Saturday
Jul202019
The Commentariat -- July 20, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Trump: Melania & Ivanka Are Just as Racist as I Am. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "... Donald Trump contradicted reports that First Lady Melania Trump and ... Ivanka Trump objected privately to rally chants urging that U.S. citizen Rep. Ilhan Omar be sent back to Africa. Rep. Omar was born in Somalia.... During an impromptu gaggle on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump was asked 'What did the First Lady and Ivanka advise you about the chant? I know you guys talked about it...' 'False information,' Trump interrupted. 'It was fake news.... We -- I talked about it, but they didn't advise me. They told me, but I didn't....'" Mrs. McC: That "they told me" sentence fragment is suspicious. "They told me" what? It sounds to me as if Trump caught himself just in time to avoid a gaffe.
~~~~~~~~~~
In case you missed it:
... The moon landing is not the only 50-year anniversary we're recognizing this weekend. As Josh Sanburn writes for Vanity Fair, "The weekend of the Apollo 11 moon landing should have cemented the Kennedy family's legacy of public service." But the Kennedys had another preoccupation: the drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne in a Chappaquiddick pond. The truth of what happened when Teddy Kennedy drove off Dike Bridge with Kopechne "still feels just out of reach."
How to Muck up a Photo-op, Starring Donald J. Trump. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump has spent days feuding with progressive House Democrats, but on Friday he stoked another conflict, pitting his NASA chief against the first men to travel to the moon as they debated traveling directly to Mars. During a gathering in the Oval Office to commemorate Saturday's 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Trump grilled NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and former astronauts Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin over the logistics of putting a man on Mars as well as the recent progress of NASA." An argument ensued.
Trump Can't Imagine Anyone as Profane as Himself. Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday extolled the debt ceiling as 'a sacred element of our country' that should never be wielded as a bargaining chip in budget talks.... 'That's a very, very sacred thing in our country, debt ceiling. We can never play with it...,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. The president's remarks come as White House officials, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, home in on a two-year budget agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would raise the national debt limit.... 'I can't imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge,' Trump said Friday.... But as a private citizen in December 2012, Trump tweeted that 'the Republicans must use the debt ceiling as leverage to make a good deal!'"
What truly makes our country great is its diversity. I've seen that beauty in so many ways over the years. Whether we are born here or seek refuge here, there's a place for us all. We must remember it's not my America or your America. It's our America. -- Michelle Obama, in a tweet, Friday
They called our country 'garbage.' -- Donald Trump, Friday, among the lies he told about Democratic Congresswomen Friday
I can tell you this: You can't talk that way about our country. Not when I'm the president. -- Donald Trump, Friday, suspending First Amendment rights of Democratic Congresswomen ...
Also too, Democratic representatives don't have the right to say what they didn't say, but it's okay for Trump to falsely attribute inflammatory statements to them. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
... Never Mind. Annie Karni of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday demonstrated the limited influence of allies or advisers who try to steer him away from pre-election racial and cultural fights. He walked back his disavowal of a racially loaded chant at a campaign rally less than 24 hours after making it. Acquiescing to behind-the-scenes pressure from nervous Republican lawmakers and from his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, the president distanced himself on Thursday from the chant of 'Send her back!' that the crowd at his rally on Wednesday in Greenville, N.C., directed at Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was born in Somalia. Mr. Trump said he was 'not happy' with the chant's language and claimed, falsely, that he had tried to cut it off. But on Friday, the president appeared to disavow his disavowal -- following the same three-stage crisis playbook he used after setting off a wave of criticism when he defended neo-Nazi protesters in 2017 Charlottesville, Va.... Mr. Trump defended the crowd as 'incredible patriots' and said that Ms. Omar, who was elected last November, was 'lucky to be where she is.' When asked about the chant again later in the day as he left Washington to spend the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump refused to condemn them. Instead, he seemed to be repeating his criticism of Ms. Omar and her allies in Congress without mentioning any names. 'You know what's racist to me, when someone goes out and says the horrible things about our country,' he said. 'The people of our country that are anti-Semitic, that hate everybody, that speak with scorn and hate -- that to me is really a dangerous thing.'" ...
... Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday accused the media of siding with Rep. Ilhan Omar and the other freshman progressive congresswomen with whom he has feuded this week, criticizing reporters' coverage of the 'send her back' chant that broke out at his most recent campaign rally. 'It is amazing how the Fake News Media became "crazed" over the chant "send her back" by a packed Arena (a record) crowd in the Great State of North Carolina, but is totally calm & accepting of the most vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen,' the president tweeted." Mrs. McC: Three?? Trump seems to lost one of his nemeses; he named four during his Wednesday campaign rant. Also too, he's very upset with the media for covering the crowd who enthusiastically greeted Omar when she returned to Minnesota: "They even covered a tiny staged crowd as they greeted Foul Mouthed Omar in Minnesota," Trump tweeted. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Lara Takenaga & Aidan Gardiner of the New York Times: "When we asked readers if they had been told to 'go back,' some 16,000 responses flooded in on our website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Readers recounted the insults they've heard as African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and Jewish Americans. Many recalled first becoming aware of their 'otherness' as young children and said that slurs have followed them into adulthood. Their stories span decades, with notable upticks after 9/11 and Mr. Trump's election. And several readers expressed regret after telling others to 'go back.' We chose 67 of the most representative stories to feature here, lightly edited and condensed." ...
... Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "... what I noticed most about the president's rally in Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday night was the pleasure of the crowd. His voters and supporters were having fun. The 'Send her back' chant directed at Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was hateful but also exuberant, an expression of racist contempt and a celebration of shared values.... To watch raucous crowds of (mostly) white Americans unite in frenzied hatred of a black woman -- to watch them cast her as a cancer on the body politic and a threat to a racialized social order -- is to see the worst of our past play out in modern form." Bouie compares Trump's crowd to "an 1893 lynching in Paris, Tex., where Henry Smith, a mentally disabled black teenager, was burned alive: "'It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage," [W.E.B. Dubois] wrote [in 1935], outlining the ways in which this 'public and psychological' wage strengthened ordinary white Americans' attachment to a system that ultimately exploited them too[.]"
... Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "As Trump's racist invective against [Rep. Ilhan] Omar and three other freshman Democratic congresswomen has dominated the news, the president's defenders have used Jews as human shields, pretending that hatred of the quartet is rooted in abhorrence of anti-Semitism.... 'When they start asking people to go back where they came from, that's the first line of attack on the Jewish people over centuries,' said [Jeremy] Ben-Ami [of J Street]. It's terrifying enough to have a president who says such things. It's an almost incalculable insult for Trump and his enablers to act as if he's helping the Jews when he adopts the language of the pogrom." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Trump's So Low Even David Brooks Gets Him Right: "In Trump's version, 'American' is defined by three propositions. First, to be American is to be xenophobic. The basic narrative he tells is that the good people of the heartland are under assault from aliens, elitists and outsiders. Second, to be American is to be nostalgic. America's values were better during some golden past. Third, a true American is white. White Protestants created this country; everybody else is here on their sufferance. When you look at Trump's American idea you realize that it contradicts the traditional American idea in every particular. In fact, Trump's national story is much closer to the Russian national story than it is toward our own. It's an alien ideology he's trying to plant on our soil. Trump's vision is radically anti-American." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Priscilla Alvarez & Geneva Sands of CNN: "The Trump administration is making revisions to the naturalization test for the first time in a decade, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Friday. The agency is focusing on changes to the civics portion of the test, though there could also be updates to the English section, according to a USCIS official. The announcement comes amid a heated debate over who should be allowed in the country after ... Donald Trump targeted progressive congresswomen, telling them to 'go back' to where they came from. Three of the four women were born in the US. The other is a naturalized citizen." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. Mrs. McC: Ken sees the move as "Another Pretender initiative bursting with satiric possibility." I have no idea what he means, but I have it on good authority that one of the new questions is "The President of the United States is elected for a term of (a) Four years; (b) Eight years; (c) As long as he wants." Correct answer: (c).
David D. Kirkpatrick & Megan Specia of the New York Times: "Iran seized at least one British oil tanker in a vital Persian Gulf waterway on Friday, a sharp escalation of tensions with the West that revived fears of a military clash, even as voices on both sides appeared to be seeking room for negotiations. The impoundment of the tanker by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval patrols came a day after the United States said it had downed an Iranian drone menacing an American warship in the region. But Iran's standoff with Britain, in particular, carries its own complications. Britain occupies a pivotal place in a bloc of European states that have tried to broker some resolution to a broader conflict between Tehran and Washington over the fate of a 2015 deal with the world powers designed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain convened an emergency meeting of advisers late Friday night to respond."
Erin Banco of the Daily Beast: "George Nader, who was a key witness in ... Robert Mueller's investigation, was hit with new federal charges of sex trafficking for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old boy he transported from Europe. An indictment unsealed Friday morning in Eastern District of Virginia also charges Nader with counts of child pornography and obscenity. The charges come on top of separate child-porn charges leveled by the same prosecutors last month. Nader pleaded not guilty to all charges during a court appearance Friday.... Nader met several times with individuals associated with the Trump campaign throughout the election and into the early days of the administration." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: There must be a reason that sexual predators are attracted to Trump & he to them. There's Jeffrey Epstein, of course, who likes women "on the younger side," as Trump once put it; there's Roger Ailes, who abused & harassed female employees for decades, during which time he & Trump were good friends; there's Steve Wynn, who was vice chair of Trump's inaugural committee & finance chair of the RNC -- by Trump's choice -- until Wynn resigned among dozens of accusations of sexual harassment & assault; there's Jason Miller, whom Trump chose as White House communications director till Miller resigned over an extramarital affair with another staffer whom he impregnated among various other allegations of unsavory sexual behaviors; etc., etc. ...
... AND This Guy, Fox "News"'s Answer to a "Liberal" Trump Backer. Andrew Rice of New York: "Of all of the many men on the long list of socialites, billionaires, and politicians associated with [Jeffrey] Epstein..., perhaps no name had been tarnished as seriously as [Alan] Dershowitz's. As Epstein's lawyer, he had helped him to thwart prosecutors; as his houseguest, he was accused of enthusiastically joining in Epstein's alleged sexual abuse.... He has been perhaps inadvisably willing to talk, and talk, and talk, answering every request for comment (including mine).... [Thursday] night, on Fox News, he accused his nemesis [attorney David Boies] of having 'an enormous amount of chutzpah to attack me and challenge my perfect, perfect sex life.'" Mrs. McC: This is a longish piece which I chose to very lightly skim on account of the "eww!" factor.
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "House Democrats want to know whether a decades-old Justice Department prohibition on indicting a sitting president played a role in federal prosecutors' decision not to criminally charge ... Donald Trump over hush money payments that he directed his fixer to pay to women. The prohibition, laid out in a 2000 memo by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, was also a key factor in former special counsel Robert Mueller's decision to refrain from considering whether to charge Trump with obstruction of justice for his repeated attempts to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say the federal prosecutors based in the Southern District of New York should disclose whether they made a similar analysis. The president's longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen was jailed earlier this year, in part for his role in hush payments to women accusing Trump of extramarital affairs, and he implicated the president in the scheme. Documents made public Thursday showed contacts between Cohen and Trump surrounding the hush money payments and were part of prosecutors' evidence that Trump directed Cohen to make the payoffs.... [Committee Chairman Elijah] Cummings noted that he wrote directly to the SDNY prosecutors because of concerns about the accuracy of information provided to Congress by Attorney General William Barr in characterizing Mueller's findings in March...."
Your Taxpayer Dollars, Going to Enrich Trump & Aid His Re-election Campaign. S. V. Date of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump is leaving Friday for another million-dollar golf weekend at his New Jersey course, where he will also host a fundraiser that will convert Republican Party money into his own personal money. The trip will be Trump's 17th visit to his resort 45 miles west of New York City since taking office, with each costing taxpayers at least $1.1 million in travel and security costs. The trip will bring his taxpayer-paid golf tab to $109.2 million. With a planned return on Sunday, Trump will add another three days to the time he has spent at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, bringing his tally there to 64 days and his total time at golf courses that he owns to 194 days.... The fundraiser at Bedminster, meanwhile, is set for Friday evening and is expected to bring in some $3 million to Trump's re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee.... Because Trump still owns his business -- despite campaign promises that he would separate himself from it -- a portion of that revenue will wind up in Trump's personal bank account."
Presidential Race 2020
Nate Cohn of the New York Times: Donald Trump's "advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the national popular vote, may be even larger than it was in 2016, according to an Upshot analysis of election results and polling data. That persistent edge leaves him closer to re-election than one would think based on national polls, and it might blunt any electoral cost of actions like his recent tweets attacking four minority congresswomen." (Also linked yesterday.)
Matthew Brown of the AP: "A U.S. appeals court panel sided with the Trump administration Friday in a mining pollution dispute, ruling that state and federal programs already in place ensure that companies take financial responsibility for future cleanups. The ruling came after the administration was sued by environmental groups for dropping an Obama-era proposal that would have forced companies to put up money to show they have resources to clean up pollution. The mining industry has a legacy of bankrupt companies abandoning polluted sites and leaving taxpayers to cover cleanup costs. But the three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it was 'unpersuaded' by the environmentalists' arguments that the Trump administration relied on a faulty economic analysis in making its decision.... The Associated Press has reported that every day, millions of gallons of water loaded with arsenic, lead and other toxic metals flow from some of the most contaminated mining sites in the U.S. and into surrounding streams and ponds without being treated."
Devoun Cetoute of the Miami Herald: "The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has opened an internal affairs investigation into whether it properly handled the case of multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, the part-time Palm Beach resident accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. Specifically, it will look at the decision more than a decade ago to allow Epstein to be free 12 hours a day on work release while serving a short sentence in the county stockade on prostitution-related charges. On Friday, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw -- the same sheriff who oversaw the controversial work release arrangement -- ordered that the investigation be done."
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Reader Comments (13)
Great Britain (and France and Germany) have obligations under the JCPOA, and they are not meeting them, meaning they, as well as the United States are breaking the agreement. The most astonishing break so far was Britain's seizure of an Iranian tanker, an act of piracy. Ayatollah Khamenei has said he will not talk to the U.S. until after sanctions have been lifted. Trump and Pompeo have apparently ignored the message and keep trying to get him to talk to them while conducting acts of war against his country. This is not going to end well.
Sent this to the lawyer son who advises on toxic waste cleanup, when I saw something similar in the NYTimes to the AP story on the easing of mine cleanup requirements. We had smirked to one another before that it looks like the Pretender is hell-bent on keeping him employed.
"What’s next?
Rescission of the common requirement that vehicles used on our roads carry insurance against the possible harm they might do to themselves, their passengers, and the persons and property of others?
Maybe grantors of mortgages should not be allowed to require that borrowers insure the collateral they have put up to back their borrowing?
Or maybe lenders should be forced to toss the collateral requirement entirely.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?"
MORE MEN ON THE MOON
THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON
For Chauncey Bondurant
Someone’s fishing for a dream
With a sliver of a moonbeam in a stream
He’ll go fishing far and wide
But he’ll come back again to me.
Late December, 1968, an astronaut trio
Ship shape and sturdy sailed through space
to the near side of the moon––––––––
Viewing the lunar sunrise these Apollo 8’s
Amazed, taken so completely by this miracle, this Genesis
one by one recited scripture:
In the beginning…
And the earth was without form…
Giving credit to a deity for the creation
Their muffled voices coming from so far––
And we on earth rejoicing, believing we had come
so far from a decade of dissonance.
And they wished us all a Merry Christmas.
I once knew a man, a close friend of my father’s
Who filled my young girl’s mind with ventures
far and wide––––
Who took me fishing while feeding my fancies
With wild tales of exploration–––
All lies, but so lovely.
Every time he’d say goodbye, when he’d ready himself
To leave, buttoning up, hat on head, he’d, with gloved hand,
throw me a kiss and say:
So long, kid, see you soon, on the far side of the moon.
Neither one of us ever made it––he died but I’m still alive
Hugging the ground on my little patch of remembered earth.
@Ken: I am flummoxed at the decision by the U.S. court of appeals panel (who are these judges?) who sided with the Trump administration in the mining pollition dispute. Can you give us more detail on what your son has said about this? The piece above ends with this:
" But the three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it was 'unpersuaded' by the environmentalists’ arguments that the Trump administration relied on a faulty economic analysis in making its decision.... The Associated Press has reported that every day, millions of gallons of water loaded with arsenic, lead and other toxic metals flow from some of the most contaminated mining sites in the U.S. and into surrounding streams and ponds without being treated."
what the hell!!!!!
PD,
Haven't talked with son #2 about this decision, so don't know what he thinks. I imagine he will read the opinion in detail sometime soon.
In the absence of expert opinion, though, I charactertically feel free to think what I will.
That thought, in sum:
We have different rules for different people, and since per dimwit Romney, corporations are people, my friend, they present a case very much in point.
As I said, we require individuals to insure themselves against the harm they might do to others before they operate vehicles, and to offer collateral that would be forfeited should they fail to repay a loan, in most cases their very home as we learned during the Bush Crash, yet before the Obama rule the court set aside, we allowed corporations to "self-insure," essentially allowing them to claim they possess the assets necessary to put right what their industry puts wrong.
The Obama rule was an attempt to halt that practice, which experience has shown often left environmental messes that mining operations casually walked away from by declaring bankruptcy after they had taken the profits and left the mess for others (you and me) to clean up.
In many senses corporations are not mere people; they are super-human, possessing the ability to die, leaving their social and economic debts unpaid, and then rising from the dead, carrying on their rapine as before, having changed nothing but their name.
I don't know what economic analyses the court found wanting, but I'm guessing it didn't take this cynical end game many mining corporations have successfully played into account.
@PD Pepe & @Ken Winkes: As I guessed before skimming the decision (which is here), this was a "Chevron" ruling; i.e., the court deferred to the agency (see page 9).
While we can certainly agree that the EPA was stupid and irresponsible & their "interpretation" dangerous, I don't think the court made a mistake in accepting the EPA's "reasoning," especially inasmuch as it took the EPA 26 years to come up with the rule. IMO, Trump's EPA, not the appeals court, is the problem.
Mrs. B.McC. -
Thank you for posting the Vanity Fair piece.
My early childhood was spent in a small NJ township, just “a stone’s throw” from Ms. Kopechne’s. I can readily recall the frantic horror this “incident” instilled in us kids. Hearing - or reading - her name still impacts. And infuriates.
An ugly reminder of how The Privileged - regardless of Party or positives - will “get away with murder”. And how misogyny (still) reigns:
“Teddy Escapes, Blonde Drowns.”
PD,
Have to tell you I really liked the poem. Thanks.
How close to fifty years ago did you create it?
I liked it in and of itself (the story of the man and all it says about the "lies" we tell one another, especially) but, as always, there's more.
This comment to the NYTimes today on a piece about the early connections between science fiction and rocketry is some of that more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/opinion/sunday/moon-rockets-space-fiction.html
"I enjoyed this one, Mr. Benson.
I believe I would have liked it as history alone even without the heavy dose of nostalgia that welled up in me as I read it.
As a space buff in my early teens in the late 50's and early 60's, (I still have a scrapbook of news stories and pictures I collected of some of those early launches) much of this history was already familiar to me, and I still have the seminal account of that era written by another member of the German Society for Space Travel, Willy Ley, who unlike Werner von Braun whose politics he did not share, fled Germany and moved to the United States before WWII and popularized the emerging field of rocketry with his writings, primarily in "Rocket, Missiles and Space Travel."
That book remains one of the best introductions to the era and some of the people Mr. Benson writes about. I would still recommend it.
I mentioned Tom Lehrer the other day in another connection (the piece on MAD magazine) and now can't help but recall Lehrer's lyrics about the "widows and orphans in old London Town, who owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun."
A devastatingly perfect way to say in other words what Mr. Benson quoted from the philospher Walter Benjamin.
I always knew Lehrer was as much philosopher as mathematician."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/19/nadia-murad-isis-killed-my-family-trump-asks-where-they-now/1783546001/
"USA Today"'s version of the extraordinary (or maybe not? It's more likely very common) White House scene I linked last night.
"Where are they now?"
He can't even pretend very well...
@Hattie: Your comment reminds me of up with which we used to put. You may recall that in the early 90s, Teddy's nephew William Kennedy Smith was accused of rape. Smith was acquitted even though the evidence against him was pretty compelling; his lawyer was Roy Black (who also represented Jeffrey Epstein). The women at the NYT rose up in anger at the coverage of the case; the paper ran profiles of accused & accuser; the profile of Smith was positive, the one of his accuser was negative & the reporters' "research" involved peeping into her bedroom window. Teddy himself was a member of the party during which Smith allegedly raped the woman. Teddy staunchly backed Smith. At one point, as I recall it was reported, Teddy showed up in a shirt & no pants. Nice.
Some time after that (can't recall how long) Betty Friedan made an appearance at NYU where she said women have to put up with men like Teddy "because he had done so much for women's rights." I argued with her during the public meeting & afterwards at a cocktail party. The women at the party, most of whom I assumed considered themselves feminists, took Friedan's side as a "pragmatic" concession. I was stunned by that "pragmatism": so it's okay if a man kills a young woman & abets the rape of another as long as he endorses equal rights laws? Good grief. I'd like to think Friedan's argument would not fly today.
A few years later, BTW, that same genre of "feminist" stood by Bill Clinton re: the Lewinsky fiasco.
Mrs. B.McC.
Yes! Yes! Yes! (William Smith & Roy Black! Betty F.’s B.S.!)
Yes! Yes! Yes!
I “ran into” Monica Lewinsky at my hood’s health-food store when she had (temporarily) moved nearby, once able to escape D.C. and the clammy paws (associated imagery respectfully censored for RC) of the assiduous Señor Starr. “Temporarily”, as The Media had camped out in front of her address, day and night.
(An Aside: I was blown away by her extraordinary and statuesque beauty, which the ad nauseam published photos of her, somehow, never managed to capture.)
I was one of many locals who protested these “journalists’” encampments. And (thought) I had instructed the camera crew to stop shooting (sooo pathetically naive, moi). Thus, the evening news was “edited” so I appeared to be offering my middle finger to “Monica!” and wishing *her* - instead of the media - “out of our neighborhood”. (Lesson learned.)
As for those “feminists” who supported Clinton and trashed Monica Lewinsky:
• Thank you ever so much, Ms. Dowd, for that pulitzer pummeling (so ‘fresh and insightful’) of a very flattered, very impressionable and very young woman, who was exploited by a potus who *should* have kept his willie in check.
• Hello again, Maureen: I’d had a mad crush on my esteemed bio professor who had taken a (healthy!) interest in helping this traumatized teen. But he was a mature and ethical being who remained my supporter and protector. Not my abuser.
• I recently refused tix to an Off-Bway production - in spite of it featuring a fave actress of mine - titled “Gloria”. I understood that it “gloria-fied” Steinem’s life. Also, that Ms. “MS” gave post-performance “talk-backs”. I knew I would embarrass (understatement) my theater-mates, unable to refrain from telling Steinem exactly how I felt about her, and about her walking (taking!) back how she *might* now have seen things differently from a
“Me Too” perspective.
Between this and Mary Jo Kopechne I need to follow my own prescription to Ken Winkes: mindful breathing and lotsa crazy kinetics while vocalizing expletives.
To those in like zones: Hydrate!
P.S for Mrs.B.McC.
I just re-read your post (sometimes need to re-read text):
I’d “missed” your “. . . I argued with her (Friedan) during the public meeting & afterwards at a cocktail party. The women at the party, most of whom I assumed considered themselves feminists, took Friedan's side as a "pragmatic" concession . . . “.
¡Brava!
I’m, now, self-flagellating (metaphorically) for having discarded my “mojo” and not confronted Steinem a few months back.
@Hattie: "I was one of many locals who protested these “journalists’” encampments. And (thought) I had instructed the camera crew to stop shooting (sooo pathetically naive, moi). Thus, the evening news was “edited” so I appeared to be offering my middle finger to “Monica!” and wishing *her* - instead of the media - “out of our neighborhood”. (Lesson learned.)"
That is amazing. I've been misrepresented by the media before, but never, never anything close to what they did to you, turning the story 180 degrees to give themselves a pass. Editing worthy of James O'Keefe.