Some feminist logic.

After quoting something I said about body-slamgate, Instapundit says: "But personally, I’m now sufficiently woke to praise Gianforte for body-slamming rapist Ben Jacobs":



And: "Thanks to male feminist Jordan Hoffman for enlightening me."

Note: Hoffman's post is about the exclusion of men from a movie theater's showing of "Wonder Woman" (which is the topic of my last 2 posts).

Understanding the creepiness of wholesomeness.

Here's a piece by Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker: "Miley Cyrus's Creepy Return to Wholesome." Do we think that a young woman is pure until she're not, and after that, if she presents herself as healthy and good, it's a disgusting fraud, and we've got to point fingers at her and call her out, so that no one is deceived into allying with this loathsome slut? That seems awfully retrograde for The New Yorker. Perhaps they never liked wholesomeness in the first place. Okay, now, I'll read the thing.

1. At the Billboard Music Awards, Miley Cyrus was introduced by her younger sister Noah with the (obviously scripted) line: "For the first time in years with pants on, my big sis, Miley Cyrus." Here's how that looked. The "pants" are very short white cut-off jeans. She also had the kind of off-the-shoulder blouse that we were just talking about in the Michelle Obama context. Instead of dancing about, Cyrus stood planted at the microphone, in the take-my-voice-seriously style of singers like Adele.

2. Cyrus has a video in which she "pets a dog, runs with balloons, and flashes her gold engagement ring." The song, we're told, "is a mix of Laurel Canyon and Nashville, equal parts bohemian and smarmy." Which doesn't sound wholesome. Petrusich says it's "lifeless." Lifeless isn't wholesome. Wholesomeness relates to goodness and health. Lifelessness is death. But Petrusich happens to prefer Cyrus's more vigorous demeanor in her song "Wrecking Ball" (which is about celebrating body-slamming ("I came in like a wrecking ball/I never hit so hard in love/All I wanted was to break your walls")).

3. Cyrus had a period a couple years ago in which she indulged in the white privilege of "trying-on and discarding of black culture," and now she's "essentially scrubbed her music and image of any hints of the hip-hop and R. & B.," and that might be "sinister."

4. Now, she seems to be doing a "good-girl routine," and it might be "a sendup" of — among other things — "our racially polarized political climate." Pop music is full of "artifice," we all know, and part of the "charade" is a cycle of "reinvention." Cyrus already reinvented herself from "Hannah Montana" to game sex object. To go back to "guileless, fresh-faced ingénue" is to pendulum swing between the 2 most obvious options for a female pop star.

5. Cyrus is getting married, we're told, and that seems to mean she needs to "find[] a new way to be (or act) virtuous." But what she's doing now is so "banal": "pretty, tamed, straight, still, white." Why is the "path forward" for young women so "narrow"? She can "become less selfish and wayward only by embracing antiquated notions of femininity and propriety."

Is that "creepy"? "Creepiness" is the headline-writer's word. Perhaps Petrusich's point is more that the reinvention is just banal and boring. A girl veers into badness for thrills and excitement. What comes next should be a better form of emotional satisfaction, not retreat to the starting point. But is retreat "creepy"?

Being boring and uncreative isn't really creepy. The creeping sensation — to get back to origins — is a feeling in the flesh, a "chill shuddering feeling, caused by horror or repugnance" (OED). If that's your point here, New Yorker, you've got to take this to the next level, to what I said in the first paragraph of this post and say that the pose is gross because what looks wholesome is actually unwholesome, and you feel revulsion.

But that wouldn't fit with the conclusion you chose, which was itself banal and boring, that after the innocence and debauchery, there's a new third stage, something less "less selfish and wayward" but not just "femininity and propriety." I guess that's supposed to sound like feminism, but I'm a bit creeped out by the statement that "femininity" is an "antiquated notion" and "white" is "banal."

Who's really creepy here?

By the way, if you declare "femininity" a "notion" — even without the "antiquated" —  how can you be trans-friendly?

"The visceral instinct to physically attack a person who has just attacked you is strong; the surge of adrenal hormones makes it feel possible and necessary."

"That circuitry is increasingly vestigial, but overriding it and playing the longer game requires an active decision," writes James Hamblin — in "How a Man Takes a Body Slam/In an assault in Montana, two very different ideas of masculinity" (The Atlantic) — praising the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs for his "judicious, prescient reaction" to the body-slamming he seems to have received from Greg Gianforte.

Hamblin likes the idea of "redefining strength" by accepting, in the moment, that one has been "physically overpowered" and not getting caught up in "the idea of masculinity as an amalgam of dominance and violence." Instead, Jacobs, speaking "as if narrating for the audio recorder," said “You just body-slammed me and broke my glasses." He also "started asking for names of witnesses to the assault who will be assets to his case as it plays out in courts of law and public opinion," and reported the incident to the police.

Of course, Jacobs's choices were not merely a matter of overcoming physical impulses and meritoriously eschewing violence. I don't know how much of an impulse to retaliate on the spot he may have felt. I don't really know how violently he was hit. I don't even know if he did something first toward Gianforte and Gianforte was doing the old tit for tat retaliation. But narrating the audio, dropping it on line, going to the police, and taking names for litigation purposes is also a form of dominance. Some people would even call it violence. Why, here's an article in The Atlantic from just last June: "Enforcing the Law Is Inherently Violent/A Yale law professor suggests that oft-ignored truth should inform debates about what statutes and regulations to codify."

You know, if somehow I were given the choice between getting body slammed and getting charged with a crime and the question were How hard would the body slam need to be before you'd prefer to get charged with a crime?, I'd say pretty damned hard. And I'm just a little old lady. I'd rather be body-slammed than get sued in tort. If you body-slammed me, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't hit you back.* But I'll tell you one thing: If you sue me, I will defend to the hilt, and —  where ethically appropriate — there will be counterclaims.

___________________

* And I have been body-slammed, at rock concerts, when I was trying to stand out of the range of a mosh pit and some young man came flying out obliviously. And sometimes it was intentional, an effort to provoke non-moshers to listen to the music the properly physical way. But I didn't call the cops or take names or file lawsuits.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH says:

A "body-slam" is lifting someone completely of the ground and then driving their body to the ground.

It's not the same as "slam-dancing" on the periphery of a mosh pit, where one person slams his body into someone else's.

Wait. Let's get some shared understanding here. Does anybody think Jacobs intended to refer to the professional wrestling move? Here's a careful, precise demonstration of what that is:

"Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean."

"The tussle left Franken’s trademark thick-rim glasses broken, but he said he was not injured.... 'I got down low and took his legs out,' said Franken afterwards.... "I’m for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down.'"

"Yesterday" = January 26, 2004.

"Don’t Judge Montana for a Single Body Slam."

A NYT op-ed by Sarah Vowell. I like Sarah Vowell, but this grated on me.

She's talking about all the diversity there is in Montana — "farmers; ranchers; miners; artists, including folk singers, though let’s not underestimate our potters; the inhabitants of two lefty college towns, Missoula and Bozeman, where I grew up; and the coastal refugees such as Mr. Gianforte...."

She goes on:

So what’s the tally — at least 14 varieties of Montanan? Fifteen if we include the summer roofers-winter ski bums affectionately known in my home valley as “dirt bags.” The dirt bags might look like a bunch of Hillary-voting hippies, but based on my five winters during the Reagan-Bush era tending bar at the local ski area, Bridger Bowl, they’re stingy tippers and therefore, I suspect, secret Republicans.

Has it ever been established that conservatives are worse tippers than liberals? Is that even a stereotype? I'm offended that this is offered up as a laugh line, as if, of course, NYT readers will get this. Presumably, it has more to do with the idea that Republicans don't support generous governmental spending, but that assumes that Democrats, who are generous with the taxpayers' money, won't be stingy with their own money.

Research shows that conservatives give more to charity than liberals give.

The liberal vanity about personal generosity, empathy, and goodness, is on display in Vowell's op-ed. I guess I could say it's funny, even if you don't believe the stereotype that Republicans are stingy, because you can laugh at the stereotype that Vowell embodies by saying that. And she keeps it personal. She says "I suspect." And we can picture her as the young bartender, noticing the tip is bad, and getting some solace out of thinking: must be a Republican.

She put him in her tip jar of deplorables. 

What I found when I was looking for what Jake Tapper said about that "He just body-slammed me" story.

Jake Tapper wrote a book called "Body Slam: The Jesse Ventura Story."



Okay. Try again. Here:

The editorial board of the Billings Gazette, a CNN affiliate, retracted its endorsement of Gianforte, stating, "We believe that you cannot love America, love the Constitution, talk about the importance of a free press and then pummel a reporter."

Tapper echoed the newspaper's stance.

"Let us add that those public officials finding it difficult these days to muster the courage to strongly condemn a politician committing assault on a reporter, maybe you need to reexamine how much you truly love the Constitution beyond just saying the words," he said.

The Constitution protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press not just for reporters, but for everyone. And the Constitution guarantees due process for the criminally accused. Someone who would "strongly condemn a politician committing assault on a reporter" might also demonstrate a love of constitutional values by refraining from assuming that a particular individual accused of committing a crime is guilty. The hesitation to condemn Gianforte — I believe, even though I averted my eyes from yesterday's swarming and feasting — had to do with a fear that an audiotape was being exploited and possibly distorted to raise a sudden frenzy just as an election was occurring.

You talk about courage, but jumping into a frenzied mob isn't a mark of courage. Show me everyone who without hesitation condemned Gianforte, and I'd like to know whether he or she either: 1. Wanted the Republican to lose the election, or 2. Was afraid of getting attacked for endorsing violence. Is there anyone left? Show me the man or woman of true courage.

What if Dusko Markovic had shoved Donald Trump back and Trump had yelled "You just body-slammed me" and we had the whole thing not on video, but only audio?

Here's Trump getting physical with the Prime Minister of Montenegro.

[VIDEO NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

I don't know if you've ever been videotaped moving through a packed, stopped crowd, with the camera zoomed in on you and the video rendered in slow-mo at the point at which you made the most physical contact and the most forward progress. But that happened to Trump. And even in that clipped-down snippet, we see Dusko Markovic smile, which reassures fair-minded people that it wasn't a big deal, but even so, it gave the anti-Trump folks something to cry "thug" about and psychoanalyze — "You tiny, tiny, tiny little man," tweeted J.K. Rowling — and mock. Everything that can be used will be used.

But what if the camera weren't there? I assume Trump would have behaved differently, perhaps he'd have been more brusque and brutal, perhaps less. He might have barged through more carelessly if he knew there were no visual record. But he might have been more patient and meek, because he wouldn't have had to worry about looking comically ineffectual. And the situation he faced might have been different if the people in front of him had had no concern that they might look disrespected and unimportant.

It's even possible that the blockage Trump faced was a deliberate closing of ranks by the European leaders assigned to the back row, so the cameras would capture thousands of images of poor Trump, stuck behind the feisty Europeans, unable to make his way forward. Imagine the headlines the newspapers could plop on top of the funniest, most symbolic-seeming picture of trapped Trump.

But what if the cameras weren't there and instead we had audio? Men moving for position within a crowd, each with his own agenda, each wanting power and high respect. They're jostling around and past each other. And let's imagine that Dusko Markovic, without the camera, reacted to Trump by pushing back, just a little bit harder. Picture it: Trump barged past, a little physical, and then Markovic took a you-push-me-I-push-you attitude and deliberately knocked Trump back. Remember, there's no video. But there's audio, and Trump yells "You just body-slammed me."

You see my point. All we'd have would be Trump's "You just body-slammed me." We wouldn't know that Trump did some modest manhandling that Markovic experienced as degrading and that Markovic was doing the old manly tit-for-tat.

You can do things with audio. I have no idea what really happened in the audio involving Greg Gianforte that was all over the news yesterday, but Gianforte has won the special election in Montana — with something like a 7 point margin of victory — and he's made a careful apology: "I should not have responded the way I did, for that I'm sorry. I should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that I'm sorry, Mr. Ben Jacobs."

I say "careful," because he doesn't say what, exactly, "the way I did" was or why — there are many reasons — he "should not have responded" like that. Of course, he's sorry. He wisely refrains from adding nonapology baggage after "I'm sorry." (People often add words like "if anyone was offended," but they never add "that I got into so much trouble.")

Speaking of "careful," going forward, politicians need to be careful. I'm worried about things that can be done with audio. The "body-slamming" vocalization may have been entirely justified by whatever happened out there in Montana, but it also points the way to endless dirty tricks. You can say anything, and you can say it with feeling: Hit hit me! He grabbed me! How dare you! You choked me!

You can lie with video too. Dusko Markovic could have hammily stumbled off to the side and fallen on the floor. But lying with speech is the normal, daily behavior of the human being. It comes so naturally and easily to us. Fortunately, sorting through lies and deceit is also something we do every day. It's hard to keep up. But we still care about trying.