8 అక్టోబర్, 2016
Trump wasn't bragging about male prowess. He was insulting the women.
This is what I'm thinking as I find myself responding to some on Facebook — in an unlinkable place — who wondered why Trump would brag about getting so much access to beautiful women.
I wrote:
Sad!
I wrote:
Maybe that's not the real substance of the brag. I'm thinking it's more: These women are so pathetic. O'Dell stood up to me, but even she was lame, because she went and got her breasts inflated. The rest of them, they just fall into your hands because you're a star. It's nothing special [that they do] for him. It's for all stars. Women are low. Women are shallow. Doesn't that message make sense? The fact that he's old underscores this message: The women are going for the man's status. In that light, it's not even a brag. It's misogyny, justified (from his point of view).ADDED: O'Dell came out with a statement this afternoon. It's so anodyne I want to delete it as unbloggable, but I'll leave it:
"Politics aside, I’m saddened that these comments still exist in our society at all," she wrote. "When I heard the comments yesterday, it was disappointing to hear such objectification of women. The conversation needs to change because no female, no person, should be the subject of such crass comments, whether or not cameras are rolling. Everyone deserves respect no matter the setting or gender. As a woman who has worked very hard to establish her career, and as a mom, I feel I must speak out with the hope that as a society we will always strive to be better."Everyone deserves respect? Then do we have to respect Trump? I've been in the mood to disrespect him bigly, but, okay... I'll try. Perhaps inside he's weak and lonely. Are not the women who fall into his hands objectifying him? And isn't he objectifying himself? He's a thing — "automatically attracted." An automaton is not a person. "It's like a magnet." A magnet is a thing. Where is the person? He grabs for the body part, like a baby, grabbing for mommy. And then he's outraged that the woman he reached out to has "now got the big phony tits." Mommy is not real...
Sad!
"Trump grabbed an unsuspecting GOP by its pussy. GOP just let him do it."
"Except for the #NeverTrump-ers, who had too much self respect along with the fact that they had no pussies for Trump to grab.... I shouldn't say the #NeverTrumpers had NO pussies for Trump to grab. In the end he grabbed Ted Cruz's pussy. Even made it purr. Poor Ted."
Said Meade, in the comments.
Said Meade, in the comments.
"This was also a different time, when it was perhaps more accepted for powerful men to prey on young women, when women felt less able to protest."
"In fairness to Trump, other senior men in politics and business — John Kennedy and Bill Clinton come to mind — also sometimes showed a sense of entitlement toward young women."
Writes Nicholas Kristof about allegations of sexual harassment by Jill Harth against Donald Trump. The "different time" was not 1964. It was 1994. We knew about sexual harassment then. We knew it very well. We'd just had our consciousness raised. (That was before it was lowered, in 1998.)
It's a complicated story, by the way:
Writes Nicholas Kristof about allegations of sexual harassment by Jill Harth against Donald Trump. The "different time" was not 1964. It was 1994. We knew about sexual harassment then. We knew it very well. We'd just had our consciousness raised. (That was before it was lowered, in 1998.)
It's a complicated story, by the way:
I asked her: Why would a woman who accused Trump of attempted rape ever go out with him?Kristof says that in the end he decided that Harth is telling the truth. Has Kristof ever opined about Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey? A search of the NYT archive turns up nothing with his name and either of those 2 women who have alleged that they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton.
“I was scared, thinking, ‘what am I going to do now?’” she says. “When he called me and tried to work on me again, I was thinking maybe I should give this a try, maybe if he’s still working on me, I should give this rich guy a chance.”
They dated for several months in 1998, when he was separated from Maples, she says. In the end, he was a disappointing boyfriend, always watching television and rarely offering emotional support, she says.
“It was a hard divorce, and I was in a nonstop crying jag,” she recalls. “You know what he was thinking? He wanted me to get a boob job. He made an appointment for me to get a boob job, a doctor in Miami.”
Stop in for some ratification at the Rat Café...
Talk about anything you want, but please vote in Round #2 of the Most Loved Rat contest. Today, we've got Virgil...
and Tumultia...
and Tumultia...
I'm picturing Trump using the debate as his forum for revealing that he is withdrawing.
It could be very dramatic. The ultimate in showmanship.
Let us look back and say: Nothing in his campaign became him like the leaving it; he withdrew as one that had been studied in withdrawing; to throw away the dearest thing he owned, as 'twere a careless trifle.
Shakespeare reference: here.
Let us look back and say: Nothing in his campaign became him like the leaving it; he withdrew as one that had been studied in withdrawing; to throw away the dearest thing he owned, as 'twere a careless trifle.
Shakespeare reference: here.
"Grabbing an unsuspecting and unwilling person's genitals is a criminal act of sexual assault under any definition of sexual assault."
"Trump is evidently proud of the fact that he wielded his wealth and star power as a weapon to help him abuse women—to kiss and grope them without their permission. This is violence, full stop.... Trump would be a dangerous enough human being if he were just a regular celebrity with a penchant for groping women. As it so happens, he might also become the next leader of the free world—a position he is manifestly unqualified to hold.... No man whose overriding ideology is that he gets to do whatever he wants—to whomever he wants—should be president."
Writes Robby Soave at Reason.
I said the same thing when I first heard the recording yesterday. Quoting Tim Kaine's "I don't like to say the words that he's used in the past... but this is behavior," I said:
You can't trust a person with power who doesn't have an internal moral core and who is not governed by self-restraint.
Writes Robby Soave at Reason.
I said the same thing when I first heard the recording yesterday. Quoting Tim Kaine's "I don't like to say the words that he's used in the past... but this is behavior," I said:
Yes, Tim Kaine is right. Trump's statement — which is itself only words — is a confession to behavior.And I agree with Soave that the problem goes beyond sex. It reveals an attitude about how to use power: If there is no external restraint, you can do anything.
Criminal behavior. Sexual assault.
You can't trust a person with power who doesn't have an internal moral core and who is not governed by self-restraint.
The woman Trump "moved on... very heavily" was Nancy O’Dell... and later he tried to fire her.
The heavy moving — which included furniture shopping — was talked about in 2005 in the now infamous "Access Hollywood" video.
Oh! "Access Hollywood" has newly conspicuous double meaning. Not just reporters getting access to celebrities, but celebrities getting sexual access to... well, to hear Trump tell it, to just about anyone they want... except Nancy O'Dell.
The attempt at firing — O’Dell was set to host the Trump-owned "Miss USA Pageant" — came 2 years later in 2007. Trump failed at the fuck and failed at the firing. But he tried, and we hear of the failure, not the success. But he's a winner. He likes to win.
In fact, if you watch the whole video, you see him winning with another woman, Arianne Zucker, the one who, in Trump's words, is "hot as shit, in the purple." Zucker is the one who inspired him to say "I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. 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 in fact, you see the female version of that power trip: The woman plays on the man's sexual interest. Grab them by the crotch. Zucker looks entirely pleased with herself, demands to walk in the center and grabs the arms of both men. If that is what is expected and that is the norm in your workplace, how can you be the cold one who keeps her sexuality to herself?
I invite you to contemplate why this got me thinking about Erica Jong's concept of the "zipless fuck":
Oh! "Access Hollywood" has newly conspicuous double meaning. Not just reporters getting access to celebrities, but celebrities getting sexual access to... well, to hear Trump tell it, to just about anyone they want... except Nancy O'Dell.
The attempt at firing — O’Dell was set to host the Trump-owned "Miss USA Pageant" — came 2 years later in 2007. Trump failed at the fuck and failed at the firing. But he tried, and we hear of the failure, not the success. But he's a winner. He likes to win.
In fact, if you watch the whole video, you see him winning with another woman, Arianne Zucker, the one who, in Trump's words, is "hot as shit, in the purple." Zucker is the one who inspired him to say "I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. 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 in fact, you see the female version of that power trip: The woman plays on the man's sexual interest. Grab them by the crotch. Zucker looks entirely pleased with herself, demands to walk in the center and grabs the arms of both men. If that is what is expected and that is the norm in your workplace, how can you be the cold one who keeps her sexuality to herself?
I invite you to contemplate why this got me thinking about Erica Jong's concept of the "zipless fuck":
The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.
"[T]he most competent and engaged workers are often at the greatest risk for burnout."
"Their willingness to labor for love and not money will, over time, expose them to chronic stress. That is especially true in universities, where there are few explicit limits on working hours.... [B]urnout is more acute in younger faculty members than in older ones (and in women more than men). It’s easier to do too much too soon than to build barriers between your work and psyche.... Academic culture fosters burnout when it encourages overwork, promotes a model of professors as isolated entrepreneurs, and offers little recognition for good teaching or mentoring... The response to faculty burnout should, therefore, not be to shrug and say that academic work is a labor of love, and some people just aren’t cut out for it. Instead, the response should be to find ways to give these highly skilled workers the rest, respect, and reward they need to stay healthy and effective. Institutions cause burnout, and only a whole effort of an institution can deal with it. A good start would be for colleges and universities to support and reward the things they say they value.... That would be more useful than drafting another strategic plan that will be ignored a year later."
Writes Jonathan Malesic, who left a tenured position teaching theology at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Malesic presents himself as having "burned out" after 11 years and at the age of 40. I say "presents" because he didn't leave the job purely because he burned out. He also did it to live with his wife, who'd gotten a job in what sounds like a nicer place than Wilkes-Barre. (He refers to it as "a bucolic region."*) And he's "working on a book about the spiritual costs of the American work ethic," which sounds like a better job. Writing a book is much more relaxing than writing a book and also teaching and handling administrative work — with all the demands and annoyances inherent in dealing with other people — except to the extent that you stress yourself out about how you're not operating from within the normal, respected structure of working in America. But if that's the very topic of your book — "the spiritual costs of the American work ethic" — that stress is a source of material.
I can't tell whether Malesic meditates on his manhood as he labors in the shade of his wife's career. Does he look at his name and shudder to think "male sick"? His essay gets a little personal, but perhaps not that personal or not personal in that way. In any case, I love the topic "the spiritual costs of the American work ethic." It's something I have always thought about, and I have never fallen into the problem of burnout that he's talks about, which sounds like a manic-depressive cycle, within which you get high off the intense work and then crash. I've always had strong boundaries and a deep instinct to protect myself from absorption into the mind of any workplace — including the one where I've worked for the last 33 years and from which I'm walking away very soon, with no sense of burnout, just a desire for more freedom.
________________________
* After writing this post, I found his website, and it says he lives in Dallas. "Bucolic"? [ADDED: I'm making an inference that could be incorrect, that he spent his sabbatical in the place where his wife received the job.]
Writes Jonathan Malesic, who left a tenured position teaching theology at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Malesic presents himself as having "burned out" after 11 years and at the age of 40. I say "presents" because he didn't leave the job purely because he burned out. He also did it to live with his wife, who'd gotten a job in what sounds like a nicer place than Wilkes-Barre. (He refers to it as "a bucolic region."*) And he's "working on a book about the spiritual costs of the American work ethic," which sounds like a better job. Writing a book is much more relaxing than writing a book and also teaching and handling administrative work — with all the demands and annoyances inherent in dealing with other people — except to the extent that you stress yourself out about how you're not operating from within the normal, respected structure of working in America. But if that's the very topic of your book — "the spiritual costs of the American work ethic" — that stress is a source of material.
I can't tell whether Malesic meditates on his manhood as he labors in the shade of his wife's career. Does he look at his name and shudder to think "male sick"? His essay gets a little personal, but perhaps not that personal or not personal in that way. In any case, I love the topic "the spiritual costs of the American work ethic." It's something I have always thought about, and I have never fallen into the problem of burnout that he's talks about, which sounds like a manic-depressive cycle, within which you get high off the intense work and then crash. I've always had strong boundaries and a deep instinct to protect myself from absorption into the mind of any workplace — including the one where I've worked for the last 33 years and from which I'm walking away very soon, with no sense of burnout, just a desire for more freedom.
________________________
* After writing this post, I found his website, and it says he lives in Dallas. "Bucolic"? [ADDED: I'm making an inference that could be incorrect, that he spent his sabbatical in the place where his wife received the job.]
7 అక్టోబర్, 2016
"House Speaker Paul Ryan, saying he was 'sickened' by Trump's comments, announced Friday night that the GOP presidential nominee would no longer attend a Republican event in Wisconsin..."
"... at which the two were slated to appear on Saturday. Trump's campaign said vice presidential nominee Mike Pence would represent him instead. Trump campaign advisers were huddling together in Trump Tower Friday night trying to figure out how to react."
How about withdrawing?
Why, it was only this morning that commenters on this blog were pushing for me and Meade to attend the rally tomorrow in Elkhorn. David Begley said:
How about withdrawing?
Why, it was only this morning that commenters on this blog were pushing for me and Meade to attend the rally tomorrow in Elkhorn. David Begley said:
Trump rally one hour from Althouse and Meade on Saturday. Wisconsin is critical for Trump and the Meadehouse endorsement is influential.I joked:
So I could tip the nation, eh, Begley? After all this, it might depend on me.Meade boosted my joke:
In a world... where Clinton corruption grew exponentially, there was one lady blogger...David Begley leaned in:
Yes, Ann, selection of the next Leader of the Free World depends upon you and Wisconsin.
No pressure....
What Donald Trump said into a hot microphone back in 2005.
"I moved on her and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there. And she was married... Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look.... Whoa! I've gotta use some tic tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
Trump immediately issued an apology, an apology that took a shot a Bill Clinton:
Hillary Clinton immediately tweeted: "This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president." And Tim Kaine said:
Criminal behavior. Sexual assault.
Trump immediately issued an apology, an apology that took a shot a Bill Clinton:
This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.If anyone was offended. Is there any chance that no one was offended?!
Hillary Clinton immediately tweeted: "This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president." And Tim Kaine said:
"I don't like to say the words that he's used in the past when he calls women, 'pigs, dogs and slobs' ... but this is behavior that's just outrageous and so that there would be a news story that would have more statements like this of this kind, I mean, gosh, I'm sad to say that I'm not surprised. I should be surprised and shocked. I'm sad to say that I'm not."Yes, Tim Kaine is right. Trump's statement — which is itself only words — is a confession to behavior.
Criminal behavior. Sexual assault.
"Early Wednesday morning, a man tragically died while trying to surf a Coney Island-bound F train near the Fourth Avenue/Ninth Street station in Brooklyn."
"To make America the greatest is my goal/So I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole..."
From the poetry of Muhammad Ali... which I found after I'd likened Trump to Muhammad Ali. I was participating in a Facebook discussion of a Politico article titled "Trump blows off debate tune-up/In this public town-hall rehearsal, Trump shows he’s put in as little 'prep' as the first time." Trump was quoted saying:
“I said forget debate prep. I mean, give me a break... Do you really think that Hillary Clinton is debate-prepping for three or four days. Hillary Clinton is resting, okay?”I'd already posted "Isn't this a lot like the way Muhammad Ali would talk before a fight? It's performance..." So it blew my mind when I searched for something about what Ali would say and I found that old rhyme that was so close to Trump's "Make America great again."
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