whose Army?"

This blog post by Noah Smith is a super interesting analysis of our current political situation and the possible parallels with Spain in the 1930s, after the Spanish American War.

I disagree with some of the premise though:

• I grew up in Arizona, a purple state. Then I lived in Pennsylvania for many years, also a purple state. America is not as clearly divided as your essay suggests.

• I also disagree that all the guns are owned by conservatives (see Arizona and Pennsylvania experience, noted above).

• And having spent 12 years in the military and knowing LOTS of liberals in the military, I disagree that the military would side completely with the right.

• I also disagree that the left would have no super power on its side - the EU is not a single nation, but it has a military and it would most certainly side with the US left.

• I also question whether all the conservative gun owners could be counted on to rise up and fight. A lot of gun owners talk tough but they would never really stand up, either because they are gutless, or even because they are just too decent.

I do not buy the argument that the only way the left can prevail is to "woo" people on the right. The majority of Americans support Democratic positions on issues such as gun control and the social safety net. We have to protect voting rights and make sure that all Americans are truly represented. Then we will have nothing to fear.

I really enjoyed this essay and I will read the suggested book. But I will not despair about the US (yet).

Essay for Laura's Pride Guide, 2016 (their 25th anniversary):

Television Then and Now

Who remembers what they were doing 25 years ago? For some of you reading this, you were toddling around in diapers. But for many, like me, we vividly recall those halcyon days, when we were spreading our wings in a blustery world, testing them to see if they could hold our weight.

Television was a wasteland in 1991, if you were looking for gay role models. Soap, with Billy Crystal’s Jodie, had ended a decade earlier. Ellen was 3 years down the road, and Will and Grace was still 7 years away.

What we had was Roseanne. In 1991, Sandra Bernhard joined the cast as one of the first openly lesbian characters to have a recurring role on a network television sitcom. The show’s popularity did not suffer from the introduction of Nancy Bartlett, and the acceptance of her character emboldened Roseanne. The show remained among the top 5 shows in the nation, according to the Nielsen ratings, through the middle of the decade, giving Roseanne the ability to include more gay themes and events in her show. The famous kiss with Mariel Hemingway didn’t happen until 1994, but it was followed closely by Martin Mull’s wedding to Fred Willis the following year.  The network had balked at the kiss, but Roseanne threatened to move to another network when NBC said they wouldn’t air the episode.  

The presence of Sandra Bernhard’s Nancy and Martin Mull’s Leon were a refreshing change from gay, lesbian, and transgender characters, who more generally appeared on television as prostitutes, murder victims, or murderers, or, as the 1980s wound down, as noble/tragic victims of AIDS. (It would be another couple of decades before the existence of bisexual people was acknowledged in any way on TV shows.)

The Golden Girls, a perennial ratings winner, ended in 1992. It occasionally featured a gay character, including Blanche’s brother, Clayton, portrayed by Monte Markham, who eventually got married in an episode airing in 1991. The show was generally gay friendly, probably because openly gay Marc Cherry, who went on to create Desperate Housewives, was a producer and writer of the show.

Similarly, Designing Women, another popular sitcom which hit its ratings peak in 1991, featured a gay character, Anthony Bouvier, portrayed by Menasch Taylor. Antony’s character occasionally wore women’s clothing, through various tortured plot twists, but otherwise his orientation was only expressed through the character’s stereotypical portrayal, rather than having a romantic or sexual life of his own. Tangentially, the show won a GLAAD Media Award in 1991 for the episode “Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend,” in which Suzanne discovers that her former pageant friend, Eugenia, portrayed by Karen Kopins, is a lesbian.

Drama series did not do as well as Roseanne, in terms of presenting fully formed gay characters. The popular baby boomer drama, thirtysomething, which had featured an HIV positive character, ended in 1991, as did the night time soap opera Dallas. (Dallas didn’t have any gay characters, I just included it so you’d realize it’s been gone for 25 years.)

Melrose Place, created by Darren Starr (who later would develop Sex and the City from Candace Bushnell’s popular NY Observer columns), included a gay character, Matt Fielding, portrayed by Doug Savant, and began in 1992. Critics continually complained about the lack of romantic, and especially sexual, life of Matt, in a show that emphasized both for its straight characters. The show admitted that it wanted to avoid backlash from conservative activist groups who notoriously organized product boycotts whenever a TV show challenged their moral standards.

LA Law had a lesbian lawyer (C.J. Lamb, portrayed by Amanda Donohoe) on staff in the middle of the show’s 8 season run (which happened to straddle 1991), but she disappeared after a lesbian kiss generally acknowledged as a publicity stunt during ratings sweeps week. Sadly, the show initiated somewhat of a trend of featuring a kiss between a straight woman and a lesbian character, done for publicity value only.

Fast forward 25 years. We no longer have to scour the TV schedule for the occasional gay character or gay issue reference. Now we regularly have entire programs devoted to us (HBO’s Looking just finished a successful 2 season run, a 2-hour series finale will be aired in July). Indeed, we have an entire network (Here).

Perhaps even more impressive is that popular programs directed at every conceivable audience now include fully developed LGBTQ characters without fear of backlash. 

Programs on network television (Modern Family on ABC), on cable (American Horror Story on FX), and on alternate services like Netflix (Orange is the New Black) and Amazon (Transparent) feature LGBTQ characters and address LGBTQ concerns unabashedly, comprehensively, and with compassion.

Shows aimed at youth audiences, such as Glee (which just completed 6 seasons on Fox), The Fosters (whose 4th season on ABC Family starts this month), and Faking It (which just finished 3 successful seasons on MTV) increasingly have honest, positive, and complex presentations of LGBTQ lives.

Even historical dramas manage to showcase LGBTQ concerns, such as Downton Abbey showing a gay man in the early 20^th century attempting a damaging “cure” for his homosexuality. The massively popular Game of Thrones includes LGBTQ characters among its cast of thousands, without concern about the sensitivities of its straight viewers.

Perhaps most encouraging, and, most surprising, is the runaway hit, Empire, a drama on Fox about a family-run music business, based loosely on King Lear, and, as producer Lee Daniels admits, borrowing from the 1980s primetime soap, Dynasty. The show features a Who’s Who of today’s African American acting royalty, including Oscar nominated Terrance Howard as the patriarch, Lucious, and the indelible (and Oscar and Emmy nominated) Taraji P. Nelson as the matriarch, Cookie, along with a string of famous guest stars. The African American community has been much slower to accept their LGBTQ brethren, so having one of the three sons on the show be openly gay was a bold, unexpected, and welcome situation. The show begins its 3rd season this fall.

Comparing the scant offering of the bygone era of the 1990s with the cornucopia of characters in today’s entertainment landscape almost boggles the mind. Feminists like to say “we haven’t come a long way and we’re not babies” in response to the famous Virginia Slims cigarette advertising campaign. But looking back at the progress that has occurred in our societal acceptance of LBGTQ people as measured by their portrayal in in popular television culture, I can’t help feeling that we were only half right.

My latest essay for Laura's Pride Guide:

HOPE FOR NOW, AND THE FUTURE

To begin, since I have a captive audience, I must discuss the most high profile LGBTQ film of the past year, Call Me by Your Name. This was the second year in a row where an unapologetic depiction of gay desire was feted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: in 2016, Moonlight won Best Picture, and many other awards as well. CMBYN was the winner of the Best Adapted Screenplay (by James Ivory, from the novel of the same name by Andre Aciman) and nominated for three additional Oscars (Best Picture, Lead Actor, and Original Song). The film was also the recipient of many other nominations and awards, including winning a BAFTA (often called the British Oscars) for Best Screenplay, and Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for its stars, Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer. The film was also honored by the Independent Spirit Awards, as well as receiving a GLAAD media award, and awards from GALECA (the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association).

Despite all these accolades (and perhaps partly because of them), I was sorely disappointed in this film. Don’t get me wrong, I like a gay coming of age romance as much as the next pansexual woman, probably more so. I know I am at risk of angering many (maybe most of) my readers, but here it is: I’ll admit that I thought CMBYN was long (over 2 hrs), slow, and not very romantic. (And I don't think a director should get any credit for making Italy look beautiful!)

Although the casting was much admired, in the book, Armie Hammer's character, Oliver, is 24, but Armie Hammer is 31, and he looks it, and those extra years make the relationship somewhat less appealing, IMHO. In this era, we are much more aware of the exploitative implications of romance when there is a large age difference between the people involved. I was not the only viewer who was uncomfortable with this aspect of the film.

I was also not the only viewer who found Elio (played poignantly by Timothee Chalamet) unapologetically privileged and rather spoiled (he spends most of his screen time pouting and glowering at everyone); as an audience member, I wasn't very invested in his getting his supposed heart's desire. In addition, (SPOILER ALERT) he’s having sex with a local girl who he dumps quite unceremoniously once his prospects with Oliver improve. Even worse, she forgives him completely, because, well, he did it for True Love (the female characters in general are underdeveloped and serve mostly as props). As a fan of the romance genre, I can say that I have seen many films that I think portray that first love experience much more authentically and in a more compelling way for the audience. From its rapturous reception, I expected something much more lovely and moving. If this is your genre of choice, I would recommend you watch the 1996 British film, Beautiful Thing, or another recent movie: Love, Simon (based on the popular YA novel, Simon vs the Homosapien Agenda by Becky Albertalli).

Love, Simon is also a flawed story, IMO, but it’s also the first film featuring a gay teen lead character ever released by a major studio (20th Century Fox). Simon is a high school senior, and gay, but afraid to come out (despite being surrounded by the most supportive and loving friends and family ever assembled in movieland). Simon is ably portrayed by heartthrob Nick Robinson (who also appeared in the interracial teen romance released last year, Everything, Everything, co-starring rising star Amandla Stenberg, and also based on a beloved YA novel). The theater where I saw Love, Simon was filled with teenage girls who were audibly delighted by the movie’s long-awaited (and fairly chaste) kiss at the end. The film is effective romance and a rather charming coming out story. The filmmakers were motivated to portray those experiences in an admittedly idealized way because, as we all know, representation matters.

Which brings me to the point of my essay, and why I titled it as I did.

My teenage daughter is a major fan of the DC universe (also called the Arrowverse) as portrayed on the CW television network in such programs as Arrow, Supergirl, and The Flash. The other day she was watching another favorite CW show, The 100. (I would watch more of these shows if I had the time, but I dip a toe in from time to time, just to keep track of what she’s being exposed to.) The 100 is really dark and gritty and sci fi, so I said, “If you like this show, you should watch the Battlestar Galactica reboot” (currently available to watch on Hulu, but not Netflix). And she said, “Does it have any gay characters?”

This got me thinking. She genuinely expects her entertainment to include LGBTQ characters. And not just token characters, she expects couples - fully formed LGBTQ characters with relationships portrayed with depth. She expects it. And if you look at the shows aimed at teens, they have them.

While I was turning my attention to teen offerings, I noticed something else. The teen entertainment landscape is littered with what I think of as “remakes,” but they are really reimaginings of characters and worlds from previous eras, sometimes going pretty far back, but giving these reboots moderns twists and sensibilities. And LGBTQ inclusion is part and parcel of those sensibilities.

When I was young, there wasn’t anything that represented the idealized and asexual teen experience more than the Archie comics and animated TV show. Even those born much later than I will hum (or sing) along with Sugar, Sugar, the smash hit song (in both the US and the UK) produced for the TV show in 1969 (and often pointed to as the epitome of the Bugglegum Pop phenomenon). The song has been utilized relentlessly since, in commercials, TV shows, and movies, as both a punchline and background music (see, for example, The Bee Movie and Orphan Black).

The Archie universe has been recently reimagined as a TV show constructed around a murder mystery (!) and other dark doings in the fictional town of Riverdale, starring none other than Disney channel perennial, Dylan Sprouse, as Jughead Jones. Archie (KJ Apa), Veronica (Camila Mendes), and Betty (Lili Reinhart) are present as well. Riverdale, as with most current teen entertainment, features a deliberately mixed race cast, and, as has also become standard, prominent LGBTQ storylines. The new show is also far from the chaste presentation of teen life highlighted in its 1960s counterpart, with frank portrayals of all types of sexuality.

Is it fair to call the latest incarnation of the long-running Canadian series DeGrassi a reboot? It’s been in production almost continuously since 1979 (except for a break in the 1990s), dealing with teen issues from abortion to online bullying. Its early incarnation was broadcast on PBS and the longest-running, Degrassi: The Next Generation, aired for 10 years on TeenNick. In 2016, it was reimagined, recast, and renamed for Netflix, as DeGrassi: Next Class. Perhaps because it came from Canada, all the versions of Degrassi have included lesbian and gay characters and storylines, and in recent seasons have also featured trans and genderfluid characters as well.

Though it landed with a thud, it’s still notable that the Paramount network attempted a recent reboot of the 1988 teen “black comedy” (referring to the style of humor, not a reference to race) Heathers. The original film was radical at the time, presenting a darkly skewed vision of teenagers, which pulled back the curtain on high school life thus far portrayed in teen films, and conveyed teens’ darker desires, including revenge on the popular (read: tyrannical) clique. It also introduced to the American lexicon such useful phrases as “What’s your damage?” and “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” A musical version of Heathers ran briefly Off Broadway in 2014. (Meanwhile, Heathers’ darling Veronica, Winona Ryder, is appearing in this generation’s off beat obsession, Stranger Things. But I digress.) The new version of Heathers, which is no longer available to view online (or anywhere as far as I can tell) still tried to say something radical about teen life: the 3 Heathers in this version are a gay guy, a genderfluid woman, and a black girl. They terrorized the students and teachers in their school with their unapologetic lifestyles and their witty one liners. Teens stayed away from this show in droves and much ink was spilled by critics pointing out how very, very much the writers had missed the point.

However, my point is that entertainment has come so far in a relatively short time that a show in which the heretofore bullied are portrayed as the bullies was created, cast, produced, and broadcast. No, that’s not my point at all. My point, and I do have one, is that my daughter’s generation expects to see characters of all races, all genders, and all sexual proclivities portrayed in their entertainment, and that gives me hope for the future.

We need to stop hating Trump

More and more, I agree with what, for example, Matt Taibbi, is saying - I think we are missing the opportunity to craft a positive vision rather than just being appalled all the time. That's so easy, to just push the outrage button. I have tons of friends who are just rabid about Trump, but how does that help? On the other hand, I'm less and less convinced that the really red state voters would vote for Democrats if we would just "listen" to their concerns. Hillary spoke to many issues that affected them, including the opioid crisis, which Donald Trump's policies is making worse. Many of those voters are not ever ever EVER going to vote for a Democrat. And they fricking love "the way Trump talks," which they pretend has to do with his being off the cuff and "real," but has a LOT more to do with his being racist as fuck. They are not ever ever EVER going to vote for a candidate they think cares about black and brown people. Dems and progressives need to inspire our natural constituencies to come out and vote. That's why Roy Moore lost. Not because Dems successfully appealed to "white working class" voters.

Here's excerpts from Matt:

. . . Despising Trump and his followers is easy. What's hard is imagining how we put Humpty Dumpty together again. This country is broken. It is devastated by hate and distrust. What is needed is a massive effort at national reconciliation. It will have to be inspired, delicate and ingenious to work. Someone needs to come up with a positive vision for the entire country, one that is more about love and community than blame.

. . . Division isn't an accident. It's not even just a by-product of a commercial scheme, though the pioneering work of Roger Ailes and Fox News played a crucial role in our current mess, by showing media companies they could make easy money through the politics of bifurcation and demonization.

Division does make money, but beyond that, it's highly political. It's an ancient technique of elites, dividing populations into frightened and furious camps so as to more easily control them. When people are scared enough and full enough of hate, they will surrender their rights more quickly.

It's not an accident that as the right-left divide has grown in this country, we've gradually given up on almost every principle that used to define us, collectively, as Americans. We surrendered our rights to privacy, failed to protest vast expansions of federal power (including to classify the inner workings of our own government – our government), stopped requiring due process to jail people and closed our eyes to torture and assassination and all sorts of other atrocities.

. . .If we were serious thinkers, and not obvious or malleable ones, we'd have spent this last year coming up with ways to improve this country, or make it more just, or more beautiful, or less violent, instead of obsessing constantly about Trump.

Republican authoritarianism

Still, as the conservative movement has completed its conquest of the Republican Party, it has never resolved the dilemma that haunted it from the beginning. Conservative opposition to policies like business regulation, social insurance, and progressive taxation has never taken hold among anything resembling a majority of the public. The party has grown increasingly reliant upon white identity politics to supply its votes, which has left an indelible imprint on not only the Republican Party’s function but also its form.

. . . 

Here is a sitting governor in the United States, not some post-Soviet kleptocrat, actually calling for “authoritarian power.” To be sure, LePage lies along the edge of his party rather than at its center. But the nature of party coalitions is that they cluster around common principles, and the mainstream of Republican thought is closer to LePage than anybody could have imagined possible a few decades ago. In a September National Review cover story, co-authors Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru, two of the right’s most erudite intellectuals, acknowledged that Trump has made some questionable statements that “certainly do not sound like the views of a person with a deep esteem for the constitutionally limited role of the president or for the delicate balance of our system of government.” But, they quickly insisted, Hillary Clinton’s support for executive actions, laws that create more bureaucracy, and liberal judges poses “a more concrete and specific threat than Trump.” Indeed, “mainstream liberalism now subverts and threatens our democracy,” and so they concluded that the safer choice, from the standpoint of the republic’s stability, would be to hand control of the Executive branch to Trump. This is how a party consensus forms. The more strident wing openly endorses authoritarianism, and the “moderate” wing refrains while agreeing that authoritarianism is still preferable to liberalism.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/the-gops-age-of-authoritarianism-has-only-just-begun.html

Misunderstanding the news

I had the most annoying experience tonight at a small party. One of the guests, whom I don't know well, dominated the conversation rather unforgivably, and said a lot of silly stuff besides (I can't imagine talking on and on for 10 or 15 minutes to [at!] a bunch of people, most of whom don't know me - news flash: that's not a conversation!)

Among other things, she said that Dennis Rodman has been sent to North Korea by the Obama administration. I hadn't paid much attention to the details of this story in the news, but that assertion kinda didn't pass the smell test. Of course, I looked it up as soon as I had the chance, and quite the opposite is true - the administration was less than thrilled with Rodman's impromptu diplomatic venture.

I thought it was interesting that she had concluded that (obviously, she doesn't pay close attention to the news - proving that old adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing).  I suspect that a lot of casual observers (as opposed to news junkies like me) assumed the same thing.

Ammunition control

Good point!

Info about guns in the home

This is so powerful~

Newtown, Connecticut massacre

Random thoughts:

Basically, just WTF.

I told the rabbi that I would not want to have to represent God after an event like this. (What kind of fucked up Supreme Being lets 20 kids be slaughtered a week before Christmas?)

Why wouldn't Nancy Lanza (the killer's mother) store her gun collection away from her troubled son?

I think we should bring some sanity to our gun policy, since what we have is barbaric. But these mass killings are much more a matter of mental health access than they are about gun control. That being said, you'd think the so-called "greatest country in the world" could figure out a way to keep assault rifles out of the hand of schizophrenics.

Great quote: "It's harder to adopt a pet in the US than it is to buy a gun."

Nic Kristof's column, "Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?" is a wonderful breath of sanity, of course.

Jezebel's column, "Fuck You, Guns" (part of a series) is great, of course.

Gawker republished a column called "I am Adam Lanza's Mother" by a woman with a violent, mentally ill 13 year old. Terrifying.

I heard an absolutely fascinating commentary over the weekend - the guy was a former official in the Bush administration (I think - wish I had noted his name) and he said that when the 2nd amendment was written, the average citizen could have the same weapon as the military (i.e., a musket) and therefore could, in theory, protect themselves from "tyranny," but now, the military has drones and nukes and chemical weapons, etc, and the average person, no matter how many guns they have, could not truly face down a "tyrant" backed by this arsenal. His point was, it's just a matter of where we draw the line - obviously we don't let citizens own their own drone, but no one considers that an affront to the 2nd amendment. Super thought-provoking.

"We can do better"

From the Post Secret website - my feelings exactly.