"Right now, Steinglass, the prosecutor, is doing a lengthy recounting of Trump's comments on the infamous Access Hollywood tape."

"There is no new information there, but Trump is listening as his own words about grabbing women’s genitals are recounted.... Trump, listening to a tape of himself from fall 2016 in which he says no one has more respect for women than he, mouths: 'True.'"

I'm following "Live Updates: Trump Trial Poised to Begin, a Criminal Case Without Precedent/Jury selection is set to start as Donald J. Trump faces charges he faked business records to cover up a sex scandal before winning the presidency. The judge declined Mr. Trump’s request to recuse himself" (NYT).

What's the difference between encouraging someone and egging him on?

I'm trying to read "Scoop: How Trump's team egged him on during CNN town hall" by Mike Allen (Axios).

The "scoop" is this:

Backstage during the first commercial break, Axios has learned, Trump adviser Jason Miller — as if psyching up a boxer in his corner or egging on a bully — showed Trump moments-old tweets from Democrats blasting CNN and saying Trump was winning.

"A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for the sexual abuse of the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll..."

The NYT reports.

The jury has found that Carroll did not prove Trump raped her, but they did determine that he had sexually abused her. The jurors also found that Trump had defamed Carroll when he called her accusations false. They awarded her $5 million damages....

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said that for the jury to establish that Trump raped Carroll, she had to prove that Trump engaged in sexual intercourse with her, and that he did it without her consent. The judge said that sexual intercourse includes “any penetration of the penis into the vaginal opening.”...

This means that the jury did not believe part of her testimony. They somehow found her story credible enough to believe partially but not totally. Was this a compromise verdict? 

Asked at deposition about whether it's "True with stars that they can grab women by the pussy," Trump said...

"Well, historically, that’s true with stars... Well, that’s what — if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”

Quoted in "In Rape Trial Deposition, Trump Says Vulgar Tape Simply Reflects Truth/The former president did not disavow the 'Access Hollywood' video when questioned by lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of attacking her. They rested their case Thursday" (NYT).

Asked what he does for a living, the Apple exec said "I have rich cars, play golf and fondle big-breasted women but I take weekends and holidays off."

Tony Blevins, Apple’s vice president of procurement, was answering a question asked by TikTok/Instagram personality Daniel Mac. Mac's thing is to ask drivers of expensive cars, "What do you do for a living?"

For his sin, Blevins has had to resign, The NY Post reports. 

It's so off-brand for Apple:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniel Mac (@itsdanielmac)

You just don't picture Apple management looking and acting like that.

Things no one was picturing in 2016... but we are now!

I'm going back to my old posts in early October 2016 to see what I said about Trump's Access Hollywood remarks (because I want to see how well I'm maintaining my cruel neutrality now as I process the news about Joe Biden). I was struck by this post from October 9, 2016, "Jake Tapper attempts a euphemism — and it's not 'vulva'":

So what Trump said was "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

And Jake Tapper obviously didn't want to say "pussy":



If you're going to use the anatomical term to avoid the slang, use the scientifically correct term. "Vagina" for "vulva" is as much slang as "pussy." "Pussy" is at least a quote. "Vagina" is ridiculous.

No one was picturing grabbing a woman by the vagina.

No one was picturing that back then, but we are now! That's the Tara Reade allegation. We're not talking about a grabbing of the outer genitalia, but the penetration of the vagina using the hand — grabbing by the vagina — the seemingly ridiculous phrase used by Tapper.

The old post ends:

If we were, those of us who are saying that Trump was referring to sexual assault would be saying rape, not merely sexual assault.

The accusation against Biden is an accusation of rape.

"In the more than three years since the tape emerged, it’s become clear that the you-can-do-anything line wasn’t only describing Trump’s attitude toward women."

"It was describing his attitude toward everything: If you’re rich, famous or powerful, you can get away with much more than most people understand. You just do it. You don’t need to worry about ethical niceties or even, sometimes, the law. You use your advantages to bulldoze any obstacles.... Trump does what he thinks is best for him, often in open defiance of rules or customs that constrain almost everybody else.... The country is left with a president who has spent decades doing whatever he thinks is in his self-interest — and a political party willing to protect that president. Staying in power trumps all."

From "The Simple Reason Trump Does What He Does/Because he can" by David Leonhardt (NYT).

In this anti-Trump tirade, Leonhardt never pauses to note that the sense of being able to do anything — to overcome all obstacles in his way — is also a force for achieving good things that benefit the whole country. It's integral to the idea of making America great that binds Trump's enthusiasts to him.

"Grab a beer (or whatever) with Warren!"

An ad that came up in my sidebar just now:



What do you think? Do you like that black-and-white image with the only color in the beer bottle? Is the profile image with the sassy hand on the hip good? Seems like she's at some sort of beer-drinking party, giving you a sense of what it might be like to go to this beer-drinking party you might win an invitation to. But I feel excluded because she's looking at someone taller than she is, and she's 5'8", 3 inches taller than I am (and I'm exactly average height women for a woman).

The line "grab a beer" makes me think of that awkward/charming "I'm going to get me, um, a beer" Instagram Live video she put out on New Year's Eve. And "grab" makes me think of Trump's old "grab them by the pussy" remark, especially when juxtaposed to "whatever," which Trump once used — or seemed to use — to refer to female genitalia (when he described Megyn Kelly as having "blood coming out of her whatever").

But "grab" is such an advertising word. I try to avoid watching TV commercials, but I believe the ads for food and drink almost never tell you to "eat" or "drink" or "have" or "buy" the product. It's always grab. And I think this started with beer: "You only go around once in life, so you've got to grab all the gusto you can."

In political speech, "grab" is pejorative. Your opponent is grabbing power. You are offering to serve. But not to serve beer!

Jean-Claude Van Damme was in a movie with Volodymyr Zelensky and Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in Trump's favorite movie "Bloodsport."

Coincidence?

I was looking into the life story of Volodymyr Zelensky, because I was trying to figure out what language he spoke in the notorious telephone call with President Trump. This mattered as I analyzed a WaPo article about the supposedly low number of words per minute compared to a phone call between Trump and the President of Mexico.

And I stumbled into the movie "Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon," in which Zelensky played Napoleon:



Fascinating. Distracting. And there's this in the cast list:

Jean-Claude Van Damme as himself

So Jean-Claude Van Damme was in a movie with Volodymyr Zelensky. Well, what, if any, is Jean-Claude Van Damme's connection to Trump?

First, there's this, from "Trump Solo" by Mark Singer in The New Yorker, back in 1997, when Trump was "solo" because he'd just broken up with Marla Maples:

We hadn’t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie. He’d brought along “Michael,” a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called “Bloodsport,” which he pronounced “an incredible, fantastic movie.” By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition—Trump’s goal being “to get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes”—he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking. When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed. “Admit it, you’re laughing!” Trump shouted. “You want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?”

And then there's this from December 2017 (again, from The New Yorker, where I get my Van Damme news), describing a scene from just before the 2016 election:

And last October, in an interview with TMZ conducted outside a restaurant while he was holding his small dog, Van Damme said, among other things, that the next President of the United States needed to “have a vodka with Mr. Putin” and “try to make peace.” He then downplayed the attention being paid to Donald Trump’s use of the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy,” and said, though he loves his “brother Muslims,” “right now, we need Donald Trump.” In that video, and in other public moments, Van Damme has had the appearance of a man who still takes himself quite seriously....

Now, continuing with the New Yorker, look at "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea/On the ground in Pyongyang: Could Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump goad each other into a devastating confrontation?" (September 2017):

When it came time for Kim Jong Il to choose an heir, his four daughters were ineligible, because of their gender. His eldest son, Jong Nam, was more a playboy than a statesman, and, in 2001, he was caught trying to enter Japan on a forged passport, to take his four-year-old son to Tokyo Disneyland. The next-oldest son, Jong Chul, was reserved and gentle. While in Switzerland, he had written a poem called “My Ideal World,” which began, “If I had my ideal world I would not allow weapons and atom bombs anymore. I would destroy all terrorists with the Hollywood star Jean-Claude Van Damme.” According to Fujimoto, Kim Jong Il said that Jong Chul was unfit to rule “because he is like a little girl.”

I don't know what more you need to know. Connect the dots!

"I recognize you, but take your fucking pants off... now!"

"Certainly, Trump found Pence a bit alien: the way he was always praying; the way he referred to his wife, Karen, as 'Mother'..."

"... and the way the couple was constantly holding hands. ('Look at them!' Trump would tease. 'They’re so in love!') But he appreciated the earnestness with which Pence seemed to believe, as so few in the party did, that Trump was a decent person. Trump had worked hard to earn that faith.... [A]fter the Access Hollywood bombshell dropped, Pence... called Trump from the road, checking in as he did daily, sounding upset. He advised Trump to offer a sincere apology. That was the last anyone had heard from the VP nominee. Pence had gone back to Indiana and bunkered down, cutting himself off from the outside world, praying with his wife about what to do next and telling his advisers that he wasn’t sure he could continue with the campaign. To the extent Trump felt regret, it was over disappointing the Pences. 'Oh boy,' he said Friday afternoon after hanging up with his running mate. 'Mother is not going to like this.'"

From "'Mother Is Not Going to Like This': The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump/The exclusive story of how Trump survived the Access Hollywood tape" by Tim Alberta (Politico). Why the return to the Access Hollywood story? Alberta has a new book, "AMERICAN CARNAGE: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump." That might explain it. But I think Trump antagonists are scrambling for bad news and there's not enough new bad news, so they play oldies but goodies. At any rate, I thought "Mother is not going to like this" was an absolutely hilarious nugget of Trump rhetoric.

You may not want to read the whole article — the article saves you from reading the book you weren't going to read — but you should click through if only to see the big melodramatic, hokey illustration. It's really good, and I hear it screaming We hate Trump, but we love hating Trump, it's all so lurid and thrilling.

Federal judge says a public charter school violated Equal Protection by requiring girls (and not boys) to wear skirts.

WaPo reports.

Baker Mitchell, founder of the Roger Bacon Academy, which runs Charter Day School [in North Carolina]... explained in an email that the dress code, along with other policies, were meant to “preserve chivalry and respect among young women and men.” He cited societal concerns such as “teen pregnancies” and “casual sex” for the need to create a learning environment that “embodied traditional values.”...

According to the decision, the skirt requirement forced girls to “pay constant attention to the positioning of their legs during class, distracting them from learning, and has led them to avoid certain activities altogether, such as climbing or playing sports during recess, all for fear of exposing their undergarments and being reprimanded by teachers or teased by boys.”

The school had defended its policy, saying it was based on “traditional values” and “is in place to instill discipline and keep order,” Howard summarized in his decision. “They argue that taking away the ‘visual cues’ of the skirts requirement would hinder respect between the two sexes.”...

“Defendants have shown no connection between these stated goals and the requirement that girls wear skirts,” [U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard] wrote.

It is hard to see how requiring girls to wear skirts constrains sexual expression. It constrains all sorts of physical activities other than sex. It really facilitates sex, especially if sex includes looking up a girl's skirt and — to use the presidential locution — grabbing her by the pussy.

My schoolgirl days were spent entirely in skirts. It was required, and then we were sent to the vice principal's office for wearing the wrong length skirt. Especially me. I vividly remember sitting through the vice principal's lecture about the sexual suffering of boys when they were subjected to the presence of a girl in a miniskirt. I felt like he was sexually harassing me by talking about sex so intensely. He was making it sexual, imposing man-mind on me, when I, required to wear a skirt, simply insisted on wearing the skirt that was in fashion. Let me wear pants, and your sex problem is gone. Unless it's not. You dirty old man.

Now... that's enough 1966. Back to the present. The most interesting part of the North Carolina dispute is defending it in the name of chivalry. Chivalry is (to pick the most apt definition in the OED) "The brave, honourable, and courteous character attributed to the ideal knight; disinterested bravery, honour, and courtesy; chivalrousness." Wouldn't it be great if there were the choice to send your son to a charter school where they shaped him into a brave, honorable, courteous, ideal knight? But if it's a co-ed school, what are they offering the girls? I'd say having male classmates who are expected to behave like ideal knights is itself a great offer, but I assume the girls too would be called to bravery, honor, and courteousness.

"Secretaries claimed he was both brilliant and 'cute,' although Michelle Obama was skeptical, writing that white people went 'bonkers' any time you 'put a suit' on a 'half-intelligent black man.'"

"She also thought his picture had a 'whiff of geekiness.' But she was more than impressed after meeting him, by his 'rich, even sexy baritone' and by his 'strange, stirring combination' of serenity and power. 'This strange mix-of-everything-man,' when she finally let him kiss her, set off a 'toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.'"

From "Michelle Obama rips Trump in new book" (AP).

I chose to focus on something other than the ripping of Trump. Toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder — now, that's amusing! It's hard to picture Michelle Obama toppled. But how is anyone supposed to write in a dignified, appropriate way about the fact that they're sexually excited by the person they married? "Toppling" is as good a word as any, and you say "lust" but in a mix of other more exalted concepts.

I note she used the word "strange" twice — "strange, stirring combination" and "strange mix-of-everything-man."

Anyway, I'm less interested in Michelle Obama's shots at Trump than what she can say about random ordinary white people — like those secretaries — and what she thinks they think of any "half-intelligent black man" that you (who?) "put a suit on." Can't half-intelligent black men put on their own suit? But I like anything half-honest about how it felt to be an accomplished black woman in a Chicago law firm and trying to succeed despite suspicions and whatever real inequities prevailed at the time and looking to meet a man who could make a good-enough match for her. And then getting Obama! That really is strange!

ADDED: I'll just say one thing about the Trump ripping:

She remembers how her body “buzzed with fury” after seeing the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women.

Is the book written in — speaking of "ripping" — bodice-ripper prose? We saw above that Michelle was toppled and blasted by a first kiss, and here we see that she experienced the "Access Hollywood" story as a bodily "buzz." Does she grasp things intellectually or do they happen in her body? And isn't that what Trump was really saying when he made that "grab them by the pussy" remark?

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

The stardom itself reaches into the body and readies the woman to receive him — that's what he was saying.  Trump's impudent verbalization of that process angers Michelle Obama, but the way those words worked was to cause her body to "buzz" — as if Trump's voice were a vibrator.

"As a queer, trans, disabled person who goes by they/them, I'm this SJW snowflake. I don’t want to sit down with cops. The Christian right is making strange bedfellows right now."

Said Dakota Bracciale, the owner of Catland, quoted in "Inside the Brooklyn Witches’ Antifa Hex on Kavanaugh/Despite protests, the Brooklyn antifa witches’ hex on Brett Kavanaugh went on. Both vengeful hate and intense love filled the event" (The Daily Beast).

Bracciale — "who goes by they/them" but calls themself "I" — made "strange bedfellows" with the police to arrange for security during Catland's planned event purporting to call violence down upon Brett Kavanaugh.

Catland is a Brooklyn shop that sells "spiritual literature, healing crystals, tarot cards, burnable incense, and other occult accoutrements."

Occult — from "classical Latin occultus secret, hidden from the understanding, hidden, concealed, past participle of occulere to cover up, hide, conceal" (OED) — means "Of or relating to magic, alchemy, astrology, theosophy, or other practical arts held to involve agencies of a secret or mysterious nature; of the nature of such an art; dealing with or versed in such matters; magical." Historical example:

1711 Ld. Shaftesbury Characteristicks III. Misc. ii. i. 53 From this Parent-Country of occult Sciences..he was presum'd..to have learnt..judicial Astrology.

Judicial Astrology!

Anyway, this Catland shop has done a fine job of getting publicity. And the Christians who protested did the hard work of making this stupid story viral.

But I want to talk about Judicial Astrology. Is it anything that our cursèd Supreme Court might do? Wikipedia — I love Wikipedia!! — has an article, "Judicial Astrology"!

"Trump is the first president in more than a century not to have a dog, and his dislike for the pets shows in his frequent put-downs."

From the front-page teaser for "'Like a dog': Trump has a long history of using canine insults to dehumanize enemies" by Philip Rucker at The Washington Post. Trump called Omarosa "that dog"  — and also "a crazed, crying lowlife." So that made an opportunity to talk about dogs, which is one of the most popular things to do on the internet. But that's because we love dogs, right? So what to say about "dog," the insult, which, of course, must be portrayed as really bad, racist actually, because Trump said it?

Let's look:

Animalistic slurs come easily to Trump, who over the past few years has likened a long list of perceived enemies to dogs — including former FBI director James B. Comey, former acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates, former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), journalist David Gregory and conservative commentator Erick Erickson.

That makes it hard to call "dog" racist. But not too hard for Rucker.

But in Trump’s telling, Manigault Newman did not simply get fired “like a dog.” She was a “dog” herself.

The old metaphor/simile distinction!

And:

The president’s calling a woman a dog — and not just any woman, but the highest-ranking African American who has served on his White House staff — drew stern condemnations.

“Mr. President, it is beneath you and the office of the presidency to call any woman a dog,” Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) tweeted. “It is degrading and demeaning, and I pray that you will stop this vulgar behavior. Our country is better than this.”

Yes, it's sexist too. Interesting that Rucker made that point without using the idea that a female dog is a "bitch." By the way, has Trump ever called a woman a bitch? Yes! It's part of the famous Access Hollywood audio: "I moved on her like a bitch." Like a bitch. Another simile. Too much of a complication.

Rucker takes on the conundrum of how "dog" works as an insult when we seem to love dogs. He talks to David Livingstone Smith, "a philosophy professor who studies dehumanization and racism":

Smith said leaders use dehumanizing rhetoric to elicit fear and solidarity against some perceived existential threat from “others.” Yet while dogs are considered dirty in some cultures, such as in the Middle East, they are popular in the United States as household pets and are considered loyal and adoring. Smith suggested that a more apt slur in America would be calling someone a rat or a pig or a wolf.

But Trump, an avowed germaphobe, has long had an aversion to dogs.

Wait. He's good with dogs:



The rest of the article is padded with information about other Presidents having dogs. Morsel of evidence Rucker fails to process: The Secretary of Defense is nicknamed "Mad Dog."

About the teenage boys playing in the snow behind the Weather Channel reporter Justin Michaels last night....

Did anyone other than Meade notice that one of them yelled "Grab her by her pussy"?

ADDED: You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

IN THE COMMENTS: Earnest Prole said:

Might it have actually been “fuck her right in the pussy”?

If so, it's a viral meme that has nothing to do with Trump's Access Hollywood remarks.

More here.

Meade says:

I guess I had a case of Trumpbrain. New Media Meade regrets the error.

SO: I guess the boys really weren't out there thinking about Trump. They were just thinking about pussy. You can do that independently of Trump. Pussy is not a Trump-owned brand. It's more that pussy owns Trump than that Trump owns pussy. Which explains the banality of the original Access Hollywood story. But if Trump can get you to think of him when you think of pussy, he's got quite a brand.

Trump responds to Joe Biden's threatening to beat him up.

Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2018

We talked about Biden's threat here, yesterday. (You can read Biden's quote there.)

This Trump vs. Biden fight/"fight" is...

Hilarious (in the way Trump has prevailed).

Hilarious (in the way that Trump has succumbed to Biden's delicious bait).

Scary (to see what children reach the highest level of power in America).

Fake news (it's stupid even to be looking at this junk).

Striking proof that America put the right person in charge.

Something else (which I know I can explain in the comments).

 

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When I saw this Katy Perry kiss on "American Idol," I said, "He should sue her."

I assume the contestants sign away their right to sue for various intrusions on their dignity, including sexual harassment, but I'd like to see them struggle to defend themselves. In a #MeToo world, this must be called sexual assault:



I'm glad to see the NYT covering this story and making it clear that the contestant Benjamin Glaze did not somehow, behind the scenes, agree in advance to be subjected to a scripted, faux-unwanted kiss. Glaze had never been kissed, but Perry invited him to give her a kiss on the cheek, and as he meekly complied, she rotated her head and gave him a smacking kiss on the lips:

”I was a tad bit uncomfortable,” Mr. Glaze said by phone this week, after the incident aired on the season premiere. His first kiss was a rite of passage he had been putting off with consideration. “I wanted to save it for my first relationship,” he said. “I wanted it to be special.”

“Would I have done it if she said, ‘Would you kiss me?’ No, I would have said no,” he said.

Well, she did ask him, but only, apparently, for a cheek kiss, which he, pressured, offered. He's using "kiss" there to mean a kiss on the lips — a sexy and not merely social kiss.

"The tape, without question, is real."

Writes NYT reporter Daniel Victor in the NYT, about the "Access Hollywood" tape, which I assume is "real," but I still wonder how a reporter can say "The tape, without question, is real." It's an assertion, and what locks it down as beyond question (other than the desire to put an end to questioning)? I understand the reason to assert that the time for questioning is over. I'm practical. Life is short. We need to move on. We're sure enough.

But it just bugs me when a reporter makes a flat assertion like this, with no attribution: "The tape, without question, is real." How can he do that? To my mind, he opens the question up by writing like that.

At the time the recording emerged — October surprise time — Trump rushed into damage control and said "I said it, I was wrong and I apologize." And that, it seems, is the only basis for Victor's strong pronouncement.

But Trump's response doesn't prove that the tape is real. It only shows that Trump decided that under the circumstances that the best tactic was apology, and perhaps that an effective apology included owning the remarks that he was apologizing for. But it doesn't prove beyond question that the tape is real. Trump could have been lying. It's also possible that he didn't remember saying it, but hearing the tape convinced him at the time that he must have said it, but now he thinks maybe somehow he was fooled.

A more subtle point is that he may have been admitting that he said the words that we all heard, but not that the words were true. I assumed, the day I heard the "Access Hollywood" remarks, that "Trump's statement — which is itself only words — is a confession to behavior. Criminal behavior. Sexual assault."

But it wasn't a confession under oath — and even confessions under oath can be false — but a "confession" in a context where he might be joking and exaggerating or just lying. He'd still be on the hook for portraying himself as entitled to "just kiss" a beautiful woman, but he was posturing in the presence of another man. Who knows the real context of Trump encounters with beautiful women that involved "just kissing"? Was it "social kissing" (a short kiss hello) or putting his hand on the back of her head, mashing his lips against hers and aggressively sticking his tongue in her mouth?

Was it a Hollywood kiss?



As for the more vivid "grab them by the pussy," Trump didn't say that about himself, but about "you" — if "you're a star." That was a critique of women, their indiscriminate susceptibility to stars, but it wasn't a confession.

My point is, there's a lot going on in the "Access Hollywood" remarks, and I don't know precisely what the issue is when I'm hearing that there is some questioning (from Trump, allegedly) that the remarks are not "real."

Is it that the tape that we heard doesn't exist? (That would be absurd.)

Is it that the voice on the tape isn't Trump's or that the tape is doctored or edited in a way that makes it inauthentic? (In that case, Trump, with more time to reflect, might want to retract his earlier "I said it." If that's the issue, is there any evidence?)

Or is it that the words that he really did say speak of things that are not real — that he doesn't "just kiss women" and that stars can't grab women "by the pussy"?

I don't know! What is the real question about the unreality of the tapes?

See? I've got questions galore now. I wasn't even going to talk about Trump's alleged questioning of the "Access Hollywood" tape, but Victor's "The tape, without question, is real" has set me off.

Phrases from the past: "Crotchgate" and "pro-sex feminism."

After writing that post about Gayle King adjusting her position relative to Charlie Rose, I created a 2 new tags: "Era of That's Not Funny" and "Trump's Access Hollywood remarks." Both tags can be applied retrospectively to the archive, but the second one is going to take a long time, and I'll get to that eventually. The first one is a more recent concept, and I'm only applying it retrospectively to posts where I've used that exact phrase, and that task is done. But in searching for the phrase, which I failed to put in quote marks, I turned up a few random things, including, from December 2006, "Camille Paglia on... it's not my word.... 'crotchgate.'"

What was "crotchgate"?! I see that there's something right now that's got a #crotchgate and Donald Trump has even weighed in:

POTUS weighing in on #Bakergate #CrotchGate pic.twitter.com/LvpwEk1SHa

— Tennessee Sooner (@TN_Sooner) November 22, 2017

Oh, I see. A college football player grabbed his own crotch (in a taunting gesture):

Baker Mayfield didn't feel like taking the high road today pic.twitter.com/30Q5UFk264

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) November 18, 2017

But what was "Crotchgate" in 2006? It was something I only blogged about because Camille Paglia took it on: Some female targets of paparazzi — Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan — were flashing their pantsless crotches. Paglia said:

"These girls are lowering themselves to the level of backstreet floozies. It angers me because I fought a bitter fight to get feminism back on track and be pro-sex at the same time. This is degrading the entire pro-sex wing of feminism.... [T]hey are cheapening their own image and obliterating all sexual mystery and glamour, which are the heart of the star system... These are women who are clearly out of control because the old studio era is over. The studio system... guided and shaped the careers of the young women who it signed up. It maximized their sexual allure by dealing it out in small doses and making sure you don’t have -- what has become here -- a situation of anarchy."

So the women are bringing the anarchy of too much uncontrolled sex?! That's not how it looks today, after the Weinstein revelations. But, of course, Weinstein and the men like him were active back in 2006, exercising control, trying to wrest "small doses" of "sexual allure" out the actresses for their own gratification. But, as Paglia put it then, the "girls" were "lowering themselves." And Paglia expressed anger, because it interfered with her "wing" of feminism: "pro-sex feminism."

Is anyone talking about "pro-sex feminism" — or "sex-positive feminism" — these days? Searching for both terms in the news of the last month, I find only a reference to Taylor Swift song lyrics and a description of a 1986 movie character (who's being brought back for a new TV show).

No one seems to be jumping at the opportunity to reconcile "pro-sex feminism"/"sex-positive feminism" with the new, staunch, zero-tolerance approach to sexual abuse. I'm sure many of those who write about feminism today are too young to remember the feminism of the 1980s, so they're unlikely to see that the things that are happening now resemble what sex-positive feminism fought against. And won. For a while.

But nobody wants to talk about sex-positive feminism now, and no female pop stars are seeking attention by giving paparazzi an unobstructed view of naked crotch.

ADDED: By today's standards, the flashing of naked crotch is considered sexual abuse. If a man were to do it, he'd be professionally and socially dead. 

AND: I've done the retrospective adding of the tag "Trump's 'Access Hollywood' remarks." 49 posts so far, including this one. I might do a project of analyzing my personal reactions over time. I'm told I really changed over time, and obviously the context has changed.

"CBS This Morning" may have fired Charlie Rose, but it used to revel in his sexual creepiness.

It's been a running joke on John Oliver's show for years:





Charlie Rose's "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King just happened to be a guest on Stephen Colbert's show last night. We're told she was already scheduled and, when the Rose story broke, she considered canceling, but Colbert's show is on CBS, and I assume I'm looking at CBS trying to extricate itself from the Charlie Rose story. And Gayle King isn't just committed to CBS, she's got her own reputation to keep clean. Watch the mind-numbing performance of Gayle King who plays dumb and cloyingly emotional:



1. In Colbert's introduction of King, he says she "delivers the hard news as co-anchor of 'CBS This Morning' and delivers the good news as the editor-at-large of O, the Oprah Magazine." Was "hard news" an intentional reference to Charlie Rose, whose penis is in the news? If innuendo was not intended, I believe it would have been noticed after it was written and edited out, so I say it was intended. Deniable, of course. Everything's deniable, like King's I-knew-nothing! routine.

2. Less than half-way through this clip, I was pausing and researching signs of lying. King is looking down and to her right (as if she had notes down there she needed to read) and scratching her cheek (at 2:02 (I've seen myself on video many times touching my cheek when I know I'm saying something that's has an element of deceit)). And look at her fist at 2:55.

3. "This is very difficult for me" — King's tactic is to make this a story of her emotional journey. Colbert plays a supporting role, with softball questions like: "Are you angry?" To which King answers: "I am a variety of emotions. There's certain some anger. There's some sadness. There's compassion. There's concern." It's so complex! "You can hold a variety of emotions around one particular incident."

4. At 3:52, she repositions and goes back to "what these women are going through." But what I want to know is what she knew and might have done to help "these women" before the news story broke and had an impact on her career. We have to start listening to women. King has been a professional in woman-oriented media for a long time. She didn't just recently get a clue about these issues. But the Colbert audience gives her a massive cheer (as she interlaces her fingers and works her hands back and forth).

5. Women will continue to speak up, King tells us in an impassioned tone, because "they're now being believed." She has to say "they," though she's a woman, because if she said "we," it would seem as though she had a story to tell.

6. King says that men need to "join the conversation." How? Men have to condemn sexual harassment and not make fine distinctions. They have to say that "it's all bad." So... not really a conversation. "All of it is really unacceptable." There's nothing to debate. Oh, but then she says, "By the same token, I want to be able to joke and laugh with friends without thinking I'm going to be called into human resources. But we all know the difference. What that is. We do." We do? Is it that talking is different and you can joke? But look at the most famous joke on the subject: "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the pussy, you can do anything." That has plainly been dumped into the all-of-it-is-really-unacceptable category. (No wonder Siri is telling me, "Ann, I don't really know any good jokes. None, in fact." It is the Era of That's Not Funny.") [AND: As Ignorance is Bliss asks in the comments: "So who put a pubic hair on my Coke?"]

And here's Gayle King talking about the Rose story with Norah O'Donnell on their show, "CBS This Morning" yesterday:



That's very stiff and stilted. The 2 women are scripted to say what's been decided as the correct way to save their show. It goes on and on, and I'm saying that after stopping the clip at 2:12. There's no way, no matter how much longer they talk — the clip goes on for another minute — they are not going to get to the topic I want to hear discussed: What did you know? If you didn't know, why didn't you know? What good are you in your women-helping-women role on morning TV if you didn't recognize the monster who sat next to you for 5 years?