THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2024
Toad-smoking expert expounds: What happens on the Fox News Channel program, Jesse Watters Primetime? According to the channel itself, this is the basic thumbnail:
Weeknights at 8pm ET, Jesse Watters brings his fresh take to Primetime. Each night, he’ll speak with newsmakers from across the country and give Americans a show where straight talk is the only talk, and the obvious will never be left unsaid.
As of last night, with what newsmaker from across the country did Watters engage in straight talk, yielding the latest fresh take? If you go to the actual Primetime site today, this is the segment that's featured:
Toad smoker describes his religious experience: "A great void"
Toad-smoking expert Hector Gonzalez shares his spiritual enlightenment on "Jesse Watters Primetime."
According to the Watters site, Watters spoke with toad-smoking expert about the great void in his life. Either that, or about his spiritual enlightenment.
We happened to watch the segment last night. In our view, it was a bit off-brand for Watters.
More typically, Watters is drawn to human interest explorations in which he can provide smarmy, condescending pseudo-advice to young women who plainly seem to be severely mentally ill.
Last night, by way of contrast, he spoke with a (male) toad-smoking expert. A whole new level of respect suddenly seemed to be present.
We mention this because this is the week when Watters' new book hits the shelves of bookstores nationwide. The title gives you a hint of its provenance:
Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe
Watters is exploring troubling tales in his new book, but only those which emerge from one particular fringe. By a remarkable act of will, HarperCollins managed to assemble this overview:
Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe
Can the political be way too personal? What if most radical activists are trying to change their lives by changing the whole country?
When Jesse Watters set out to interview a few dozen radical activists to find out where their wild ideas came from, he discovered two things that shocked him:
First, he liked these people.
Second, their political positions were not primarily from books, teachers, or other activists. They originated in personal drama. Most of these people didn’t need legislation. They needed a therapist.
In Get It Together, [Watters] takes on Wokeism in a way no one else has. Through a series of (sometimes very) personal interviews with some of the most radical activists in the country, Watters discovers that these activists may be overlooking the most important change they need to make—within themselves.
From activists working for climate change salvation, Black supremacy, and social justice to a professional cuddler and a transwoman who identifies as a wolf, Watters shows how many well-intentioned Americans have bought into causes invented and run by people who are illogical, emotional, and ill-informed.
Through their stories, Watters uncovers common threads—childhood traumas, broken relationships, and a lack of introspection. What if the people obsessed with the end of the world are just hurting from how this one has treated them? What if that, rather than ideological disagreements, is the deeper root of our country’s political divide?
Funny, fresh, and fascinating, Get It Together is sure to spark important conversations, and to inspire us to see one another not as political opponents, but as real and broken human beings.
Casting himself in the role of psychiatrist, Watters explores the problems caused by activists who are suffering from "a lack of introspection." There's only one rule which guides his selection of cases—the people suffering from a detailed set of afflictions all have to come from "the left."
We haven't read Watters' book. That said, we have seen way too many segments in recent weeks, on way too many TV shows, in which he attempts tries to describe the new offering.
Two weekends ago, ownership forced Mark Levin to pretend that Watters has written a fascinating book.
Watters' attempt to describe his book on that show produced about as insipid a cable news segment as we've ever seen. We even felt sorry for the world-class loudmouth Levin as he was forced to go through it.
You're right! We still haven't forced ourselves to link you to the appalling recent segments in which Watters pretended to offer counseling to several young women who were quite plainly mentally ill. It was about as gruesome a block of work as we've seen on TV.
As one part of the overall package, Watters works from behind an unusual comic persona. We look forward to scanning his book—and on some occasion, we'll steel our courage and link you to the segments to which we've referred.
Watters and Gutfeld and Pirro and Tyrus and Kat and the others oh my! We think of the end of the Hawthorne tale, Rappaccini's Daughter, in which the daughter of the mad scientist now lies dead, from a type of poison, on the grounds of a beautiful garden:
Just at that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunderstricken man of science, “Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is this the upshot of your experiment?”
Somerby says "ugh gross" to the notions in Watters' book, primarily because the diagnosis is fairly accurate but, in an amusing act of projection, those notions apply to right wingers, not leftists.
ReplyDeleteWatters' does not have a clue about ideology, he abuses areas of study and knowledge for his personal benefit; he is a classic run of the mill right wing grifter. Grifter aside, in many ways, he is a gift to the blue tribe as he makes the red tribe look ridiculous.
Other than tsk tsking Watters for exploring root causes, Somerby would just rather ignore such stuff and continue to push his own brand of nonsense that keeps his fans ignorant.
The idea that Somerby has fans that rely on him for their news source or world view or whatever this is trying to insinuate, and thus could be kept ignorant - is patently ridiculous. But this sort of hyperbole is par for the course for this commenter.
DeleteBased on what Bob wrote, Watters has two assertions:
ReplyDelete1. A number of far out leftist positions are basically from people who are irrational.
2. A lot of rational people wind up supporting irrational positions.
IMO a good example is gender vs sex. Scientists obviously have a good handle on sex: there are external sexual organs, ability to perform particular functions like childbirth, and chromosome differences. In the overwhelming percentage, these all match.
Scientists also have a good handle on homosexuality. Certain people are sexually attracted to people of their own sex. Although scientists don't know the cause, the existence of gay people is confirmed.
Another scientifically valid group are those who have sex change procedures. One can verify that their external sexual organs match their chosen new sex.
But, then there are those who claim to have a gender different from their biological sex. AFAIK there's no scientific verification of this idea. I don't think there can be, because there's no objective definition of 'gender'. If I say I'm a woman, there's no way to prove me wrong.
Despite its lack of scientific verification, most of the rest of us have adopted irrational theory. Some are persuaded to buy into the theory. Some are forced to support the theory by threats. So, the large number of rational people are supported an irrational idea.
Rationality has nothing to do with mental illness.
DeleteScientists do know the cause of homosexuality these days. Your error with respect to gender differences comes from assuming that gender is physiological (biological) and not socially constructed. You also mistakenly say that there is no way to verify whether a woman is a woman or not, but there is a way. You ask her. Gender is defined by each person, not by some external standard.
No one is "forced to buy into" any theory by threats. We do not live in a totalitarian/authoritarian society, except for those who are gay or trans or gender divergent in states where they are not allowed to express their own individuality. There has definitely been a reign of fear for gays when being homosexual was illegal (punishable by death in some countries), or when being gender divergent can get you beat up or ostracized or fired or killed (in the case of trans sex workers).
Marriage is also a social construct. Is it less real as an institution because it was created by society instead of what you call "science?"
I think you are still confused about this stuff, David, and should read more, preferably books by people who are trans or gender divergent or LGBTQ+, including some history of that civil rights movement.
Delete"Despite its lack of scientific verification, most of the rest of us have adopted irrational theory."
I don't think any significant number of people adopted it. 15-20%? Probably fewer. The rest of us can tell men from women just by looking at them.
@2:43 I appreciate your calm, orderly response. I have some quibbles:
DeleteI don't mean to imply that mental illness is caused by irrationality My intended point was only that mentally ill people can be irrational.
Can you provide links to scientists who have discovered the cause of homosexuality? I thought they didn't even know whether or not it had a genetic component.
A search engine produces many examples of people who were forced to buy into gender ideas or who were punished for not doing so. E.g., see "Florida teacher who was fired for using gender-neutral honorific " https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/florida-teacher-was-fired-using-gender-neutral-honorific-mx-sues-state-rcna129602
You are of course quite right that there was historically severe prejudice against gay people. It's amusing and sad that many liberals support some groups who continue that prejudice today, such as the Gaza Palestinians.
You and I agree that the only way to determine someone's gender is by asking them. You're OK with that situation; I'm not. Particularly when it involves children. Children make mistakes. They're not always right. If a biologically female child says s/he's really a boy, how could we tell whether the child is right or wrong?
From what I read, today many children are mistakenly identifying themselves as the other gender and then being significantly harmed by inappropriate medical treatments.
“Gender is defined by each person, not by some external standard.”
DeleteAnonymouse 2:43pm, and THAT should be the first thing stated and stressed to kids who want gender affirming surgery.
The way to determine people’s gender is to grope them.
Deletebitches be crazy
DeleteYou guys are too ignorant for words.
DeleteIt’s obvious that in order for you to have it all way to Sunday, you make this shite up as you skip along.
DeleteSpoken by a woman who probably thinks Gender Studies courses shouldn't exist at colleges.
DeleteGender affirming surgery is not for people who want to change their gender. It is for those who want their biological sex to match their sexual identity. It has nothing to do with gender presentation (which is how someone dresses and behaves).
DeletePeople have cosmetic surgery for a variety of purposes -- to look sexier or prettier, to remove birthmarks or scars, to remove unwanted hair, to reduce their breasts due to back problems, to look younger or to keep their droopy eyelids from blocking their sight, to make themselves taller (if born with a height defect, something also done in childhood). They modify their bodies in other permanent ways to conform to identity, such as tattoos, rings in their ears, nose, lips, bellybuttons or genitalia, some implant stones in their earlobes. And then there is female genital modification to conform to religious prescriptions for women, penile implants for men, body-building, butt lifts and enlargement, weight loss surgery.
So, why is it that when someone wants to change their body to conform to an inner image of their own gender, right wingers suddenly become so squeamish? After all, Tucker is all for men using sunlamps to radiate their testicles in order to feel more manly. How is this different?
Cecelia, these questions are for you to answer.
@8:12 for me the key is a person’s age. Adults can do whatever they want with their bodies. Children are not old enough to make their own medical decisions. Parental approval is required.
DeleteEven parental approval may not be sufficient in some cases. There were situations where parents had a religion that disdained normal medical care. I vaguely recall a case where the court overruled the parents when a standard medicine Csl treatment could cure the child.
This is cultural David. In Hispanic families little girls have their ears pierced as toddlers, by their mothers. In Anglo families, girls do it at the mall in middle school. Circumcision is totally cultural whether done at birth or as a later religious ritual. The child has no say. Teens get tats all the time without their parents knowing. This idea of parental control is a smokescreen for other concerns, especially on the right.
DeleteAnonymouse 8:32pm, quit trying to pad your non-answer answer with utter fluff.
DeleteParticularly when the argument over hormone therapy and profound surgical alterations is rammed down everyone’s throat by the threat that anything less is tantamount to encouraging suicide.
You can’t have it all ways. You can’t divorce gender from biology and say that it’s gender rather than biology that determines sex, but also— gender is a social construct.
Quit trying to gaslight the whole world away from the understanding that biology/sex determines gender, but due to complex psychological reasons some people don’t identify with their biological sex. Quit trying to usher in a society that Orwell wouldn’t have thought possible.
If biology determines sex, what about the people who are born with sex characteristics of both sexes?
DeleteAnonymouse 7:25am, or two heads?
DeleteNo it's actually one of the better arguments against the hard binary perspective on gender. Some are born with both sex organs. What is god trying to tell us?!
DeleteRationalist, what is God trying to tell us with any disorder? What signal do we get that there’s a deeper meaning to our existence or evidence of greater human autonomy from being born with a genetic anomaly?
DeleteIf you can define your gender based upon your feelings, why can’t I define your gender as well, based upon my feelings about your personality and mannerisms? After all, if it’s just a matter of the way you feel inside, why can’t I approach your sense of self with the same level of skepticism I might harbor if a friend informed me that he is “a people person” or “super intuitive”.
Yeah, well, that’s in the eye of the beholder or in the mind of the self-defined. Stay out of the women’s bathroom.
This is a human rights and corruption issue, and really, everyone from liberal to conservative to anything else should be for medical freedom for people within the system that exists. Americans are the easiest to scare people in the world and should take a pause before letting the culture war get the better of them.
DeleteWhat American conservatives fail to realize is they are taking a subjective, not objective view of gender from a specific strain of European cultural prejudice and calling that the baseline which everything should be measured. And biology and sociology have in the past several hundred years started to outpace that formulation. The heteronormativity of a specific cultural strain of European publishing does not account for the true spectrum of human experience.
The fake concern with which medical procedures you get isn't about whether they help you or not. That's all a smokescreen to hide the fact that your political agency is being taken away from you. Rescuing people is just an excuse for taking away their rights. Doctors used to lobby women out of jobs when midwives competed for them, so they took a hard line on abortion. Even today billionaires and business papers track the amount of labor and population demographics of society and write long think pieces about family sizes and divorce rates. If America gets too gay and doesn't reproduce, who will be the much abused "essential worker"? Capitalism has a very strong interest in your family affairs.
Conservatives have weaponized the very real threat of masculine rage which has built up through years of patriarchy onto the minorities themselves. Nobody is advocating for most of the surgeries they imagine are happening. People get surgeries at reasonable ages, and they work themselves into a frenzy telling themselves all kinds of lies about how this happens. Same as abortion, works like a charm to divide and conquer.
Europe gave us Romeo and Juliet but they also would turn a blind eye to legalized forced sex and births of women to rebound the labor population from the Plague. They would turn a blind eye to prostitution forced onto queer people, and all kinds of therapies trying to force people to be what they were not.
When the British went to Africa they saw "man-wives" living together and imposed their own particular point of view on it. It's still very difficult to be homosexual in most of Africa due to a combination of state ideologies mixing, especially European and Muslim ideology interacting with systemic bruises. Islam and Christianity are hiding from their sacred feminine using vindictiveness.
Listen, if you want to get religious about it, the reason God invented gay people was mostly so that the men would leave the women alone for a bit and let them eat a few apples in peace without having a bunch of men fighting over who controls what happens to what's between someone's legs. Why do you want to cure men who are some of the strongest allies of women? Gay men stick together with women like nobody else.
1. Childhood trauma does not cause mental illness, although it may result in adjustment problems.
ReplyDelete2. Mental illness does not belong to any specific political viewpoint or ideology, although religiosity can be a symptom.
3. Personality disorders are not a form of mental illness.
This is a hook for Watters to sell a book that may be entertaining to Republicans but will offer no useful advice to anyone actually trying to improve their lives.
Tucker Carlson did not become an awful person because his mother left his father, who quickly remarried. A man who smokes toads is not crazy just because he does something unusual within our society. Telling folks with problems to "get it together" is the equivalent of telling someone who is depressed to "snap out of it" or "cheer up".
Mental health professionals have to be licensed in many states, but book authors can write whatever they want and it is chalked up to freedom of speech. Those of us who work with troubled people find this sort of thing morally and ethically wrong because it takes advantage of people who may be suffering, takes money under false pretenses, offers hope that is not fulfilled, and maligns a political party in the guise of selling another bogus cure.
But perhaps it is foolish to put Republicans and the word "ethics" together in the same sentence.
America still has some poverty and social unrest, but the bulk of America's anxiety comes from the corporate class who are so entitled, privileged, and abusive to the country that the responsibility of all this work gives them anxiety. They process this anxiety through a culture of workaholic self-abuse, and publishing political tantrums in crappy, half researched 900 page pop sociology books from Harvard and Yale, they all gullibly read and then debunk every year. Hell, Elon Musk invented the perfect commodity for our generation: a car that you can drive into water and drown in and not escape. Full sensory deprivation. Maybe you can even put on a podcast about how to make money using the reading of Psalms while you drown in a lake for capitalism.
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ReplyDeleteSounds like Jesse Watters is our Corby, moonlighting.
No, I know Corby and Watters is no Corby.
DeleteThe link didn’t work.
ReplyDeleteThe link is fine, you’re just too tall.
DeleteAnonymouse 4:43pm, right, and I’d be the first person you’d ask for help with the overhead airplane bins.
DeleteYou’re too tall for the link, but you’re just right for the bin.
DeleteAnonymouse 5:57pm, too tall. You’d fit in one better.
DeleteYou ain't seen my bin.
DeleteYou might as well monitor the latest headline from the National Enquirer.
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Delete“ They needed a therapist”
ReplyDeleteEvery Watters accusation is a confession.
Anonymouse 4:43pm, a version of that sentiment comes to my mind every time that anonymouse starts up on childhood trauma. There’s been some screaming over wire clothes hangers in her childhood.
DeleteHer?
DeleteIt?
DeleteIt’s sad, really, that Watters’ mom used to dress him up as a girl and force him to write “I hate white men” a hundred times a day, right before she abandoned the family and her duties as a mother and wife to engage in a lesbian relationship with a black/Asian transgender man who switched back to being a woman.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like the plot for the latest Disney movie.
DeleteWhat did Disney ever do to you?
DeleteAnonymouse 6:30pm, they made movies that suck.
DeleteAnother record high stock market. Why this is bad news for Joe Biden:
ReplyDeleteI hear Israeli weapons stocks are doing well, but Biden wouldn't know the first thing about that.
DeleteImagine if a North Korean dictator were profiting off selling weapons to a genocide? Liberals would have his head.
DeleteBut because he is a nice English speaking American you give Biden a pass to genocide 30,000 Palestinians.
Biden and Trump should both be deported to Gaza.
DeleteWith greed in their eyes the liberals stomp on the near eastern Oriental
DeleteBiden's administration has never used the word genocide to hold him responsible and the Washington Post is afraid of using it as well.
DeleteThe Democrats do not get to simply claim Trump will make the genocide worse and do as much genocide as they want.
DeleteIt's not automatically great for Biden because the stock market in the United States is significantly skewed towards the rich, while the rest of Americans are on a treadmill of debt, owning little to no stock. Publicizing it makes Biden look more like a Republican 'Richie Rich' type of character, Ã la Mitt Romney.
DeleteThe fact that the internal machinery of power is broken so much that we can't take Biden out and replace him with someone else is why people like Trump get elected in the first place.
DeleteThe stock market isn't only for stock owners. It is used to raise capital that allows companies to operate. I bought my daughter stock when she was in middle school and she cashed it in after college in order to fund medical school. One of the stocks was Disney (before Touchstone Pictures) and it split multiple times, proving to be a lucrative investment. I was not rich and she didn't bet rich off it either, but it was a lesson in how to save and invest. Perhaps the difference between those who prosper and those who do not lies in such lessons that the middle class can give to their children.
DeleteIf you teach the non-rich that money is only for the wealthy, it seems like a self-defeating message that stokes resentment without helping anyone improve their lives.
Trump is running for office to have impunity. Anybody with a brain has to vote against that. Democrats could put anyone in Biden's place and make the same arguments they're making now against Trump. They're just too cowardly and lobbyist focused to accomplish it.
Delete@7:54 -- what a load of crap.
DeleteBiden was chosen by the majority of people voting in primaries in 2019-2020. In the current election, he polls ahead of each of the other alternatives and has been winning primaries by much larger margins than Trump has. This idea that no one wants him to be reelected is YOUR strawman but is inconsistent with election results. If Biden were replaced, the person polling second best against Trump is Kamala Harris, our current VP. She is the second choice of the voting public -- and those are the people who matter during elections -- the people who vote.
Trump was "elected" because Russia and Comey interfered illegally in our election in 2016. He was not the choice of anyone except Russia and extremists bigots on the right. Most people wanted Hillary (look at her popular votes).
Of course Trump will make the Gaza war worse. And he will also make the Ukraine war much worse, because he will do whatever Putin wants.
DeleteTelling people in poverty to just buy more stock is hilariously out of touch with everyday concerns like rent, student debt, grocery prices,. Elitists who still cling to neoliberal bootstrap philosophy get savagely punished in the culture wars by the right-wing.
DeleteIf all it takes to fix America is the stock market then crank up the oil boom and let's have one final hurrah denying reality.
DeleteWill Trump’s assets really be seized?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/politics/trump-calls-ny-attorney-generals-bond-suggestions-impractical-and-unjust/index.html
Not one of these is a denunciation of the prosecutions. Take the first example. Somerby is criticizing us on the left for failing to craft winning arguments, he is not saying Trump is being prosecuted unfairly. And the other examples are similar. (The closest to a denunciation is the last example, but that doesn't cut it, either. As Somerby said in that post, "Does that mean that something's wrong with the case? We have no idea.")
ReplyDeleteI read your first example, and I think you missed the quote which supports your accusation that Somerby has denounced a prosecution:
ReplyDelete"That said, it's hard to avoid being scornful of those high-minded prosecutors in Gotham. Apparently, they actually want American citizens to cast their votes on the basis of pointless slimy bullshit like this, rather than on the more substantial considerations our culture's elites love to downplay and avoid."
The "slimy bullshit" is Trump's efforts to buy off Stormy. So, this one time I'll agree that Somerby has denounced a prosecution.
In the old days they would convert the people to Christianity before taking over their governments. Now they psychoanalyze you.
ReplyDeleteThe term psychoanalysis refers to Freud's theories. Those are 100 years in the past. Psychology, including clinical diagnosis and treatment became scientific in the mid-20th century and has little to do with analyzing people. The kind of thing Watters is doing is called psychobabble or pseudoscience and is as mistaken as scientology or phrenology. Somerby is as ignorant as Watters.
Delete“They” 6:10? This blog used to be a nonstop psychoanalysis of Trump.
DeleteYour obtuse particularism is stupid. "It's only psychoanalysis if it comes from Freud otherwise it's sparkling psychology."
DeleteFreud is a big part of why people don't understand queer people to begin with. His theories set us back decades.
DeleteIf all you have is a cocktail anecdote about how to define psychoanalysis you're just wasting people's time.
DeleteLiberals pretend nobody notices them memorizing a bunch of extra trivia like the teacher's pet to center themselves in every conversation. 9:31 PM definitely sat in the front row of class with his hand up eagerly hoping for teacher's approval.
DeleteYour story intrigued me... out of curiosity, how much are you making??? Thanks!
DeleteHey Folks! I've just received my instructions kit today... Can't wait to start working on this... Wish me luck!
Delete@5:39 They are all denunciations.
ReplyDeleteBiden should be in jail for genocide.
ReplyDelete@7:18 why do you bother writing crap like that?
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with denunciating the prosecutions of Trump? They backfired politically big time.
ReplyDeleteDenouncing? Are you another troll farm non-native English speaker, like Cecelia?
ReplyDeleteBiden is facing a lawsuit for genocide.
ReplyDeletehttps://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/biden-gaza-genocide-case-constitutional-and-international-law
Out of one side of its mouth the Biden administration says to calm down about calling it a genocide, and invoking the genocide convention. And out of the other side of its mouth it says it's sorry about the dead Palestinians, but the 14 billion dollars in aid to Israel will go through while we ask Israel not to let you starve like we did Afghanistan.
8:24,
ReplyDeleteSo we should only use the law for political considerations?
Are you Justice Alito, or Justice Thomas?
The toad guy is not a "newsmaker". Obviously, Rappaccini's Daughter has nothing to do with any of this.
ReplyDeleteI’m Chief Justice Roberts.
ReplyDelete