LESSONS CONCERNING THE FALL: Greta walks!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2017

Interlude—Possible hint of a brilliant disguise:
Finally, there's someone to admire in the wide-ranging discussion of Harvey Weinstein's decades of misconduct.

That person is Sarah Polley, the actress and writer/director who wrote an essay about the matter in Sunday's New York Times.

Polley's essay is unusually intelligent throughout. But our respect for Polley turned to admiration fairly late in her piece.

Earlier, Polley had described an unpleasant encounter she had with Weinsten when she was just 19. As she neared the end of her piece, she added a type of confession:
POLLEY (10/15/17): Harvey Weinstein may be the central-casting version of a Hollywood predator, but he was just one festering pustule in a diseased industry. The only thing that shocked most people in the film industry about the Harvey Weinstein story was that suddenly, for some reason, people seemed to care. That knowledge alone allowed a lot of us to breathe for the first time in ages.

Here is an unsettling problem that I am left with now: Like so many, I knew about him. And not just from my comparatively tame meeting with him. For years, I heard the horrible stories that are now chilling so many people to their core. Like so many, I didn’t know what to do with all of it. I’ve grown up in this industry, surrounded by predatory behavior, and the idea of making people care about it seemed as distant an ambition as pulling the sun out of the sky.
To a person, the analysts cheered.

In the previous week, they had seen an array of players finesse the question of whether they had known about Weinstein's decades of misconduct. By way of contrast, Polley said that she had known about Weinstein. And she hadn't just known in some general or anodyne way.

"For years," Polley says she heard the stories about Weinstein. And she hadn't just heard some array of tame, murky stories. She had heard "the horrible stories" concerning which people suddenly, "for some reason," suddenly seem to care.

Like many others, she didn't act on what she knew, in part for perfectly sensible reasons. That said, Polley described her own failure to act as "an unsettling problem." In our view, her admission of knowledge and her statement of regret are the marks of a person with an active conscience. So is an insightful statement which got dropped from her text in the hard-copy Times:

"This [film] industry doesn’t tend to attract the most gentle and principled among us," Polley was willing to say at an early point in her piece. Keep that thought in mind.

Sarah Polley was willing to say that she had heard "the horrible stories." Elsewhere, attempts to sidestep, avoid or finesse this question seemed to come early and often.

For our money, the Morning Joe program was especially shameless in its repeated attempts to reinvent Mika Brzezinski as a courageous culture-war hero with respect to Weinstein's misconduct. As Mika, a star of Weinstein Books, lodged her non-denial denials, the Morning Joe gang seemed to be working from script.

We have no idea of Mika knew, but her program's journalism was utterly bogus, suspect. That said, others sidestepped this question too, and not just with respect to Weinstein's behavior. At yesterday's Washington Post, a code of silence was in effect when Kathleen Parker insulted her readers' intelligence concerning a similar, earlier matter—the behavior of Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly at the Fox News Channel.

According to Parker, Greta Van Susteren certainly didn't know about that conduct when she was earning those millions of dollars over at Fox! According to Parker, this fact qualifies as "obvious." After all, that's what Greta has said!
PARKER (10/15/17): Ailes, of course, left the company he created two weeks after former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment. They reached a settlement amount of $20 million, and he died soon thereafter. Justice doesn’t get any plainer than that. O’Reilly left the same company after revelations that he had settled with five women who accused him of sexual harassment, although the dethroned king of cable news has said the claims had no merit.

[...]

Moreover, “everyone” sorta knew about these men, at least by reputation and rumor. Not everyone [knew], obviously. Greta Van Susteren, who left Fox News soon after Ailes, told me again on Thursday that she never had any idea what was going on. But many did, apparently, and they looked away, including some of the alleged victims, who kept silent for fear of retribution or, perhaps, because they were ultimately willing to suffer humiliation in exchange for advancement. This seems an obvious, if painful, truth.
Over at Fox, many people knew about what Ailes and O'Reilly were doing, or at least so Parker suspects. But according to Parker, it's "obvious" that Greta didn't know. To Parker, this fact is "obvious" because Greta has said so again. She said so again just last week!

It's obvious Greta didn't know because Greta has said so? Your intelligence and decency are being insulted when a fully competent journalist hands you such manifest nonsense.

That said, codes of silence—guild protection rackets—are widespread within the upper-end press corps, which, like the film industry, may not, through the size of its rewards, always attract and produce the best people. We think of the time when Rachel Maddow also vouched and covered for Greta, back when Greta split from Fox and took her talents to The One True Liberal Channel.

Did Greta Van Susteren know about Ailes and O'Reilly's conduct? We have no earthly idea.

That said, we do know this: for four long and guesome years, she knew all about Donald J. Trump's birtherism. Indeed, she served as Trump's main enabler, as his caddie, as he became the king of the nation's birthers.

Through 2015, Greta Van Susteren played dumb for Trump concerning his birtherism. But so what? When Greta brought her talents to MSNBC, Rachel vouched for Greta intensely.

We should all watch Greta's program, the cable star told us gullible liberals. Greta wasn't just a fabulous journalist, we were told. She was also Rachel's drinking buddy and her bestest best friend!

Why did Rachel say those things? We can't answer that question. That said, we've long suggested that Rachel's laughing, joking on-air persona may perhaps and possibly be a bit of a brilliant disguise.

In the October 9 New Yorker, Janet Malcolm described that brilliant disguise—but she approves of the on-air practice, which she admiringly describes as Maddow's "performance of the Rachel figure."

Is Maddow cloaked in a brilliant disguise when she performs her "sleight of hand" every night—that is to say, in "her performance of the Rachel figure?" Next question:

Is it possible that "cable news," like Hollywood, may not necessarily "attract the most principled among us?"

In our view, our nation's journalistic and political culture have collapsed beneath the weight of these questions, perhaps beyond the point of repair. For that reason, as the world turns, crashes and burns, we'll discuss those questions all week.

Janet Malcolm says she's mesmerized by Maddow's "performance of the Rachel figure." What in the world is she talking about?

We'll start with the baby poop.

Tomorrow: "Baby-poop-colored cannisters" and "the Rachel figure"

Sources of our language:
For the Springsteen lyrics, just click here.

To hear the song sung, click this.

55 comments:

  1. Hillary claimed not to know about Bill Clinton's abusive behavior, even though, by all reports, she was an active participant in covering it up. Of course, Trump's personal life is disgusting. Not to mention John Edwards and Gary Hart.

    Why are many top candidates and Hollywood bigwigs so immoral? Maybe both professions require extraordinary ambition and aggressiveness and both convey extraordinary power.

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    1. This has been refuted many times here. Please take this garbage somewhere else.

      Delete
    2. “Before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it,” he said. “You know, I’m inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good.”

      “You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’” he continued. “And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.”

      According to interviews BuzzFeed News conducted with former Miss Teen USA contestants, Trump did just that in 1997. Four women who were competing in the pageant that year — including one who was 15 at the time — recalled that Trump walked into the dressing area while they were changing.

      One of them called it “shocking” and “creepy” and said she rushed to cover herself. Another recalled that the contestants were “just scrambling to grab stuff… whatever garments they had.”

      Another called it “really shocking,” saying, “We were all naked.”

      “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’” Mariah Billado, former Miss Vermont Teen USA, said.
      *************

      You voted for that man, Comrade DinC. That perverted dirty old man, creeping around in underage girls dressing room.

      You forfeit any right to criticize anyone else, you two-faced hypocrite.

      Why were you such an enabler of a perverted old man?

      "Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

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    3. Yes, mm. I already acknowledged that Trump's personal life is disgusting. I voted for him because I thought his Republican policies would be better than Democratic policies for Americans and for the world. So far, they have been IMHO.

      P.S. I don't admire Hillary Clinton's personal life, either, but that's not why I didn't vote for her.

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    4. Comrade DinC, what the fuck do you know about Secretary Clinton's personal life?

      The first thing you do is jump on here to LIE about President Clinton and then about her being an "active participant" in "covering it up", nonexistent evidence of non existent "abusive behavior".

      Paula Jones' case was summarily dismissed because her story fell apart. Every other accuser of President Clinton was investigated and found to be bullshit, even by Ken Starr.

      David, you're too much of a coward to ever admit to yourself that you voted for an abomination. How's his health care "policy" going, Comrade?

      ****
      One of the oddities of Donald Trump’s decision to cut off cost-sharing reduction payments to private health insurers is that literally no one benefits from the move. Usually, at least someone benefits from Republican health care measures, even if the underlying idea is misguided, but in this case, everyone loses from the president’s gambit on CSRs.

      It takes effort to come up with a policy proposal this foolish. In one move, Trump has managed to hurt consumers, hurt insurers, hurt the health care market, and raise the deficit, creating a bizarre dynamic in which the country will pay more and get less. What’s more, the Associated Press found that 70% of those who benefit from cost-sharing reduction payments live in red states.

      In other words, the White House is not only making the health care system worse on purpose; it’s also hurting parts of its political base.

      The question, of course, is why. Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, said over the weekend that Trump’s goal is to “blow up” insurance markets, which is an amazing thing for him to admit out loud.

      The president had a different explanation.


      REPORTER: You promised that you would help people who are struggling. The CSR payment looks like it will hurt low-income people.

      TRUMP: The CSR payments, if you take a look at CSR payments, that money is going to insurance companies to prop up insurance companies.

      REPORTER: To help lower-income people.

      TRUMP: That money is going to insurance companies to lift up their stock price, and that’s not what I’m about. Take a look at who those insurance companies support, and I guarantee you one thing: It’s not Donald Trump.

      The president is badly confused about his own actions. The money goes to insurers to cover out-of-pocket costs for lower-income Americans. Ending the CSR payments may hurt insurers stock prices – something Trump was especially excited about over the weekend for reasons he didn’t explain – but it also directly hurts those who benefit from the payments, while indirectly hurting everyone through increases in premiums.

      http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/even-republicans-arent-happy-trumps-health-care-gambit
      ****

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    5. mm -- give me a break.
      1. We know that Clinton had sex with Gennifer Flowers, because he admitted it. The only question is how many times over how long a period.

      2. Paula Jones essentially won her suit. Clinton settled for the full amount that she was suing for.

      3. When the Monica scandal broke, Hillary lied to the nation. She falsely asserted that her husband was innocent, that the charge was a falsehood created by some supposed "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."

      P.S. One can argue the pro's and con's of the CSR payments, but just about everyone agrees that they were illegal. Obama should not have made them and Trump should not have continued them this long.

      From the POV of an ordinary citizen, a nice thing about having a President who the media hates is that the media are less likely to let him get away with grossly illegal actions.

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    6. Why do we have to keep going over and over this same tired propaganda? You don't belong here and no one wants you here. Take this crap somewhere else.

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    7. David, quit lying.

      He admitted to one encounter with Gennifer Flowers. She was the one claiming a 12 year long affair, for which she was not able to produce any evidence.

      See below, TDH, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2016:
      ***
      Back in 1992, Flowers declared that she'd enjoyed a torrid twelve-year affair with Bill Clinton, the only man she ever loved. She received several six-figure paydays along the way as she told her story. All in all, she took in more than $500,000 for her thrilling claims, which she was never able to document in any discernible way.
      *****

      That's some good stuff at TDH, you ought to try reading it.

      Paula Jones' suit was summarily dismissed for lack of evidence. He settled that while it was under appeal because of the entrapment about Monica Lewinsky.


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    8. During the deposition there was a very broad definition of sexual contact presented by Jones's attorneys. Clinton admitted to contact with Flowers under that broad definition. He never admitted to an affair or to intercourse with her. Not even a one-night stand. He never said what the contact was specifically.

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    9. " I thought his Republican policies would be better than Democratic policies for Americans and for the world. So far, they have been IMHO."

      You can get away with any perversion you want, as long as you promise to keep women and people of color in their place.

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    10. David, you misunderstand CSR payments just as badly as Trump.

      Halting the CSR payments hurts everyone and helps no one. It hurts Republicans by putting them to blame for the negative consequences. Republicans in congress actually support the CSR payments. It also in no way helps insurance companies, one of the more laughably tragic claims put forth by Trump.

      Halting the payments hurts poor people by not helping them with health insurance costs, will raise everyone's premiums, will significantly increase the deficit. It literally helps no one.

      Contrary to your statement about CSR payments "just about everyone agrees that they were illegal", only partisan Republicans attempt such an argument, displaying their low level of integrity.

      The legal battle is merely over a phrase in the law that is unclear on how the payments are appropriated. No one is arguing that there is anything inherently illegal about CSR payments.

      David, clearly you are uneducated and misinformed about this subject, or suffer from the typical low integrity character issue most Republicans have. Here is some clarity, and a way to redeem your character:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/08/07/president-trumps-claim-of-obamacare-bailouts-for-insurance-companies/?utm_term=.5f1736d5efa6

      https://www.gq.com/story/trump-ends-csr-payments

      https://thinkprogress.org/trump-august-csr-payments-57aeb2348012/

      https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/2/16086374/voxcare-csr-payments-trump

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    11. You are a joke, David.

      Health care was one of tRump's signature campaign issues. He promised to repeal the ACA, and replace it with something much better, providing better coverage for more people for less money and it was going to be so easy. Only he could do it.
      You voted for that lying sack of shit.

      In his first tragic year he has proven to be totally incompetent, unqualified and too lazy to use the high office you have entrusted to him to actually do anything about it.

      What I posted, the words tRump spoke, are totally objectively false. There is no debate about it. What tRump spoke was pure tRump bullshit with no connection to reality. Yet you don't even see that. You reflexively defend the callous vindictive EO he executed, which he did for the express purpose of undermining the ACA program which he claimed was collapsing. Well apparently it wasn't collapsing fast enough for his liking so he has been undercutting it in every conceivable way, this being just the latest example.

      No one who has watched this abomination believes he could answer substantive policy questions about health care in this country for longer that about 20 seconds before he reverts to a steady stream of bullshit, which you scoop up with gusto.

      Leave aside for a moment the merits of his action on the CSRs. The point I was making was that he had no fucking clue what he was talking about. This after nearly a year of utter complete failure trying to get Congress to repeal and replace.

      Trump doesn't blame himself though. We can all take comfort in the fact that Trump doesn't take any responsibility for his total failure and incompetence.

      So when you say you voted for trump because of his "policy", it is laugh out loud funny, you jackass.

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    12. Greg Popovich, veteran:

      I’ve been amazed and disappointed by so much of what this President had said, and his approach to running this country, which seems to be one of just a never-ending divisiveness. But his comments today about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presidents Obama and Bush never contacted their families, is so beyond the pale, I almost don’t have the words.”

      “This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner – and to lie about how previous presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers – is as low as it gets. We have a pathological liar in the White House: unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this President should be ashamed because they know it better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.”

      Delete
    13. Thanks, mm, for reminding me how good Bob has been. I'm often frustrated with his commentary and his tone in this era of Trump. And thanks to everyone for all the passionate pushback against Trump's bullshit, again something I miss from Somerby.

      Delete
    14. "Paula Jones' case was summarily dismissed because her story fell apart."

      No, it was dismissed because she could not prove she had suffered any damages. While awaiting her appeal she was paid a settlement.

      Delete
    15. Pushback against the bimbo eruption allegations against Clinton in light of Lewinsky is a derangement syndrome like no other.

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    16. DavidinCA, you got smoked. LOL

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    17. No, it was dismissed because she could not prove she had suffered any damages

      Which was the whole pretext of the suit. Her story fell apart because it never happened.

      Delete
  2. Somerby says: "Like many others, she didn't act on what she knew"

    This is false. Like most actresses who encountered Weinstein, Polley took care not to place herself in a compromising position with Weinstein. Not to be alone with him, not to be dependent on his approval. That is the kind of self-protective action any woman would take when confronted by a powerful man who is also dangerous when thwarted. She took plenty of action.

    Somerby, like many others, seems to believe that in order to be courageous, a woman must speak out, file charges, do something to help other women (other than warn them quietly behind the scenes). Why is this the burden of those who are abused by guys like Weinstein? It shouldn't be. I don't believe any woman needs to speak out about what they knew about this man, at the time, or now. He is at fault. Not them.

    Calling this a brutal business evades responsibility for conforming one's actions to the civilities of our society. Weinstein was taught, just like other little boys, not to mess with girls. He ignored that. The wrong is his, not his industry's and not his victim's. He is the monster here. The industry is not.

    There are men like Weinstein in every profession. Women encounter them all the time. They are taught to deal with them and above all, not to rock the boat for anyone else by complaining about their treatment. Men demand this -- not the entertainment or news industries -- men demand this. Men need to take responsibility for the actions of their brothers, not continue to blame women such as Mika for not knowing enough or not saying enough -- or whatever Somerby is claiming about her today. Mika tried to get her books published. That shouldn't require her to out a psychopath. It should require her to submit a manuscript her viewers might read. She did that and that is all that is required of her. The principled stand falls on the shoulders of the men who let Weinstein get away with this stuff because they feared damage to their own careers. Men need to speak out because they have more power than women, because this is a male-dominated society. With that domination comes responsibility.

    What did Somerby know? Why is he only now joining this bandwagon? Why does he think the way to solve this longstanding, ubiquitous problem is to berate Mika?

    What an ass Somerby has become.

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    1. "Somerby, like many others, seems to believe that in order to be courageous, a woman must speak out, file charges, do something to help other women (other than warn them quietly behind the scenes). "

      You have made this up. There's nothing here that suggests that.

      What's here is disgust at the hypocrisy of a media that *pretends* at a moral superiority it manifestly does not have.

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  3. How Somerby manages to begin a post about Weinstein's misconduct, and then somehow ends up with the major culprits being Maddow, Greta, and Mika, shows something disordered in Somerby's thinking.

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    1. What is it? What is the something it shows?

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    2. His disordered thinking.

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    3. Weinstein's conduct, Ailes's conduct, the problem of sexual harassment and sexual predation in general, leads Somerby back to his usual criticism of Maddow, an unrelated topic. It's like Clinton Derangement Syndrome or Trump Derangement Syndrome, where everything under the sun is related to the target of one's derangement.

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    4. But he relates the topic doesn't he? He describes a media player (Polley) who doesn't 'sidestep a reality' (having knowledge of Weinstein) whereas other powerful media players (Mika, Maddow) have sidestepped realities (knowledge of Greta's playing dumb re. Trump's birtherism). Agree or disagree he connected them coherently. The topic is Maddow and Mika. It's not a post about Weinstein's conduct or sexual predation in general.

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    5. Obviously, I don't think he connected them coherently, hence my objection. First of all, Weinstein committed crimes. Secondly, women not coming forward about sexual assault isn't the same as Maddow praising Greta van Susteren or Greta 'playing dumb.'
      Sexual harassment or assault in the workplace is pernicious; women not coming forward isn't "covering for" the harasser; it's about keeping a job or a career which could otherwise be destroyed.
      Also, who in the world is surprised that there are "unprincipled" people in the movie business, or the media business? What business doesn't have that? Even religion contains unprincipled people by the boatload.
      Somerby also doesn't seem to acknowledge what a workplace is like. If all journalists or TV media people were always and only at each other's throats, how could any media organization exist with more than one person in it? So Maddow welcomed Greta to MSNBC as a fellow employee; so what? In Somerby's view, that's equivalent to sexually harassed women keeping quiet about their abusers?
      I know of no absolutely pure source for news, whether it's "powerful media players" or lonely internet bloggers.


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    6. In both cases it's about it's about keeping a job or a career which could otherwise be destroyed. That's the connection. I see you realize that Maddow is unprincipled. Some people, believe it or not, don't!

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    7. Don't put words in my mouth, bub. I did not say that Maddow is unprincipled.

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    8. Oh just because you said it was no surprise there are "unprincipled" people in the media business and she was the person in the media business who was the subject of the piece so I drew that conclusion. Sorry about that.

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    9. 'Gunk Miller': Yes, you are sorry.

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  4. Parker does not really say that it was obvious Greta did not know. It is sort of implied by the segue, but the statement that "everybody did not know" really is obvious. Even in a situation where you "hear" something second or third hand, well, how much credence do you give a story you hear? That will depend a) on your own interactions with the subject of the story and b) your own interactions with the author of the story.

    This line jumped out at me "suffer humiliation in exchange for advancement. This seems an obvious, if painful, truth."

    Because who has not experienced that on the job? Well, I suppose I had not myself, until this most recent job - and it is a pretty good job. Except for being the most dysfunctional place I have ever worked.

    Seems to me that I have put up with a lot of things I did not want to put up with (besides the normal business of doing what I do not want to do - go to my stupid job five days a week) in order to keep my $10.69 an hour part-time (or full time) job as a janitor.

    I sat at home one day, dreading going to work, and I realized that I was in an abusive relationship with my boss. I searched the personnel manual for a policy against abuse and harassment, but there is not such a policy. There is a policy against SEXUAL harassment, but not one against harassment in general.

    In other incidents, well, is it okay for an employer to expect your to work 25/8? I always joked that I was working 25/8 because 24/76 was not good enough for them. There's nothing that says they HAVE to appreciate the fact that you start at ten in the morning and don't finish until 3 AM the next day.

    But when you want to keep your job you have to swallow your indignation about how little they appreciate you. Oh, but it violated federal law too since I was working unpaid overtime (which I got back (eventually) in comp time) After they wrote me up for going home early and reducing my unpaid over time for that week from ten hours to eight hours, I started making them pay me for my overtime.

    I am confident that ALL working people could tell stories about "the excrement I put up with in order to keep my job". The Weinstein story is part of the increasing power of the liberal/feminist narrative of "the problems of women are worse/more important than those of others".

    "Me too"

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  5. Somerby bolded this portion of Polley's column:

    "The only thing that shocked most people in the film industry about the Harvey Weinstein story was that suddenly, for some reason, people seemed to care."

    Women have always cared about this kind of behavior. It has always been part of the women's movement. But women have had little power to address it.

    This implies that what has changed is either (1) women have increased power to address such issues, or (2) men now care, or both.

    Here are my questions. Do Republicans care about this as much as Democrats? I don't think so. Republicans are arguing that this is just the way the world is and we need to shut up and go on with their work. Dr. T's comment is an example. Does Somerby care about this? I don't think so. He seems to have little empathy for Weinstein's victims and he raises this behavior as a stick to beat Maddow and Mika with since they are hypocritically calling for Weinstein's head (in Somerby's view) when they said nothing before when they presumably felt more powerless. A chorus of voices seems safer than a single complaint.

    Are the problems of women more important than those of others? No feminist that I know of is saying that. No one criticizes a coal miner for caring about the problems of the coal industry, but women are always criticized for caring about women's problems, as if they are only allowed to care about their own interests after all the interests of others have been dealt with. Claiming that women are making their problems too important usually means shut up and sit down and stop complaining, because women's problems are always considered LESS important than those of others.

    Weinstein committed physical assault against quite a few men, crimes that could have been prosecuted because they were witnessed by others, crimes with physical injury. He didn't go to jail because men behaved the same as these women did. They wanted the work and they knew Weinstein could and would poison their careers if they didn't ignore his misbehavior. In the face of this, Somerby expects Mika and Maddow to speak up -- when others didn't because they couldn't.

    Somerby is an ass.

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    1. It sounded to me like he expected Rachael to speak up about Greta's playing dumb re. Trump's birtherism. I wish she would have! But he is right, the bags of money fly out the door when you are honest about those kinds of things. There's a code of silence with both institutions. Principled people are weeded out for the most part.

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    2. Maybe van Susteren didn't see her job as 'correcting' all the misstatements by political figures. Maybe she wanted to be a neutral mediator figure. Maybe Maddow respected that about her, rather than trying to challenge her colleague. That doesn't make either of them unprincipled necessarily. All human institutions contain unprincipled people, probably including ones you and I belong to. I prefer to be more circumspect about that when it comes to institutions that I am not a part of.
      I reserve judgment on Maddow, in other words.

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    3. I didn't like the way businesses operated so I formed my own company.

      Here are some of the things I saw as a female middle manager in a fortune 500 computer company: (1) buying prostitutes for auditors and customers, (2) paying bribes, (3) falsifying meeting minutes to shaft a female manager, (4) promoting a male manager ahead of a female even though he was objectively less competent, (5) callous treatment and outright lying to employees about upcoming reorganization and layoffs, (6) favoring large customers over smaller ones by diverting their shipments, offering perks, etc., (7) firing women with child care problems and black balling them from rehiring, (8) propositioning female employees while out-of-town because being married doesn't count when traveling, (9) budget overruns tolerated for men but not women, (10) casual and repeated use of the b-word and c-word to refer to women, (11) casual sex in the hospitality suite by managers at trade shows, (12) inclusion of girl friends on the booth staff lists to attend trade shows, (13) male temper tantrums and screaming fits aimed at employees, sometimes innocent bystanders, (14) extreme drunkenness at business functions. This drove me out of tech employment and I never looked back. Now they are wondering why women don't want to work in tech.

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    4. No, Gunk Miller is a pig. Excuse me. That's inaccurate. Gunk Miller is a fucking pig.

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  6. Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park and you never know what you'll find.

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  7. I'd love to know from all the highly "principled" commenters here: who is your unsullied source for news? Please inform us, so that we can all share in your miraculous immaculate journalist, pundit or news org whose word is 100% unquestioned. Please name specific names so we may see the light. It can't be Rachel, CNN, MSNBC, or The NY Times, 'cause those are all 'faux', says Somerby. Where does Somerby get HIS news, for that matter, so that he's able to judge faux from true? Or do we admit that those very orgs I listed contain some truth (maybe even a lot), and that we liberals actually DO fact-check, contrary to Somerby's casual assertion to the contrary?

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    1. I agree with you that MSNBC and NY Times lack integrity.

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    2. Diane Rehm
      John Oliver

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    3. 'Gunk Miller': quit being a troll and tell us what news organizations you follow, which media people you respect. Or are you too chicken?

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    4. I like Ian Masters' Background Briefing. An hour, five days a week program on local public radio. Also available online.

      I remember Bob Somerby was a guest years ago.

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    5. I would not say that I am "chicken" unless the meaning of the word has changed since the last time I heard it which was when I was 9.

      But I read all the usual suspects and a lot of the old lefties like Moyers, Chomsky, Klien, Sheer, Hedges. People the hacks in cable won't touch for the reasons expressed here.

      Delete
    6. No one made a claim that those orgs don't contain some truth. For God sakes boy, you are full of ad hominem and straw men.

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  8. "No feminist that I know of is saying that" says 2: 28. Might need to get out more.

    Here's an article from Huffpo. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/me-too-lets-men-off-the-hook_us_59e4e3a2e4b04d1d518390d2

    Not only do men NOT have problems as important as women, they are ALSO the cause of those problems. Hashtag ALL men.

    "The effect is an exhausting cascade of predatory actions that tell women what they already know: guys consider our bodies disposable."

    Why are women unable to use adjectives? (see what I did there?) "Some" or "many" is too much work to include in a blanket statement. Perhaps because the writer really DOES mean ALL, as later explicated.

    "If every woman you know has been harassed or assaulted, then every man you know has likely made a woman feel unsafe." Well, prove me wrong, there is an adjective - EVERY.

    Of course, I have to plead guilty. As a college sophomore there was a woman in the dorm who was always harassing me. Once, because of construction we happened to pass each other on some back path. I got the distinct impression that she felt kinda unsafe. The bully seemed a little bit nervous when it was just her and her victim.

    There was another article which I cannot find now, but which I had read shortly before I posted my other comment. It was written by a guy and it said that men (full stop) needed to say "me too" as well. But in the case of men, it would mean "I am a Harvey Weinstein too".

    The meme seems to be turning in to "women's lives are awful, and it is men's fault". Something that not only says that women's problems are bigger than men's but that men are the root of all evil.

    My contention was that women's problems seem to be quite similar to men's problems. Don't see how that means anybody should shut up. However, if you want me to care about your problems, it's probably not a good idea to demonize me in the process of describing those problems.

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    Replies
    1. There was a saying in the 60s that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. You want to be absolved for what other men are doing, but you don't seem to want to get involved with stopping them, and you seem very unsympathetic toward women. You go from the absence of a quantifier (some) to men are the root of all evil, something not said in what you quoted. One might call that defensive. The difference between men's and women's problems is that men typically have more power, are larger, have more control, more ways to fight back, and men are more likely to be believed when they report a crime.

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  9. I've made a point of never getting romantically involved with anyone at my workplace(s). Not necessary and not worth the risk.

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    Replies
    1. Having a man jerk off into a potted plant in front of you isn't any kind of romantic relationship.

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    2. Not saying it is, or condoning that garbage. I just feel the risks and possibility of "misunderstanding" outweigh the benefits. Business is business works for me.

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  10. More appropriate lyrics:
    https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tevrocuicatwrngj6ei664uubd4?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ok. [backs away slowly toward the nearest door].

      Delete
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  12. Others too have now admitted they had a pretty good idea of what Harvey was up to and that they are culpable for it.
    The problem isn't that Bob brings this back to Maddow so much as that he brings EVERYTHING back to Maddow.

    ReplyDelete