Democrats are hoping "rage moms" will boost them to power.

I'm reading "The ‘Rage Moms’ Democrats Are Counting On/As millions of American families face an uncertain start to the school year, the anger of women who find themselves expected to be teacher, caregiver, employee and parent is fueling a political uprising" by Lisa Lerer and Jennifer Medina in the NYT.

“Right now, I think women have just had it up to their eyeballs,” [Elizabeth] Warren said in an interview. “They no longer feel isolated and one-off in how they couldn’t figure out how to make the system work, and recognize the system is broken, and nobody’s making it work.... They’re fired up. And I love it.”...

[T]he backlash against Mr. Trump has been burning since the day after his inauguration, when millions of women joined protests across the country. Their fire has endured through #MeToo, waves of teachers’ strikes led by predominantly female unions, the outcry against school shootings, and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a movement started largely by female racial justice activists. For the second election cycle in a row, a record-breaking number of female candidates are running for federal office. Mr. Biden’s selection of Ms. Harris was widely seen as a nod to the energy women have given the Democratic Party during the Trump era....

There's a lot in that article about the need for government support for those who are engaged in childcare. There should be rational policymaking in that area. Closing the schools because of coronavirus has highlighted our reliance on schools as childcare (as opposed to simply education). There's nothing more important that bringing up the next generation, yet it's something that's handled quite haphazardly. I'd like to see much more rationality. But somehow the discussion is about "rage moms" and Democratic Party power. That's so disgusting.

First of all, don't call women "moms." Women and men have a strong interest in raising children well. And women and men can and should form political opinions that take this interest into account.

And don't call women "rage moms." Rage implies irrationality, so you're trading on a sexist stereotype that women are irrational. Women and men are subject to rage, and it's not usually a good thing — especially around children!

ADDED: Another sexist stereotype inherent in "rage moms" is that the anger of females is lightweight and not dangerous. That's the same stereotype that lets people slough off the concerns of females. The pop-culture trope is "You're cute when you're angry."

When you were a child did you have a "rage mom"? I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't. If you did, tell me about it — Did you "love it" (to quote Elizabeth Warren, effusing about ginning up the anger of women for the aggrandizement of the Democratic Party)?

How many millions of women are out there in America trying to take care of their real children and hearing the message that they should be enraged because the government isn't helping them enough with their grueling labor? Would  you like to be a little kid with a rage mom?

"Well, I love Apu. I love the character, and it makes me feel bad that it makes other people feel bad."

"But on the other hand, it’s tainted now — the conversation, there’s no nuance to the conversation now. It seems very, very clunky. I love the character. I love the show.

Said Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons," talking to the NYT about the character who seems to many people to be too much of an ethnic stereotype. What's he supposed to do about the problem?

We’re not sure exactly how it’s going to play out. Back in the day, I named the character after the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray. 

When I was young, back in the day, educated people got the message there were certain films you needed to know and ought to see if you ever got the chance. This was back at a time when you had to keep an eye on the movies that were showing at some "art house" movie theater and arrange your schedule to prioritize important movies. These days, it's so easy to see anything you want to see that you can put it off for ever, and maybe people just stopped applying pressure on each other to see the great classics when it was no longer necessary to remain vigilant in case, say, "Pather Panchali" played anywhere near you.

In short, the name "Apu" can no longer carry the message Groening may once have thought it contained:

I love Indian culture and Indian film and Indian music. I thought that the name was a signal that we had, at least, a scholarly intention. 

A scholarly intention!

I thought maybe a kid was going to grow up and find out what the name came from and go watch the Apu Trilogy, which are the greatest films, basically, in the history of cinema.

Or a kid would grow up, notice the films and laugh at the name because of "The Simpsons" and move on.

The Times questions Groening about his statement that "people love to pretend they’re offended"?

That wasn’t specifically about Apu. That was about our culture in general.

Yikes. Be careful, Matt, you might step on the anti-Trump hysteria that's raging this week (and every week).

And that’s something I’ve noticed for the last 25 years. There is the outrage of the week and it comes and goes....

But did Groening mean to say the Apu critics weren't sincere? Asked, Groening quickly credits them with sincerity and volunteers that he agrees "politically, with 99 percent of the things" they believe. He repeats that he loves Apu and shifts the blame onto all the other shows for not having an Indian character.

It's so much easier to avoid criticism by just not doing the thing that somebody might say you're doing wrong.

ADDED: Compare Groening to Roseanne Barr, who, speaking only for herself and being carelessly expressive, brought destruction to work that hundreds of people were participating in. Groening is, I am guessing, thinking of preserving not only his work but an entire workplace. He needs to be careful, even if that carefulness is the opposite of what makes comedy great, what got him where he is. And now, I'm back to wanting to talk about Trump again. Why doesn't he look at what's happening and tone it way down to save the show?

Mocking the sexual desire of a 100-year-old tortoise.

I clicked on the clickbait: "100-year-old tortoise walks 6.5 miles for romance with plastic dome" ("A 100-year-old tortoise that escaped her owner's California yard was found 6 1/2 miles away attempting to romantically court a small dome.")

But I disapprove of laughing at the creature's sexuality. We cannot comprehend the longing of 100 years. We cannot know how it feels to be so separated from your fellow species that something in the rough shape of what feels like your counterpart fixates you.

And the euphemism "attempting to romantically court" is quite disgusting. I encounter that after reading the NYT story about Cher's anti-Trump speech to a crowd in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which includes such dirty-word avoidance as "'I just think he’s' an idiot, Cher said of Donald J. Trump, adding a decidedly unprintable modifier."

It's not "unprintable." It's quite printable: fucking. See? The NYT merely chooses not to print it. "Unprintable" is a cornball expression. "Fucking" is a crudeness that bothers some people, but where is the concern for people like me who are bothered by the prissy way you posture to avoid it?

"Unprintable" is a word that was created to express the idea that something is "Not fit to be printed" because it is "too shocking to appear in print; obscene, rude." I'm quoting the (unlinkable) OED, which finds the earliest appearance in print in 1830, in something called "Age": "A sham improvisatore held up to the ridicule of society by the excellent but unprintable jeu d'esprit of James Smith."

What is an "improvisatore"? The OED says: "A poet who composes or performs verse extemporaneously." James Smith seems to have been one of the freestyle rappers of his day, mocking some unnamed other one as a sham. It was excellent but unprintable... so we can't read whatever it was.

Improvisatore... improviser. When we don't have a script — when we don't want a script — if we want anything to happen at all, we must improvise, like a tortoise with his sham tortoise, the plastic dome.



IN THE COMMENTS: CJ points us to an episode of "Futurama" that treats the sexual needs of a 100-year-old with excellent humor and quality profundity:



"I haven't seen a female of my kind in well over 100 years!"

"You think L.A. is Hell, this awful place of corruption and anti-creativity, and when I look at Wisconsin..." said Matt Groening...

... to Lynda Barry (who teaches at the University of Wisconsin), and she said: "It’s its own kind of Hell... colder than Scott Walker’s tit... When I look at your place in Malibu, and you can see the ocean, I just think, I’d rather die than live here."

Groening and Barry, cartoonists who have known each other for a long time, were doing an appearance together in a bookstore in NYC, where, I presume, the audience looks down on both Wisconsin and Malibu.

"I kid you not: The IRS just released a statement on its improper harassment of conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election including the words: 'mistakes were made.'"

Says Instapundit, under the heading "It just gets worse."

I see that "Mistakes were made" has its own Wikipedia page:

The New York Times has called the phrase a "classic Washington linguistic construct." Political consultant William Schneider suggested that this usage be referred to as the "past exonerative" tense, and commentator William Safire has defined the phrase as "[a] passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it." While perhaps most famous in politics, the phrase has also been used in business, sports, and entertainment.

The phrase is most associated with Richard Nixon and his press secretary Ron Ziegler:

U.S. President Richard Nixon used the phrase several times in reference to wrongdoings by his own electoral organization and presidential administration.

On May 1, 1973, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler stated "I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein" (referring to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post). He continued, "We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place." The previous day, White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman had resigned, as the Watergate scandal progressed.

But it's not as though the association with Nixon has worked over the years to warn off other politicians. As you can see at the Wikipedia page, President Reagan used it in 1987 (about Iran-Contra, President Clinton used it in 1997 (about Democratic Party fundraising scandals. Senator McCain used it in 2005 (about the Iraq war). There are more items on the list, including — I love Wikipedia —today's statement by the IRS.

Under the "see also" heading:

List of political catch phrases
Non-apology apology
Non-denial denial
Spin (public relations)

IN THE COMMENTS: Erich said: "Calls to mind the classic Matt Groening cartoon."