TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2024
Kubrick does it again: This very morning, far off campus, we found ourselves thinking, again and again, of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.
We plan to rewatch it this weekend. For today, this capsule, from memory:
In Eyes Wide Shut, the Tom Cruise character discovers that the actual world is not at all the way he thought it was.
He discovers this as he stumbled upon a peculiar scene in a mansion somewhere out on Long Island. Shout out, North by Northwest?)
(Apparently, the actual location for the shoot was a British mansion called Somerton. No known relation.)
Out on Long Island, the Cruise character stumbles upon the "masked orgy of an unnamed secret society"—a set of rituals built upon ancient desires concerning sexual subjugation. We can't quite recall where the plot goes from there, but how much more do you need?
Last night, we watched as several of our major broadcasters swept aside large chunks of what happened in Madison Square Garden this Sunday.
Within the framework offered by these TV journalists, it all came down to that one (indefensible, ugly and stupid) non-joke. You would have thought it was just that one joke—just that one joke, all by itself, in the course of a very long evening!
A viewer would have thought it was just that one joke! Swept away was this part of Sunday's evening's sick ritual:
ROSENBERG (10/27/24): She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party—a bunch of degenerates. Low lives. Jew-haters and low lives. Every one of them. Every one of them.
Watching some of the shows we watched last night, a viewer would never have known that the Garden Party included such disordered, atavistic remarks.
No one tried to explain, or even to cite, the oral sex insult Hulk Hogan pulled from the garbage can and directed at Candidate Harris. Swept away were other such slimy remarks from this long throwback ritual.
In fairness, Kubrick may have undershot his mark by a bit. In Eye Wide Shut, participants in the throwback ritual feel they must do so in secret.
Sunday night, at the Garden, participants felt they could engage in their ancient ritual conduct right out in the open. Their secrets were protected by several major news shows last night as Sunday evening's full range of events went unmentioned and undiscussed.
That said, vast amounts of our failing discourse have been built upon an eager agreement by our major journalists—the agreement that they should be keeping their eyes (and their traps) wide shut.
We're sorry, but once again this:
Last night, clinical psychologist Mary Trump told Lawrence O'Donnell that her grandfather, Fred Trump, was "a sociopath." She doesn't say the same thing about her uncle, perhaps for reasons of liability.
Whatever! The point we'll propose is this:
Our nation's discourse is currently being overrun by a cadre of men who show all the signs of being (clinically) disordered.
It isn't just Donald J. Trump. It's also Elon Musk, whose taste for blatant, bald misstatement seems to know no bounds.
The preference for constant wild misstatement is a basic symptom of at least one major clinical disorder. Nor is it only Trump and Musk who display this obvious taste. We'd be inclined to wonder about Kennedy Jr. and Vance as well.
That said:
We American citizens can wonder as much as we please. The people who pose as our nation's journalists have agreed, long ago, that our spotless minds must not be robbed of their sunshine by such fairly obvious points.
We Americans go on and on, then on and on, as our journos conspire to keep their eyes shut. One recent example:
Has anyone ever struggled so hard, or at such length, to defend an indefensible practice of his guild as Ezra Klein did in this recent presentation for the New York Times?
We'll review that absurdly lengthy piece in the days ahead. It seems to us that Nicholas Kristof is now working to keep our eyes shut too—to keep ruminations safe.
On Sunday, the most ancient, atavistic impulses were general over the Garden. Last night, again and again, the entire prehistoric ritual was whittled down to one joke.
The sexual insults aimed at Harris were set aside and forgotten. For the record, such sexual insults have been widespread at the Fox News Channel.
Those sexual insults are aired every night—and Blue America's most trusted tribunes choose to avert their gaze.
MeToo came and went with great speed. In our view, it was baldly faux a very large part of the time. As a nation, we've now reached a very dangerous place—and this is a major part of the way we all got here.
For us, it's back now to a different campus for more of the day's crucial medical research. That said:
We're going to rent Eyes Wide Shut this weekend. In the last film of his stunning career, did the great Kubrick do it again?
Imagine calling comedy "disordered."
ReplyDeleteEveryone should watch Tony Hinchcliffe's roast of Tom Brady on Netflix. Racist, offensive, shocking, inappropriate, and hilarious.
Jon Stewart played clips of the MSG set and said he loved Hinchcliffe's comedy.
Trigger warning! Perpetually angry and humorless Democratic women will melt into a puddle of rage over it, as will their delicate male Democratic counterparts.
Too bad millions of Puerto Ricans took offense. You should keep explaining to them that they are perpetually angry and humorless, coming as they do from a floating pile of garbage, as they either decide to vote for Harris or angrily switch their votes away from Trump.
DeleteThe Left doesn't have a great sense of humor.
DeleteThe hilarious joke Republican politicians tell about the Democratic Party cheating in elections falls flat with them and the media.
ALL the anti-immigrant stuff you hear from the Right are jokes. You'd have to be a fool to think they're being serious.
DeleteThe "joke" is that in real life, women and children aren't being raped by immigrants, but by men. Get it?
Delete
ReplyDeleteBut the Democrat party faithful certainly are a bunch of degenerates. That's an empirical fact, observed by everyone during the last decade.
Seriously, this is not a joke.
Many Trump supporters are deplorable. No offense, but no joke either, amirite?
DeletePlease let us know all of the degenerate acts the Democratic faithfull are engaged in. Seriously, this is not a joke.
Delete"Blue America's most trusted tribunes"
ReplyDeleteCitation needed.
"This very morning, far off campus, we found ourselves thinking, again and again, of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut."
ReplyDeleteWhen you "find yourself" thinking of something (anything) over and over without conscious intention, it is called an obsession.
obsession definition: "an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind"
Somerby tells us about this obsession but he doesn't relate it to anything else in his essay, indeed there is no relevance. So why does Somerby mention it at all? I have wondered that every single time Somerby has returned to discuss this not very good film.
Somerby says that the Tom Cruise character discovers a hidden world, that things are not as he assumed, but sex is generally kept hidden out of a sense of privacy. This film is about deviant sex among a group of like-minded people. Such groups have always existed.
Somerby might have explained that the Republicans are planning to invade that privacy with their own rules about sex and other private activity. I assume they will not impose the same rules on party bigwigs, since there is plenty of deviancy there that won't fit JD Vance's strict ideas about what men and women should do.
Somerby could have written an interesting essay, but once again he disappoints by preferring not to think and instead to push more right wing talking points. First, he joins the right, which has been pointing out that the left seems to be only concerned about one joke. That isn't true, but Somerby says it anyway. He says that no one cares about the misogynist remarks against Kamala Harris, when that is far from true. The outrage against the right's behavior has been general and consistent, but WE cannot do anything about it and do move on to newer outrages. He then blames the left for complaining insufficiently about the right's ugly behavior. We have no control over what jokes were allowed in Trump's rally. We didn't even attend. So why are we responsible for what was said? We didn't "let" them do it -- they have free speech rights. And yes, we have complained but look what happened when Hillary called the Trumpies deplorable. They haven't changed and we haven't changed in our opposition to that crap, but WE are not responsible for their misbehavior, their rotten personalities, their mental illness or their fascination with violence. We didn't hatch Kyle Rittenhouse. They did that, and they own it, even on the occasions when the NY Times decides to stop fluffing Trump and point out his mistakes.
The idea of Somerby sitting in the dark watching and fantasizing over Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in the world of deviant sex is slightly sickening. Somerby is perhaps like the other men in that film, dressed in robes with masks to hide their leers, subjugating women in ritualistic ways that make their crude lusts seem more high brow. There is porn for all sorts, even Somerby. I do suggest he not mention it, the next time he can't help but go watch the sexy parts in that movie again, and for God's sake, don't tell us which scenes they are.
"In the last film of his stunning career, did the great Kubrick do it again?"
ReplyDeleteI love the opening scene of The Wild Bunch, where three young boys are shown torturing insects in the street.
I love it when a director is courageous enough to show its audience, right in the first scene, that they aren't going to like watching the brutality that will follow. A more subtle filmmaker might build up to violence instead of leading with it before people have had a chance to buy their popcorn.
Maybe he was being satirical. That is the defense of bad comedians, right?
DeleteThey're torturing a scorpion -- some "ambivalence and ambiguity" there.
DeleteNotice how the right is denigrating anyone who complains about their racism and sexism as being "scolding women". That is a sexist theme that Somerby doesn't mention, but weren't fathers supposed to be the disciplinarians? When you say that women are the ones who care about and complain about bad behavior on the right, isn't that a role reversal?
ReplyDeleteI keep waiting for big daddy Trump to discipline his minions who are pushing away votes, but Trump is the one behaving badly and setting the role model of a father who is himself a deadbeat abusive prick, not the father who keeps the kids on line with those spankings when he gets home, the daddy disciplinarian who shows boys how to behave like real men. In fact, I don't see any discipline on the right at all -- only the incitement to break rules and do ugly things, without restraint (self or from others). When the moms step in and try to restore order, if they are male, the right calls them women, and if they are women, then the right pretends that moms shouldn't ever tell children what to do, but how can that be correct, any kind of a good model of parenting?
So, basically, this isn't really about Vance's family values or Carlson's daddy fantasies, but about a group of unruly boys and girls who think they can and should do whatever they want, without anyone telling them what to do, but with lots of rules for the people they don't like (teachers & librarians, OB/Gyns, the press, immigrants, libs, etc). And they don't want any necessary rules implemented for health and safety (or the survival of our planet) to interfere with their fun and games.
Freud would say the Republicans are pure id run wild. The right may talk about parents and spankings, but they are delighting in the absence, removal of any restraints. I don't know whether that makes them all sociopaths or all retarded children (developmentally speaking) but plenty of them are criminals and social deviants. So maybe Somerby's reference to a movie about sexual deviants is apt after all. It is just that Somerby didn't make the connection, so his enjoyment of Kubrick's portrayal of deviance is more likely to be an exercise of right wing fantasy misbehavior more than an exploration of why restraint is necessary in a civilized society.
Excuse me for stopping here. I have to go chase those right wing deviants off my lawn again, because I am a female cat lady and that's what we do, that and vote for a president willing to do the job, Kamala Harris, instead of a grown child with no impulse control and no ability to think any more because (1) neurosyphillis is the #1 internet explanation or (2) dementia is the most likely explanation.
"MeToo came and went with great speed. In our view, it was baldly faux a very large part of the time."
ReplyDeleteYes, we recall the various times Somerby defended some sexual abuser (even convicted rapist Brock Turner). Ask Sean Combs whether metoo is over, or the CIA assault whistleblower whose abuser's trial is just starting.
Someone who thinks that bitches be lyin', the way Somerby does, has no standing when he pretends to care about misogyny aimed at Kamala Harris. Somerby was right there defending Kavanaugh. Clarence Thomas was confirmed in 1991, but I'll bet Somerby was rooting for him too, because Anita Hill was an obvious manhater (along with the two dozen women ready to testify in support of Hill).
Somerby needs to understand that when women's testimony was disregarded in that hearing, it led to The Year of the Woman in 1992, women running for offices up and down the ballot in record numbers (and being elected). They even opened a women's bathroom near the senate chamber.
This election is producing the same kind of backlash, due to Trump's stacking of the court and the Dobb's decision eliminating abortion rights in red states. Women are angry and remarks like Somerby's don't help that situation. They remind us that there are guys like him plotting to put women back in the kitchen, so Somerby's bold crusade against allowing women to testify to their abuse in court is going to remind us to go vote for Harris and to get our female friends on the same bandwagon. Until guys like Somerby no longer feel comfortable claiming that men need to be protected from the consequences of their misbehavior against women, declaring #metoo over prematurely (just as Somerby has declared racism no longer a thing), women are going to vote Democratic up and down the ballot, because that is the only way to protect our rights as full and equal citizens against asshole like Somerby and his Republican buddies.
"Somerby's bold crusade against allowing women to testify to their abuse in court"
Delete"Somerby has declared racism no longer a thing"
You may want to re-check the accuracy of these statements.
What is it about these Somerby-hating Anons that leads them to just make shit up about him?
DeleteGo back and read what Somerby said about Kavanaugh. Then read the recent articles about how Trump suppressed the investigation into the leads produced during Kavanaugh's hearing. Just like what happened with Clarence Thomas.
DeleteSomerby claimed that students at black colleges were complaining about racial microaggressions because they didn't have enough real racism to talk about in their lives. It was during the controversy when the black student was told by a security guard that she couldn't sleep on the sofa in the student lounge because she didn't belong there. Somerby weighed in that black students no longer had enough racism to complain about since racism is no longer widespread in our society. He also argued against seminars that examine racism as being unnecessary and teaching students to be excessively woke. Not being black, claiming there is no racism is a pretty outrageous thing for him to say and flies in the face of the relevant statistics comparing black and white experience in various areas. Note that Somerby has also gone out of his way to claim that there is no undertreatment of black people for pain (which is untrue) and there are no health disparities for black people (also untrue based on the literature).
Somerby is pretty consistent in his confusion about racial issues, and also his defense of men who are accused of abusing women, even 14 year old girls (see his ongoing articles about Roy Moore).
Anyone who has been reading Somerby since 2000 will be familiar with his repeatedly expressed attitudes. For example, his suggestion that school desegregation was bad for Boston schools because of the demonstrations against it.
You are defending the wrong guy here, PP. And no, I will not look up any quotes for you. I've done that and you refuse to read them with an open mind, continuing to split hairs to maintain your assertions.
"Anyone who has been reading Somerby since 2000 will be familiar with his repeatedly expressed attitudes."
DeleteI've been reading him since well before 2000 and so I know that what you say is false.
And I know that you can't paraphrase worth a damn.
DeletePP, all you know is that you disagree with my take on Somerby's writing here over the years. I suspect that you agree with him, thus what he says sounds like common sense to you. I disagree with a lot of what he writes, so a lot of it sounds outrageous to me. You don't seem to be able to see anything from any perspective except your own.
DeleteI was doing research on racial differences in pain expression, about 10 years ago. I had a grant to do it from NIH (National Institute of Health). When Somerby made his remark about the claims of undertreatment of pain for black people being bogus, I posted my literature review, which included the research studies showing exactly that, that black people were undertreated for pain historically and in modern studies. Somerby claims to not read his comments, so his mistaken claims were unaffected, but that was a massive contradiction that anyone should have seen contradicted Somerby's claim. Do you think the govt would spend 1/2 million $ to study something that was bogus (unsupported by the medical literature for a variety of kinds of pain)? I have gone to considerable effort to contradict Somerby's other mistaken statements, most recently the one about the MS reading scores, which Kevin Drum yielded on but Somerby never backed off -- when he was shown to be wrong in comments.
You claim that I am a Somerby hater. I don't hate the guy but I do dislike perpetuation of wrong info by people making supposedly authoritative claims, as Somerby does regularly. Another example was when he claimed that there is no gender pay gap, criticizing Harris for quoting the Dept of Labor's own statistics from their website. Somerby comes back to that one frequently, but he is majorly wrong about it. Last year's Nobel Prize winner in Economics won for her research on the gender pay gap, why it exists. Her name is Claudia Goldin. Has Somerby backed off that claim? Of course not.
You are defending the wrong guy for the wrong things. Picking on me doesn't change reality. These are topics I care about and I am not going to cede reality to Somerby's sexist and racist claims.
"Another example was when he claimed that there is no gender pay gap.
DeleteNope. Bob said it was less than was being reported, not that it didn't exist.
"claiming there is no racism is a pretty outrageous thing for him (Bob) to say"
DeleteSure would be. If he said it. But he didn't. So apologize.
He did say there wasn’t enough racism in black student lives so they were inventing microaggressions. That is bad enough. I won’t apologize to anyone who says what he says.
DeleteSomerby dodn’t say what you attribute to him about the pay gap. That is wishful thinking.
DeleteSomerby quibbled over whether pay was for the same work, ignoring that sexism causes the work to be different. But he first called Hillary a liar, then Harris, when they were not talking about his restricted case.
DeleteI would suggest that you use exact quotes and dated citations when you criticize Somerby, because frankly you seem incapable of accurately paraphrasing him.
Delete"Somerby quibbled over whether pay was for the same work"
DeleteThe problem you have is TDH has a search engine which lets you type in 'gender pay gap'. At the link below you'll see the variety of arguments Bob deploys, principally to chip away at the notion of a '28%' overall gender pay gap.
And yes, one of them is about whether pay was for the same work, which is a legitimate criticsm to make, even if some people poke fun at it by the use of 'quibble'.
https://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/search?q=gender+pay+gap
If he ever acknowledged the inequalities that cause work to be unequal, you might have a case, but he never did that.
DeleteFuck your exact quotes.
DeleteAh, the voice of the truly woke.
DeleteI wonder how JD Vance will react when they come to deport his wife and half-American children?
ReplyDeleteThe good news for Vance is they have promised to keep families with illegals together on "60 Minutes", so Vance will have to be remove to India with his family.
DeleteHarris will not appear with Joe Rogan because he wouldn't accede to the special conditions she demanded -- one hour instead of the usual 3 hours. And, Rogan coming to her rather than doing it in his own studio, as usual.
DeleteInstead Rogan will host Vance. Vance has been effective at interviews, even when dealing with hostile interviewers. With Rogan's lack of hostility, I expect Vance to knock this out of the park.
"Vance has been effective at interviews, even when dealing with hostile interviewers."
DeleteHe lies like a rug, which I guess counts for 'effective' in your book.
“J.D. is kissing my ass. He wants my support so bad.”
Deletehttps://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=b77251912650b4ae&sxsrf=ADLYWIJwCXLpR1W3YLME9BoAdwIYd7s2ew:1730294390397&q=JD+is+kissing+my+ass&tbm=vid&source=lnms&fbs=AEQNm0Aa4sjWe7Rqy32pFwRj0UkWfbQph1uib-VfD_izZO2Y5sC3UdQE5x8XNnxUO1qJLaRIaEtzaSH-OhiOhqt_msDm5okqi8cL1oZ65TIjTcqv6T8esjvThYq9Ns2Gw1OzwscspIdexpXzhODlqfQbECmCysNaSSzqkl4mwSCwPpI0f-CXo5T3zNwXZ2xz4gC8o91irXFbVGpv1XPw8flYeTfLoFheFA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiOkPzzmLaJAxXaOkQIHQPcJtMQ0pQJegQIEhAB&biw=1536&bih=730&dpr=1.25#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:26e0a808,vid:dVdiRYvszJI,st:0
Maybe Somerby took Tucker a bit too literally and had a ball-tanning accident. It would explain the medical absences.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet men don't find that joke funny, especially Republican men.
DeletePoor snowflakes.
Deletehttps://thecycle.substack.com/p/what-really-happens-if-trump-wins
ReplyDeleteHitler was legally elected in Germany, but he quickly dismantled protections for citizens. Within one month, he had subverted the courts and was sentencing political opponents to imprisonment in Dachau (built for that purpose). In two months, he started persecuting Jews, starting with forbidding them to practice law. We cannot be complacent about what another Trump term might mean.
Immigrants are Trump's scapegoated group. You might feel fine with Trump because you are not an immigrant yourself. Perhaps you don't know any immigrants either. But do you know people with Spanish surnames? Do you know people with brown skin, even if they are citizens who were born here to families who have been American for generations? We are common in the Southwest, from Texas to California and the states between. Joe Arpaio (who was pardoned by Trump in 2020) put people in jail without worrying about whether they were citizens or not, just on suspicion, for having brown skin, a Hispanic sounding name, maybe speaking Spanish outside the home. Or maybe they were locked up for being Democrats. These were not criminals but people scheduled for deportation, without checking their eligibility.
What is to stop that from happening again when the MAGAs go door-to-door rounding up folks for repatriation? They said it in Madison Square Garden. American is for Americans -- but they think that means white people with American names like Trump (whose mother was German) or Musk or Knaus (Melania's name before she bought her citizenship by marrying Trump). Any of us could wind up in a camp awaiting deportation to a country we have never even visited, having to scramble for legal help to prove our citizenship, even if we were born in the USA.
That's why we need to defeat Trump. And that means voting for Kamala Harris. Simply staying home or voting third party won't help. We all need to vote for Harris in order to protect ourselves from the kinds of things that happen when a charismatic fascist wants to be a dictator on day one. You may think Trump is joking, but he means it -- and he has said it himself, no more mister nice guy.
First they came for the "illegal" immigrants
ReplyDeleteAnd I did not speak out
Because I was not illegal
Then they came for the non-Americans (legal but not from here)
And I did not speak out
Because my granny was from one of the good countries not the shitholes
Then they came for the gays and bisexuals
And I did not speak out
Because I was normal, not even curious
Then they came for the transpeople
And I did not speak out
Because I enjoy being a boy
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller.
"Martin Niemöller is best known for writing First They Came, but he is a complicated figure. Initially an antisemitic Nazi supporter, his views changed when he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for speaking out against Nazi control of churches."
Deletehttps://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/pastor-martin-niemoller-hmd-2021/
"Vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance equivocated on Hinchcliffe's widely denounced remarks, saying "maybe it was a stupid racist joke," but "maybe it's not." Scarborough mocked his political ineptitude." [Rawstory]
ReplyDeleteUSA Today is refusing to make an endorsement, even though it endorsed Biden in 2020. That strikes me as racist and sexist. Trump has only gotten worse, so it has to be because they can't support Harris as a right-leaning organization.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a traffic light that turned yellow at the wrong time would strike you as racist and sexist.
DeleteWhat do you think it means when they are willing to endorse a white man (with about the same qualifications) but not a black woman?
DeleteIt tells me that the woods are lovely, dark and deep and there are a lot of reasons why people make decisions in this world, and you're way too quick pulling the racist/sexist trigger.
DeleteTrump is worse now than in 2020. That strengthens the racist/sexist case. This endorsement should be a slam dunk and there are no alternative theories.
DeleteHmmm…there was racism and sexism on full display at that Trump rally.
Delete"Melania Trump insisted to Fox & Friends that her husband “is not Hitler” because of the “support he has.”
ReplyDeleteSaid Melania: “It’s terrible. He’s not Hitler. And all of his supporters they standing behind him because they want to see country successful and we see what kind of support he has.” [Political Wire]
Do you determine whether a person is a fascist or not based on the amount of their support? Melania seems to think so. Hitler had enough support to become the elected Chancellor of Germany. Did that make him any less of a fascist?
Yes, Melania has to say something positive about her husband, but claiming he is not Hitler because so many people like him, ignores the crowds of adoring followeers who attended Hitler's rallies in the bad old days.
Your vote is your secret. He'll never know. Vote for Harris.
ReplyDeleteOne of the jokes at the Garden Party was that Democrats should be called the P Diddy party. Epstein-Diddy party would be more accurate, but just P Diddy party better reflects proclaimed Dem DEI values. Epstein and his guests abused only white girls. Looks like Diddy and his celebrity pals abused girls AND boys of all races.
ReplyDeleteThis is what desperation looks like. And irony. Trump is himself a huge sexual abuser and convicted rapist and yet they are making these sorts of jokes at their hate rally.
DeleteSpeaking of Trump and Epstein . . .
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/39NMGEUUmx8
"SEATTLE (The Borowitz Report)—A heated battle has erupted between two of the world’s richest men as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk compete to see who can shed more customers, industry observers reported on Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteDavis Logsdon, who teaches a course about sociopathic CEOs at the University of Minnesota, said that both men “have what it takes” to send customers fleeing in droves.
“You might think that Musk, endowed with such world-class obnoxiousness, would be unbeatable as a customer-repellent,” he said. “But it’s impressive what Bezos has managed to do through sheer cowardice.”
“In the past 48 hours, for example, hundreds of people have tried to sell their used Teslas in the Washington Post classifieds,” he said. “Unfortunately for them, only 9 people still subscribe to the Washington Post.”
This is what is at stake in this election:
ReplyDeletehttps://digbysblog.net/2024/10/29/the-horror-7/
Digby describes the persecution of women having miscarriages by fanatics in red anti-abortion states. Yes, these are atrocities, but they are happening to real women and we need to protect ourselves against this kind of thing.
Vote for Harris. It is the only way to prevent extremists from rolling back the freedom of women and returning us to second-class status. This is not a matter of maintaing the right to hold a job -- it is about staying out of jail for some women, and it is about life and death for other women.
From Jonathan V. Last (The Bulwark):
ReplyDelete"
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Today’s Triad explores one of the fundamental tensions we have at The Bulwark. Many of my colleagues are optimists who see the best in people.
I am . . . not an optimist. Especially when it comes to people.
But at the same time, I think it’s always better to understand reality. If the people are rotten, then we’re better off facing that fact, rather than constructing alibis for why they might not be as bad as it seems.
Because you can only begin to plan and respond once you understand the contours of reality.
We’re about to learn something important about our country. And we might not be glad that we did.
100% Reality
0% Happy Talk
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What More Do You People Want from Kamala Harris? (Part Deux)
She's done everything voters could reasonably have asked for.
Jonathan V. Last
Oct 29
∙
Preview
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Tonight we’re going to livestream Kamala Harris’s big closing argument rally for Bulwark+ members. The show starts at 7pm. If you’re a member, here’s how to join us live. If you’re not a member yet and want to join, we’d love to have you.
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Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally at Resch Expo on October 17, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
1. Precriminations
This morning we got word that Kamala Harris tried to do the Joe Rogan show. She proposed a date and was willing to sit with him for an hour.
Rogan balked.
So Rogan’s demand was that the sitting vice president detour from her campaign in swing states to come to him in Austin and also that she give him—what?—three hours?
And if she was only willing to give him an hour, and he had to travel to her? Well, then he thought his audience would be better off not hearing from her at all.¹
I am sorry but that is not on the level.
This is just one more area in which Kamala Harris has done—or tried to do—everything that was asked of her in the name of outreach to the great and good American people who get their news from a guy who talks about sucking his own dick.
Share
Kamala Harris has a 50-50 chance to win this election.²
But I want to head off arguments that if she loses it was somehow her fault. That she did something wrong, or didn’t do something important.
Because here is the rock-bottom fact: No reasonable observer could have asked her to run a better campaign.
Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee a hundred days ago. In that time she:
Unified the Democratic party.
Reversed Biden’s polling deficit and took the lead over Trump.
Organized a successful convention.
Created a policy framework for her prospective administration.
Pivoted to the center on nearly every issue: From domestic energy production, to gun reform, to immigration.
Absolutely schlonged Trump in their debate.
Performed somewhere between adequately and exceptionally in every single media interview.
Spent time with several non-traditional media outlets.
Gave almost unfailingly good speeches in front of giant crowds.
Performed heroic levels outreach to Republicans and swing voters by appearing on Fox News and campaigning with the likes of Liz Cheney—while explicitly inviting and welcoming Republican voters into her coalition.
Harris did not play perfect baseball—you or I could sketch out a handful of things we wish she had done differently. Or better. But the perfect campaign does not exist."
Vote for Harris. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
Sorry, tried to cut-paste just the part listing her accomplishments in the last 100 days. Instead it picked up the whole thing. Maybe Somerby will come along and delete it.
Delete@5:03 - your excuses for Harris not appearing with Rogan don't hold up IMO.
Delete-- Few people actually care who deserves the blame for her non-appearance. The important point is that she missed this opportunity to connect with tens of millions of voters.
-- Trump and Vance agreed to Rogan's terms. Why shouldn't she?
-- Harris was actually IN Texas a few days ago. She could have coordinated a Rogan interview with that trip.
-- A strong candidate like Bill Clinton would have jumped at the chance to do a 3 hour interview. And, his interview would have won over a great many voters.
On the other hand, DiC, a strong candidate would have done that 60 minutes interview, even agreeing to be fact checked, as Harris did, but Trump did not.
DeleteWe also found out at the Trump rally/kundgebung that Harris is the Antichrist. That’s exactly what a strong candidate would present.
Delete"Trump and Vance agreed to Rogan's terms. Why shouldn't she?"
DeleteGood point. Whatever Trump and Vance do, Kamala should also do.
@8:04 - the difference is that 60 Minutes is biased and dishonest, while Rogan is fair. The bias and dishonesty are proved by 60 Minutes covertly replacing an actual Harris answer with her answer to a different question. Her actual answer would have made her look bad.
DeleteOk, David. You’re full of shit.
DeleteWhat these fundamentalist Christians don’t seem to understand is that the Antichrist won’t appear as their enemy, but as their (deceiving) friend. It’s right there in the Bible that they purport to read.
DeleteIncorrect, DiC:
Delete"Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false.
"60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes. Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment."
It is quite rich to call out Harris for not appearing with Rogan, when Trump ran away from any further debates with her, having face planted in the one and only debate they had, in which she manhandled the geezer.
DeleteA self important less than mediocre intellect like Rogan can stipulate the conditions of his interview with a presidential candidate who he favors less than Trump. A legitimate journalist would have found a way to accommodate her busy schedule and interviewed her somehow, some way. There is zero chance an Anderson Cooper would behave this way.
DeleteThere is a theory, which makes sense to me, that Kamala didn't want to do a Rogan interview, but she didn't want to be blamed for turning it down. So, she set conditions which she knew would be unacceptable to him.
Delete"There is a theory..." There is likewise a theory that Trump avoided any interviews in which he would be challenged , opting instead for softball engagements with sycophants like Dr. Phillips and Rogan. In fact, that is not a theory, it is a point of fact.
Delete"Dr. Phil" autocorrected. Incidentally, Harris went into hostile territory for an interview with a Fox talking head who interrupted her over 30 times. Where were Trump's balls? He cancelled multiple interviews, being the fragile old man who knew he couldn't hack it.
Delete"There is a theory..."
Delete"We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,’”
Hah
DeleteThe Bulwark? It sucks to be on the same team with the lowest right wing neocons of them all.
DeleteDickhead in Cal is just here to deflect, throw dust and do his bitchy drive-by fascist hit jobs. He is enthusiastically voting for a convicted felon under felony indictment in three additional jurisdictions. A corrupt businessman found to have committed business fraud and fined over half a billion dollars (under appeal). A man found liable for defaming the woman he raped, and then stepping on his dick once again and found liable a second time for defaming the woman he raped. Dickhead in Cal doesn't care about any of that and would rather you forget about it too, so he comes here to bring up Joe Rogan who has fuck all to do with Trump's Bund Rally where one of his supporters called Puerto Rico a pile of garbage. Joe Rogan, a man who believes the moon landings are a hoax.
DeleteJoe Rogan, no college education, conspiracy theorist and purveyor of Covid misinformation. Recipe for a MAGA.
DeleteIsn't the Bulwark an outfit of child predators or do I have the wrong group of gay men?
Delete“Eyes Wide Shut” was a lousy film.
ReplyDeleteIs Somerby actually placing blame on MeToo for the sexual insults against Harris, and also for the dangerous place our country is now in? And MeToo was faux? Is this for real?
ReplyDeleteRight-wingers are getting desperate, as the election nears.
DeleteTDH is far from some type of genius political analyst. I like him though, because he often has good insights (inevitably leading to absurd criticisms by a small number of annoyingly clueless anonymice commenters). But it does seem to me that TDH has a tin ear in his references to movies, poems, ancient Greek epics, etc. as somehow enhancing his point of view. The connections between the Iliad, "sacred" Thoreau, the Robert frost quote, and, especially Eyes Wide Shut and the current political situation, and the point he is trying to make are excessively tenuous. Eyes Wide Shut - I've seen this movie - lots of nudity in it (including Nicole Kidman) - which is the best thing about the movie from my standpoint, but I completely fail to see how it relates to the current predicament we are in with intractable hostility between Blues and Reds, each of whom seems to have gone off the rails in several areas. It appears that TDH enjoys making these literary references, and maybe I'm missing something, but his editor should urge him to stick to the facts, and forego these tenuous allusions.
ReplyDelete