RawStory’s Tom Boggioni reports on something I would never watch myself: Fox news talking to a “political insider” for the “inside thinking” on the politics of politics. Oy. Nonetheless, the insider raised a good question: Are house democrats a good witch or a bad witch?
“There is real danger for the president lurking out there,” Stirewalt cautioned the Fox News host. “Republicans — if they lose control of Congress — there is a very strong chance that Donald Trump will be impeached.”
When things fall into my particular area of expertise, being a non-entity as far as the national (or even local) media is concerned can be crushingly disheartening. Watching people with next-to-no knowledge on a topic have their opinions broadcast to millions while your demonstrated mastery and expertise in a field make it plain to you that everyone involved in an important national conversation is missing out on some very, very important basics is horribly frustrating, as anyone who has ever studied any of the fields on which an Important Political Consultant pontificates can attest. Imagine if you will, that in the aftermath of some horrible tragedy involving vaccines produced by in vivo exposure of embryonic zebra fish to a virus Our Hero PZ Myers is forced to listen to David Brooks pontificate
Well, of course if you give this vaccine to farmed salmon you’re going to see a higher incidence of anadromous autism, the evolution of the zebra fish practically guarantees it. Then that autism is inevitably going to cause a collapse in fish stocks because if you’re autistic you won’t breed, and these sick farmed salmon are eventually going to pass that trait on to the wild salmon through genetic mixing of farmed and wild fish, which ends up hurting the livelihoods of fishermen in the Pacific NorthWest and leading directly to the tragedy we saw this week.
Well, I’ve felt something like that a time or two, as have many actual experts in their fields, I’m sure. What doesn’t typically happen, however, is having your idiocy immediately challenged by someone who is both an actual expert in the field and a writer of special magnificence. So even though John Kelly was clearly spouting idiocy (and evil) in the interview I’ve already critiqued, I did not realize what was coming: a thorough and complete trashing by someone with very practiced communication skills, strong connections throughout the national media, and legitimate expertise in the US Civil War. Oh, John Kelly, what have you done? You’re a general, you’re not supposed to be ignorant enough to walk blithely into a big gun’s field of fire. Pissing me off is one thing, but pissing off someone who actually knows the history of slavery? I hesitate to continue. It’s over, Kelly. Ta-Nehisi Coates has the high ground:
Regarding John Kelly’s creationist theorizing on Lee and the Civil War, its worth pointing out a few things.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017
Yes. A few things. Go read Coates’ tweets, and prepare for what I expect will be a devastating long-form piece in the near future. In the meantime, it is, of course, worse for Kelly than just that. He’s actually walked into overlapping fields of fire, and I don’t think it’s going to help him much that his allies are going to say some of these blazing guns sound a bit shrill:
While they raped my Grandmother, lynched my Uncle, broke up my family to lost history, you find honor & compromise in that, you racist, prick? https://t.co/bOihrwd67N
— Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) October 31, 2017
Yeah, I think racist is the least of the criticism Kelly has (deservedly) coming his way.
Still working on a very turbulent and difficult move – oy, this one has been hard. Nonetheless, I have recently been informed that the world has been marching on without me. For those of you who aren’t suffering move-induced-lack-of-time-and-spare-energy, I thought you might like to hear all about the cool praise-y things the United States’ President’s chief of staff General John Kelly has to say about Confederate general and slaver who came across as particularly cruel to his slaves compared to other slavers Robert E. Lee. It turns out that, even at this point in my moving process, I have some thoughts to express on these “thoughts” that Kelly had on television with Laura Ingraham sitting across from him.
Roy Moore, candidate for US Senate from Alabama and twice-removed for cause Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama has called for the impeachment of a federal judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, because she had the gall to review an action taken by the executive branch of the United States, find it not in comportment with the laws of the US, and issue an order to take the action necessary to bring executive action back within the bounds of US law. Via Twitter, Ben Jacobs of the Guardian*1 reports on this statement by Moore:
So I’m moving on Tuesday, and it’s been very hard to write anything for the last 10 days because of the upcoming move, but rest assured, we’ll be getting back to important topics soon.
In the meantime, I was reminded of Helen Pluckrose’s work at Aeromagazine by someone whom I will not blame, because I’m taking the high road here.
As a result, I feel compelled to write about how wrong Pluckrose is about certain important aspects of intersectionality. And yet, I don’t actually have time right now, plus I have an aversion to giving Pluckrose’s thoughts any more specific attention (such as might occur during an actual critique of any specific article).
Thus, I will limit myself to saying that the metaphor/theoretical model of Intersectionality was introduced by Crenshaw in the late 80s, but not the concept. The concept of intersectionality is at least as old as, “Ain’t I a woman?” as anyone questing for Truth might easily find.
I will also say that Crenshaw’s metaphor/model of intersectionality was not invented as a way to encourage listening. Nor was it crafted because she was opposed to the idea of a future society devoid of power structures that encourage scrutiny of race or gender. Intersectionality was crafted as a response to a practical problem in lawsuits seeking remedy for discrimination against Black women in the workplace:
If it is not completely obvious, what the courts have constructed, and what Crenshaw decries, is a series of justifications that both protects those who discriminate on the basis of (legal) sex if it just might be that the bigots discriminated against a particular plaintiff on the basis of race and also protects those who discriminate on the basis of race if it just might be that the bigots discriminated against a particular plaintiff on the basis of sex. Of course, Black men were not required to prove that their discrimination was racial only, not a combination of race and sex, vice versa for white women.
If you haven’t already, go back and read some of the other articles in my series On the Corner, so you don’t end up having conversations just as misconceived and misinformed as those of Pluckrose.
Off to make lunch and do more packing and cleaning!
The CBC’s The Current had a story on #metoo and sexual violence/harassment prevention this morning. One guest was carefully talking about the tradeoffs between eradication strategies and harm reduction strategies. The other was firmly ensconced within the loving, anti-feminist embrace of Chill Girl tradition, raging against the demonization of men, portraying all women as fragile victims, and the conflation of bosses non-consensually massaging their employees and strangers kidnapping women to rape and kill them in an isolated farmhouse. Predictably, CG denigrated the tone of the people speaking out on #metoo and the public presence of actual outrage.
Now, I could critique the segment in general. The Feminist Guest certainly made a couple statements with which I could quibble (though in general I thought FG was very good), but the Chill Girl delivered so much wrong it would be easy to make another Crip Dyke-Patented, Lengthy, Ranting Post™ dissecting the conversation and especially CG’s contributions. But this isn’t that post.
Oh, NYTImes. You have all the details about Bill O’Reilly’s latest sexual harassment, assault and rape settlement. You have all the details, and you’re willing to share:
21st Century Fox, acknowledges that it was aware of the woman’s complaints about Mr. O’Reilly. They included allegations of repeated harassment, a nonconsensual sexual relationship and the sending of gay pornography and other sexually explicit material to her, according to the people briefed on the matter.
Emphasis mine.
Really, NYT? If it was fellatio focussed porn, would we know that? If it included anal penetration, would that be fit to print? Shall we presume that there was no cum shot, or just that the cum shot was, shall we say, not newsworthy?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware of anti-semitism, but RightWingWatch has delivered a disheartening quote from a prominent guest on something called “The Richie Allen Show” and I don’t care how fringe this is, it’s awful:
“Pedophilia is rampant within the Jewish religion, from what I’ve researched,” Crokin said. “I’ve also discovered that predators prey on children at Jewish camps. Now, it is interesting how pedophilia has been exposed within the Catholic church but there hasn’t been a huge scandal about the pedophilia that goes on within the Jewish community. We do know that the Jews control most of the mainstream media and Hollywood, so you’re probably on to something with that.”
Some of you may know that I spent many years actively pushing forward conversations within anti-rape and anti-domestic violence organizations and activist circles in ways that would make us better able to respond to the needs of victims/survivors and the challenge of stopping rapists/abusers in a world of much more complex sexuality and gender than those movements had previously considered.
Rand Paul has gotten libertarianism wrong again. Despite the fact that he has attempted at times to throw off the libertarian label as too limiting and ultimately inaccurate in describing the whole of his political philosophy, Paul has also clearly embraced the label many times. More importantly for our discussion, many movement libertarians have embraced Paul as a movement leader, giving the initial fundraising momentum necessary to Paul’s political success. So why is Paul seemingly so intent on violating whatever limited principles libertarianism might hold?
It’s no surprise that most libertarians are doing libertarianism wrong of course: most of us don’t think through most of our positions, even many times on important issues. There simply are too many important issues for us to be educated or even thoughtful about every single one. I’m sure I do progressive queer feminism wrong many times as well. In fact, that’s part of the reason why I’ve chosen the life path that I have, with its focus on study that permits more time to examine those positions, more exposure to knowledgable, thoughtful takes on important issues I haven’t yet considered, and more support for rethinking issues that one had previously thought settled.
Nonetheless, you don’t exactly expect movement leaders to do that movement wrong. If a person wasn’t competent on issues important to a movement why would that person have been accepted as a leader?